Cars And Motorcycles: Sports cars

Showing posts with label Sports cars. Show all posts

New cool Best Sports Cars for Under £30000

But proper sports cars are super expensive, right? Not necessarily. Confused.com has found a selection of sporty gems that will give you a buzz without leaving a hole in your wallet.

Best for seat-of-your-pants thrills - Caterham 7

OK, so there’s a little bit of cheating involved here. The Caterham 7 is the definitive, stripped-down sports car, in more ways than one: it has the bare essentials, some models don’t even have a windscreen, but the upshot is you get spectacular performance and handling for a relatively modest outlay.

The snag is, unless you pay extra, you have to build it yourself. But with the cheapest versions starting at £17k, you won’t find more fun for your cash anywhere else.

Best for everyday use – Ford Focus ST

Don’t be fooled by the familiar body shape, the Ford Focus ST is a real wolf in sheep’s clothing. The standard Focus is already a hoot to drive, but add some serious power, racy underpinnings and steroid injections to the bodywork and you have a proper performance machine.

Thankfully, this hot hatch has lost none of its charm and everyday usability in the transformation, with a five door option available, as well as a big boot and comfy cabin. All this for a car that tops out at around £22k.

And hot hatches don’t have to cost silly money to insure either. Why not compare car insurance quotes to see what a Ford Focus ST will cost you to cover – you may be surprised.

Best for top-down poseurs – Mazda MX-5

Calling the MX-5 a poseur’s car is a bit unfair. From the outside it has all the right ingredients: long bonnet, pert little rump, folding roof and just the two seats, so it’s a hit with those who want to look the part. But the truth is the MX-5 is also a real driver’s car.

It has a sharp rear-wheel drive chassis, a choice of keen petrol engines, and is undemanding behind the wheel. Cynics might say it’s a carbon-copy of a certain British roadster, but the truth is that the MGB was never this good.

The MX-5 range starts at £15,420.

Best for tight budgets and tight parking spaces – Fiat 500 Abarth

This little rocketship is a triumph in compact style and performance, and is expected to cost under £14k when it’s released in spring 2009.

You’ll need to be quick though as this could well be hit of the year. The standard 500 is already a pleasure to look at and to drive, but the Abarth version adds a mean streak and some serious punch.

It outshines the Mini Cooper for style and should cost about the same, so get ahead of the fashionistas and go Italian. The Abarth is expected to fall into car insurance tax band D.

Best of British – Lotus Elise

The little Norfolk car maker has been plugging away for years producing some of the best sports cars at any price, and the current Elise is arguably their best yet.

The combination of light weight, sparkling engines and some of the best chassis engineers in the world means you, the lucky driver, gets to savour a car that simply loves bends, looks fantastic and is exhilarating to drive.

Even better, the entry-level S model nips in at £24k – bargain basement for a pint-sized supercar. The top-spec SC model is head-bangingly fast but just creeps over our £30k barrier.

The lightweight approach also pays off at the pumps – despite the performance, the Elise S can still do 34mpg, which is cheap motoring by sports car standards.

How To Name A Successful Sports Car Company

Recently we’ve come to hear of a new supercar from Holland called the Zenvo ST1. Zenvo, being the name of the manufacturer and ST1, the name or model designation of the car. Now whilst the car looks good and will go into production soon I have a nagging feeling that it may not.

This is due to the fact that it has a very normal name aside from the fact that it is entering a market that is filled with names like Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin, Bentley and newer successful upstarts like Pagani, Koenigsegg, Spyker as well as not so successful ones like Keating, Farboud, Farbio and Arash. The latter three were started by one person who seems to be able to start one concept sportscar after another, which in itself is an epic story altogether.

Now this has got me thinking. Not enough to have lost any sleep or lost my appetite, but enough to get this written down. I have surmised that it isn’t only about pedigree or heritage that would make a sportscar company successful but the name of the sports car itself.

Let’s not put cars with tons of heritage like those from Ferrari (above), Porsche or Aston Martin. These car companies are institutions and icons. People would just buy any new one that comes along without even blinking. These companies can even come up with a car designated FXX-9325@Napoli or 911 GT3 UB40 and people will sing with joy.

It’s these newcomers that have a hard time trying to establish themselves. Notice that if you named it wrong, things may never get off the ground. Take for example the Keating TKR (pictured above). It was actually called the Barabus TKR prior to 2008. With a name like Barabus it may as well be called the ‘TKO’ for all I care as people may think its a copy of a BRABUS. Then now its called a Keating. Which isn’t something that conjures up images of power, speed and glory in the first place. It does conjure up images of Ronan Keating singing a nice love ballad though.

The other cars that come to mind are the Farbouds, Farbios and Arashes. It needs a stronger name and a stronger model number. You need to ensure that the image the name and model portrays are of epic proportions. If you name a car Farboud GTS some people may think that its a lawnmower. If you do not have heritage to back up that name then it is hard using just a GTS moniker.

And that is why you have Pagani. Somehow Pagani got it so right with the Zonda. They’ve got it so right with the Zonda that there is only one model that Pagani manufactures (with different editions). Everyone with money would want one. It doesn’t even build its own engines. It lets AMG make one for them. All the better, as they’ve got one of the most aural of all V12s (bar some Ferraris and Lamborghinis) in the universe. So Pagani designs the most outrageous supercar it can and come up with a name that is so right for it; Zonda. How right it sounds when you say it. Zonda.

Of course you may argue that Koenigsegg’s supercar is called the CCX and CCX are just some initials. But think about it, with a name like Koenigsegg how can you lose? It sounds so unreal. So different from everything out there in the English speaking world that it works. It is long enough to sound great and strong. If it were just SEGG or something like that it would fall into the same category as IKEA, which is nice sounding, but cute, and somehow sounds homely for some strange reason. So an IKEA XYZ would never work. Of course, even Koenigsegg have started naming their cars as their latest one is called the Agera. So what I am theorizing may be absolutely correct.

Another fine example of a sports car that has a nice company name is the Wiessman. It only uses MF5 as its model name and it works. Why? Wiessman sounds so German, maybe because it is. It sounds so evil, so much like Dr No in James Bond. Sounding evil is good. Like being bad is good. If you know what I mean.

This is also why there is not much interest in Tesla. While it does relate to something electrical and is a person’s name, it isn’t that strong a name.

So a startup sports car company must find a proper name. A name so epic and strong that everyone would stop what they’re doing and go buy one. This is why I think having a name like the recently unveiled Argentine manufactured Rossin-Bertin Vorax (pictured below) would work so well for a supersports car. Having a double barrelled surname like Rossin-Bertin or something like Bonham Carter or Rhys-Davis makes a name sound so distinguished. And when you combine it with an aggressive sounding word (that may not have any meaning) like ‘Vorax’ it gets better. The sports car could be a success regardless from the fact that it comes from Argentina for that matter.

You get some kind of heritage in a distinguished name and the added aggression from a word that somehow instills power and strength. Imagine a company called Vaughn-Williams-Montague naming their V14 (yes, a large bespoke engine with a rare cylinder count would also make people buy the upstart sports car) engined Grand Tourer the Vaughn-Williams-Montague Shotgun Aggressor 10000RRR (the bigger the number the better – and it always works with more than one ‘R’). The upstart sports car company should name the company and car as such even if it is owned by a Pete Butterscotch of Essex, England.

Instant heritage I say. Instant heritage.

How To Name A Successful Sports Car Company

This is also why there is not much interest in Tesla. While it does relate to something electrical and is a person’s name, it isn’t that strong a name.

New Gillet Vertigo.5 Spirit – The Ultimate Lightweight Sports Car

Whilst major manufacturers like Ferrari and Lamborghini are slowly inching their way from supercars weighing a portly 1450kg (3100lbs) or so to a target weight of around 1,000kg (2200kg), small volume manufacturers are already manufacturing sub 1000kg sports cars. One such manufacturer is Gillet.

Gillet is the brainchild of Tony Gillet, a Belgian racing driver who was famous for winning the Belgian hill climb championship for several years and had also competed in the Paris-Dakar Rally. He started off as the official importer of the Dutch made Lotus Super 7 derived Donkervoort and has branched off into car manufacturing with the Gillet Vertigo series of sports car. What started production in 1993 (the original Vertigo pictured above) has now evolved into the current Vertigo 5 Spirit.

The Spirit in race form has competed in the FIA GT Championships for the last few years and the road-going car is derived from it. It is one unique sports car in which it is powered by the Ferrari derived 4.2-litre V8 Maserati engine that is used in the Maserati GranTurismo. How many cars have you read about that uses this fabulously aural engine aside from Maserati? None. And this makes it a really good thing, making the Spirit something special.

The Spirit gets the dry sumped engine that makes 420bhp running through a sequential 6 speed gearbox driving the rear wheels. Now these days 420bhp isn’t as much as an Audi RS5 making 444bhp. Ferraris like the 458 Italia makes 560bhp and even 4 door sedans like the S65 AMG make that many horses too. But the magic in this small automobile manufacturing company is in its weight, or lack of it. The Spirit weighs 950kg, about the weight of a Daihatsu Sirion supermini. The car gets it lightweightness from its small size (wheelbase is only 2340mm) and its liberal usage of Nomex/Carbon Fibre in its monocoque shell.

This would also mean that it already has a power to weight ratio of 424bhp/(metric)ton. This is more than the 413bhp/ton that the 458 Italia makes. And we know that the Ferrari Mille Chille (1000) is just a concept car made in 2007 with no sign of it making an appearance soon. Lamborghini have also previewed their Sesto Elemento concept car at Paris recently, a 1000kg Gallardo concept car that may make production in the near future. But it is still a car of the future. Not now, like the Spirit. But I’d say the biggest culprit on not wanting to ‘lighten up’ is Lotus. Their future competitor against Ferrari and Lamborghini, the Esprit will purportedly weigh 1490kg. The Spirit is proof that you can keep things light right now in the present, and not the future. Price isn’t such an issue too, as a Spirit would set you back by about 130,000Euros. A 458 Italia would be closer to 175,000Euros.

The rest of the car could still be based on the Super 7 concept but with a fully enclosed cabin, fenders and scissor type doors. Notice the short overhangs and posture of the Spirit. Then notice the Maserati-esque vents (like on the Maserati GranTurismo) at each side after the front wheel arches. A nod to the engine supplier.

The car has a suspension and brakes setup like most race bred cars; double wishbones pushrod style with tuned absorbers and springs up front. The rear is also fully independent with double wishbones too. The brakes are AP Racing 4pot calipers up front running 330mm ventilated discs, the rears run AP Racings with 300mm ventilated discs. The polished multi-spoked alloy rims are 19inches in diameter running 225/35/ZR19 up front and 275/35ZR19 at the rear.

With the specification that reads like a motorhead’s dream, the Spirit seems to meet the criteria of a fabulous performance car. One that would be an interesting and engaging drive. The only drawbacks that I can see from the car’s design is that the plain looking cabin betrays its Lotus Super 7 heritage by looking very kit car like, even with leather and suede plastered everywhere and that it looks ultra cozy. Too cozy for some fat people (the writer of this article included). That really thick door sill and tight bucket seat may be a challenge for most weight challenged people. Maybe in order to run a sub-1000kg car you should be as svelte as the car. Who knows.

One other item noticed is the lack of airbags. The thing about the EU is that the regulation as regards safety features somehow allows for small or low volume manufacturers to forgo certain items that must be featured even in the smallest cars. Of course such a car may not be sold in countries where the laws regarding vehicle safety are tighter. I suppose sometimes you can only find purity in cars like this. Safety takes a back seat to pure driving pleasure. The excuse that you could give for not having any airbags is that airbags are only necessary when you crash so make sure you don’t, especially in the Spirit. Quite simple reasoning.

So you want one? It may not have lots of heritage, but it does have lots of racing pedigree. It also has Sony Playstation exposure too. You can drive the Vertigo in most versions of Gran Turismo 4 and the Spirit is hinted by Gillet themselves to be one of the cars featured in the upcoming but the forever delayed Gran Turismo 5. At least you don’t have to worry about fitting yourself in one if it’s in game form.