141–150 of 222 posts
Warning: pure speculation.
In general, car companies have luxury divisions. They prefer to maintain a separation between the "look and feel" of their middle class and luxury cars to maintain demand for the higher-margin luxury products.
Mazda does not, which is why they make some of the best-looking middle class cars on the market today.
I don't know about supercars, but what about simply sleek, small sports cars? Something like the Lotus Elan, Triumph Spitfire or the Porsche 911. First-gen Mazda Miata is the only low-end car that I know that actually looks reasonably sleek and designed (the second-gen looks like a stupid ordinary car). It's no 911, but it has a nice retro charm. A well-designed sports car doesn't need lots of power or anything else…
Middle class cars at aimed at different needs than highend cars. A highend car like a Ferrari may aim at image and performance solely and not consider how that car would handle/drive in adverse conditions like snow or concerns for MPG. Most middle class cars are highly optimized shape wise for MPG as well as handling all types of road and weather which is why tires on performance cars look so different than middle cl…
The emphasis on MPG is driven by regulation, not consumer choice. Auto manufacturers are required to satisfy fleet-average MPG requirements that have continuously risen over years. Most low- and mid-hanging engine efficiency improvements have been picked, so drag reduction is just about all that's left. This is why the large bulk of modern cars all look like identical eggs even though consumers would pay for non-egg…
My theory, let's call it Automobile Honest Aposematism theory (AHA), in short, posits that market forces compell car manufacturers to honestly signal the quality of their cars with the cars' design and colouring, or risk financial punishment meted by disappointed consumers.
In short, producing a cheap-o car that looks like a Ferrari would cause consumers to punish the car maker responsible, obviously by not buying their product, but also these days by ridiculing the cheap fascimile in social media etc.
In the animal world, it is understood that signalling of various attributes (aggression, mating fitness etc) is predominantly honest, despite the obvious advantages of false signalling, and there is work suggesting that this honesty is maintained by punishment [1] [2] [3] (but note [5]).
There is also an alternative interpretation of AHA, the Handicap Alternative to AHA (HA-AHA) which posits that sports' cars' design is an example of the Handicap Principle [4], according to which high-cost singalling is only affordable by the truly fit, or in other words, you'll only be flash with your car designs and colours if you can afford to be flash.
The two interpretations are not necessarily competing: selling a cheap car for a lot of money to cover the high cost of its high-quality, but dishonest, signalling will very likely incur a harsh punishment by market forces.
And, er. That's AHA in a nutshell :)
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[1] Evolution of Honest Signaling by Social Punishment
https://ai.vub.ac.be/sites/default/files/camready_0.pdf
[2] Social punishment of dishonest signalers caused by mismatch between signal and behavior.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20727756
[3] A socially enforced signal of quality in a paper wasp.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15538369
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle
[5] There are also examples of cheating behaviour that does not incur penalties; see Batesian Mimicry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry
However, this is more applicable to cross-species, rather than intra-species, behaviour, unlike in the case of paper wasps where it concerns competition between members of the same genus.
Perhaps because supercars are ridiculously impractical. They are too low to handle speed bumps, they are cramped inside and have little to no luggage or passenger space. Those tradeoffs are to make them fast. People who drive them care about performance, and will likely have a second car for more general driving. No one would want to buy a car that made those trade offs without getting the performance in return.
The MX-5 is fun though. It feels good to drive it at a moderately spirited pace. Several attempts to compete with it have won hands down in every significant performance metric, yet failed in the marketplace because they just didn't feel as good to drive.
I can offer an opinion not yet seen in this thread. It comes down to tolerances. My father works for GM as a tool and die maker. He says that GM is obsessed with tolerances in their panels. This means that the gap between the hood and front quarter panel is the same near the windshield as it is near the headlights. Same goes for all other areas of the car. It's hard to get right. If you start to get more complex desi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Celica was not discontinued. I'm looking at a 2016 model right now, it's a clone of a Dodge Viper.
It was discontinued in 2006 and brought back later. The same thing happened with the Camaro.
Because at the end of the day the Ferrari (or Porsche or Lamborghini) design is not a very comfortable or practical design for day to day use. The (two) people I know who own Porsche sports cars also own a second car.
I don't know about supercars, but what about simply sleek, small sports cars? Something like the Lotus Elan, Triumph Spitfire or the Porsche 911. First-gen Mazda Miata is the only low-end car that I know that actually looks reasonably sleek and designed (the second-gen looks like a stupid ordinary car). It's no 911, but it has a nice retro charm. A well-designed sports car doesn't need lots of power or anything else…
I had a first-gen Miata. It looked great and handled well but it was quite impractical. No back seat, tiny trunk, and not even a powerful engine to get excited about. Then I moved to snow country where I could only drive it half the year because of its real wheel drive. Now I have a car that looks rather ordinary, has a huge trunk, a real back seat, four wheel drive, and which can easily cruise at 140 mph if I'm stup…
By analogy, Asus (and several other brands) now makes laptops that look almost exactly like a MacBook Pro — unibody aluminium enclosure, glass screens and everything — at a tiny fraction of the price. So why won't anyone create a Porsche 911 replica that is as good-looking and as good to drive, only without the insanely high price?