For Sale: The supercar you've never heard of

History is littered with obscure supercars, built in tiny numbers and often with outlandish performance claims, but we thought we'd heard of most of them.

The Lotec C1000 was new to us, however. That is until we stumbled across this ad from US dealer RK Motors, who has this incredible one-off supercar for sale.

The story goes that in 1990 an incredibly well-off oil tycoon from the United Arab Emirates fancied owning the fastest car in the world.

With nothing commercially available that took his fancy, he commissioned German engineering firm Lotec to build him his ultimate supercar.

It took five years and US$3.4 million, but Lotec did just that, creating a 745kW monster claimed to be capable of 431km/h.

Even two decades later, that puts the C1000 even with the current record holder, the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.

How'd Lotec do it? Well, carbonfibre construction keeps the C1000's kerb weight to just 1060kg, while a twin-turbocharged 5.6-litre V8 provided by Mercedes-Benz produces an old-school 1000hp.

A triple-plate clutch will build up your left thigh muscles and transfers all that grunt to a five-speed Hewland manual gearbox.

Suspension is double wishbone front and rear with adjustable anti-roll bars and electronically adjustable dampers.

Behind those 17-inch BBS alloys are race-spec AP brakes and the rims themselves are wrapped in Expedia rubber.

There's plenty of leather on the inside and air conditioning, too, but it's still a rather spartan affair, and judging by this rare video of the C1000 in action, it doesn't look to be the most refined machine on the move.

The question is, given an unlimited budget and your own imagination, what would you create?

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