When people talk about Hennessey Performance Engineering they often complain that, while the cars are fast, they're not great at withstanding small arms fire. The solution? A custom VelociRaptor-based armored SUV they're calling the "War Wagon."
Hennessey's already made a nice side business building ridonculous supercharged and twin-turbocharged Raptors dubbed the VelociRaptor. Now Hennessey's getting into the armored car business with a modified Raptor built with a 6-to-8 passenger SUV body and armor-plating.
The idea's to repair a weakness with current modified armored vehicle manufacturing, which essentially takes chubby kids and gives them access to an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, by creating a new class of vehicle: armored high-performance vehicles.
No, you're not in a Neal Stephenson novel, this is real.
"Adding armor protection to SUV's such as Chevy Suburbans and Cadillac Escalades can easily increase vehicle weights from 6,000 lbs to over 10,000 lbs", said company president John Hennessey. "We are excited to be able to apply our 20 years of high-performance experience to the armor vehicle industry."
Renderings of the Hennessey VelociRaptor APV (Armored Performance Vehicles) show the new Ford F-150 SVT Raptor SuperCrew with an Expedition-ish rear end designed to accommodate more passengers and cushion them in high performance, desert-crossing safety. Backing up the SUV will be the same supercharged 6.2-liter V8 Hennessey's already getting to produce 575 hp.
It will be built using as many Ford parts as possible, though Hennessey tells us the increased width of the Raptor means a large amount of custom fabrication will be necessary. The first vehicle will be built next summer and is just one of many APV products. They'll also do the GMT900 platform vehicles, Nissans, Jeeps, Land Rovers, Land Cruiser/LX570s.
And if you're not interested in having an armored supercharged Raptor SUV because no one is trying to shoot at you, but want a supercharged Raptor SUV they'll help you out there, too.