High Performance Cars

Ditto again! I'd put myself in a similar category - through my teens and twenties I loved cars, and did some mildly stupid things in cars that I would now frown on. Later I spent a bit of time working for car makers, and as a result have been fortunate enough to drive some very nice, fast cars on road and on track (and to be driven in them by people with far more skill than me). Unlike kil0ran though, despite 'identifying' as a petrolhead, aspiring to all sorts of exotica for many years, and briefly toying with buying a hot hatch (Clio 200, liquid yellow, since you ask), I only bought my first car (a run of the mill second-hand hatchback) a few years ago, am highly unlikely ever to buy anything more potent, and my current car aspirations waver between buying an estate and considering if I need a car at all any more (it only gets used for long motorway trips).

I still read car magazines occasionally, but they ring a bit hollow now. I have no doubt that the journalists who write for them are very skilled drivers, but seeing images of the latest preposterously overpowered Ferrari being drifted on an open road seems massively irresponsible to me now. Likewise, talking about the pleasure of well weighted steering, perfectly timed heel and toe downshifts and the 'adjustability' of a chassis, evocative though that is, only thinly disguises the fact that road tests in these cars involve driving which would, if not conducted out of sight on remote Welsh and Scottish roads where most people are not going to enjoy these cars, attract police attention.

I do feel a bit conflicted - I spent so much of my formative years aspiring to fast cars that, now that it's vaguely possible, I wonder if I should do it anyway to satisfy the teenager inside me (who, by the way, had even worse taste and wanted a TVR Cerbera). But if I did, I would want to use that performance. Going 10/10ths on a track doesn't really do it for me, and my older self just doesn't think it's ok to use that performance on the road. And owning an expensive performance car just to drive the same way I drive my runaround now feels a bit irrelevant and unnecessary. 

It's true that having a performance car doesn't mean you have to drive like an idiot. But even if manufacturers comply with the guidance in the advertising codes and don't expressly market them this way, it seems clear to me that what they are selling is road cars with performance that, for the most part, cannot be used legally or safely on the road.   

I spent 9 years working at a well known supercar dealer, and used to spend every day driving supercars such as Ferraris, Bugattis, Astons, Porsche etc. Not just brand new ones but multi million pound true classics. After a while they became just cars. When I drove them I became used to their many faults. I realised that the more money you spend on a car, the more trouble you can get. Astons, lovely to look at, horribly unreliable. Even the service manager at our local Aston dealer told me most of the time cars came in with a light on the dashboard, the techsdid not know what was wrong. They simply cleared the fault code and sent the car out. Ferraris from the 90s, such as the 348, were so unreliable that almost every time you went to fire one up, they would either break down or something would fall off. The most disappointing supercar I drove was the Jaguar XJ220, built not for the roads but for the track. A nightmare to get into, you almost needed to perform a three point turn to get round a roundabout, and the rear lights were upside down Rover 214 lights and Metro door handles!

Many of our customers were premier footballers, who bought a ridiculous amount of cars and just drove them like the complete knobs they are.

I moved on from that job but still work within the industry, and my current boss has a stock of new Porsche, Rolls Royce, Lamborghini and others, they are much more reliable now but very clinical. They are too perfect. 

I am fortunate that I have the knowledge and experience of cars that, if I won the lottery, I wouldn't go out and blow a load on a supercar as most of them are disappointing. But to try and explain this to someone who has never driven one is difficult.

Your last paragraph, I sort of disagree with. In my experience, almost every customer who bought a supercar drove them like knobs, but didn't have the experience to handle the cars if they bit back, which many did with disastrous consequences. 

This is indeed an excellent post, and I definitely think it's worth more love on the site! Would you be up for starring in a mini feature? If so I'll drop you a line, or email me at jack.sexty [at] road.cc 

False comparison.  What has one go to do with the other?

Secret_squirrel wrote:

False comparison.  What has one go to do with the other?

I would say that it seems absurd to speed-limit a low-risk form of transport to maximum speed, but not speed-limit a hi risk form of transport.

Seems like a fair comparison to me....

Captain Badger wrote:

Seems like a fair comparison to me....

Cars and pedestrians are almost totally segregated and their interactions strictly controlled via crossings & pavements etc.

The probabilty of a bike interacting with a pedestrian - particular for bycycle commuters is much, much higher. Eg on mixed use pavements.

Hence not an even comparison.

Secret_squirrel wrote:

The probabilty of a bike interacting with a pedestrian - particular for bycycle commuters is much, much higher. Eg on mixed use pavements.

Hence not an even comparison.

The annual butchers bill of pedestrians killed by cars and their drivers (both on and off the pavement) might tell a different story...

I'm afraid that I remain unconvinced that legislating a low risk activity whilst ignoring a high risk one, both of which inhabit the same environment, is anything other than absurd. To me the comparison stands.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Agree 100% - all cars should be limited by law to 85 mph (15 mph extra in case a boost is needed to avoid a collision on a motorway). The fact that it's illegal to run an ebike on the public highway that can exceed 15.5 mph but you can run a car or motorcycle that can do 200 mph accentuates the absurdity.

I'm genuinely trying to work out what sort of collision could be avoided by the 15mph boost?

surely it would only be if something was coming at you from behind at more than 70mph.

But if all vehicles were physically limited to 70mph then this would never happen.

What did you have in mind?

rjfrussell wrote:

I'm genuinely trying to work out what sort of collision could be avoided by the 15mph boost?

This is the sort of thing that's quite common where a short burst of acceleration could get you out of trouble...

https://youtu.be/c2eNallSXUc?t=178

Theoretically, yes. But in that (terrifying) example:

(a) to apply a burst of acceleration effectively, you would need to know the lorry was pulling out on you. I'm not sure that would have been obvious to the driver in that clip, as it looks like the lorry driver indicated and started moving out just after the car had passed. I doubt therefore there would have been enough time in that clip for the driver to accelerate out of trouble.

(b) even if there had been time to react and accelerate, the driver didn't have much space to accelerate into without getting dangerously close to the second lorry in front.

But I take the point - if you're say two thirds of the way past a lorry which starts indicating, with clear road in front, then accelerator may be more effective than brake...

I would add c) The cause of that collision was not that the car driver failed to accelerate fast enough, the problem was that the lorry driver failed to look properly!

OnYerBike wrote:

I would add c) The cause of that collision was not that the car driver failed to accelerate fast enough, the problem was that the lorry driver failed to look properly!

for sure, but with a lot of left hand drive HGVs on our roads, it happens more than it ought to.

I'm careful not to put myself in that position, only passing a HGV when I can get past in one swift overtake, but it's not always possible. I always watch for drift when passing too.