Former JLR chassis guru Mike Cross once told me he thought it was no bad thing that there weren’t many 500+hp cars available with manual transmissions because, with that much grunt on hand, drivers had enough to deal with. Heaven knows what Cross would make of the new Hennessey Venom F5-M, which has a six-speed manual transmission and a whopping 1,817 hp.
The world’s most powerful manual-shift
production car is based on the existing Venom F5 Roadster, but swaps that car’s
seven-speed automated manual for a true six-speed manual with a billet aluminum
shift gate. That’s hooked up to the same 6.6-liter twin-turbo V8 and makes the
same power and 1,618 Nm of torque. It sounds like an insane idea,
and that makes it a great one in our book.
Hennessey doesn’t provide any performance
figures, though it’s inevitable that the $2.65 million F5-M won’t be as quick
as its paddle-shift brother in a drag race. Not that the buyers of the 12 cars
being built will care, because driving a manual is about the feel not just
going fast. And besides, the M is still going to be quicker than just about any
other car on the road.
Though the transmission swap is the big
news here, it’s not the only feature differentiating the F5-M from a regular F5
Roadster. The three-pedal car also gains a huge 55-inch (1,400 mm) dorsal fin
that stretches from behind the seats where the roof-mounted air scoop is
located and out to the trailing edge of the rear deck.
Joining the new pedal box and carbon
fiber/aluminum shifter in the cabin is a wider console in which the previously
vertically stacked circular air vents are replaced by a pair arranged
horizontally. Carried over is Hennessey‘s yoke-style steering wheel that
features plenty of buttons but no top section to spoil the view of the
rectangular digital gauge pack.
