I love supercars. Well, kind of. I love the idea of supercars – pushing the performance envelope of road cars through the judicious application of clever engineering, technology and constant refinement. All this with the aim of pointing a car at a gloriously twisty bit of tarmac and getting from beginning to end with as much style, joy and sheer exhilaration as possible. What petrolhead wouldn’t love that? Many of the best drives of my life have been either at the wheel or in the passenger seat of supercars.
However, in reality, the vehicles most people would label as supercars today are anything but. They are Fabergé eggs. Or at least they have been for the last 20 years or so. Allow me to explain.
When my deep and vaguely unhealthy fixation on cars was really taking hold, a prime example of an entry-level supercar would have been the Ferrari 328GTB. By today’s standards, it’s not hugely quick, the 0-60 sprint takes 6.4 seconds and you’d be doing well to crack 160mph. But when an average hot hatch from the period was offering about a nine second (ish) 0-60 time and topping out at 120mph, these seemed like spaceships. They even seemed vaguely, potentially attainable. The 328GTB was about £45,000 when launched in the UK, or about 6.4 times the average wage. Clearly an exclusive, luxury item, but not completely outside the bounds of “maybe one day” dreaming.
When it came to the driving experience, supercars of the era offered potent, charismatic V8 or V12 powertrains, manual transmissions, rear-wheel drive, and little in the way of driver assistance other than (possibly) ABS and power-steering. They required skill and experience to drive, but were deeply rewarding and could actually be enjoyed on public roads, as long as you were sensible.
Soon the charismatic Ferrari F40 and advanced Porsche 959 appeared on the scene. You could say this was the moment that the ‘hypercar’ was born. Whatever the case, they were incredible, era-defining vehicles.
However, the true Concorde moment came with the 2005 launch of the Bugatti Veyron – all 16 cylinders, eight litres, four turbos and 987bhp (1001PS) of it. This seemed to light the blue touch-paper in the car world. Ever since, supercar manufacturers have produced one bonkers limited run special, restomod or “recreation” after another. Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, McLaren, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Koenigsegg, Pagani and countless other boutique manufacturers have all been at it. Each successive model built using some new kind of unobtanium and boasting enough horsepower to make a Saturn V feel inadequate.
Naturally, as complexity and power has increased, so too has the cost. When the Veyron’s €1,000,000 price tag was announced, many scoffed and raised an eyebrow as we asked “who on earth is going to pay that for a new car?”
As it turns out, enough people apparently have near bottomless wells of disposable income (or – cough – ill-gotten cash to launder) to make the supply of new, short-run hypercars a significant market sector. In fact, £1,000,000 is generally seen as chicken feed now. The latest breed of these machines come in at 2-3 million a pop, or more. And often you have to be specially invited to buy one.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, very few ever see the road or track. After all, who wants to risk damaging an irreplaceable, one-of-fifty appreciating asset? So they’re doomed to live their life cocooned in temperature and humidity controlled bubbles, passed from collector to collector as their value soars. They’re no longer hypercars, supercars or even cars – they’re nothing more than pointless baubles, bought purely as investments and destined to never fulfil their potential.
They become, in essence, Fabergé eggs. Lovely to look at, if only ever seen by a privileged few. A valuable asset, but ultimately fairly useless as anything other than a way to make sure everyone understands how impossibly wealthy you are. Without having to do anything as gauche as telling them, obviously.
The irony is that, should one of these unicorns ever actually make it to a road, they offer staggering performance. Outputs in the region of 1,000bhp are common-place. In fact, we’re in an era where 1,500bhp to 2,000bhp monsters with 0-60 run times of about two seconds and top speeds well in excess of 200mph are the norm.
“But they’re the crazy machines intended for collectors and money-launderers” I hear you cry, “You can still buy a good, old-fashioned entry-level supercar.”
Ah, but can you? Because I’m not sure they exist anymore. Let’s examine two current examples. Remember, these are not ‘hypercars’ or super-rare collectibles, these are entry-level supercars.
First we have Ferrari’s 296GTB. It develops a truly whopping 819bhp from its hybrid setup. It’s so insanely quick that an F40 wouldn’t see which way it went. You’ll have to pay at least £242,000 to get one, but options are eye-wateringly expensive, so it’s likely to actually be the thick end of £300,000, or more.
McLaren’s answer to this is the Artura, which delivers a thumping 690bhp from a similar mix of dino-juice and electrons. Despite making do with 129bhp less than the Ferrari, the 0-60 run still disappears in less than three seconds and it will top out at more than 200mph. Something of a bargain compared to the 296GTB, it would seem, as you can put one in your garage for about £200,000. Although, as with the Ferrari, you’ll pay significantly more than that by the time you’ve so much as glanced at the option list.
The median UK salary (as per government data in February 2024) is about £28,000. So while in the mid to late 80s you could put your bum in the driver’s seat of an entry-level supercar for about 6.4 times the average annual income, now you need to pony up a minimum of nine times the average. In fact, the equivalent amount of cash that would have got you a Ferrari 328GTB back in the 80s will now only get you a BMW M5 or an averagely specced Range Rover. Very pleasant cars, for sure, but not supercars.
And we haven’t even mentioned the crushing depreciation that modern “entry-level” supercars are suffering from. Keep one for a couple of years and you’re predicted to recoup only about half of what you paid. That’s a significantly bigger loss than previous generations.
Naturally, you’d assume that, possessed of so much power and bristling as they are with driver assists and the latest technology, modern ‘supercars’ would be much better to drive than their forebears. And you’d be right, in a way. They have far more grip, they’re easier to drive at the limit, and of course they’re generally safer for the occupants when it comes to low-to-medium speed accidents. Yet all that technology does have a few negative effects.
Firstly, it can give the driver a false sense of security and result in them vastly over-estimating both their own skill behind the wheel and the car’s ability to get them out of trouble. In a car that can hit more than 100mph in six or seven seconds, that’s a problem.
Secondly, it shifts the focus of the car from driving to performance. Here’s what I mean by that: to drive an older supercar at any kind of speed required effort, skill and concentration. Without wanting to sound too weird, much of the joy in driving comes from the sensory feedback. Feeling what the wheels are doing beneath you, hovering at the edge of grip levels, revelling in the exhaust note, the satisfaction of snicking through the gears… And you could enjoy all of this even at public road speeds, just about.
In a modern supercar, the sensations and feedback are far more cosseted. Electrically assisted steering, magneto-rheological damping, advanced traction control systems and other such driver aids have numbed the experience at public road speeds. To elicit the same thrill, you have to be going quicker. Much quicker. Highly illegal on a public road quicker. So unless you do track days in your new quarter-of-a-million pound ‘entry-level’ supercar, you can never really enjoy it properly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a powerful car. I’ve driven supercars, track specials and muscle cars in anger, but the only time I could honestly say I was able to truly let loose and enjoy it was on a track.
The fact that ‘entry-level’ supercars are capable of the 0-60 dash in under 3 seconds and have top speeds well north of 200mph is insane. This is demonstrably too much power for public roads – certainly in the UK – and almost definitely too much power for the skillset of most drivers in any circumstance. The fact that someone can step into one of these road rockets the day after having passed their test, having never driven anything more powerful than a Perodua Kelisa, should terrify any right-thinking person.
Of course, this horsepower arms race has filtered down to hot hatches, ‘standard’ performance cars and EVs now too. All of which are generally too heavy, too fast and too complicated.
It’s common now for fairly normal hot hatches, such as a Honda Civic, Volkswagen Golf or Mercedes A-Class, to come from the factory with 300-400bhp and the capability to charge to 60mph from a standstill in 4 seconds, before running on to 160mph+.
Add to this the fact that these same ‘everyday’ cars come with a wide variety of driver aids and “safety” systems that almost encourage a lack of attention (speed limit identification, lane keeping assist and auto-braking, I’m looking at you). And we haven’t even got onto the subject of track and drift modes, which are accessible on public roads but make the cars even fiercer and potentially much more dangerous to other road users.
They’re also far, far bigger than they used to be, and significantly heavier due to both the size increase and the burgeoning use of hybrid and BEV technology.
The result is that these cars offer significantly better performance than a Ferrari or Lamborghini from the late 80s, are so easy to operate that a blind dog could drive them at pace and weigh as much as a small moon. Oh, and thanks to cheap lease deals, are financially accessible for a large number of drivers, regardless of experience or age. Call me silly, but that just seems like a recipe for disaster.
This headless rush for “bigger, better, faster, more” in the world of motoring causes many other issues too. The more complex a vehicle is, the more it costs to maintain, repair and replace. This pushes up purchase prices, parts costs, repair costs and insurance premiums. This means that more vehicles get written off for relatively minor damage, which from an environmental point of view is incredibly wasteful. Bigger, heavier vehicles take up more room on the roads and in car parks, they cause more wear and tear and are potentially more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.
All of this leads me to thinking we’re at a bit of a cross-roads. Hypercars are out of the question unless your name is Gates, Bezos or Musk. Supercars are largely unattainable for the majority and, let’s be honest, not actually very nice to drive on the UK’s small, crowded and badly cratered public roads. Modern hot hatches are becoming too powerful, too complex and too expensive. And performance BEVs are almost all too heavy, too big, too expensive and, other than the Hyundai Ionic 5N, just a bit… meh.
So what’s a car enthusiast to do? What will give us the driving thrill, interaction and enjoyment that we craved as kids?
I think I have the answer, and like a true member of Gen-X, I’m going to say it’s the 80s and 90s. From the Astra GTE and Honda CRX to the Toyota Supra, Nissan Skyline R32 and Volvo 850-R, The performance machinery of the 80s and 90s absolutely nailed the brief. Fast enough to be thrilling without being psychotically dangerous, they offer a compelling mix of reliability, power and handling prowess.
An added advantage is suprisingly low running costs. Unless you’re going for something properly rare, there’s a vast array of performance retro goodness available for between £2-10k. Classic insurance and historic vehicle status helps to keep costs low too. Many marques and models from the era still have great parts supply too and are easy enough to work on yourself – which not only keeps costs down but allows you to build your skillset. And even if you don’t fancy getting your hands dirty, the mechanics I’ve spoken to prefer working on older, more mechanical vehicles that aren’t full of electronics and sensors – and reckon they’re much easier and cheaper to fix.
Driving a modern classic, which for the purpose of this article I will randomly define as anything from the last two decades of the 20th century, also opens the door to some of the brilliant car communities and owners clubs dotted about the country. These are not only great ways to meet like-minded folk, but are a hive of knowledge, parts and help when you need it.
A five-minute internet search turned up a raft of late 20th century gems, all priced between £3,000 and £5,000. There were all manner of rarities from a glorious Fiat Coupé 20v Turbo to an increasingly sought-after Ford Probe V6 or the ‘touring car for the road’ joy of a Vauxhall Vectra V6 GSi. Toyota Celicas, Sporty Hondas, Renault Clio 172s, Golf GTIs, Busso-powered Alfa Romeo GTVs, a couple of Nissan 350Zs – all on your drive way for less than the downpayment on even a fairly basic new car. And you know what? They’ll all more characterful, usable and interesting than any modern ‘supercar’ you care to mention. They’re less stressful to own too as you won’t be paranoid about accidentally clipping a kerb or scuffing a door mirror.
I guess what I’m saying is, if as a kid you always loved the idea of a Ferrari, a £5,000 W10 MR2 is probably going to be just as much, if not more, fun to own. And it definitely won’t be a Fabergé egg.