The year 1991 doesn’t seem like that long ago, and there are those of us who remember it well. Even as young as I was, it feels like it was a time I “lived.” But ever since way back then, Hennessey Performance was pumping out horsepower by the ton, or by the 6,500 tons, you could say.

Following the conventionally-accepted wisdom that a horse weighs approximately 1,000 pounds, at a total of around 6.5 million horsepower produced in various sports cars, trucks, and SUVs throughout the decades, the math tells us that Hennessey has pumped out a grand total of around 6,500 tons of horsepower out onto our streets. If that doesn’t make your heart sing tunes of dandelions basking in a golden meadow, you’re on the wrong website.

Hennessey has been doing this long enough to know how to play the game. They have an astounding list of accomplished builds to their credit and they build cars to a caliber above most other tuning outfits you’ll find anywhere. They didn’t last three decades by NOT making dope cars.

As talented as the Hennessey team is, they are not infallible. Even the likes of these talented masterminds are susceptible to questionable judgment calls every now and then (and we’ve found most of them here). They aren’t many in numbers, but there have been a few occasions when Hennessey has just flat-out failed. Most of the time, they sure do nail it, though!

19 Venom GT (Nailed)

The Venom GT looks about as deadly and menacing today as it did in 2014 when it devastated the asphalt with blistering 0-60 mph sprints in only 2.7 seconds. It had the raw power to maintain this acceleration all the way to 100 mph in only 5.6 seconds and wasn’t shy about it, either. It’s a world-record holder (Guinness verified) in the 0-300kmh (186mph) run with a time of 13.63 seconds and also holds a hypercar world record for a 0-200mph run in 14.51 seconds. It’ll be a half-mile down the road before your “10-second” drag car breaks its quarter-mile marker and you won’t even know what hit you, that is if you seriously think anything you’ll ever own even stands a splinter of a chance against the GT.

18 Venom F5 (Nailed)

Of all the impressive examples of superior craftsmanship and engineering that have been seen from Hennessey throughout its existence, few of their builds (or rather, few machines on the entire planet) exhibit the level of precision and master-crafting that went into the F5. It sounds like a top-secret government weapon and at the projected top-speeds the F5 team is shooting for, it might as well be. The Venom GT hit 270 mph thanks to 1,244 horsepower but was hampered by less-than-ideal aerodynamics. Many of these problems are addressed by the F5’s sleeker body and flow-through air channels. The 7.6-liter, billet-aluminum block is fortified with steel cylinder sleeves and its twin-turbos pump the slug of metal up to around 1,600 horsepower at 24psi. 300mph or not – this thing is baaaad!

17 Chevy SS (Failed)

I want to like this car, and there’s no doubt it would smoke me off the line at any red light in the world given anything I own, so it’s not like I’m trying to tear it down to a pile of nothing but I’m not going to build it up to be a poster boy either. The Chevy SS was a VF Commodore imported from abroad and badged as a domestic performance car, the first domestic performance sedan from Chevrolet in almost 20 years. Even so, slapping some superchargers on something to pump it up to 650 horsepower makes it cool on that account only. It’s pointless unless you’re into sleeper cars (or dumping money into failed models that had nothing better to do than make themselves as unpractical as possible).

16 VelociRaptor Truck (Nailed)

What do you call a performance truck when you want it to sound meaner than the monster it already is, but it’s already named something that’s about as wild as they come? Hennessey’s approach was to modify the name to the technical genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur (don’t worry, I can’t pronounce it either) that lived during the Cretaceous Period. This raging dinosaur is anything but ready to lay down and go extinct, though, with plenty of owners complaining that there was no V8 option. Despite 450 horses on tap in a factory Raptor, Hennessey took it upon themselves to dress the “VelociRaptor” with a specially-built, 5.0-liter Ford V8 tuned to a pony or two shy of 760 horsepower.

15 CTS-V HPE1000 (Nailed)

The Cadillac CTS-V was a performance model of their already-popular CTS line. It was a car to show that Cadillac, although not raging full-steam ahead into a racing sector, could still produce a production car worth trying to drop a gear on if you had something fast. It was basically Corvette guts in Cadillac dress. Historically, they’ve been powered by either the LS6 or LS2 platform in their respective 5.7- and 6.0-liter displacements. The HPE1000 upgrade offered by Hennessey does pretty much what it sounds like it should do, offering up to 1,000 hp at 6,400 RPM and 966 ft-lbs of torque at 4,400 RPM.

14 Chevrolet Suburban (Failed)

The Suburban has been an icon for about as long as a long-roofed family-hauler has been a thing. We’ve seen the Suburban go from a fuel-thirsty, carbureted piston-pounder with a mechanical choke to a refined and well-adapted people-mover for the 21^st century. It’s great for soccer moms doing those things soccer moms don’t get enough credit for—and not much else. Sure, 508 horsepower blowing through your driveline is awesome, nobody can argue that, but that driveline has a lot of truck to push. If you’re spending this kind of money you should really be able to do something with it. A gigantic suburban isn’t the best platform to invest ponies into if you want the biggest bang for your buck but you’ll be sure to enjoy sucking down three gallons of gas every time a light turns green.

13 Exorcist ZL1 Camaro (Nailed)

So it’s just another 10-second car, who cares right? “That’s not very impressive,” you may say. And many may agree with you, especially seeing as with something like a Hennessey build, you’d expect this thing to start digging trenches where the wheels spin. But the magic starts with the base-ZL1 Camaro long before Hennessey touches it. The ZL1 is known widely amongst enthusiasts as the most track-capable car General Motors has ever produced. And that's a substantial claim given their professional resume of production cars, but it seems to be widely agreed upon. And that’s just what Hennessey started with. What they ended with was the Exorcist: a 1,000-hp Camaro with a three-second 0-60mph time and a 217 mph top speed.

12 Cadillac Escalade (Failed)

There is such a thing as excess. And although it seems like, in reference to horsepower, there should never be such a boundary, the Hennessey Escalade found it and hung a big neon sign on it for everyone to see. The Hennessey Escalade is powerful contender, there’s no arguing that. It’s a Cadillac, so you’d expect luxury. It’s also a Tahoe, essentially, so you’d expect truck-like capabilities. But the two of these things combined already borderline approach excess. I’ve never seen the point of a Cadillac-branded truck in the first place. I could buy a Tahoe for $30,000 less and smoke your Escalade. So, while your Escalade is getting a Hennessey retrofit, my Tahoe will be right next to yours, getting the same retrofit, still saving $30K and still faster than you’ll ever be.

11 Dodge Challenger Hellcat (Nailed)

By now, we are a little more accustomed to the astronomical power figures of today’s production Challengers. Dodge set out to make a very bold statement with the Challenger’s reintroduction and I think it’s safe to say they delivered the message, loud and clear. The Challenger holds a long list of records and accolades as it punches into an insanely powerful realm of power, fresh out of the box. They made it pretty hard to top. But, with their standard MO, Hennessey Performance found every crack, crevice, and seam to stuff power in, and they packed it in with a strong press. It’s everything you’d expect a Hennessey Hellcat to be.

10 Dodge Challenger Demon (Nailed)

Adhering to the standard Hennessey upgrade model, you’ll notice they usually like to conduct performance package releases in sets of three per vehicle, with three different power levels for the same model (as if everyone wasn’t going to choose the top package anyway). In the case of the Challenger Demon, however, they only offer two. Whether or not it’s due to the Demon’s factory spec sheet leaving little left to improve on is speculative, but the thing is already performing like no road car ever would need to (that’s why we love it). The HPE1200 Demon upgrade is the top dog of the Demon upgrades, but with those figures, you’re pretty much top dog of everything you see (and most things you don’t).

9 Lincoln Navigator (Failed)

Hennessey has an eye for style, as we’ve stated, but what we didn’t state was that eye sometimes is a little bit foggy. Try to defend it if you can, but it’s really hard to argue the benefit of a truck like this from a shop like theirs. It’s the Navigator, an SUV that was never particularly popular by any stretch of the imagination, and every single one you seem to see on the road is either brand-new or run-down and raggedy. They just don’t seem to last. The Navigator was always a dud from delivery, and not even the likes of a prestigious firm like Hennessey have any hopes of bringing it to honor. The Navigator line needs to find a big katana to jump on and end it Samurai-style before it sucks Ford down like the Edsel before it.

8 6x6 VelociRaptor (Nailed)

Looking more like a Megalodon than a small-to-medium sized carnivore of the Cretaceous period, the 6X6 VelociRaptor adds an extra axle to the tail, making for one of the most monstrous pickup trucks you can legally drive on the road. The upgrade kit puts more than enough power through all six of the wheels and now Ford can say they have an answer to the 700-hp Mercedes G63 AMG 6x6. That 9,000-pound beast of a truck is what Mercedes called the “automotive declaration of independence.” That’s pretty much a callout from Mercedes to see what we've got to answer it with. Hennessey answered nicely, I believe, but I’m still waiting for a Top Gear face-off.

7 Chevrolet Silverado (Nailed)

Okay, Chevy folks, fear not. Chevy has a 6x6 from Hennessey, too, they didn’t leave us out. But they did make it from a 2019 Silverado and since the 2019 is about as ugly as Winnebago, I’d rather feature the legendary classic in its four-wheeled form (and with nicer body lines). The Silverado has never not been a capable truck and Chevy's Super Bowl commercials don’t let us forget this. But it takes the skillful team at Hennessey to follow through with fully realizing the truck that the Silverado wants to be. That truck has an 805-horsepower, high-flow, 416cid stroker with a 2.9L supercharger running 10psi of boost. The Hennessey HPE800-equipped Silverados run 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds and pump out a quarter-mile in 12.3 seconds at 112 mph.

6 Ford F-150 Heritage Edition (Failed)

With so many of Ford’s trucks in the Hennessy tuning program, one does begin to eventually wonder where the proverbial “line” should be drawn. Sure, the iconic F-150 is as fitting as any pickup to be honored for its heritage, but amidst Raptors, VelociRaptors, 6x6 VelociRaptors, and even a Shelby performance Raptor (yea baby!), how many high-performance Ford trucks do we really need flooding the market? Even at that, it’s what you could call a high-quality problem. I’m over here complaining about having too many high-performance pickup trucks on the market while we were only dreaming of a performance utopia like this 20 years ago.

5 McLaren (Nailed)

The Texas-based tuner has no limits to what it will touch. You’ll not see them fooling around with Civics (yet), but they have no aversion to travels abroad for a hypercar conquest that has no end in sight. After twisting the Ferrari 458 inside-out and moving on to a McLaren 12C, it’s pretty apparent they’ve got a good handle on just about everything from six-wheel behemoths to the 300-mph land speed record (pending). The 2016 570S has a wide range of Hennessey Performance upgrades that put down the power like you know they’re going to. Plus, it helps Hennessey to have a few McLarens under their belt to define their professional image (like they needed any help in that department).

4 Chevrolet Tahoe RST (Nailed)

So we’ve seen a failed long-chassis SUV, a failed luxury SUV, and an ugly Ford that should have been put to sleep long ago, but where’s all the dope Hennessey SUVs? One starts to think after so many duds that the unicorn of a people-moving truck doesn’t exist. In fact, it does, you just have to know where to look. The space is crowded with a bunch of other SUVs that shouldn’t really be there, but the short-wheelbase Tahoe is the perfect truck chassis to tune up to 650 horespower. It’s not exuberantly flashy like the Escalade and not ridiculously long like the Suburban but it’s everything you need without anything you don’t.

3 Dodge Viper 650R (Failed)

Motor Trend cited it as the “fastest street car we’ve ever tested!” For a publication like Motor Trend, that either means the 650R is really, really fast, or the publication is very, very old. Both happen to be the case here, though, as the Hennessey Venom 650R was one of the baddest Vipers you’ve ever seen…in 1999. The 3.3-second 0-60mph time is still impressive today and so is beating out an IRL car in a drag race to that same 60 mph. And that's not to mention saying you can smash a Winston Cup car in the quarter mile (although Winston Cup cars are hardly set up for any of that action). Everything about the 650R was amazing back in 1999 but today, it takes much more than a 650-hp Viper to blow our socks off.

2 GMC Yukon (Nailed)

If the Tahoe hits the SUV sweet spot, how about the Denali? You and I both know it’s essentially the same truck—minus a few bells and whistles here and there, and some pretty trim, they are really no different. Although the Yukon moves up on the scale of prestige a few notches past the Tahoe, it’s not excessively flashy like the Escalade but packs quite a bit of creature comfort into a nice-looking package. It’s what GMC does. What Hennessey did was take this and toss in the semi-standard 2.9-liter supercharger with their high-flow intercooler system and give the 6.2-liter Vortec 650 horespower to stomp around with.

1 Ford Heritage Mustang GT (Nailed)

The regular Ford Mustang GT has phased in and out of relevance as a performance contender throughout its career. Sometimes Ford pumps it up with reasonable amounts of power, making it a little thunder-pony in disguise. Other times it’s been more of a washout. Either way, we can’t seem to get rid of the Mustang GT. For the 2019 model year, Hennessey is producing a limited run of 19 units. They give you all kinds of memorabilia like certificates, plaques, and other doodads to go along with it—but what we care about is power. In typical Hennessey fashion, they delivered on history's tall order with 808 horses, over 150 above their 650 per-vehicle average. Not a bad way to hit the ground running in 2019 for either Hennessey or the Mustang GT.

References: venomgt, hennesseyperformance, motortrend, and trucktrend.