Four Cars From America’s Weirdest Supercar Maker Are Coming Up For Sale

Nostalgia cycles tend to run at roughly 30 years, which means the early-to-mid ’90s are about as cool right now as they were at the time. This is apparent everywhere, but especially in the car world, and what’s the most early-to-mid ’90s supercar maker to ever exist? Vector, of course.

Vector, if you needed a refresher, was a California-based company founded by businessman Gerry Weigert, one of those flash-in-the-pan supercar manufacturers that flared into existence in the late ’80s, only for its car production to fizzle out a few short years later. The handful of cars it did make, though, were like visions of what everyone thought the future would look like in the early ’90s, some of the most spectacular wedges to ever roam the streets.

We bring this up now because one Vector coming up for sale is rare enough, but at RM Sotheby’s’ Monterey sale next month, there are four of these ludicrous machines going under the hammer. They’re part of the wonderfully-named ‘Turbollection’ entry in the sale, which also includes some other borderline vapourware supercars of the same era (any group of cars that makes a Porsche 959 look borderline normal is pretty special).

The first of the Vectors is a 1991 W8 Twin Turbo, one of 17 made. Packing a 6.0-litre, twin-turbo V8, it makes around 600bhp, enough to propel it to 60mph in 4.2 seconds and a claimed top speed of over 200mph, despite the only transmission option being a GM three-speed automatic.

It also has a dashboard like an airliner cockpit, and this is the only example finished in the extremely period-appropriate shade of purple. It’s covered 2,643 miles, and RM Sotheby’s reckons it’ll set you back between £600k and £800k.

Next up are two totally unique prototypes, coupe and Roadster versions of what should have been the W8’s successor, the WX-3, from ‘92 and ’93 respectively. These are the sole examples built of each body style, and both were owned by Wiegert himself until 2019. Both were displayed at the 1993 Geneva Show, packing a 7.0-litre version of the twin-turbo V8 with a claimed 1000bhp, although still hooked to that three-speed auto.

The coupe’s covered just over 2,600 miles, while nobody really knows what the Roadster’s done – apparently, Wiegert programmed it to read 89,000 miles for its Geneva debut to show how durable it was, and it still reads that figure today. Both are estimated at between £1 million and £1.15 million.

Financial woes would prevent the WX-3 from ever making production, but the Vector story gets really weird in 1994, when Indonesian company MegaTech – run by the son of a former military dictator – carried out a hostile takeover of the company against Wiegert’s wishes.

MegaTech had also just acquired a small Italian company called Lamborghini from Chrysler, so when it restarted Vector production in 1996 with the M12, it used the 492bhp 5.7-litre V12 and five-speed manual from the Lamborghini Diablo.

Only 17 were built before Lamborghini was sold to Audi, preventing Vector from using the V12 any more. This is chassis number five, finished in – what else – purple, with some almost painfully ’90s three-spoke alloys. Produced in 1996, it’s covered 6,151 miles and could be yours for a comparative song – between £310k and £470k, by RM Sotheby’s’ estimates.

Wiegert passed away in 2021, leaving behind a legacy as the brains behind one of the supercar world’s boldest, most ambitious companies ever. You might end up needing around £3.5 million for the full set of four, but imagine pitching up to something like Radwood in one of them – you’d be the talk of the show. Now, where did we leave our stash of tie dye T-shirts?