Hennessey Performance
Lonestar Motorsports Park
Tuner School
YouTube
GUMBALL 3000
John Heinricy
The Texas Mile
Lifted Limos
Firedrum Internet Marketing
Sprinkler Warehouse
Projects
Web Industry
Search Engine Optimization
Graphic Industry
Video Industry
Miscellaneous
Coming Soon:
Completed Car Photo Shoots
Hennessey '09 Goofy Recap Pics
Videos added to blogs
So John got Hot Rod Magazine, a Primedia company, to send a photographer from Austin down to shoot some photos of the Camaros we are working on. I watched him take a few shots, picked up a few tricks, and gave it a quick shoot myself before leaving for the day on Friday. Here is what I came up with while playing around. Hmm...
Some of the guys from PEDDERS Suspension (Based out of Austraila) came down from Michigan to help us at the shop with the new Camaro. The lowered stance looked great, but on the track the car bounced around like you wouldn't believe. The rear suspension needs some major major work if we are going to keep the PEDDERS kit on the car...
... almost took the house next door too. Would have been horrible, luckily the local fire departments showed up -just- in time, seriously. It came within feet of the house. It started from farmer boy on his tractor that caught the dry grass on fire, which then caught his tractor on fire. Then he noticed it spreading towards the house, got in his other tractor, tried to put the grass fire out by running it over, catching the other tractor on fire, headed towards the pond in the tractor to put the fire out, which lead towards the house, almost burning it down. Awesome move farmer boy, awesome.
This was a project created for a friend of mine, Rob Strouse, free of charge. (This was also some-what of an experiment with some 'Web 2.0' features, and outside-the-box CSS tinkering).
After creating the website and marketing materials, the economy in Phoenix took a major dive. The limousine industry was hit particularly hard. Unfortunately, the company was put on the side line for most of 2008. In early 2009, a strange thing happened - another limousine company in the Phoenix area emerged, operating under the name 'Lifted Limos' along with a fleet of vehicles. Due to their intense marketing and advertising campaigns, visitors started to flock to the existing LiftedLimos.com website looking for the new company they had been hearing about.
So - to make a long story short, Rob was focusing most of his time and engery into other projects, when all of a sudden, he started getting tons of phone calls for his limo service, all thanks to another local company using the same business name. Rob is still riding out this new found success! I will keep you updated as new events unfold..
Case Study on the growth and success of SprinklerWarehouse.com , and its affiliates; a family owned and operated company by Steve Okelberry, along with a great warehouse staff, coming soon.
YouTube Success - #1 Most Viewed Video (in the US) in the Autos & Vehicles category on Friday, June 26th, 2009.
- The World's First 2010 Camaro with the ZR1's LS9 Engine!
I recently created and uploaded our video of our 2010 Camaro with the Corvette ZR1's LS9 engine powering the car! After uploading on Thursday, John emailed me with the following statistics on the video - pretty impressive! Feel free to browse our YouTube channel at:
www.YouTube.com/HPEDesign
Turn DOWN your volume!!!!
Statistics & Data - Honors for this video (36)
#15 - Most Discussed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles,
#72 - Most Viewed (Today) - Canada, #90 - Most Viewed (Today),
#87 - Most Viewed (Today) - South Korea,
#18 - Most Viewed (Today) - Netherlands,
#18 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Germany,
#3 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Australia,
#2 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Canada,
#7 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - United Kingdom,
#44 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Ireland,
#7 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - India,
#8 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - New Zealand,
#13 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Israel, #1 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles,
#8 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Spain,
#1 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Mexico,
#7 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - France,
#34 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Italy,
#1 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - South Korea,
#1 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Netherlands,
#2 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Brazil,
#26 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Russia,
#75 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Hong Kong,
#43 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Taiwan,
#60 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Czech Republic,
#13 - Most Viewed (Today) - Autos & Vehicles - Sweden,
#90 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Netherlands,
#64 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - Australia,
#12 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - Canada, #14 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles,
#27 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - Mexico,
#15 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - South Korea,
#3 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - Netherlands,
#94 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles - Brazil, #16 - Top Favorited (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles, #57 - Top Rated (This Week) - Autos & Vehicles
We are now working on our 4th Email Newsletter for Hennessey Performance along with some help from Tim, our new content developer and media guy at the shop. These newsletters are hosted on the Studio-Media server and the Email campaigns are managed by Campaigner, a company affiliated with Yahoo Small Business Services.
Check out the latest from Hennessey Performance: 2009 Dodge Challenger newsletter 2010 Chevrolet Camaro newsletter 2010 Nissan GT-R newsletter
Aerial Pictures of Lonestar Motorsports Park & Hennessey
We had a local guy fly over one of our weekend drag racing events at Lonestar and take some cool aerial pictures. Some of the good ones are shown below.
YouTube Success - 50+ Videos; over 1.5 Million Views!
As of today, Hennessey Performance Engineering has received over 1.5 million views on YouTube from the ~50 videos I have created so far while working for the company, over the last year. Feel free to browse the YouTube channel at: www.YouTube.com/HPEDesign
John had a some guys come in and 'digitize' the Camaro for us. They put white powder all over the car (because the car is a dark color, usually they don't have to add the powder) and they added a bunch of little white dots to the car to help with the 3d modeling. It was a pretty cool process.
2009 Nissan GT-R motor pulled - custom turbos fitted...
Now that we have had our hands on the new 2010 Camaro for a few weeks, we have completed our first Upgrade Package - The Supercharged HPE550 Kit - making 532 RWHP on race gas. We brought in John Kiwitcz aka KIWI, previously from Motor Trend, and a huge douche bag, to do some 1/4 Mile testing. Photos by Zach Hill.
First test fit of the custom HPE550 Graphic kit...
John had some renderings created of the HPE550 package which included Yenko style side stripes and hood stripes. We found a place that already had them designed, customized them for our needs, and put them on the car...
GUMBALL 3000 2009 stops by Hennessey Performance - Rode from Houston to Orlando in Tony Hawk's Jeep...
So I was lucky enough to jump in Tony Hawk's Hennessey powered 600HP Turbocharged Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 to finish off the second half of the GUMBALL 3000 event this year because Tony had to go to New York after stopping in Dallas to finish the first half of the Event. Vinny Russo of Spiker Automotive did most of the driving along with John Hennessey, and his oldest son JP. Riding in Tony Hawk's Jeep, Lambo's Ferarri's and More, drunk in New Orleans with Dennis Rodman, dinner with Dave Mirra, what a great trip!!
So John got his hands on one of the very first Production models of the 2010 Camaro... Vin number 22 or something. He immediately takes it over to the drag strip for some tests, gotta love it! All we could get out of the stock car was 13.45 seconds. The motor isn't really broken in, and the track wasn't too sticky. In stock trim, the cars are good for low 13s, MAYBE high high 12s... maybe...
Shell Houston Open for my birthday
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
My Aunt Cindy and Uncle Pat from Phoenix flew in for the week to visit my Father and I. We all went to the Shell Houston Open Golf Tournament on Sunday after my Birthday Friday night, April 8th.
We decided to take our Hennessey ZR700 2009 Corvette ZR1 and our GTR600 2009 Nissan GT-R to the Texas Mile in Goliad, TX for some testing. It is a "Standing Mile" course at an old air plane field, in the middle of nowhere. We also flew in John Heinricy to be our test driver in the Yellow ZR1. Earlier this week we spent some time in the ZR1 with Heinricy driving at MSR Houston's road course. In the pictures below: John Hennessey, JP Hennessey (John's oldest son), John Heinricy, Kevin Kesterson (head tech), Brian McMahan (tuner), Zach Hill (DAG, former Tuner School grad), and Randy (transport driver)
John Heinricy & ZR1 at MSR Houston, Testing Trip #2
This is the first time I have met John Heinricy, former Director of Performance Vehicles for GM, and an established Road Racer and more. Hennessey flew him in to test our ZR700 Upgrade package for the 2009 Corvette ZR1, since Heinricy had so much to do with the development of the entire Corvette line in the first place.
TX2K9 at Hennessey & Lonestar - Dyno Day & Drag Racing
March 20th - 21st, 2009
Last year TX2K8 was hosted at Hennessey for the Dyno day and Drag Racing events. This year was the same, but on a much larger scale. There were Supras cranking out 1,400 Rear Wheel Horsepower, and Supras running 6 Second 1/4 Mile Times! From Supras blowing motors on the dyno in front of the entire crowd to track cars getting sideways into the wall Friday and Saturday.
Fourwheeling & Camping in Arkansas
Saturday, March 14th, 2009
My Father and I drove up to Arkansas for the weekend to go fourwheeling with my Grandfather, Uncle and Cousins from Iowa. We were in the Ozark National Forest, South East of Fayetteville, . You know, that Deliverence type territory. We brought guns and dogs. And guns. The trails were sick, I rode my cousins 450 most of the time. I need to get one.
Dave Golder, the General Manager at Hennessey, entered into the first race of the 2009 24 Hours of Lemons year-long series. It is a "$500 or less" value car race that happens twice a year at MSR, for a total of ~10 races a year in the states.
John Heinricy & ZR1 at MSR Houston, Testing Trip #1
This is the first time I have met John Heinricy, former Director of Performance Vehicles for GM, and an established Road Racer and more. Hennessey flew him in to test our ZR700 Upgrade package for the 2009 Corvette ZR1, since Heinricy had so much to do with the development of the entire Corvette line in the first place.
Filming the CTS-V and ZR1 at the track... got picked on while filming a pass... attempted to take it out on Kevin... but Kevin got me back with the water hose
Hennessey had a booth next to Ford and Bently at the Barrett-Jackson show in Scottsdale, AZ. We had someone selling a Neiman Marcus editon Dodge Viper, so we went on stage to represent it. It was supposed to air live on Speed TV, but the car that went on the block before the Viper took too long, so they had to cut to commercial. But luckily enough the next car for sale was the first 2010 Chevrolet Camaro for sale, and I was actually on stage for the sale of it.
