Despite its lofty goals and Malinick’s aerospace past, the Venom F5 can still thank pencil and paper for its design. “I do a ton of sketching,” admits Malinick. “It’s my favourite part of the process. I probably have thousands and thousands of sketches, whether it’s F5 or what we’re moving onto next.”
It’s bait I can’t resist taking: what is coming next? He says: “If the F5 is all about performance, the next car is about driving interaction. It’s not going to be as powerful; it doesn’t need to be.
“The feedback we’ve had from customers and dealers has been really strong. It’s very much the antithesis to the digital age of cars we find ourselves in.”
Does that mean it’s a manual? “If the customers come back and say ‘we want a DCT’, okay, that’s fine,” he says. “But as of now, I’d say it’s analogue to the nth degree.”
Which suggests it will be free of the Venom’s turbocharging. “We’re still determining that,” says Malinick, “but we’re leaning towards something free of forced induction for the purity of it all.
“We want something very, very high-revving.” Sounds like a noble target to us.