The supercar is dead. Or so Jeremy Clarkson says. On a recent episode of Top Gear, driving an Aston Martin Vantage, he became mournfully poetic about the future of fast cars. "Cars like this will soon be consigned to history books," he lamented, while exercising the Aston’s tuneful V12 engine along a moorland road.
It’s easy to see why Clarkson thinks like this. Fuel prices rise, green thinking grows, speed limits get stricter — the mood is not with big mph motors. Yet Clarkson is wrong. Fast cars will get greener, but they won’t get any slower or less thrilling. In the past few months, we’ve seen four of the most extraordinary supercars ever conceived. Many more will follow.
Two of these motorway missiles come from those sultans of speed, Porsche and Ferrari. The £101,000 911 Turbo is probably the most all-round impressive 911 yet, as well as one of the fastest (194mph, 0-62mph in 3.6 sec). The new 458 Italia (202mph, 0-62mph in 3.4 sec) may well be the greatest Ferrari of recent times, as well as the best looking.
Considering their enormous potential speed, both cars are pleasingly fuel abstemious: 24.8mpg (911 Turbo) and 21.2mpg (458) really isn’t bad for a pair of cars that can pull in the horizon at less than three miles a minute, and is way better than any equivalently muscled machine of only a few years ago.
Mercedes-Benz, better known for its princely saloons, rugged estates and boulevard-cruising convertibles, has also joined in the fun. Its new SLS is a low-slung, aluminium-bodied two-seater that is electronically speed limited to 197mph.
Quite what is the point of this is anyone’s guess. Mine is that it leaves the door open for an even quicker version. To the super-affluent, there is no such thing as fast enough.
The most distinguishing feature of the £150,000 SLS is its gullwing doors, which mimic the most famous trick of the Mercedes 300SL sports car of the 1950s. The doors work well, as long as you remember to grab them on your way in. You can’t reach them when seated.
The fourth recent entry into the supercar stakes comes from McLaren, which has just launched a new automotive division. Its first offering is the £170,000 (or so) MP4-12C, on sale in 2011. This has many technical novelties. Apparently, the suspension balances executive car ride comfort with sports car handling, and its V8 turbo engine is supposedly the most fuel-efficient yet fitted to a road car. It also promises a strong but light single-piece carbon fibre ‘safety cell’ that McLaren MD Antony Sheriff believes could one day find its way into ‘ordinary’ road cars, as costs drop.
This typifies one of the great benefits of the supercar: many auto industry breakthroughs began on fast top-end cars (including disc brakes, ABS and air-cleaving aerodynamics). McLaren chairman Ron Dennis is convinced the supercar market — temporarily depressed but which has boomed over the past decade — will recover by the time his new car tempts motor-minded millionaires. As confidence returns, and as emerging markets (especially China) grow, so demand will be fuelled.
There will always be demand for the best, the ultimate, no matter whether it’s for houses, boats or watches. With motoring, that means the supercar.
Gavin Green is a motoring journalist and consultant
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