Ferrari and Lamborghini are obvious picks for this list. Too obvious, really. Everyone expects exotica.
But mid-engine cars don’t have to be impossible to buy. This timeline starts in the 1960s, when the concept was just a whisper. We’ve got supercars, yes. We’ve also got bargain bins. Rare beasts. Absolute disasters. Concepts that died young, haunting us with what if.
Here’s how the engine moved to the middle without breaking the bank, mostly.
The Spark: 1961 Bonnet Djet
This car invented the category. First ever mid-engine road car period. It rode on Renault bones. Matra finished it when Bonnet ran out of cash. Desperation makes history, it seems.
1964 De Tomaso Vallelunga
Sounds expensive? It looks like a supercar. It has a Ford Cortina heart. A 1.5-litre one, to be precise. The speed limit here was 112 mph. A ceiling, not a suggestion.
Production was tight. Fifty-eight units between ’65 and ’67. Rarity doesn’t mean worth.
1965 Ford GT40
Ford wanted to buy Ferrari in ’63. The deal collapsed. Henry Ford II didn’t like saying no to the Italian spirit.
He built a car to beat them at Le Mans instead.
The GT40 won four times. Revenge tastes sweet.
1966 Lamborghini Miura
The prototype hit the Geneva show. Lamborghini thought he might sell twenty. Just twenty.
He was wrong. By year seven, 763 were done. All had 3.9-litre V12s sitting behind the driver. The myth became a market.
1966 Unipower GT
Britain’s first cheap mid-engine sportster. Built with Mini parts. Beautiful. Brittle, financially speaking.
Cost too much to live. Seventy-five made in two years. A lovely failure.
1969 Porsche 914
Purists hate it. Drivers loved it. It cost a fortune when new. The engine? VW based. 1.7 to 2.0 litre four-cylinders. Some got the 2.0 flat-six from the 912 if they were lucky.
Over 100,00 sold. The anti-Porsche that became a Porsche.
1971 Clan Crusader
Glassfibre body. Hillman Imp engine. Loud and lean.
It was faster than the competition, mostly. It was also 40% more expensive than an MG Midget. Math doesn’t care about style. 315 built. Company folded. End of story.
1971 De Tomaso Pantera
The accessible Italian supercar. It had a Ford 5.8 V8.
It was poorly built. Shockingly so. The look? Perfect. Over 7,000 made across twenty-one years. Beauty persists. Quality did not.
1971 Maserati Bora
Citroën owned Maserati then. Giugiaro drew it. Maserati built it. First mid-engine attempt for the brand.
It looked like the future. The market saw it differently. Only 571 sold in seven years.
1972 Fiat X1/9
Bertone designed this slice of life. Fiat 128 underpinnings. The first affordable option that actually worked.
A 1.3-litre got you 99 mph. A 1.5 came later in ’78. Slow. Fun.
We talk about these cars because they defied the trend. Or ignored it entirely.
Is speed really the only metric for success? Probably not. The X1/9 proved you could be cheap and correct. The Crusader proved you could be fast and stupid.
Most mid-engine cars today are priced like private islands. These reminders that it used to be a Tuesday afternoon engineering exercise feel like relics from a simpler, dumber time.
