One of my favorite parts about playing Grand Theft Auto is checking out the “fictional” cars and trying to figure out what they’re supposed to be. The stately Admiral is clearly inspired by the Mercedes-Benz W123, for example. Sometimes, it’s the other way around: There’s a little-known sports car called the Superlite SL-C that looks like something you’d unlock for beating a GTA mission, and one is currently for sale.
Superlite describes the SL-C as “the perfect supercar,” and it sounds like its engineers poured a lot of passion into the project. It’s a kit car compatible with numerous engines, so you can pretty much dial in the amount of power that you want, and it was designed to be relatively easy to build at home. It features an aluminum chassis, a fiberglass body, aluminum suspension components, and a mid-engined design that unlocks a 46% front/54% rear weight distribution, though that figure varies depending on the engine that you stuff in the back.
But the styling? It’s fairly generic, which explains why it looks like it was beamed from the Rockstar Games design studio. It’s almost like if a Maserati MC12 had a kid with a 24 Hours of Le Mans prototype. The example listed on Bring a Trailer wears a copper-colored wrap that makes it even more GTA-like. The background is perfect: It makes the listing’s main image look like a screenshot from the game. I can picture myself driving the SL-C to that parking lot and stepping into the old RV behind it to grab a hidden package before going to the safehouse.
I’ll cut Superlite some slack. It’s a small operation with limited resources, so it undoubtedly placed a bigger focus on handling than styling. And, there aren’t 100 different ways to shape an aerodynamic supercar with a mid-mounted engine—that’s why a lot of race cars look alike.
At least the odds of finding two identical SL-Cs are low. It’s a kit car, so it’s ultimately what you make it. Power for the one on Bring a Trailer comes from a 6.0-liter LS V8 linked to a 996-generation 911 GT3’s six-speed manual transmission, which has to be one hell of a combination. Bring a Trailer says the drivetrain used to be 100% Porsche: This SL-C was powered by the same 911’s 3.6-liter flat-six until a few years ago. The V8 has been modified, and Superlite quotes a 2,400-pound weight, so I bet there’s a lot of fun to be had behind the wheel.
Bidding currently stands at $17,000 with about five days left in the auction. For context, this exact same car sold for $68,000 in September 2017, when it was still Porsche-powered. More recently, Bring a Trailer sold another SL-C powered by a 7.0-liter LS7 V8 engine for $63,000.
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