Would you rather a Ferrari or a Toyota?
Admit it - you hate supercars. I know deep down you’d love it if someone gave you a Ferrari, Lamborghini or something similarly exotic, but the truth is you don’t really care about them and if I offered you a Toyota HiLux or Ford Ranger, the majority of Aussies would pick the ute.
I know this because pretty much anytime we write about these multi-million dollar machines it’s clearly how little interest there is in these unobtainable cars. And, as a die-hard petrolhead who grew up with posters of supercars and model cars scattered around my room, I have to say… I get it. Modern supercars just don't hit like they used to.
Like I say, when I was a kid, growing up in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, I loved supercars like the Ferrari F40, Porsche 959 and Vector W8 (it’s ok if you don’t remember the last one). But fast forward to today and I find modern supercars uninspiring and I’m even beginning to question their existence.
Take the all-new Ferrari F80. It should have been one of the most exciting new cars I saw in 2024, a brand-new, cutting-edge, race-inspired hypercar that blew everything else away. And yet, when I saw it online I was left numb - no excitement, no joy - just a blank feeling. Last week I finally saw the F80 in the metal (or should that be carbon fibre?) and while it certainly has more visual impact in-person, I still have no emotional response to it in the same way I felt about the F40, F50 and even the Enzo; which I think is one of the ugliest cars Ferrari has ever made, but also one of the coolest.
It’s not just Ferrari either, all the modern supercars leave me cold. New McLaren W1? I’d rather have the original McLaren F1. Aston Martin Valkyrie? It looks so extreme it’s scary, like you’ll need to see a physio just to get in and then again when you get out.
Maybe I’m just getting old and realising how deeply unobtainable these cars are and that is spoiling the mystique for me…
Personally I’d prefer to drive a Toyota GR86, Hyundai i30 N or Mazda MX-5 across my favourite back road. You know, cars without enough power to launch a rocket but with dynamic, engaging handling that lets you enjoy the experience without worrying about your driver’s licence being revoked if you squeeze the throttle for just a second or two too long.
Perhaps therein lies the problem - modern hypercars are so fast they only belong on a racetrack. And even as someone who has loved motor racing since my earliest memories, I find that just too extreme, too niche and frankly too much. A great car should be great on the road - any road - not only smooth, wide, unrestricted racetracks.
I’ve recently driven cars that I would consider ‘extreme’, such as the Porsche 718 Spyder RS - the ultimate iteration of the Boxster. It’s fast enough to break the speed limit in second gear, and yet you don’t need to drive it that fast to enjoy it on the road. It has one of the best-handling chassis I’ve ever experienced and is backed up by the brand’s fantastic 4.0-litre flat-six engine.
By comparison, Porsche’s most extreme sports car, the 911 GT3 RS, is basically a racing car without numbers and feels much more at home on a track than it does on the road.
Unfortunately, with inflation and the increased performance and complexity car makers are putting into even their hot hatches, the affordable sports car is becoming a rare species. It seems the entire market is shifting upwards, hypercars now cost $3m and up, sports cars are $200,000 or more and now hot hatches are increasingly starting above $50k and stretching to nearly $100,000.
For those who can afford the new Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti or whatever super-exotic machine they love, I wish them nothing but the best. I hope they put money aside for hiring a racetrack. But for the rest of us, I hope affordable, accessible performance cars don’t disappear completely anytime soon because I still care about those.
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