5 Awesome American Sports Cars You Probably Never Knew Existed
When you think about a thoroughbred American sports car, the Chevy Corvette and Dodge Viper come to mind. While iconic, those two weren’t the only awesome sports car built in the US.
However, that changed in the late 1950s with the arrival of the Chevrolet Corvette.
During the following decades, the Corvette became America’s sports car icon, a title that no other US-built car really challenged until the early 1990s when Dodge introduced the V10-powered Viper.
Nevertheless, smaller US companies developed some fascinating sports cars that, for various reasons, never reached the same level of popularity as the Corvette and the Viper.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at five awesome American sports cars you probably never knew existed.
Studebaker Avanti R3
Founded in 1852, the Indiana-based Studebaker Corporation was one of the few smaller carmakers that kept up with Detroit’s big-money brands.
However, by the early 1960s, the company was in serious financial trouble and needed something special to survive.
That “something” came in the form of the 1962 Studebaker Avanti, a new two-door, four-seat flagship that offered Corvette-level performance and handling mixed with Thunderbird-level luxury.
Though it competed directly with the Ford Thunderbird in the personal luxury car segment, the Avanti was a legitimate sports car when delivered in its range-topping R3 trim.
With a chassis comprised largely of off-the-shelf parts but flawlessly tuned for impeccable maneuverability, the fiberglass-bodied R3 was powered by a 289-ci (4.7 liters) Studebaker V8 equipped with a Paxton supercharger.
With 290 hp on tap, the lightweight Avanti R3 was allegedly more agile and faster than a Corvette.
To promote the car, the Studebaker took an R3 to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where former race driver Andy Granatelli broke 29 U.S. land speed records. The R3 also reached an incredible top speed of 170.78 mph (274.84 kph), which was a new yet unofficial American production car speed record.
Sadly, the Avanti did not sell well enough to save Studebaker, mainly because of serious built-quality issues associated with the fiberglass bodies. The model was discontinued after 1963, and the company ceased operations about four years later.
Apollo GT
Photo: RM Sotheby’s
In 1960, Frank Reisner, a former chemical engineer born in Hungary, raised in Canada, and educated at the University of Michigan in the US, met a promising American engineer named Milt Brown, and the two decided to build a sports car.
As crazy as that sounds, that idea hatched in the stands of the 1960 Monaco Grand Prix materialized in the beauty you can admire above.
Initially called Apollo GT (and later, Vetta Ventura 5000 GT) this beautiful car that looked more like a Ferrari than anything assembled in the US, was designed by Intermeccanica, the famed Italian coachbuilder founded by Reisner and his wife in Turin.
While the body and bare chassis were built in Italy, the Apollo GT was assembled in Oakland, California, and featured a suspension system as well as a powertrain sourced from Buick.
The latter comprised a 250-hp, 300-ci (4.9-liter) overhead valve V8 coupled to a Borg-Warner T10 four-speed manual transmission.
During the initial production run that lasted from 1962 to 1964, 40 units (including a convertible prototype) were built.
When International Motor Cars, the company that produced the GT, folded, its assets were purchased by Vanguard Industries’ Fred Ricketts, who produced 11 additional units and sold them under the Vetta Ventura moniker for about a year.
Finally, several more units were completed by enthusiasts who purchased unfinished chassis, bringing the production total to 88.
Consulier GTP
Photo: Bring a Trailer
The next entry on our list came into being during the 1980s when a hedge fund manager named Warren Mosler decided to start building lightweight, road-legal track cars.
To be fair, Mosler was an amateur race driver, so he wasn’t completely nuts when he made the decision to start building cars. Moreover, he assembled a team of talented engineers and put together a state-of-the-art facility in Riviera Beach, Florida.
The result of Mosler’s efforts was the Consulier GTP. While it wasn’t the greatest-looking American sports car ever built, the Consulier was built around an innovative fiberglass-and-foam monocoque chassis as well as a Kevlar/carbon body that enabled a dry weight of 2,200 pounds (998 kg).
The first-ever production car with no structural metal in the body, the GTP had a flawlessly tuned suspension system designed by IndyCar experts McKee Engineering, who used existing parts from the Dodge Daytona Shelby Z.
The rear-mounted 2.2-liter Turbo II inline-four was also borrowed from the Shelby Z, giving the driver of the lightweight sports car 175 hp to play with.
Thanks to its power-to-weight ratio, the Consulier GTP could sprint from 0 to 60 mph (0-97 kph) in 5.2 seconds on its way to a top speed of approximately 149 mph (240 kph).
The original model was launched in 1989, followed by a revized Series II model that featured minor improvements and either a standard 190-hp Turbo II , or a more powerful Turbo III as an option.
Production of the Consulier GTP ended in 1993, but before that, Mosler partnered up with Shelby American to create a special edition, 245-hp Consulier C4.
Vector W8
Photo: Vector Motors
During the 1970s, college graduate and aspiring automotive designer Gerald Wiegert set his mind on developing an American supercar so insane that it would make the era’s Ferraris and Lamborghinis look like lawnmowers.
He teamed up with Hollywood car expert Lee Brown and managed to put together a functional prototype called W2, but since the US was going through a major fuel crisis at the time, the project moved towards the production phase at a snail’s pace.
Finally, in 1989, the W2 had evolved into a production car that was christened Vector W8.
With a wedge-shaped, aircraft-inspired body, W8 looked like Robocop’s Lamborghini, and hidden in the middle of its monocoque chassis was an outrageous V8 capable of Sci-Fi figures – at least, for 1989.
The unit in question was a transversely-mounted, twin-turbo Rodeck aluminum 365 ci (6.0-liter) race engine rated at an astonishing 625 hp and 649 lb-ft (880 Nm) of torque.
That meant the W8 could accelerate to 60 mph (97 kph) from a standstill in about 3.9 seconds and reach a top speed of 242 mph (389 kph).
Unfortunately, the car arrived during turbulent financial times, so only 22 units were produced between 1989 and 1993.
Mosler MT 900 S
Photo: Mosler Automotive
The Consulier GTP wasn’t the only awesome sports car built by Mosler. The company continued developing lightweight sports cars, and in 2000, they unveiled the McLaren F1-inspired MT 900 prototype, which morphed into the MT 900 S road car and the MT900 R race car.
Like the old GTP, the MT 900 S weighed 2,200 pounds (998 kg), but it looked a million times better.
It was also a lot more potent since it was initially powered by a 435-hp Corvette Z06-sourced LS6 V8.
From 2007 to the end of production in 2010, the MT 900 S was powered by a more powerful 7.0-liter LS7 rated at 600 hp.
Equipped with the latter engine, the road-legal track toy could sprint from 0 to 60 mph (0-97 kph) in 3.1 seconds, according to a test conducted by Car and Driver magazine.
During the model’s nine-year production run, only 20 road-legal MT 900 S were built.
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