…when clearly they’re not ?

Poxy little engines and full sporty styling !

Either it’s a sports car or it’s not !

Back in the 80s different models had different looks L , GL, GLX GTS etc each manufacturer had its own branding.

Crappy little Fiats etc made to look mean, when clearly they just make fart noises!

Environmental friendly – not with all that extra plastic and alloy being used.

Im outa here 😉

and for for the record I have a 4.2 V8 S4 and I only do about a 2000 miles a year so hardly causing trees to die.

To make people feel better

So they can charge you more for individualization! To show how special you are.

And then you come to sell – but no-one wants your Fiat 500 with a pink roof, blue wing mirrors and orange bonnet stripes. 🙂

Specific outputs have shot up in recent years.

100bhp/litre is now fairly standard when in the 80’s that was supercar territory.

As an example a 2.9litre Sierra had 140bhp – I’ve got a 1.5 litre car that matches it for power and exceeds it on torque.

So, yes, tiny engines but actually reasonably fast compared with cars of yore.

And then you come to sell – but no-one wants your Fiat 500 with a pink roof, blue wing mirrors and orange bonnet stripes.

You’re going to have to invest in a respray if you really need to sell it.

for the record I have a 4.2 V8 S4 and I only do about a 2000 miles a year so hardly causing trees to die.

Come on now, even with only 2K per year you could get through of a few rubber trees with that amount of grunt.

Some people like the styling but don’t necessarily want or require their car to be massively powerful.

What is a ‘sports’ car, then? Most road cars seem to spend their time sat in traffic anyway, or catching up the next slow moving queue. A 4.2 V8 or a 1.2 3 cylinder has very little bearing on journey time.

I liftshare with a bloke who owns a 911 & a Kia Sorrento. The commute takes the same time, regardless of what car we take. You could argue that the Kia is marginally faster, because we don’t have to slow down over speed bumps.

I have been pondering this very same topic for about a year, I still can’t understand the need to make something Sporty when it’s clearly not.

I’ll start with bashing BMW, this will no doubt provoke consternation and recrimination but we have to start somewhere and this brand are known for thier mimicking of sporty desires..

3 series other than the proper M3.

The rest of the range are mid tier engined family cars, there is no need to put skirts or badges or bumper splitters or 28” alloys on it. Just make it have 17” wheels with fat tyres on it, take the stupid bumpers off, make the headlights fully round and not those ridiculously slanted down frowny Mr Angry Face things they have on now.

Audi, another brand that stick massive alloys and stupid suspension and back crippling seats in anything with an S-Line badge on A4/5/6 A1/2, and frankly that’s pointless, they are blob carriers with no sporty intentions whatsoever. Take all the crap off them, make them what they are just a normal people moving machine and make them efficient and easy to drive..

As for “sporting up” SUVs!! What a pointless designed image vacuum they are. I totally get the SUV, to me it’s a wonderful piece of design and effective at what it does, but sticking 46” wheels on them and making seats barely usable and bumpers that drag on the ground is frankly an oxymoron.

I drive an SUV, it isn’t sporty in anyway whatsoever, but I admit some of the design ques on it do veer towards some faux sporty intentions.. which is a joke.

Good topic.

Because it sells cars. Simple, but then I suspect you knew that.

Because the style looks good, they sell and as you’ve pointed out it’s the engine that makes them ‘sports cars’.

I’m not sure the look has ever just been exclusive to the faster versions.

It’s like why do kids lower their shitty hatches, stick big noisy exhausts on and bling them up.

They did it in the olden days too. I give you the 1.6L Capri Laser – sporty, but as slow as ****!…

It’s not a sports car unless it has a Janspeed exhaust.

I had one on a mini that kept falling off. Most notably when been followed by a police car.

Specific outputs have shot up in recent years.

100bhp/litre is now fairly standard when in the 80’s that was supercar territory.

As an example a 2.9litre Sierra had 140bhp – I’ve got a 1.5 litre car that matches it for power and exceeds it on torque.

So, yes, tiny engines but actually reasonably fast compared with cars of yore

True outputs have gone up, what does your 1.5litre car weigh compared to the Sierra

The Ford Sierra was a bit pants power wise from memory, I had a Sapphire.

The reality is, most cars, spend most of there lives stationery, so it makes no difference if it goes fast, as long as it looks the part.

Marketing.  next.

“Back in the 80s different models had different looks L , GL, GLX GTS etc each manufacturer had its own branding”

Back in the 80’s my Dad bought a Vauxhall Cavalier LX (i think).  Basically the sports kit on a completely standard 1.6 car – spoiler on the back, stripe down the side, low profile alloy wheels (with stupid short tyre life) and recaro seats.

The wheels were smart, the seats comfy and it came in a really nice dark metallic blue.

I still can’t understand the need to make something Sporty when it’s clearly not.

Given that ‘racing’ is illegal on public roads and even the lowest powered bottom of the range model in the range is capable of exceeding the motorway speed limit, and given the number of road deaths and serious injuries each year I can’t understand why manufacturers are allowed to market cars in a way that encourages dangerous and illegal driving.

All that extra grip and superior handling that these ‘sports’ cars are meant to have, yet you frequently see them wrapped around street furniture. Anecdotally, more than you see cars that havent been **** up.  It’s really curious.

Endless gammon complaints about speeding cyclists racing on public roads (when what they’re seeing is a non-competitive club run) yet none about cars marketed as ‘racing’.

Er, why do designers design things to make them sell to the public. Dat is a weelly hard kweschun innit.

It’s a good question.

If designers need a topic of reference, then make a vehicle do what it should do in the most effective and efficient manner. Not sharpen 2b’s and protractor the gillingham out of it.

If Sporty design was taken out of the equation, and designers and manufacturers gave the public an effective efficient and drivable “thing” people would still buy cars.. people need cars and if effective and efficient designs were the only option people would go “oh, ok… Holly still needs to go to school, that looks easy to get in/out of and it does xx to the litre and the lights work and the seats are comfortable and it hardly makes a noise when driving on Britain’s pot holed gravel road network… I’ll buy one”

Take my money.

These A4/6 S-line back breakers are image vacuums, you instantly know who the driver is, how they vote in elections and what thier moral backbone consists of.

I suppose it’s designers way of ringfencing a section of the public that can be easily identified.

First and foremost, because that’s what consumers want.

Secondly, people who actually care about performance are a dying breed – in the 90s when I first started to drive, most Lads and some Women, but not many said to themselves “I’ve got £x, how fast can I go?” and maybe “how much insurance I can bare to pay”.

Mate of mine bought his Son a Swift Sport for his first car, If we’d been in his position at 17 we would have been giddy with excitement, a God amongst Men, well Boys, in School and probably had it on it’s roof inside a week – all he cared about was “does it have Bluetooth?”.

When we were Car shopping last year, most models don’t even list performance stats, PCP rate, Co2 and MPG are all consumers care about these days. Pick the one you like the look of, pick a colour you like (or just have a white one if you’re over stretching yourself a bit) and hope it does 80mpg.

And I don’t think it’s blind ignorance to the thrill of ‘making progress’ either, because unless you fancy a track day, or head out the countryside at 5am at make a nuisance of yourself when do you get to use your “0-60 in 4 secs”? Hypothetically when you’re comparing yourself to the stranger in the car next to you, that’s when.

Either it’s a sports car or it’s not !

Erm, binary-thinking FAIL?

Unless you can draw a line…at what? 0-60? bhp/ton? Is that just up to you? Do all non-sport cars have to have 4″ wide steel wheels, and all sports cars 8-12″ alloys and lo-pro tyres?

What a daft statement.

Image engineering.  You want a sportier look but can’t afford (or don’t want the running costs of) the halo model in the range.  Loads of manufacturers do it.

M-Sport

S-Line

AMG

ST-Line

R-Line

etc etc.

You get some truly daft cars as a result

318d M-Sport anyone – suspension to keep a dentist happy and 140bhp!

BMW used to be at least fairly honest with the exhausts.  You only got separate double exhausts on something with at least 6 cylinders.  Now you can spec your 320D with all the bling you like.

Don’t get me started on 4 cylinder hatchbacks with quad exhausts either

I had a car that actually had the word “Sport”on the back in shiny chrome letters.

It weighed the thick end of three tonnes and took about 12 seconds to reach 60 mph.

It looked like this…..

That’s still a sports car, right?

If Sporty design was taken out of the equation, and designers and manufacturers gave the public an effective efficient and drivable “thing” people would still buy cars.. people need cars and if effective and efficient designs were the only option people would go “oh, ok… Holly still needs to go to school, that looks easy to get in/out of and it does xx to the litre and the lights work and the seats are comfortable and it hardly makes a noise when driving on Britain’s pot holed gravel road network… I’ll buy one”

Take my money.

I’m thinking of buying a Dacia Duster as well. Oh, wait, you don’t own one?

Because if they didn’t we would all be driving cars like this

Specific outputs have shot up in recent years.

100bhp/litre is now fairly standard when in the 80’s that was supercar territory.

Honda was producing 100Bhp/litre engines in the 80s and outputs have only increased as manufacturers have learnt to use turbos to fudge emissions.
Sierra is a good shout; the turbo was 100Bhp/litre back in 1986.

I have a 4.2 V8 S4 and I only do about a 2000 miles a year

Buy a less shit car and you’ll want to drive it more. 🙂

so hardly causing trees to die.

It is still grotesquely unnecessary. You could have built two cars from the same materials.

Why are there cars on the road that can do in excess of twice the national speed limit?

Coz hot babes

L , GL, GLX GTS

I used to love some of the weird rationing of spec to justify the price gap between badges.

At the low end of the spectrum things like the original Fiat Panda were pretty lowly specced anyway. But at the bottom of the range they had no door on the glove box, at the top end you got a locking glove box. Below that one  you got  a glovebox door but no lock. My friend had one just above base spec model. It didn’t have the glove box door… but it did have the hinges

Why are there cars on the road that can do in excess of twice the national speed limit?

So people like me can drive at twice the limit.

There are plenty of laws out there that exist to protect the less functioning in society that can quite comfortably be ignored by the rest of us. Take drugs for example. 🙂

I used to love some of the weird rationing of spec to justify the price gap between badges.

*stares wistfully into the distance and remembers the smell of a vinyl roof on a hot summer day.

Even the “boggo” A4 se has 18” alloys

🤣

Pointless.

And.. here’s a thing, I’ve just been onto Audi’s website to find a pic of a boggo A4 basic model, no pics were there. What there was was some slider that allowed the user to “upgrade” without actually showing what the basic model looked like from the start of the process..

So I get the “aspiration” angle, but at least a pic of what the vehicle looks like from basic would be nice eh.. and not at all complicated.

Pointless.

By Increasing the diameter of a wheel instead of width, higher footprints can be achieved with less resistance.

Take drugs for example.

This chap obviously did.

All depends if you want your car to look nice (to you).  What is wrong with it looking good?

I am not interested in or need a high power car but I want to drive one that I like the look of.

I also ride a bike that I like the look of.  I play a guitar that I like the look of.  I live in a house that I like the look of.  I have pets that I like the look of.

The two capri pics the RS alloys look great, the Janspeed exhaust must have been fitted wrong as they were the dogs bollox back then and great if your tailpipe internal was creamy white colour not sooty, I canny believe vauxhall would give anyone other than John Cleland a recaro seat but i may be wrong and finally what does the s stand for with your Audi? I bet these 2000 miles are £1 / mile at least

By Increasing the diameter of a wheel instead of width, higher footprints can be achieved with less resistance.

What is the advantage of a “higher” [larger] footprint? Friction is determined by the coefficient of friction of the material:

The force due to friction is generally independent of the contact area between the two surfaces. This means that even if you have two heavy objects of the same mass, where one is half as long and twice as high as the other one, they still experience the same frictional force when you drag them over the ground. This makes sense, because if the area of contact doubles, you may think that you should get twice as much friction. But when you double the length of an object, you halve the force on each square centimeter, because less weight is above it to push down.

https://www.dummies.com/education/science/physics/how-surface-area-affects-the-force-of-friction

the fastest ‘crappy little fiat’ (abarth 695 biposto) does 0-60 in 5.7 seconds. Your S4 does it in 5.3. That’s not worlds apart

Sadly Vandem Plas must have died in the ’70 s, they made you feel regal with wood dash, a couple of badges and twin su carbs

and for for the record I have a 4.2 V8 S4

Suurrrffffmmaaa…….

L , GL, GLX GTS – I used to love some of the weird rationing of spec to justify the price gap between badges.

Me too – you knew where you stood with regard to your friends and neighbours and options lists were manageable. My dad used to have company cars and every couple of years we’d be up to our eyeballs in Vauxhall, Ford or VW brochures where every other page turn brought you a whole new wealth of plastic delight and otherwise blanked-out knobs, switches and dials! Happy days.

What is the advantage of a “higher” [larger] footprint?

Really?

Friction is determined by the coefficient of friction of the material:

You’re missing the forest for the trees, but how about maintaining footprint for lower resistance, if it makes you happy.

There are reasons why cars don’t run on inch wide tyres you know, despite your quoted physics. I could explain if you really needed me to but I do have a eulogy to write…