Vector Automotive is one of America’s most legendary supercar companies, but not because it was a success.
Automotive engineer and primo promoter Jerry Wiegert started the outfit in Los Angeles in the 1970s and spent the next decade developing the very high-tech W8 supercar. It graced many a magazine cover and poster with its futuristic styling for years before it finally went on sale in 1990 for $283,750. That was an astonishingly high price at the time, but it rose to $450,000 by the end of the model run in 1993 after just 17 customer cars were sold.
Wiegert was working on the next model by then, but the company had gone public and he was ousted through a hostile takeover by Megatech, which also purchased Lamborghini the following year.
Scrambling to get Vector back on its feet, the now Florida-based Vector took the Lamborghini Diablo chassis, rebodied it and introduced a Stars and Stripes-painted Vector M12 at the 1996 Detroit Auto Show nicknamed American Anthem.
It made history as the first “American” car to offer a V12 with a manual transmission, but was a critical and commercial flop with just 17 – including prototypes – built through 1999, as Lamborghini became part of Volkswagen.
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Vector had come under a new ownership group by then, which included entrepreneur Randy Welty, but the company, as it was, went belly-up soon after, and Welty kept several of the unsold W12s. After Welty died in 2021, his son Jake inherited the collection, which included the American Anthem that he is now putting up for auction at the Barrett-Jackson Scotsdale event in January 2027.
The car has just 1,054 miles on its odometer and still wears its auto show livery, which was created by designer Michael Santoro and includes images of the Statue of Liberty on its doors and hood. The interior is trimmed in blue leather and suede, and its 492 hp 5.7-liter V12 still runs.
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Barrett-Jackson doesn’t offer an estimated value, but the last M12 sold publicly went for $423,000 at the Gooding & Company Pebble Beach event in August.
