Some interesting info that I never knew before. According to Wikipedia (and I know they're not an authority on everything) Hennessey is considered to be a manufacturer as well as a tuning company.
They're definitely not the former (does Hennessey even have a WMI?) and considering how many owners have accused him of theft they're probably barely the latter at this point.
Wikipedia also says stuff like this:
The Venom GT Spyder is an open top version of the Venom GT. Having decided to order a Venom GT,
Aerosmith lead singer
Steven Tyler approached Hennessey in mid-late 2011 and asked if an open-top version could be created. This involved structural changes which added 30 lb (14 kg) to the curb weight.
Now, I've seen plenty of photos of Steven Tyler's Venom GT. Allow me to postulate my theories regarding the engineering struggles Hennessey faced to make the car a convertible that the prose of that article is implying took place:
And I know the Venom GT was built using the Lotus Elise platform (guessing that's what your car is 😊) but personally, I would be pretty chuffed if my car was the blueprint for a 1200hp monster 💀
But that doesn't make it a Venom GT. That makes it a Lotus Elise (or, more likely, an Exige) that has a Corvette engine in it and a wheelbase stretch. Lotus is the one who did the work to develop a car and federalize it to be sold for the US market. Lotus is the one who partnered with an automaker with business in the United States to get a drivetrain the EPA would sign off on and got a waiver from NHTSA to not need to fully meet US crash testing requirements (as well as renewing that waiver with minor changes until Lotus decided that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze anymore since the Evora was out anyway).
Hennessey came along after and swapped the engine and claimed it was a production car he made and claimed it could do a bunch of things that he knew would never be tested by any of the people who actually got one of them after ordering them; all with the further knowledge that it wouldn't need to pass emissions anywhere because nobody who did get one would be stupid enough to even try and register it in a CARB state; and it wouldn't need to be have crash testing or anything like that because the car is legally still a Lotus. What I suspect he's doing with the F5 since he can't just coast off the fact that someone else already did all the hard work for him is selling engines and chassis separately and then offering to assemble them together as part of the purchase price so he can just have it registered with
something for a VIN but as a kit car.
So, you say that Hennessey tells owners to register their cars in Montana to avoid emission regulations. So theoretically, would importing a European supercar into Montana bypass emissions laws everywhere else in the States?
No, because you couldn't get it into the country to begin with. That's what the Show and Display waiver Hennessey claims the F5 falls under is for. If you managed to sneak it into the US and get it registered in Montana or Vermont you
could drive it around, for sure, but you might come home to ICE towing it out your driveway to go crush it; like all the people who were registering Skylines and S15s as 240SXs in the early 2000s.
You could very well be right but nothing suggests anywhere that it's a track-only car.
We pretty strongly can assume it's not
really street legal because if it was street legal Hennessy wouldn't be claiming that it's street legal under the carve out Bill Gates forced into United States law purely so he could drive his 959s; and again Show and Display wouldn't apply to it to begin with even if we didn't literally have the list of cars allowed under it. If it was really street legal he would just point to his company's WMI code it would have as a real OEM and produce the F5's EPA certification documents and the NHTSA waiver he'd probably need for it and then he'd be golden,
indisputably.
Instead he lied; and lied in a way that was easily verifiable even if none of the automotive websites bothered checking.
Apparently, only 24 were slated for production. But if it was on a track or drag strip with a Koenigsegg Jesko, for example, don't you think it would be a legitimate rival?
No, because the Jesko is an actual car. Not one that you can buy in the United States, but one that has some sort of certification testing in at least the target region that they are sold in, from an established manufacturer of cars for over two decades.
Hennessey's vehicles are stats pages on Supercars.net; and whether they are even produced (nevermind whether they can do anything he claims they can as delivered) is immaterial to whether people look at them online and subsequently give him money to steal parts off of their SVT Raptor or Viper.
Perhaps John is able to take advantage of a legal loophole and circumnavigate emissions laws? But there's still SSC and Saleen, right?
From what I've read SSC does the same thing Hennessey does, but without the 30 years of baggage Hennessey himself has.
Saleen hasn't built a car in 15 years and basically no longer exists; but when they
did build the S7 they had the engineering support of Ford and Ford suppliers and were themselves a major Ford contractor/supplier since the 1980s who had always gotten EPA and CARB certification for their parts/models (just like Callaway also had) so they had the expertise and the connections to do so.
I had a look at the lap times on the Nurburgring but I saw it was very Euro-centric. Many Porsches in particular but also Mercs.
The highest ranked Japanese car was #39 which was the LFA Nurburgring Package.
www.google.com
I think there was a Corvette Z06 in #38 and I believe the 2017 Viper ACR was well ranked, somewhere in the Top 20 I believe.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Det...try=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAwOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==
But it's not much compared to European marques.
