Hennessey's Venom F5-M has 2,031 hp and a manual gearbox, because madness
Over 2,000 hp and three pedals: the manual is very much alive
If the manual gearbox is meant to be dying, someone forgot to tell Hennessey. The Texan firm is unleashing the Venom F5-M, a hypercar with well over 2,000 hp sent to the rear wheels through an honest-to-goodness gated six-speed manual. It is, frankly, gloriously unhinged, and we could not love it more.
The world's most powerful manual
The headline is simple and slightly terrifying: 2,031 hp, all of it going through a proper three-pedal, gated six-speed manual. That makes the Venom F5-M comfortably the most powerful manual car in the world. The power comes from Hennessey's twin-turbocharged 6.6-litre V8, and fitting the manual was no bolt-on job: the engine had to be remapped with more graduated, gentler power delivery lower down, specifically to stop the rear tyres lighting up every time you so much as think about the throttle in the first few gears.
A very different kind of manual to Ferrari's
The timing is delicious. Ferrari has just revived the manual idea with its 12Cilindri Manuale, but that car uses a clever by-wire system emulating a manual. Hennessey has gone the whole hog with a genuine mechanical gated shifter, the real, old-school article, just like the analogue purity celebrated by the manual Ferrari 599 GT Speciale. For die-hard enthusiasts, that distinction matters enormously.
Rare, expensive and already gone
If you want one, bad news: you are too late. Hennessey will build just 12 examples of the Venom F5-M Roadster, each priced at 2.65 million dollars, and every build slot is already claimed. Exclusivity like that is part of the appeal, and it makes the F5-M an instant collector's piece as well as a driver's fantasy.
See it run at Goodwood
The Venom F5-M makes its production debut at this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it will tackle the famous hillclimb twice a day across the four-day event. Watching a driver row their own gears in a 2,000-plus hp hypercar up that narrow, walled hill should be one of the most nerve-jangling sights of the weekend.
AutoNext Take
Is 2,031 hp through a manual gearbox sensible? Absolutely not. Is it magnificent? Completely. In an era racing towards automated, electrified everything, Hennessey building the most powerful stick-shift car ever, purely because enthusiasts want it, is exactly the sort of defiant, joyful madness the car world needs. It takes real skill, and no small amount of bravery, to master a car like this, and that is the whole point. We would not want every hypercar to be this wild, but we are thrilled this one exists. Long live the manual.
