The Miata IS a sport car. It handles great, is a ragtop, RWD, MT, two seats and pointy. Miatas totally rock. I’m considering buying one in the future.
They also have a somewhat girly image, brought about by their size, their lack of agreessive features, and roundy-round styling.
It’s both! Are you saying girls can’t be sporty? What kinda sexist are you? 
I’ve sort-of been following this thread, since I’ve had several sports cars. I wondered what ‘the worst’ would be, but didn’t think to speculate myself.
And then you mention the TR-7.
The TR-7 isn’t bad as a ‘sports car’. But it did suffer by comparison. Power is not really a defining characteristic of sports cars. Austin Healey Sprites and MG Midgets are no speed demons; but they certainly were ‘sports cars’. But the TR-7 was underpowered. Even though I don’t consider power to be that important, I’ll accept it in this case. Also, the TR-7 came out as a coupé instead of having a convertible hood.
But the most damning thing about it is that it is a sympom (I’d not necessarily say a direct cause) of the Death Of The British Sports Car. The TR-6 had its problems, true. When the Datsun 240Z came out, the venerable TR-6 was rather outclassed. But instead of come up with a ‘Z-beater’, BL came out with a car with less power than its predecessor. ‘The Wedge’, ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’, didn’t have the drop-hood as it should have. It didn’t look like a British sports car. And it drained resources that could have been put into developing a new engine (which was being looked into) for the MGB. (Except for switching to a five-bearing, from a three-bearing, crankshaft in 1964 or 1965 – I’ve forgotten which – and the addition of power-robbing emissions controls, the MGB engine was pretty much unchanged from 1962 to 1980.)
I wouldn’t fault the live rear axle. The ones on my MGBs worked fine. But for replacing an aging but more capable car with this lower-powered car, for not initially offering a convertible option, for draining resources that could have been applied elsewhere, and basically being ‘The Car That Killed Triumph’ (as well as its stablemates in the BL conglomerate), I’ll add my vote for the TR-7 to be ‘The Worst Sports Car’.
“Tranny”? ::snerk::
I haven’t driven one, but I’ve never heard anybody say anything good about the Saab Sonnet.
I have a friend who swears that the answer to this question is the DeLorean DMC-12, with nothing in second place. He had one, and said the quality was simply abysmal - there basically wasn’t any system or component that failed to cause a problem. The car might have been oaky when things worked, but you couldn’t tell because they never did.
Ah, British Leyland… the company with the unspeakable talent of fucking up a good thing, no matter how easy it would have been to just evolve a new model.
They made some stunning looking cars, that all completely sucked on a technical level. Some people call me crazy, but I still love the styling of the Princess. Sure, with a name like that it was doomed to fail, and the fact that it rusted away within 3 years of construction didn’t help… but what a stunner to look at! Then again, maybe I’m weird.
Anyway, Bad Sports Cars.
I’ve got another controversial one. As so often, the product of a merger or takeover.
The early 70’s Citroën SM.
Don’t get me wrong, in terms of styling, it’s one of the most beautiful cars ever built, being as it is based on the DS platform. But it was built shortly after Citroën bought Maserati. They needed a quick image builder to recuperate the cost of the purchase, and the SM was it. FYI, the investment was never earned back, and Citroën fell into the claws of Peugeot in the late 70’s.
The SM was billed as a sports coupé, but in reality, it was only the Maserati engine that could give it some street cred in that regard. The suspension was Citroën-comfy, the brakes were alarmingly poor, and the car cornered worse than an American sports car. 
And as all Citroëns after 1935, it was front wheel drive…
(Yes, I’ve driven one, it’s magnificent. But not a sports car by any stretch of the imagination!)
Ah. the Delorean, good one!!
On the one hand, ya gotta give props to a man who cons Margaret Thatcher out of a few billion quid. On the other hand, Delorean eventually gave us an underpowered (Renault V6 I think it was), overweight, badly built… movie prop.
An aquaintance of mine owns one, and loves it. Ít IS fun, in its quirkiness… but it’s the furthest thing from a sports car you could imagine. My almost-5-meters-long FWD Alfa could easily outrun it on a bendy road.
It reminds me of a cross between this AMC prototype and a Pinto Wagon.
Um, a 2005 TVR? With no airbags? Over 350 horsepower?
Details, please.
You are invited to make tea with my boxer shorts. :mad:
Shit, the presence of Lucas “Electrics” make most English sportscars inferior to the Fiat.
'Scuse me. I’m going to the garage to give THEFIAT a hug.
There you have it. The Ford Mustang, a poor man’s sports car. Funny how you said the exact thing I was thinking as I clicked the thread. Every time I see another trendy stupid Mustang with some young girl or dipshit hotrod guy in the driver’s seat I can’t help but think “get a real sports car.” Ford can also be known as Found On Road Dead, Fixed Or Repaired Daily, and Driver Returns On Foot. I would know from experience, as I have a Ford (it was free) with only 74k miles on it and it acts like a shitbox with 300k miles on it. I’m afraid to kick the bucket of bolts because it will probably fall apart. When I put it into overdrive I’m afriad the engine is going to be spat out of the exhaust pipe (maybe not literally).
Being a newly converted Cadillac enthusiast, I’m noticing how Chrysler mimics the Cadillac design so blatantly, right down to the “luxury sports car” model of the year. Chrysler is complete ass, and they fit into my “shitty car” pile just underneath Ford. No, I don’t need reasons. 
Oh yea, since we’re talking about sports cars, I hear my husband talking in his sleep about this one so it must be impressive:
http://rufautocenter.com/newcars/RT12_Turbo_05_t.asp
shrug
We’re hardly even stretching our intellectual muscles here.
How about a mid/late 70’s Corvette? Horsepower less than a current Japanese econobox, and (in my opinion) ugly styling with required gold-chain/chest-hair driver.
Or another one billed in the US as a sports car, the Mercury Capri front-drive convertible. The linked picture looks OK, but have you ever really seen one that didn’t look like a total rat (at least I’ve not).
Or the Mustang II (not to piss anybody off) - by the way, the linked picture really captures the Pinto-ness of that car.
I’m sure I’ll think of some more, but I wanted to throw those out for now.
Actually, the new 300s owe a great deal to Studebaker as far as their looks go (not the best example, but the only one I could find in a quick search). And, IIRC, admitted to borrowing the look for the Dodge Ram truck (not the current incarnation, but the design previous) from Studebaker as well. And Cadillac, started out life as a Ford, whereas the Dodge brothers got screwed over by Ford.
:eek: Say it ain’t so! Then why does GM own Cadillac whereas Ford is a competitor of GM?
I’m going to go pet my car and tell him he’s better than a Ford 
Because after Ford built his car, he ran out of money, he brought in some financial backers who didn’t like the idea of building a car for the common person, and promptly booted him out of the company and changed it’s name to Cadillac in honor of Detroit’s founder.
Yes, brand new, right from the factory, every TVR is equipped with a six-cylinder engine producing between 350 and 440 horsepower. None of them have airbags or traction control. Some of them have power steering.
Ooh, we haven’t even started digging. Let me think of some real dirt clods…
-The Hyundai Scoupe, otherwise known as the “Poupe” - same mispronunciation. Starting with a genuine, capital-F Failure of a chassis originally under the Excel, Hyundai managed to get 115 detonation-prone horsepower out of a 90-cubic-inch turbocharged engine. They then linked it to a gearbox which I swear was connected to the gearlever by ropes. This gearbox had a tendency to just shear the dog clutches right off the countershaft. The handling couldn’t be described as anything other than “Excel-like”.
-The Toyota Paseo. Advertised as a sporty coupe, it was heavier than the Tercel coupe it was based on by a clear 100 lbs. The center of gravity was also higher so it didn’t handle, either. The icing on the cake was that Toyota charged extra for it.
-The Mercury Capri. Ford owned enough of Mazda to know that they shouldn’t have tried to compete with the Miata. So, they didn’t, and sold the Capri instead.
Fiat, home of Maggot Marelli electrics, the only thing in the world that makes Lucas stuff look good. 
Christ Fiat would run a blue wire into the harness, and a yellow wire out, and they were the same fucking wire or the relays that are wired with 4 black wires. Shit like that makes electrial faul tracing such an adventure on Fiats. :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes:
