MOSLER MT900S

MOSLER MT900S

Weighing just 2,275 pounds and equipped with an eight-cylinder, 7,000-cc, 600-horsepower General Motors LS7 engine mounted behind the driver and a six-speed manual transmission, Mosler MT900s is powerful and fun to drive. Mosler Automotive claims that the car can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds. At the low engine speed of 1,000 revolutions per minute in first gear, this car goes 40 mph. So far, they have made only 20 of these cars.

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HENNESSEY VENOM GT

HENNESSEY VENOM GT

Somehow they managed to install a huge engine into a small, lightweight car, and pushed the limits of automotive performance. With the body shell of a Lotus Exige and an eight-cylinder, 6,200-cc, 1,200-horsepower, twin-turbocharged engine and a six-speed manual transmission driving the rear wheels of a 2,700-pound car, it is not difficult to understand how, with a power to weight ratio of nearly 1:2.25, it recorded a top speed of 270.49 mph in February 2014 on the Kennedy Space Center shuttle landing strip, making it one of the fastest production cars, if not in fact the fastest, in the world.

Production is on a small scale for now, just 10 vehicles per year. As of August 2014, 16 of the 29 produced Venom GTs were sold.

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FORD GT

FORD GT

Ford GT is an American mid-engine two-seater sports car inspired by Ford’s GT40 racing cars of the 1960s and produced during the 2005 and 2006 model years. Total production for both years was 4,038.

Ford GT features a superplastic frame with aluminum body panels, roll-bonded floor panels, a welded center tunnel, one-piece door panels, and an aluminum engine cover. Brakes are aluminum Brembo calipers cross-drilled and vented on all wheels.

The mid-mounted aluminum, eight-cylinder, 5,400-cc, supercharged, 550-horsepower engine and six-speed manual transmission with a helical limited-slip differential, tested by Car and Driver and Motor Trend magazines in 2004, recorded 0 to 60 mph acceleration times of 3.3, 3.5, and 3.7 seconds.

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FISKER KARMA

FISKER KARMA

As a 5,300-pound, full-size, four-door sedan, Fisker Karma is an unusual supercar: it is fuel efficient and “the first true electric luxury vehicle with extended range” capable of 112 miles per gallon of gas. Karma made its debut at the 2008 North American International Auto Show. Fisker uses cheap, lightweight sheet molding compound body panels to decrease weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Karma is a hybrid powered by a four-cylinder, 2,000-cc, 260-horsepower turbocharged engine and by two 120-kilowatt electric motors charged by lithium ion batteries. The front-mounted four-cylinder gas engine generates electricity for the drive motors and the batteries. The electric motors are the sole forces directly driving the wheels. Karma has the top speed of 125-mph and reaches 60 mph in 6.3 seconds – those are ambitious claims for a car weighing more than two and a half tons.

The cars are manufactured in Finland. The first deliveries occurred in the USA in July 2011, and about 1,800 units went to North America and Europe by December 2012. Production suspended in November 2012 with about 2,450 Karmas built. Fisker Automotive filed for bankruptcy in November 2013. Successor owners say they plan to resume Karma production by the end of 2014 or early 2015.

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FALCON F7

FALCON F7

Five years ago, engineer and car enthusiast Jeff Lemke decided to build his personal supercar and commenced work on the Falcon F7 project. Falcon Motorsports completed the project just in time to present a production version at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show.

F7 has a gas-welded aluminum chassis with a reinforced carbon-fiber floor pan, carbon-fiber body panels, and an eight-cylinder, 7,000-cc General Motors LS7 engine behind the seats tuned up to 620 horsepower. Like most small automotive enterprises, Falcon Motorsports has yet to develop its own engine, transmission, or suspension, instead of using Chevrolet Corvette Z06 components under license. At 2,800 pounds, the carbon fiber F7 is not a lightweight, but with its 1:4.5 power to weight ratio it can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about 3.5 seconds. Falcon Motorsports claims the top speed of 190 to 200 mph.

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