The Panoz Esperante Is The Underrated American Sports Car Everyone Forgot Existed – SlashGear

The most recent version of the Esperante first debuted in 2014 at a vintage aircraft show charity event held during Monterey Car Week. It was heralded as the 25th anniversary edition of the Esperante from years past, and Panoz was only going to make 25 total models in its Georgia-based factory. Every Panoz Esperante was hand-built, so each specific car was slightly different from the last. But every Spyder model shared a mostly aluminum chassis, a six-speed manual transmission, and a 6.2-liter aluminum V8. The Esperante Spyder GT’s tagline was “Sounds Like Thunder. Goes Like Lightning.”

In addition to being hand-built, the cars were essentially custom designs built to the specification of the customer. For example, the customer could opt for a variety of interior creature comforts like a navigation system, a push-button start, or air conditioning. Customers could even spring for a supercharger that bumped the engine’s horsepower from 430 to 560 or more, according to Panoz. It does not appear that the Panoz website has been updated since 2017, but pricing for the Spyder GT model started at $169,900 for a base model. Although “base” may not be the right word used to describe a bespoke sports car with a six-figure price tag.