Driving down a pristine stretch of tarmac with an open-top car, chasing the sun disappearing into the horizon can be such a calming experience, right? Now, add 1817 bhp, a nought to 100 kph sprint time of little over 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 500 kph to the equation… everything changes, right? Instead of enjoying the vistas, you are in a tunnel vision and you are trying to stay calm but can’t help laughing maniacally as the 6.6-litre V8 roars with all its glory. And that’s the new Hennessey Venom F5-M — the world’s most powerful manual car.
Hennessey will only make 12 examples of this car, all of which are already spoken for, and if you think the only difference is a 6-speed gated gearbox with an aluminium and carbon fibre shifter, you are mistaken. The American company has almost entirely redone the interior for this car.
For starters, the centre console features horizontal air vents, with completely redesigned air conditioning controls. And to add a bit of seriousness, the windows have jet-fighter-inspired switches for the windows. While the exterior is almost the same as the auto-transmission roadster, there’s a big 1400-mm dorsal fin that starts from the roof mounted air scoop to the trailing edge of the rear deck.
Not that the $2.65 million (Rs. 22.12 crore) is up for grabs, but once a colour has been selected from the company’s configurator, it is deleted to ensure total exclusivity to the customer. If you don’t want an ‘analogue’ car with a pure, manual transmission, a few units of the 7-speed automatic transmission version of the Roadster are still available if you can spare the money.
