Gyvon
Well-Known Member
This has been bugging me for a while. Is it the performance? Price? What
We've had some heated discussions on this topic before, and usually there's not much agreement. Most people bring up a combination of some, if not all, the following points:
Performance: Has to be among the top performers in the market at the time of its release. A supercar from the 60s (say, a Miura) might not be as fast as a V6 Camry of today, but back then it would've been among the fastest cars on the planet.
Styling: Has to stand out; this is a very subjective thing, and the Honda/Acura NSX is a car that some say looks like a supercar, while others say it's too bland.
Engine: Is often mid-engined or an exotic engine of some sort (V-12, V-10, or more). This is an optional criterion, as you have cars like the Mercedes 300SL, which has straight-6 out of a sedan in the front, but is definitely a supercar. I made it an either/or criterion so that cars like the De Tomaso Pantera and BMW M1, which had "ordinary" mid-mounted engines, could get a point towards them
Impact: Often a pioneer of some sort, either among all cars or within the company. Miura was the first mid-engined V-12 road car, Viper was the first huge-engined insane American roadster since the original Cobra, BMW M1 was the first and so far only mid-engined BMW, and so on.
Price: As others have mentioned, has to be high. Again, this is a point against the NSX, which was meant to be the "affordable" supercar and so sorta went against the ethos of the category.
I'd say that a car meeting 3-4 of these would be a supercar, but obviously there are exceptions going both ways (a commonly-accepted supercar that doesn't meet 3-4 of these, or a commonly accepted non-supercar that does meet 3-4 of these), so I'm not going to set down a hard and fast rule. In the end, it's a pretty subjective question. Let me turn it around at you: are there any specific cars that you think are borderline and can be argued one way or another? NSX is usually one of them.
Solely going by that criterion, neither the SLR McLaren nor SLS AMG would be supercars. Viper, well, I dunno. That's borderline. Has the performance but not the pricetag. NSX doesn't quite have either.Wow, thank you sir. You even helped settle a bet without me having to ask (whether the Dodge Viper counted as a super car. Friend said it wasn't since the engine was in the front).
But the Viper has the 'what the fuck?' quality to it, making the lower price more negligible.Solely going by that criterion, neither the SLR McLaren nor SLS AMG would be supercars. Viper, well, I dunno. That's borderline. Has the performance but not the pricetag. NSX doesn't quite have either.
Solely going by that criterion, neither the SLR McLaren nor SLS AMG would be supercars. Viper, well, I dunno. That's borderline. Has the performance but not the pricetag. NSX doesn't quite have either.
You can't engineer the 'Super' into your car.
The Carrera GT called, it wants a word.