Special Edition: Top Three

It's part 1 of a special TGTBTU post, dear readers! Today's topic is the Top Three cars that I personally can't wait to have in my garage. It's my version of automotive fantasy football, you might say. So, let's kick off with my number 1 most wanted car....

1st Place
Hennessey Venom GT
$1,200,000

The Hennessey Venom GT. My, my, what a machine. The gear-heads at Hennessey Performance Engineering (famous for taking stupid fast cars and making them even more stupid fast) sure know how to get my motor churning. They took the chassis and body of a Lotus Exige, tweaked it almost beyond the point of recognition, then threw away everything else. In place of the standard Exige power-plant, they dropped in a colossal 7.0 liter twin-turbocharged V8 sourced from the Chevy Corvette C6 ZR1, which they then tweaked to produce an absolutely ground-shattering 1,200 horsepower. Sound like a bit too much to handle? Never fear my friends, because Hennessey also installed a three-option driver control setting, allowing the driver to select the engine output from the full 1,200 hp to 1,000 hp, or for the driver who is feeling sensible, a meager 800 hp. Of course, when combined with the lightweight carbon fiber body panels, race-spec rims and 6 speed manual transmission, even the low 800 hp setting is enough to send this monster to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds. Did I mention that the top speed is allegedly 272 mph? I say allegedly because Hennessey has yet to find a driver with testes dense enough to attempt a top speed run. This car made my number one spot because it it pure, unhindered speed and mechanical wizardy all wrapped up in a body that you could cut the fabric of time open with. I suppose that it is also a plus that it can beat out the fat, bulbous Veyron (which, for the record, I loathe). 

     

2nd Place
Lexus LFA
$400,000

Clocking in at a close second is the fantastic Lexus LFA. The LFA is what happens when you lock a group of talented automotive designers in a room and give them free reign to dream up and execute a car built on nothing but a desire to create distilled awesome.Two of my favorite bits about this car are the fact that somehow the eggheads at Lexus managed to create an in-house 555 hp 4.8 liter V10 that is the size of a V8 but only weighs as much as a V6, and that that same engine revs so hard and so quickly that they had to design a custom digital rev-counter because there was no normal analogue rev-counter that could keep pace with how fast the LFA gains and loses revs. That is how insane this baby is. They literally had to make a brand new measuring tool just to accommodate for the numbers the LFA generates. The Lexus is clad in carbon fiber, as one would expect, making the curb weight a frighteningly low 1,580 pounds. So, it is essentially a jet engine that weighs about as much as a toaster-oven. Top speed is 202 mph, and the zero to sixty time comes in at 3 seconds dead, all the while sounding like a true-blooded Fromula 1 racer (thanks to a Yamaha tuned exhaust system). All this from a car that was originally meant to be a test-bed, science fair project. 

3rd Place
Ford VelociRaptor F-150
$51,000

All right, this one might need a small amount of justification. I'm sure that many of you will look at my third choice and wonder if I really know what I'm talking about, but I promise you, this truck is worth a look, and deserving of my number 3 spot. The Ford SVT Raptor is less of a pickup truck and more of a finely tuned dune racer. It's got a 6.2 liter V8 that cranks out a respectable 411 horses. That is, unless you give it over to those gurus at Hennessey Performance Engineering. Toss another 8 grand at them and they will take your standard issue Raptor, replace the intake and exhaust systems, re-tune the engine computer and heap on another 65 horsepower for a total of 476 hp (there is also a twin-turbo option). Compared to the other cars on this list, that doesn't sound like much. However, you have to remember that this is a truck, one that was specifically designed to eat up sand dunes and terrorize the off road circuit, so 476 hp may as well be Lamborghini levels of power. This car is what you want went the zombie apocalypse rolls along, as nothing short of a nuclear blast can stop it. And let's be real, it does have a sex appeal of it's own in that cousin-loving, snake-skin boots and dirt-doughnuts sort of way.