Opinion: Defining the supercar

As a young writer (many years ago) I was given a sage piece of advice: “As a journalist, you don’t need to know the answer to everything, you just need to know where to find the answer.”

It’s a principle that applies well to many things and a rule that’s served me well over the ensuing years. But just occasionally, a question pops up that can’t be answered via the usual oracles and it happened again recently: “What is a supercar?”

You might initially think this is one of the easiest car problems to solve but as I stood there considering the response, it became clear that there is no universal definition, and even the term itself is a subjective concept coined by I’m not even sure who or what. What do you think?

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I’ve run the question past a few car people since and a variety of suggestions have been thrown into the mix, only to be spat back out again as inconclusive.

Power was one – perhaps a supercar needs to possess a mandatory minimum horsepower figure to qualify. But if this is true then what’s the milestone output, and surely it can’t apply to all vehicles can it? The Alpina XB7 has in excess of 600 horsepower but no one would label the seven-seat SUV a supercar would they?

What about acceleration then? Here, too, you might choose the Mercedes-AMG GT Four Door coupe that’ll get to 100km/h from standstill three tenths faster than a McLaren F1. But a supercar? I think not.

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Perhaps it comes down to outright track prowess and being able to demolish any mere high-performance cars in lap times.

Here, too, it’s a little tenuous as there are plenty of so-called supercars that wouldn’t necessarily be your first pick if you had to set a benchmark lap and, more importantly, there’s a chance they’d get licked by a serious hot-hatch in the technical stuff. Put a Honda Civic Type R against a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ on Lake Mountain and I’d put money on the Japanese hatchback doing victory (reverse) doughnuts in the summit carpark before the $950,000 Lambo.

Which brings me to price and perhaps the easiest variable to debunk. In the world of cars, a high asking price guarantees only one thing – a lighter wallet.

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High-end models can be expensive for a variety of reasons and, more often than not, the thing you’re paying for is not super-ness.

Certainly, performance has something to do with it as supercars are never slow and always powerful, but I think the key to the essence of a supercar is that it rolls in an equal part of hyperbolic style and won’t compromise on either in the name of practicality.

Yes, a McLaren GT has a combined luggage space bigger than a Toyota Camry’s boot, but if you try shoving a fully assembled Ikea chest of drawers in above its mid-mounted V8, you’ll be disappointed.

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And yes, a Ferrari F8 has a button to lift the front suspension but any undulation in the road bigger than a speed bump will scupper it like it’s hit a tank stop.

The true core of a supercar lies not just in what it can do, but what it can’t. Supercars are compromised – that’s the point, but it still leaves us without a clear genotype. And that’s before we’ve even thrown the ‘what is a hypercar?’ curve ball.

If what you have moored in Monte Carlo measures 100 feet or more, it’s a superyacht. And if you can unleash a fiery hell on an unsuspecting city at the push of a button, you’re a superpower. Defining a supercar, however, is not quite as clear cut…