This. My friends and I went to the 1st USGP at Indy (yes, I know - V10s). Completely last minute, we drove from the DC area, had to stay 100 miles from the track. As we walked up to the stadium and heard the cars for the first time I said “that was worth the whole trip”.

Not for me. On a street driven car, sound makes a big difference. I can enjoy sound all the time. Awesome handling and acceleration are great for about 5% of the time, unused the other 95%. A proper exhaust on a V8 Ferrari makes traffic jams tolerable.

Have you ever read corner-carvers.com? Small but with a number of industry engineers. The designer I mentioned, an OEM calibrator, several guys in the aftermarket suspension business. Not a lot of traffic but it can be very interesting.

I wish I had a better answer but that doesn’t make my point any less true. For any given car, automakers are now incentivized to make it *just* a bit larger if they can do so. In the near term, a wider track might do it. Longer term, as new platforms are developed, they’ll be stretching wheelbases as much as…

Oops. That’s a very good point.

No, it’s per manufacturer.

I can’t believe they thought track * wheelbase was a good plan. Expect some oddly proportioned cars going forward as everyone struggles to sneak into the next lower tier.

Tesla will be finished with the tax credit program by the time the 3 is released. It phases out at 200,000 cars.

It is. You may not. :)

I’m afraid you may have missed the boat on those. I’ve seen asking prices over 200k for clean looking 550s!

This, exactly. I suppose it pencils out compared to buying a brand new corvette and eating depreciation but only barely.

And 550s, Challenge Stradales, 6MT 430s, etc. Even my lowly 6mt 360 appears to be worth more than I paid for it 5+ years ago. Whether it lasts or not, I have no idea (probably not).

Ugh, now you’re giving me flashbacks. My ‘87 turboesprit was K-jet. What a lash-up! A million relays and I think the ECU was an abacus in a box.

Car&Driver had a comparison test back in ‘95 - your quote may have actually come from that article. The Lotus Esprit S4s came in last and finished the test sans 2nd gear, exactly the same condition my own S4s was when i bought it in ‘00. :) It was still a whole lot of fun.

I love me some 4 cylinder Esprit (I’ve had two) but he really overstates the construction techniques. The bare body is a wet noodle and it’s just bolted to the chassis, which provides 90% of the rigidity. Nothing fancy going on there. I seem to recall that the car had a torsional rigidity about 1/2 of a BMW E46 convert…

There’s a lot of room to go with the 4 cylinder Esprit engines though. The block is really stout. The last version, the S4s, had 300hp. 350 is not a big deal.

It’s been a while but I think the inner fenders were modified for bigger wheels and tires at one point. An early Stevens Esprit might not be able to fit the V8 wheel/tire package at a lower ride height.

Your cellphone is powered by COAL!

Sure it makes a difference, but a negligible one. Electrical loads increase the load on the alternator and require more fuel. A reasonable power requirement for a car at highway speeds is 20hp. That’s 15,0000 watts. Plug in your phone and you now require 15,000 + (4.5 / efficiency of the alternator) watts to maintain…

I know he’s 2 cars on (or three?) but Doug managed to sell his gated transmission 360 moments before the prices started going up. IIRC, he sold in the mid-70s and similar cars seem to be getting >100k now.