Future of Exotics in USA

That's a cool car. I hope they become successful.

 

Is "exotic kit-car" an oxymoron

Look at the Alfa Romeo TZ 1 and TZ 2's of the 60's basically Auto Delta kit cars. Lamborgini Countach construction quality is worse than some kit cars. Light weight composite frames and custom fiberglass or Kevlar bodies in small production runs with production motors will be the future. Very much the way Lotus is going. The cars with over 500 HP will be gone. Look at the Ariel Atom 0-60 2.6 Sec kind of hard to beat.

 

I have numerous articles from the late 1960s and early 1970s that say "drivers will never experience 400-plus horspower again" citing government regulation, rising fuel prices and insurance company profitability as the culprits.

Boy, they were wrong!

Innovation and technology always win. Horsepower wars go in cycles -- always have, always will.

60s were about horsepower, 70s about luxury (albeit in a gaudy big size and cushy seats=luxury kind of way), 80s about handling and technology, 90s got back to power. Look back and see similar trends in early automotive production in the teens, 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s.

 

Innovation is eternal. Unfortunately, governmental regulation overrules it way too often.

What is happening is that "exotics" will become politically incorrect to own or support. There will be fast cars in the future. They just won't be like what we drive today. Someday we may look back as the "O's" as the golden age. Can anyone believe that under government control the Corvette will have a bigger, faster and more thirsty engine than it has today? Highly unlikely.

Yes, there was a drastic drop in HP in the 70's that we eventually crawled out of. But, don't forget how low things were for so long in between. It was a sad day when Chevy had to make a Corvette "California" special that had all of 165 HP in 1975. The regulators in California certainly didn't care. In fact, I bet they cheered.

Let's hope we don't have to go through this again.

 

Well, the Hummer, some several years ago, had already become politically incorrect to drive, but there are still plenty of Hummers being sported around. I would say the only difference now is that you have a bit of polarization of support for/against the Hummer. You might see that with Exotics...while still having a large fan base who adore your car, it's possible to have it be less uncommon for haters to be more vocal about it.


Even without government control, would people really keep pushing for a bigger and thirstier engine than today? And even more power is only up until a certain threshold, in my opinion. I don't think cars, or even sports cars, in the conventional sense, would exceed 700-800 hp as it becomes quite overkill. Even without government control I think the natural tendency in the market in the mean time is to still continuously bump up the Corvette's power slightly, but emphasize on a better packaging to where fuel economy is not adversely affected/is positively affected, or something along that nature.

 

I've always been of the mindset that I'm married to the results, not the technology. When I was serving in director roles for corporations above product line and Web marketing teams, I would often respond to questions about "platform" or "software" or "technology" with: "I don't care if you use NT, UNIX, or a squirrel with electrodes on his head running on a treadmill -- just that the thing does what we need it to do and allows us to build reasonably for the future."

It reminds me of all the people who poo-pooed the C5 Corvette when it appeared in 1997 (and with current Vettes, as well), because it has an "old technology pushrod engine". My C5 does 0-60 in 4.6, pulls .93gs and gets 35 highway mpg (top up, lights off)...at the time, there wasn't a single car that could touch those in terms of combined average. Technology for technology's sake is worthless. (By the way, dual overhead cam engines are also over 100 years old, as are those with hemispherical combustion chambers.)

So I personally don't care what I put in my car to power it, provided it isn't a larger hassle than lining up at the gas station. As long as the sports cars still provide acceleration, handling, comfort, refinement, relative useful life -- I don't care what's under the hood.

And as a former marketing person, I can state with authority: one day's "out of style" always returns to style. Trends are fleeting.

As an automotive journalist, one can blame the length of development for better cars in the 1970s on Ford and GM's profitability during those years, and thus a systematic approach to not putting good technology into production due to short-term lower profit margins. They always used the path of least resistance/lowest cost, which often caused great problems.