On this issue and our like for Space and pictures and junk, we are one. Cept I'm fatter.



I think Eric keys his definition of sports car on "horsepower." Guinness World Records, however, does not:

"Mazda Miata named best-selling sports car by Guinness World Records(TM); Mazda produces 600,000 MX-5 Miata Roadsters, breaks previous record"




Sorry to repeat myself - People take too much pride in their car's label. How DARE you call my (insert car) ANYTHING but a sports-car. It's fast! It handles well! It's got a LOT of HP!

 

Yeah, to me a sports car is all about how much fun it is to drive hard (and driving hard doesn't mean just driving fast). That has very little to do with power. Historically, in fact, sports cars were not powerful. My first car was a 1969 FIAT 124 Spider, with all of 95bhp (at a time when muscle cars were often well over 300bhp). But it was so much fun to find the twisty back roads and drive! Even legally. And, frankly, the more "practical" a car is, the farther it is from being a sports car, IMO.

The very idea that the Miata, perhaps the qunitessential modern interpretation of "sports car," isn't a sports car is pretty silly.

And I agree that it shouldn't matter what label someone puts on your car; if you enjoy your car, based on whatever criteria are important to you, that's all that should matter.

 

regular NSX is vastly overated to me. its slow and the handling is not that great for the price. they say the S2000 outhandles the type S easily. They get their *** kicked all over the place on the track in stock form by cheaper cars.

The NSX type R, now thats a different story. They call it the fastest JDM and it out paces many cars that cost almost 2x as much. some people get the regular NSX mixed up with the type R, and think all NSXs are like that.

 

I totally agree!

I agree AWD does lose alot of drivetrain drag.

The first 3 gears are unbeatable. The turbo in the STi was pretty much suited to lower gear driving. However, from fourth gear onwards... it kind of felt flat as you don't get that turbo rush feeling. This is in reference to MY01 Sti.

One thing to note is that when you mash the loud pedal to the floor while you are off boost... the car will take longer to spool up in boost as the PCM cuts fuel. The car just sits there and then starts going. You have to get used to gradually applying throttle pressure... to build boost. I don't know how the latest STis drive these days if you just mash the accelerator pedal to the floor while off boost.

 

^^^
Yes, but the S2000 is a newer car. I did say that the NSX is outdated by todays standards.

 

In the US the STI has very little lag due to it being a 2.5 and has a pretty impressive powerband so not a lot of downshifting is needed.

 

Lag will always be inevitable with a turbo car, that's why the Jap comes with the Spec C with better throttle response. With that much torque, its even possible to not shift down to maximize traction.

 

On a side note, dang, i was gone for about a day and was suprised of all the responses. I read through all of them and was pretty happy of all the responses!

Okae, back to the topic, the nsx hasn't changed in a decade, just the styling but the nsx is pretty much the same i stil believe. The price tag is wayy tooo high but kind of understandable if you ever saw the production of the car. I guess it was more of quality than quantity for that car because i know its all hand built. But yeah, the type r nsx is a crazy nice machine.

Anyways, i agree with yiksing, lag in inevitable on a turbo car, that why sequential twin turbos were created to try to reduce turbo lag. I feel like the imprezza 2.5rs (pre 99) are underrated, those cars are freaking great and would prefer them over the newer cars eventhough they aren't turbo'd.

 

Back 40-50 years ago, things were much more cut and dried. On one hand, you had American Muscle; on the other, European sports cars (with the Covette somewhere in the middle). Today, we have 4-door, 4-cylinder, turbocharged, AWD vehicles that handle better than the Europeans and are faster in a straight line than most of the muscle cars.

The term "sports car" has evolved over the past 50 years. I'm just saying that it has evolved so much that it now encompasses a broad spectrum of vehicles, from a FWD, 4-cylinder $20K Honda Civic Si to an AWD, 1000hp, $1 million+ Bugatti Veyron. No doubt that the person with the Civic likes to call his car a sports car, if nothing else because of the implied connection with the Bugatti.

I think this thread has shown that the term "sports car" is now so completely muddled and broad that it really doesn't have any meaning.

I'm not interested in "taking the sports car" title away from anything. I'm just trying to show that there is too much that passes for a "sports car" these days, and that we could be better served by breaking down the sports car category. Besides, based on the definition you posted, that title would be taken away from the RX-8 and MX-5 because they lack excellent acceleration and top speed

 

i totally agree. i love the nsx. is it a bit pricey? sure. by the time it was ousted a year ago, there were many cheaper cars that could outhustle it.
But i love the look of it and when it came out there was nothing like it really.
it was a good pioneer of sorts and is one of the few japanese sports cars to have a 'exotic' style look....in my opinion.

 

I've seen reviews showing RX8s and Miatas with acceleration equal to or better than the STi or Corvette or many other cars you deem 'sports cars' because of their HP.



I've seen .91 for the MX5 - there aren't TOO many stock cars with that kinda acceleration.

 

The Skylines are underrated, but because they get so much rep from fans who has not really seen them in action they are seen as overrated. RBs are good for over 1000hp, not bad for 2.6 litre engines. 2JZ is good but only with the iron block.

The 350Z is not overrated, look at the starting price for them and the tuning you can do. You have to live under a rock to think they are. The VQ is one of the best if not the best selling engines out there, and because several models share the same design, turbo kits can be similarly applied. They do well on various tracks and exceptionally well winning races on the Japanese racing circuits.

The NSX is another underrated car. Fanboys just think this is the ultimate vtec machine, but it is more than that. It holds its own against exotcs even if they don't have character and big performance.

Other underrated cars that deserves mention are the MR2s, STR4s, Del Sols, MX5/Miatas, Suzuki Cappuccinos, 180sx and Trueno AE86 to name a few.

Overrated cars, no offense to the owners, are the ones with rotaries in them. The RX8 is incredibly overrated despite winning awards for best engines etc. I don't know any other award winning engines receiving the kind of negative feedbacks from consumers with regards to fuel economy and maintenance.

The RX7 has the chassis and weigh to be something great, only to have the worst reputation for reliability for a Japanese sports car.

What da hell???????

 

Porsche 911, four seats, is it a sports car?
1989 lotus Elan, front wheel drive, so i guess someone should tell Lotus it's not a sports car. Boy will they be surprised.

 

clone wtf, i have driven many cars and alot were faster off the line but i still get chills when i get in my car. overrated! why because you say I dont think so. If i need a little extra boost i just jump in my wifes car (05-s2k) and that gets old really quick. rx8 -not slow,not overpriced,and most important not a clone

 

JIC: Lateral....

 

I totally don't think the rx8 is overrated, hell the reason i have one is because of the first and only test drive(and i'm a sucker for black.) As for the NSX i was honestly looking on autotrader for a used one before i got the 8, one because of the history of the car, and two because in my small town of hamilton NJ, you will never see another one around here. But you will see tons of automatic corvettes, tons of 3 and 4 gen camaros and firebirds, and a whole bunch of 350Z(which i love.) I test drove 3 Z's before i bought my 8, but the 4 seater sealed the deal. Jumping back to the NSX, after doing some research a couple months ago, you could find a low mile, meaning not over 70,000, and decide condition 91 to 94 in the USA, and if you have a 91 there was a rear camber recall do to the rear tires trend disappear fast a hell, but it was the car of the year in 1991 according to car and driver.

 

i have new from a buddy of mine that works for ford that a new focus hatch is coming out with AWD and with the volvo inline 5 turbo motor giviing it 240 hp that will be 1 hell of a car

 

I saw the name of the thread and figured if we make it 2 pages without a debate on the definition of the word "sports car", I'll be amazed. Needless to say I'm not amazed.

As stated earlier, Wikipedia has a pretty good breakdown of the cars 90% of us are thinking of when we hear the word "sports car", whether the car actually is that specific type of car by definition or not...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_car

For the sake of this discussion, let's expand it from "spots car" to "sporting car". By doing that we'll avoid additonal OT debate. We'll also be free to discuss grand touring cars like the Aston Martin DB9, Muscle Cars like the GTO, Hot Hatches like the Focus RS, Sport Compacts like the STi, and Sport Sedans like the BMW M5. Okay?

So back on topic...

Most underrated sporting car to me is the E30 M3. Many people who call themselves car enthusiasts think the E36 M3 and E46 M3 are the BMW compact coupes to have. No way. They are nice cars...no doubt...but nowhere as tossable, tunable and trackable as the E30 M3. It was very light, had perfect 50/50 weight distribution and low compression, bullet proof cast iron engine that took to aftermarket boost like white on rice. Its suspension is also known to take disgusting amounts of punishment on a track...something latter M3 models have never been able to claim. Much like the production STi's and Evo's of the early 90's, the E30 M3 was built to homogolate the M3 for proffesional GT racing. To this day it remains a tremendously underrated car with only limited cult like popularity in small amateur racing circles.

Hmmm...most overrated sporting car huh. I'm gonna have to nominate the VW R32. It's more of blue collar luxury car than a sports car to me. My friend bought an '04 for almost $35k and my ittle $20k SRT-4 could run circles around it with less about $1.8k in engine and suspension mods. Even my stock stereo was better. From a strictly performance-to-price perspective, the VW R32 gets my vote as the most overrated sporting car.

 

How about "performance car" or is that too open?

 

Racing cars = Any cars modded to extreme to win a race
Sports cars = A car that looks sporty (RICED up XXX)
A very fast car in the straight (Mustang, etc)
A slow car but fun to drive (Miata)

 

were would a RX8 fit in?

 

Underrated------- Mazda 323 Gtx and GTr

Not too many around and some are tuned north of 400whp.

Overrated-------Dodge stealth r/t and subaru svx

Nothing about these cars were good.

And an honorable mention goes to the 300zx tt(extremely overatted imo)

 

I agree with the E30, there were plenty of those in the 80s racing in Europe and Australia, just didn't think anyone here is old enough to remember.

Mazda GTR? Uh yeah but stock wise they are pretty slow, the slowest out of the EVO, STI and Pulsar GTiR.

 

I believe they came with 200+ hp stock, which was pretty good for a low 2000lb car in the early 90's

 

If we're talking about the car in US form (GTX) it was only had 132hp and weighed 2645 lbs.

Even the Euro/Japan Spec cars (rated higher) ran to 60 in about 8 seconds. Since you said early 90s compare that to the DSM cars of the same time which would obliterate the GTX in a straight line. It was a pretty cool little car but how someone can call a tarted up Mercury Tracer underrated and not like the STI is beyond me

Also, the SVX pretty cool design IMO, it was also not a sportscar and was prettymuch the epitome of a GT car/Luxury Cruiser. Also to say nothing about the Stealth RT was good is a bit strong. They were damn fast for their time, still are (mid 13s in the 1/4), and handled fairly well considering their heft. I mentioned the 3000GT earlier so I'm not dismissing you calling it overrated, just think your stance is a little harsh.