Sports Cars
A British definition of a sports car from around 1910 was anything that a gentleman could not enter without stooping or removing his hat. By the ´30s it was considered to be a fast, handsome two-seater. In the ´60s, an American journalist came up with the tongue-in-cheek description of any car in which the seats could be folder flat to make a double bed.
While none of these efforts move us toward any formal definition, that last ironic one gets us closest.
Sports car should always be fun, individual, good-looking, fast, charismatic, but above all else, hugely emotional. We love them because they´re a welcome antidote to workaday family sedans.
To really understand what a sports car is, though, we have go back to the ´20s and ´30s. Bugattis, Bentleys, and Alfa Romeos were street-legal versions of Grand Prix racers. They brought the sport of competition to ordinary owners. Carmakers soon realized that by making road cars look like thinly veiled racers they could tap into a world of glamor and speed. The divine Bugatti Type 35 was a road car you race on the weekend, as were the monster Bentleys of the ´30s.
Race-winning performance and grand Prix looks became very marketable commodities, which made well-heeled owners seem rugged, exciting, and very desirable. Soon the entire auto industry realized that racing actually sold cars, and manufacturers spent mountains of cash supporting race teams. And they didn´t always need to win. For the public just to see something screaming around a circuit that vaguely looked like the car they could buy from the showroom was enough. The sporting connection brought a halo of association to street-legal sports car, and starry-eyed enthusiasts bought them with grateful enthusiasm.
And the simple principle of buying something that looked like a racer was how the reputations of icons like the BMW 328 and Jaguar C-Type were born. Both were hugely successful in competition, and both could be bought straight off the showroom floor.
The Early Sports Years
Through the Thirties the sports car was always a stern, uncompromising device. Weather protection was minimal, gearboxes hard to master, and ride quality washboard-hard.
The sports car´s close connection with motorsport made it less than user-friendly. Times, though, were changing and few customers actually wanted a car that could be realistically entered in serious competition; the pressure was on to create a more specialized, less unyielding machine.
And the most significant wind of change blew from Germany , where a svelte, silky, confection with soft suspension, tubular chassis, and a small engine of amazing efficiency dramatically altered the whole course of the type´s development. The 1936 BMW 328 was a complete revelation, offering customers a poise, balance, and lightness of controls previously unheard of. But not only was the 328 astonishingly sweet to drive, it notched up a hugely convincing victory in the 1940 Mille Miglia, instantly setting the stage for a complete revaluation of sports car design.
After the cessation of World War II, two British car companies effectively reinvented the sports car. One was MG and the other Jaguar. The MG TC of 1945 may looked prewar with its separate mudguards and spindly spoked wheels, but an enlarged cockpit, 1250cc engine, decent top, lights, and brakes made it disarmingly easy to drive. So much so that even American GIs, used to the labor-saving devices of transatlantic iron, bought TCs in droves. Car-starved Britain beat a path to the doors of the MG company not because the TC was a miracle of modern automotive packaging, but because it cost so little and drove so easily.
Jaguar, on the other hand, went several steps further, creating the first truly modern sports car, which was not only phenomenally cheap, but also sensationally fast and incredibly handsome. The XK120 of 1949 had sweeping enclosed bodywork, a comfortable cabin, useable trunk, easy controls, and a glorious twin-cam engine that would run for years.
The Moss gearbox was a bit crunchy, the drum brakes prone to fade, and the steering wheel still looked like it belonged on the bridge of a paddle steamer, but here was a sports car that wasn´t just beautiful, but beautifully accessible too.
Instantly the sports car was no longer the preserve of the rich and physically fit but a hugely powerful consumer durable that magically conveyed youth on maturity and maturity on youth.
The Classic Years
The Fifties was the sports car´s most fertile decade. The two-seat roadster had become a suburban trinket, a toy even, and almost completely divorced from the brutal, rough-riding competition machine of 20 years earlier. A new set of parameters dictated that sports cars didn´t only have to be convertibles, they could be hardtops too. A modern-looking aerodynamic body was a must, along with accommodation for two in real comfort (and even space for two little ones in relative discomfort). Room for a suitcase or two was also essential, plus niceties like heaters, wind-down windows, and map-reading lights. Performance-wise, 100 mph ( 161 km/h ) became the speed benchmark, and anything much faster was considered frighteningly modern.
Although the Porsche 356 of 1950 could only manage 85mph ( 137 km/h ), its wind-evading shape, spacious cabin, and rewarding road responses established it as a breed apart. The Svelte MGA of 1955 may have looked more rakish, but the little Porsche brought a new imperative to the sports car genre: engineering excellence. The two-seater could now be technically audacious, rewarding its lucky owner with the tactile bounty of controls that talked to you. The average driver could now tear through corners, play tunes on his gearbox, and practice fishtails safely. The sports car had become fun.
Then in 1954 the new sports car rulebook was torn to shreds. The incredibly avant-garde Mercedes 300SL was a vision of the future. The first true postwar supercar, it could hit 150mph, had a multitubular space frame body, peerless aerodynamic credentials, fuel injection, and, if you bought the coupe rather than the roadster, those glorious gullwing doors. Nobody cared that it cost more than Jaguar XK140s –the 300SL was so modern it made you want to burst out cheering.
But those who coudn´t afford the stratospheric price tag of the Mercedes were still happy to scorch around in a cornucopia of ´50s rockets. Cars like the AC Ace, Jag XKs, Lotus Elite, Alfa Spiders, and Triumph TRs offered daring looks and creditable performance yet didn´t cost the world. Most were reasonably reliable, simple to drive, and easy to own.
The sports car was maturing nicely and generating plenty of profit for its markets. MG made million dollars from its MGA, and every European auto mogul was desperate to carve a niche in what was becoming the most lucrative market, the US , where 80 percent of all sports cars were sold.
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