What makes a car cool? There is no simple answer, designers spend thousands of hours on their latest creations, often rejigging the design to meet new regulations of changes in current trends. Design signed off and finalized, now comes the nervous wait, will it be a success or a flop?
Rest assured, at some point, every carmaker large or small has turned out a dud, on paper crammed with the best technology, engines, and wearing some of the finest automotive bodywork since the beginning of the car itself, only to fail to grab the attention of fickle gearheads everywhere.
Here is a selection of the coolest sports cars that flopped spectacularly that proves when it comes to cars, best to ask gearheads what is cool.
9 TVR Cerbera Speed 12 - Anything With 1000hp And No Turbos Is Cool
Just reviewing the Cerbera Speed 12s power and performance claims makes this one of the most spectacular road cars of all time. Boasting a 7-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine delivering anything from 800-1000hp depending on sources. At the time, TVR claimed a top speed of 240mph, with a sprint to 60mph in under three seconds.
Sadly it wasn't to be. TVR owner Peter Wheeler deemed the Speed 12 too extreme for road use and canceled the project after 3 road-legal examples had been built. Too extreme? Possibly. But we think TVR would have struggled to find buyers to make the project worthwhile.
8 Chevrolet SSR - Cool Idea Until They Built It
Remember Chevrolet's El Camino or GMC's Syclone? Both incredible performance-orientated trucks that delivered tire-shredding antics while remaining loyal to their utilitarian origins. In 2003, GM revived the sports truck theme with the Chevrolet SSR, except, along the way, execs lost sight of the truck part in favor of a convertible style roadster affair.
Even the inclusion of a beefy 6-liter V8 engine couldn't rescue the SSR from ridicule, the press and gearheads couldn't make up their minds what use it served other than a modern retro styling statement in how not to build cars.
7 MG XPower SV-R - High Price, Low Badge Appeal
At a time when factory closure seemed inevitable, MG Rover gave rise to one of the most surprising sports car projects of recent history. Hoping to revive interest in the beleaguered brand, MG river execs blindly believed they could build a sports car for $150k and then flog it to the public.
No one in their right mind would hand over $150k for a Rover, gearheads willing to buy any Rover badged car were hard to find, let alone someone willing to buy a supercar. Under the skin, MG used a revised Qvale Mangusta chassis and Ford 5-liter V8 producing 385hp. Even with such a promising specification, it was hard to ignore the price, Ford's own Mustang boasted more power for less than half the price. Needless to say, just 7 MG XPower SV-R's found buyers.
6 Lister Storm - Briefly The Fastest Four Seat Production Car
For sure, the Lister Storm is never going to win any beauty awards. Its wide angular nose serving the function to better cool the mid-front mounted Jaguar-sourced V12 engine. Loosely based on production engines, Lister reworking the cylinder block and heads in search of more power, 546hp to be precise.
What makes this supercar cool is the way it cossets four adults in luxury at insane speeds, hitting 60mph in 4-seconds, topping out at 200mph, at the time the fastest production 4-seater in 1993. But, the $300k asking price was too much to tempt customers, only four road-legal cars were built, Lister instead concentrated the Storm program with the GT1 racing series.
5 Bugatti Veyron - Engineering Success, Just Don't Ask About The Real Costs
Taking the world by storm in 2005 with a specification sheet straight out of science fiction, the Veyron boasting an immensely powerful 8-liter turbocharged W16 motor not only beat the previous production speed record but completely smashed it with a top speed of 253mph.
The price of such performance? A cool 1.9 million dollars, a bargain compared to the actual development and production costs, Bugatti effectively losing millions of dollars on every Veyron built. Undeniably a cool car that has since paved the way for current hypercars, but as a commercial venture, the Veyron is a flop.
4 Acura NSX - Cool Supercar With Worrying Lack Of Sales
Resurrecting the iconic 90s supercar in 2016, Acura returned to producing supercars carrying the hopes of gearheads of a better, faster, and more powerful NSX while maintaining the original's razor-sharp handling. Reading the brochure and press coverage you'd think the NSX is a winner, and yet sales globally are dropping faster than the proverbial lead balloon.
Equipped with a potent 3.5-liter V6 twin-turbo setup boasting 543hp augmented by dual electric motors delivers the supercar experience with a top speed approaching 200mph, dispatching 60mph in 3-seconds. However, its cabin lacks the unique special feel normally associated with exotic machinery, on current sales, it looks like the NSX will fall short of greatness despite the cool factor.
3 Volkswagen Phaeton W12 - The Best Super Sedan, Worst Badge Choice
Volkswagen's "people's car" background was always going to be an issue when producing the Phaeton, a luxury sedan that easily rivaled BMW, Mercedes, and in-house sibling Audi. To stand out, VW fitted the top-spec model with arguably one of the great modern engines, a 6-liter W12 that also featured in several Bentleys.
So, Phaeton the super-cool performance sedan that on paper at least had every major rival beaten, even on pricing the odds were stacked in favor of Volkswagen. If only the badge on the hood and trunk had a little more prestige maybe the Phaeton would have succeeded.
2 Cadillac XLR - Not Quite Good Enough To Topple Foreign Imports
Any list of luxury sports cars is sure to be dominated by European imports, this, after all, is a market BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, and Audi all fight over with a range of impressive machinery, but in 2003 a newcomer emerged in the form of Cadillac's surprisingly good XLR.
Stripping away that angular bodywork reveals why the XLR was so good, based largely on the Corvette C6 floorplan complete with a supercharged 4.4-liter Northstar V8 motor gave the newcomer poise and performance to match its visual appeal. Undeniably cool top-down motoring backed up by the rumble of lazy American V8 soundtrack should have been a winner, but poor sales signaled the premature end of the XLR in 2009.
1 Lotus Elan M100 - Stunning Front-Wheel-Drive Sports Car, Shunned By Lotus Fans
Resurrecting the once-famous Elan should have been a straightforward process for Lotus, a master of producing small two-seater sports cars that utilized low-weight and smaller engines to excite. Somewhere between boardroom and production, Lotus lost its way, the Elan arrived in 1989 with what many believed was the wrong chassis layout.
Built down to a budget Lotus opted for a rather clever front-engine design using a separate raft chassis system that admittedly worked very well, the Elan was easily the best handling front-drive chassis bar none. Gearheads didn't share the same viewpoint, preferring to buy Mazda's cheaper MX-5 that had more in common with the original 60s Elan.