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Production of Piper Sports Cars began in the south of England in 1968, and they’ve now become bonafide cult classics.

Ask any gearhead you know what they think are prime examples of cult classic cars, and they're likely to tick off a popular list made up of the Porches and Corvettes. But it doesn't take a Chevy Corvette, Porsche 911, Volkswagen Beetle, or Lamborghini Countach to birth a legion of devoted fans. All it takes is a car to offer a little bit (or trunk loads) of an oddity, just enough to tempt and snare a certain group of people.

For this reason, many cars, including modern models, across America and Europe enjoy large followership strong enough to achieve cult status. But just to be clear, having a following isn't the same as being a cult classic.

For that, the car has to fall short of expectations, which often include the expectations of its maker, upon initial release. So, Piper's sports cars are bonafide cult classics because they fit this bill perfectly, failing to live up to expectations and yet managing to maintain a devoted, passionate group of loyal fans long after their production run.

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Originally based in Kent, UK, Piper Cars is a spinoff from a British camshaft and engine tuning parts manufacturer of the same name that specialized in the manufacture of specialist sports cars. The spinoff automaker offered its first car in 1968, a road-legal model of the Tony Hilder-designed Piper GT introduced at the 1967 London Racing Car Show.

Piper sold the ‘production’ fiberglass road model GT in a kit form, comprising the body and chassis. However, continued production of the GT got delayed until the following year due to numerous design flaws identified by customers who bought the few already sold. So, the next offering received substantial modification and therefore could no longer be just Piper GT but the Piper GTT.

Notably, the GT's chassis/body kit comprised a front-engine rear-drive tubular steel chassis using Triumph Herald front suspension and Ford rear axle components. The chassis could take a variety of engines. Along with the GTT, Piper Cars also developed a mid-engine Group C racing car called the Piper GTR. Only one race-oriented GTR got made before Piper Car's owner, Brian Sherwood, had a fatal car accident as the sun set in 1969, resulting in the termination of the GTR project.

The GTR was remarkably low, measuring just 30 inches tall and boasting an impressive drag coefficient of just 0.28. It’s a shame that the GTR fell short of expectation at the 1969 24 Hours of Le Mans, no thanks to an overheating engine and the GTR's driver, John Burton's failure to record a qualifying time. But Piper's fans will always appreciate Hilder's work in achieving the GTR's impressive Cd by pushing just about all the car's mechanical components to the rear.

The Piper GTR got no further summons because its owner died, and the new command didn’t care as much. Following the owner's death in 1969, two Piper Cars employees Bill Atkinson and Tony Waller took over and promptly shelved the racing project to focus on the road models. And so, about two years after Sherwood's death, Piper Cars (now renamed Emmbrook Engineering) released a thoroughly revised Piper GTT called Piper P2 (or Phase 2).

The Piper P2 featured many upgrades to the GTT, spanning the chassis, body, and interior. The car sold way into the mid-1970s. The revisions left the P2 with a roomier interior and improved gearing although what Atkinson really wanted was to launch a much bigger all-new model better suited for daily driving on regular roads. According to Piper Sports and Racing Car Club, the company, from inception, produced around one hundred examples of the Piper sports cars.

They were all essentially the same car offered in incremental upgrade stages and slightly varying names. In the end, the company didn’t have the money to finance the kind of car Atkinson really wanted to build, so his vision didn’t progress past the sketch stage, and everyone left to get a ‘job.’

Commenting on an internet forum post about the company, Atkinson revealed he sold his own P2 to buy home furniture but later bought it back in the late eighties with the car in seriously poor condition and need of restoration. The fate of Piper sports cars largely contributes to its cult status, a late-sixties dream car that never got to sit at the same table with the TVR or Lotus, despite coming close to doing just that.

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The final Piper Cars installment, the Piper P2, is a survivor, and survivors often have a loyal following. Atkinson swapped his for a piece of furniture, but the car survived the ‘betrayal’ and offered its original owner a second chance. Atkinson spent years restoring the car, but the finished work was worth the time.

Furthermore, the late Brian Sherwood was not the original founder of Piper Cars. Sherwood bought the company after the somewhat disastrous outing of the road-going Piper GT, mired by early problems with the build quality. The history of Piper Cars traces back to the mid-sixties when former Formula 3 race car driver George Henrotte gathered an ensemble of engineering talents at Campbell's Garage in Hayes, Kent. They proceeded to stitch the open-top racing prototypes featuring a GRP body over a space-frame chassis.

When Sherwood eventually set his sight on the Le Mans, the company that’s more like a team built the lone 30-inch-tall GTR propelled by a 1.3-liter Lotus-sourced Ford twin-cam engine producing 155 horsepower. You create a cult classic car when the creator of such a project dies in a tragic accident without getting to see the car he built to make a successful run of the Sarthe. Engine troubles had crippled the GTR's first attempt at the 1969 Le Mans.

Philip Uwaoma, this bearded black male from Nigeria, is fast approaching two million words in articles published on various websites, including toylist.com, rehabaid.com, and autoquarterly.com. After not getting credit for his work on Auto Quarterly, Philip is now convinced that ghostwriting sucks. He has no dog, no wife- yet- and he loves Rolls Royce a little too much.