Sports car

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This article is about roadgoing sports cars. For the type of motorsport, see Sports car racing.

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1963 Jaguar E-Type, a classic sports car

A sports car is an automobile designed for performance driving. Most sports cars are rear-wheel drive, have two seats, two doors, and are designed for precise handling, acceleration, and aesthetics. A sports car's dominant considerations are: superior road handling, braking, maneuverability, low weight, and high power, rather than passenger space, comfort, and fuel economy.

Sports cars can be either luxurious ^[1] or Spartan, but driving mechanical performance is the key attraction. Drivers regard brand name and the subsequent racing reputation and history (Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, etc.) as important indications of sporting quality, but brands such as Lamborghini, which do not race or build racing cars also are highly regarded.

A car may be a sporting automobile without being a sports car. Performance modifications of regular, production cars, such as sport compacts, sports sedans, muscle cars, hot hatches and the like, generally are not sports cars, yet share traits common to sports cars. Often, performance cars of all configurations are grouped as Sports and GT cars, or, occasionally, as performance cars

A sports car does not require a large, powerful engine, though many do have them. Some classic British sports cars lacked powerful engines, but were known for exceptional handling due to light weight, a well-engineered, balanced chassis, and modern suspension. On tight, twisting roads, such an automobile performs more effectively than a heavier, more powerful car with less maneuverability.

This Chevrolet Corvette (1963 model) was based upon European sports cars

Due to North American safety regulations, many sports cars are unavailable for sale or use in the United States and Canada. In Britain, Europe, and the Middle Eastern market (e.g. UAE), a flexible attitude towards small-volume specialist manufacturers has allowed companies such as TVR, Noble, Pagani, etc. to succeed.

1 Layout
2 Seating
3 Examples
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Layout

1990s Lotus Elan; a front-engine, front wheel (FF) drive sports car

The drive train and engine layout determine the handling characteristics of an automobile, and is the point of the design of a sports car.

The front-engine, rear-wheel drive train layout (FR layout) is common to sports cars of any era. This configuration has survived longer in sports cars than in mainstream automobiles, because of performance, handling, cost, and packaging. Current examples include the Caterham 7, Mazda MX-5, and the Chevrolet Corvette.

In search of improved handling and weight distribution, other formats have been tried. The RMR layout is commonly found only in sports cars — the motor is centre-mounted in the chassis (closer to and behind the driver), and powers only the rear wheels. High-performance sports car and supercar manufacturers, such as Ferrari and Lamborghini prefer this layout. Many modern cars, especially grand tourers, also use a FMR layout, with the motor sitting between the front axle and the firewall.

Porsche is one of the few, remaining manufacturers using the rear-engine, rear-wheel drive layout (RR layout) for powering the rear wheels. The motor's distributed weight across the wheels, in a Porsche 911, provides excellent traction, but is not ideal, as the engine's weight is not between the two axles; the vehicle is poorly balanced, thus, many early Porsches handled twitchily. Yet, Porsche continuously have refined the design and, in recent years, combined engineering modifications and electronic driving aids (i.e. computerised traction-stability control) to counteract inherent design shortcomings.

Some sport cars have used use the front-engine, front-wheel drive layout (FF), e.g. Lotus Elan M100, Fiat Coupé, Fiat Barchetta, Saab Sonett, and many Berkeley cars. This layout is advantageous for small, light, lower power sports cars, as it avoids the extra weight, increased transmission power loss, and packaging problems of a long driveshaft and longitudinal engine of FR vehicles. Yet, its conservative handling effect, particularly understeer, and the fact that many drivers, believing FR more appropriate for a sports car, this layout is atypical to high-performance sports cars. The FF layout, however, is common in sport compacts and hot hatches, such as the Honda Civic Si and Type-R, the Volkswagen Golf GTi, and the Peugeot 205 GTi.

Before the 1980s few sports cars used four wheel drive which had traditionally added a lot of weight. The Audi Quattro, with coaxial driveshafts, proved its worth in rallying, and with the added advantage of all-weather traction ability and advantage, four wheel drive is now common in high-powered sports cars, including Porsche, Lamborghini, and the Bugatti Veyron supercar.

[edit] Seating

Some sports cars have small back seats that are really only suitable for luggage or small children. Such a configuration is often referred to as a 2+2 (two full seats + two "occasional" seats). The Mazda RX-8 includes two small backward-opening doors to better accommodate extra passengers.

Over the years, some manufacturers of sports cars have sought to increase the practicality of their vehicles by increasing the seating room. One method is to place the driver's seat in the center of the car which allows two full-sized passenger seats on each side and slightly behind the driver. The arrangement was originally considered for the Lamborghini Miura but abandoned as impractical because of the difficulty for the driver to enter/exit the vehicle. McLaren used the design in their supercar F1.

Another British manufacturer, TVR, took a different approach in their Cerbera model. The interior was designed in such a way that the dashboard on the passenger side swept toward the front of the car which allowed the passenger to sit farther forward than the driver. This gave the rear seat passenger extra room and made the arrangement suitable for three adult passengers and one child seated behind the driver. The arrangement has been referred to by the company as a 3+1. Some Matra sports cars even had three seats squeezed next to each other.

[edit] Examples

Main article: List of sports car manufacturers

In addition to specialist sports car marques, almost all major car manufacturers make some form of high performance car, sometimes very successfully such as Ford with the GT, Mazda with the RX-7, BMW M Cars, Chevrolet with the Corvette, Honda with its S2000, Nissan with the Z-car, Toyota with the Supra and Mercedes-Benz with AMG.