Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Sports cars are like mousetraps–someone’s always trying to build a better one. In the ’50s guys like Powel Crosley, Briggs Cunningham, “Wacky Arnolt” and Sydney Allard put some interesting and sometimes quite capable machines on road and track.

In the ’60s and ’70s there were cars by De Tomaso and Bricklin to tempt the off-beat shopper, while the ’80s gave us machines like the DeLorean and Vector Twin Turbo. In the 1990s (and beyond), guys like Daniel Panoz kept the low-production sports car fires burning.

Although the automobile market seems to grow ever more competitive, independent sports car builders still emerge to challenge the world with something faster, or better handling, or maybe just more fun.

Check out this piece from London’s Independent on the world’s top ten little known sports cars. Many owe design inspiration to the nimble Lotus Seven, though some look quite unique (there’s a photos link below the picture of the muscular-but-homely Donkervoort D8 GT). Though it’s got a certain modern-slot-car thing going, the Mastretta looks pretty good, and the Hulme F1 projects speed and has modern Formula 1 technology, even if it looks like some Weebles who dropped out of school, started lifting weights and hanging out at the racetrack designed it.

Many cocktail-napkin sports cars go by the wayside, but kudos to the restless builders willing to take on the big boys.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.