As to the General Question; is the answer:
- Chevrolet Corvette (over 1,000,000)
- Mazda Miata (over 500,000)
- MGB (512,243
?
amarone (how is that pronounced? “A moron?” 
Just kidding!) YES! FIAT! They ROCK, BABY!
Nice link, Jeff Olsen! Unfortunatly, none of them are red, the only proper color for an Italian sports car! (Mine’s red, ya know?) Mine is like top picture. Except for the color. And the interior is tan. And mine isn’t as nice. And my wheels are kinda dirty.
Well, okay. Its not much like the top picture except for it is of an Italian car.
One of the coolest cars I have owner/driven. I’m headed to NAPA today to pick her up a new battery.
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
Yeah, gatopescado. There were two Fiat Spiders, and one tired old 500, in the family when I was a kid. Not all at the same time, though.
I’ll have to go with Miata != sports car crowd. But the deffinitions get wierd. Corvette is a sports car. Mustang depends on the model. MACH1, Shelby, Boss Cobra are sports cars to me. The fox body 5.0 also pushes slightly into sports car for me. The rest are pony cars, but I would never call them GT. Camaros are similar, with some sports, most pony. Miata is a roadster as are some Porsches, Ferrari’s and MGBs. GTs are some Lexuses, Infinitis, and 84+ 8 cyl T-Birds. Those are just my thoughts though.
For the purposes of this thread (even if you don’t agree):
Roadsters are sports cars.
GTs and “pony cars” are not sports cars.
High horsepower is not necessary for a car to be a sports car.
The Miata is a roadster, and therefore should be considered a sports car.
The Corvette is a sports car.
The Mustang is more of a GT, and not a sports car. The Shelby Cobra (not the Mustang) is a roadster and a sports car.
The Karmann Ghia is a sports car, albeit a very slow one.
The karmann Ghia is more of a sports car than any Mustang or Camaro. I agree the C1 Corvette and the C5 Corvette are sports cars and probably the C2. But all that crap inbetween, you are going to have to convince me of that. The C4 was a GT in every since of the word right? Like a 928 or even the Z cars of the same time frame. The mid 80s were bad for sports cars. The MR2 and the RX-7, maybe the Supra. Of course you still could get a 911 or a Fiat Spyder, but I didn’t see many of either of those in the semi-rural midwest.
Well, it is an Italian word (like Fiat and Ferrari, I suppose), so you have to pronounce the final vowel as a syllable. “A moron, eh?” is probably close enough. 
How can you not classify the 1990’s era Camaros as sports cars? Even the base models had tight suspension tuned for the track, and engines over 200hp. They had no back seats to speak of, the catalytic converter intruded on the front passenger’s legs, etc. And, the Z-28’s performance was only a hair behind the Vette’s.
I think the 240Z-260Z, and 280Z definitely qualify as sports cars. In fact, they are some of the best low cost sports cars ever made. With the ZX models, Nissan moved away from pure sports, and back into GT and touring cars. But the later 300ZX’s would have to be considered sports cars by any measure. Their performance was outstanding, even by today’s standards.
A true sports car, IMO, has two seats and is built to handle, go, and stop. It’s not for hauling or towing. That’s it really. The only other criterion that’s pretty important is some kind of removable roof. I’d add a manual transmission. Of course, now there are paddle shifters, manumatics, CVTs, etc. I’m just old school, I guess.
Sports cars: Corvette, Viper, Miata, Toyota makes one, BMW Z3, M Roadster, Z4, Z8, Ferraris by the handful, Panoz, The new Porsche (drool), Opel Speedsters (for Euros), Vauxhalls (also for Euros), Lotus (mostly for Euros), Lamborghinis, etc. Of course we used to have the RX-7 and many others. (The RX-8 seats 4)
Even though The McLaren F1 seats three, I’m absolutely including it.
Cameros strike me as too big and not nimble enough to be soprts cars. More of a GT.
I really like Porsches. I used to have a 911SC, and it was the most fun to drive of any car I’ve had. The new 911-996(?) lost some looks when it got the Boxster front end and lost those voluptuous flairs. But I’d still have one (dark blue with a grey interior) before a 911-993 just because mechanically they are supposed to be the best Porsches ever. I’d also like to have a 1969 Porsche 911 Targa (red) with the zip-out rear window.
The Z isn’t even close to 2nd place. I think that goes to the Ford Model T.
The Model T wasn’t a sports car. I was wondering what the first-, second-, and third-largest selling sports car is.
Got $400,000 laying around? If so, buy this.
Then, in appreciation for me pointing it out, let me drive you around a couple days.
Or, buy a Saleen SR 7.
It has 500 lb/ft at 3000 RPM. Shifting would be optional.
More then 7 million Mustangs have been sold since the car was introduced in 1964
I see someone hasn’t been paying attention.
From this page, the claim is made:
Is the Z car a sports car? Consider that Paul Newman won in a 280-ZX two years in a row, and:
That’s a sports car.
Okay, from a briefing file from the Mazda corporate website, I see that cumulative Miata/MX5 production through 2001 was 623862; from a forum on miata.net, I get a figure of 40754 for 2002 production, so the total number of Miatas produced through 2002 is 664616.
Not to drag this off topic, but to those posters who don’t consider the Miata a sports car, I’m curious why. Is it strictly an issue of horsepower? While I agree that 142hp isn’t much, even considering the vehicle weighs in at about 2,400 pounds, (2003 models.) but roadsters are about handling, not power.
Would you say the Fiat Spyder isn’t a sports car? It had less power than a Miata.
Quite. FWIW, the MGB had 95 hp in its 1800cc engine. (Which was reduced in the 1970s because of ever-more-strict emissions laws in the U.S.)