Using weight and original price as a reference, I suspect that the Ford Pinto with 2.3L engine manufactured in Lima, Ohio, was the world’s most expensive car.
The 2.3L was a slug that could have been - early on - a blast, but the Ford Finance Committee got in the way.
Air Research was supplying turbo’s, and Ford was testing the turbo-charged engine in the Pinto and what would beome the Ford Mustang II.
With the 2.3LT, the cars were fun. (Note: The original Pinto, sans exhaust and big bumpers weights, using the 1.6L engine from Europe, was actually fun when wound up.)
But the Finance Committee decided, that the turbo-charged 2.3LT would not sell.
So the Pinto ended up with the 2.3L slug, with an added executive touch:
The Finance Committee figured that an oil supply hole in the connecting rod, could be eliminated, saving some money per rod per engine per car . . .
And so it was.
Except, many of the engines manufactured during that fiasco - years around 1974 - did not last as cylinders “burned up,” because of cylinder wall damage.
Customers would bring their Pinto into a Ford dealership and report:
“The engine runs fine, but when the car tries to get up to speed on the highway - especially into the wind - the car can barely do 50, and days later, 40, then 25! Which is how I got here with this . . . thing.”
As the cylinder compression ratio of one or more of the 4 cylinders, bottomed out.
Before Ford succeeded with the 2.3LT in the Mustang and Thunderbirds sales (1980’s) that were popular initially in the South, I would visit a small foundry just north of downtown Detroit. I had some aluminum prototype thing being developed. And I found some experimental 4-cyl double-over-head cam shaft Ford test engines in the works.
I was glad to see that progress.
I would add, that EV’s are the most expensive, because their forced supply into a headwind of customer dislike . . .