How to phrase this without sounding absurdly ungrateful and possibly clinically insane? I should just say it: I’m completely over hypercars. They’re amazing, spectacular, and highly varied. Mostly huge fun to drive, too. But for the love of God, can’t we just get some normal performance cars for normal people?
Poor me, right? I can hear the violins. I get it. Working for Top Gear is a massively privileged position, and you could say that life lately has been extraordinarily wonderful. In the past nine months or so, I’ve driven the Ferrari F80, the Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution Evo, the Merc-AMG One, the Aston Martin Valkyrie and Valhalla, the Ferrari Testarossa, the Lamborghini Revuelto, the Pagani Utopia Roadster, and the McLaren W1.
It’s been amazing fun. The intensity of the F80 is hard to describe and left an indelible memory. The Valkyrie is deeply flawed, but reaches peaks that nothing else can quite touch. The AMG One seems overly complex and a bit outgunned, but is actually raw, slightly weird, and endlessly fascinating.
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The W1 captures the trademark McLaren feeling of lightweight agility but adds even greater precision, aero performance, and has the world’s most explosive rocket stuffed up its backside. And the Pagani is just deeply wonderful on every level.
So why the fatigue? Well, it doesn’t seem that long ago that just one of these cars entering our orbit every few years would have been a special event. A moment to savor, filled with exciting new technologies to pore over; game-changing performance to imagine and acting as a new North Star to lead the way for sports cars and supercars to follow.
In between, there would be dozens of hot hatches, a good handful of new sports cars, and cool and intriguing new variants of existing models to enjoy. But now? The hypercars come by the dozen, while hot hatches dwindle to nothing and affordable sports car launches have basically disappeared save for a once-a-decade Mazda MX-5 replacement.
So, if the super rich are falling over themselves to buy highly focused and outrageously capable hypercars, why is the wider market completely blind and deaf to the appeal of something that isn’t a lifted hatchback that looks exactly like the neighbor’s lifted hatchback?
Except...it isn’t. Just look at the evidence. Toyota GR86: Sold out in about 12 minutes. Civic Type R: Ditto, and now with fantastic residuals. Alpine A110: Slow burn at first, but gained notably over time and commands strong money on the used market. Plus, the MX-5 continues to perform strongly. Not to mention the GR Yaris.
Now, these are cars with relatively small sales figures, but they suggest that the appetite is there and that it’s voracious if you get the product right. Basically, if you launch a really good hot hatch or sports car, it’ll be a smash hit and do your brand the world of good.
So, maybe it’s time for other manufacturers to show some imagination, join the likes of Toyota (bravo, by the way) and build affordable cars that are actually fun again. At the very least, it’ll give us poor Top Gear contributors a break from driving £2 million hypercars in gorgeous locations with no care for the fuel or tyres being burned up. Which will be a relief. I think.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
