The auto industry is making history with the most advanced fleet of fantasy sports cars ever. Want to go shopping? Just dreaming? Get ready for the ride of your life
It starts with a body. The sloping front end, the lifted rear, the whole thing a piece of kinetic sculpture finely hewed from metal and glass and rubber. Lift the hood and you find the muscle. You take a step back to survey the whole package and a thousand clichés dance in your head. You think of sex, status, power, dreams fulfilled. Mostly, though, you think about speed. Lots of it.
For every indulgence there is an apex, and 2004 marks new territory for the autophile. Never before in more than a century of car history have manufacturers attained such levels of panache, technology and performance; they've delivered the greatest collection of cost-is-no-object sports cars ever to hit the tarmac. A shift in the market in the 1990s paved the way for this new wave of supercars. Volkswagen bought Bentley, BMW bought Rolls-Royce, and Mercedes pumped some new blood into its venerable Maybach badge. These well-funded companies began competing to see who could create the finest and fastest vehicle. By the turn of the 21st century every supercar manufacturer--even blue-chip Americans such as Chrysler and Ford--had entered the race in the sport category. The result? Street-legal rides with asphalt-shredding horsepower and ultrasophisticated electronics, gift wrapped in some of the most audacious bodies the world has ever seen.
We assembled the ultimate garage, filled with our picks from the top of the sport supercar market. Then we did some test-driving. The following are the best of the best. They range from incredibly expensive to (literally) priceless. All are fast; one of them (at right) is practically supersonic. Each is guaranteed to get your motor running one way or another. They'll ruin you for pedestrian rides. Read on at your own risk.
