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In Pictures: 11 Cars That Will Make You Cool

Let's get something straight. Italian cars are cool--but not just any Italian car. It's got to be something special.
"There's something about the design language of Italian supercars and sports cars that just exudes coolness," says Ray Wert, editor-in-chief of the car blog Jalopnik. "An Alfa Romeo 8C? Sex on wheels. Maserati? Gorgeous. Basically any Italian car will make you cool--with the exception of a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Those brands are so overplayed. "
Wert contends that those two most iconic of Italian brands are too stereotypical to actually raise their drivers' coolness quotient--though he admits that Ferrari's new FF, due out next year, may be different, at least for a while.
In Pictures: 11 Cars That Will Make You Cool
"It's one of those situations where, for the first couple of months, when you're the first guy who people have seen in that car, you're cool," Wert says. "But when you're the second guy, you're not." (Ferrari declined to comment on the record for this story. Seems it prefers to let its product speak for itself.)

Tough crowd. Apparently if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, cool has got to be obvious to everyone.If being swarmed by gawkers denotes cool, see what happens when you drive up in a restored Delorean.

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The Rules of Cool
Fortunately for drivers less intuitively cool than others, there are some general guidelines that determine whether a car is cool.
For instance: The car must not be awkward to get into or out of. The extremely low-riding Lotus is disqualified here, while the slightly higher Audi R8, for instance, is not.
Also: A truly cool car must have two doors rather than four, and it must not have undue amounts of chrome or unnecessary design accents on the exterior (this disqualifies any blinged-out Bentleys, BMW's admittedly great but four-door M-line sedans, and the aggressive Aston Martin Vantage, which has huge vents carved on its hood and chrome throughout the interior (though the Aston Martin Virage or Aston Martin Rapide would qualify for consideration).
Above all, a cool car must look effortless.

The Fastest Cars Under $30,000

Think you've got to spend big if you want a fast car? Think again.

Plenty of affordable cars will do zero to 60 mph in under six seconds; some are one-third the price of racers from Porsche or BMW.

The Ford Mustang GT, the Ford Mustang coupe and the rally-style Subaru Impreza WRX are just some of the thrifty speedsters that give luxury coupes a run for their money. Our list of the quickest under $30,000 has the others.

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Behind the Numbers

To compile this list we used zero-to-60 mph times for 2011 models tested by Edmunds' InsideLine.com. The 10 fastest that cost $30,000 or less made the cut.

It's no surprise that the cars with truly blistering zero-to-60 mph times, like the Aston Martin V12 Vantage and the Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid—4.1 and 3.1 seconds, respectively—are much too expensive for this tally.

But one surprising and notable absence on our list is the much-adored Mazda Mx-5 Miata. While track nerds and weekend drivers love the little roadster, it just didn't have the pep to compete.

"The Miata is fun and handles well and will beat some of those cars on a racetrack, but it doesn't have the horsepower to accelerate from zero to 60 quickly, " says Dan Edmunds, the director of vehicle testing for Edmunds.com. "Handling and cornering speed are where the fun is for many, but acceleration is a different factor."

Another note: Our list includes only cars. Had we included pickup trucks, the $26,410 Toyota Tundra Tundra (zero to 60 mph in 5.1 seconds) would have qualified.

Finding Speed for Non-Luxury Prices

The trick to finding a quick car is knowing where and how to look: Models like the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart and Mazda Mazdaspeed3 go zero to 60 in 5.8 and 6.4 seconds, respectively, because they are short, lightweight and turbocharged. They don't need huge engines in order to speed up quickly because they don't weight a whole lot to begin with.

If you want to hold the price down on a sporty car, it'll also help to forgo engine upgrades altogether. Take the Chevrolet Camaro, for instance, which fell just short of making our list: With a sprint time of 6.7 seconds, the V6 version wasn't fast enough; the $31,795 V8 SS variant, although fast, was a bit too pricey.

"Technologies like direct [fuel] injection and variable valve timing systems ... allow even the smallest engines to generate impressive horsepower while retaining reasonable levels of fuel efficiency," says Ed Hellwig, the editor of InsideLine.com.

The same attitude of thrift should apply to creature comforts like leather seats and technology packages—opting out of those means your car will be lighter, faster and less expensive. But that sacrifice of the finer things in life shouldn't be too much of a problem for most buyers in this range. Cars like the Subaru Impreza WRX and Mazda's hatchbacks are loved for their rough-and-tumble rally personalities, not for interior frippery or extra design cues.

That said, Ford has done a great job in the last few years of making small cars with high quality and decent interior design. (The two 'Stangs on our list indicate that commitment.)

Hyundai and Kia have done the same, says Eric Lyman, the director of residual values for automotive analysis firm ALG. Indeed, the Hyundai Genesis 3.8 R-Spec Coupe, Hyundai Sonata SEand Kia Optima SX each qualified for our list because they are both quick and affordable.

"Hyundai has done remarkably well over the past couple of years, and we're expecting Kia will be on a similar trajectory that Hyundai has been," Lyman says.

World's Most Expensive Cars

To compile our list of the most expensive cars this year, we reviewed price lists from all the ultra-luxe automakers who might have produced a contender this year for the top spot, including Bentley, Bugatti, Ferrari, Koenigsegg, Lamborghini, Leblanc, Maserati, Maybach, Mercedes-Benz, Pagani, Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Saleen, Spyker and others. We narrowed our terms for the list by choosing only cars that are currently in production and street legal, which eliminated the discontinued $653,000 Enzo Ferrari, as well as the $500,000 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster. Prices do not include taxes; some prices have been converted from euros to dollars. Not all of the vehicles on our list are sold in the U.S.

Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren

Price $452,750

Engine: 5.5 liter Supercharged V-8.
Mercedes-Benz SLR McLarenhas been on world's fastest and most expensive cars lists for quite a while now. This car is a fascinating result of a collaboration between two well known car brands: Mercedes and British race car legend McLaren.The delightful SLR McLaren is probably the most sophisticated and comfortable of all street-legal race cars to date. In 2007 most expensive car list this supercar is most likely going to be replaced by its successor Mercedes-Benz SLR 722 Edition

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Sports Car McLaren F1

One of the world's best acclaimed and avant-garde sports cars anytime produced to this day, the McLaren F1 bankrupt the almanac for acceptable the fastest assembly car ever. Produced in the nineteen ninety eight, the car still holds the almanac of actuality the world's fastest NA agent assembly car, although three added assembly cars accept baffled the F1 at their all out top speed. The McLaren was a anniversary in car production, with a top acceleration of two hundred and forty afar per hour.

An acutely ablaze body, about aerodynamically perfect, the car can still attempt with the achievement cars of today alike with a decade of abstruse advances aback the F1 began production. The BMW six liter V12 was acutely able and produced over bristles hundred and fifty horse power. Whilst the car is able and advised for performance, and in actuality has a chase car copy which won the nineteen ninety bristles Le Mans, the autogenous was advised with account in mind.

The doors of the car lift upwards, and are accepted as butterfly doors. The disciplinarian is built-in in a assertive position in the car, in advanced of the engine. Two commuter seats are amid to either ancillary of the driver, but added back. The actual low weight of the McLaren was accomplished by the use of ablaze materials, such as carbon fiber, gold and magnesium. The aerodynamic adeptness of the car is addition important agency in its success. The annoyance accessory of the F1 is alike above to some of the fastest cars about today, assault the Buggatti Veyron and the world's accepted fastest car, the SSC Aero.

The assembly of the car ran for six years, amid nineteen ninety two and nineteen ninety eight. Amid this time, one hundred and six of the cars were produced, with anniversary demography three and bisected months to produce.

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