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Supercar

Examples of supercars (from left to right): Mercedes SLS AMG, Lamborghini Aventador, Pagani Huayra, Ferrari Enzo, Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari 458 Italia, and Ferrari California.

A supercar – also called exotic car – is loosely defined or described as a street-legal, luxury superlative performance sports car – both in terms of power, speed, and handling. The term 'supercar' is therefore frequently used for low-bodied sportscars with powerful, rear mid-mounted engines.[1] Since the 2000s, the term hypercar has also come into use for the most high-end performance cars.

Supercars commonly serve as the flagship model within a vehicle manufacturer's line-up of sports cars and typically feature various performance-related technology derived from motorsports. Some examples include the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini Aventador, and McLaren 720S. By contrast, automotive journalism typically reserves the predicate 'hypercar' for (very) limited, (two- to low 4-figure) production-number cars, with new-prices in the 21st century often exceeding a million Euros, dollars or pounds. Contrary to the "regular" range-topping supercars, many hypercars are more rare, even in an exotic car maker's history – appearing as one-offs, like Porsche's Carrera GT, or just occasionally made specialty models, built over and above the marque's typical product line-up, like the Ford GTs or Ferrari's F40, F50 and Enzo lineage. Very few car makers, like Bugatti and Koenigsegg, only make hypercars.

In the United States, muscle cars were often referred to as "supercars" during the 1960s.

  1. ^ A low car has both a low center of gravity, (favorable for handling), as well as less frontal area, reducing its aerodynamic drag, and thus enabling a higher top speed; and rear mid-mounting the engine further optimizes the handling, like in Formula One or Indy Cars, as well as having a very big engine in a very low car, while retaining good forward vision for the driver.

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