Caution: long post, many examples, manic poster, fool on the loose.
Toronado
You misunderstand. Most people in the exotic car marketplace could care less whether the engine is reliable. The want an exotic, revvy engine. Not a V8. That is why the Pantera failed. And it had nothing to do with the Italian steel. It had to do with the overall build quality and oil embargo.
Yeah, I'm definitely misunderstanding, because while I admit that the Marcos and Ultima cars have sales in the single digits, I was under the impression that the Saleen was an exception. Isn't it pretty much selling out year after year? Isn't the Koenigsegg sold out? Wasn't that why they are on their third iteration?
But I do understand that the appeal of 7-liter V8 "supercars" is quite limited. However, I think the reasoning is more complex than just having an American muscle car engine. Generally, LS*-equipped cars are sold by companies that do not have the financial backing of Lamborghini or Ferrari. Marcos was run poorly (all three times) and the car was not the best handler since the engine overpowered the chassis. The Ultima is two hex bolts shy of being a kit car. The DeTomaso debacle even became associated with MG/Rover, which didn't end well, to say the least.
There's other companies who've used engines that
are exotic and still don't attain the recognition they might have gotten had their cars not been shoddy or if circumstances been different. Mega used a Mercedes V12, and went nowhere. Pagani used a Mercedes V12, and is now considered a real contender. The difference? The rest of the car, not the engine.
Even Mercedes' own SLR McLaren essentially uses a modified AMG 5.5L supercharged engine. Does that make the car any less exotic or special? Even when half the cars in Greenwich, CT, are **55 AMG's?
Lister, the former Jaguar tuner, made the Storm out of a highly modified Jaguar V12. Sales? About 4. The reason was the price was too high for what was considered an unknown supercar maker, but at least they made it to Gran Turismo 2. A few years later Steve Saleen does the exact same thing. So far 48 cars have been delivered, with quite a bit of a waiting list still to go.
TVR makes a great inline-6, and are one of the few small-scale manufacturers able to make their own engines. But their sales are so low they had to temporarily close one of the factories. Why? Their reputation of reliability was poor, and the cars were too uncompromising for most people. For the same price, they could have the wonderful 911 C4S, and often do.
Spyker uses an Audi V8 and has a fantastic look. No clue why their sales are stagnant.
Vector's semi-exotic V12 and aeronautical engineering didn't save them worth a damn.
Noble uses a rather common, if highly modified, Ford V6. They may actually be able to enter the US market soon.
Yamha had a very cool 3.5L V12 in the OX99-11 (the most remembered "forgotten" supercar), but its problems were everything but the engine.
It's not the engine, but what you do with it that matters (don't read into that any more than the obvious). The chassis, the interior, the styling, the whole package of the car. Like I said, low budgets and US V8's generally go together for companies that create low-volume cars, mostly because the engine is cheap. But there are those that succeeded in spite of that engine, and those that failed miserably even with bespoke engines.
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As for whether people care that their exotics are reliable or not, I can give plenty of evidence to the contrary. The few people I know that own 70's and 80's Italian icons (308GTS, F456, 25th Anniversary Countach, a few others) generally don't drive them. It's all semi-rolling sculpture as far as they're concerned. The cars are beatiful, but the term "expensive to own" exists for a reason. These cars need a lot of maintenance if you expect to drive it like a similar-era Porsche or 60's muscle car. The demand for such older supercars is all about rose-tinted glasses and delusions of emulating Thomas Magnum.
Then of course there's the NSX. It's a victim of some rather unrealistic expectations on Honda's part, since they hardly updated the car, but it's initial sales year was quite high for something that was essentially a competitor of the F348. It kicked the entire supercar segment in the rear, forcing them to create reliable cars.
And then Ferrari sales began to rise again.... Sure, nowadays, Ferrari is all the rage, Lamborghini is poster material again, and the NSX is being phased out with no guaranteed replacement, but it took the Italians 15 years and a lot of effort to get to this point.
Toronado
Besides, on the Pantera alone their are multiple factual errors in that article.
Like what? No, really: what's wrong with the article? Because I can't find anything else that contradicts the Wiki article. If something's wrong with a Wiki article, sign up & fix it, provided you can back it up.