As regards this comment, I used to own a Miata. Traded it in on a kid, but that’s life right? A co-worker was a Fiat fan, owned a Spider and an X1/9 that he built out of two separate cars. Anyway, his wfe had a late model Accord and when they took the odd weekend trip they always drove the Spider. Even though almost every trip they were stopped by the side of the road while he fixed something. He carried belts hoses fluids and I don’t know what else, but a large part of the happiness he got from owning a Fiat was working on it. The large part of the fun I received from owning the Miata was driving the thing. And from what I understand, many classic sports car owners are more like my co-worker than like me and my Miata (sigh, I love my son but man convertibles are cool!).
Miata: The MGB That Works!
Having the Beetle on the list negates the rest of the list. I’ve had several and, while they are fun to drive, “sporty” is not an adjective I’d use.
If you HAVE to have a VW on the list, I’d choose the aforementioned GTI or the ill-fated Corrado.
I’m flabbergasted that the Lamborghini Countach didn’t make this list. To me it signifies automotive power. It’s not even my favorite car (I’m a huge 911 fan), but it still is ultimately the defining sports car for me.
Except the new Charger is a 4-door sedan. At least there’s gonna be a Charger in NASCAR again. Too bad the Hemi’s still illegal.
As far as a new Camaro, sure, why not. I’d really rather have a new Chevelle, though. That would be awesome, especially if they offer the 'Vette motor as an option.
Alas, the older I get, the faster I was. That pretty much sums up the nostalgia. You’re most connected to the cars that were popular near your formative years.(*)
(*= the Era of the 80’s notwithstanding. I doubt the Citation or K car will EVER end up on a ‘best of’ list.)
Having been a heavy Corvette guy for years, and tangentially involved in miatas, PT cruisers, and general hotrodding, I’ve found if you take a guy out of his NCRS shirt and put him an a Mustang or MOPAR shirt (or BMW, Mercedes, or Ferrari), you’ve got the exact same guy. The tendency to think your selection is the best is human nature, and there have been SO many iconic cars over the history of the automobile that a truely representative list (especially from a sub-culture magazine) will have gaps.
So, MY corvettes are the Best Cars Ever…to me. That’s not to say I won’t appreciate or lust after anything else. But when I vote with my Dollar, it’ll most likely have a Corvette Badge on it.
I disagree. I do agree that the Beetle has no place on the list, but it received enough votes to get on it. I think that maybe the people who voted for it must have gotten low scores on the reading comprehension part of their SATs, since the magazine was polling for the best sports car. Nearly all of the rest of the cars are valid, in spite of that aberration.
Yeah, I used to love the Countach. Great science fiction styling. I think there’s a good reason why it’s not on the list, though: It’s bloody expensive. Readers of the magazine who answered the poll were probably giving their opinions based upon their personal experiences with cars they’ve owned. I’d bet there were some votes for the Countach, but not enough to make the list. Remember that these are readers/car owners, and not people who do road tests for automotive magazines.
As much as I like the Countach, I still think the 911 is a better sports car. It may not be as fast, but it’s probably more comfortable and more reliable. The 911 engine is very robust. Better gas mileage, too. I read an article a years ago that compared a new Ferrari (I don’t remember which one), a Lamborghini Countach, a Porsche 928 (I think it was the S4), and a Lotus Turbo Esprit. According to the drivers/writers, the best of the bunch was the Porsche. The Ferrari was faster, but the Porsche was better as a ‘complete package’. They said the Countach was getting a bit long in the tooth. IIRC, the Countach was introduced in the mid-1970s and the article was written in the late-1980s. Where the Porsche had been improved over its production run, the Countach was pretty much the same as it always was. I think the ratings, from best to not-the-best (certainly all of the cars were spectacular, so I wouldn’t say ‘worst’), were: Porsche, Ferrari, Lotus, Lamborghini.
It’s amazing how much our perception of performance changes over time. I used to own a 240-Z (owned three of them, actually), and I remember them as being very fast. And I remember the press at the time talking about how finally the average person could own a true sports car with terrific performance.
But looking at the numbers… 161 HP, 0-60 in 8.2 seconds. Pathetic numbers by today’s standards. For example, Ford’s new family sedan, the 500, is getting trashed in the press for lacking performance. It has 200HP, and does 0-60 in around 7 seconds. That’s not even good enough for a family sedan any more.
The same is true for 60’s muscle cars. They weren’t nearly as fast as we remember. Some had monster engines with huge gobs of torque, but they were mated to archaic suspensions and tires that simply couldn’t put the power onto the road. A car like a WRX Sti would blow away a stock big-block Chevelle, simply because the WRX would be halfway down the track while the Chevelle was still making big clouds of white smoke.
And of course, the handling of cars today is light-years ahead of what it was even two decades ago.
See, this is where magazine articles and posters diverge from reality. A good friend of mine rented a ‘71 Countach for his 50th birthday. This is a car that gets pregressivley less and less cool the closer you get to it. Notwithstanding the fact that it’s a rental and had lived a pretty hard life. It’s hard to look at peeling blue velour trim and think ‘ultimate cool’. He got on it and I figured we were really packing the mail, north of 110 or so. I look over, figure out that speedo read in kph and we were only doing 85…and took awhile to get there. Looking in the engine compartment, once you get past the fact there’s a V-12 in there, you notice things like - six carbs must be a BITCH to co-ordinate, and the cable setup to actuate all of them at the same time is a rough cast part that YOU could do better. Panel fit sucked, it had cooling issues stock, and visibility was nonexistant behind and to the side. Those cool scissor doors weight a TON when the gas shock goes away, and you’ve gotta be REALLY flexible to get in the thing (and less than 6’)
My friend commented that by being able to give it back at the end of the weekend, he got the better deal.
All that aside? Damn. It’s a Lambo!
[nitpick]
Sure it wasn’t an '81?
Lamborghini only presented the Countach as a concept car in 1971, and the LP400 production run didn’t begin until 1973 or 1974.
[/nitpick]
You gotta love a car that requires you to open the door to reverse into a parking spot. (warning: .ram video)
It was an early car. I can ask. (and post a pitcure or two if you can pick out the year that way. ) It’s a great advancement over tractors (Lambo was a tractor manufacturer), but a long way from just about any other mass produced car.
I love that the controls are in Italian. the HVAC system had a knob labelled FREDDO.
Who the heck is FREDDO? And what did he do to warrant a knob in this car?
IIRC, the original Triumph engines were developed from tractor engines.
Must. Resist. Making. ‘Knobber’. Joke.
Must. Resist. Making. LotR. Joke.
Freddo is Italian for “cold”.
The LP400 Countach wasn’t that fast. It ran the 1/4 mile in mid-14 second times. A Neon SRT-4 will beat it.
That car was all image. Its actual performance was average at best, and way below average for a ‘supercar’, and it has so many compromises and rough edges that it’s really a poor example of a car.
[ul][li] MGB[/li]Should be on the list, but #1? No way. Not up far enough on the fun-to-drive scale - there’s just too little response and too little grip. It’s also getting pretty slow nowadays. KEEP
[li]Jaguar E-Type[/li]Yep. but not #2. It was fatally flawed in so many ways. It wasn’t that good a handler even for it’s time. KEEP
[li]Porsche 911[/li]Well, if you group 40 years of very different cars together, it’s difficult to disagree. One of the most successful sports racers of all time. KEEP
[li]AC/Shelby Cobra[/li]Hot car, but lethal to drive. It had the stability of a go-kart, the grip of a hog on ice, and the power of a 707. A good Elan would run and hide from it as soon as you got anywhere near the corners - the Cobra driver wouldn’t even see which way it went. KEEP
[li]Chevy Corvette Stingray[/li]See Cobra, above, although a bit more benign than the Cobra. I presume they mean the C2 (63-67), not the C3 (68-84), which weighed two tons and had the reflexes of a Caprice. KEEP
[li]Datsun 240Z[/li]Yep. American straightaway speed with British cornering capability. KEEP
[li]Jaguar XK120[/li]Massively significant car and deservedly on this list. KEEP
[li]Triumph TR2, TR3[/li]A tin can with a tractor engine - but it was and is so good. Mechanically invincible yet lightweight. KEEP
[li]Austin-Healey Sprite/MG Midget[/li]Only the first and second editions - after that they got heavier without adding much more power. KEEP
[li]Austin/Morris Mini[/li]You could tell whether any sedan could beat a Mini on the track by measuring the distance between the last turn and the finish line. KEEP
[li]Alfa Romeo Guilietta[/li]No arguments there. KEEP
[li]BMW 2002[/li]Nor there. I’m glad to see an enlightened view of what constitutes a Sports Car. If the primary designed-in purpose of a car is to be fun to drive, it is a sports car even if it’s a station wagon. KEEP
[li]Austin-Healey 3000[/li]No arguments there. I think the Datsun 240Z replaced it pretty well - powerful no-muss-no-fuss sportscar with a big six. KEEP
[li]Porsche 356[/li]Hmm. “C” and “D” versions are really good, but the 356A wasn’t too far removed from a Beetle. DROP
[li]Triumph Spitfire[/li]No, no, a thousand times no. Horrid car. Designed without human drivers in mind. Violates chaparralv8’s Fundamental Axiom of Sports Motoring: A sports car must be better-handling and more fun to drive than a sedan in the same price range. A Spitfire couldn’t keep up with a similarly powered Morris Minor. DROP
[li]Datsun Roadster[/li]chaparralV8’s Fundamental Axiom of Sports Motoring again. DROP
[li]Triumph TR4, TR250, TR6[/li]Too heavy and brutish to be nimble, dinky British sportscars but 30 horsepower short of a Big Healey. DROP
[li]Shelby GT350, GT500[/li]Nope. They still handled like derailed locomotives. Their virtue was straight-line speed - and they weren’t any better at that than a Dodge Dart with a big motor. DROP
[li]MGA [/li]Ok, as long as it’s not in the top five. The MGB belongs very close to it on this list - they were very similar cars. KEEP
[li]Lotus 7[/li]Heck yeah. Should be a lot higher - there wouldn’t be many objections to calling it the best of all. KEEP
[li]De Tomaso Pantera[/li]Hmm. It’s too bad the pretty ones were bad and the good ones were ugly. KEEP
[li]Alfa Romeo GTV[/li]If you can find a clean one with Webers… but a rusty Spica one is a nightmare. KEEP
[li]Lotus Europa[/li]The definitive mid-engined sports car - as long as you’re under 5’8"! KEEP.
[li]Sunbeam Tiger[/li]The original '60s TVR Griffith deserves this spot instead. It was the better British/American hot rod roadster. DROP
[li]Austin-Healey 100/4[/li]Hmm. I’d say that it and the 3000 should either be counted as one. DROP
[li]Fiat 124, 2000[/li]No argument there. Great little sedans and convertables. Like Hondas only without the ricers and reliability. KEEP
[li]Lotus Elan[/li]The best, of the best, of the best, of the best. Can anyone drive an Elan and not want to have one? A Miata’s so plain, so sluggish, so ordinary next to one. KEEP
[li]MG T-Series[/li]Introduced Americans to the idea of a “sports car” that wasn’t a hot-stepping roadburner. KEEP
[li]Ford Mustang[/li]Which one? I think it qualifies if only for the late-1980s ones - aces of spades on the street, the strip, and the track. KEEP
[li]Volkswagen Beetle[/li]Not a sports car. Horrid little skunks whose strength was only in numbers. DROP
[li]Volvo 1800[/li]Hmm. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for sports cars here. It beat the British cars when they broke - which was often. DROP
[li]Alfa Romeo GTV6[/li]Combine this listing with the GTV, above. DROP.
[li]Chevrolet Camaro Z28[/li]As long as you don’t look after 1973 or before 1994, sure. KEEP.
[li]AMC AMX[/li]Funny little Javelins. Great cars. Shows you what a car company could do with a hacksaw and a fifty-cent budget. KEEP
[li]Yenko Stinger Corvair[/li]Well, the Corvair should get on here in some form. The strange thing about Unsafe at Any Speed is that Nader isn’t anywhere near as hard on the Corvair as he is on half a dozen other cars. The Volkswagon Beetle got its own Nader book about it. I think Ralph actually won a national SCCA title in a Corvair after the book came out. KEEP
[li]Datsun 510[/li]The winningest racing sedan of all time. Still cleans up on the track. The “Flying Fridge” absolutely mopped the floor with just about everything when it came out. KEEP
[li]Reliant Scimitar [/li]The sporty wagon wasn’t a bad idea - and these were very quick cars in later forms. KEEP
[li]Ferrari 250 GT[/li]There should be a Ferrari on this list. I can think of ten non-absurd ones that I’d rather see here. DROP.
[li]Jaguar XJS[/li]Nope. An XJ6 is a better car in every possible way - and it’s beautiful. The XJS is ugly. DROP
[li]Mazda Miata[/li]Needs no introduction. KEEP
[li]Opel GT[/li]There are half a dozen European Chevies that I’d rather see on this list. DROP
[li]Saab 96[/li]Vacuum-cleaner engine, roly-poly body, handbrake on the front wheels - you’d be nuts to drive one. One of the best rally cars of all time. Great paradox. Great car. KEEP
[li]TVR Griffith, Tuscan[/li]The British Sportscar - better than it ever was. KEEP
[li]Fiat 850[/li]Just avoid the automatics… KEEP
[li]Morgan Plus 8[/li]No more modern than it has to be. No more primitive than it should be. KEEP
[li]MGC[/li]Let’s see. Take an MGB and drop a ropey six-cylinder engine in the front, spoiling the handling. DROP a Rover V8 in one…
[li]Turner 950[/li]KEEP - I saw one at an autocross last year and it still looked great out there.
[li]Lancia Fulvia[/li]HF only. Crazy cars. Italian Saabs. Only V4 to be anywhere near decent. KEEP
[li]Opel Manta[/li]KEEP as long as there remains a single unrusted example.
[li]Singer Le Mans[/li]I’ve been a serious car nut for 15 years. I honestly had never heard of this one before this list. From what I’ve just read, it wasn’t too far removed from a race car - and shouldn’t a sports car back it up on the track? KEEP
[/ul]
Ok, so there are 14 DROPS on the list.
To this list, add:
-Mazda RX-7, all three generations. I can’t believe they left this off the list yet put the VW Beetle on it. In the early '80s they were a shining beacon in a morass of mediocre metal. The third-generation ones are still in SCCA Super Stock for autocross - the only cars that beat them are Z06 Corvettes with a 40% power edge.
-Toyota MR-2, all three generations. There was and is a sportscar hidden in every Corolla - you just have to start removing material.
-Fiat X1/9. Let’s see. The 124 is on the list. This is a 124 engine with a 128 transmission in the middle of a Dallara-designed chassis.
-Porsche 914. It’s a bit off a struggle with this one. They never really got the engine right until they put the 911 engine in it - and then they charged way too much for it. A bastardized 914/911 using a later engine is a far better car than they ever came from the factory - but it’s now a Joe’s Garage Special and not a Porsche anymore.
-Honda CRX. How anyone could vote for the Triumph Spitfire over this is beyond me. Great little front-drive sports cars.
-Lotus Elise. Everything a sports car should be and beyond. There are some zany ones with 190 horsepower out there - that should make them absolute missiles.
-Peugeot 205 GTi. The Golf GTI is a more significant car. The Peugeot is a better one. Lift-off oversteer galore - almost a race car setup for the road.
-Dino 206/246. I told you there’d be a Ferrari on the list. This isn’t it. It is, however, one of the most beautiful cars ever built. It also has all the glory and speed of a 12-cylinder Ferrari for half the complexity and half the cost. Probably the best road car (F40s don’t count) Enzo ever built - and he wouldn’t even grace it with his own name.
-Lancia Stratos. Hmm. Let’s put a Ferrari Dino V6 in the middle of a wedge smaller than a Mini. Absolutely bonkers.
-Porsche 944. It had every right to kill the 911 - it was faster, cheaper, more successful in competition at the time, and devoid of all the silly 911 problems and idiosyncracies. I still don’t know why it didn’t. I still don’t know why anyone bought a 911 when they could have had a 944.
-Lotus Esprit. A glaring omission from the list. In its last year of production, CAR magazine called it “one of the fastest land-based objects on earth. We’d still have one”. That was 25 years after it was introduced. It kept Lotus alive through some very lean years.
-TVR Griffith (60s). Let’s see. 289-ci Ford V8? Check. Under 2400 lbs? Check. 5-inch wide bias-ply tires? Check.
-Ferrari 360. I thought about all the earlier mid-engined Ferraris - and then realized they were all rubbish. 308, 328, 348, BB, Testarossa - all of the compromises of a mid-engined car, and all of the problems of a Ferrari, for no reward.
-McLaren F1. This list needs a supercar. Why not the best?
There’s the problem with all supercars - the difference between a supercar and a sportscar isn’t speed, it’s inaccesibility… a 190-hp Federalized Elise will run riot against almost anything you care to name.
Chaparrelv8 said:
And yet you put the Z-28 on the list? The GT-350 was designed for SCCA racing, and the suspension gear was totally different from stock Mustangs. Differences included a larger front stabilizer bar, special Pitman & Idler arms, lowered upper “A” frames, Koni shocks and traction bars. Ford even located the battery in the trunk to improve weight distribution.
The Z-28’s were certainly excellent SCCA competitors, but the GT-350 raced with essentially the same running gear as the street version, whereas the Z-28’s were extensively modified. I loved both cars, mind you, but I don’t understand how you can claim the Z-28 is a true sports car and the GT-350 is just a straight-line muscle car - especially since the Shelby wasn’t even all that fast in a straight line. It had 302 HP, and ran 15 second 1/4 mile times. The Z-28 was more powerful, with 365HP small blocks and 425 HP big block engines.
An Elise is a very special car, though. One of my favorites. But I don’t agree with your characterization of supercars. Most of them ARE fast.
Good post, chaparralv8, though I don’t agree with some of your choices on the DROP list.
Why no classic Australian cars? 