The era that brought us the supercar
Here are five powerful dream cars from automakers you wouldn’t have expected
In the late 1980s and mid ’90s, a new genre of vehicle was beginning to emerge called the supercar.
There have been quick cars before this era, but they weren’t the same as the supercars we know and love today.
In the ’60s and ’70s, vehicles such as high-performance Shelby Mustangs and V12-powered European grand tourers were often referred to as “supercars,” but there’s no way they’d be called that today.
The first era of supercar as we know it featured high-downforce cars with an incredible power plant that produced huge amounts of power — and didn’t stop at performance.
Most supercars are not only quick, but luxuriously appointed to make the driver feel as special as possible, and offer a unique experience that just can’t be matched by regular vehicles, or even high-luxury vehicles.
When the first vehicles of this kind rolled out of the shop, everybody took notice and wanted to get in on the supercar game — and we mean everybody. Brands that traditionally have made mundane cars for regular people started pulling in engineers and visionaries from motorsports teams to create some truly awesome cars for the road, and in turn created some supercars most people wouldn’t expect.
FORD GT90
Obviously, Ford knows a thing or two about performance. Throughout the ’60s and early ’70s, it released products that could truly win on Sunday and sell on Monday. The only exception was the GT40, because while it was an excellent race car, there was no street-legal equivalent.
Sure, you could get yourself a De Tomaso Mangusta or Pantera for a similar feeling, but it wasn’t a true Ford.
The first inkling that Ford was serious about building its own supercar was the GT90 in 1995. With a wild cyberpunk-before-cyberpunk take on the styling of the ’60s classic, the GT90 was a dream that would never become a reality.
In the trunk was a quadturbo 4.0-litre V12 producing 720 horsepower — a number unheard of from a Detroit automaker. The GT90 went from a drawing to a running, driving prototype in just six months. Fun fact: the engine was made by electric beam-welding discarded Lincoln V8 blocks.
ACURA/HONDA NSX
Honda’s humble beginnings as a motorcycle manufacturer have done nothing to deter it from taking on as many giants as possible.
At around the same time it moved into street cars, the Japanese brand would also begin to dominate in Formula One with small-displacement
V12 engines that would rev up to 14,000 rpm.
When Honda released the Acura NSX in 1989, it was an extreme departure from what the world thought it was capable of. Honda has always been involved in racing, whether it was with two wheels or four, but the NSX brought some of what they’d learned on the track to the street.
The NSX featured the world’s first all-aluminum body on a production vehicle, which contributed significantly to its low mass.
PEUGEOT QUASAR
Peugeot has dipped its hands into pretty much every industry. Starting life as a manufacturer of salt and pepper grinders, it also produced coffee and bicycles long before it ever built cars.
Peugeot has typically stuck to passenger cars for the everyday commuter. However, Peugeot is no stranger to supercar concepts.
As the French automaker was dominating Group B rally in the mid-’80s, it wanted to build a supercar that would carry that performance from the dirt to the pavement. That machine would be the Peugeot Quasar.
The chassis of a 205 T16 served as the basis for the vehicle, to which F1-style suspension components were installed.
Multiple parts were made of either Kevlar or carbon fibre.
The mid-mounted, twinturbo in-line four-cylinder engine was also borrowed from the 205 T16, and produced 600 hp and 360 poundfeet of torque.
This show of power could be seen even when the car was sitting still, thanks to a completely exposed rear body section.
CHRYSLER ME FOUR-TWELVE
After the exciting years of Chrysler and Lamborghini’s partnership, Chrysler settled into bed with Daimler, a much more sensible partner.
While the marriage didn’t go so well for a few years, they did end up producing a few beautiful children — one of them being the ME FourTwelve supercar in 2004.
Because Americans love to make everything into acronyms, ME Four-Twelve is actually short for “Mid-engine with Four turbochargers on a Twelve-cylinder engine.”
A carbon-fibre body sat on top of a carbon-fibre and aluminum-honeycomb chassis, and power came from a Mercedes 6.0-L V12 mounted behind the driver.
Thanks to the addition of four-turbochargers, it produced a respectable 850 hp, which would’ve been more than anything else on the road at the time — if Chrysler had actually put the vehicle into production.
That power was enough to give the ME Four-Twelve a zero-to-100 km/h time of just 2.9 seconds and an estimated top speed of 399 km/h.
CADILLAC CIEN
Cadillac is known the world over as a luxury brand that built a reputation on opulent vehicles designed for those who wanted the best.
For the brand to venture into the territory of performance driving might seem natural today, but in 2003 it was a radical departure.
For its 100th anniversary, Cadillac decided to give itself a very expensive present: a supercar called the Cien, which is Spanish for 100.
In the trunk of the Cien is a displacement as Cadillac as chrome, a 7.5-L Northstar V12 engine producing 750 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque.
The engine had a special cylinder-deactivation feature, which meant it could run on eight or fewer cylinders under lighter loads.
The chassis was made of a composite called “aerogel” — one of the weirdest and lightest materials — while the car itself was built in the U.K. by Prodrive, the motorsports company most famously known for its rally expertise.
The exterior design was inspired by the F-22 Raptor, a fighter jet that also inspired the interior design of the 2020 Corvette C8. Say, now that the C8 has been revealed, this looks pretty similar, doesn’t it?