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(Bloomberg) -- Hennessey, the modification shop known for adding power to pickup trucks and pony cars and for its record-setting Venom F5 hypercar, will add a tactical division at its headquarters in Sealy, Texas. The so-called defense systems unit will build vehicles useful for law enforcement, military operations and firefighting.
The company will hire 15 to 20 additional employees this year and add 80,000 square feet to its existing 50,000-square-foot factory to facilitate building the new vehicles, founder John Hennessey says on Bloomberg’s Hot Pursuit! podcast.
“In the recent past, we’ve had multiple requests from different military organizations for specialized vehicles, but at the time we didn’t have the bandwidth to do it,” Hennessey says. “After I’d heard the fourth, fifth, sixth request, somewhere along the way I’m like, ‘OK, maybe that’s the sector that we need to pay attention to.’”
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The company has modified from 500 to 600 vehicles per year for the past three years, including 1,000-horsepower Ford Raptors and Charger Hellcat SRTs. “This year we feel like we’ll have the demand and capacity to build over a thousand units,” Hennessey says.
The first vehicle to emerge from the defense vehicle program will be based on the Jeep Gladiator Rubicon and called the Warhawk, a reference to the Curtiss Warhawk P-40 single-engine American bomber used during World War II. The 6,020-pound rig is a people-mover for off-road situations, especially for clients who want something lighter and faster than other military vehicles, Hennessey says.
“There’s times when something like an armored Humvee is too conspicuous and too slow, and it’s just kind of a sitting duck,” he says.
The Warhawk retains the Jeep factory-built 3.6-liter V-6 engine with four-wheel drive, 1,200-pound payload and 4,500 pounds of towing capacity, but the modification adds steel bumpers with an integrated winch, armored shielding for the drivetrain, off-road run-flat tires, extra power outlets, and mounting points for weapons, cameras, radars and medical equipment. It can also be converted to run on diesel or kerosene-based fuel.
“This is not one-size-fits-all,” Hennessey says. “These will be specially built based on the very specific application of the client—probably some government agency, whether it’s military, police or fire—and depending on what they want.”
The Hennessey Warhawk will make its public debut on Jan. 21 at the SHOT Show, an annual convention about the businesses of shooting sports, hunting, law enforcement and armed forces industries, in Las Vegas. Pricing for the vehicle starts at $250,000.
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