track toys

Evo picks their favorite track toy from a list of cars that will never make it to the US…

Skip driving in traffic and just go to the track.

With such an heavy emphasis on outright performance, modern sports cars are better suited for the track than the street. They are just too fast for most public roads. So why buy a car that is compromised with the rules and regulations of the street when the only place you can really enjoy it is at the track? Go all out. Get something that doesn’t have to meet pedestrian impact rules or get 25 mpg.

Who cares about lap times?

Even at the track, comparing lap times between cars insanely pointless. Evo rightfully picked the car that was the most fun to drive, not the fastest. The notion of being fastest only applies to club or series racing. Head to head racing doesn’t happen at open track days. You’d get kicked off the track real quick for trying to out brake another driver at any DE event.

bare essentials

My favorite aspect of superbike design is the uncompromising emphasis on functionality. It is simply on another level compared with what we see in sports cars. Sure, a GT3 looks legit with a huge rear wing and fat chin spoiler, but the fact remains that the car’s design is largely based on aesthetic merit. Not to pick on Porsche, this is true for most brands. How many production cars look like LeMans prototypes?

Ducati’s 1199 Superleggera has nothing to hide

While cars are fully draped in frivolously contoured sheet metal, the motorcycle is relatively naked. There’s a minimalistic approach to the bodywork. Much of the motorcycle eschews covering, and the panels that are in place, feel almost shrink-wrapped to the underlying chassis. F1 design follows the same philosophy with body panels wrapped tight across the hard points of the car.

Contemporary car design occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. Huge sculpted sheets of metal cover the chassis, and that’s fine. The requirements of a passenger sedan simply do not align with those of a superbike. However, the fact that this philosophy hasn’t really caught on with sports car manufacturers is puzzling as there is an industrywide push for lightweight solutions. If you look beyond the mainstream brands, this approach has already driven one brand to prominence.

No fat on an F1 body

Looking closer to a motorcycle than a conventional car, the BAC Mono wholeheartedly embraces the minimalistic approach. The car revels in its lack of aesthetic compromise; sharing it’s mechanical guts with the outside world. Beyond the fact that it merely looks the business, by shedding unnecessary body panels (and everything else) in the name of performance, it is terrifyingly fast with a sub 1,200lb curb weight and 285hp.

Mono’s lovely guts on display

There is so much visual drama that is missing when cars are fully clothed in metal. The exposed componentry adds to the car’s sense of purpose. The underlying engineering that goes into developing a car is nothing short of incredible. No reason to keep it hidden.

turn it up

Functional design is timeless so I hope the look of the 458 Speciale grows on me because this is the direction sports car design is headed. With so many new vents and winglets on the car, I’m struggling to find the beauty so abundant in Ferrari’s previous mid-engine specials like the 360 Challenge Stradale and 430 Scuderia. The 458 Speciale’s radical modifications relative to those found on the Stradale and Scuderia signal one thing: the competition is growing fiercer.

aero team beat out the design team

As mentioned by Chris Harris when he drove the 991 GT3, large sports car manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari and McLaren simply can’t launch cars that are slower than their predecessors. As the performance envelope continues to escalate, design will increasingly give way to function (note the rise in popularity of hood mounted air extractors like the Speciale’s shown above). So while I’m not a huge fan of the Speciale’s awkward aero, I appreciate the impetus behind it. You can’t see those bits from the driver’s seat anyways.

end of an era

Evo assembled an impressive collection of supercars spanning the last 25 years as a farewell to the analogue era. There are definitely some questionable entries in the group with the Murcielago SV and Noble M600 (seriously?), but Evo is British so let’s just leave it at that. The McLaren F1 or F40 may be the defining cars of the era, but I would be hard pressed to take either over the Carrera GT. A poster of the Carrera GT still hangs in my childhood bedroom.

transitive property

wonder why this look never really caught on…

Eddie Murphy owned the late 80’s and early 90’s. He could do no wrong. His movies were huge, and his comedy was on point, as were his skin tight leather outfits. One of my favorite bits from his Raw stand up revolved around the line “what have you done for me lately”. Eddie laments how demanding the women he’s dating have become. They’re always wanting more from him. But of course, Eddie obliges because he gets things from them in return. It’s a mutual relationship, and it makes sense.

People’s attachment and fanaticism for a particular automotive brand has always struck me as the ultimate one-sided relationship. If you considering yourself a diehard fan of a particular brand but you can’t rationalize buying any of the cars they currently sell, you should probably ask yourself, what has this brand done for me lately? Are they still the same brand? Do they really deserve your undying allegiance?

The answer is most likely no. There are so many factors that go into developing a car, those within the company (particular employees, resources and technology) and those outside the company (consumer and safety/environmental) which just happened to coalesce into the perfect storm that resulted in your favorite car. These ingredients are constantly changing. 

Successful marketing would have you think otherwise. Win enough races 20+ years ago or simply survive long enough, and you should have amassed a horde of appropriately vintage footage from which to cherry pick the defining moments of your brand. Yet, this implied continuity across the entire brand and over time is simply unfounded.

hard to follow this bloodline

Brand loyalty is generally a bad thing. It encourages complacency and lessens accountability for brands because people will buy their products regardless of individual merit. People often mistake a good product for a good brand. While it’s important to appreciate the past to understand the present, it doesn’t mean you have to be tied to the past in the present. Most car companies certainly are not. Fanboys should take note.

cold war syndrome

More interested in the intangibles and driving experience than raw performance numbers, Chris Harris always has compelling insight on the cars he drives. His recent test of the newest GT3 raises some interesting points. My thoughts after the video.

Forget the GT3 badge, is it even a 911?

While the lack of a manual transmission gets all the attention, the change in the general behavior of the car, with a more willing and predictable front end, really deserves the most scrutiny. The driving experience quintessential to a rear-engine layout is slowly being engineered out of the car. Cars undoubtedly evolve with each iteration but when does a 911 cease to be a 911 in terms of anything but aesthetics?

Absolute performance has superseded the driving experience. 

Cars keep getting faster, while roads stay the same.  Manufacturers are caught in an endless cycle of escalating performance that amounts to little more than a shouting match for short-lived bragging rights. The new GT3 is faster and more capable but to what end? I’ve mentioned it before but it’s worth repeating that easily accessible performance is a novelty. When anyone can get in the new GT3 and go 9/10ths, it’s unequivocally an accomplishment for the car’s engineers but a shallow victory for the driver.

bullseye

I haven’t been the biggest fan of Lamborghini recently (read). They have the nasty habit of keeping cars on the market far too long. The Murcielago lived a mortifying 10 years, while the Gallardo is currently pushing 11, a full three generations in Ferrari time (360, 430, 458). Lamborghini just strikes me as the laziest sports car brand on the planet. Did I mention they’ve only managed to win one race in their entire history?

But recently, Lamborghini has been showing signs of a renaissance with their emphasis on limited-run cars. The industry needs more of this, and I’m not talking about Pagani and Koenigsegg flooding the market with even more one-offs that amount to little more than a special paint job. Safety and emissions requirements have really killed the low volume sports car industry, but no company is better positioned than Lamborghini, with VW money behind them, to make some truly outrageous stuff. With Audi and Porsche also under VW and their respective sports cars encroaching on Lambo’s entry price/performance point established by the Gallardo, the opportunity to redefine Lamborghini as a truly low-volume performance brand is screaming at the VW board.

Sesto Elemento is carbon fiber heaven

Forget the Gallardo. It doesn’t do the brand any favors, and Ferrari owns that part of the market. The Aventador needs be the minimum entry point for Lamborghini ownership. Take the resources that would have gone towards the Gallardo replacement and focus on building some truly special cars. Elevate the brand above Ferrari. The Sesto Elemento, with production limited to 20 and outrageous performance thanks to 600hp and 2,200lb curb weight, demonstrated that Lamborghini was headed in the right direction. But then they went about launching the Veneno, and really missed the mark. $4 million for the privileged to own a reskinned Aventador? No thanks. The whole thing felt half-assed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, each Veneno, of which there are only three, will wear one color of the Italian flag. My heart goes out to whoever drew the green straw.

On their 50th anniversary, Lamborghini again returned to form with the Egoista. The stats aren’t important but rather the underlying forces that brought about this car. “Hedonism to the extreme” emerged as its guiding principle. A centrally located single seater, the car looks ill-equipped for anything outside of driving, as a true sports cars should be.

Egoista: proof that hedonism can be a good thing

Maybe it’s a little obnoxious, even by Lamborghini standards, with the fighter pilot head-up display and slightly uncomfortably styling (the front reminds me of a Nintendo 64 controller), but the Egoista manages to successfully break from the stale and tired mass production side of the brand and that was desperately needed. If Lamborghini continues this trend of wild limited-run cars, I just might have to jump on the bandwagon.

priorities

People will give you a myriad of reasons why they like older sports cars, but drive one for a day and you’ll probably come to the conclusion that in most situations, they suck. They can be crude and demanding, but under the right settings they are undeniably exciting and leave you wanting more. The sound and vibration from the engine, the smell of the brakes and clutch, prodigious body roll and poor sound insulation all contribute to a full sensory experience, so much more than just “feel” through the steering wheel.

too much road feel

Contemporary sports cars strive to expand that window of accessibility. They aim to be more competent in more situations, and I don’t see anything wrong with that. I appreciate properly sorted suspension, brakes that work under repeated use and reliable engines. The overall result is a more predictable car. The one bit of older tech I’m not so excited to see replaced is the manual transmission.

spot the difference?

I’m going to skip the longwinded diatribe on why a manual is more engaging that a paddle system. I think it has its advantages, but they are purely subjective in nature. However I think the rise of paddles signals a very distinctive shift in automotive philosophy; the driver has become the weakest link in the system.

Error-prone, inconsistent and slow compared to software, drivers only hamper performance in contemporary sports car. This trend has been a long time coming. The manual has survived as long as it has because there was no suitable alternative from a performance standpoint. Relinquishing control began with the advent of ABS and the acronym-heavy driving aids that followed. Making increasing more decisions without the driver’s consent, let alone knowledge, these systems have relegated the driver to a second-class citizen of their own car.

The compelling nature of older sports cars stems from their dependence on the driver. Performance was not a question of the car’s abilities but rather those of the person behind the wheel. Today, all that is required to drive quickly is blind faith that the electronics will sort everything out for you. Just floor the throttle and hold on. The sports car has become its own worst enemy; homogenized through the pursuit of performance.

No driver aids (including ABS) in the McLaren F1

All of the important cars launched in last week’s Geneva Auto Show eschewed the manual in favor of paddles and promised new levels of performance to boot. Yet, absolute performance isn’t gratifying. It’s a novelty, and novelty fades.

in the name of progress

Out with the hydraulic steering, manual gearbox and GT1 derived engine. In are 20″ wheels, PDK and electric 4 wheel steering. Sounds more GT-R than GT3. I pray they haven’t completely neutered my favorite sports car. In Porsche I trust…

fire the marketing department

Listening to the Corvette team talk about the new C7 is painful. They essentially acknowledge that the C6 was half-ass in a lot of ways, which doesn’t inspire confidence in their latest attempt. Even worse, they constantly reference more expensive competitors, which I think does the C7 a disservice. People should want to buy a Corvette because they want a Corvette, not because they can’t afford a Ferrari. When you frame something as the cheaper alternative, it’s always a losing proposition.

time for the ultimate de-badge?

Sports cars are luxury goods, and people buy them because of how they make them feel. Personally, I can’t remember being as excited for a Corvette as I am about the C7. There is much to like about it: heaps of aluminum, power and style. The C7 needs to shake the notion of the budget sports car. If it wasn’t called the Corvette, everyone would be foaming at the mouth for one. Maybe it’s time to kill the Corvette brand…