(FORTUNE Magazine) – Speedier than a Porsche 911, costlier than a Ferrari Testarossa. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's a Vector W2 TwinTurbo, which does more than 200 mph. Basic sticker price: $180,000. Gerald Wiegert, 45, founder and chairman of Vector Aeromotive, joins a long list of flaming individualists who have set up shop as automakers. They are not all future failures like Preston Tucker (whose enterprise collapsed in 1949) or John De Lorean (1982). More than a dozen U.S. car companies survive on a tiny output of various kinds of exclusive cars. Wiegert, a former freelance designer for such contraptions as jet skis, has a top production target of four cars a month, all handbuilt by 25 employees in a Wilmington, California, factory. His prototype is shown on the previous page. The first production model may roll out this year. For $25,000 more, you get all the options, including a computer to measure G-force and an automatic fire extinguisher. If all that's too steep, the company's shares have been selling at 15 cents each.