I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is hot pursuit.
All right, we have a fantastic guest for you today. I'm pretty excited, Hannah. You're the one who brought him to us. And John Hennessy has really become a legend alongside you know, Carol Shelby in America.
Completely and he's done the difficult task of running and operating a car company and actually delivering cars. When they say they're going to make them, they make them and they actually do it. And he's got a few world records too.
Yeah. Absolutely, So it's a ten year anniversary of the world record that they set with the Venom GT, which I think Steven Tyler famously had a one off version built for himself as a spider. And now it looks like they're going to try that again with their new car, the Venom F five.
Which is super exciting. And John also shared some very enticing little tidbit too, I have to say in our conversation. So I'm actually going to be watching Hennessy pretty closely these next few years.
All right, let's get into it with John Hennessy. Let's kick it off with the Venom F five and Coda.
Okay, sure, Venom F five went to the circumd America's about a month ago, and we've been doing a little bit of testing up there, just kind of dialing our setup in in the car for our customers, and got close to a lap record and we thought, well, golly, maybe we can come back and see if we can be the fastest production series roadcar and street tis at CODA. And we did just that. We beat the I think the Seizinger guys there from LA. We beat them by
four tenths of the second. We beat the McLaren P one by about seven seconds of lap and I still don't think that we're anywhere near what the F five is capable around Coda. But again, I think that what was kind of a cool thing with kind of demonstrating its capability on the road course. People weren't expecting the Venom F five to be something that would be capable of going and setting big numbers on racetracks like Coda, like we have gone in the numbering yet, but it's
on our list. But but we always wanted that Venom F five to be you know, my track analogy would be track and field and nowgs it would be to be the decathlete of hypercars. So it does, it stops, it turns, it accelerates. Obviously, it's got tremendous power to weight ratiow Again, certain hyper cars are known for certain you know Bugatti obviously the very luxurious and very high top speed. And so anyway, that was a that was
a big box for us to check. And we've got a number of other performance records and speed records that we're looking at down the road, but right now it's nice to validate being the fastest production series roadcar and street tiers at CODA.
John, I have to say a couple of things. Number One, I love hearing you say golly, because that is so Texan. And my dad says that he's the only other person I really so that's that's a very texting thing. And you know it's really interesting. You know, we've talked in the past about You've said, hey, these type of records and these really high speeds are kind of just the result of engineering. They're not even necessarily the goal, because a lot of your buyers are not looking necessarily to
own a world record car. Is that am I remembering?
Right?
Is that still accurate.
That is exactly right. You've got an excellent recollection and exactly to your point, the lap record. Like, we didn't go to CODED as a marketing event, as a marketing exercise. We went there basically to develop our car, perfect our car, to simulate our car under conditions that at some point our customers are going to drive it again. Nobody. I don't know that any but any of our We've sold about forty cars. We've delivered twenty two F fives to day.
I've not had an F five client say well, hey, you know, look, I'll be really really excited if you can set a lap record somewhere. They love that. I tell you what's interesting what our clients really resonates with our clients. We hear this from almost all of them. They tell us that buying the F five is much for the experience with me, with our family, with our company. That's as important to them the overall experience. It is
the actual car itself. So what's cool is is by developing the car and focusing on engineering and perfecting the product,
the by product is the speed record. And so you know the old saying of form follows function, form follows performance really in this case, the the the the performance of the car is really just a function of our focus on trying to make the best car that we can make, and the result is we said a lap record, and again we still feel like there's there's quite a bit more time left in the car, but we've checked that boxers are the things that we're looking at down
the road. But it's it's cool for our customers to have a brading right to say, hey, my car is the fastest of this. And again we have we've got big goals for the F five, whether it's the Vmax run, the top speed run that we're looking at doing hopefully later this year, and maybe a few other things along
the way. So yeah, I think the story behind the car is very important, but you know, people really like the overall experience and going to car Week and coming to the factory and specing their car and spending time with our clients. It's it's very experiential and it's a very boutique part of the process that we really that we I enjoy my family or enjoy all my all of our kids work on a business and are all very involved in the program. So those relationships with those clients is really special.
I have to say, you know, just looking at the car, it's gorgeous. I would be happy to own one for just the design, the engineering, the power train. I wouldn't need a world record to buy this car. That doesn't mean you're not going to try and set one. Right currently, I think it's held by the Bugatti at three hundred and four miles per hour or so.
And I think there's a konig Seg that I think.
John tell me I'm wrong.
The Bugatti is a prototype the konig Seg has.
In any case, you you've set a world record before. John tell us about this whole the whole history, because you set a world record with the with the VENOMGT ten years ago basically, and that was beating a Bugatti at least I've read, And now it seems like you're in the same situation a decade later.
Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. So way back when is the Venom GT came into existence and we had orders and we're developing the car. It was always our goal to be the fastest. So at the time Bugatti with their vay Round supersport had run a two AA average of two hundred and sixty seven miles per hour, and that was the number that we wanted to beat. So when we went to NASA and we're running on
the former spaceship landing runway. On that particular day we ran two hundred and seven miles our in one direction, we wanted to turn around and run the opposite direction. So you typically to for Guinness or for FIA, or just for the world to recognize an official top speed run,
you want to run in both directions. That way, you cancel out any wind or I mean, NASA is very flat, but in the case of Kona Seig, they ran on a run or on a highway in Nevada that had a slope to it, so you have to go uphill and down hill. So anyway, we wanted to make the return run. But on that particular day, NASA was testing an autonomous spacecraft called Morpheus on the end of the runway that we were departing from, so we could run.
I think we were running from north to south, but they would not allow us to run south to north because they had spacecraft and people on the opposite of the runway. So we thought, no big deal, so we put that it went out in the news and then some of the haters, and I won't say Biggutty's a hater, but they definitely were like, well, that's not a because you didn't run both directions. Yeah. Oh hey, Look, we're friendly competitors. And at that time, their CEO is a
guy named Wolfgang Drheimer, whom I got to know. I met him a car week. He really liked the fact that we were competing with him. He felt like having that rivalry he created relevance in the market, which I totally agree with, and so we became friends, and so
I saw him maybe a couple of years later. I was at Geneva when they were unveiling the Shiron and he was very busy, shook hands, just chatted for a moment, and as he walked away, he turned around and looked at me over his shoulder and he smiled and said, Hey, John, make sure next time you run a top streeed run you run bout directions. And I laughed and like, okay, man, all right, it's on and so fast forward. So he's
no longer co. He retired, and then the guy the Bugatti guys went out and ran their shure on superscored back. I think it was in twenty nineteen. Amazing number. They ran almost three hundred and five miles per hour, but for whatever reason, they only ran one direction. Yeah, and I know some of the guys that work there. I'm like, okay, you've left the door open now, Hannah. You were mentioning
earlier the Conaset guys have run a two average. I think it still stands at two hundred and seventy eight miles or something like that. They did that back in maybe twenty seventeen. So again we feel like, again for the vmax run or an official two, for an official production top seed record, you've got to run both directions and to your point, and I don't know, I don't know this for a fact. I wasn't that air the
same when they ran the car. But it's been mentioned that the car that they ran maybe had some significant modifications that are not necessarily on the road cars that you could buy. So I'm not gonna I'm not going to take any knocks against them. If they had a rollcage or they lighten the car, whatever they did to make that run, it's still an astonishing record. It still sets a high bar Look, we love competition. We want to we want to go out and beat that number again others are playing.
Let me just ask, is it true that the theoretic theoretical top speed of the Venom F five is over three hundred twenty five miles per hour? And how do you how do you figure that out?
Yeah? Uh yeah, So we've got a team of aridon amesis internally and externally from the company. Uh the CFD. The aero analysis says, with the power that our car is making with its funnel area and drag, it's three hundred and twenty eight miles per hour theoretical top speed. We're not trying to go anywhere near that. But look, I mean if we could get to five hundred kilometers, which is around three hundred and eleven miles per hour, if we could do that in one direction, I think
that would be really cool. But you know, the thing that really boils down to these top speed runs is where do you do this a runway? I don't know if the NASA runway in Florida is long enough. We're probably going to have to do it on a highway. And so look, this is high stakes poker in that you've got the safety of the driver. You've got the car, you know, so where do we run the car? That's
the big thing that we're working on. We feel like we've got the car right now is ready to go, go make the run, but we're we're working on a few different things. Maybe a longer runway, a little bit longer than us and also the possibility of a Texas Highway so you know, howdy yeehaul, you know, all those good texts and things, would be kind of fun to do it here here and here in the great state of Texas, we'll say.
Second largest state. I'm curious, can you give us a feel for when you decide to go for a record run, how long is the planning for that and how much does it cost? In general? I mean, is this a big output for the company or it's not that big a deal for lack of a better word. And then I just also want to say, theoretically, on that three twenty eight, it seems like you're saying that the limiting factor on a speed is space to do tires also come into it and think specific to the car.
Absolutely, so first question, it's absolutely a huge deal to do it right. So we have dedicated resources. Our engineering team has been actually been working on this for quite a while so in a variety of phases, so prepping the car, working with Michelin. We were actually in South Carolina and had some meetings with the fine folks of Michelin. They've been a great partner on the tire. So we feel great about the tire. Obviously there's president the gonna set.
Guys have run into the two ninety range with the with the pilots Supersport Sport Cup two tire, So we feel good about the tire. But really to your point, it's the where you know the location. How much distance do we have to work with. We did a test
on gosh really probably twelvehndred horsepower. We ran two hundred and seventy two months power with the F five a couple of years ago, just to validate the car before we started delivering the clients, and so I think we can probably run upwards of three hundred at NASA, but again that's nowhere near it's it's we don't We're not trying to get to the theoretical top speed, but we would like to hit that five magic five hundred kilometer number at least in one direction. So so yeah, there's
a ton of time, a ton of resources. It's risky business. As President Kennedy said back in the sixties, we don't do these things because they're easy. We do them because we're hard. Because they're hard. So it makes our product better, it makes our engineers are drivers better. I don't know that I've had a customer say, well, you know, I'll buy the car if I can, if it has the top speed record. Yeah, it's probably good for breaking right, So it's probably really good for brand, long term and
long term value of the car. But again, people are buying the F five not because of its vmax potential. They're buying it because it's a piece of automotive art and it's the most fun vehicle I've ever driven, So that's part of what they're buying. But I think again, I think some of them, these guys and men and women that own the F five and have it on order,
they're also savvy investors. They're also somewhat betting on the come that if we do knock off Bugatti and we do set the two way average, that the likeliness of their car being worth more than they paid for it is going to increase. So yeah, now we take it very seriously. It's a huge investment of time and money, and it's also look, there there's also risk involved. There's reasons why the manufacturers do not play in the sandbox.
It's because it's it's high stakes pokers. So we take that very seriously in the safety of our driver in our car. So but we're still very intent on doing it. This is just part of our our family's DNA, our company's DNA, and it's white and one of the reasons why we're in this business. We like to push the boundaries. We like to climb the next highest mountain.
Now you mentioned neburgering, sounds like you might take the car over, did were you?
Yeah? So, look, I mean it's it's always been something that's been loosely on a radar screen, but way down the priority list. Relevant. It is absolutely relevant. But I will say this that the degree of difficulty of going fast or being the fastest the Nordchlifa is a higher bar than a top speed run. It's a bigger investment, it's riskier, there's a lot that there's a lot there's just as many variables in terms of weather, the track,
it's down to the driver. Look, we've we've got access to So I hired a guy, Brian Jones, about nine months ago who came to me. I didn't seek him out. I didn't even know that I needed at the time. But Brian was previously the chief engineer of the ams want Ams Wan has the record at the Normie Life But so I think they ran a six thirty two or six thirty three lap time. So Brian's Brian's now my chief engineer, and he feels like we're we're capable
of running a time fashion than that, but it's very complicated. It's, you know, five six thousand miles away. I would have to take a significant part of our team and kind of camp out over there, and ultimately you're looking for the right day with the right weather. So again, we have other other priorities on the on the record list between now and then, but I could see us, I could see us doing some testing there and next year
and but you never know. I mean, obviously now we're now, I mean we're always playing with the big boys, but like you know, Mercedes Porsche, so they're very significant competitors and I'm going to guess at some point, you know, Porsche's not going to sit back and why Mercedes sit at the top of the leader board, They're going to want to knock that off. So back to what we first started talking about, we will go to the nerveberg Ring to further develop our car and make our car
even better. And if as a byproduct, we've got a fast lap time, you know, even if it's not a record time, if we go out and we've set a respectful time, we'll put the video out. It's compelling, it's fun, and again it's something that we want to do, but again for the long term brand of the car and
the provenance and future value. I think I think this is another reason why we do these things is because you know, at some point, you know, you know, mean again, I feel like we build the world's greatest internal combustion powered hypercar currently, but at some point there may not be internal combustion powered hypercar. So we kind of feel like it's our duty to be kind of a part of history as much as we can.
I want to ask first tout Hennessee Performance because it's hard to really pinpoint the company you do. You know, you tune the way I found about out about the company. You know, ten years ago or fifteen years ago, you tune other cars. So I wanted to, you know, get your supercharger kit for my Tahoe way back when. And you do. You know, obviously a number of manufacturers products, but you also make these cars which I think compete with more like Pegani and Bugatti, McLaren and Kunigseeg than
you know, Porsche or Mercedes that you mentioned. Explain the way you think about Hennessee Performance to us.
Sure, So we basically have three different divisions within the company. Hennessey Performance modifies. We make fast cars and trucks go faster, so Broncos, rappers, Mustangs, corvettes, things of that nature. The last couple of years we built just under six hundred vehicles. So again, you come to us, you want something that's fast, it's probably in the one hundred of two hundred and fifty thousand price range. That's what we built. You might own the vehicle and send it to us, you might
call us up. I just want to buy a turnkey vehicle. So that's from a revenue standpoint, since this is Bloomberg, that's about half of our revenue. The other half predominant other half of our revenues from AT five production, so again about eleven cars the year the last two years. Then we have another division of the business that we don't really talk about a lot, but it's really it's a huge part of our culture, and that's our trade school called Tuner School, where we teach people how to
modify cars. We have classes three semesters a year. The students are eighteen to eighteen to thirty five year old men and women both come to Tuner School. They're here for four months, fourteen weeks, and so that's about forty percent of our work staff. We have just under one hundred employees. About forty percent of the people that work here at Hennessy have come out of Tuner School. So it's a really it's a really important part of our workforce.
It's a big part of our top line business.
Ye correct, correct and so and so this overall machine. They're very Again, we have different divisions, but they all interrelate to each other. We're our best and our brightest that come out of Hennessey Performing Us generally will migrate over to the Hennessy Special Vehicle side of the business, building and developing the f five. We also are growing our engineering department significantly under under Brian Jones leadership. Again previously with MULTIMATEC he was chief engineer for MG one
and for four GT. And so look, we you know, we've been around for thirty three years. People part our name, whether it's modified vipers, the Venom Viper, you know, Mustangs, Camaros, raptors for lost rappers, that's what we're really known for. But I promise you this, we are setting up the company for success and growth for the next one hundred years. And again our our our kids or we have five kids plus the son in law. They're all involved in
the business in some form or fashion. It started off as a crazy idem me wanted to modify Admitsubshi three thousand GT and race back in nineteen ninety one. But it's turned out a really neat need be neat business and need brands. You know we've got yeah, oh yeah, I got a little personal collection with the number of Radeway cars. So yeah, stuff.
I'm so curious. You know, you mentioned that you're thinking about the next hundred years, and I can't help but think that there have been so many automotive startups that
have come and gone over the years. You know, Matt and I in our line of work see them come and go, and you know, it's just I'd be curious to note to what do you attribute your ability to really actually not just show a car at a car show and not just make one or two that are trotted around everywhere, but actually be producing vehicles for clients. Because it's a very difficult thing to do.
It is, and I don't take it for granted. I'm grateful every single day. And I guess if I'm going to go down just kind of my mental gratitude list of how do we get where we are and what's going to get us where we want to go? I think that's our people starts with like, again, our kids are grown now, we've gotten through Baylor tuition and all that private school for some of them, and so that was a huge motivator. So getting back to the old, the old saying of you know, for NASA's failure was
never an option. So you know, I've got five little kids and five kids in school and the wife that depended on me. But again as that as we've kind of evolved from that, now we have one hundred families that work here in the business. So you know, it's been pivotal for us and for our family to have
the right people on the team. So, whether it's accounting and finance, whether it's marketing, whether it's engineering, whether it's design, I really feel like we have we have eight players in fast and class talent here that would compete with any of the bigger OEMs that are operating obviously on a much much larger scale. But you know, we, as my friend Joe Jacuzzi from works a GM now pulled me many years ago, don't believe your own bs, don't believe your own press. We all have egos that we
all have to put in check. And I'm I'm definitely, you know, one of those people. But I guess, as I've gotten older and hopeful a little bit wiser, try to keep that going.
Check.
Did Joe really just have great people and trust her people?
Did Joe somehow? Did Joe help you start up your business? Because I've heard you talk about kind of your origin story, and Jacuzzie always plays into it.
I'll tell put Jacuzzi stories. So I me at Bonnable in nineteen ninety one with my three thousand GTVR four and the very nice people at Mitsubishi Motors in California decided to send Joe, who was in their PR department, out with a freelancer, a guy named see Van Tune.
Van still a very close friend. Van rose up to be the editor in chief at motorcrim back in the mid to late nineties, and so Joe and Van showed up when I was just about to get into a fist fight with one of the with one of the marshals in the pits who said you can't drive your car under his own power. I'm like, well I drove here. I didn't trailer my car. And the guy's like, what, nobody drives their car to bonnible By I did. I had my luggage on my floor, Jack and my suitcase
and helmet in the back. Anyway, so Van and Joe pull up just as I was getting really to really get into it with this guy, and they were like, oh, we've got a minivan. We can toe John around. So we became friends at Bonnable. I set a class record at Bottable and then Joe was so kind. Joe said, Hey, look, I really like your story. I really like what you're doing.
If you come down to LA after Bonnible. I'll take you around all the introduce you to some of the automotive Back then, it was just car magazines, right, So the car magazine guys. And I've read car magazines ever since I could read. And I'm like, oh, that'll be so much fun. So I go down and do that. Meet guys from Jeff Carr at Motorcron and guys from hot Rod and car Craft and Car and Driver. I've been gone from home now for like three weeks. I'm like,
I'm ready to go home. Joe said, hey, look, trust me, if these guys like you and they like your car and they write something nice about you, your phone will ring. It's sure enough. Two months later, magazine comes out, my phone started ringing. People wanted to buyer stuff. So Joe
taught me a very very important lesson. I didn't even know what that concept of earned media was back then, but at that point once I learned that lesson, pretty much every time for when somebody from a major car magazine would call me up and said, hey, we need a car to go do something stupid crazy like me driving two hundre miles an hour and in a viper around the hand a proving grounds in Capnia City. That was that was a scary moment, but anyway, I would
just say yes. And so that's I think how we began the process of building a brand, going back on, you know, almost thirty years ago. So I credit my friend Joe Jacuzzi to that. We still talk. I'll probably see him in Detroit in a couple of weeks. He's a dear friend and been a very very kind to kind of help guide me along the way.
So I have to ask, it's two hundred miles an hour the fastest you've driven?
John personally?
What ye personally?
Gone? Yeah, so venom GT I hit two forty three and F five I think I'm around two twenty without. You know, again, when we're out at NASA, we're testing the car. We've got a pro in the car. They're not going to just let me just jump in it and go yeehaw, but I'm going to do that at some point.
What does that feel like?
What is that speed? You know? I mean, so we have a little drag strip out behind our factory here, So in the F five, even at one seventy five, it's very axhilarating. But I mean in the case of you have five accelerating even in the into the two twenties. The faster it goes, the faster it wants to go. It's very surreal. And you know you're not just feeling that. You're not just feeling the G force and the speed.
It's a it's a complete sensory overload of sound, of vibration, even site, even even like where you're looking to you get there quicker than you thought you would, so so your whole body has this whole sensory download of every sense that Again, we're talking about EVS, and I don't know. I could talk about the EVS plenty, but you know, I've got to test the plat. It's my it's currently my daily driver. It gives you all the g's, but that's
all that's all you get. You know, it's somewhat antiseptic, as my doctor friend says about luck of cars.
So why do you job? Why do you drive that as a daily driver instead something that sounds good?
Well that's a long list, but the reason I'm have been driving it up till now is I paid a hund forty grand for it, and I think it's words forty so like I lost my shirt on resale value, some might as well just wear it out. Also at the time when I about the time I bought that and I best bought that car because I wanted to experience it to analyze, like, don't want to get into that market. And we've sent our customers and dealers have
since told us they don't want evs. And now obviously you're hearing that from a lot of the rest of the market. But I had bought I had ordered an Audi RS six of aunt Wagon for my daily driver. It came in around the same time when and when my wife. And when my wife saw it, she said, is that my new car? So that car's three years old and has seven thousand miles on it. So anyway, so maybe maybe at some point, out of the goodness of her heart, she'll let me drive that. But I
think I'm just about done with the Tesla. I have no I have no issues with the Tesla. It's a it's otherwise a very good car. It has horrible resale value, and it destroys retires. I go through a pair of retires every five thousand miles. But that it's been a good car.
Now, does this mean that the project Deep Space is not happening. And this is the six wheel three million dollar Yes, this design idea that I remember writing about a few years ago, is that is that done?
No, it's it's on hold. So if we go back three four years ago, we felt like, okay, you know, the OEMs and the government's all talking about, oh, we're going to be all electric twenty thirty twenty thirty five. I'm like, I hope that isn't true. Hopefully the market gets to decide. Hopefully the consumer gets to decide. But if, by chance, the OEMs and the governments do get away with what I hope they won't do, we have to
be prepared to pivot. So we thought of, okay, if we're going to get into ev we have to do something radically different. And so that's where the six wheel drive, long wheelbase, big battery you know, six motors came from. And then we introduced that. We talked to our customers and dealers about it for the I don't know, six nine months afterwards, and everybody gave it a big thumbs down, and I'm like, well, for at least our customers, they
still want combustion. So we didn't kill d space is not not dead, but it's on pause and we can always circle back to it when there's interest. But right now we're looking forward to the next car after F five will be in one hundred percent of the turn combustion, and we'll kind of see what's after that. You know, when we put it was a big bet on that F five. I literally bet the family fortune what little
we've got on developing that car. And so basically what I'm saying is, you guys are referring to others that have not you know, not made it financially. I can't afford to make a bad bet and bet on a car that doesn't go, that doesn't sell where the market turns in the wrong direction. So we're always trying to listen to our customers, listen to the market, and hopefully kind of deal wing Gritzky saying, we want to be skating towards where the puck is going, not where it is right now.
To that point, I wanted to ask you about your kids. I mean, you have five kids. You always talk about your family in every interview, you know, so you're obviously focused on them. Are they focused on you? Are they focused on the business? Is this going to be the kind of thing where they either get into it or do they influence you heavily in terms of what you're what you're doing in the future.
All the above. I mean, we just we're three point one million Instagram followers. That was me yielding to my oldest daughter and listen to my kids three or four years ago when we had three hundred thousand Instagram followers. They've grown it, you know, they've grown it ten x since then. And so yeah, I think I think the older I get and the better that the overall team that surrounds them. But look, we want our brand to be relevant from age ages and demographics from eight years
old to eighty years old. We don't ever want to go the way of you know, hopefully nobody gets mad at Harley Davison, but I kind of feel like some Harley Davis and buyers have aged out and now they're getting older, so we want to make sure that we're relevant.
So yeah, So again I think listening and yielding to our kids that are ranged from age from twenty three to twenty nine, and it's very much we arm rustle a lot, and we argue a little bit about future product, but I generally, again on future product and kind of certain directions of the company go. I'll give them some leeway to to try different things, but ultimately we want to see very focused, but we also want to be open minded to certain pivot points of other you know,
we're talking a lot about rest of mods. We don't really want to do portions. I mean, obviously there's a number of other companies doing that type of stuff. So what kind of rest a mod would we do? We don't really know, but that's a that's an active, almost daily topic of discussion within the family, within the company, so possibly yeah. I mean, look with muscle cars, I mean, there's a lot of things we can do. I think Broncos Blazers. Again, there's a lot of demand for those
cars that were the cars that were special to us. Again, I'm sixty one, so the cars I grew up with there and those are our customers. They have the money to spend on those type of vehicles kind of going forward. So it's fun having that. It's fun to be able to experience the business with our family.
What your kids think about electric cars, especially electric hypercars, I mean, is there an argument that there's a younger generation that's a lot more open to an electric hypercar than the older people.
So I've got Sun along drives a Model three to work just because he can just wear it out back and forth. But he also owns a C seven Corvette for a track car. He's got a fifteen hundred Ardstar of Super sitting in his garage. He's probably a little bit like me that the EV kind of becomes the appliance that gets us kind of where we want to go. But we don't want to rock chip and wear out
our special cars. Right. The rest of the kids are all driving internal combustion, So again there's there's pros and cons to that program. But to your question on you know, look, you've got you've got Pinaprina and you've got Remonks with these two thousand horsefar hypercars. I think the Pinafrina is better looking than the Remonks, but technologically they're both I'm sure amazing cars and ridiculous fast. But most again, most
of our F five customers don't want them. I've got one customer that just bought a Penafrina, but they don't have the emotion and they know that. So again it fits a certain part of the niche part of the market. That's not where we're going to be going if other people want to get into the You know, it seems like there's always some ev HyperCard that kind of pops up out of the woodwork and makes a big splash,
and then you don't hear. At least Geneva Motor Show, there'd be some Chinese company with some new you know, one thousand words part of shoe box. It would show up, and the next year at Geneva you didn't see them anymore. We don't want to be those guys. We want to be again. We want to make relevant, smart decisions on future product and I think so much of that is driven is the combination of what I like, what our family likes, but really it's all about what our customers
and dealers want. It's about what the public wants.
I just want to talk a little bit about the cars that you like and where your taste is now versus where it was. I think of you as synonymous with muscle cars, but you know, you started out with the Mitsubishi, and you did a lot of g ADM cars, and I know that you also were into like the super B rally cars. So what do you like right now, Like if you could put together a garage of like two or three cars, what would you what would you pick for that garage?
So like right now, I really want to ven mgt in the stable. We built about a dozen of those. There's a client that might take one on trade. I might build my own VENMGT twelve and a horse power twelve and Arkilo's a very light weight. I definitely want to repuill my wife's Audi or a sixth on at some point that's that will be my daily At some point we might end up with his and hers. We'll see, gosh,
what will be the third one? So the car that the car that my wife and kids gave me for my sixtieth birthday a year and a half ago, nineteen sixty nine olds four four to two convertible, which is very similar to the very first car that I bought. So if I had to have three cars right now and plus and half five, so that'd be four cars. So those those would be my four cars.
You know, that's a good list. Did you come from a car family? John rolling Up?
My dad was definitely a car guy. I was always in the cars and always had something new, and so I think I inherited the car bug from my dad, definitely, but he was the only one in the family. My grandfather was in the planes and he was a pilot during World War One, so I guess there's that side of the business. But yeah, my dad, you.
Know, I wanted to ask you brought the olds, and I've seen it on YouTube, and as far as I understand, it's not like a resto mod it's still original, right, So it is original, which is interesting because you're you're a guy who mods everything. That's your business. So I wonder, aside from the olds, because you have that and I know how it's meaningful to you, are there cars that you would like to have that you wouldn't modify.
That's a great question. I mean, in the case of my fourth four two it you know, it seemed like it was fast back when I had mine in the seventies, but it doesn't feel very fastness. I've been thinking about putting an LT four in it and tune that up to you know, eight hundred horsepower, eight fifty horsepower. Yeah, no, Look, there are other cars. I can tell you a great car. Lexus was very kind of about ten years ago. Let me drive an LFA for two weeks. That's a car.
If I own LFA would be LFA would be on my extended list of like vehicles I'd love to own. I don't think I would touch a thing about the LFA, you know, I really wouldn't. Every car is different. I'm trying to think other cars that I really wouldn't want to touch. Nothing really comes to mind. I mean, again, the cars that we want to modify for our clients, we have to have some upside where we can make
them more fun, more unique. But they also have to be reliable, they have to pass smog, they we offer a warranty, so so we have to check all those boxes. But again, for what I would want to do for myself, I level muscle cars, but look, the carbureter are having to pull off the air box and force some fuel
and the batteries go dead. So again, if at some point we pivot towards restaurants, I would want to make it to where like you could sit in your garage for six months and you can just go out and just hit the key and it starts the first time. That I think would be a nice thing to have.
Would you pivot towards restomods because it seems like a market that isn't going away.
Absolutely, again, we will likely do it at some point. I just don't know what vehicle it is. I mean, right now we from design engineering standpoint, I probably have the bandwidth to develop one or two restaurants in the next year or two. But again, I don't want I don't want to. I really don't want to do what's already been done unless I feel like I can, I can differentiate our product and our brand in a significant way.
So you know, I'm not going to throw out any names of vehicles, but anybody listen to podcasts if you want to comment or email us and what kind of a rest am id you would like to see come from Hennessy. But I think it leans towards American muscle you know, whether it's just a muscle car, a sports car, or a trucker issue, I don't know. But uh, you know, I just don't I just generally don't like doing products
where it's kind of already been done. Like again, I'll use the I love nine eleven's and there's a particular genre of nine to eleven that's not been done before that I'd love to do, but I feel like Singer and others do such a nice job of it. I don't know if I want to jump into that sandbox necessarily.
Well, if you, if anyone listening has a recommendation for John, that email is hot pursuit at Bloomberg dot net. Email us with your recommendations and we'll get them to John. And sounds like there's room for some Porsche activity maybe or or not right? I mean, I know you said Singer does it great? But didn't you just say there's does it?
Does it?
Yeah?
Look, I mean put it this way, there's a certain type of a nine to eleven that I would like to build for myself that does not really exist in the marketplace.
Which type is?
So I don't know if I want to give it away. Good we end up doing that. I like they like to keep it a surprise.
I take that as a good sign that you're serious about it, whatever it is.
Yeah, Yeah, we talk. We talk about it a lot internally, but we'll see.
I want to finally ask you about the powertrains that you love, John, because that's, you know, been your focus for so long. And I guess i'll leave out we can leave out the flat sixes. But are there power trains that you prefer, like big naturally aspirated motors. Do you like superchargers vetter than turbos or are you Does it depend completely on the car? Are there some that really stick out for you?
Look, I meet a opportunity. I love it all. So if it's rowdy and fast and fun, makes the right sounds, makes the car go feel right, I'm a fan. So I love NA Again. Going back to our days with the Viper, we were we had big war kits for the Viper. We did a nine liters package and we could get eight hundred horse power of the Viper normally asked right, I love that again. When it comes to boost, I can make an argument for supercharger or turbo. I
love this feeling and the sound of turbos. But in terms of our business, it's hard to scale big powerful turbo kits. So predominantly of the six hundred vehicles that we're building a year, like we have our we have our our Venom seven seventy five horsepower F one fifty pickup truck. It's super charged because we can scale that and it's got great reliability to it. Obviously, the F five is twin turbo, but again, we're only doing eleven
of those a year typically, so I love them all. Again, I think that, you know, if there's one common denominator, it's it's kind of American muscle. It's it's V eight in the case of the Viper obviously V ten. But look, I have no issue with you know, you can get a GTR to make three thousand horse power out of a V six, so there's no I'm not in particular, you know, I don't have anything against the Inline six like the two jay Z and the Super those are
wonderful motors. But again, there I guess it just kind of comes down to the V eight and the V ten are kind of special to us, and they've been our kind of our specialty going back for almost thirty three years, so we'll probably continue to continue to go down that path.
Good.
Yeah, thanks for taking the time to share all this stuff. We're watching.
Thank you all.
Eagerlly loving watching your work, and I'll be watching with even more focus from now on. Thanks so much for joining us. All Right, so awesome interview with John Hennessy. He loved listening to him, It loved his answers, I've been looking deeper and deeper into his work recently. So very cool that they're gonna it looks like they're gonna attempt a world record. Yeah.
I think it's exciting. And I just love the Texas connection. As you know, he's just a guy down in Texas doing his thing, and he's he's earned a lot of respect over the years, so I think that's very cool.
He just like went racing a few times and was very successful, and he was like, I'm gonna start this doing business.
I know, he's so casual about doing these things that are incredibly complicated and difficult, and he's just you know, very ho hum about it.
Kind of cool, very cool. And he talks about the potential of resto modeling a few cars, which I think is so tantalizing. I wonder what they could be.
I think we need our listeners to email us at hot Pursuit at Bloomberg dot.
Net, Hot Pursuit at Bloomberg dot net, and.
We're thinking, you know, Porsche, Corvette, Bronco, maybe something along those lines.
I wonder I wonder if he'll go the four by four route. I wonder if that market has come substantially down like I look on bring a trailer, and the prices seem to it.
I do think it's peaked a bit. I honestly do think it's peaked.
But he could do something that we haven't even thought about, so.
That'd be cool.
I would love to hear suggestions, and we'll send him along to John Hennessy next week. Have you got anything special coming up?
You know, Mercedes is finally unveiling their electric g Wagon.
Now.
I drove a prototype of this vehicle last year, and now they're of course having the official launch. I'll have something to report about that next week.
All right, Well, I am expecting to try out the Lamborghini the off road Lamborghini Strato. The Strato cool. They're supposed to bring it over tomorrow and a buddy of mine he sent me a suggestion that I thought was pretty amazing. And I've never even thought about it before. You could even do a story. The old Albany Post Road.
Never heard of it.
It's about, I don't know, fifteen miles north of me. It's not that far away. It is the oldest dirt road in America.
How do you even know that it's I mean, how would you claim that.
I don't know. The Old Albany post Road is apparently one of the oldest unpaved roads in America, or the oldest everywhere I look. It says it's the oldest. It's about ten kilometers long, six point six miles long. And I'm gonna take this because they told me not to take it off road, right the off road Lamborghini in the press religion in the lone agreement, it says it's not fair. It says, by the way, don't take it off road. So I wanted to find a road that wasn't paved.
Yes, that's fine, fair game, it's still ally ho and carry on.
Well, that does it for this week. That's all we got time for. I'll see you here, same time, same place, next.
Week, the time, same place. Email us hot Pursuit at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is Bloomberg