Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is
Speaker 1: hot pursuit.
Speaker 2: All right, we have a fantastic guest for you today.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty excited, Hannah. You're the one who brought him
Speaker 2: to us. And John Hennessy has really become a legend
Speaker 2: alongside you know, Carol Shelby in America.
Speaker 1: Completely and he's done the difficult task of running and
Speaker 1: operating a car company and actually delivering cars. When they
Speaker 1: say they're going to make them, they make them and
Speaker 1: they actually do it. And he's got a few world
Speaker 1: records too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So it's a ten year anniversary of the
Speaker 2: world record that they set with the Venom GT, which
Speaker 2: I think Steven Tyler famously had a one off version
Speaker 2: built for himself as a spider. And now it looks
Speaker 2: like they're going to try that again with their new car,
Speaker 2: the Venom F five.
Speaker 1: Which is super exciting. And John also shared some very
Speaker 1: enticing little tidbit too, I have to say in our conversation.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually going to be watching Hennessy pretty closely
Speaker 1: these next few years.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into it with John Hennessy. Let's
Speaker 2: kick it off with the Venom F five and Coda.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, Venom F five went to the circumd America's
Speaker 3: about a month ago, and we've been doing a little
Speaker 3: bit of testing up there, just kind of dialing our
Speaker 3: setup in in the car for our customers, and got
Speaker 3: close to a lap record and we thought, well, golly,
Speaker 3: maybe we can come back and see if we can
Speaker 3: be the fastest production series roadcar and street tis at CODA.
Speaker 3: And we did just that. We beat the I think
Speaker 3: the Seizinger guys there from LA. We beat them by
Speaker 3: four tenths of the second. We beat the McLaren P
Speaker 3: one by about seven seconds of lap and I still
Speaker 3: don't think that we're anywhere near what the F five
Speaker 3: is capable around Coda. But again, I think that what
Speaker 3: was kind of a cool thing with kind of demonstrating
Speaker 3: its capability on the road course. People weren't expecting the
Speaker 3: Venom F five to be something that would be capable
Speaker 3: of going and setting big numbers on racetracks like Coda,
Speaker 3: like we have gone in the numbering yet, but it's
Speaker 3: on our list. But but we always wanted that Venom
Speaker 3: F five to be you know, my track analogy would
Speaker 3: be track and field and nowgs it would be to
Speaker 3: be the decathlete of hypercars. So it does, it stops,
Speaker 3: it turns, it accelerates. Obviously, it's got tremendous power to
Speaker 3: weight ratiow Again, certain hyper cars are known for certain
Speaker 3: you know Bugatti obviously the very luxurious and very high
Speaker 3: top speed. And so anyway, that was a that was
Speaker 3: a big box for us to check. And we've got
Speaker 3: a number of other performance records and speed records that
Speaker 3: we're looking at down the road, but right now it's
Speaker 3: nice to validate being the fastest production series roadcar and
Speaker 3: street tiers at CODA.
Speaker 1: John, I have to say a couple of things. Number One,
Speaker 1: I love hearing you say golly, because that is so Texan.
Speaker 1: And my dad says that he's the only other person
Speaker 1: I really so that's that's a very texting thing. And
Speaker 1: you know it's really interesting. You know, we've talked in
Speaker 1: the past about You've said, hey, these type of records
Speaker 1: and these really high speeds are kind of just the
Speaker 1: result of engineering. They're not even necessarily the goal, because
Speaker 1: a lot of your buyers are not looking necessarily to
Speaker 1: own a world record car. Is that am I remembering?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is that still accurate.
Speaker 3: That is exactly right. You've got an excellent recollection and
Speaker 3: exactly to your point, the lap record. Like, we didn't
Speaker 3: go to CODED as a marketing event, as a marketing exercise.
Speaker 3: We went there basically to develop our car, perfect our car,
Speaker 3: to simulate our car under conditions that at some point
Speaker 3: our customers are going to drive it again. Nobody. I
Speaker 3: don't know that any but any of our We've sold
Speaker 3: about forty cars. We've delivered twenty two F fives to day.
Speaker 3: I've not had an F five client say well, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, look, I'll be really really excited if you
Speaker 3: can set a lap record somewhere. They love that. I
Speaker 3: tell you what's interesting what our clients really resonates with
Speaker 3: our clients. We hear this from almost all of them.
Speaker 3: They tell us that buying the F five is much
Speaker 3: for the experience with me, with our family, with our company.
Speaker 3: That's as important to them the overall experience. It is
Speaker 3: the actual car itself. So what's cool is is by
Speaker 3: developing the car and focusing on engineering and perfecting the product,
Speaker 3: the by product is the speed record. And so you
Speaker 3: know the old saying of form follows function, form follows
Speaker 3: performance really in this case, the the the the performance
Speaker 3: of the car is really just a function of our
Speaker 3: focus on trying to make the best car that we
Speaker 3: can make, and the result is we said a lap record,
Speaker 3: and again we still feel like there's there's quite a
Speaker 3: bit more time left in the car, but we've checked
Speaker 3: that boxers are the things that we're looking at down
Speaker 3: the road. But it's it's cool for our customers to
Speaker 3: have a brading right to say, hey, my car is
Speaker 3: the fastest of this. And again we have we've got
Speaker 3: big goals for the F five, whether it's the Vmax run,
Speaker 3: the top speed run that we're looking at doing hopefully
Speaker 3: later this year, and maybe a few other things along
Speaker 3: the way. So yeah, I think the story behind the
Speaker 3: car is very important, but you know, people really like
Speaker 3: the overall experience and going to car Week and coming
Speaker 3: to the factory and specing their car and spending time
Speaker 3: with our clients. It's it's very experiential and it's a
Speaker 3: very boutique part of the process that we really that
Speaker 3: we I enjoy my family or enjoy all my all
Speaker 3: of our kids work on a business and are all
Speaker 3: very involved in the program. So those relationships with those
Speaker 3: clients is really special.
Speaker 2: I have to say, you know, just looking at the car,
Speaker 2: it's gorgeous. I would be happy to own one for
Speaker 2: just the design, the engineering, the power train. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: need a world record to buy this car. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean you're not going to try and set one. Right currently,
Speaker 2: I think it's held by the Bugatti at three hundred
Speaker 2: and four miles per hour or so.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a konig Seg that I think.
Speaker 2: John tell me I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: The Bugatti is a prototype the konig Seg has.
Speaker 2: In any case, you you've set a world record before.
Speaker 2: John tell us about this whole the whole history, because
Speaker 2: you set a world record with the with the VENOMGT
Speaker 2: ten years ago basically, and that was beating a Bugatti
Speaker 2: at least I've read, And now it seems like you're
Speaker 2: in the same situation a decade later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of a funny story. So way back
Speaker 3: when is the Venom GT came into existence and we
Speaker 3: had orders and we're developing the car. It was always
Speaker 3: our goal to be the fastest. So at the time
Speaker 3: Bugatti with their vay Round supersport had run a two
Speaker 3: AA average of two hundred and sixty seven miles per hour,
Speaker 3: and that was the number that we wanted to beat.
Speaker 3: So when we went to NASA and we're running on
Speaker 3: the former spaceship landing runway. On that particular day we
Speaker 3: ran two hundred and seven miles our in one direction,
Speaker 3: we wanted to turn around and run the opposite direction.
Speaker 3: So you typically to for Guinness or for FIA, or
Speaker 3: just for the world to recognize an official top speed run,
Speaker 3: you want to run in both directions. That way, you
Speaker 3: cancel out any wind or I mean, NASA is very flat,
Speaker 3: but in the case of Kona Seig, they ran on
Speaker 3: a run or on a highway in Nevada that had
Speaker 3: a slope to it, so you have to go uphill
Speaker 3: and down hill. So anyway, we wanted to make the
Speaker 3: return run. But on that particular day, NASA was testing
Speaker 3: an autonomous spacecraft called Morpheus on the end of the
Speaker 3: runway that we were departing from, so we could run.
Speaker 3: I think we were running from north to south, but
Speaker 3: they would not allow us to run south to north
Speaker 3: because they had spacecraft and people on the opposite of
Speaker 3: the runway. So we thought, no big deal, so we
Speaker 3: put that it went out in the news and then
Speaker 3: some of the haters, and I won't say Biggutty's a hater,
Speaker 3: but they definitely were like, well, that's not a because
Speaker 3: you didn't run both directions. Yeah. Oh hey, Look, we're
Speaker 3: friendly competitors. And at that time, their CEO is a
Speaker 3: guy named Wolfgang Drheimer, whom I got to know. I
Speaker 3: met him a car week. He really liked the fact
Speaker 3: that we were competing with him. He felt like having
Speaker 3: that rivalry he created relevance in the market, which I
Speaker 3: totally agree with, and so we became friends, and so
Speaker 3: I saw him maybe a couple of years later. I
Speaker 3: was at Geneva when they were unveiling the Shiron and
Speaker 3: he was very busy, shook hands, just chatted for a moment,
Speaker 3: and as he walked away, he turned around and looked
Speaker 3: at me over his shoulder and he smiled and said, Hey, John,
Speaker 3: make sure next time you run a top streeed run
Speaker 3: you run bout directions. And I laughed and like, okay, man,
Speaker 3: all right, it's on and so fast forward. So he's
Speaker 3: no longer co. He retired, and then the guy the
Speaker 3: Bugatti guys went out and ran their shure on superscored back.
Speaker 3: I think it was in twenty nineteen. Amazing number. They
Speaker 3: ran almost three hundred and five miles per hour, but
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, they only ran one direction. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I know some of the guys that work there. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: you've left the door open now, Hannah. You were mentioning
Speaker 3: earlier the Conaset guys have run a two average. I
Speaker 3: think it still stands at two hundred and seventy eight
Speaker 3: miles or something like that. They did that back in
Speaker 3: maybe twenty seventeen. So again we feel like, again for
Speaker 3: the vmax run or an official two, for an official
Speaker 3: production top seed record, you've got to run both directions
Speaker 3: and to your point, and I don't know, I don't
Speaker 3: know this for a fact. I wasn't that air the
Speaker 3: same when they ran the car. But it's been mentioned
Speaker 3: that the car that they ran maybe had some significant
Speaker 3: modifications that are not necessarily on the road cars that
Speaker 3: you could buy. So I'm not gonna I'm not going
Speaker 3: to take any knocks against them. If they had a
Speaker 3: rollcage or they lighten the car, whatever they did to
Speaker 3: make that run, it's still an astonishing record. It still
Speaker 3: sets a high bar Look, we love competition. We want
Speaker 3: to we want to go out and beat that number
Speaker 3: again others are playing.
Speaker 2: Let me just ask, is it true that the theoretic
Speaker 2: theoretical top speed of the Venom F five is over
Speaker 2: three hundred twenty five miles per hour? And how do
Speaker 2: you how do you figure that out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Uh yeah, So we've got a team of aridon
Speaker 3: amesis internally and externally from the company. Uh the CFD.
Speaker 3: The aero analysis says, with the power that our car
Speaker 3: is making with its funnel area and drag, it's three
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty eight miles per hour theoretical top speed.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to go anywhere near that. But look,
Speaker 3: I mean if we could get to five hundred kilometers,
Speaker 3: which is around three hundred and eleven miles per hour,
Speaker 3: if we could do that in one direction, I think
Speaker 3: that would be really cool. But you know, the thing
Speaker 3: that really boils down to these top speed runs is
Speaker 3: where do you do this a runway? I don't know
Speaker 3: if the NASA runway in Florida is long enough. We're
Speaker 3: probably going to have to do it on a highway.
Speaker 3: And so look, this is high stakes poker in that
Speaker 3: you've got the safety of the driver. You've got the car,
Speaker 3: you know, so where do we run the car? That's
Speaker 3: the big thing that we're working on. We feel like
Speaker 3: we've got the car right now is ready to go,
Speaker 3: go make the run, but we're we're working on a
Speaker 3: few different things. Maybe a longer runway, a little bit
Speaker 3: longer than us and also the possibility of a Texas
Speaker 3: Highway so you know, howdy yeehaul, you know, all those
Speaker 3: good texts and things, would be kind of fun to
Speaker 3: do it here here and here in the great state
Speaker 3: of Texas, we'll say.
Speaker 1: Second largest state. I'm curious, can you give us a
Speaker 1: feel for when you decide to go for a record run,
Speaker 1: how long is the planning for that and how much
Speaker 1: does it cost? In general? I mean, is this a
Speaker 1: big output for the company or it's not that big
Speaker 1: a deal for lack of a better word. And then
Speaker 1: I just also want to say, theoretically, on that three
Speaker 1: twenty eight, it seems like you're saying that the limiting
Speaker 1: factor on a speed is space to do tires also
Speaker 1: come into it and think specific to the car.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, so first question, it's absolutely a huge deal to
Speaker 3: do it right. So we have dedicated resources. Our engineering
Speaker 3: team has been actually been working on this for quite
Speaker 3: a while so in a variety of phases, so prepping
Speaker 3: the car, working with Michelin. We were actually in South
Speaker 3: Carolina and had some meetings with the fine folks of Michelin.
Speaker 3: They've been a great partner on the tire. So we
Speaker 3: feel great about the tire. Obviously there's president the gonna set.
Speaker 3: Guys have run into the two ninety range with the
Speaker 3: with the pilots Supersport Sport Cup two tire, So we
Speaker 3: feel good about the tire. But really to your point,
Speaker 3: it's the where you know the location. How much distance
Speaker 3: do we have to work with. We did a test
Speaker 3: on gosh really probably twelvehndred horsepower. We ran two hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy two months power with the F five a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago, just to validate the car before
Speaker 3: we started delivering the clients, and so I think we
Speaker 3: can probably run upwards of three hundred at NASA, but
Speaker 3: again that's nowhere near it's it's we don't We're not
Speaker 3: trying to get to the theoretical top speed, but we
Speaker 3: would like to hit that five magic five hundred kilometer
Speaker 3: number at least in one direction. So so yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a ton of time, a ton of resources. It's risky business.
Speaker 3: As President Kennedy said back in the sixties, we don't
Speaker 3: do these things because they're easy. We do them because
Speaker 3: we're hard. Because they're hard. So it makes our product better,
Speaker 3: it makes our engineers are drivers better. I don't know
Speaker 3: that I've had a customer say, well, you know, I'll
Speaker 3: buy the car if I can, if it has the
Speaker 3: top speed record. Yeah, it's probably good for breaking right,
Speaker 3: So it's probably really good for brand, long term and
Speaker 3: long term value of the car. But again, people are
Speaker 3: buying the F five not because of its vmax potential.
Speaker 3: They're buying it because it's a piece of automotive art
Speaker 3: and it's the most fun vehicle I've ever driven, So
Speaker 3: that's part of what they're buying. But I think again,
Speaker 3: I think some of them, these guys and men and
Speaker 3: women that own the F five and have it on order,
Speaker 3: they're also savvy investors. They're also somewhat betting on the
Speaker 3: come that if we do knock off Bugatti and we
Speaker 3: do set the two way average, that the likeliness of
Speaker 3: their car being worth more than they paid for it
Speaker 3: is going to increase. So yeah, now we take it
Speaker 3: very seriously. It's a huge investment of time and money,
Speaker 3: and it's also look, there there's also risk involved. There's
Speaker 3: reasons why the manufacturers do not play in the sandbox.
Speaker 3: It's because it's it's high stakes pokers. So we take
Speaker 3: that very seriously in the safety of our driver in
Speaker 3: our car. So but we're still very intent on doing it.
Speaker 3: This is just part of our our family's DNA, our
Speaker 3: company's DNA, and it's white and one of the reasons
Speaker 3: why we're in this business. We like to push the boundaries.
Speaker 3: We like to climb the next highest mountain.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned neburgering, sounds like you might take the
Speaker 1: car over, did were you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, look, I mean it's it's always been something
Speaker 3: that's been loosely on a radar screen, but way down
Speaker 3: the priority list. Relevant. It is absolutely relevant. But I
Speaker 3: will say this that the degree of difficulty of going
Speaker 3: fast or being the fastest the Nordchlifa is a higher
Speaker 3: bar than a top speed run. It's a bigger investment,
Speaker 3: it's riskier, there's a lot that there's a lot there's
Speaker 3: just as many variables in terms of weather, the track,
Speaker 3: it's down to the driver. Look, we've we've got access
Speaker 3: to So I hired a guy, Brian Jones, about nine
Speaker 3: months ago who came to me. I didn't seek him out.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know that I needed at the time.
Speaker 3: But Brian was previously the chief engineer of the ams
Speaker 3: want Ams Wan has the record at the Normie Life
Speaker 3: But so I think they ran a six thirty two
Speaker 3: or six thirty three lap time. So Brian's Brian's now
Speaker 3: my chief engineer, and he feels like we're we're capable
Speaker 3: of running a time fashion than that, but it's very complicated. It's,
Speaker 3: you know, five six thousand miles away. I would have
Speaker 3: to take a significant part of our team and kind
Speaker 3: of camp out over there, and ultimately you're looking for
Speaker 3: the right day with the right weather. So again, we
Speaker 3: have other other priorities on the on the record list
Speaker 3: between now and then, but I could see us, I
Speaker 3: could see us doing some testing there and next year
Speaker 3: and but you never know. I mean, obviously now we're now,
Speaker 3: I mean we're always playing with the big boys, but
Speaker 3: like you know, Mercedes Porsche, so they're very significant competitors
Speaker 3: and I'm going to guess at some point, you know,
Speaker 3: Porsche's not going to sit back and why Mercedes sit
Speaker 3: at the top of the leader board, They're going to
Speaker 3: want to knock that off. So back to what we
Speaker 3: first started talking about, we will go to the nerveberg
Speaker 3: Ring to further develop our car and make our car
Speaker 3: even better. And if as a byproduct, we've got a
Speaker 3: fast lap time, you know, even if it's not a
Speaker 3: record time, if we go out and we've set a
Speaker 3: respectful time, we'll put the video out. It's compelling, it's fun,
Speaker 3: and again it's something that we want to do, but
Speaker 3: again for the long term brand of the car and
Speaker 3: the provenance and future value. I think I think this
Speaker 3: is another reason why we do these things is because
Speaker 3: you know, at some point, you know, you know, mean again,
Speaker 3: I feel like we build the world's greatest internal combustion
Speaker 3: powered hypercar currently, but at some point there may not
Speaker 3: be internal combustion powered hypercar. So we kind of feel
Speaker 3: like it's our duty to be kind of a part
Speaker 3: of history as much as we can.
Speaker 2: I want to ask first tout Hennessee Performance because it's
Speaker 2: hard to really pinpoint the company you do. You know,
Speaker 2: you tune the way I found about out about the company.
Speaker 2: You know, ten years ago or fifteen years ago, you
Speaker 2: tune other cars. So I wanted to, you know, get
Speaker 2: your supercharger kit for my Tahoe way back when. And
Speaker 2: you do. You know, obviously a number of manufacturers products,
Speaker 2: but you also make these cars which I think compete
Speaker 2: with more like Pegani and Bugatti, McLaren and Kunigseeg than
Speaker 2: you know, Porsche or Mercedes that you mentioned. Explain the
Speaker 2: way you think about Hennessee Performance to us.
Speaker 3: Sure, So we basically have three different divisions within the company.
Speaker 3: Hennessey Performance modifies. We make fast cars and trucks go faster,
Speaker 3: so Broncos, rappers, Mustangs, corvettes, things of that nature. The
Speaker 3: last couple of years we built just under six hundred vehicles.
Speaker 3: So again, you come to us, you want something that's fast,
Speaker 3: it's probably in the one hundred of two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand price range. That's what we built. You might
Speaker 3: own the vehicle and send it to us, you might
Speaker 3: call us up. I just want to buy a turnkey vehicle.
Speaker 3: So that's from a revenue standpoint, since this is Bloomberg,
Speaker 3: that's about half of our revenue. The other half predominant
Speaker 3: other half of our revenues from AT five production, so
Speaker 3: again about eleven cars the year the last two years.
Speaker 3: Then we have another division of the business that we
Speaker 3: don't really talk about a lot, but it's really it's
Speaker 3: a huge part of our culture, and that's our trade
Speaker 3: school called Tuner School, where we teach people how to
Speaker 3: modify cars. We have classes three semesters a year. The
Speaker 3: students are eighteen to eighteen to thirty five year old
Speaker 3: men and women both come to Tuner School. They're here
Speaker 3: for four months, fourteen weeks, and so that's about forty
Speaker 3: percent of our work staff. We have just under one
Speaker 3: hundred employees. About forty percent of the people that work
Speaker 3: here at Hennessy have come out of Tuner School. So
Speaker 3: it's a really it's a really important part of our workforce.
Speaker 2: It's a big part of our top line business.
Speaker 3: Ye correct, correct and so and so this overall machine.
Speaker 3: They're very Again, we have different divisions, but they all
Speaker 3: interrelate to each other. We're our best and our brightest
Speaker 3: that come out of Hennessey Performing Us generally will migrate
Speaker 3: over to the Hennessy Special Vehicle side of the business,
Speaker 3: building and developing the f five. We also are growing
Speaker 3: our engineering department significantly under under Brian Jones leadership. Again
Speaker 3: previously with MULTIMATEC he was chief engineer for MG one
Speaker 3: and for four GT. And so look, we you know,
Speaker 3: we've been around for thirty three years. People part our name,
Speaker 3: whether it's modified vipers, the Venom Viper, you know, Mustangs, Camaros,
Speaker 3: raptors for lost rappers, that's what we're really known for.
Speaker 3: But I promise you this, we are setting up the
Speaker 3: company for success and growth for the next one hundred years.
Speaker 3: And again our our our kids or we have five
Speaker 3: kids plus the son in law. They're all involved in
Speaker 3: the business in some form or fashion. It started off
Speaker 3: as a crazy idem me wanted to modify Admitsubshi three
Speaker 3: thousand GT and race back in nineteen ninety one. But
Speaker 3: it's turned out a really neat need be neat business
Speaker 3: and need brands. You know we've got yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I got a little personal collection with the number of
Speaker 3: Radeway cars. So yeah, stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious. You know, you mentioned that you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the next hundred years, and I can't help but
Speaker 1: think that there have been so many automotive startups that
Speaker 1: have come and gone over the years. You know, Matt
Speaker 1: and I in our line of work see them come
Speaker 1: and go, and you know, it's just I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to note to what do you attribute your ability to
Speaker 1: really actually not just show a car at a car
Speaker 1: show and not just make one or two that are
Speaker 1: trotted around everywhere, but actually be producing vehicles for clients.
Speaker 1: Because it's a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker 3: It is, and I don't take it for granted. I'm
Speaker 3: grateful every single day. And I guess if I'm going
Speaker 3: to go down just kind of my mental gratitude list
Speaker 3: of how do we get where we are and what's
Speaker 3: going to get us where we want to go? I
Speaker 3: think that's our people starts with like, again, our kids
Speaker 3: are grown now, we've gotten through Baylor tuition and all
Speaker 3: that private school for some of them, and so that
Speaker 3: was a huge motivator. So getting back to the old,
Speaker 3: the old saying of you know, for NASA's failure was
Speaker 3: never an option. So you know, I've got five little
Speaker 3: kids and five kids in school and the wife that
Speaker 3: depended on me. But again as that as we've kind
Speaker 3: of evolved from that, now we have one hundred families
Speaker 3: that work here in the business. So you know, it's
Speaker 3: been pivotal for us and for our family to have
Speaker 3: the right people on the team. So, whether it's accounting
Speaker 3: and finance, whether it's marketing, whether it's engineering, whether it's design,
Speaker 3: I really feel like we have we have eight players
Speaker 3: in fast and class talent here that would compete with
Speaker 3: any of the bigger OEMs that are operating obviously on
Speaker 3: a much much larger scale. But you know, we, as
Speaker 3: my friend Joe Jacuzzi from works a GM now pulled
Speaker 3: me many years ago, don't believe your own bs, don't
Speaker 3: believe your own press. We all have egos that we
Speaker 3: all have to put in check. And I'm I'm definitely,
Speaker 3: you know, one of those people. But I guess, as
Speaker 3: I've gotten older and hopeful a little bit wiser, try
Speaker 3: to keep that going.
Speaker 2: Check.
Speaker 3: Did Joe really just have great people and trust her people?
Speaker 2: Did Joe somehow? Did Joe help you start up your business?
Speaker 2: Because I've heard you talk about kind of your origin story,
Speaker 2: and Jacuzzie always plays into it.
Speaker 3: I'll tell put Jacuzzi stories. So I me at Bonnable
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety one with my three thousand GTVR four
Speaker 3: and the very nice people at Mitsubishi Motors in California
Speaker 3: decided to send Joe, who was in their PR department,
Speaker 3: out with a freelancer, a guy named see Van Tune.
Speaker 3: Van still a very close friend. Van rose up to
Speaker 3: be the editor in chief at motorcrim back in the
Speaker 3: mid to late nineties, and so Joe and Van showed
Speaker 3: up when I was just about to get into a
Speaker 3: fist fight with one of the with one of the
Speaker 3: marshals in the pits who said you can't drive your
Speaker 3: car under his own power. I'm like, well I drove here.
Speaker 3: I didn't trailer my car. And the guy's like, what,
Speaker 3: nobody drives their car to bonnible By I did. I
Speaker 3: had my luggage on my floor, Jack and my suitcase
Speaker 3: and helmet in the back. Anyway, so Van and Joe
Speaker 3: pull up just as I was getting really to really
Speaker 3: get into it with this guy, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 3: we've got a minivan. We can toe John around. So
Speaker 3: we became friends at Bonnable. I set a class record
Speaker 3: at Bottable and then Joe was so kind. Joe said, Hey, look,
Speaker 3: I really like your story. I really like what you're doing.
Speaker 3: If you come down to LA after Bonnible. I'll take
Speaker 3: you around all the introduce you to some of the
Speaker 3: automotive Back then, it was just car magazines, right, So
Speaker 3: the car magazine guys. And I've read car magazines ever
Speaker 3: since I could read. And I'm like, oh, that'll be
Speaker 3: so much fun. So I go down and do that.
Speaker 3: Meet guys from Jeff Carr at Motorcron and guys from
Speaker 3: hot Rod and car Craft and Car and Driver. I've
Speaker 3: been gone from home now for like three weeks. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to go home. Joe said, hey, look, trust me,
Speaker 3: if these guys like you and they like your car
Speaker 3: and they write something nice about you, your phone will ring.
Speaker 3: It's sure enough. Two months later, magazine comes out, my
Speaker 3: phone started ringing. People wanted to buyer stuff. So Joe
Speaker 3: taught me a very very important lesson. I didn't even
Speaker 3: know what that concept of earned media was back then,
Speaker 3: but at that point once I learned that lesson, pretty
Speaker 3: much every time for when somebody from a major car
Speaker 3: magazine would call me up and said, hey, we need
Speaker 3: a car to go do something stupid crazy like me
Speaker 3: driving two hundre miles an hour and in a viper
Speaker 3: around the hand a proving grounds in Capnia City. That
Speaker 3: was that was a scary moment, but anyway, I would
Speaker 3: just say yes. And so that's I think how we
Speaker 3: began the process of building a brand, going back on,
Speaker 3: you know, almost thirty years ago. So I credit my
Speaker 3: friend Joe Jacuzzi to that. We still talk. I'll probably
Speaker 3: see him in Detroit in a couple of weeks. He's
Speaker 3: a dear friend and been a very very kind to
Speaker 3: kind of help guide me along the way.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask, it's two hundred miles an
Speaker 1: hour the fastest you've driven?
Speaker 2: John personally?
Speaker 1: What ye personally?
Speaker 3: Gone? Yeah, so venom GT I hit two forty three
Speaker 3: and F five I think I'm around two twenty without.
Speaker 3: You know, again, when we're out at NASA, we're testing
Speaker 3: the car. We've got a pro in the car. They're
Speaker 3: not going to just let me just jump in it
Speaker 3: and go yeehaw, but I'm going to do that at
Speaker 3: some point.
Speaker 1: What does that feel like?
Speaker 3: What is that speed? You know? I mean, so we
Speaker 3: have a little drag strip out behind our factory here,
Speaker 3: So in the F five, even at one seventy five,
Speaker 3: it's very axhilarating. But I mean in the case of
Speaker 3: you have five accelerating even in the into the two twenties.
Speaker 3: The faster it goes, the faster it wants to go.
Speaker 3: It's very surreal. And you know you're not just feeling that.
Speaker 3: You're not just feeling the G force and the speed.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a complete sensory overload of sound, of vibration,
Speaker 3: even site, even even like where you're looking to you
Speaker 3: get there quicker than you thought you would, so so
Speaker 3: your whole body has this whole sensory download of every
Speaker 3: sense that Again, we're talking about EVS, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: I could talk about the EVS plenty, but you know, I've
Speaker 3: got to test the plat. It's my it's currently my
Speaker 3: daily driver. It gives you all the g's, but that's
Speaker 3: all that's all you get. You know, it's somewhat antiseptic,
Speaker 3: as my doctor friend says about luck of cars.
Speaker 2: So why do you job? Why do you drive that
Speaker 2: as a daily driver instead something that sounds good?
Speaker 3: Well that's a long list, but the reason I'm have
Speaker 3: been driving it up till now is I paid a
Speaker 3: hund forty grand for it, and I think it's words
Speaker 3: forty so like I lost my shirt on resale value,
Speaker 3: some might as well just wear it out. Also at
Speaker 3: the time when I about the time I bought that
Speaker 3: and I best bought that car because I wanted to
Speaker 3: experience it to analyze, like, don't want to get into
Speaker 3: that market. And we've sent our customers and dealers have
Speaker 3: since told us they don't want evs. And now obviously
Speaker 3: you're hearing that from a lot of the rest of
Speaker 3: the market. But I had bought I had ordered an
Speaker 3: Audi RS six of aunt Wagon for my daily driver.
Speaker 3: It came in around the same time when and when
Speaker 3: my wife. And when my wife saw it, she said,
Speaker 3: is that my new car? So that car's three years
Speaker 3: old and has seven thousand miles on it. So anyway,
Speaker 3: so maybe maybe at some point, out of the goodness
Speaker 3: of her heart, she'll let me drive that. But I
Speaker 3: think I'm just about done with the Tesla. I have
Speaker 3: no I have no issues with the Tesla. It's a
Speaker 3: it's otherwise a very good car. It has horrible resale value,
Speaker 3: and it destroys retires. I go through a pair of
Speaker 3: retires every five thousand miles. But that it's been a
Speaker 3: good car.
Speaker 1: Now, does this mean that the project Deep Space is
Speaker 1: not happening. And this is the six wheel three million
Speaker 1: dollar Yes, this design idea that I remember writing about
Speaker 1: a few years ago, is that is that done?
Speaker 3: No, it's it's on hold. So if we go back
Speaker 3: three four years ago, we felt like, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: the OEMs and the government's all talking about, oh, we're
Speaker 3: going to be all electric twenty thirty twenty thirty five.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I hope that isn't true. Hopefully the market
Speaker 3: gets to decide. Hopefully the consumer gets to decide. But if,
Speaker 3: by chance, the OEMs and the governments do get away
Speaker 3: with what I hope they won't do, we have to
Speaker 3: be prepared to pivot. So we thought of, okay, if
Speaker 3: we're going to get into ev we have to do
Speaker 3: something radically different. And so that's where the six wheel drive,
Speaker 3: long wheelbase, big battery you know, six motors came from.
Speaker 3: And then we introduced that. We talked to our customers
Speaker 3: and dealers about it for the I don't know, six
Speaker 3: nine months afterwards, and everybody gave it a big thumbs down,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, well, for at least our customers, they
Speaker 3: still want combustion. So we didn't kill d space is
Speaker 3: not not dead, but it's on pause and we can
Speaker 3: always circle back to it when there's interest. But right
Speaker 3: now we're looking forward to the next car after F
Speaker 3: five will be in one hundred percent of the turn combustion,
Speaker 3: and we'll kind of see what's after that. You know,
Speaker 3: when we put it was a big bet on that
Speaker 3: F five. I literally bet the family fortune what little
Speaker 3: we've got on developing that car. And so basically what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is, you guys are referring to others that
Speaker 3: have not you know, not made it financially. I can't
Speaker 3: afford to make a bad bet and bet on a
Speaker 3: car that doesn't go, that doesn't sell where the market
Speaker 3: turns in the wrong direction. So we're always trying to
Speaker 3: listen to our customers, listen to the market, and hopefully
Speaker 3: kind of deal wing Gritzky saying, we want to be
Speaker 3: skating towards where the puck is going, not where it
Speaker 3: is right now.
Speaker 2: To that point, I wanted to ask you about your kids.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have five kids. You always talk about
Speaker 2: your family in every interview, you know, so you're obviously
Speaker 2: focused on them. Are they focused on you? Are they
Speaker 2: focused on the business? Is this going to be the
Speaker 2: kind of thing where they either get into it or
Speaker 2: do they influence you heavily in terms of what you're
Speaker 2: what you're doing in the future.
Speaker 3: All the above. I mean, we just we're three point
Speaker 3: one million Instagram followers. That was me yielding to my
Speaker 3: oldest daughter and listen to my kids three or four
Speaker 3: years ago when we had three hundred thousand Instagram followers.
Speaker 3: They've grown it, you know, they've grown it ten x
Speaker 3: since then. And so yeah, I think I think the
Speaker 3: older I get and the better that the overall team
Speaker 3: that surrounds them. But look, we want our brand to
Speaker 3: be relevant from age ages and demographics from eight years
Speaker 3: old to eighty years old. We don't ever want to
Speaker 3: go the way of you know, hopefully nobody gets mad
Speaker 3: at Harley Davison, but I kind of feel like some
Speaker 3: Harley Davis and buyers have aged out and now they're
Speaker 3: getting older, so we want to make sure that we're relevant.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So again I think listening and yielding to
Speaker 3: our kids that are ranged from age from twenty three
Speaker 3: to twenty nine, and it's very much we arm rustle
Speaker 3: a lot, and we argue a little bit about future product,
Speaker 3: but I generally, again on future product and kind of
Speaker 3: certain directions of the company go. I'll give them some
Speaker 3: leeway to to try different things, but ultimately we want
Speaker 3: to see very focused, but we also want to be
Speaker 3: open minded to certain pivot points of other you know,
Speaker 3: we're talking a lot about rest of mods. We don't
Speaker 3: really want to do portions. I mean, obviously there's a
Speaker 3: number of other companies doing that type of stuff. So
Speaker 3: what kind of rest a mod would we do? We
Speaker 3: don't really know, but that's a that's an active, almost
Speaker 3: daily topic of discussion within the family, within the company,
Speaker 3: so possibly yeah. I mean, look with muscle cars, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things we can do. I think
Speaker 3: Broncos Blazers. Again, there's a lot of demand for those
Speaker 3: cars that were the cars that were special to us. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm sixty one, so the cars I grew up with
Speaker 3: there and those are our customers. They have the money
Speaker 3: to spend on those type of vehicles kind of going forward.
Speaker 3: So it's fun having that. It's fun to be able
Speaker 3: to experience the business with our family.
Speaker 1: What your kids think about electric cars, especially electric hypercars,
Speaker 1: I mean, is there an argument that there's a younger
Speaker 1: generation that's a lot more open to an electric hypercar
Speaker 1: than the older people.
Speaker 3: So I've got Sun along drives a Model three to
Speaker 3: work just because he can just wear it out back
Speaker 3: and forth. But he also owns a C seven Corvette
Speaker 3: for a track car. He's got a fifteen hundred Ardstar
Speaker 3: of Super sitting in his garage. He's probably a little
Speaker 3: bit like me that the EV kind of becomes the
Speaker 3: appliance that gets us kind of where we want to go.
Speaker 3: But we don't want to rock chip and wear out
Speaker 3: our special cars. Right. The rest of the kids are
Speaker 3: all driving internal combustion, So again there's there's pros and
Speaker 3: cons to that program. But to your question on you know, look,
Speaker 3: you've got you've got Pinaprina and you've got Remonks with
Speaker 3: these two thousand horsefar hypercars. I think the Pinafrina is
Speaker 3: better looking than the Remonks, but technologically they're both I'm
Speaker 3: sure amazing cars and ridiculous fast. But most again, most
Speaker 3: of our F five customers don't want them. I've got
Speaker 3: one customer that just bought a Penafrina, but they don't
Speaker 3: have the emotion and they know that. So again it
Speaker 3: fits a certain part of the niche part of the market.
Speaker 3: That's not where we're going to be going if other
Speaker 3: people want to get into the You know, it seems
Speaker 3: like there's always some ev HyperCard that kind of pops
Speaker 3: up out of the woodwork and makes a big splash,
Speaker 3: and then you don't hear. At least Geneva Motor Show,
Speaker 3: there'd be some Chinese company with some new you know,
Speaker 3: one thousand words part of shoe box. It would show up,
Speaker 3: and the next year at Geneva you didn't see them anymore.
Speaker 3: We don't want to be those guys. We want to
Speaker 3: be again. We want to make relevant, smart decisions on
Speaker 3: future product and I think so much of that is
Speaker 3: driven is the combination of what I like, what our
Speaker 3: family likes, but really it's all about what our customers
Speaker 3: and dealers want. It's about what the public wants.
Speaker 2: I just want to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: cars that you like and where your taste is now
Speaker 2: versus where it was. I think of you as synonymous
Speaker 2: with muscle cars, but you know, you started out with
Speaker 2: the Mitsubishi, and you did a lot of g ADM cars,
Speaker 2: and I know that you also were into like the
Speaker 2: super B rally cars. So what do you like right now,
Speaker 2: Like if you could put together a garage of like
Speaker 2: two or three cars, what would you what would you
Speaker 2: pick for that garage?
Speaker 3: So like right now, I really want to ven mgt
Speaker 3: in the stable. We built about a dozen of those.
Speaker 3: There's a client that might take one on trade. I
Speaker 3: might build my own VENMGT twelve and a horse power
Speaker 3: twelve and Arkilo's a very light weight. I definitely want
Speaker 3: to repuill my wife's Audi or a sixth on at
Speaker 3: some point that's that will be my daily At some
Speaker 3: point we might end up with his and hers. We'll see, gosh,
Speaker 3: what will be the third one? So the car that
Speaker 3: the car that my wife and kids gave me for
Speaker 3: my sixtieth birthday a year and a half ago, nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine olds four four to two convertible, which is
Speaker 3: very similar to the very first car that I bought.
Speaker 3: So if I had to have three cars right now
Speaker 3: and plus and half five, so that'd be four cars.
Speaker 3: So those those would be my four cars.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good list. Did you come from
Speaker 1: a car family? John rolling Up?
Speaker 3: My dad was definitely a car guy. I was always
Speaker 3: in the cars and always had something new, and so
Speaker 3: I think I inherited the car bug from my dad, definitely,
Speaker 3: but he was the only one in the family. My
Speaker 3: grandfather was in the planes and he was a pilot
Speaker 3: during World War One, so I guess there's that side
Speaker 3: of the business. But yeah, my dad, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I wanted to ask you brought the olds, and
Speaker 2: I've seen it on YouTube, and as far as I understand,
Speaker 2: it's not like a resto mod it's still original, right,
Speaker 2: So it is original, which is interesting because you're you're
Speaker 2: a guy who mods everything. That's your business. So I wonder,
Speaker 2: aside from the olds, because you have that and I
Speaker 2: know how it's meaningful to you, are there cars that
Speaker 2: you would like to have that you wouldn't modify.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I mean, in the case of
Speaker 3: my fourth four two it you know, it seemed like
Speaker 3: it was fast back when I had mine in the seventies,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't feel very fastness. I've been thinking about
Speaker 3: putting an LT four in it and tune that up
Speaker 3: to you know, eight hundred horsepower, eight fifty horsepower. Yeah, no, Look,
Speaker 3: there are other cars. I can tell you a great car.
Speaker 3: Lexus was very kind of about ten years ago. Let
Speaker 3: me drive an LFA for two weeks. That's a car.
Speaker 3: If I own LFA would be LFA would be on
Speaker 3: my extended list of like vehicles I'd love to own.
Speaker 3: I don't think I would touch a thing about the LFA,
Speaker 3: you know, I really wouldn't. Every car is different. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think other cars that I really wouldn't want
Speaker 3: to touch. Nothing really comes to mind. I mean, again,
Speaker 3: the cars that we want to modify for our clients,
Speaker 3: we have to have some upside where we can make
Speaker 3: them more fun, more unique. But they also have to
Speaker 3: be reliable, they have to pass smog, they we offer
Speaker 3: a warranty, so so we have to check all those boxes.
Speaker 3: But again, for what I would want to do for myself,
Speaker 3: I level muscle cars, but look, the carbureter are having
Speaker 3: to pull off the air box and force some fuel
Speaker 3: and the batteries go dead. So again, if at some
Speaker 3: point we pivot towards restaurants, I would want to make
Speaker 3: it to where like you could sit in your garage
Speaker 3: for six months and you can just go out and
Speaker 3: just hit the key and it starts the first time.
Speaker 3: That I think would be a nice thing to have.
Speaker 2: Would you pivot towards restomods because it seems like a
Speaker 2: market that isn't going away.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, again, we will likely do it at some point.
Speaker 3: I just don't know what vehicle it is. I mean,
Speaker 3: right now we from design engineering standpoint, I probably have
Speaker 3: the bandwidth to develop one or two restaurants in the
Speaker 3: next year or two. But again, I don't want I
Speaker 3: don't want to. I really don't want to do what's
Speaker 3: already been done unless I feel like I can, I
Speaker 3: can differentiate our product and our brand in a significant way.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm not going to throw out any
Speaker 3: names of vehicles, but anybody listen to podcasts if you
Speaker 3: want to comment or email us and what kind of
Speaker 3: a rest am id you would like to see come
Speaker 3: from Hennessy. But I think it leans towards American muscle
Speaker 3: you know, whether it's just a muscle car, a sports car,
Speaker 3: or a trucker issue, I don't know. But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I just don't I just generally don't like doing products
Speaker 3: where it's kind of already been done. Like again, I'll
Speaker 3: use the I love nine eleven's and there's a particular
Speaker 3: genre of nine to eleven that's not been done before
Speaker 3: that I'd love to do, but I feel like Singer
Speaker 3: and others do such a nice job of it. I
Speaker 3: don't know if I want to jump into that sandbox necessarily.
Speaker 1: Well, if you, if anyone listening has a recommendation for John,
Speaker 1: that email is hot pursuit at Bloomberg dot net. Email
Speaker 1: us with your recommendations and we'll get them to John.
Speaker 1: And sounds like there's room for some Porsche activity maybe
Speaker 1: or or not right? I mean, I know you said
Speaker 1: Singer does it great? But didn't you just say there's
Speaker 1: does it?
Speaker 2: Does it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Look, I mean put it this way, there's a certain
Speaker 3: type of a nine to eleven that I would like
Speaker 3: to build for myself that does not really exist in
Speaker 3: the marketplace.
Speaker 1: Which type is?
Speaker 3: So I don't know if I want to give it away.
Speaker 3: Good we end up doing that. I like they like
Speaker 3: to keep it a surprise.
Speaker 1: I take that as a good sign that you're serious
Speaker 1: about it, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, we talk. We talk about it a lot internally,
Speaker 3: but we'll see.
Speaker 2: I want to finally ask you about the powertrains that
Speaker 2: you love, John, because that's, you know, been your focus
Speaker 2: for so long. And I guess i'll leave out we
Speaker 2: can leave out the flat sixes. But are there power
Speaker 2: trains that you prefer, like big naturally aspirated motors. Do
Speaker 2: you like superchargers vetter than turbos or are you Does
Speaker 2: it depend completely on the car? Are there some that
Speaker 2: really stick out for you?
Speaker 3: Look, I meet a opportunity. I love it all. So
Speaker 3: if it's rowdy and fast and fun, makes the right sounds,
Speaker 3: makes the car go feel right, I'm a fan. So
Speaker 3: I love NA Again. Going back to our days with
Speaker 3: the Viper, we were we had big war kits for
Speaker 3: the Viper. We did a nine liters package and we
Speaker 3: could get eight hundred horse power of the Viper normally
Speaker 3: asked right, I love that again. When it comes to boost,
Speaker 3: I can make an argument for supercharger or turbo. I
Speaker 3: love this feeling and the sound of turbos. But in
Speaker 3: terms of our business, it's hard to scale big powerful
Speaker 3: turbo kits. So predominantly of the six hundred vehicles that
Speaker 3: we're building a year, like we have our we have
Speaker 3: our our Venom seven seventy five horsepower F one fifty
Speaker 3: pickup truck. It's super charged because we can scale that
Speaker 3: and it's got great reliability to it. Obviously, the F
Speaker 3: five is twin turbo, but again, we're only doing eleven
Speaker 3: of those a year typically, so I love them all. Again,
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, if there's one common denominator,
Speaker 3: it's it's kind of American muscle. It's it's V eight
Speaker 3: in the case of the Viper obviously V ten. But look,
Speaker 3: I have no issue with you know, you can get
Speaker 3: a GTR to make three thousand horse power out of
Speaker 3: a V six, so there's no I'm not in particular,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have anything against the Inline six
Speaker 3: like the two jay Z and the Super those are
Speaker 3: wonderful motors. But again, there I guess it just kind
Speaker 3: of comes down to the V eight and the V
Speaker 3: ten are kind of special to us, and they've been
Speaker 3: our kind of our specialty going back for almost thirty
Speaker 3: three years, so we'll probably continue to continue to go
Speaker 3: down that path.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for taking the time to share all this stuff.
Speaker 1: We're watching.
Speaker 3: Thank you all.
Speaker 2: Eagerlly loving watching your work, and I'll be watching with
Speaker 2: even more focus from now on. Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining us. All Right, so awesome interview with John Hennessy.
Speaker 2: He loved listening to him, It loved his answers, I've
Speaker 2: been looking deeper and deeper into his work recently. So
Speaker 2: very cool that they're gonna it looks like they're gonna
Speaker 2: attempt a world record. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's exciting. And I just love the Texas connection.
Speaker 1: As you know, he's just a guy down in Texas
Speaker 1: doing his thing, and he's he's earned a lot of
Speaker 1: respect over the years, so I think that's very cool.
Speaker 2: He just like went racing a few times and was
Speaker 2: very successful, and he was like, I'm gonna start this
Speaker 2: doing business.
Speaker 1: I know, he's so casual about doing these things that
Speaker 1: are incredibly complicated and difficult, and he's just you know,
Speaker 1: very ho hum about it.
Speaker 2: Kind of cool, very cool. And he talks about the
Speaker 2: potential of resto modeling a few cars, which I think
Speaker 2: is so tantalizing. I wonder what they could be.
Speaker 1: I think we need our listeners to email us at
Speaker 1: hot Pursuit at Bloomberg dot.
Speaker 2: Net, Hot Pursuit at Bloomberg dot net, and.
Speaker 1: We're thinking, you know, Porsche, Corvette, Bronco, maybe something along
Speaker 1: those lines.
Speaker 2: I wonder I wonder if he'll go the four by
Speaker 2: four route. I wonder if that market has come substantially
Speaker 2: down like I look on bring a trailer, and the
Speaker 2: prices seem to it.
Speaker 1: I do think it's peaked a bit. I honestly do
Speaker 1: think it's peaked.
Speaker 2: But he could do something that we haven't even thought about, so.
Speaker 1: That'd be cool.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear suggestions, and we'll send him
Speaker 2: along to John Hennessy next week. Have you got anything
Speaker 2: special coming up?
Speaker 1: You know, Mercedes is finally unveiling their electric g Wagon.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I drove a prototype of this vehicle last year, and
Speaker 1: now they're of course having the official launch. I'll have
Speaker 1: something to report about that next week.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I am expecting to try out the
Speaker 2: Lamborghini the off road Lamborghini Strato. The Strato cool. They're
Speaker 2: supposed to bring it over tomorrow and a buddy of
Speaker 2: mine he sent me a suggestion that I thought was
Speaker 2: pretty amazing. And I've never even thought about it before.
Speaker 2: You could even do a story. The old Albany Post Road.
Speaker 1: Never heard of it.
Speaker 2: It's about, I don't know, fifteen miles north of me.
Speaker 2: It's not that far away. It is the oldest dirt
Speaker 2: road in America.
Speaker 1: How do you even know that it's I mean, how
Speaker 1: would you claim that.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The Old Albany post Road is apparently
Speaker 2: one of the oldest unpaved roads in America, or the
Speaker 2: oldest everywhere I look. It says it's the oldest. It's
Speaker 2: about ten kilometers long, six point six miles long. And
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take this because they told me not to
Speaker 2: take it off road, right the off road Lamborghini in
Speaker 2: the press religion in the lone agreement, it says it's
Speaker 2: not fair. It says, by the way, don't take it
Speaker 2: off road. So I wanted to find a road that
Speaker 2: wasn't paved.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's fine, fair game, it's still ally ho and
Speaker 1: carry on.
Speaker 2: Well, that does it for this week. That's all we
Speaker 2: got time for. I'll see you here, same time, same place, next.
Speaker 1: Week, the time, same place. Email us hot Pursuit at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net. I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg