The sticker prices for modern supercars are insane. You can quite easily drop half a million dollars or more on a vehicle, and even then you might not get the top of the range.
Supercars, though, have a dirty little secret – not all of them are expensive. In fact, you can get incredible performance for much less than you think, so long as you’re willing to look in the right place.
In this post, we look at some of the ways that you can get genuine high-performance supercars without blowing your budget. Check them out below.
Buy A Kit Car
Road-legal production vehicles have to meet a bunch of regulatory standards before the authorities will allow them to go out on the road. But kit cars don’t have the same kinds of restrictions. So long as they have a roll cage, there are very few additional requirements.
For this reason, they tend to be much cheaper to buy and build than standard vehicles. In many cases, they are just road-worthy buggies that prioritize the engine, drivetrain, and brakes over anything else. You’re getting performance, but you’re not having to pay for any extras, like air conditioning, sound systems, or safety features. It’s all about raw power and performance.
For the speed junkie on a budget, kit cars are a dream come true. You get to experience the thrill of supercar speeds, without cratering your bank account.
Go Japanese
When people think about supercars, European exotics are the first vehicles that enter their minds. After all, Italian manufacturers virtually invented the modern concept of a supercar.
However, the Japanese also have a lot of car companies. And many of them make top-of-the-range vehicles worthy of the supercar moniker.
Going Japanese provides you with an incredible performance at a fraction of the price. Brands like Nissan, Toyota, and Honda keep their prices down by using standard pieces of equipment from their mass-market range and borrowing engine technology from each other. The result is a selection of ultra-cheap, ultra-high-performance vehicles.
Good examples of Japanese supercars include the Nissan GT-R, Honda NSX, and the Subaru BRZ. The names aren’t particularly appealing, but the performance is incredible.
Buy Used Supercars
The supercar market can be a little fickle sometimes. Everyone wants the latest vehicles. But once their heyday comes to an end, prices drop considerably. You can often find vehicles that once sold for more than $200,000 going for as little as $10,000.
A lot of buyers look for used Ferraris and other luxury cars. Collectors often keep them in exceptional condition in the hope that they will go up in value, generating a profit. But that’s never guaranteed. And so that’s why you can sometimes find vehicles with hardly any mileage on the clock going for bargain-basement prices.
There are costs associated with buying a used supercar – mainly the insurance. But most people with regular incomes can afford that. It’s certainly cheaper than remortgaging your home to get the latest model.
Buy A Track-Only Vehicle
The ability to drive on the road is one of the reasons why supercars are so notoriously expensive. Engineers must find a way to combine high performance with roadworthiness – and that’s never an easy task.
But with track cars, that requirement disappears. Vehicles can be literally a chassis and an engine and you can drive them around on a private course – there are no members of the local authority there waving clipboards at you, telling you to stop.
Track vehicles have the downside that you can’t drive them on the road. But if you’re more interested in performance than show-boating, does that really matter?
The only place where driving a performance vehicle is fun is at the track. And many now offer rentable storage garages where you can keep your vehicles until you go racing on the weekends.
Yes – some track cars are very expensive because of all their lightweight technology. But there are a lot of second-hand test vehicles on the market you can purchase for race day.
Some tracks even organize amateur events and Sunday Cups, allowing you to pit your skills against other enthusiasts. Again, prices for these activities are surprisingly affordable.
So what’s the bottom line here? The truth is that supercars are affordable, so long as you’re willing to make some sacrifices. One approach is to wait for the car you want to depreciate and then buy it on the second-hand market.
Another strategy is to find novel ways to get performance, such as going Japanese.
