John Hennessey Again Earns His 'Crook' Badge
I hate it when people get ripped off. And judging by your reaction to Bark’s piece last week about a dealer in Florida, you hate it too.
The latest con job to be posted to the Interwebs involves someone who’s no stranger to crime: John Hennessey. The Texas-based tuner of extraordinary supercars, Hennessey Performance Engineering, might not be building cars as exclusive as it purports — that is if it builds them at all, reports Jalopnik.
The latest swindle involving Hennessey, who owns HPE, begins with a foreign customer named All Ahmad Ali.
All Ahmad Ali wanted was a Chevrolet Corvette souped up to have enough horsepower to defibrillate God. To realize this dream, the Qatari went to one of the most famous names in the car tuning business: John Hennessey. But three years later, he is still fighting Hennessey Performance Engineering for more than $70,000 of a refund for a car he said he never got. And numerous ex-HPE employees told Jalopnik that Ali wasn’t alone—that the man and his famed tuning company are engaging in a litany of deceptive business practices.
This began the unravelling process of delayed customer orders, refused refunds, and counterfeit parts. The company’s former CEO is currently engaged in legal action with HPE. Some ex-HPE employees claim that customer cars would sit around for months or years before being touched, and that money paid by foreign customers was sometimes used to pay for work performed on other projects.
It’s a huge story, and not one that’s easily summarized without stealing Jalopnik’s thunder, so you should probably head over there to give it a read.
More by Mark Stevenson
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No way no how am I heading over to the cesspool of Jalopnik to read this.
I used to frequent Autoblog, and on any article about Hennessey you were guaranteed to get comments related to parts from customers' cars being stolen to fix or finish another one, people being swindled, etc. People should be getting the Harris County DA's office and the Texas Attorney General's office involved, if they want Hennessey investigated.
Jalopnik and Autoblog have been shills for this huckster's game a while now, running frequent "articles" that were nothing more than PR copy for whatever vaporware he was pushing at the moment. EVERY SINGLE TIME they ran that crap, commenters would gently chime in to remind everyone that he was/is a crook, and EVERY SINGLE TIME they would have their comments shouted down or deleted. "Old news" don'tcha know. Well, I guess his checks bounced at Jalopnik (and God knows they need every penny they can scam), so now the knives have come out. Autoblog hasn't piled on yet so maybe his money is still good there. At some point this bozo is going to irk the wrong dude and get slapped with an interstate fraud indictment.
Hennessey also stopped local drag races because it was too much of a bother.