Lambo's New $1.4mil Supercar - Page 5

Disagree. That post showed major league stones.

Mohammed al-Fayed memorably once said -- and I paraphrase for the virgeens in our audience -- that it is possible to have large stones but a small henge.

I kind of agree... I love cars, but at a certain point it's sort of sickening. I can picture spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-200k if I had the dough and of course classic cars are a different story. Stuff like this just makes me think some people have more money than sense (or class).

The rear looks like ET's face!

Shaved?

Jon.

That's it, I'm outta this thread. You can write to me care of JRR, the Interchange, Ask Andy, 90210.

Just like the terms "supermodel" or "diva" in pop music usage, I think "supercar" has been diluted to the point of meaninglessness. It used to mean a car that was on the edge of performance and design requiring some hair on your chest to drive. Nowadays, it just looks like designs ripped off from famous old cars with the biggest engine they could stuff into it --- there is no personality or vision anymore.

The last real supercar was the McLaren F1. The others since have just been the same variations on the same theme. The Honda Fit is more interesting than all the supercars sold today put together.

--Andre

I beg to differ. The Enzo was technologically groundbreaking and an awesome performer. It's telling that the design was so forward-looking that it pissed off all the Ferrari traditionalists. It's ugly until you appreciate why it was made that way--to me, that's pretty meaningful.

The Enzo stretches certain dimensions of a car's envelope to new levels, but that's not really very different from things like the Veyron or homologation specials like the 911 GT3 RS-R or the M3 GTR, and it's not terribly imaginative in terms of design.

The McLaren F1 on the other hand introduces new dimensions for a supercar's envelope, and does things that weren't expected for a supercar: everyday livability and practicality. Gordon Murray wanted a car that a couple could drive from England to the French Riviera for a getaway while still retaining traditional supercar performance. That was pretty inconceivable for any supercar before.

The F1 also put the driver in the right spot for a high performance car. No production car since has done that. The F1 also managed to make it practical with its 1+2 seating config.

The F1 also had a design purity missing from almost every supercar today in that its design axioms were carried literally to every nut and bolt of the car. That's how you avoid creating a 3200-lbs F430 while trying to label it a supercar. With that weight, the 430 can hardly be called a sportscar, much less a supercar.

As a testament to how deep its engineering and design purity was, the F1 won Le Mans the first time it was entered, even though it was never designed to race. It set several speed and acceleration records, even though its design brief just set power-to-weight ratios, and not any particular speed targets. It took something like a Veyron to finally eclipse the F1 in top speed, and the Veyron was basically built just to do that, albeit in a clumsy, ugly way.

The bar for "super" was set back in 1995, and no one's moved it since. The supercars we have today for the most part are just faster, perhaps more reliable versions of the same cars you could get before the F1.

--Andre

Gordon Murray's tribute to one of the truly great supercars, the Honda/Acura NSX:

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dggtsppm_6cgtnscht

Some F1 info in there, too, but the most telling observation about the NSX:

"The philosophy of creating a car for human beings is apparent throughout."

--Andre

Ya, the F1 was awesome. I'm not so in to cars anymore, but I remember reading about it when it first came out. They really thought about every aspect of the car. And the 1+2 seating was an awesome idea. If I could have my pick of cars, it would still be the McLaren.

Gordon Murray had been dreaming of the 2+1 configuration since he was in school. The F1 was on the drawing board (well, at least on the mental drawing board) for over 20 years, thus every aspect of its design was thought, and rethought, again and again.

Jon.

He said he doodled it while in high school or thereabouts. There may even be pictures of his notebooks from back then in the F1 book.

--Andre