Vehicles | November 30, 2017 9:00 am

The $100k Saleen 1 Is Proof That Entry-Level Supercars Exist

Have your cake and send your kid to college, too

By The Editors

The Ferrari FXX Evolution is a badass car. But at $12.5M, there won’t be many buyers. Same goes for the $2.7M all-titanium Volcano.

Next to those, the new Saleen 1 — priced at $100,000 — is a downright steal.

Introduced by racing champ (and namesake) Steve Saleen at the L.A. Auto Show this week, the car is a sendup of the Saleen 7, which won 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2010. That car had a seven-liter engine and 1,300 horsies under the hood. While the S1 isn’t quite as robust, the inline four-cylinder turbocharged engine is good fro 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and a top speed of 180 miles per hour, so we’d stop short of calling it a slouch.

saleen 1 (8 images)

The color they unveiled was “beryllium,” a copper chrome that looks better than it sounds. The interiors have all the modern connectivity you could want, along with a sleek white leather finish.

The other big news from the Southern California carmaker: they’ve now got a Chinese counterpart, Jiangsu Saleen Automotive Technologies Group, which will be manufacturing the S1 (along with a few other luxury cars) for the Chinese market.

So prepare to see more of these on the road.