This one-off, 2,031bhp, manual Venom is the most powerful and expensive F5 ever built
Special 'LF' announces Hennessey's new 'Maverick' commissions division Skip 12 photos in the image carousel and continue reading
Hennessey has revealed a shiny new customer car designed and built by its new in-house customer commissions division. Call sign, 'Maverick'.
And 'Maverick' has created a one-off Venom F5 Revolution called the 'LF', resplendent in 'River Sand' metallic paint over 'Coco Brown' carbon fibre. Oh, and there's a gated six-speed manual gearbox bolted in and much more power, making this a proper one-off (and proper scary) Venom F5.
Advertisement - Page continues below
Indeed, Hennessey said this car – built for an American chap called Louis Florey – is the most expensive, most complex and highest spec Venom F5 ever built.
As you can see, it's based off the roadster iteration of Hennessey's F5 Revolution, which in turn is geared more for track performance. And this one previews a number of bits from the upcoming Venom F5 'Evolution'. You might like
Bits like a new front splitter, reshaped dive planes, new louvres, a new rear deck with an integrated lip spoiler, and a 'significantly taller' rear wing. There's new suspension, and the not so small matter of a power hike.
So where previously the F5 Revolution's 6.6-litre twin-turbo churned out 1,817bhp, it now produces 2,031bhp. For the sake of clarity, 2,031bhp is rather a lot of horsepower to be marshalling yourself via the gated manual.
Advertisement - Page continues below
That being said, this one-off Venom F5 LF offers a more 'positive' environment in which to exploit those new muscles. The car debuts an upgraded carbon monocoque, which is stiffer, and offers better seating ergonomics, more footwell space, a new centre console milled from solid aluminium, and new switchgear.
You can of course take your F5 back to Hennessey to get it bespokerised by Maverick, and upgraded to Evo spec, while all future F5s will be built with 2,031bhp and better aero from the start. Time to buzz the tower. Looking for more from the USA?
Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Look out for your regular round-up of news, reviews and offers in your inbox.
Get all the latest news, reviews and exclusives, direct to your inbox.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Food at the woke Tesla Diner? The paper boxes probably taste better than some of the contents, says Joel Stein
The world's first Tesla Diner opened in West Hollywood last month, on a Monday at 4.20pm. That is, according to stoners everywhere, the time of day at which one is supposed to smoke marijuana, which perhaps tells you all you need to know about how Elon Musk expects people to operate his self-driving Teslas. Four days after its opening, I'm driving to meet my 16-year-old son there. Despite all the Trump-heiling and USAID-cutting and subsequent Tesla car burnings, Elon Musk has built his first diner/recharging station in one of the most liberal corners of one of the most liberal cities in America. When we arrive at 9.30pm, it's mayhem. 'I think this is now the most dangerous neighbourhood in Los Angeles,' my son says about what is normally a pleasant stretch of the city. Teslas are queuing around two blocks. Over the blare of Tesla horns, Tesla owners scream out of their Tesla windows at each other, and especially at the staff trying to manage the parking-lot entrances. People weave through the crowd jammed into the lot, recording everything on their smartphones as if they were war reporters. Eventually we find my friend Igor, who lives a few blocks away, standing in a very long line. An Elon Musk fan (who has kept that fact quiet recently), he has been excited since the project was announced seven years ago and has watched the diner and its 80 charging stations slowly being built over the past 18 months, turning his neighbourhood into the world's premier Tesla tourist attraction. Now Igor surveys the Mad Max chaos around us and says, 'As a local resident, I'm horrified.' One of the challenges was finding a chef. Suzanne Goin, who runs all the food at the Hollywood Bowl, said no – and then exchanged her Tesla for an electric BMW. Wolfgang Puck, the famous Austrian chef, declined. When Walter Manzke, the Michelin-starred chef of LA restaurant République, told the New York Times that the diner sounded 'exciting', the online backlash was so furious, he quickly backtracked. When those queueing on the sidewalk are told there is a three-hour wait, most of them don't leave. Igor tells me that if you're driving a Tesla, which I am, you can park in a charging station and order food from the screen in your car. But those parking spots are all full, too. I've never seen anyone literally jump up and down with excitement until Igor spots a Tesla exiting the lot. I grab the lone empty Supercharger spot in the parking lot/drive-in movie theatre. We plug in the car and giddily order £95 worth of food from the dashboard screen (you can also order inside on screens that look just like Tesla dashboards). The charging is so fast that my car is filled in ten minutes. Half an hour later a guy approaches with two bags of food. He is not, as promised in Musk postings on X, a woman on roller-skates or a robot, which are the two main male-fantasy ways to have food delivered. But we do not want to eat in our car. We have come here to see the Tesla Diner. Luckily, the woman at the door lets us past the red velvet ropes keeping back the angry crowd. The reason, she explains, was that we were nice, as opposed to screaming at her. Inside, it's pretty cool. In 2023, Musk promised the diner would be 'Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging' and that's exactly how it looks. The circular chrome retro-futuristic structure was designed by Stantec, the Canadian architecture company that built the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It looks a bit like Pizza Planet from the Toy Story movies. The white spiral staircase is sort-of futuristic, though the much-hyped humanoid Optimus robot prototypes that Tesla is developing, displayed behind glass, feel a bit Hard Rock Cafe. The robot dishing out popcorn has finished up for the day, which is a surprise since I did not know robots had time off. But this is very much a union town. The upstairs closes at 11pm, which seems weak for a '24-hour diner' (especially since its wraparound deck offers a great view of LA). It transpires that service is 24 hours only for Tesla drivers who order on the app, from their cars. For everyone else doors open at 6am and close at midnight. But the most surprising aspect, considering Musk's rants against transgender rights (despite the fact that Vivian Jenna Wilson, one of his 14 known children, is trans) are the bathrooms. All of them are marked 'gender neutral'. This is a woke diner. The food is sourced from bakeries, dairies and farms that are within the charging range of a Tesla (about 350 miles). The chef who eventually took the job is someone I know called Eric Greenspan. He responded to my email a few weeks before the diner opened by writing the most ominous of messages: 'Hey, Joel. Good to hear from you. I've got no comment on that project currently, but it certainly seems like a cool place. Looking forward to checking it out when it opens.' His food, which I've enjoyed before in forms from grilled cheese to Peking duck delivery, is even more underwhelming. It comes in paper boxes that look like Tesla Cybertrucks and probably taste better than some of the contents. The tuna melt (£10.50) is great, the strawberry shake (£6) is nicely packed with real berries, the Tesla Burger (£10) is OK. The rest is awful. The Lime Rickey soda (£6) is flat. After one bite of the egg sandwich on a buttermilk waffle (£9), Igor declares: 'This should be sent to Mars.' Is the impossibly flavourless waffle raw? You would return it if you'd bought it at a corner shop while you were really stoned. Musk had demanded that all the dishes be 'epic', which these definitely are not. The 'Epic Bacon' is in fact simply 'bacon'. Most of our fries are left untouched, along with all of that Lime Rickey soda. But no one inside seems to care. Teens happily crayon their version of the future Tesla on their placemats. The nice couple sitting next to us, one of whom teaches special-needs kids, own two Teslas and buy up all the merch they can, including a wind-up Tesla destined to be played with in the classroom. The most surprising thing is the lack of protesters. A few had been there earlier, but they were overwhelmed by the Tesla lovers. Sure, Musk is feuding with Trump, but the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory falls apart when they're both cool with Nazis. The people enjoying their non-epic burgers and fries aren't excited about a diner. They are excited about optimism. For decades every sci-fi movie and TV show has been dystopian. Everyone I know in LA is sure they're leaving their kids a worse world. That's not what the Tesla Diner says. It says that drive-ins and burgers are the right direction. Clean energy. Huge metal trucks. Local ingredients. Robots making popcorn. Gender-neutral bathrooms. Driving home through West Hollywood, I pass a bunch of self-driving Waymo cars on the street, and food-delivery robots on the pavement. The future, for the first time in a while, felt like it might just be OK. Though I suspect a lot of what I am feeling comes from putting the Tesla Diner in my rear-view mirror.
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Tesla Model Y review: FREDA LEWIS-STEMPEL on whether it can help boost sales for the Musk owned car firm in Britain
This year has been a controversial one for Tesla. Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on 20 January the Elon Musk-owned brand has been rarely out of the headlines thanks to its founder's attendance at the VIP event, and his highly-publicised endorsement of 'The Donald' and MAGA. Some Tesla owners have been plastering 'I bought this before Elon went crazy' stickers on their EVs, Trump tried out a Model S on the White House lawn, Tesla stocks nosedived 39 per cent and Musk and Trump have since had a very public breakup – and we're only in August. Among the noise, Tesla has introduced a product it hopes will give the brand a much needed sales and popularity boost; the new Tesla Model Y. The Model Y has been the crowning success of Tesla, becoming both its best-selling model and in 2023 the world's best-selling car – the first EV to manage this. And yet it's taken the Texas-based EV maker five years since the Y first landed on our shores to update it's hero car. The new Model Y arrived in January, and since then Daily Mail Motoring Reporter Freda Lewis-Stempel has driven both the Launch Edition and the Long Range Rear Wheel Drive version to see whether the new Model Y is an improvement on the outgoing version, and crucially whether it can turn the tides favourably for Tesla? What are the differences between the old Tesla Model Y and the 2025 Tesla Model Y? Without too many spoilers, the latest Model Y has been updated outside, inside and across its technology offerings. The exterior marks the biggest change: it's been redesigned with a new front end inspired by the Cybertruck and Cybercab, and features slimmer adaptive headlights, a new lightbar and blanked-off angles. The rear now has C-shaped LED taillights and a full-width reflecting light bar, along with 'TESLA' letting and again a more buffed look. Tesla says the exterior has been beautified for 'exceptional aerodynamic efficiency' with less drag and low-resistance tyres to enhance range. On the surface this gives the new Y a chiseled and sophisticated look compared to the bulbous old Y. It might not sound like a radical makeover, but in the world of Tesla these visual changes are as surprising as your friend with the long, blow-dried locks rocking up with a sharp, French-girl chic bob. The interior has also had both tech and material upgrades, and there are range extensions across the battery options too. But we'll come onto those. The Cybertruck (which isn't available in the UK) is another inspiration for the new Y including the angular front and the lightbar Interior space and practicality – is it still a family-first car? The Model Y's new interior and old interior would make a good spot the difference because so little has changed visually. It's still the big, clean, crisp and somewhat stark cabin it used to be, it's more that there's been an improvement in quality and comfort. The noticeable changes are that ambient lighting has been added, along with an eight-inch touchscreen for rear passengers which has its own Bluetooth, Wifi, and microphones for voice commands and phone calls. The front 15.4-inch touchscreen remains the same but Tesla has brought in new software updates including one that allows you to use your Apple Watch as the car key. The front seats are now ventilated – a blessing on the 31-degree weekend I was driving around Sussex in the RWD – and there's sun reflecting glass which also helps in the summer. Front and rear heated seats are a plush (clearly) winter feature. The seat redesign makes the already comfy chairs that bit more supportive – like the car seat equivalent of a perfectly firm mattress. The addition of a rear touchscreen for infotainment is a bonus and will please kids and adults alike - it has its own Bluetooth and Wifi. It also controls the rear heated seats and aircon Tesla's brought in 20 per cent road noise reduction thanks to new acoustic glazing and softer fabric on the dash and doors and there's very little noise making it's way into the cabin at all, which made the many motorway miles I drove extremely relaxing. Slightly surprisingly the 2025 Y has 20 litres less interior space than the outgoing model. Luckily though you don't notice that as the person packing the car because there's still 2,138 litres between the frunk and boot and the rear seats now fold completely flat, at the touch of a button. And passengers front and back still have ample space, no matter how tall. Neither my 6ft or 6'2 friends had anything bad to say, quite the opposite in fact. The Model 3 caused a big stir by going stalkless last year but the Model Y has only followed suit by halves, ditching just one stalk - the gear selector One key difference between the old and new Y is that the new Y has one stalk on the steering wheel. The new Model 3 brought in the idea of a stalkless wheel, and to say it has been unpopular would be putting it gently. So Tesla has kept the indicator stalk but ditched the gear selector for the 2025 Y, with the gear selector now found on the touchscreen instead. Do I love it? No. Is it at least better than the stalkless 3? Yes. All in all the Model Y interior has always been a huge selling point, and it remains just that in the new version – even more so. What is it like to drive? Both the AWD and Long Range are very quick – Tesla made EV instant acceleration famous – but the AWD is 1.3 seconds faster over the 0-60 sprint. The Long Range I drove for around a week, the AWD only for a weekend - the reason being that I needed as much range as possible and the Long Range offers 387 miles on a single charge compared to the Launch Edition's 353 miles. The Model Y has never been as fun to drive as the Model 3, nor does it deliver the same handling, but there is a slight improvement on the old version Y, although it still heaves a bit over uneven road surfaces, and overall has a firm ride. I've always likened the Y to driving a go-kart but its probably more like a dodgem in how dart-y it feels. The driving position is a bit odd too, you're perched high up but there's a lot of dash and bonnet in your view. The Y isn't as fun to drive as the Model 3 or as comfortable, and this remains the case with the 2025 version What infuriates me, as is the case in any EV with no drivers display, is that I have to look across constantly to know what speed I'm doing. It's impossibly hard to not end up speeding because of this. Just a small drivers display – that's all I'm asking for. The one-pedal drive though is a highlight; I barely used the brake pedal and the heavy regenerative braking keeps the range well topped-up. The high-quality cameras make overtaking and manoeuvring in tight spaces stress free and generally you feel confident in your spacial awareness in the Y. Tesla has some of the best driver and safety assists in the business. Plus the range is impressive and it is really effortless to drive on long distances and excels as motorway cruiser. It's not a shining star of electric SUV driving, but it's definitely a solid choice. Pricing and ranges – which Model Y is right for you? The Y arrived in Launch Edition form – the most expensive and the one in our walkaround video. That came off the production line with a hefty price tag of £60,990 and with a claimed range of 353 miles, a top speed of 125mph and 0-60mph in 4.1 seconds. There's now a Rear-Wheel Drive, the Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive I drove, and a Long Range All-Wheel Drive version. These will cover 0 to 60mph in 5.6s and 311 miles on a single charge, 0 to 60 in 5.4 seconds and 387 miles and 0 to 60mph in 4.6 seconds and 364 miles respectively. The cheapest is the Rear-Wheel Drive Y which starts at £44,990. The Long Range RWD jumps up to £48,990 and the Long Range AWD price bumps up again to £51,990. Charging speeds are just as fast as Tesla owners are accustomed to with the new Model Y Launch Series able to charge up to 250kW, which will give you 172 miles in 15 minutes on a Supercharger. For comparison though the new MG IM6, which I drove around the same time and goes head-to-head with the new Model Y, offers a 0-62mph of 5.4 seconds and a range of 388 miles but for around £1,000 less - it costs £47,995. It also beats the Model Y's rapid charging speeds because it can ultra-rapid charge up to a staggering 396kW. So how is Tesla doing? Tesla sales and popularity Sales have been low since the beginning of the year, with BYD selling more EVs in Britain than Tesla for the first time in January: 1,614 compared to Tesla's 1,458 cars. Then BYD sales in Europe were up 58 per cent in the first three months of 2025, while Tesla's were down 41 per cent in France, 55 per cent in Sweden and Denmark, nearly 50 per cent in the Netherlands and 12.5 per cent in Norway during the same period. This was when early investors called on Musk to go. Despite Musk once laughing at BYD, the Chinese car giant has been a problem for years. It became known as the 'Tesla killer' as far back as 2023 when it dethroned Tesla as the biggest EV manufacturer in the world, and has been pummeling Tesla by bringing out models that directly compete - from the BYD Seal against the Model 3 to the Sealion 7 against the Y. The summer months of 2025 have been filled with tales of Tesla stocks plunging – June saw $150bn wiped off its share price after Trump Vs Musk spat erupted. Then UK sales plunged by 60 per cent in July, with the blame split between Elon Musk's involvement in the White and with hard-right European parties, Tesla's aging car line-up and tougher competition from BYD and other Chinese EV giants. At the same time a poll from EV website unsurprisingly found that three in five drivers are put off buying a Tesla because of Elon Musk. Tesla has tried to pin some of its poor sales on inventory issues, telling This is Money that low volume of registrations in the month of April were due to the company selling out of its UK-spec Model Ys, and the first deliveries of the facelifted Model Y not beginning until the start of May. A spokesperson told us: 'Due to this, numbers reported by SMMT and others will predominantly reflect Model 3 deliveries, with a small amount of Model Y.' However, July deliveries don't reflect any of these issues and registrations are still poor. While there's still time for new facelifted Y to improve Tesla's sales in the UK so far the EV hasn't had had the lift hoped for. Anti Musk protests: A man sprays paint graffiti against Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on a Tesla showroom in New York Tesla says that it allocates $0 towards marketing and advertising and instead relies on loyal customers and levering the status of its CEO Elon Musk - but this hasn't helped its sales in 2025.. Cars and Motoring Verdict: Can car buyers separate the EV from the man who created it? On the surface, Tesla's issue is that it's an image-based brand. And its image has gone to the dogs. It's been a pioneering brand for electric car adoption, and over time its image issues might dissipate, but go deeper and there's a more complicated problem to deal with. Tesla no longer offers anything so radical, so special, so different to the competition that its cars stand out from the competitive EV crowd – the new Y included. There's no huge step up from the old version, it mainly just looks better. The Y is surrounded by EV SUV competition and not just from BYD. There are new SUVs that offer faster 0-60s (MG IM6), have plusher Scandi interiors (Volvo EX40), are better to drive (Polestar 3), deliver faster charging (Hyundai Ioniq 5), and have cheaper price tags (Renault Scenic). And none of them come with a 'toxic' CEO. I've had many a fabulous journey in a Tesla and would again. I enjoyed having the new Y in to drive and appreciated its range, comfort and Supercharging. But in the end, I don't want to have put a sticker on my car saying the person who made it is 'crazy'. Do you?
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Once neglected Midwest city revs back to life as an ultramodern hotspot
Detroit was once in such bad shape it was forced to declare bankruptcy. Now, it is experiencing somewhat of a miracle. Home to a major music movement and the birthplace of the American car, this Midwest city had $1 homes for sale in [TK year]. Now, it's being reborn as an affordable hotspot with booming job and housing markets.
