But first, he has to show a clean pair of heels to both Bugatti and to Koenigsegg, the current record-holders with 277.9mph. It’s quite an aspiration for a Texas tuning shop that specialises in endowing home-grown muscle cars and pickup trucks with more power – anything up to 2000bhp.
But for 10 years now Hennessey has also made its own bespoke supercars and is no stranger to driving them fast: in 2014 the Venom GT hit 270mph on the Space Shuttle runway, in one direction at least. The successor to the GT is the Geneva-starring Venom F5, the car finally to win the top speed title for the Lone Star State, says John.
Boldly yellow, the F5 in Geneva is a design model only but when it gets an engine (later this year) it will be an entirely bespoke 8.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 churning out 1600bhp.
The rear-drive car weighs 1,360kg, has a Cd of 0.33 and is predicted to get from 0-186mph in “about 10 seconds, same as last year’s F1 cars”, on its way to that 300mph v-max. Only 24 cars are going to be made, they cost US$1.6m apiece and, John tells GRR, eight are already sold.
GRR met John on his Geneva show stand – just across the aisles from his French and Swedish rivals – to find out more about his plans… including when we are next going to see a Hennessey car ripping up the tarmac at Goodwood…