Hennessey Venom F5-M Pairs 2,031 BHP With A Six-Speed Manual

Hennessey Special Vehicles will debut its new Venom F5-M at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 9, calling it the world’s most powerful manual hypercar. The Texas-built roadster pairs a 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged V8 producing 2,031 bhp with a six-speed gated manual gearbox driving the rear wheels only.

Hennessey first announced the F5-M in 2024 with 1,817 bhp. The version bound for Goodwood carries an extra 214 bhp, a new carbon-fiber chassis, adaptive suspension for the first time in the Venom lineup, and a 55-inch dorsal fin. Twelve examples will be built at $2.65 million each, with the company’s founder framing the project as a wager that buyers still want analog driving in a hypercar class now led by Rimac’s electric Nevera R and Koenigsegg’s hybrid Gemera.

A 2,031-bhp Manual And The Brief Behind It

Hennessey’s own release of the F5-M announcement and full specification list calls the car “the world’s most powerful manual hypercar.” The powertrain centers on the 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged “Fury” V8 carried over from the standard F5 and reworked to produce 2,031 bhp, up from the 1,817 bhp Hennessey quoted when it first announced the project in 2024. Power flows exclusively through a six-speed gated manual to the rear wheels, with no hybrid assistance, no all-wheel drive, and no torque-vectoring differentials softening how that power reaches the road.

Hennessey described the engine management and traction-control calibration as engineered to deliver “a precise, linear application of power, enabling the driver to control output in every gear with confidence.” The car also builds on a package Hennessey calls the “Venom F5 Evolution,” a set of aerodynamic, suspension, and chassis updates that the F5-M is the first model to wear in full.

At 2,031 bhp, the F5-M sits third among production cars in raw output. The two cars ahead of it use electric motors to reach their figures. The F5-M asks a human to manage all 2,031 bhp with a clutch pedal and a shifter.

New Chassis, A 55-Inch Dorsal Fin, And Adaptive Suspension For The First Time

The hardware around the engine is largely new. Hennessey built the F5-M around a fresh carbon-fiber monocoque chassis and revised bodywork that adds two visual signatures to the Venom family. An integrated roof scoop feeds cool air into the engine bay from above the driver, and a 55-inch (1,400 mm) dorsal fin runs from that scoop to the trailing edge of the rear deck.

The fin is more than styling. Hennessey engineered it to add downforce at speeds beyond 200 mph and to give the F5-M what the company calls “immediate visual identity” within the broader F5 lineup. The car also becomes the first Venom with adaptive suspension, and it will be sold only as a roadster. The open-top layout and the new chassis let Hennessey place the manual shifter at the visual and ergonomic center of the cockpit, a decision the company says drove the rest of the interior redesign.

The cockpit itself has been reconfigured around the manual driving experience. The shift lever is machined billet aluminum and sits within a precision-milled six-speed gate that produces a “crisp, machined-metal clink” on each selection. Hennessey says the new console layout forced the team to redesign the center stack around the shifter before any other element.

Where It Stands Among The Most Powerful Production Cars

The F5-M’s output puts it third on the list of most powerful production cars currently sold. Koenigsegg’s Gemera, when optioned with the 5.0-liter V-8, produces a combined 2,300 hp through a nine-speed multi-clutch transmission the company calls the Light Speed Tourbillon, per the published technical specifications for the V-8 Gemera.

Rimac’s Nevera R produces 2,107 hp from four electric motors driving all four wheels through single-speed gearboxes, as the announcement listing the Nevera R’s 24 performance records outlines. The current top three production cars by output look like this:

• Koenigsegg Gemera (with V-8): 2,300 hp
• Rimac Nevera R: 2,107 hp
• Hennessey Venom F5-M: 2,031 hp

The F5-M is the only car in that trio without electric motors, hybrid assistance, or all-wheel drive. The three cars also deliver their power through three different interfaces: a nine-speed multi-clutch automatic, four single-speed electric drives, and a six-speed manual that requires the driver to find each gear. The F5-M sits 269 hp behind the leader of that list. The bigger split between the three is in how each one places power on the road.

The First Build, In Purple Carbon And Gold

The car running up the Goodwood hill is not a press demonstrator. It is Chassis 1, commissioned by a UK customer through Hennessey’s bespoke Maverick division, which lets F5 buyers specify unique colors, materials, and interior details. This particular F5-M wears exposed purple carbon fiber across its bodywork, anodized gold accents, and hand-painted British Union Flag and American Stars and Stripes rendered in gold along the trailing edge of the dorsal fin.

The owner’s family name, “Sheikh,” appears on the rear of the car and is stitched into the driver and passenger knee pads inside. A 24-karat gold nose badge finishes the front end, and the gold paint scheme matches the other livery accents across the body. Hennessey says the other 11 F5-Ms are allocated to clients around the world, led by owners in the United States, with the UK Chassis 1 taking the public debut at Goodwood.

The Maverick process is the in-house program Hennessey uses for one-off customer builds across its hypercar line. Each F5-M owner is guaranteed a unique specification, and no two of the 12 cars will carry the same combination of color, material, and personalization when deliveries run out.

Hennessey Special Vehicles designs, develops, and builds its hypercars at its headquarters in Sealy, Texas. The company has now delivered more than 40 Venom F5 hypercars across all variants to customers worldwide.

Goodwood, Brundle, And The First Public Runs

The Venom F5-M will appear in the Goodwood “Supercar Paddock” before tackling the hill climb twice daily across the four-day Festival, which runs July 9 through 12. Professional racing driver Alex Brundle is at the wheel for both runs each day.

We’ve always believed the Venom F5 delivers the most intense performance experience on the planet, but with the F5-M, we’ve gone even further. A gated six-speed manual puts the driver completely in control, while the open-top design brings the Fury V8 sound directly into the cockpit. The noise, the feel, and the power delivery are raw and unfiltered.

John Hennessey, the company’s founder and CEO, said this in the F5-M announcement on July 6.

Hennessey framed the Goodwood runs as the first public demonstration of the F5-M in motion. The debut comes before customer deliveries beyond Chassis 1, and the company plans to use the Festival’s twice-daily hill climbs as the car’s first sustained exposure to a paying audience. The Goodwood hill climb has historically hosted production-car debuts from manufacturers looking to demonstrate new models in front of an international crowd of buyers, owners, and press.

The Manual Question In A Class Going Electric

The F5-M’s defining choice is the one most of its competitors have abandoned. Manual transmissions have all but disappeared from the top tier of the hypercar market as torque figures have climbed past what a human foot can realistically manage, and as dual-clutch and single-speed electric gearboxes have moved in. Hennessey’s response was to design the F5-M around the manual first, then engineer the rest of the car to support it.

The F5-M is not simply an F5 with a manual transmission. It is a complete design response to a very different kind of driver involvement.

Nathan Malinick, Hennessey’s director of design, gave the comment in the same release.

The center console is redesigned around the shifter, with the open-top roadster layout bringing the V8 sound directly into the cabin. The shift lever is machined billet aluminum and the gate is precision-milled to produce the metallic click on each selection. Twelve buyers will pay for that involvement, in a class where the cars ahead of the F5-M on the horsepower list rely on electrification to reach their figures. Those buyers get analog feel at the cost of hybrid efficiency, all-wheel traction, and the closed-cockpit refinement most modern hypercars now offer.

Price, Run Size, And Where The Manual Goes From Here

The F5-M is priced from $2.65 million before taxes. The standard Venom F5 Coupe starts at approximately $2.1 million, so the manual roadster carries a premium of $550,000 over its closest non-manual sibling. Hennessey plans 12 examples total, with Chassis 1 already delivered to its UK owner and the other 11 allocated to clients around the world.

Hennessey also announced that, following the F5-M launch, the six-speed manual and the new chassis architecture will be made available across the rest of the F5 lineup, letting buyers specify Coupe, Roadster, and track-focused Revolution variants with the manual gearbox. The first F5-M runs up the Goodwood hill from July 9, and the wider manual rollout across the F5 family will follow.