Once a rival to the Bugatti Veyron, this low mileage 248mph supercar is going to auction next month
In the early 2000s there was a craze among small-run car manufacturers to break the production car speed record. The ultimate victor of this battle was the Franco-German Bugatti Veyron but America also managed a decent crack at it, with Californian firm Saleen making the 220mph+ S7 supercar.
In 2005 Saleen upgraded the S7, adding Garrett twin-turbochargers to its 7.0-litre Ford Windsor OHV V8 engine, as was intended on the original production car, and named it the S7 Twin Turbo. The turbochargers produced 5.5psi (0.38 bar) of boost, increasing the maximum power of the car to 750hp and pushing the top speed up to 248mph. There are few cars that can top the speed of this 13-year-old car, especially when you exclude recent hybrid hypercars and only count cars that are powered fully by an internal combustion engine.
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Top speed isn’t the S7’s only forte, with a 0-60mph time of 2.8 seconds, 0-100mph in 5.7s and 0-200mph in 27s. Barrett-Jackson is selling one of the S7 Twin Turbos at the Scottsdale 2019 auction, which takes place on January 12-20 next year in Scottsdale, Arizona.
So why should you buy this high-performance supercar? Well, it’s a likely future classic, which will no doubt inflate in price over time should the market treat it as such, and its crazy low 240 miles since new odometer count helps its collectable status.
The silver and black car, which comes with a six-speed manual gearbox, is being offered without reserve, but previous S7s at auction suggest this could easily go for somewhere between $300,000 and $450,000 (£235,000 - £355,000, €265,000 - €395,000).
There hasn’t been a true successor to the S7, which was also a popular car in GT racing, making this car a proper collectors item.
