The 20 Greatest Italian Sports Cars and Supercars of the Past Decade

There are sports cars and supercars made all over the world, but the Italians seems to understand how to make them pull on drivers' heart strings like nobody else. We think that even the engineers seem focused on giving the car charisma. Of course, it doesn't always work. Sometimes the attempt to be interesting and charming comes across like that dude in the club wearing a bright blue top hat: stupid.

That, however, is not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the good stuff, and a lot of it has been made in the last decade. The recession hit the vast majority of people pretty hard, but exotic cars have never been selling faster, and because of that, we're seeing a renaissance. These are The 20 Greatest Italian Sports Cars and Supercars of the Past Decade.

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Year Introduced: 2010
Engine: 562 hp 4.5L V8

We know that it's just a 458 that was rebodied to fit Eric Clapton's taste, but we happen to think that Clapton has pretty damn good taste. This one-off Ferrari is a beautiful and unique masterpiece.

Year Introduced: 2007
Engine: 399 to 454 hp V8

This is one of the most elegant and perfectly proportioned designs of recent years. It's the kind of car that is going to look sexy for all time. It's not trendy, it's classic. Better still is the way it sounds. It's a sound that was once scientifically proven to make people slightly hornier. That's right, hornier.

Year Introduced: 2007
Engine: 508 hp 4.3L V8

The Ferrari F430 was a capable performer, but the Scuderia variant took it and honed it into a machine capable of incredible precision. Part of that was the suspension retune, but the anal retentive weight savings helped even more. The windows were even replaced with fixed pieces of plastic for the sake of lightness.

Year Introduced: 2009
Engine: 434 hp 4.7L V8

Every other model of Quattroporte was a nice car, but the Sport GTS was magic. By replacing the SkyHook suspension (that didn't work) with single-rate springs and doing a bunch of small tweaks to the car's handling, Maserati managed to make the huge Quattroporte feel as lively as a much, much smaller car. This was a work of art.

Year Introduced: 2004
Engine: 493-562 hp V10

It has finally retired, and we think that's a good thing, but we loved the Gallardo. The Gallardo was, by a very wide margin, the best selling Lamborghini of all time. It was also the favorite Lamborghini of tuners and the aftermarket, the most frequently raced Lamborghini and a whole lot of other things that mean it will definitely go down as a classic.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 600 hp 5.2L V10

It's not beautiful in the classical sense, but it's certainly interesting to look at. We think that the idea of the one-seat Egoista was simply that Lamborghini got tired of predictable automotive journalists blabbering about "fighter jet styling" and decided to show them what a stealth fighter-inspired car would actually look like.

Year Introduced: 2007
Engine: 444 hp 4.7L V8

By all accounts, the Maserati GranTurismo-based Alfa Romeo 8C wasn't nearly as a hot of a performer as it should have been, but nobody cares. Why? Because it looks and sounds incredible. This was never supposed to be a car that would set lap records at Spa, it was designed for looking incredible at ritzy restaurants and crossing countries in comfort and style. It's a GT car, and it might be the sexiest tourer.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 240 hp 1.8L Turbo I4

Not every car made in Italy costs more than your extended family's combined yearly income, some of them are in the same range as a Corvette or Shelby Mustang. Better still, the Alfa 4C, with its ultra-light carbon fiber construction and sexy, Tipo 33-esque bodywork is slated to go on sale in the USA for about $54,000.

That's the kind of car than an enthusiast can dream about for a few decades, and finally purchase when he's middle aged and wealthy, so that everybody else can refer to it as nothing more than a "mid-life crisis."

Year Introduced: 2012
Engine: 730 hp 6.3L V12

Once Ferrari broke free from its self-imposed rule of not making any car that was faster than the Enzo around the Maranello test track, cool stuff started to happen. The amazing F12 was so impressive that the man best known for demanding more power from everything, Jeremy Clarkson, thought that it might have been a little too powerful. That's thanks to its weird and cool hood holes that generate downforce via a mixture of amazing engineering and black magic and a roaring V12.

Year Introduced: 2011
Engine: 700 hp 6.5L V12

The Murcielago is gone, and we're almost surprised by how forgotten it already is. People sometimes had a hard time telling the Gallardo and the Murcielago apart, but the Aventador his the scene and there has been no mistaking it since. It has a presence that puts its predecessor to shame, and performance to match.

Year Introduced: 2009
Engine: 562 hp 4.5L V8

People used to joke that you bought a very expensive engine from Ferrari, and Enzo was kind enough to throw a car in as well. That joke might not ring as true as it once did, given just how sophisticated the 458 is, but that engine is a work of art. It generates more power per liter than any other production engine by virtue of revving all the way up to 9,000 rpms. Oh, and by the way, that Speciale version that Ferrari made, the one that elevated the 458 to an entirely new level, was pretty sick, too.

Year Introduced: 2008
Engine: 640 hp 6.5L V12

This car drew a lot of attention when it debuted, but we had no idea that it was the vanguard of a new trend. The Reventon paved the way for all of the crazy small run Lambos that have followed in the last few years, and for that we are very, very thankful. Not to mention, it influenced the look of Lambos that followed.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 444 hp 4.7L V8

Touring Superleggera made this amazing Alfa Romeo Disco Volante as an homage to some of Alfa's greatest cars and we assumed it was just a design exercise. Luckily, we were mistaken. If you have the money, you can buy this stunning car that's built on a shortened Maserati platform just like the 8C.

Year Introduced: 2007
Engine: 740 hp 6.0L AMG V12

The Zonda was a favorite of just about everybody from day one, but the Zonda R took it to another level. Using the V12 from the Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR race car and as much GT racing tech as possible made it an absolute monster. Now we know that it was used as a test for many of the Huayra's features.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 543 hp 5.2L V10

We really wish this were a production car. It's such a ludicrous and wonderful vehicle that occupys a niche that just isn't filled. Why wouldn't people want a supercar than can, at the push of a button, rise up and tackle a rally stage?

Year Introduced: 2011
Engine: 570 hp 5.2L V10

"Sesto Elemento" is the sexy, Italian way of saying "this car is made of nothing but carbon fiber. The chassis is carbon, the seats are carbon, the body is carbon. Shit, we would have hired a carbon fiber test driver if we could have found one."

Putting a 570 hp V10 in a car that weighs 200 lbs less than a Ford Fiesta makes for a lively automobile, unsurprisingly. And in person, it's absolutely heart-stopping.

Year Introduced: 2012
Engine: 720 hp 6.0L AMG V12

Yes, it looks like Satan's pet catfish and it has a name that only two percent of car enthusiasts can properly pronounce, but it is one hell of a car. It roars and it goes like little else. The Huayra makes cars from Lamborghini and Ferrari look positively pedestrian.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 740 hp 6.5L V12

This is one of the crazy cars that sparked a little infatuation we currently have with Lamborghini. We love that in an era of increasing homogenization in automotive design, largely due to pedestrian impact standards and the ever increasing need to reduce drag, some people out there are still making cars that are just straight up crazy. Supercars are really just insanely expensive toys, and Lamborghini is one of the only companies that seems to understand that.

Year Introduced: 2013
Engine: 789 hp 6.2L V12 and a 161 hp KERS unit

Ferrari made a hybrid. That was a bit weird, but after seeing just how powerful and capable it is, we think that this, along with the 918 Spyder and the McLaren P1 have absolutely shattered the misconception that hybrids have to be boring. Anybody who would call this superlative car "boring" would clearly just be trolling.

The name, however, is beyond idiotic.