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Sports car

Grand tourers

A sports car is a type of automobile designed for sporting performance.

While opinions differ as to the exact definition, most sports cars have two seats and two doors, and are designed to provide excellent handling, acceleration, top speed, and good looks.

A sports car is a car whose dominant design consideration is driving pleasure. The ideal sports car (only the Bugatti Type 35 is a clear example) is capable of both transportation and racing service. A sports car's compromise between road holding, braking, maneuverability, low weight, power, reliability, comfort, passenger space, economy and etc. is intermediate between that of a sedan and that of a racing car. A car is generally considered a sports car if it gives up comfort and passenger space for handling, by having a low roof. This definition has the advantage that a sports car can be identified simply by seeing how high it is. A sports car will not usually turn over when driven hard with racing tires, while a sedan or "truck" usually will. On the other hand, (at least the original) Ford Thunderbird, though low, is not generally considered a sports car because its suspension emphasizes comfort above handling. Sports cars can be fairly luxurious or spartan, but neither comfort nor cost may be achieved at the expense of driving pleasure. Customers regard racing experience (Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, etc.) as an important indication of sporting quality, but brands such as Lamborghini, who do not race or build cars exclusively for racing, may also be highly regarded.

Great emphasis is often placed on handling—the ability of the driver to remain in control of the car under challenging conditions such as when the car's tires begin to lose their grip on corners.

A car may be sporting without being a sports car. Performance modifications of regular cars, such as muscle cars, hot hatches and the like do not generally fall in the pure sports car territory.

A large, powerful engine is not required; many of the early British sports cars lacked a powerful engine and did not accelerate as quickly as, say, muscle cars, but were known for having exceptional handling characteristics due to their combination of light weight, carefully engineered/balanced chassis and innovative suspension designs. Lotus is often cited as an example of this approach. On tight, twisting roads, such a car has higher effective performance than a heavier, more powerful car with less cornering ability.

In many situations, the term "sports car" is used to refer to any car with more power or performance than is typical for cars in general. Often vehicles in the muscle car, performance sedan/saloon or grand tourer (GT) category are referred to as sports cars even though they tend to lack the light weight and excellent handling characteristics of a true sports car.

Due to bureaucratic restrictions in the North American market, many sports cars are not available for sale or use in the United States and Canada. In Britain and Europe, a more flexible attitude towards small-volume specialist manufacturers has allowed companies like TVR, Noble, Pagani, etc. to succeed.

Prices on sports car have risen due to emissions requirements, more luxerious interior, more powerful engines and so on. Apart from some small British firms the idea of an affordable sports car vanished until the introduction of the Mazda Miata. The Miata had a rather modest price tag and a not that powerful engine 120 bhp. Since the success of the Miata others have followed.

Layout

The layout of drive train and engine influences the handling characteristics of a car and is the focus of more attention in a sports car.

Most modern cars use front wheel drive (FF) where the engine is in the front and drives the front wheels. Some sports cars have this layout (e.g. Lotus Elan M100, Fiat Coupé, Fiat Barchetta, Saab Sonett...), but due to its conservative effect on handling, it is not typical in higher-performance models. However the FF layout is quite common in small Japanese sport cars such as Honda CR-X, Subaru Alcyone SVX, Toyota Celica, Mitsubishi Eclipse... The FF layout has some advantages in small sport cars since it allows you to reduce weight (no need for gearing and propshaft) and size (no intrusion from the transmission tunnel).

Previously FR, front engine driving rear wheels, was common. The designation is deceptive as the engine is often mounted behind the front wheels, so it should be called a mid engine. This form has survived longer in sports cars than in the mainstream and is declared by some to be the "classic" layout for sports cars. The lighter rear-end and rear drive increases the ability of a car to "drift" around corners without losing control.

In search of improved handling and weight distribution other formats have been tried. mid engine, rear drive (MR) is a layout commonly found only in sports cars—the engine is mounted towards the centre of the chassis, close behind the driver, and powers the rear wheels.

Porsche are the sole remaining users of the RR layout, a rear engine driving the rear wheels. The qualities of their cars are often said to have come about despite rather than because of this layout. The weight distribution across the wheels in a Porsche 911 provides excellent traction, but cannot be seen as ideal as the weight of the engine is outside the car's wheelbase. This would usually lead to extremely unpredictable handling and, indeed, many of their early Porsches did suffer from this. However, Porsche have continuously refined the design and, in the recent years, combined their modifications with electronic driving aids like computerized traction and stability control which do much to counteract the inherent flaws of the design. Many of Porsche's techniques have been applied to other cars with success.

One option for transferring the power from the engine to the car's wheels is all wheel drive or AWD. Although some early passenger cars used this technique (e.g. 1966 Jensen FF) it did not gain widespread acceptance until the 1980s, when Audi upgraded their FF design to a turbocharged Quattro. Their great initial rally racing success in the early 1980s was soon bettered by even more sophisticated mid-engine cars, eg. from Peugeot or Lancia, who was later continued with the front-engine Lancia Delta Integrale.

Japanese manufacturers like Mitsubishi and Subaru use AWD in performance cars that serve as a basis for rallying, so they can be considered real sports cars. Many of the top-performing cars from marques like Audi, Porsche and Lamborghini have AWD in order to allow less skilled customers to take advantage of the power, which has to be considered the exact opposite of sporting.

In touring car racing like the 1990s German DTM, Opel and Alfa Romeo needed to add AWD to their FF designs in order to keep up with the Mercedes-Benz standard FR. After having been beaten once even in the wet by the inferior concept, these two brands pulled out of the DTM/ITC because they couldn't afford the high costs anymore. When the DTM serie resumed in 2000, AWD was banned to save costs, which was eventually accepted even by Audi.

Seating

Some sports cars have small emergency back seats that are really only suitable for luggage or small children. Such a configuration is often referred to as a 2+2 (two full seats + two "occasional" seats). Often these seats are only included to lower insurance premiums. When no other form of transportation is available, people have even been known to get into the backs of cars without even these vestigial seats.

Over the years, some manufacturers of sports cars have sought to increase the practicality of their vehicles by increasing the seating room.

One method is to place the driver's seat in the center of the car which allows two full-sized passenger seats on each side and slightly behind the driver. The arrangement was originally considered for the Lamborghini Miura but abandoned as impractical because of the difficulty for the driver to enter/exit the vehicle. McLaren used the design in their limited-edition supercar the F1 whose performance was so extraordinary that the inconvenience of getting in and out of the car was dismissed by many owners as a minor complaint.

Another British manufacturer, TVR, took a different approach in their Cerbera model. The interior was designed in such a way that the dashboard on the passenger side swept toward the front of the car which allowed the passenger to sit farther forward than the driver. This gave the rear seat passenger extra room and made the arrangement suitable for three adult passengers and one child seated behind the driver. The arrangement has been referred to by the company as a 3+1.

Some Matra sports cars even had three seats squeezed next to each other.

The tiny Messerschmitt TG500 had only one front seat, reminding one of a high performance airplane cockpit or of a motorcycle, with the passenger sitting in the rear. (The model name of the three wheeled Messerschmitt KR200 version was Kabinenroller, which means enclosed motor scooter.) The TG500, naturally, was not a commercial success. The romance of a sports car is lost without the possibility of having one's favorite person beside one. Perhaps it would have sold in a country where the women walk behind the men.

The Morgan Four Seater may be the only true four seat sports car, ever. It has no luggage space at all when the rear seats are occupied, and, aside from the number of seats, it is among the most spartan of sports cars, making it impossible to call it a sedan or convertible.

Safety

Unfortunately, sports cars are often charged more for insurance, because, naturally, people who drive far and fast prefer them, but they are the foremost examples of active safety. Excluding their tending to tempt their drivers, they are safer than other cars because they are capable of avoiding accidents that would be inevitable for other vehicles and because they stimulate their drivers to improve their driving skills and to pay attention.

Examples

Well known specialist brands or marques, new and old, are:

AC
Alfa Romeo
Alpine
Aston Martin
Audi
Austin-Healey
BMW M
Bricklin
Bugatti
Caterham
Darrian Cars
Davrian
De Lorean
Ferrari
Fisker
Jaguar
Koenigsegg
Lamborghini
Ligier
Lotus
Marcos
McLaren
Maserati
MG
Morgan
Noble
Pagani
Panoz
Porsche
Spyker
Triumph
TVR
Vector

Almost all major car manufacturers also make some form of high performance car, sometimes very successfully such as Ford with the GT40, Mazda with the MX-5/Miata, RX-7/RX-8, Chevrolet with the Corvette and Nissan with the Z-car and Skyline GT-R.

Most major manufacturers have a sports car that serves as the 'flagship' image car of the company. For example,

BMW M6
Chevrolet Corvette
Dodge Viper
Ford GT
Honda NSX
Mazda RX-7, RX-8
Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution
Nissan Skyline GT-R, Z-car
Renault Sport Clio V6
Subaru Impreza WRX STi
Toyota Supra

(Note, some of these cars, such as the Clio, Impreza, Lancer, M6, and Skyline may not fit the definition of a sports car, nevertheless, they serve as a sympol of a company's performance orientation.)

See also

• Roadster
• Muscle car
• Car safety

External Links

• Information and high-resolution pictures for all major makes and models
• Forum for automotive enthusiasts

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This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.