Finally. Someone in the motoring press has realised that driving enjoyment is about how fun you go, not just how fast. In the November Evo, Chris Harris, quite rightly, questions the faster = better performance car culture. As with processor speed and hard drive space in the world of computers, bhp & 0-60 were only ever an arbitrary indicator of which car goodest (sic), and have become ever more irrelevant in recent years.
He points out that faster has become useless on the public highway – correct; that a lot of the high tech wizardry that festoons the modern performance car aids speed, but reduces enjoyment – agreed; and that we need to redefine what constitutes a performance car and what it's market is – no argument here.
Where I disagree is that he lays the responsibility for the current state of affairs solely at the feet of the marketeers (abetted by the engineers). I can't help but feel that someone's missing here: the motoring press, specifically the 'dab of oppo', 8 minute 'Ring time, 'enthusiast' car journos who at the very least have been cheerleaders to this whole process, pushing back the frontiers of epic hyperbole in their efforts to heap praise on the latest product of this culture.
I used to be a fan, and grew up reading Clarkson in the original Performance Car, subsisted on Autocar, Motor etc. But inevitably we grew apart, I can even recall when I first realised this: some years ago one of the mags, in a test of a 911 RS GT2 or somesuch, had a pull quote to the effect of '150mph feels like 50mph' in a tone of breathy excitement, as if this were a Good Thing. Which it might well be, on the racetrack, or engaged in some life-saving, continent crossing profession that precludes flying (struggling to think what that might be, but whoever you are – Porsche's got your back.) To me, that just sounded like you had to go three times as fast to have the same amount of fun, which didn't sound very much like progress at all.
Many of today's cars have so much power and so grip that to enjoy them on public roads means driving like a colossal... idiot. A corollary of this arms race is that most of the core driving functions can no longer be safely left to dim-witted organic bit plonked behind the wheel without electronic intervention. Quite right too; the current M5 famously has 507bhp – and that seems normal, relatively. But let's really think about that for a moment. Now further imagine it without belt and braces traction & stability control: at which point the idea of a mass produced, 507bhp, 2WD(!) saloon becomes ludicrous. In a parallel universe one can imagine such devices being banned after a series of high profile tragedies.
My other problem is that this culture is not confined to performance cars. A few years ago the standard Autocar road test was revised to include an 'On The Limit' section, complete with pictures. This might relevant in tests of explicitly sporty or performance cars but, say, the Perodua Myvi? Probably less so.... (and I can probably guess anyway: epic understeer before falling over?) In just about any modern car, the stability control kicks in before the fun does. In a mates' diesel A3 doing a well over a tonne was far too easy – and boring (thankfully I was in Germany at the time so no licence harm done.) The damping on my parents Volvo V50 is pretty good, so much so that it almost compensates for the lurches, bangs & crashes caused by the rock hard ride – because apparently these days, even Volvo estates must be 'sporty'.
