Exotic Sports Cars

Exotic sports cars are some of the more desirable cars in the world, but what exactly the term means is open to interpretation. Originally, the term sports car was used to describe cars literally designed for sporting such as racing and other automotive sports. However, road-going exotic sports cars quickly became designed with road manners and fun more in mind that winning races.

Many aspects of a car that allow it to go around a track quicker also make it harder to control and less fun to drive on public streets. For example, purpose built racecars tend to have very stiff suspensions and very quick steering ratios. These are good things when on a track, but on imperfect roads, that can make a car unstable. So road going sports cars tend to have softer suspensions than pure racing cars, but are still much stiffer than cars that are not designed with sport in mind.

People have always loved exotic items because they are foreign and often very sexy and romantic. The same is true for sports cars. The flowing lines of a Ferrari are very different than those of a classic American car. There is something so distant and foreign about a car like a Ferrari. A Corvette Z06 is just as fast and handles just as good as a Ferrari F430, however in America the Corvette is seen as more normal while the Ferrari is exotic and different. This is why exotic sports cars fetch such high prices. But the term exotic is a matter of perspective.

In Europe, many car guys love Corvettes and think of them as exotic. They offer a brutish personality that many European cars lack, and thus the Corvette is more foreign to them. Since the Corvette is not officially sold in Europe, at least not in any great numbers, it is also very rare there and much more expensive than it is in the United States. In England, it is somewhat common to see kit cars based on the Lotus Super Seven, a very small lightweight roadster. The Seven is seen as a very simple, almost homely car that is also very fast. In America, the car is so unusual that when sighted, it usually turns more heads than a Ferrari does. Despite being almost mundane to look at, though fun to drive, in England, the Seven is extremely exotic in America.

For Americans, the typical exotic sports cars are Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Porsche, but this is another type of exotic sports car that puts some emphasis on comfort. Aston Martin makes grand touring cars that offer a sports car edge with some added comfort. They also offer very sleek and sexy lines with a little more of a James Bond coolness than Italian seductiveness. Small companies that try to best the efforts of the better-known companies are pushing the art of exotic sports cars further every year. Koenigsegg is a Swedish car company that makes some of the fastest sports cars in the world. Pagani is an Italian car manufacturer that competes with the other Italian companies.