Hennessey Venom F5-M: 2,031-BHP Manual Hypercar Debuts at Goodwood
While every other hypercar maker raced to build a quicker robotized gearbox, Hennessey went and bolted a clutch pedal to a 2,000-horsepower car.
Look at that number twice: 2,031 bhp, all of it going to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual with a real third pedal. The Hennessey Venom F5-M is the F5 that has no business existing in 2026, and it does anyway. The rest of the hypercar world quietly agreed years ago that no human shifts fast enough to matter at this kind of power. Hennessey handed the driver a gated lever and told them to keep up.
The Texas builder brought the production F5-M to the Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 9-12, 2026, and instead of parking it under a spotlight, ran it up the hillclimb. Hennessey flatly calls it "the world's most powerful manual hypercar," and the numbers back the boast. Nothing else with a clutch pedal is even in the conversation.
A manual, on purpose, at two thousand horsepower
Most cars in this bracket went paddle-shift dual-clutch for a plain engineering reason. An automated gearbox swaps ratios in milliseconds and never fluffs a downshift, and at four figures of horsepower those milliseconds are lap time. The F5-M ignores all of that. The idea was never the quickest possible shift; it was the driver doing the shifting, heel-and-toe and all, the engine's full fury running through a right hand instead of a control unit.
Hennessey calls the F5-M the most involving car it has ever built, and the open-top debut car sells that pitch on sight. There's no roof over the V8, and no software smoothing off the rough edges. Whether 2,031 bhp is best deployed this way is almost beside the point, because a small number of buyers clearly still want it exactly like this.
The Fury V8, and where 2,031 bhp comes from
Under the engine cover sits Hennessey's own 6.6-liter twin-turbocharged V8, named "Fury." Nobody handed it down from a bigger manufacturer; Hennessey designed it and builds it in house, which is rare air for an outfit this size. In the current production F5-M, running the Venom F5 Evolution package, it makes 2,031 bhp.
That figure has crept up over the F5's life, so it's worth being exact about it: 2,031 bhp is the current official number for the car Hennessey is selling today, not an early or launch spec. Torque comes in at around 1,193 lb-ft for the Fury engine, though Hennessey hasn't published a separate confirmed torque figure tied to the 2,031-hp tune specifically, so read that as reported rather than nailed down.
Six speeds, three pedals, one very serious clutch
The gearbox is a six-speed gated manual, the type with the exposed metal gate that clicks the lever into each slot. Sending two thousand horsepower through a manual transmission is a tall order, so Hennessey reworked the carbon-fiber monocoque to package the third pedal and its linkage properly rather than cramming them into the automatic car's tunnel. By reports the transmission comes from Italian specialist CIMA, though Hennessey doesn't name a supplier on its own page, so file that as unconfirmed. Drive reportedly runs to the rear wheels only, which fits the raw, analog character the company is selling here.
Twelve cars, $2.65 million, and a Roadster first
Exclusivity is built in. Hennessey will make just 12 examples of the F5-M, and the debut car arrives as an open-top Roadster. Prices start at $2.65 million before taxes, which drops it into the thin band where the badge, the build number, and the story count for as much as the spec sheet. At a dozen cars for the whole planet, the waiting list writes itself.
Where the numbers land
| Spec | Venom F5-M | Source |
|---|---|---|
| EngineFury, in-house | 6.6L twin-turbo V8 | Official |
| PowerEvolution package | 2,031 bhp | Official |
| TorqueFury engine | ~1,193 lb-ft | Reported |
| TransmissionGated, three pedals | 6-speed manual | Official |
| ProductionRoadster debut car | 12 units | Official |
| PriceBefore taxes | from $2.65M | Official |
Hennessey hasn't published a standalone top speed for the F5-M. The company says the aerodynamics work "beyond 200 mph," and the broader F5 line is engineered to exceed 300 mph, but no separate F5-M maximum has been stated. Torque, the CIMA gearbox supplier, and the rear-drive layout are reported rather than fully confirmed on the official page.
The Goodwood debut
Instead of a static reveal, Hennessey launched the production F5-M in motion at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed, running it up the famous hillclimb across the July 9-12 weekend. Racing driver Alex Brundle is reported to have taken the wheel. Fitting, for a car whose whole argument is the physical act of driving. There's no better way to introduce a manual hypercar than to actually work the gears in front of a crowd.
"the world's most powerful manual hypercar"
- HennesseyOn paper the F5-M makes no sense, and that's the whole reason it's the most interesting car Hennessey has ever shown. A dual-clutch F5 would beat it on any stopwatch you care to name. But speed was never scarce at this price. What's scarce is three pedals and a proper gated shift wrapped around a 2,000-horsepower V8 the company built itself. Twelve people get to find out whether a human can really manage that much power with a clutch and a gate, and I'd give up a tenth of a second for the chance to try.
Nobody's re-wheeling a $2.65-million hypercar. But the whole appeal here is control, which is the same reason drivers spec forged wheels for the cars they actually own. Forza forges to your exact fitment, strips unsprung weight so the suspension and brakes work with you, and lets you pick diameter, width, offset, and finish instead of living with whatever the factory decided. If the F5-M is really about doing it yourself, this is the version of that you can park in your own garage.
Explore forged wheels →