Meet the man who turned a Lotus Exige into a 270mph hypercar
From tuning his Mitsubishi 3000GT to manufacturing the 1817bhp Venom F5, John Hennessey is the ultimate power broker
Few names are as synonymous with speed as that of Texas-based tuning mogul John Hennessey. Obsessed with making fast cars go faster since the 1990s, Hennessey’s eponymous business, Hennessey Performance, has grown from humble beginnings modifying his own Mitsubishi 3000GT to become one of the world’s best-known tuning companies and a manufacturer in its own right.
Not content with boosting a variety of contemporary muscle cars (and pickups!) to 1000bhp and beyond, Hennessey has earned its place as a hypercar maker. First with the Venom GT – a 1244bhp, 1244kg, 270mph-plus monster loosely based upon the Lotus Exige – and more recently with the in-house-designed, all-carbonfibre, 1800bhp and projected 300mph-plus Venom F5.
Hennessey’s high-profile, proudly American approach may tweak a few noses, but not only are the cars he builds uniquely exciting and outrageously potent, but his commitment to the competitive spirit of building the world’s fastest cars is second to none. And no wonder, for his connection with fast cars was made almost before he could walk:
‘My earliest memories are of my dad’s ’64 Pontiac GTO. It was a stick-shift car. As soon as I was big enough to stand on his lap and hold the steering wheel, he had me “driving” it. If you spoke to my mom, she’d tell you of the time she momentarily left me alone in the family VW Bug and I managed to release the handbrake, knock it out of gear and roll down the driveway, across the busy main street and right to the far side of a parking lot. You could say that was my first taste of speed!’
Hennessey’s love of cars was clear from early childhood, but an instinctive drive to better himself was just as influential in the path he ended up taking. ‘I’ve always been entrepreneurial. My parents didn’t have much money, so if I wanted money to do things, I had to earn it. Back in ’77 my dad was working as an insurance adjuster. There was a body shop that had a 1969 Oldsmobile 442 Convertible that they had repaired but the owners had abandoned.
'The shop was going to sell it to my dad for a couple of hundred bucks and it was going to be my first car. A month goes by and I’m like, “Hey Dad, what’s the deal with that 442 that you showed me?” and he just kind of dodged the question. Then I notice the car is parked in the neighbour’s driveway across the street. I’m guessing Dad needed the money. It was like torture for me to see the car, but it spurred me on.
‘My transport back then was a couple of motorcycles – a Honda CB100 that would barely do 50mph, and a Kawasaki 400. I crashed the 400 and had to fix it up. The neighbour with “my” 442 was an auto worker at the local Ford plant, and he helped me repair my bike. Long story short, when the bike was fixed, I asked him if he would consider trading my two motorcycles plus some cash against the Olds. He did the deal and I paid him at the rate of $50 a month, driving the 442 for my junior and senior years of high school. I absolutely terrorised Kansas City in that thing!’
The Oldsmobile was Hennessey’s first foray into muscle cars, but other automotive influences soon began to take hold: ‘I was a huge rally fan. I loved Group B, especially when Michèle Mouton drove the Quattro at Pikes Peak. Likewise the Porsche 959, which is the car I covet the most to this day. The 959 has always remained a dream, but I managed to get a Quattro [an ’83 model] in ’87. It was my daily driver, so I was pretty careful with it. Back in 2022 I treated myself to a Quattro for my 60th birthday. Unbeknown to me, my family had got me a 442 Convertible as a birthday surprise. It’s not the actual car – it’s much better – so it’s fun to have those cars from my earlier life.’
Buying his first Quattro and his admiration for the 959 would drive Hennessey to purchase a car that would ultimately change the course of his life: ‘By this time I had an environmental clean-up business. I kept thinking about what car could I buy new and modify to make into my own poor man’s version of a 959. Not just to use it on the street, but to take it to Pikes Peak and race it. That car was my 1991 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR‑4. Initially I only wanted to do Pikes Peak, but then also did the Silver State Classic in Nevada. I got fourth overall with an average speed of 167mph, taking 33 minutes and change to complete the 90-mile course. This was in 1991.’
The bug had well and truly bitten but it came at a price, Hennessey becoming increasingly distracted from his day job and ploughing his savings into the 3000GT. ‘I was watching my bank balance going south and I thought, man, I really like this car thing. I like development and testing and racing, but if I’m going to be able to keep doing it maybe somebody else would pay me to modify their car. That’s when I decided to start the business we have today.’
It was a big decision but one that ultimately suited Hennessey well, his entrepreneurial spirit, passion for cars and an early grounding in engineering providing the building blocks for one of the world’s best-known tuning companies.
‘Two years of engineering at college gave me an understanding, but also enough knowledge to know when to defer to proper engineers,’ he says candidly. ‘I think my biggest strength is creativity. Having the ability to envision something and then persuading the right people to help me make it real. That was true back in 1991 when I asked someone to help me manage the boost control on my 3000GT and was the same when I first thought about the Venom F5 in 2013.
'I spent the next three or four years convincing my family and employees to believe in it and turn it into a full-scale design model. Then within months of showing that at SEMA [the world’s biggest tuning industry show] we had six orders. I’ve learned that when people tell me my idea is crazy, I’m really onto something good.’
If Hennessey’s Mitsubishi 3000GT was the car that started it all, the Dodge Viper was the car that truly put the name on the map. ‘It was huge for us,’ he says, with obvious affection. ‘Things got serious for me with the 3000GT. I went from pretty much doing everything on the car myself to renting a workshop and taking on a mechanic, as I knew a skilled technician would help me take things further.
'Anyway, a little while after we got the shop I had a call from a guy who’d noticed what I’d done in the Silver State and said he had an allocation for one of the first customer Vipers. He wanted to do the event and asked me to get the car ready. He was thinking more of safety equipment, but after I met him in Dallas and drove the Viper back home I thought it could be so much more with some work on the exhaust, intakes and maybe cylinder heads.
‘So I called him up and offered him a deal. I said, I think I can get another hundred horsepower if you let me modify it. I’ll do it for free and support you at the Silver State. My only request is, after the race, you let me bring the car down to Southern California and show it to the guys at Motor Trend and Road & Track magazines. He agreed and that’s how the first Viper Venom was born.
'We started at 500bhp, then 550, then eventually 650 naturally aspirated. We did some really cool stuff with those cars, going to magazine shoot-outs and breaking 200mph. Back then there was only magazine media, so whenever I had a request from a legit outlet I always said yes, as the marketing value of that was way more than I could afford to do with advertising.’
Successive generations of Viper enabled Hennessey to build on his early success, but by the mid-noughties he could see the time was right to expand the portfolio: ‘We’d built a good team by this stage. I could see that the Gen 3 Viper wasn’t as popular, and I felt we should pivot to other vehicles, so we started looking at Mustangs and F‑150 pickups.
'Also, it was around this time the C6 Z06 Corvette came out with 500 horsepower. It was less money than the Viper, and Bob Lutz [former driving force at Chrysler and father of the Viper] had joined GM. I thought if “Maximum Bob” is there he’s going to be doing some cool stuff that we should look at. We stopped working on Vipers in the end because it was just getting too hard to get parts, but I’ve still got a few in my collection. They will always be special cars to me.’
His business is rooted in American muscle, but Hennessey’s collection and tastes extend beyond the obvious. ‘I’ve run a Tesla Plaid as my daily for the last couple of years to gain an understanding of EVs, but I sold my 992 Turbo to get it and spent the whole time regretting it. I’m replacing the Tesla with a Cadillac CT5‑V Blackwing manual with 1000 horsepower. That should be fun.
‘I bought an RS6 Avant a few years ago, but the moment my wife saw it she claimed it as her own. And when my youngest daughter graduated from college my wife and I bought ourselves a Ferrari 812 GTS. We were like: “No more tuition fees, no more rent payments, let’s get a Ferrari!” If I could wave a magic wand, I’d have an AMG One. And there’d also be a toss-up between Gordon Murray’s T.50 and a T.33 Spider. Oh, and a Pagani Huayra R. That thing sounds just like a V12 F1 car.’
Nostalgics will say the muscle car peaked in the ’60s and ’70s, but there’s a strong argument to suggest the last decade has been the greatest of all for big-power American V8s. Hennessey’s decision to diversify beyond the Viper meant he has been perfectly placed to ride that wave, with a range of upgrades to the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro, plus trucks like the Raptor and Ram.
‘I can remember Dodge endlessly teasing the Demon – an 800bhp version of the Hellcat – and I thought we needed to create a rival that would beat it. That’s where the Exorcist came from. We took the Camaro ZL1 – which ran basically the same supercharged LT4 V8 as the Corvette Z06 – and created a 1000bhp monster. It pretty much doubled the cost of the factory ZL1, so I thought maybe we’d sell ten of them. To date we’ve built 120.’
If the present is a heyday for muscle cars, the not-too-distant future looks worryingly bleak. When your lifelong love of cars was informed by V8s and your business is built around tuning them, the switch to battery power is doubly traumatic, yet Hennessey remains pragmatic. ‘I feel sorry for the OEMs because they have to make product decisions years in advance. Unfortunately, the big stuff from Dodge and GM is gone. I think it’s a mistake for them to get out of V8 muscle cars, and then bring them back as EVs.
'I just don’t know how many true muscle car guys are going to make the switch from V8 to EV. Maybe they will circle back. The muscle car went through a dormant phase due to the oil crisis and Clean Air Act in the mid‑’70s and early ’80s, but they came back eventually.
‘Thankfully Jim Farley at Ford has gone on the record saying they will continue to produce V8s into the 2030s. God bless him and Ford for having the courage to continue with that. I sure hope that for my kids and for future generations, the OEMs and governments are somehow able to work things out so you can still be emissions and fuel-economy friendly, and yet still have a V8.
'As an enthusiast I always want to be able to buy that type of car. I’ve just got a Mustang Dark Horse and we’re putting a supercharger on it, so it’s 800bhp at the rear wheels. I can’t wait to rip that thing. That was true for me 45 years ago. It’s true for me today. It’ll be true for me when I’m in my 80s. That’s not changing!’
