Venom F5 Revolution Roadster in Exposed Carbon Is a One-in-Three Mortal Sin for Demigods

It is no different than the regular production version (don’t chastise me for the adjective), but it lacks one crucial feature and is so visible that you can’t even see it. Literally – the car has no paint over its carbon fiber shell. So, what’s the big deal? They just build it faster because it doesn’t have to go through the paint shop, right?

Right, if the said maker is not based in Sealy, Texas, and they’re not named Hennessey Performance Engineering (emphasis on ‘Performance’ and ‘Engineering’). Case in point, the American speed demigods did it – they left three of their hypercars unpainted, per the customer’s special request. However, that’s not the end of things, but the beginning of a highly accurate ordeal.

Carbon fiber strands are particularly fussy about aligning perfectly when woven patterns intertwine across body panels and even more so when two adjacent panels are installed on the car. After all, when someone coughs up a duffel bag of historical portraits of dead American presidents, they expect at least perfection, if not better.

Making carbon fiber body panels is not new to Hennessey – the Venom F5 is practically built from the super-strong, lightweight material. But until now, watchmaking precision was not a main concern, as the patterns were hidden under the livery. With that chromatic veil gone, the herringbone design must be exact in every part of the car.

Since the Venom F5 is a 300-mph engineered vehicle, aerodynamics plays a major role in its body shape. That feature, in turn, means that the carbon fiber is molded with surgical precision. Still, it also means a lot of headaches when said shaping has to be centered around the visual alignment of the carbon fibers.

A Venom F5 Revolution Roadster has virtually no flat surfaces – thanks to speed-augmenting aerodynamics – so even the tiniest defect would render the entire work useless. Hennessey hasn’t earned its fame for being an obscenely fast automobile tuner and maker alone but for the precision of its craftsmanship, too. So, the exposed carbon series of the Venom F5 is absolute Nirvana – as if the colored examples were boredom essence with windshield wipers.

Except for the obvious absence of paint, the three-car series is no different than its chromatic siblings; the twin-turbocharged Fury V8 sits behind the driver, delivering 277 hp. That’s from every liter of displacement, and the engine stacks up to 6.6 liters for a total output of 1,817 hp at a screaming 8,000 rpm and 1,193 lb-ft / 1,617 Nm at 5,000 rpm. The monstrous powerplant redlines at 8,500 revolutions per minute in F5 driving mode, so that magical 300-mile-per-hour (482 kilometers per hour) target is not just Fata Morgana.