7 Of The Rarest Cars In The World

The W Motors Lykan HyperSport was first unveiled in pre-production form in 2013, the year after the company itself was founded. Just seven were made at a cost of $3.4 million, making the Lykan HyperSport the third most expensive production car at the time of its release.

Justifying that price were ostentatious design elements like precious jewels in the headlights and gold stitching on the seats of the coupe. It even featured a dihedral door system like a Koenigsegg, but its performance was far off.

One of these limited-edition cars was used by the Abu Dhabi Police, but none of these factors changed the fact that the car seemed like more of a cash grab than a genuine attempt at producing something extraordinary.

The Ferrari Sergio was the street-legal version of thePininfarina Sergioconcept, a windscreen-free roadster that was revealed in 2013 at the Geneva Motor Show as a tribute to the former chairman of the company, automotive designer Sergio Pininfarina, who had died the previous year.

In 2016, Maranello produced six examples of the car, adding a windshield and a removable hard-top. Based on the underpinnings of the instant classic that was the gorgeous 458 Spider, you got a 9,000-rpm 4.5-liter V8 producing 562 horsepower at the redline. For what it represents and who it pays tribute to, this is arguably one of the most special low-volume Ferraris ever made, even if it's not quite as lovely as the concept.

An undoubted icon was launched late in 1995 as theMcLaren F1 LM, and only a handful were ever made. Literally - just five saw the light of day. This was essentially a roadgoing edition of the F1 GTR race car that dominated that year's running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

It used the same BMW V12 engine as that car but did without the race-mandated restrictors that were added so the car could adhere to the Balance of Performance regulations. It produced a heady 671 hp in a car 132 pounds lighter than the regular F1, at a featherweight 2,341. And the F1 was already the speed king. Nearly 30 years later, BMW is only just starting to produce that kind of power in its own cars, and they're twice as heavy. Race cars turned into limited-production cars don't get much cooler than the F1 LM, and almost nothing today is as pure.

The Lamborghini Veneno special-edition coupe arrived on the world stage in 2013, and only four were ever made, one of which today lives in the MUDETEC museum. This limited edition was based on the Aventador Coupe, but its engine produced even more power, with 740 ponies being deployed. Lamborghini later produced a further nine Roadster models, which technically makes the model ineligible for our list.

But the only four-unit edition of a car that we could find was the Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic, and each of them was unique in some way. Moreover, these were essentially special editions of the regular Type 57. The SC Atlantic is a car many believed to have had a three-unit production run, but in 2004, renowned Bugatti historian Pierre-Yves Laugier confirmed in his bookBugatti: les 57 Sportthat four were produced, although only three survive to this day, each worth millions of dollars.

The C3 edition of theChevrolet Corvette提供的选项L88 427立方ch big block V8 in 1967, a high-compression iron-block racing engine that was claimed to produce 430 hp but actually put out closer to 500.

This heavy power plant was a $1,000 option, and Chevy didn't publicize it very well, likely because the option was a quarter the cost of the car itself. But even more expensive was the ZL1 package from 1969, which featured an aluminum block for the L88. In total, the option cost $4,700 over and above the car's $4,000 MSRP: $1,032.15 for the L88 and $3,010 for the ZL1 pack. As a result, just two buyers bit the bullet, according toHagerty,我在yello轿跑车w and white. Those lucky individuals had the fastest production car ever produced at the time, but they were not as unique as originally believed. A December 1969 issue ofCar and Drivermagazine revealed a third ZL1 was ordered in red by a Gulf Oil engineer who would occasionally race it on track, according toWikipedia. He never sold it.

ThePagani Zonda HP Barchettais also a three-unit special-edition car, but in this case, we think the American is more special in many ways. It's arguably the holy grail of the C3 range.

The Koenigsegg CCXR is already a mindblowing hypercar - or megacar if you prefer founder Christian von Koenigsegg's term - butthe Trevita editionis even more spectacular. Trevita means "three whites" in Swedish, and the car embodies that description with the Koenigsegg Proprietary Diamond Weave, a unique method of carbon fiber manufacturing that sees the fibers coated with a diamond finish. Three cars were initially planned, but because of the complexity of the construction, only two were made in Koenigsegg Shimmering Diamond Weave bodywork. With 1,018 hpon E85, this is a true speed demon, but considering the extraordinary construction methods, we doubt anyone will risk feeling out its top speed.

The Shelby Cobra Super Snake and the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe (the latter officiallythe most expensive car in the worldand the speed king of its time) were also limited to just two examples by their respective manufacturers. The Merc attracted loads of money (around $142 million) when Mercedes put it up for sale last year, but the Shelby coupe isn't cheap either, with the model personally owned by Carroll Shelby fetching $5.5 million in 2021.

There are several rare cars out there, many of which could have easily found a place on this list. For example, theRolls-Royce Boat Tailis a car of which only three examples will be made, and only for the most loyal Rolls-Royce clientele. In slightly higher numbers, we have the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, of which there were 18. Expand the scope a little further, and you come to other rare models like the roadgoing edition of the first-generation Ford GT40, one of the finest endurance racers America has ever produced. Porsche is also known for producing limited-edition cars, and Mercedes-AMG is a fan of special-edition production cars too. Everybody likes something special.

Aston Martin produces send-off models of its sports car icons, and early Aston Martin racecars, like so many of the era, increase in value and become rarer as the decades pass, especially when some are crashed or otherwise rendered unusable. The Aston Martin DBR1, for example, has sold for high eight figures.

Basically, this amalgam of limited cars could stretch on forever because engineers will always push the boundaries, and brand executives are always keen for a hit model that will rake in cash just as soon as it is announced. The reasons for creating limited-production cars could be as diverse as homologation requirements, poor sales, manufacturing struggles, or a change in leadership, but whatever the reason for a brand to release a limited edition, you can be sure that there will be many more limited edition cars produced in low volumes for as long as vehicles exist.