Age: 51
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Company: Hennessey Performance Engineering; 35 employees in a 36,000-square-foot facility with its own drag strip in Sealy, Texas, and five more employees at a satellite facility in Lake Forest, California.
Past projects: Beginning with his own 1991 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4, Hennessey has tweaked, supercharged, and turbocharged Vipers, Camaros, F-150 Raptors, Corvettes, and more.
Current project: Venom GT, a 1244-hp, twin-turbocharged, 7.0-liter V-8–powered $1.2 million version of the Lotus Exige. Hennessey tested it at more than 270 mph and claims that it is the world’s fastest production car. It all depends on what your definition of “is” is. He plans to build 26 Venom GTs.
C/D: How do you decide what cars to concentrate on modifying?
JH: Twenty years ago, a car like the Viper might be popular for three to five years. Now my theory is that what’s cool changes every 18 months. So now I’m constantly looking to see what’s the next cool car. Today it’s obviously the C7 Corvette. And we do a lot of Raptors, too. There’s always an ebb and flow.
C/D: Why do you do this?
JH: It’s a passion or addiction. When we can build a Venom GT and deliver it to a guy like Steven Tyler and he says to me: “I work a lot and I travel a lot, and when I’m home I drive my Venom every day. It’s one of the things in life that gives me enjoyment.” That’s satisfying.
- It Ain’t Over, Bugatti: Hennessey Venom GT Does 270.49 mph, Claims World Record
- 200-mph Club: Scorching the Mojave Mile in a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport
- Watch a 1000-hp Hennessey Chevrolet Camaro Murder Death Kill Its Rear Tires
C/D: Does top speed still matter?
JH: It matters to me personally. I didn’t want to build the Venom GT and have some qualifications like “the fastest around the Nürburgring.” I wanted to say we’re the fastest. It was a matter of pride.
C/D: What’s been your biggest screw-up?
JH: Well, that’s a long list, to be honest. The biggest thing I had to overcome, back 10 or 12 years ago, was my pride. I got to a point where we had been featured in plenty of magazines and on covers. And I just thought, “We build great cars, and customer service and turnaround times—they’ll just have to wait because we have such a great product.” I had the product, but I wasn’t paying attention to the back end of the business. And it caught up to me. I found out the hard way that it’s a big deal.
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