Supercars, hypercars, whatever you want to call them, everyone has heard of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and McLaren. It seems like every other day a famous automaker is releasing a 1,000-horsepower car
with a six- or seven-figure price tag.
But, there are so many other extreme rides out there that I bet you’ve never seen or heard anything about. Now’s your chance to learn about these exotics before your friends do! So, keep reading to see our list of these spectacular and weird supercars. Let’s go!
SSC Ultimate Aero – Tuatara Origins
While the Ultimate Aero definitely looks like a kit-car Lamborghini on the outside with its billionaire doors and a rear end that looks an awful lot like a Diablo SV, like my mom always says, it’s what’s inside that counts. And inside, the SSC has a heart of pure evil, a beating heart of a hypercar before hypercars were even a thing.
SSC claimed that the Ultimate Aero was created for drivers thanks to a lack of ABS, traction control, and other techno-nanny devices. It was basically a Dodge Viper, and sadly, like the Viper, it only lived for a short time from 2004 to 2013.
Thanks to a neck-snapping 1,287 horsepower, the American-built Aero even held a Guiness World Record for fastest production car at 256 miles per hour, until it got smoked by a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport. And for the price of the Veyron, you could buy two Aeros and have money left over for an Aston Martin. That’s how I’d spend my money.
From the folks who made the massively popular Lykan Hypersport, the next supercar on our list, the Fenyr Supersport from W Motors, is a mythical wolf dressed in, well, it’s dressed in wolves’ clothing.
W Motors Fenyr SuperSport – Big Bad Wolf
The Fenyr looks like a Subaru BRZ that had an overdose of growth hormones. But don’t be fooled by its immature design language wrapped in carbon fiber. While it looks like the car you drive in Rocket League, the Fenyr is an untamed hypercar named after a mythical wolf god.
This is no bedtime story. The seven-figure price will keep you up at night. Spend $2 million and stand on the skinny pedal, and the Fenyr screams all the way up to 250 miles per hour, with a 0-to-60 time of 2.8 seconds. Yeah, you get what you pay for.
These are amazing numbers when you consider this comes from a six-cylinder engine. Yeah, it’s an 800-horsepower twin-turbo flat-six RUF engine that’s based on a Porsche design, so I suppose the performance isn’t that much of a surprise. The carbon fiber body doesn’t hurt either.
You want one of the first of these to roll out of the factory? Well, too bad. They only made 10 Launch Edition Fenyrs, and one guy bought half of them. That’s right, some rich bastard bought $10 million worth of wolf cars.
If 10 copies of a supercar is too common for you, then maybe you should put this next beast on your shopping list, the Force 1 V10.
Force 1 V10 – Viper But Better
The name Force 1 V10 kind of sounds like something out of Star Wars, and the design resembles a squinting catfish, but the VLF Force 1 is a proper American supercar. Who is VLF, you ask? It’s kind of like the dream team of automotive car dudes. Combine Henrik Fisker, designer of the failed-but-still-beautiful Fisker Karma, as well as the Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8, with auto industry veteran Bob Lutz, a man responsible for like half the cars you love today, and you get a couple of guys whose first idea was to replace the boring hybrid powerplant of the Fisker Karma with a Corvette engine. You can see that this is a match made in heaven.
For their sophomore effort, they decided to go even bigger. The Force 1 V10 is based on one of the greatest American sports cars of all time, the Dodge Viper. VLF went all out. They even brought on a Viper Racing Team driver to help design the suspension. Starting with a carbon fiber body and adding more than 100 horsepower to the Viper’s potent V10 engine, the Force 1 clearly makes a statement.
Despite the Force 1 V10 being such an amazing piece of American ingenuity and brawn, it never really got off the ground. Reportedly only five of the cars were ever made. If you’re really into rare supercars, then maybe this is the one for you. Just bring your checkbook, these are selling for around $300,000 today.
So, what’s the best thing to come out of Russia since bottles of Stoli? A supercar, of course. And that would be the Marussia B2.
Marussia B2 – Давай Давай!
Ideas for supercars can arise from anywhere. I mean, I think of new supercars all day, like a Dodge Hellcat-powered mid-engined two-door. Build it, Dodge! One place where good ideas probably form around a bottle of vodka is Russia, and the Marussia B2 was the first supercar dreamt up over a plate of pirozhki. Its looks have been described as brutal, but I’m pretty sure the inspiration came from Darth Vader’s helmet. Alright, I promise that was my last Star Wars reference for this article.
Buyers had a choice of two Cosworth engines: a 3.5-liter naturally-aspirated V6 or a 2.8-liter turbo-six, which when combined with a modest 2,400-pound weight, helped give this monstrous machine a 0-to-60 time of 3.2 seconds. Not bad for a first try, komrade!
Marussia seemed like it had a sure-fire hit on its hand when the car was launched in 2010. With a $130,000 price tag, it was kind of a bargain. Yet, a small number of B2s ever saw the road, and the company went belly up four years later.
Up next is our award-winner for supercar with the longest name, and that would be the Fittipaldi Motors EF7 Vision Gran Turismo by Pininfarina. We’ll keep it simple and just call it the Fittipaldi E7.
Fittipaldi EF7 – Land Shark
Not many cars are named after a man. Well, wait, we can’t forget about Ford. There’s like a billion Fords. Nevermind. Anyway, if you’ve got a $1 million just waiting to be spent and a supercar craving, and want a car named after a guy, then the Fittipaldi EF7 might be your perfect toy.
Brazilian racecar legend Emerson Fittipaldi wanted to recreate the racing experience for deep-pocketed amateur racers. He turned to the iconic Pininfarina design team, and since they’d recently been let go by Ferrari, they were all too happy to oblige.
They say the design is inspired by nature, and the front end is that of a shark, and sharks are badass. So, the EF7 is badass, right? For the carbon chassis, they hired German firm HWA, the team responsible for the Porsche 919 Hybrid prototype, making the EF7 a featherweight at only 2,200 pounds. Yeah, we’re not kidding, this car is legit, it only weighs one ton.
What’s even better is that it’s got a 4.8-liter naturally-aspirated V8 that pumps out 592 ponies. Fittipaldi says he wanted go without turbos because “when you have a normally-aspirated engine, you’re able to drive the throttle and steering together.” Is it true? I have no idea, but it sure sounds cool.
Each EF7 buyer will receive personal driver coaching from Fittipaldi himself, which, even at $1.5 million, sounds like a good deal to me.
Okay, you probably don’t have $1.5 million sitting around, so you can’t buy one. But, good news, neither can anyone else. They were supposed to go into production in 2018, but no one’s heard anything since. Today, the only way you can drive the car of Fittipaldi’s dreams is in Gran Turismo.
Some rich guys have money to burn, while others have smoking hot cars. The Zenvo ST1 takes care of both.
Zenvo ST1 – Fire Away
It’s a dime-a-dozen story. A rich guy wants a unique supercar, so he creates a company to build his own ultimate joy ride. Sometimes it’s a story with a happy ending, like Pagani, and sometimes it’s Zenvo. Zenvo Automotive was established in Denmark by wacky rich guy Troels Vollertsen.
Zenvo’s first effort, the ST1 supercar, entered production in 2009. It’s 1,100 horsepower put the ST1 on the extreme end of the supercar spectrum, with a face reminiscent of a really angry Ford Mustang from hell. It might actually be a real life demon, seeing as the ST1 caught on fire during a Top Gear taping and the non-combustible ST1 they tested later turned in a lap time slower than a BMW M5. I guess it’s a good thing that only 15 were ever produced, with only three of the cars coming to the USA.
The Zenvo was about $1 million brand new if you wanted one here in the States, which is a tidy sum. But what’s even crazier is that if you actually bought one in Denmark, where the ST1 was born, you’d pay $2.5 million just to register the thing! So, it’s no surprise they weren’t really targeting the local Danish market with the ST1.
If you’re worried about pulling up to the tennis courts in the same supercar as some other douchebag, then the Icona Vulcano is the perfect ride for you.
Icona Vulcano – Solo Supercar
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more extreme with supercars, along comes the titanium-covered Icona Vulcano with a jaw-dropping $2.8 million price tag. It’s the ideal ride for a billionaire or a hedge fund manager who’s on his way somewhere to spend even more money.
Sure, it looks like a Toyota 86 up front, but under the hood sits a supercharged V8 cranking out 1,000 horsepower, generating a 0-to-60 time of 2.8 seconds. Perfect for Mr. Moneybags, who thinks Lamborghinis are too ordinary. But don’t tell that dude that the engine is really from a Corvette ZR1. So much for uniqueness.
But, sorry to say, unless a Vulcano is already sitting in your driveway or jet hangar, you’re out of luck, my friend. Icona only made one Vulcano, and it took over 10,000 hours of hand-powered labor to make.
Now, let’s move on to the Mosler MT900 and another story about a rich guy starting his own supercar company. Rich dudes clearly start a lot of car companies. Next thing you know, billionaires will start building their own space ships. Oh, wait a minute, they’re doing that already.
Mosler MT900 – Meh Mobile
No one purchased a Mosler MT900 for its looks. I’m not saying these are ugly, they’re just kind of “meh” when you could be driving a Lamborghini, Ford GT, or some other supercar of the day. People bought the MT900 because of a love for driving, at least I hope that was the reason, because I can’t think of anything else. George Lucas even bought the first one.
Hedge fund managers like Warren Mosler may know how to make money, but they’re just as good at pissing it away, especially when it comes to building cars. Yeah, Mosler had some good ideas with the carbon fiber frame, Corvette LS engine, and Porsche transmission. Plus, the MT900 was priced under $200,000 and went 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds, so there was a lot of bang for the buck.
But, at the end of the day, you still had to look at it. Maybe it was a face that only a mother could love. Just a few dozen MT900s were ever, sold and the company went out of business in 2013.
Give yourself bonus points if you can guess where our next supercar, the Arrinera Hussarya, is from. We’ve looked at supercars from Russia to Brazil and all over. Now, let’s check out the born-in-Poland Arrinera Hussarya.
Arrinera Hussarya – Still Waiting
I’ll translate the tongue-twister name. Arrinera is the company and the Hussarya is named after Poland’s Hussar cavalry. But no cavalry came riding to the rescue to save this supercar. Sure, their track-only GT3 racer puts out plenty of ponies thanks to a mid-mounted LS7 V8.
It’s even a bargain at $300,000, but the vow of a street-legal version Hussarya remains automotive vaporware after five years. These promises have become nothing more than horse fertilizer. Where’s our street-legal Hussarya?
Crazy or brilliant? You decide if the Tramonta, our last supercar in this roundup, is a good idea or a good example of automotive engineers doing bad things.
Tramontana – Made For Madness
The insane Tramontana comes from Spain and looks like a cross between a jet fighter and a Can-Am Spyder, so I’m not sure what to call this thing. There’s even an open-top version that looks like an F1 car made for two.
The craziness continues. While we’re on the subject of insane, the Tramontana starts at $600,000
and has either a V10 or V12 engine that makes up to 700 horsepower. Crazy? Yeah, crazy like a fox, because they sell a dozen of these per year. There’s a supercar for everyone.
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