Speed is overrated. Every airliner you've ridden on hits almost 200 on the ground. I've been over 160 multiple times in fairly normal cars with uprated tires and brakes. Going 200 isn't really that impressive anymore, the average sports car can do it if you have enough space.
Sport vehicles go fast very quickly and handle well at high speeds. That's the fun part - acceleration. Getting punched into the seat off the starting line, braking into a curve, smoothly slalom through apexes, then rocketing towards the next set of curves... You've clearly never been in a proper sport car because that lesson is self-evident well below 60.
As an aside, has anyone else noticed how new posters are overwhelmingly pessimistic and reliant on dubious anecdotes?
I'd make a slightly different point - what makes a car exciting is handling.
There's a big transatlantic divide on this point. American sports cars tend to be relatively large and heavy, with huge torquey V8 engines and simple live-axle suspension. They're fast in a straight line, but they don't really handle in corners. European sports cars tend to be tiny and extremely lightweight, with a small and free-revving inline 4 and sophisticated independent suspension. They're not very fast, but they're incredibly agile and nimble.
If you want to learn to be a racing driver, you'll probably get taught in a Mazda MX5 Miata. It's the most popular entry-level racing car by a country mile. Mazda overtly based the Miata's design on classic British sportscars. In this kind of car, you can explore the limits of grip at non-lethal speeds. The lack of weight partly offsets the lack of power - you don't have a particularly high top speed, but you can carry a great deal of speed through a corner. Such a car richly rewards you for skillful and precise car control.
When it comes to driving on the street, the excitement you get from acceleration tends to trump the enjoyment of a car that handles really well. It's not anything inherent to one or the other, it's just that there are very, very few places on a public road where pushing the limits of a car's handling makes any sense whatsoever. On the other hand, even in a city a person can test the limits of a car's off-the-line acceleration, and that is usually a good way to get a smile or a laugh.
I have a car that handles well enough that it's popular for racing and it has always been a joy to drive, but the first time I drove a friend's very overpowered, automatic-transmission Corvette was quite an eye-opener. That's the kind of car where you can bend someone's mind with the performance without even breaking the speed limit, and without expending a lot of effort.
> there are very, very few places on a public road where pushing the limits of a car's handling makes any sense whatsoever
That's precisely why superlight cars with small engines and skinny tyres make sense.
Here in the UK, the normal speed limit outside of urban areas is 60mph. On a twisty country road, a base-model MX5 will start to come alive at well below that speed, especially in the wet. The basic engine is a 1.5 litre straight four producing 130bhp, so you can really use most of that engine on a public road.
It's more exciting because it's not very powerful - you need to give it plenty of revs and work through the gearbox to make progress. In a properly powerful car, you reach the speed limit before the engine has even had a chance to breathe. The tight handling and light weight allow you to carry that speed through a corner with confidence. Admittedly it does help if your country has roads with corners, which I understand may be hard to come by in some parts of the US.
There's a philosophical difference between making a car that adds some element of drama to your commute and making a car that's brilliant to drive just for the sake of driving. American enthusiasts are only just starting to fall in love with the hot hatchback thanks to the Fiesta ST, but here in Europe hot hatches have been hugely popular for decades.
My father's a lifelong Lotus Seven enthusiast, so I've heard this before. I'm afraid that when you drive something like a new Corvette or 911 Turbo, it bends your mind in some completely new ways. I don't think I'd buy one even if I could, but if my goal was to keep the occasional passenger entertained, something like that would be a nearly ideal tool.
There's no denying the Miata is an absolute gem. I am very happy that it is still made in this era of overpowered, huge cars and rocket-powered hatchbacks. Sacrilege: I know two different people who have shoehorned American V8s into early Miatas. Somehow I haven't driven that beast yet. I'm still not quite sure how it's even possible.
> Admittedly it does help if your country has roads with corners, which I understand may be hard to come by in some parts of the US.
On the other hand, you're at a great disadvantage in terms of population density. Finding a quiet road seems like it'd be a bit of a trick.
>On the other hand, you're at a great disadvantage in terms of population density. Finding a quiet road seems like it'd be a bit of a trick.
Surprisingly, it really isn't. We're extremely densely populated, but we also have very strict controls on sprawl. The UK has a peculiar planning policy called the green belt - there's a ring on the map around each city, beyond which any development is effectively prohibited. Outside of London, you're rarely more than half an hour away from open countryside.
For example, this road is about half an hour from the centre of Manchester, our third biggest city:
Powerful enough that you can have serious fun in a straight line (0-60 in the high 4s or low 5s, say) but not so much that you can't have a decent thrash without getting into license-endangerment territory.
I've had a Golf R for about a year and have plenty of legal fun it.
You've touched my heart with this comment. I had a 1.8s MX5 for 4 years. Fantastic little car. Everything about it. Couldn't find a single fault with anything. Simply superb.
I now have a 3.4 Boxster S, which feels largely like a more grown up version of the MX5. Much, much quicker - put it in sports plus mode, fire up launch control, put the PDK gearbox into manual, switch off the traction control and it's a real blast, however, on public roads, it's simply scary at times. This is the real problem, it feels very anti-social (at best) to do that on all but the quietest of roads and outright illegal on most others. Hence I feel myself yearning for another MX5...
Cars with more than 600hp or are tuned so well as to need less surely aren’t average. We’re taking at least $75k which really isn’t something an average person will ever be able to buy.
Sure you could probably build something with an engine capable of producing enough power— but I don’t think I’d want to do 200mph in a 96 Honda Civic.
Mine can, it's 20 years old and costs much less than a new Fiat. Reliable too...
If you want to buy a car like that new it will cost you a ton of money but second hand with a bit of searching you can find that kind of car easily, top speed of a car is irrelevant anyway, in this case it was simply a result of age, low mileage, budget and trim. And there is no way I am going to delude myself and think I am a good enough driver for speeds like that whatever the tires under it are.
You have a cheap, reliable, 20 year old Honda Civic that reaches 320 km/h? If that's the case I'm impressed.
Edit: not sure to which part of the comment you were replying, I probably misinterpreted it and you're talking about a sports car, not a Honda Civic. Still impressive but less crazy :)
Not a Civic. In nl there is a rule that you have to add 22% or 25% of the new value of your car to your income if the car is company owned. That's a lot of $ even for relatively cheap cars, for something a bit more comfy you'll be paying a ridiculous amount.
The trick is that there is another regime for cars older than 15, for those cars you add 33% of their actual value to your income if they are company owned.
There is a small set of cars that are still viable after 15 years, that you can find with low mileage and whose actual value is low enough that there is substantial difference between 33% of that and 22% of the new value of a much newer car.
Low mileage old cars tend to be of a few brands only, it would be very hard to find an old Civic with few miles on it, I just checked and the lowest mileage Civic that is older than 15 years still has 100K+ km on it.
Agreed ;) Also, the number of Corvettes on offer of that age is super low and I don't like them to begin with. Porsche is nice but as you noted expensive as well as very expensive maintenance wise. I did look at a couple but could not find one in my price bracket that would last even a year without major repairs.
Basic bolt ons for a gm F-body will take you up to 155 mph before being electronically limited. Don't need nitrous for that. Pretty sure though beyond 180 would be incredibly hard.. That is a ton of aero force the cars weren't designed for, not to mention tires.
If you really needed to go over 180 mph in a GM car, you'd use a Corvette. Used ones are surprisingly cheap and I'd venture to guess that all you would need to break 180mph in a C5 (OOB they do 175mph) would be a taller top gear and some engine electronics, although there are obviously lots of engine modifications available. For a little more than the 12k the parent post mentioned (I'm thinking 15k), you could have an expert bore the engine out and get an extra 130hp. For less than 40k you could be driving a real monster.
These sorts of mods are common enough among drag racers, except most of them aren't optimizing for top speed.
> Speed is overrated [...] the average sports car can do it if you have enough space.
Returning to car examples, the race build of sport car tends to be worse in top speed that its street version and favor braking/acceleration, simply because modern racing and racetracks put emphasis on cornering where driver skill and tactic is decisive, and not on long straights, where take overs result from top speeds.
