Get your own Free Home PageOK this is a document that I made up some years ago that illustrates my thinking at the time. I hasten to point out that I have changed my mind about some matters ie.
And in other areas I have been forced to change my mind because of outside events.
So please read the document for what it is, idle speculation from the early 1990s.
What is a "Sports Car"? By definition it was a car used for sport, ie. a car that can be used for motor sport or racing. This definition is now out of date. Current leading edge racing cars cover a wide variety of types, from the F1 cars that cost $10 M per car, through Group C racers to Paris-Dakar type Group B rally rockets, and going off the deep end to nitromethonal powered dragsters.
No-one seriously expects to take a F1 car onto a public road. On the other hand I have these fingers, no wait, on the other hand there are definitely detuned versions of Group C (XJ220 Jaguars, 962 Porsches) and Group B (959 Porsches, Lancia Delta Turbos) that are sold for public use. And while no-one drives top-fuel dragsters about, a number of people build, or attempt to build top-fuel funnycars (the next fastest type of dragster) and drive, or attempt to drive them around.
While both a street legal Group C racer or a Group B Rally Car would be fabulous beasts to own, they are far too expensive to make in any kind of cheap way. So we must abandon the heady realms of top level competition and re-examine what we, as adrenalin crazed mental adolescents desire from our motorised transport.
1. Speed. Speed can be divided into two areas; the actual top speed of the vehicle given a long, flat, dry, straight road with no police, and the acceleration of the vehicle.
The top speed of any vehicle that can do more than 200 km/h (eg. a Falcon GL Stationwagon automatic) is purely academic in Australia. But it is vitally important to be able to say "Oh the speedo only goes to 350 but that's O.K. because you can watch the tacho and do the calculations in your head." So what you really want is a car that looks like it can do a substantial mach number, and that can in reality do at least 200 km/h.
Acceleration is far more important. Although there are many accepted measures of acceleration, the ones that I consider to be important in Australia are, in decreasing order of vitalness: 0-60 km/h; 80-140; 60-100.
0-60 is what everyone sees when you're driving around town (ie where you will probably be 90% of the time) and you have stopped for some reason and now have to speed up again. 80-140 is what you use for the highway, when you are stuck behind some droid in a brown kombi van with My Other Car is a Volvo bumper stickers and so you are forced to plant the heel to the steel and zap past her in the time between the regularly spaced Mack trucks that are coming the other way. In a true performance car this will actually involve 80-160 or even 80-180 km/h. 60-100 is used when you are going from the former situation to the later situation.
2. Sex appeal. The vehicle has to look great, not just to you, but also to those you are trying to impress. Unfortunately this area is entirely subjective, and logical analysis is no help whatsoever.
I can however lay down some ground rules for people who have similar tastes to myself.
a) The vehicle should be aerodynamic. The Lotus 7 is functionally a superior sports car but it's appearance leads you to wonder if it can reach the speed limit. As stated in the section on top speed, the vehicle must look as though the top speed will cause you to age at a different rate from the rest of humanity. Since the 1960s this has required the extensive use of aerodynamic styling. However, every few years the fashionable concept of what aerodynamic styling actually is changes, so one is presented with a vast range of styling types and body shapes to choose your ideal morphology from.
b) The vehicle should appear close to the ground, with a wide stance that seems to grip the earth. Note use of the word appear. It doesn't have to be that shape, it just needs to look that way. I can't think of any examples for height, but any look at a modern 911 will show a vehicle that looks wide but in reality is quite narrow.
c) The vehicle should appear to have two doors. This is just because we are conditioned to think of two doors as sporty. This is not a hard and fast rule. There are dozens of examples of sedans that are most righteous sports cars. d) It must be the right colour. A simple comparison of 2 1993 TX5 V6's sitting side by side showed that the black one was lowerset, more streamlined, had a more aggressive grill and looked allround like a sports car, whereas the grey example, which on close inspection was absolutely identical in all respects except colour was just another Japanese 5 door sedan.
The choice of colour is not difficult. Everything looks good as a glossy black. All Italian cars except Lambos are to be red. All English cars are to be British Racing Green. German cars, and Lamborghinis, (which genetically are Czechoslovakian) can be silver, dark grey or black, with the darker colours being the sportiest. A deep blue can sometimes work too, but not always. There is also the approach recently developed by Ruf for its Porsche based supercars, ie if the car looks sufficiently hot in its basic shape, paint it a MATT military style olive. The shear unusualness of a matt finish will attract attention, and people assume that if you care so little for the appearance as to paint it that way then you are not using the car for appearance. What then? Well it is obviously for speed so it is assumed that this is a one of a kind experimental racer or something.(N.B. It must not look as though it has just faded from a previous glossy finish.) This colour has another huge advantage, it is far cheaper to apply and scratches and nicks are repaired in seconds. It is also far less likely to receive scratches and nicks, at least not those of the "jealous peasant" variety.
3. Handling. It is axiomatic that the sports car should have better handling than anything else you are likely to be on the same mountain road as. The definition of handling is a fair bit trickier. I prefer the practical concept of how fast you can happily take a given corner. Happily is an important requirement, there are often cases of car A being ultimately faster around the corner than car B, but car A is shuddering, lurching and generally scaring the life out of its driver while car B is smooth, gentle and the driver knows exactly what is going to happen. Obviously car B will be faster in any normal situation, because the driver is prepared to drive at a higher speed, and by my definition has better handling.
Then we have the reaction of the vehicle to a rough surface. In many places that are suitable for high speed driving (no cops) the roads are terrible. In such situations one can find that a HQ Holden can out run a BMW because the softer suspension allows the HQ to smoothly glide over surfaces that would have the BMW shuddering and lurching. The above is changed by the addition of tight corners however, the BMW will shudder and lurch around the corners while the HQ will smoothly glide off the road and into a tree. Of course the HQ may still stay ahead because the fact that replacing the entire car is cheaper than the BMW's headlights makes the driver a lot braver.
4. Accommodation. This is once again a matter of personal taste, but the general rule is that you can never have too much space. On the other hand, a lot of people prefer a car that looks as though it is as cramped and impractical as possible. So ideally you have a car that looks as though it would only fit 2 small people and no luggage, but can really pack in as much as a long wheelbased landcruiser.
There are some basic levels of accommodation that really are necessary (though not always present in available sports cars).
a) Seating for 2 people; 2 large people. Not sumo wrestlers, but you should be able to fit in while wearing a thick coat and not have to be below, say, 195 cm and 100 kg.
b) Luggage space able to take 2 suitcases and 2 cabin bags. Ideally you could take a fridge too, but a minimum requirement is the ability to go to the airport and not need a taxi to carry the luggage.
5. Other features.
a) You need an opening in the roof. This can range from the minimum of a sunroof( one that slides open, not the useless ones that just tilt open 5 cm) through targa tops and cabriolets to full blown convertibles. This is once again a matter of personal taste, but you must have the ability to stick your head out, and preferably jump in and out with the doors closed.
b) 4wd is useful if you are going off road, onto dirt, or up to the ski fields, and the added grip can substantially reduce wheel spin and hence increase off the line acceleration. It also increases your cost, weight and fuel consumption. And all the cars with the fastest off the line acceleration (eg. Dodge Viper, Top Fuel Dragsters) use rear wheel drive, so it isn't that much of an advantage. If cost is a consideration then a road car is probably better off with decent snow chains and a light weight winch.
c) Anti skid control weighs a lot less than 4wd and can almost do as much, except in serious offroad situations. Unfortunately, it costs a lot more, at least for the small scale producer. Nice if you can get it, but you need an on/off switch: a sports car often wants to spin its wheels.
d) Antilock Braking Systems enable an average driver to brake like a champion, but you dear reader are a do or die sports car driver, you are a champion! Well at least you could be if you had the correct training, which would cost about 1/10 of an ABS system. Being a good driver has other advantages too, or so I am told.
e) Air conditioning. As the owner of an E-Type Jaguar once put it, "God will determine the condition of the air". You couldn't want better than that could you?
f) Power steering, power windows, power mirrors, power sunroof, power boot opening, power petrolcap, power seats, power steeringwheel adjustments, power doorclosing, central locking, power roof, etc., etc. You total wimp! You completely deserve to have your car so overloaded with electric motors that it is too heavy to move. May getting in the car use so much power that the battery goes flat, thus leaving you trapped and unable to get out! Ha!
Well O.K. power windows impress people, but that is what the rest of the car is for, if they aren't impressed yet, get a leather interior, or gold plate the instruments or something.
g) Stereo. An absolute necessity. A CD may be going a little overboard, but then again maybe it isn't. AM/FM Radio Cassette is the absolute minimum.
There are a number of different ways of making your sportscar. All they have in common is that they should leave you with a lowset, aerodynamic, great looking vehicle with a high power to weight ratio and good handling. The main variation is in how much work you are prepared, or able to do. In order of increasing physical labour:
This is the most common method of getting a car. Theoretically it is also the most expensive, but in reality the problems, tooling, time etc. of the other methods can often make this route appear quite attractive.
The main problem is finding the sort of car you want, for the right price. Quite simply the ideal car for you will probably be very different from that of a huge multinational corporation (who make almost all the cars on the market). The big manufacturer has to deal with making it attractive to lots of people, not doing anything radical because that represents a risk, and satisfying the fascist interfering government and consumer bodies who want everything brought down to the lowest common denominator (and that denominator is to be safe, nonsexist, green, peaceful and boring). There are of course cars, and car makers, that do not fit this description, and they are without exception very expensive, hence the need for writings such as this.
This enables you to liven up the boring corporate answer you have to get something a lot more interesting. This is very widely done, and there are a wide variety of shops available that will sell you go faster parts, or even do the work for you.
There are two problems with this approach. Firstly, you cannot alter the appearance of your car much. Sure you can buy a cheap car with moderate performance, (in Australia that is a Falcon or Commodore) hot up the engine, and bolt on spoilers and a rear wing. But this will just change your car from looking like 80% of the cars on the road, to looking like 20%. Not a great improvement.
The second problem is that in order to get even a Falcon or Commodore (forget about Lasers, Telstars, Camrys or even Toranas) to go really fast, takes a lot of work and it will take a fair bit of money. None the less these cars are good enough to give quite substantial performance, and medium handling. They also can provide heaps of accommodation, a nice big sunroof, and all the other requirements of a good sportscar. The real problem is in the appearance.
The best example of this is engine swaps. Now you are starting to talk about some serious performance. Many people have used this method to get themselves a great sports car, indeed some of the cars made in this way went on to become classics, made in their hundreds, or perhaps their thousands.
The usual technique is to put a big engine in a small car to get a good power to weight ratio. Examples of this include the original AC Cobra in which the AC Ace, an English sports car that ran a small 56kW engine was given a lightweight, high revving, 150kW V8 from a big American sedan. This proved to be one of the fastest, most enjoyable cars ever built, and copies are still being made all over the world. Another example is the 350 Capri, a small German designed sports car with its 3 litre V6 replaced with a 5.7 litre V8. This was never put into production but hundreds of examples were made by enthusiasts all over the world and they are still available secondhand in Australia.
A very similar concept is to put a huge engine in a middle sized car, such as the Ford Mustangs which were available with 7 litre truck engines forced into the engine bays. A more modern example is the AMG Hammer, which combines a 6 litre Mercedes V8 with a medium sized 300 series Mercedes sedan. Once again they had very good power to weight ratios, but with bigger, roomier and safer cars. Unfortunately they also had much higher costs and fuel consumption.
The extreme development of this process is to combine a huge engine with a small car. The classic example of this is the AC Cobra, not content with replacing a 56 kW six with a 150 kW V8, they then tried the 375 kW, 7 litre V8 from the Ford truck range (the same engine as the Mustang). Naturally this gave the sort of 'slam in the back ' acceleration that has never been available in a road car since, or at least not a production road car.
Other parts swaps between different cars are nowhere near as popular, the only choice that is encountered is that of changing the grill, or front end of one car for another. This is done entirely for looks, which as I said is a very important part of any sports car. Examples I have seen include a Mercedes front on a Commodore, and a TransAm front on a Kingswood Ute. This is one way to stop your worked family car, as described in the above section 2, from looking like everyone else's.
This method is what most people mean when they refer to building a car. The actual mechanical units such as the engine, transmission, suspension etc. are from a production car (not always all from the same type of production car). Holding all this together is a custom made body, either made by the person or, more usually, bought as an empty hull from a kit maker.
This method can give you some pretty extreme vehicles, with a lot of latitude when it comes to making you own "ideal car". Of special note is that the use of the small, lightweight, and often fibreglass bodies that these cars often have gives an excellent power to weight ratio, even with ordinary engines.
The appearance of the available kit bodies can also be very sexy. A favourite are copies of famous sports cars such as Cobras, Porsche 911 and 356s, Contaches and most Ferraris. Also available are original designs such as Purvis Eureka and Bolwell Nagari. And, for those with older tastes, a wide variety of antique looking vehicles such as Lotus 7s and Madisons.
The only problem one can encounter with this form of construction, besides the vast amounts of physical effort required to fit together all the parts that are supposed to drop into place, is getting the roadworthy certificate. As the rules are progressively tightened, this will get more and more difficult, especially if you want an exciting engine in a kit designed for a VW chassis, as many of them are.
This is the extreme case, not only do you think you can do better than a car company at selecting the performance of the car to suit you (obviously) and you think you can make a better looking car than they can (quite likely) but you reckon you can design a better engine, better suspension, and a better gearbox. This is extremely improbable. Face it, the big companies have literally billions to spend on research and development, they have thousands of experienced engineers and tradesmen, and they can afford to set up big factories to cast, forge, sinter and machine all the components they design.
The reason the home builder can improve on the big companies in many areas is that what is ideal in those areas is often a matter of opinion. For example, providing your opinion of what is good looking is different to what is available, then you will always be able to design a better looking car. Another example is the trade off between ride and handling. For a given suspension setup, you will always have to choose between a soft ride and good cornering. You, the sports car enthusiast, may well accept a much harsher ride than usual, in order to gain better roadholding, once again it is a matter of opinion.
But in the areas of engine, transmission and suspension design, the objects you and the car companies are aiming for are reasonably the same. While you may disagree on the desired stiffness of the suspension, everyone agrees that the purpose of the suspension is to absorb the bumps on the road, while keeping the wheels in ground contact and in the correct orientation. Hence their design of the double wishbones, shock absorber placement etc. should be just as good as you can get for the money, the only choice is the spring and damper rates, and the stiffness of the bushes. And while your choice of the gear ratios may be different, the actual layout of the gearbox will be hard to improve on, especially as you have a wide choice of all these components to choose from. Even with engines, almost everyone finds it better to start with an existing design (a good existing design) and modify it rather than start anew. Even engine makers generally adopt this method.
The only reason to adopt this route is if you have managed to make some major breakthrough in the technology of the components, for example if the car is made to test a new type of automatic gearbox, or a steam engine. Even there, it is most unlikely that you will be testing a new transmission, engine, suspension, windscreen wipers, headlights, tires, stereo, window winders etc. at the same time, so it will always be more effective to take them from production vehicles.
There are five main variables when it comes to determining the performance of a vehicle. These are the power and torque of the engine, the gear ratios used in the transmission, and the weight and wind resistance of the car.
The purpose of the transmission is to enable the driver to always be able to have the engine running at or near its peak power. It should also be able to select a very high gear so that the car can cruise at very low engine RPM so as to conserve fuel. Engines which are tuned to produce a large amount of power tend to be peaky, which means they produce maximum power only in a narrow rev range at a high RPM. Hence to maintain this high engine speed at all different speeds will require a lot of different ratios, which is why modern sports cars tend to have 5 or 6 speed gear boxes.
An alternative solution is to have a very torquey engine. Then it will be possible to achieve good acceleration at low engine RPM.
Assuming the gear ratios are appropriate to the vehicle, the performance is determined by the power to weight ratio, and the torque to weight ratio. The power to weight ratio is usually a very good indication of the maximum acceleration of the car. However to achieve this performance it will be necessary to select a low gear and raise the engine RPM to the peak power range. The behaviour of the car when the accelerator is floored, but without gear changing, is determined by the torque to weight ratio.
Of course at higher speeds, above 120 km/h, the wind resistance on the vehicle will have a marked effect on the vehicles performance. The wind resistance is composed of 2 factors: the drag coefficient (Cd), or how slippery the shape is, and the frontal area, or just how much air has to be pushed out of the way. Hence the fast sportscars tend to have low, swoopy shapes, but as indicated before this usually has more to do with appearance than performance.
Getting back to the subject of power to weight ratios. To improve the power to weight ratio one can do 2 things, either increase the power that is available, or decrease the weight. It never fails to come as a surprise how much effort people put into improving the power of their cars, while often maintaining, or even increasing the weight. Simple moves such as emptying the car of all the rubbish and unnecessary equipment, and replacing a huge heavy Ford jack with a light weight hydraulic one, can produce a noticeable improvement in performance. More extreme measures include replacing iron components with aluminium, magnesium, or plastic parts, and removing luxuries such as power steering and airconditioning that are also a drain on the engine power. Other examples include replacing a steel radiator fan with a plastic, electric one, and installing Mag wheels. It should be pointed out that the effect of the weight of rotating components is magnified.
If you are building the body yourself then the choice of panel material should be the lighter materials such as fibreglass, aluminium or wood.
It should be pointed out that many of the fastest homemade cars rely entirely on light weight for their speed, having quite ordinary engines. One classic example is the Lotus 7. Current versions will, on a racetrack, beat a M5, 944 Porsche, 308 Ferrari etc. and yet it is equipped with only an 88 kW 4 cylinder engine. This is due to the weight of only 600 kg. A more modern, but still ugly example, is the Rocket. This vehicle weighs a mere 350 kg, and packs a 101 kW motorcycle engine. This is the same power to weight ratio as an F40 Ferrari, and the small size and increased maneuverability means it is even faster. Yet another example is the Super Karts, which manage 260 km/h with a mere 500 cc engine. Of course the ultimate example is a motorbike, most of which will leave any road car for dead. If only it wasn't so fatal to die...
Increasing the power of the engine, or selecting an engine that has more power to begin with is much more common, with large amounts of information and expertise available, therefore I shall not discuss this much. I will just say that going for a large capacity engine with bags of torque will result in a car with more useable performance than perhaps one with more total power but requiring a lot more revs.
Investigation must also be given to the following substances: Nitrous Oxide, Nitromethanol, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Oxygen.
Having examined the above options I am of the opinion that the best method to go for is a combination of options 2 and 3. Buying a car and modifying it or swapping bits with other cars until the required performance is achieved. This project has to be examined as layed out below.
Looking at the above list it can be seen that these four stages are all interrelated and each point must be examined in the light of all the others. This shall be done as follows.
A primary consideration has to be cost. If funds were unlimited you would just buy a Lamborghini Diablo, McLaren F1, Ruf Nato etc. and be happy with it. Assuming a budget somewhat like mine I shall work with a figure of between 10 and 20 K. With this figure in mind the base car should be between $7500 and $15000.
Another prime consideration has to be appearance, if you want to get the car registered without a great deal of difficulty then the sheet metal should be changed very little if at all. So the base car has to look very much like your final sex-god-on-wheels. This obviously restricts your choice a fair bit. The situation isn't as bad as it sounds as the look of a car can be substantially altered with some very minor changes, this will be described later.
Suspension is another area that you will find difficult to change much. This is not so much for legal reasons, though they are a problem. The real difficulty, as explained before, is that beyond changes in spring rates, damping, bushes and other such tweaks, it is quite difficult to improve on what is available in the base car. (At least while remaining in our budget) This is especially so as any car with a sufficiently sporty appearance to be suitable for this project should have reasonably sporty suspension too.
Transmission. For a sports car you want a manual gearbox with as many gears as possible. The drag racing fraternity tend towards 2 and 3 speed autos modified for fast changes, but these are not really suitable for situations more complicated than maximum acceleration. So go for a manual, probably a five speed. The only situation where this won't work is if the engine will be really powerful, eg. at least 250 kW. In this case a five speed capable of taking the load may not be available, but this is changing fast. In the future, automatics such as the Porsche tiptronic may filter down to our price range. A tiptronic equipped Carrera can match a manual one around a race track, (and that is with a Porsche test driver at the wheel, so anyone not as good at driving will be slower than the auto). Sadly, at present they are way beyond our price range.
Engine: theoretically one can get any sort of car and put whatever you like under the bonnet. If it won't physically fit under the bonnet (eg. a five litre V8 as a replacement for a 1.5 litre Alfa flat 4,) then you rip out the back seat and put the new engine there. Unfortunately this sort of thing is not encouraged by the police. So you have to look closely at the rules. First of all you don't even have to ask for permission to swap to another, more powerful engine, if that engine was also available in that model car. Hence you can buy a 2 litre, four cylinder Commodore and drop in a 5 litre V8.
The second thing about engines is that noone is going to take yours apart and measure it to check that what you have is what it looks like. Hence a 4.2 litre Holden V8, can be enlarged to a high compression 5.6 litres with high flow heads and a mild racing cam and it will look identical to even a close inspection of the outside. And of course to a casual inspection, a 3.8 litre M5 engine will look pretty much like the standard 2 litre 6 your 320i is supposed to have.
Hence choose a car that either has an engine that can be developed into a fire breathing beast, or that was available with such an engine, or that has an engine that looks very much like such an engine.
GTV This car has the looks and can be given the power necessary to fulfil our purposes. They can be had quite cheaply, especially the older ones that have worn out engines. The solution is probably to find a nice hot V6 engine to put in, and disguise it as an Alpha one. An extreme person would go for V8 (3.5 l Rover probably) but this is tempting fate (law wise) so a commodore engine would probably be better.
Sprint The only other common, good looking Alpha. The engine swaps are much harder as flat 4s with more power are not available, the existing engine is already worked, and dropping a 308 into the backseat (as used in the Giocattollo sports car conversions) is far too difficult and illegal. (Giocattollo made a legal conversion but the result cost $92 000)
3 Series. If a cheap six cylinder three series is available you can do one of two things. Either stroke and bore the engine out to 3.8 litres and rebuild it to M5 specifications. This will give you a car with supercar performance. Then wack on a M4 badge and go flying. Alternatively find another six (preferably a big BMW six) and do the same thing. It will require a fair bit of engine work but should keep those F111's honest.
5 Series. You could probably get one of the older 5 series and do the same thing. It will end up a heavier, and hence safer, more stable, thirstier and slower car, and it will need a little more cosmetic surgery to look modern. I have actually seen a mid 80s M5 for sale in our price range!
7 Series. Too big and no awesome engines were available until too recently to be affordable.
6 Series. Same as the five but better looking and more expensive to begin with.
XJ6/12. These cars have a bad reputation for reliability. Hence a car that looks almost like a new one (both inside and out) can be had for as little as $6000. Of course you then get all the problems that go along with that sort of discount. A total engine rebuild is called for, but of course this is necessary anyway to get the performance you are after. These engines are capable of very substantial power outputs, with the 3.4 l E-types capable of 200kW, a 4.2 l six should be quite grunty. The V12s are even better. Even so, there will be a continuing series of problems. Many people give up and swap the engine for a V8. This usually is lighter, more powerful, and working! Alternatively you could purchase one that has already been swapped over, these are shunned by the average punter and so are quite cheap. The high weight of these cars will reduce the possibility of blistering acceleration but they are suitable for high speed cruising and handle well.
XJS. As above but lighter and sportier in appearance.
924 Almost has the looks, this can be dealt with. The originals are gutless but the S variant had a 944 engine and sufficient power. Are at the upper range of our price band. A turbo could probably be made to breathe fire while looking pretty virginal.
911 Any 911 available at this price has at least one thing wrong with it, find out what and decide if it is serious. Some may have had the engine replaced with something else (eg. 13b turbo or 327 V8 from the adds I have seen) If this was a good job then someone has done your work for you. Buy! Needless to say the looks are exactly what you want, though you may want a tail on the back.
944 Too expensive. See 911
928 Too expensive. See 911
No Ferrari is ever going to be in our price range.
See Ferrari.
No sporty looking merc will ever be in this price range.
Usually too expensive, but I have seen some that were affordable, if it is in good nick and less than 15 years old, it will just require some cosmetic work to look nice. Few people will know what it is, but those who do will be very scared.
RX7. The early models need some fibreglass to look any good, but they have the right image and handling. Many have had, or deserve to have, latter model engines in them. This will be a reasonably fast car. The turbos can be made very fast with relatively little work. Latter model cars are better looking but slightly heavier. Post 1991 cars are brilliant, but too expensive.
MX5. Needs more power and costs too much, in every other respect is ideal.
Supra. Needs more power and less weight. The turbo versions can be tuned up to give sufficient grunt but a weight loss program wouldn't go astray. A bit pricey.
Celica. Only post 85 cars look good enough, (unless you want a Cerrino) Even these need a bonnet scoop to convince people you're serious. Only GT4s have enough power and they cost too much. The nonturbos really need a lot of work to get much more power out of, and probably some forced induction.
MR2. Probably out of the price range, but a good looker with great handling. The problem is that the engine is already powerful for a four (117 kW) and so it will require a fair bit to improve upon. (See Celica)
Z-Cars. Most of these have sporty looks but the latter models have too much weight, see Toyota Supra.
Starion. The turbo has the looks and the power is just a tweak of the turbo controls away. Can be a great handler too. The price is right. The non-turbos react very well to slight modifications, extractors and a worked manifold getting the power of the standard turbo. Cordia. Like the Starion but front wheel drive and this is alleged to cause problems. It also doesn't look as good.
There is a steady trickle of American sports cars that are privately imported into Australia. Things such as Corvettes, TransAms etc. have all the sex appeal one could ever want, and are usually fitted with big beefy V8s. Really big V8s. Up to 400 C.I. (6.75 litres) These are usually linked up to a slushbox, and hence consume about 1 litre per kilometre. The solution to this is a four speed manual and LPG. Then you're cooking with gas! This will just be within our price range and should be an awesome car. (of course you may want to up the compression ratio (to 16:1!) etc. and add a fuel injection system, but this is getting quite expensive.)
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