We need a reset: Dickie Meaden on why the modern supercar has finally gone too far
Revisiting the ‘80s has Meaden grappling with the mind-boggling evolution of fast cars
Taking part in last year's 1980s ‘evo eras’ group test was one of the best few days I’ve ever had in this job. Considering I’ve been doing it since shortly after the wheel was invented, that’s quite a statement, but it’s true.
If you’ve read Peter Tomalin’s account of what we got up to you’ll know why it was such an enjoyable test. If you haven’t, I’m not going to spoil it for you, but suffice to say the cars were an absolute joy. Not without quirks and shortcomings, but revelatory in terms of the simple driving pleasure they provided and the modest means by which all but the Ferrari Testarossa delivered it.
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Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time in big, fast, hugely powerful modern GTs and supercars including the AMG GT63 S E‑Performance, which combines Affalterbach’s familiar 4-litre biturbo V8 with a battery hybrid system for a combined 805bhp and 1047lb ft of torque. It weighs 2120kg, accelerates to 62mph in 2.8sec and keeps going until it hits 199mph. Even by 2026 standards it’s nuts. By 1980s standards it is an alien craft.
Quite how we got here I have no idea. It’s an extraordinary and in many ways quite absurd evolutionary path. Especially as nobody actually asked for cars of this complexity and capability. It’s not AMG’s fault. Just like every other maker of fast cars, when cornered by legislation they have come out fighting with a model which not only has more performance than you could ever need, but is absurdly easy to use and exploit.
In most of life’s situations hindsight is the most useless of things. But in the case of driver’s cars we know for a fact that how things were is better than how things are. At least so far as the fundamentals of what’s required to make a great driver’s car.
Perhaps the loss of deftness, delicacy, connection and involvement are the price we pay for increased refinement, reliability, useability and safety. We’re certainly told – and it’s not unreasonable to accept – that such progress comes with inevitable weight increases, which drives a perpetual cycle of chasing more power to find performance gains, which in turn needs more cooling, bigger brakes, wheels and tyres, which adds more weight that needs more power to mitigate.
Growing environmental pressures have only added to the problem, but the solution to passing those legislative gateways has given engineers the means to add huge amounts of power either via battery-electric hybrid systems or pure EV. The result is cars like the aforementioned AMG; mind-blowingly impressive, yet ridiculously excessive in almost every way.
It would be easier to rail against them if they didn’t drive so well. But however good these new hybrid-powered, torque-vectored, four-wheel-steered machines are at masking their weight, not only do they never feel as free as a car that weighs half a ton less, in these environmentally attuned days I’m always aware that however well the effort is masked, the sheer amount of energy it takes to make so much mass go so fast is absurd. It just feels wrong.
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We need a reset, though how one can be implemented is beyond my meagre intellect. Trouble is, if you leave it to politicians you end up with a vast, super-smart industry being forced to commit heinous acts of self-harm to appease flawed legislation that those same politicians then kick endlessly down the road.
Perhaps if auto makers were given more latitude, we’d get smarter solutions. In the unlikely event that I become Transport Minister I think I’d sign-off on something akin to the old Group C regulations; basically you can go as fast as you like but you’ve only got a prescribed amount of fuel to cover a given distance.
Manufacturers – especially those with racing heritage or active motorsport departments – would apply themselves to the task in amazing and imaginative ways. The cars would be more efficient, and we’d love them because they would have an authenticity and engineering purity that’s lacking in the current breed of incredible hulks.
We rightly revere Gordon Murray and Adrian Newey for applying themselves to the challenge of creating the ultimate road-legal supercars. In the case of the Valkyrie, Newey’s uncompromising vision was nightmarishly difficult to realise in production-possible form. Yet his genius and that of Murray and any number of other race car designers is interpreting regulations.
Create the right framework, point people of exceptional calibre at the problem, and then flex the manufacturing might of Toyota, VW, Ford, GM et al and the results would surely be spectacular.
This story was first featured in evo issue 334.
