America’s other sports cars: 33 Corvette alternatives

Post-war two-seaters that offered something different

The Chevrolet Corvette might be America’s favourite sports car, but it’s far from the only one.

In fact, there’s not a Corvette among these 33 post-war US two-seaters, though allergy sufferers should note: some may contain Corvette parts.

Join us as we take a chronological journey through sports-car history.

1. Crosley Hotshot

America’s first post-war sports car was the Crosley Hotshot, a tiny two-seater powered by an equally minute 721cc engine that proved a winner in SCCA club racing.

Indiana-based Crosley made various miniature vehicles, including pick-ups and off-roaders, between the late 1930s and the early 1950s.

2. Kurtis 500S

Frank Kurtis’ single-seat racers chalked up hundreds of wins on short oval dirt tracks and dominated the Indianapolis 500 for years.

But he also built a series of V8-powered road-legal sports cars that beat Shelby’s Cobra to market by more than a decade.

3. Cunningham C3

America’s Cup yacht race champ, entrepreneur, heir to the Swift meatpacking company millions and, inevitably, playboy, Briggs Cunningham used his vast fortune to fund a series of sports cars bearing his own name.

His dream of winning Le Mans never came true (he finished third in ’53 and ’54) but the need to homologate the first Le Mans entry did give us the stunning Cadillac V8-powered Cunningham C3 road car.

4. Nash-Healey

Nash contracted Donald Healey’s British sports car company to build this quirky two seater (three at a pinch) that had a carbon footprint like a Chinese power station.

The spectacularly long-winded production process involved Nash shipping six-cylinder Ambassador engines across the Atlantic to be mated with modified Healey Silverstone chassis, which were then forwarded to Italy to meet their Pinin Farina bodies, before the completed cars were returned to the US. Phew!

5. Kaiser Darrin

Memorable for its puckered grille and a bizarre set of doors that disappeared into the front bodywork rather than swing open, the Kaiser Darrin’s exotic styling hid ordinary Kaiser Henry J compact car running gear.

That meant it was slower than its rivals, and fewer than 450 production cars were built before Kaiser pulled the plug.

6. Ford Thunderbird

Having watched Chevy’s six-cylinder glassfibre Corvette struggle for sales, Ford realised that something far more conventional, but which paid lip-service to European sports cars, was a better bet.

Henry was right: while Chevy sold just 300 Corvettes in its first year; Ford shifted more than 16,000 T-Birds in its initial 12 months on sale.

7. Bocar

Colorado native Bob Carnes finished third at the wheel of a Jaguar XK120 in the state’s famous Pikes Peak hillclimb in 1953 before embarking on a venture to create his own cars.

Starting in 1957 he built a small run of sports cars, mostly powered by Corvette engines, until a 1962 fire at the factory ruined the fun.

8. Ford Mustang I concept

Two years before applying the Mustang name to a brilliantly marketed re-skin of the very ordinary Falcon, Ford used it on this sporty two-seater.

Featuring a mid-mounted V4 under its aluminium skin it was a radical machine for early 1960s Detroit – too radical, it would seem, for Ford to put into production.

9. Bill Thomas Cheetah

Bill Thomas had already built up a reputation as an expert on tuning Chevrolets when he hit on the idea of fitting a Corvette V8 into a new lightweight chassis.

The Cheetah’s front-mounted engine was bolted so far back in the frame it was effectively mid-engined, though it fried its driver and the chassis had the structural integrity of overcooked spaghetti, meaning it never lived up to its promise.

10. Shelby Daytona

Carroll Shelby’s Cobra, a fusion of AC Ace chassis and Ford V8 engine, had already proved itself on the road and track. But the open bodywork created too much drag to keep up with the 180mph-plus Ferraris on the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans.

Shelby and designer Peter Brock replied with the Daytona coupé – which didn’t win Le Mans, but which did become the first American car to win the World Sports Car championship in 1965.

11. Ford GT40

Henry Ford II was furious when Enzo Ferrari backed out of a deal to sell his company and vowed to hit Ferrari where it hurt – at Le Mans.

After a year spent ironing out reliability niggles the GT40 – so called because it was just 40 inches tall – went on to win Le Mans three times, including a 1-2-3 finish in 1966, and produced a handful of incredible road cars.

12. Pontiac Banshee concept

Supposedly the sporty brand in GM’s portfolio, Pontiac – and its head, John DeLorean – felt it deserved a two-seat sports car to rival sister brand Chevrolet’s Corvette.

GM bosses disagreed, ordered Pontiac to cancel the project, and just to rub salt in the wound, used the Banshee’s design as the basis for the 1968 C3 Corvette.

13. Excalibur SS

Proving that retro-themed cars such as BMW’s Mini aren’t a modern phenomenon, renowned industrial designer Brooke Stevens was inspired by his love of pre-war Mercedes sports cars to create the Excalibur in 1964.

With a switch from Studebaker to Chevy V8 power, the Excalibur was soon offered for sale and found favour with famous owners including Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis.

14. Meyers Tow’d

Surfer and boat builder Bruce Meyers used his glassfibre expertise to create the original beach buggy and set a new record in the Tijuana to La Paz off-road race, the forerunner to the Baja 1000.

Other VW-based designs followed, including the Tow’d (pictured above), but copycat companies quickly began ripping off Meyers’ creations and he was forced to fold the business in 1970 – only to restart production 30 years later.

15. AMC AMX

American Motors didn’t have the resources of Chrysler, Ford or GM but it wasn’t short on ideas, including the 1968-1970 AMX.

Essentially a shortened Javelin, AMC’s answer to Ford’s Mustang, the two-seat AMX offered a range of engines up to a 315bhp, 390cu in (6.4-litre) V8.

16. Pontiac Fiero

Keen to protect the Chevrolet Corvette, GM bosses had thwarted Pontiac’s previous attempts to build a sports car. But by pitching the Fiero as a sporty, economical commuter car, the division finally got its own two-seater. 

It was built between 1983 and 1988, but enjoyed a long afterlife as the core ingredient in hundreds of mostly terrible Ferrari replicas.

17. Ford EXP

The EXP was Ford’s answer to the same mid-1970s hike in gas prices that inspired the Fiero. Built from American-market Escort bits, powered by a weedy smog-spec 70bhp 1.6 CVH and characterised by headlamps that looked like a pair of CCTV monitors, it was never going to set the sales charts alight.

More power and a slipper nose followed, but by 1988 the EXP was EXPunged to make way for the four-seat Probe.

18. Vector W8

Gerald Weigart struggled for a decade to bring his American supercar dream to life, before finally launching the W8 in 1989.

Unlike contemporary supercars, which were harder to drive than a herd of bolshy cattle, the Vector predicted current trends with its automatic transmission, power steering, air-conditioning and digital information screens.

Just 17 customer cars were delivered before Weigart’s dream went pop.

19. Buick Reatta

Though more of a personal luxury car in the mould of the original T-bird than a true sports car, Buick’s Reatta was sophisticated by mid-1980s Detroit standards.

A fuel-injected V6 drove the front wheels, there was fully independent rear suspension, anti-lock brakes and a touchscreen interface on the console to operate equipment such as climate control, 25 years before touchscreen tech went mainstream.

20. Cadillac Allanté

Cadillac’s answer to the Mercedes SL and Jaguar XJ-S was a blandly handsome front-wheel drive convertible with an airline gold card to match that of its owners.

Cadillac didn’t just employ Italy’s Pininfarina to design the Allanté’s bodies – it produced them too, shipping all 21,000 of them back to the US on specially kitted-out Boeing 747s to meet the rest of the car.

21. GM EV1

Back in 1994, when most people still equated electric cars with creaky old milkfloats, GM offered select customers the chance to lease a swoopy EV that was as quick to 60mph as a hot hatch.

The EV1 was a revelation, but GM claimed there was insufficient demand to make the project profitable, recalled every car and crushed most of them.

22. Dodge Viper

The spiritual successor to the Shelby Cobra, the original 1991 Viper pushed a solid 400bhp to oil-drum-sized rear wheels courtesy of an aluminium V10 developed by Lamborghini – then under Chrysler control.

Five generations of Viper were produced before Chrysler cancelled the programme in 2017.

23. BMW Z3

A BMW? If we’re going to include cars such as the Ford GT40 – conceived in the US but built in Europe – it only seems fair to add one that wore a German badge but was actually produced in the United States.

The Z3 and its musclebound Z3M brother (pictured), were designed primarily for the North American market and were also manufactured there, in BMW’s Spartanburg plant in South Carolina.

24. Plymouth Prowler

Inspired by classic hot-rod culture, the retro Prowler was all show and no go thanks to Chrysler’s decision to stiff it with a 214bhp V6 instead of the V8 it was crying out for.

Later cars got a boost to 253bhp, slashing more than one second from the original’s tardy 7.2secs 0-60mph time, but it still lacked that classic V8 burble.

25. Panoz

Best known for its successful racing cars, Georgia-based Panoz also produced a number of roadgoing sports cars.

The first of them was the AIV, a modern twist on the Lotus 7 theme, powered by the Ford Mustang Cobra’s 305bhp 32v V8. That was followed by the more conventional Esperante sports car, pictured here.

26. SSC Ultimate Aero

No relation to Carroll, though the inevitable misconnection could only help with marketing, Jerod Shelby founded his Shelby SuperCars operation in 1998.

Less than a decade later the 1287bhp SSC Ultimate Aero was declared the world’s fastest production car by Guinness World Records, with a top speed of 256mph.

27. Saleen S7

A big name in modified Mustang circles, Saleen branched out into the supercar world with the mid-engined S7 in 2000.

Featuring carbon bodywork and a 550bhp aluminium-block Ford V8, it didn’t want for pace – though that didn’t stop Saleen upgrading the S7 with a pair of turbos and 750bhp from 2005.

28. Chrysler Crossfire

Chrysler’s rival to Nissan’s 350Z in the early ’00s coupe wars was based on Mercedes SLK running gear.

Sadly, the styling (famously described by Jeremy Clarkson as looking like a dog at stool) wasn’t the only thing retro about the Crossfire – the recirculating ball steering was as vague as a Neolithic road map.

29. Cadillac XLR

Unlike its Allanté predecessor, the sharp-suited XLR was a proper sports car – it was essentially a Corvette beneath the crisp bodywork, but with Cadillac’s more cultured 320bhp DOHC Northstar V8 in place of the Chevy’s pushrod motor.

A supercharged XLR-V joined the standard car in 2005, but sales never reached Caddy’s expectations and production was cancelled in 2009.

30. Chevrolet SSR

A car, a truck and a convertible with a folding hardtop - the only thing the retro SSR wasn’t, was popular.

At least it had a V8, unlike Plymouth’s equally nostalgic Prowler, but with a modest 300bhp giving 0-60mph in 7.7secs on the the early cars, it didn’t have the trousers to back up that hot-rod mouth.

31. Pontiac Solstice

GM finally took the sports car fight to Mazda and its MX-5 when it launched the Pontiac Solstice in 2005. Its sister brand Saturn got its own version, the Sky, a year later, while mainland Europe knew it as the Opel GT.

Alas, when the 2000s recession killed off Pontiac and Saturn, GM axed the sports cars rather than reassign them to its Chevy and Buick operations.

32. Tesla Roadster

Before Tesla became famous for its supercar-baiting four-door Model S, Elon Musk’s Palo Alto startup made waves by using a modified Lotus Elise chassis to create a zero-emissions sports car cable of hitting 60mph in less than 4secs.

Though impressive, the Roadster’s acceleration wasn’t rocketship-fast by current Tesla standards, but it did become the first production car launched into orbit when it was fired out of the atmosphere on one of Musk’s SpaceX rockets.

33. Hennessey Venom

More lunacy with Lotus DNA. This time, imagine a Lotus Exige hit by the same gamma rays that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk.

The twin-turbo, 7-litre GM LSX V8 slotted into the stretched Lotus chassis pushed the Texan supercar to 270.49mph during tests at Kennedy Space Center’s shuttle landing strip in 2014.