BEST BUYS SUPERCARS

CLIMBING PRICES, HIGH DEMAND AND INCREASINGLY arduous allocation procedures have made owning many of the latest thoroughbred supercars no more than a pipe dream for the majority.

- SAM JENKINS

Look to the classifieds for their recent predecessors, though, and there's a healthy supply of outstanding performers available for a fraction of the price and effort.

Unlike supercars of old, more modern offerings won't necessarily break the bank to run, either, many models coming with surprising reliability and the reassurance of lengthy warranty programmes, should the worst happen.

So what will it be? From Italian exotica in the form of the Ferrari 458 Italia to Japan's high-tech, hybridised Honda NSX, via the bargainous but brilliant McLaren 650S and an evo Car of the Year-winning Porsche 911 GT3, here are our recommendations for some of the best used supercars you can buy today.

HONDA NSX (NC1)

A brilliantly engineered - and rarely seen - tech pioneer

AS THE SUCCESSOR TO HONDA'S GAME-CHANGING '90s supercar of the same name, the 2016 NSX received a mixed reception upon its launch. Rather than bringing the original NSX recipe up to date, the new offering added turbochargers and hybrid assistance to the mix, ingredients that many believed went against the purist principles of the earlier models.

Before its arrival, however, the reborn NSX had already been through numerous revisions behind closed doors, with initial plans beginning once the NA2 version had gone off sale way back in 2005. You may have seen grainy trackside YouTube videos of a V10-powered, front-engined NSX prototype being tested in 2008, but this concept was ditched not long after amidst the global financial crisis, with Honda scrapping all non-essential projects. When new CEO Takanobu Ito took the helm in 2009, he sought an NSX that was 'clever, with a focus on dynamic development'. That car would be the mid-engined, hybrid-powered NC1.