I’ve heard of this, but how common is it?
It feels like it’s very common, but that may be availability bias. Outright vandalism aside, it seems people will readily spit on your exotic ride:
Sure, why not? When else would I drive it? I don’t live in Texas, there aren’t any wide open roads around here, if I don’t use it like any other car it’s pointless to own.
I remember an episode of Top Gear in which, as I remember, Richard Hammond was driving a supercar in Italy. He was exiting the parking garage in an older building and had trouble because the car was on a slight downward slope and the front end was so low it was scraping the curb as he tried to exit. I think the other two put boards under the tires to raise it over the curb.
In short, supercars can be impractical in everyday situations.
Rich guy I knew had owned lots of supercars but for a long time he drove a Honda NSX, which was way less exotic than he had driven previously. When I asked him about it, he shrugged and said it was plenty fast but he found it far more practical in terms of ground clearance and general driveability at around-town speeds, so he stuck with it. He said he had found himself leaving his previous more exotic cars in the garage because he just couldn’t be bothered dealing with their peccadilloes.
I said yes, but it depends on the errand. Beer run? sure. Complete grocery run? no.
Yup.
I voted Nope, and the above is exactly why. I’ve had the chance to drive and ride in a few Lamborghinis, and a number of other Italian and German exotics. Driving them on stop and go traffic or congested city streets? Absolutely miserable. The clutches were, without exception, heavy as heck. Driving a Ferrari in daily traffic would seriously build up your left leg to Ahnold like proportions. And the Lamborghini Aventador I had the chance to drive for a few days last summer had a shittier A/C system than my 30 year old BMW classic.
If I owned an exotic, it would be a track car. I still want something liveable to drive to the grocery store.
Don’t forget that nobody will see you on the road because the car is so low.
Sure! I’ve kept classic and antique cars under regular plates and inspections and used them for drivers so assuming I owned some super-car why not run it around?
This is the part you’d never catch me doing.
Not any more. You can’t buy a supercar these days with a left pedal, at least not a new one.
Ferrari? No.
Lamborghini? No.
McLaren? No.
Bugatti? No.
Koenigsegg? No.
Ferrari hasn’t offered a car with a manual clutch since the 599GTB in 2011. Lamborghini’s last manual was the Gallardo, and the company sold very few of those compared to the paddle-shift option.
About the closest you’ll get to a supercar with an old-fashioned stick-shift these days is a couple of varieties of Aston Martin, some Porsches (but not the 918, the 911 GT3 or the 911 Turbo), some M-class BMWs, and some American sports cars like the Corvette.
…The better to… show it off?
I doubt it has much room to stow stuff inside, so it’s probably not very useful for most of the errands I run.
Right. Pick up a bookcase at IKEA? Haul mulch from Home Deport? Probably not. Buy a $115-buck shirt at Nordstrom? Sure.
I doubt it. I’m not really a car guy. By the time I have the money to drop on a Lamborghini, I’m bound to also have someone in my employ who runs errands for me.
If I had a car like that, it’d be a Countach, and it’d be my baby. Not a chance in hell I’d let some soccer mom turn it into a crumpled wad of metal.
The California was available with a manual and it was sold until 2014.
I’d drive it to the Hookers and Blow Emporium and that’s about it.
True, but:
a) The manual was only a special-order option (unlike for the 599); no Californias were produced for showroom sale with the manual gearbox,
b) They discontinued the manual option for the 2013 model year (so, effectively in mid-2012),
and
c) they did this because, of the 10,000 or so Californias sold throughout the world, a total of 3 (that’s 3 vehicles, not 3% of all Californias) were ordered with a third pedal.
So i guess it technically qualifies, but not really. Also, until the T was released in 2014, quite a few reviews of the California were rather critical of its ride and handling. When the T came out, Top Gear said: “Much-improved (and very fast), it now deserves the badge on its nose.”