Saleen Wants You, The People, To Design Its New Supercar

American manufacturer and tuner Saleen is probably most familiar to you for the S7, a low-volume mid-engined supercar made throughout the noughties. Powered by a thumping great Ford V8, it made a name for itself both for its success in motorsport and for appearing in basically every racing game of the era that featured licensed cars.

Things have been fairly quiet from the California-based company since then, but it still exists, producing a few tuned versions of modern Fords as well as the S1, a smaller mid-engined four-cylinder sports car that only appears to have made it into the real world as a one-make racing car. 

Oh yeah, and because of a bizarre and short-lived joint venture in China that ended in several ugly court cases and accusations of embezzlement, its name also briefly appeared on the Maimai, a tiny and oddly proportioned electric microcar. It was a strange chapter in the company’s history.

All of this is a long-winded way of announcing that, finally, the company wants to build a proper successor to the S7. Called the S11, it’s being previewed by the rakish red concept at the top of this story. That’s the only proper picture we’ve got, although there’s also a full-size clay model, a walkaround video reveals some more detailed renders in the background.

That model and those renders have just gone on display at the LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma, Washington, as part of a year-long exhibition called The Birth of the American Supercar. It’s been curated by company founder Steve Saleen himself, and also sees cars from fellow rare-groove American manufacturers like Hennessey and Vector on display.

Here’s the thing, though – visitors to that exhibition will also get to help design the S11. Apparently, the styling’s not finalised yet, and throughout the next 12 months, visitors to the exhibition will be able to vote on different design elements. So, if you’ve ever wanted to design your own supercar, now you can. You’ll just need to get yourself to the Pacific Northwest of the United States which might be a bit of a costly way to do it if you live in, say, Daventry.