The Birth of the Supercar

Sports cars started to appear in the late 40's with the introduction of 'sporting' road cars from now famous marques such as Ferrari, Jaguar, Lotus and Porsche. In those days, the ethos of the sports car was a car designed not only for the road but for motorsport competition aswell.
Through the 50's and early 60's sports car performance progressed. 1954 saw the arrival of one of the all time classics the Mercedes 300SL 'Gull Wing'. It's fuel injected 3 litre produced over 240bhp giving a claimed top speed of 165mph. Also, as far back as 1957, the Chevrolet Corvette was capable of hitting 60mph in under 6 seconds, while the Z102 from little known manufacturer Pegaso was rumoured to be good for 160mph!

ongoing battle for supremacy between Ferrari and Lamborghini with the introduction of the 180mph Testarossa and the 455bhp upgrade of the Lamborghini Countach QV.

The 80's, however, would be remembered for two things - the financial boom that sent elite car values soaring and, probably as a consequence of this, the birth of the hypercar! It all started with the emergence of the Group B racing class. To be eligible to compete, manufacturers had to produce at least 200 road going version of their competition cars. While short lived it may have been, Group B provided us with a selection of awesome road cars that moved performance onto a new plane, the first of which was the sublime Ferrari 288 GTO.

The GTO's twin-turbo V8 endowed it with genuine 190mph performance and a 0-60 time of under 5 seconds (the first road car to achieve this since the 1965 AC Cobra). Racing materials and technology played a large part in the make up of the GTO, as they did in the next in the hypercar line the fascinating Porsche 959.

Bugatti's 1000bhp Veyron, along with McLaren worrying efforts from the likes of Koenigsegg and B Engineering's Edonis, we can all be optimistic that the supercar will still be with us in another 40 years to come.

Artical by http://www.supercarworld.com/