- 6,041
- Puget Sound
- Crash852
Yep, that's more or less the unfortunate part for me.
Tech is advancing so quickly that we get a mega-super-hyper-car every two or three months. A crazy hypercar used to be something to marvel at, and we seldom got one, so it was big deal - occasionally for two or three years. Now, bizarrely the hypercar market seems flooded. So rather than being car mag pin-ups, they're just eliciting an "oh another one" from me. Which is a shame. The top tier of any hobby or interest should still be...of interest to the people who can't afford them.
A watch collector should still be fascinated by and enjoy a million dollar watch they're never going to own. As a car enthusiast I should still find something of interest in a hypercar. It should still stir me.
The rapid pace of exceedingly quick and ridiculous cars is so consistent now that it's lost that impact on me. All-electric even more. It guarantees we don't have to wait around for "first sound and firing up of _______" videos. It means there's nothing pretty, chrome, polished, gorgeous under the hood to look at. There's nothing interesting to even talk about power-plant wise beyond efficiency numbers and pure output. Electric cars are fine, but emotionally stirring? Not so much. An electric car will never have an incredible unique exhaust noise, etc. The kind of stuff you talk about for decades after the car's release. It'll be another electro-whining vehicle with face-melting performance.
This kind of thing just leaves me a little cold. If you want to get me impressed or intrigued, I find stuff like the Singer Porsches to be immensely more interesting or stirring to my soul
The top echelon of performance cars have always waxed and waned along with the wider macroeconomic situation. We are in the midst (tail end, IMO) of an economic boom, and supercars, hypercars, and record classic car prices are very prominent examples of ongoing asset bubbles. This period isn't the first time where you have that top level of cars coming out from left and right. Look at the economic booms heading into the late 80s and then the following one as the computer revolution reached mainstream in the mid-90s. There were tons of cars coming out that was supposed to compete at that top level. We all remember Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959 in the 80s, and McLaren F1 in the 90s. What about Jaguar XJ220? Bugatti EB110? Cizeta-Moroder? Vector? Others?
We will always remember the seminal, landmark cars, while those that made less of an impact will be forgotten. That is true now as it was in the past. We'll talk about the first supercar to get sub-3 seconds 0-60 (like we talk about first supercar to exceed 200 mph), or the first to successfully implement a hybrid powertrain, or whatever other firsts and superlatives. I suspect that in 30 years time, assuming internal combustion engine cars are still a thing, we'll look back at this period with fondness for just the amount of performance sold, and pick out a couple highlight supercars/hypercars of today that stand the test of time to revere.
