Starting a car company takes years of work, but now it's possible to buy an entire automaker—supercar builder Falcon Motorsports—for $675,000.
First spotted by Jalopnik on Monday, the sale includes "tools, molds, material lists, and other items currently in possession of Falcon," as well as "all logos, slogans, trademarks, copyrights, know how, processes, trade secrets, formulae, inventions, engineering data, electronic databases, all drawings, license agreements, and all other intellectual property and/or proprietary information" related to Falcon cars, according to an online ad.
Granted, Falcon only built seven cars, and that short production run ended several years ago. But what it did come up with was a worthy addition to the supercar pantheon.
2014 Falcon F7 (Photo by Cars and Bids)
The company started out with body kits and other modifications for the Dodge Viper before attempting a complete car of its own. The result—the Falcon F7—was unveiled at the 2012 Detroit auto show.
The F7 was powered by a GM-sourced LS7 7.0-liter V-8 that produced 620 horsepower and 580 pound-feet of torque. It drove the rear wheels through a Ricardo 6-speed manual transaxle. Carbon-fiber bodywork and an aluminum interior tub (the actual chassis was hydro-formed tube-frame steel) kept the curb weight down to 2,785 pounds, while Corvette-derived suspension addressed handling. Falcon quoted a $250,000 price tag when the car was unveiled.
That apparently didn't attract much interest. Falcon originally planned to make 20 cars annually, but never got that far. One of the seven cars it did eventually build was recently listed on Cars and Bids, with a high bid of $122,000. Perhaps the company will get a new lease on life under a different owner, but the track record of American supercar builders isn't exactly encouraging.