#150: The Supercar is Dead, long live the Supercar

May 1, 2025; 10 minute high speed read

Consider the Ferrari 308 GTB.

Introduced at the 1975 Paris Car Show, the 308 GTB (B for Berlinetta) had specifications which, in hindsight, reflected the austerity of the 1970s: relatively petite, with a 2.9L V8 engine which produced between 230-240hp. It was impractical and unreliable, but it was an exotic Italian mid-engine supercar which outshone anything else at the time. I cut out a photo of one from a magazine, framed it, and put it in my bedroom: more of a crystallization of my far off dreams, rather than my approachable ambitions. It had a base price of about $20K at a time when a new Corvette could be purchased for about a quarter of that. Nowadays, a Toyota Camry GV70 sedan with a 3.5L V6 produces 301 hp and retails for about $40K… but inspires none of the sheer lust that the 308 did in 1975.

Realizing the dream

I once purchased a supercar, a quarter century ago. Like most young men, I dabbled with the idea of owning one, but it was never a serious goal until one day when a casual visit to the Ferrari dealership in Tokyo later resulted in an invitation to test drive one, on a Sunday morning.

I vividly remember the test drive around the relatively empty streets, dodging garbage trucks doing their rounds — my expectations were totally overwhelmed by the engineering that went into this vehicle, which was such an extreme version of anything I had ever driven (at the time I had a BMW E34 M5 sedan in Avus Blue). As I exited the car, my sole thought was that in faraway Maranello Italy, there was a group of slightly insane engineers that cared this much about the art of the sports car and bringing visceral emotion into the automobile experience… and that I wanted to support (so altruistic!) these fanatics and their worthy endeavors. Although I had been in the world of investment banking for 8 years at this point, my most extravagant purchase had been my (used 3 year old) BMW M5.

Esmerelda, parked in Ginza, one of her favorite spots. The license plate is an homage to Sony.

Back in 2000, Ferrari was a small private company, but it was a well-known brand because of their racing pedigree: they only produced about 3000 cars a year, with only about 10% of them coming to Japan. Nowadays, Ferrari is a listed company with a market capitalization of $75bn (almost twice that of BMW, despite their annual production of 2.5 million cars) and they produce 13-14K cars annually. I had a delightful relationship with my Ferrari, which I named Esmerelda, after the curious Latina taxi driver in Pulp Fiction, even though the name is a derivative of ‘emerald’ — and although it gulped fuel at about 2km per liter (about 4.7 mpg) running around Tokyo, I kept it for 16 years (one year longer than I kept my Tokyo residence).

Among the many things I loved about Esmerelda was the gated six-speed gearbox (with a carbon fiber F50 shift knob), which made a satisfying click-click-click when you put it through its paces. Arriving at a time when manual gearboxes were starting to fade away, the transition of transmissions was the first time I thought that the traditional supercar might be ebbing away. Supercars were not supposed to be easy to drive: the immense downforce of a racing clutch, rev-matching through gear changes, and maybe even double-clutching, was part of the fun and difficulty of owning one. Esmerelda loved cold weather, because the air was denser and therefore she combusted better – her 5.5L V12 was happiest while devouring vast quantities of frosty air.

Ideally, supercars were an impractical indulgence: my two-seater GT had a tiny trunk which could barely shoehorn in a single set of golf clubs, and perhaps two small weekend bags in the shelf behind the passengers. I once had to shamefully ask my Dad to take a taxi in Tokyo because I could only fit my Mom in the passenger seat.

The modern ‘supercar’

To my mind, the genre is overflowing. Supercars are everywhere. Some have four doors (eww), and some are even SUVs (double eww); hybrid fuel systems and pure EVs (little of the traditional supercar acoustics) are common — but more than anything, they no longer seem rare. Each supercar itself might be reasonably rare, but there are so many supercar brands and models that they are no longer rare sights in aggregate, like the legions of “rare” Rolexes (if you have to tell me it’s rare, then it probably isn’t). Ferrari alone has six current models (F80, SF90, 12Cilindri, Purosangue, 296, Roma), none of which, by the way, is available in manual transmissions. In an attempt to make them rare and exclusive, their prices have climbed to rarified levels, with many in the $1-5mn range and hitting $20mn+ at the top end — which means the supercar has morphed from the irrational purchase of the mid-life crisis male, to a demographic which is more dominated by F-U wealth than auto enthusiasm. In order to even have a chance at the limited editions, it is de rigueur to have an extensive history of buying (and ideally without selling) Ferraris, so almost by definition they are meant to be collected and stored, rather than actually driven. Like the Hermes business model, where access to the exclusive items requires a long buying history, this mindset has penetrated the world of supercars, so it now requires a cross between a car enthusiast and an uber-wealthy Pokémon fan (‘gotta catch’em all’).

Technical devaluation

But while supercars are adding more and more digits to their price tags, at the same time they are being technically devalued.

High end EVs, with their near instant torque and multiple motors, have brought down acceleration times and available horsepower and torque to previously unimaginable levels, especially when you factor in the dimension of price. The aforementioned 308 GTB had a 0-60 mph time of 6.7 seconds. My Esmerelda and her V-12 engine had an official 0-60 time of 4.3 seconds. Nowadays, plenty of non-supercars have 0-60 times under 4 seconds, under 3 seconds is relatively common, and at the high end, many of them are around 2 seconds. Tesla’s Model S Plaid (about $95K new in the US) is about 2.1 seconds, with a rated horsepower equivalent of over 1000 hp, representing supercar performance in what is largely a high performance luxury sedan. But the latest batch of Chinese cars have done to the supercar industry what DeepSeek did to large language models in AI — cutting edge performance, while being eminently affordable.

The current epitome of the affordable supercar is the Xiaomi SU7 Ultra, which sports the equivalent of 1526hp, retails for under $75,000 in China, and has the fastest four door lap time (6:46.874) at the Nurburgring (OK it was a pre-production car). And it’s not one of those cars you can only see on Supercar Blondie’s YouTube feed (she seems more focused on cheap Chinese fakes than high performance models), the SU7s are very popular and they are being delivered in production quantities.

The new SU7 Ultra of a colleague, in Shenzhen [April 13, 2025]

Supercar Syndrome

In the first Incredibles movie, young Buddy is a super-fan of Mr. Incredible, but the feeling is not reciprocated. Spurned, Buddy becomes an inventor of devices which can give anyone superpowers, and in one of the best lines of the movie, laughs “when everyone is super, no one will be…” [Is it only me or doesn’t Syndrome look like an overgrown baby Jay Leno, the ex-host of the Tonight Show, and avid supercar collector?]

Tesla changed automotive history by proving EVs could easily compete with traditional fossil fuel cars, and by swapping ICE engines and transmissions for electric motors, it gave ordinary EVs extraordinary acceleration times. Since the advent of EVs, showing off – I mean ‘demonstrating’ – acceleration has become far less interesting, largely because so many cars can do it, and they can do it so quickly that it far exceeds any practical use (overkill for merging onto a highway).

Even my cute little BMW i3 EV, which is mostly used for runs to the grocery store in Hawai’i, has a 0-60 mph time (6.6s) which is (0.1s) faster than the Ferrari 308 GTB that I used to introduce this article. Plenty of high end EVs now hover around 2.0 seconds, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT is at 1.9 seconds (for $230K). And now, the aforementioned Xiaomi SU7 Ultra is available in production quantities for under $75K (if you happen to live in China, the EV center of the world). And many other Chinese EVs, including the new Denza Z ($42K), have given Chinese consumers a wide range of ‘affordable’ supercars.

So for a fifth of the world’s population, Syndrome’s prophecy has already come true.

[“When everyone is super… no one will be” – Syndrome, The Incredibles]

The sad process of de-humanizing driving

Perhaps it started innocently with power steering and automatic transmissions. Then anti-lock braking systems seemed like a good idea to enhance safety. This took us to traction control, stability control, and proximity sensors – which gave way to advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS); now we are on the seemingly perpetual cusp of fully autonomous driving. The human driver is almost always the weakest and most dangerous element of an automobile, so taking control away from the human and giving responsibility to AI-enhanced systems seems far safer (and an undeniable statistical win for accidents). I was in Shenzhen earlier this month to test out some robotaxi concepts – although I don’t think they’re ready for widespread deployment (it was a little like being in a car with a bad driver, but with perfect superfast reflexes), it’s clear we’re counting down until robotaxis are a dominant form of transportation.

Pure driving used to be fun. Those experiences are diminishing rapidly as the analog equipment and real driver control fades from view. In Los Angeles, I have a friend who bought one of the last great driver-oriented supersaloons, the BMW E39 M5, precisely because it wasn’t dominated by electronic systems, allowing the driver to be as close to the controller of the high performance car as possible. Nowadays, I suppose that mantle probably goes to Porsche, which still apparently offers manual transmissions for the current 911 lineup.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) read-across

What EVs have done to the statistic of acceleration time, a variety of AI models are starting to do to multiple dimensions of human endeavor. They’re useful at this point, without yet being comprehensive enough for direct human replacement, but they are expanding capabilities and improving proficiency at an amazing rate. In both the intellectual (LLMs etc) and physical (robotics) realms, they will soon be capable of superpowers in a variety of capabilities, as defined by comparison to what mere humans can do.

But in the same way that the Ferrari 308 GTB was far more than just red car with a relatively fast acceleration time, and my Esmerelda was more than a titanium-hued V-12 front engine shark, optimizing for superlative statistics doesn’t capture the romance and sheer emotional power of those marvelous maniacs in Maranello. Pulling up to a hotel in an old school impractical supercar won’t be the same in a robotaxi, no matter how blinged out.

Final notes

This was intended to be a light lament, continuing along the theme of fading analog pleasures, while expanding a little on the automotive themes of #99 Stealth Wealth and Hidden Identities.

I am tempted to buy a manual transmission car at some point, even if I know it’s impractical and I probably wouldn’t drive it as much as I imagine. I did go out of my way to rent a manual transmission car in Europe in May 2024, just a Peugeot 208, for the express delight of driving a manual again, which was just as much fun as I remembered. Europe may be the last bastion of manual transmissions, so just renting them while on vacation could be an appropriate compromise. But then again, buying a supercar was never about compromise, it was about doing something demonstrably irrational and borderline stupid, while being willing to live with the stigma, because the driving experience was simply exhilarating.