This all started today on CherokeeSRT8.com forums. My buddy with the Jeep has been asking me to check out superchargers and turbos for his SRT8. He said he was really interested the Hennessey turbo kit for $10,000. This was probably a month ago. I started doing some research and found all these claims made by people about Hennessey Motorsports and told my buddy to stay away from them. Well I sign on to the SRT8 website today and theres a post from a user named "John Hennessey" and he says they are basically testing out this new kit for the Grand Cherokee SRT8 and they will post vids soon.
After reading these claims that this guys has been ripping people off I decided to post a questions asking if all the claims were true, and so on. You can read the rest if you want. http://www.cherokeesrt8.com/forums/showthread.php?t=622
Short Story: John Hennessey has threatened to sue me for my post on CherokeeSrt8.com...and now Ive screwed him out of thousands of $$$$
This is from an Autoweek article back in mid 2002.
Hennessey's Vipers are fast, but lawsuits say he serves them up too slowly. (Photo by Mark Vaughn)
Ninety-eight percent of his customers love him, John Hennessey says. But a few hate him and some have sued. Hennessey Motorsports in Houston specializes in tuning Vipers, adding more power to what is already one of the most powerful cars in the world. Hennessey’s Vipers have been featured in this and many other magazines and the cars he has sent to us and to other media were impressive performers. Hennessey presents himself well, projecting an image of the consummate Texas good ol’ boy whose reassuring conversational style and howyewdoin’ demeanor put customers at ease. People believe they will get what he says he’ll give them. But not all people do.
According to a lawsuit filed in Salt Lake City, Utah resident Taig Stewart sent his Viper GTS to Hennessey last May for an engine upgrade to 1100 hp along with several other modifications. For that he wire-transferred $142,500 to Hennessey. The lawsuit states the parties agreed the car would be done by mid-July 2001. As of press time the car was still sitting under a tarp in Hennessey’s shop in Houston. Or most of the car, anyway. Stewart’s suit claims Hennessey sold the car’s engine, transmission, wheels, tires and hood. The suit seeks return of the money, the Viper and “no less than $1 million” in punitive damages.
Hennessey claims he’s just slow in getting the work done.
“My side of the story is we’re planning on finishing his car and planning on giving him everything that he paid for,” said Hennessey. As for the parts being sold, “That’s totally false. We’ve got all his parts in the shop except the hood and he wanted to do a lightweight hood.”
Stewart is not the first unsatisfied customer. The longer we dug the more dissatisfaction we found. Here’s a sampling:
On Nov. 14 a New Jersey court entered a final judgement of $133,674 against Hennessey on behalf of Viper owner Gary Dan for a botched conversion.
William Walters said he is out over $22,000 after shipping his Corvette to Hennessey for a head and cam package that was never done; he did have five rods bent and a head gasket damaged on the dyno in Hennessey’s shop during an experiment Hennessey tried with nitrous oxide.
Jerry Johnson said he had to file suit in Placer County Court in California to straighten out registration and engine computer problems on a Viper he bought from Hennessey. n Jon Belinkie said he loves the changes made to his Viper but had to sue in his home state of Maryland, then register the judgement in Texas, to recover overcharges Hennessey made on his American Express card.
Rick Ryan said he had to hound Hennessey for eight months by long distance from Marietta, Georgia, to put the proper wing and stripes on his Viper.
Mark Lublin said he sent his Viper cylinder heads to Hennessey for new valves but when the heads came back he found the “new” valves were actually used; a cam that was delivered to Lublin in a Hennessey box turned out to be a stock Chrysler cam. Lublin was finally refunded $5,715 from American Express but only after nine months of disputing the charge; and he got no money from Hennessey.
Bruce Iannatuono said he ordered $8,500 worth of Hennessey parts for his mechanic in Baltimore to install but was only able to use two-thirds of what was shipped, and then only after haranguing Hennessey for six months on an order that was originally promised in five weeks.
Most of the complaints come from outside Texas. Hennessey, some said, tends to take better care of local customers.
“If you were out of state, man you were fair game,” said Kyle Kent, a former employee at Hennessey Motorsports. When an out-of-state car came in it was sometimes parted out, with the wheels, tires and whatever else looked good going to other cars waiting to be finished or sold outright, according to Kent and others inside Hennessey Motorsports. Then Hennessey would call the car’s owner and try to sell him an upgraded kit. If the customer balked, Hennessey would take parts from other cars in the shop, or just let the job sit.
Kent described one typical disassembly on an out-of-state Viper. “The motor and transmission went into a Durango John was putting together, the brakes went to someone else, the hood went to a guy in Ohio, the rear bumper to South Carolina, man you name it. We had multiple cars like that.”
Another common practice was putting stock parts on what was supposed to be an upgraded car.
“One customer spent $130,000 to $140,000 and that guy thought he had purchased a Venom 650R package which he thought came with the stroker motor,” Kent said. “John told him he was getting a stroker. He was just getting heads and cams.”
Hennessey denies any wrongdoing.
“I’ve got probably 3000 customers,” he said. “I’ve built over 300 cars and out of that I’ve had a handful of people that I’ve had some sort of a delivery problem with and I’ve had some of them who have sued me. So is that some sort of a trend or is that par for the course?”
Hennessey's bad reputation has been known for a long time, especially here locally. Although he tends to take better care of locals, I wouldn't let him work on anything of mine.
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Worry about a lawsuit when you see a statement of claim. Until then its BS, suing for libel over a bulletin board is like suing for McDonalds making you fat.
wow, you only hear what the magazines say, and they praise him like he's the god of vipers or something. i couldn't even imagine showing up to a shop who i had given $30k+ to and see my car basically 'parted out', and then get the cops called on me and arrested.
unbelievable.
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During a Super Tuner Shootout a few years back, there was some side story on Hennessey about how he was the only tuner being investigated by the BBB or something like that - which may have been back when his name was still Hennessey Motorsports.
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I was actually talking to a former 650R owner about this. He said while his car was fast, there was no way that he got the stroker motor, but he was pretty sure he got the heads and cam package. Needless to say, he got rid of it long ago.
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"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; the rest are all merely games"- Ernest Hemingway
There is, of course, no place in the world where talk is cheaper than on an Internet message board, and a few lurid posts hardly constitute proof of wrongdoing. So I went to the Web site of the Houston Better Business Bureau (www. bbbhou.org) and searched for Hennessey Motorsports. The BBB reported 12 complaints filed against Hennessey in the past 36 months, of which seven were in the past year. Of the 12 complaints, only one was listed as resolved. To put this performance in context, I ran checks with the local BBBs of every participant in our Supercar Challenge. Just one other complaint turned up, against AutoThority, and it was described as "resolved."
Then I went to Dun & Bradstreet, the financial research firm, where for $117 I purchased a comprehensive report on Hennessey Motorsports. For comparison, I also purchased a report on the well-known Lingenfelter Performance Engineering. The report indicated that LPE was financially sound, with no liens, lawsuits, or judgments pending against it. In contrast, the Hennessey report revealed that courts have four times ruled against the company and that there are 10 lawsuits currently in various stages and three liens. The D&B report also provided a "Financial Stress National Percentile" rating, measured on a 1-to-100 scale, with 100 being the best possible score. Hennessey's company had a rating of one. (LPE had a 79.)
Goes to show you... you have to be very careful who you trust... and when you get screwed many times it costs more in the end than to have just let it go...I hope he gets shut down if these reports are true, and they seem to be well based.
Kind of sucks because Hennessy can build some amazing cars. But after that PM he sent you, it sounds like he's just trying to bully you around because he has more money. F*ck that piece of shit. I hope his business burns to the ground for this (figuratively).
See my sig. for further insight into Hennessey's attitude towards potential customers.
As a side note, what he is suggesting (and again, employing as a means to avoid the questions) is that all the acusations thus far are loaded questions that make inherent assumptions about his guilt. There are none. No one has said "Hey Hennessey, when did you stop ripping people off?" The questions thus far have been "Hey Hennessey, what the hell is up with these claims?" He has yet to answer to any of them, but instead has decided to make further threats of suing for libel/slander (though it appears he knows not the difference between the two) and skirting the questions.
Last edited by astrocreep96; 07-18-2006 at 02:08 AM.
My favorite part about that whole situation is the fact that the owner/moderators of that site refused to delete the thread just because John wanted to, and he's a vendor on that site.
They've been fairly impartial to the whole issue, sounds good to me. On Evom, if someone has a problem with a vendor and makes a thread about it, they give the vendor time to post about it and hopefully resolve the issue, then close the thread to avoid any unnecessary flaming. Hennessey has yet to do anything other than threaten a lawsuit so far.
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some questions dont deserve answers. if you or anyone else does not want to do business with us then thats your choice.
Reply With Quote" - John Hennessey
)
with cams, blower, and forged internals
). It seems the same issues are still floating around.
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