Dunga

So I was watching a top gear episode from season 3 last night on netflix. Richard Hammond drives a mclaren mercedes SLR super car and raves about how strong that 600+ horse power engine taking you from 0-60 in 3.8 seconds with a top speed >200 mph. This is in a £300k + car that is effectively reserved for a small population of buyers who can afford it.

Now I know affordability is super relative/subjective but isn't it something that we can get that performance in a -hot looking- car that costs 10% of that? Everybody knows corvettes have always been a good value for money, but the performance and technology we're getting today is that of elite cars only 10 years ago.

That's good :-)

musclecar6

I agree. One can send a Stingray to your favorite well regarded forum tuner and have them install a well designed supercharger kit, tune it to perfection and have a street rocketship that can keep up with and pass any of those ridiculously over priced exotics( or just wait for a C7 Z06). To top it off, the C7 has an awesome exotic look, coupled with an available upscale 3LT interior and Z51/mag ride/NPP combo that really makes a beautiful statement. Simply the best, regardless of price ( spoken like a life long vette junkie).

Sin City

I think what some people forget is that over the life of the C7, they will probably make nearly 100,000 of them. They've already made 22K at least in the first year and don't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

McLaren could only build about 15 SLR's a month. Chevy makes 180 or so Corvettes a day. When you take all the R and D and tooling costs and divide it up, not to mention increased costs from scale and a lack of mass production techniques, you have to have huge margins on these low production cars to justify making them.

Basically, you can't compare apples to oranges. It's more than just the cost of labor and material that makes cars like the SLR so expensive.

C7Joy

I wonder what it will be like in another ten years?

Dunga

Absolutely agree. My point is, the exclusive performance and packaging classically associated with those elite cars at the time, is now very accessible to us "normal" people.

OMG

Well another interesting thing...you can buy that Merc now probably for less then a C7.

Dunga

More like $200k. But then you'll get a check engine light and will have to sell both your kidneys to fix it :-)

Higgs Boson

slr with miles is around 200k.
slr with less than 500 miles is 700k.

yeah you can get a vette for that.....

LIStingray

With the Obama fuel regulations that are in place and set to kick in - it will be lower performance for a lot more money in a hybrid design - it will feel like the mid-1970's all over again

Mike Mercury

you may be disappointed.

Many in the cult gave this mental-case too much credibility:



we may be witnessing the beginning of the end. The 8sp auto is not 8 speeds for the goal of lightning fast performance

AORoads

Yes, but it's claimed to provide lightning-fast shifts.

vetteLT193

It's pretty much always been this way. The supercars of a yesterday end up being the standard of today.

There are some exceptions to the rule but they tend to be street legal race cars and not true supercars. (i.e. the F40, where you aren't in luxury, you are in a carbon fiber bare bones race car).

This is also true of the tech used on today's sports cars will end up being on regular cars in just a few years. (examples... ZR1 LT5 was the precursor to the Caddy Northstar, "ASR" traction control ended up in basically everything, Magnetic ride suspension is in many cars now, etc.)

romaja

This car should prove interesting:

http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140...rcar-made-real

Greg00Coupe

And compare maintenance and insurance costs. Not a factor if you can afford the expensive cars but is to me to whom 60 70K is a lot of money.