Although the spectral mapping property in general fails it is shown that a ``spectral gap mapping theorem'', which characterizes exponential dichotomy, holds for a general class of semilinear hyperbolic systems of PDEs in a Banach space $X$ of continuous functions. This resolves a key problem on existence and smoothness of invariant manifolds for semilinear hyperbolic systems. The system is of the following form: For $0 0$ $$ \mathrm{(SH)} \left \{ \begin{array}{l} {\partial \over {\partial t}} \begin{pmatrix} u(t,x) \\ v(t,x) \\ w(t,x) \end{pmatrix} + K(x) {\partial \over {\partial x}} \begin{pmatrix} u(t,x) \\ v(t,x) \\ w(t,x) \end{pmatrix} + H(x, u(t,x), v(t,x), w(t,x)) = 0, \\ {d \over {dt}} \left [ v(t,l) - D u(t,l) \right ] = F(u(t,\...