Manufacturers are falling over them- selves to put supercars on the market. Not those wimpy things restricted to 155 mph, but full-blooded vehicles which you can only drive hard on some German autobahnen and in downtown Naples.
I was once driving a 1954 Swallow Doretti at 60 mph on a three-lane motor- way and a McLaren F1 came by at about 70 mph. Naturally, there was a stream of cars belting by him at 90 mph; I bet there was boasting in many an office the next day. Being able to boast you’ve overtaken a supercar on the road, however, is like pulling faces at a photograph of Mike Tyson. Some cars invite the law to pay attention but perhaps you do not want to spend the ensuing months riding a bicycle.
I know the owner of the McLaren and he uses it to commute to his office in central London because a great car makes you feel good at any speed. The Ford Sierra Cosworth was one, while the de Tomaso Pantera GTS looked the part but was an utter dog. I had a police car tail me for miles while driving a Pantera and all I could see was the hood of the car behind because of the Pantera’s huge rear wing. The wing was as butch as Kong, but it cracked at 160 mph.
In the U.K., there was a blanket speed limit of 20 mph from 1903 until January 1, 1931, when all limits were lifted. You could legally drive in London at 100 mph—or 48 mph if you had an Austin Seven. Know what happened? Road deaths fell from 7,305 in 1930 to 6,691 in 1931.
Despite this evidence, police forces round the world will chant the mantra: “Speed Kills” whereas it is inappropriate speed that kills. You can leave a space capsule at 17,000 mph but are not advised to jump out of a car at 17 mph.
Restrictions in towns were introduced in Britain in 1935, but there was no upper speed limit until 1967 when 70 mph was imposed on some roads, 60 mph on most. Interestingly, the culprit in this is AC Cars, which built a 7-liter Cobra GT coupé for Le Mans in 1964. This was a one-off, styled in house by Alan Turner, not to be confused with the Daytona coupés.
During testing at Le Mans, the front end was found to be lifting on the Mulsanne Straight so Turner made some modifications and the car was taken out on the M1 motorway early one morning for a test. It achieved about 193 mph and passed a police car. The cops gave chase, but only because they wanted to know how fast it had been going so they could tell their mates.
The AC was sponsored by “The Sunday Times,” which sent a photographer to the test. You can guess what happened. Politicians thought this was too much like fun to be comfortable, so we got speed limits, radar traps and, these days, speed cameras.
This brought to an end the testing of racing cars on public roads. The Kingston Bypass, in South London, was Cooper’s test track. There was a cop shop across the road from Cooper and the bobbies were always looking in, but they evaporated when Cooper needed to test single seaters.
In Norfolk, there is a long stretch of road known as the Thetford Straight. In 1957, Archie Scott Brown arrived at one end with the works Lister Jaguar. Unknown to him, at the other end, Henry Taylor turned up in a D-type. They passed each other somewhere in the middle with a terminal velocity that was half the speed of sound.[pullquote]“In real life, 0–60 is as about as useful as a bloke’s nipples.”[/pullquote]
Many new cars are quicker than Archie’s and every maker feels it must advertise its 0–60 mph time. In real life, 0–60 is as about as useful as a bloke’s nipples.
About the only time any of us makes a standing start is at traffic lights. Where are most traffic lights? In towns, of course, and you are advised not to do 60 mph in a town unless you want to do a lot of home improvements without the distraction of driving your car.
If Bandersnatch Motors tells you its car will go 0–60 in five seconds, you can believe it. The days have long gone since manufacturers doctored speedometers or lent testers doctored cars—no production Jaguar up to the mid-1960s was ever as quick as the road test cars. Speed records were set using listed “optional extras” like an aluminum undertray, but was any customer ever able to buy one?
A manufacturer makes a claim for 0–60 so the road tester has to replicate it. It becomes a feature of the test so manufacturers can use it as a yardstick, and so it goes on. It is nonsense.
When Toyota introduced the MR-2 in 1965, the U.K. importer took only the 16-valve 1,587-cc engine and claimed a 0–60 time of 7.7 seconds. This was not a remarkable sprint, but it had to be verified. To achieve 7.7 seconds you had to wind it up to maximum revs and drop the clutch, something which few of us do with our own cars.
All performance figures issued by manufacturers these days are accurate, but 0–60 is meaningless. The MR-2 was an important sports car and sheer speed has never been the point of a sports car. The original “Frogeye” Sprite barely topped 80 mph and 0–60 took 20.9 seconds, but it fulfilled the main functions of a sports car: it was fun to drive and it was a mating call.
If a car does not contribute to the gene pool it is not a sports car. Forget performance figures, it has to make the driver feel good and be a mating call.
I once drove an MG TA and the owner said that I would not go the day without a lady of a certain age telling me that she did her courting in one. It took just two hours, and she was a fine-looking woman with a gleam in her eye.
