A 2023 one-off built for Michael Jordan included a glovebox humidor the basketball star never actually requested.
Real gold. A cigar humidor. A pistol holster. Hennessey's Maverick division has done all three. Each request came from a different client spending above $2 million per car. The gold job was a one-time mistake they won't repeat.
The disclosures, made , Hennessey Director of Design, at the 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed, expose how ultra-low-volume hypercar builders now compete less on horsepower and more on personalisation depth. At above $2 million per unit, Hennessey sits in a tier where McLaren and Koenigsegg also field bespoke commissions — but few have documented requests this specific. The Maverick division, launched to handle one-off work, is the commercial structure behind it. Our wider coverage of industry restructuring across the hypercar and low-volume segment in 2026 tracks how these divisions are changing OEM economics.
The Gold Venom F5 That Cannot Be Cleaned
A client in Mexico ordered a Venom F5 and specified that certain metal components be replaced with actual gold. Not gold-coloured paint. Not gold leaf. Solid gold. Malinick confirmed at Goodwood that the engine cover vents on that car are cast from the real material. Hennessey fulfilled the commission. The problem surfaced afterwards. Gold, being among the softest structural metals at a Vickers hardness of roughly 25 HV compared to around 150 HV for aluminium alloy, deforms under cleaning contact. Malinick's summary was direct: bad things happen when you clean it. The company has since declined to repeat the specification. Malinick told journalists at the festival that Hennessey would not confirm further details about the client or the car's current condition. That question went unanswered. Whether the vehicle has been driven, stored, or sold on remains publicly unknown.
What $2 Million Actually Buys at Maverick
Hennessey prices Venom F5 variants above $2.0 million per unit. The company has confirmed a production ceiling of 24 Venom F5 roadsters and 12 Revolution coupés — 36 cars combined across both body styles. At a floor price of $2.0 million each, total theoretical revenue across the full F5 family reaches $72.0 million (36 × $2,000,000). That calculation excludes Maverick surcharges for one-off commissions, which carry additional fees not publicly disclosed. Gold alone as a commodity: one troy ounce traded near $3,300 in mid-2025. Engine cover vents on a car this size involve perhaps 200–400 grams of metal surface area. At 400 g (roughly 12.9 troy oz), gold replacement cost at spot would add approximately $42,500 in raw material before fabrication. Machining bespoke gold components to automotive tolerances multiplies that figure considerably. Hennessey has not published Maverick division surcharge schedules, and a request for that pricing document submitted before publication received no response.
Malinick's Own Words on the Jordan Commission
The Michael Jordan Venom F5, completed in 2023, included a built-in humidor fitted inside the glovebox. What Malinick clarified at Goodwood was unexpected: Jordan did not request it. According to Malinick's account, the Hennessey design team decided independently that they 'really wanted to go over the top' for the commission and added the humidor as a signature detail. That framing matters commercially. A client-driven request is a service. A house-initiated flourish on a $2 million car is a design statement — and a marketing one. The Jordan car has since been displayed publicly and referenced in Hennessey press materials. Whether Jordan has driven it or where it is currently kept was not confirmed by Hennessey's communications team before this article went to press. The humidor detail first appeared in Hennessey Special Vehicles' own documentation circulated to media in late 2023.
Texas Roots, Firearm Fitment, and an Uncomfortable Parallel
In 2024, Hennessey fitted a car — model unspecified in Malinick's account — with a custom holster sized for a vintage Colt 1911 pistol. Malinick described the fit as 'millimeter perfect.' Hennessey also offers a key fob shaped like a firearm as a catalogue option. The company frames both as expressions of its Texas identity. That framing is coherent domestically. It sits less comfortably against Hennessey's stated international ambitions — the Maverick division is presented as a global one-off service. Gun storage in a customer vehicle raises different legal questions in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and across most Asian markets where Hennessey has sought clients. Malinick did not address export compliance for commissioned vehicles with factory-fitted weapon storage at Goodwood. This editorial asked Hennessey's press office whether commissioned vehicles with firearm fitment are cleared through separate legal review before delivery to international clients. No answer was provided by deadline. The gap is worth noting. For context on how Chinese OEMs navigate European regulatory specificity when bringing bespoke product to market, the compliance burden is instructive.
What the Maverick Model Means for Niche-Maker Economics
Hennessey's Maverick division formalises what has been informal practice at ultra-low-volume builders for years: a structured one-off arm that absorbs commissions too complex or too unusual for standard production. The move mirrors what Rolls-Royce did with its Bespoke division and what Bugatti attempted with its Sur Mesure programme. The difference is scale. Rolls-Royce Bespoke operates across thousands of annual units globally; Maverick operates across dozens. That changes the unit economics sharply. Each Maverick commission must carry its own engineering overhead without the amortisation benefit of volume. Malinick's admission that the gold-vent job was 'so complicated' they will not repeat it suggests that some requests clear the revenue bar but fail the production-efficiency test. A business that cannot repeat its most headline-grabbing commissions is one that will eventually need to define clearer limits — or accept that each one-off is effectively a loss-leader for brand visibility. The McLaren product roadmap announced in summer 2025 included a bespoke commission tier, suggesting the segment is converging on this model regardless.
Hennessey was founded in Sealy, Texas in 1991 , initially as a tuning operation before pivoting to ground-up hypercar production with the Venom GT in 2011. The Venom F5 name references the Fujita scale's most destructive tornado rating. Total Venom F5 units planned across all variants: 36. The complete Hennessey model history and specifications are catalogued in the Global Auto Index manufacturer database.
