I always wondered why car companies like Mazda or Hyundai or Honda don't produce cars that may not have the performance capabilities of a Ferrari but resemble one in their shape? Thus advancing the way the car market looks now a days. Does anyone have a clear answer?
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 designs with panels meeting at odd angles and with multiple bends it gets even harder, and more expensive.
Therefore, my theory is that mid range car companies don't want to build complex designs as they will increase the price of their car needed to satisfy their tolerance specs.
My friend is a Ferrari mechanic and he says the panel gap and fitment is atrocious, he claims that part of the construction is mostly done by unskilled labor. The money, time, and care go into the design, suspension, engine, interior, etc. He has a lot of stories about large panel gaps, off-center screw holes on body panels, terrible fitment and lots of refurbishing needed even with a brand-new Ferrari.
Enzo Ferrari once said, "I don't care if the door gaps are straight. When the driver steps on the gas I want him to shit his pants." So I don't accept the parent commenter's idea that manufacturing tolerances are relevant to styling.
It's economics and marketing, in my opinion. Car manufacturers find it hard enough to make money that I don't see them mass manufacturing risky designs that only a small number of people want to drive.
Building on this comment as a mech eng who works in metal construction of heavy industry, it's also to do with the economies of scale and profit margins.
As you reduce the purchase price, you need to increase volume to ensure profits. Similarly, you want to absolutely minimise construction cost to maximise said profit.
As you increase volume and minimise construction cost, you rapidly reduce the scope of possible manufacturing techniques. You narrow down to tried and true methods of fabrication and assembly. Now the parts must be readily handled by robots, reproducably accurate between the same parts, parts must be able to swap between mating parts without bespoke tailoring (ie: the opposite to Apple's vision system to pick the right set of parts to assemble together), it must reliably assemble and stay assembled, it must be easily and quickly maintainable by cheaper labour for aftermarket cost minimisation, it must perform well in the battery of safety tests yet not become structurally complex to pass them, it must be light to minimse raw material costs, etc. etc. Deviating from this essentially adds cost, and even a small additional cost adds significant burden due to volumes and small margins.
With all of those constraints in place, you then consider a middle-of-the-park design that isn't polarising in its appearance or function to maximise market share. Thus, you converge towards a relatively inoffensive sedan shape that Just Works for all parties and still satisfies that litany of constraints on the design, manufacture and maintenance.
> relatively inoffensive sedan shape that Just Works for all parties and still satisfies that litany of constraints on the design, manufacture and maintenance
I feel like you've encapsulated the essence of Toyota.
When has a mass produced middle class car ever looked like that Alfa 4C? It's neither mass produced, nor middle class. It shipped with a $67k msrp. You're talking about a car that sells in the hundreds of units.
In my case, the price premium isn't really that much to even think of, as I would have been going with a fully loaded GTI, which would have sticked around $35k or so, so it's not even _that_ much of a price bump.
>"You can't build a "Ferarri shaped car" at the same price as an Chevy Impala because the shape is a part of the cost."
I don't know how it compares to the cost of a Chevy Impala, but it's definitely possible to get the Ferrari look on a budget, here's one example of a kit to convert a Toyota MR2 to look like a Ferrari F360 (similar kits exist for other cars):
Years ago car body panels were made with hydraulic presses that could make those curvy shapes that older cars had, however, a hydraulic press is expensive and slow. A mechanical press can churn out those panels at 4x the speed and at a fraction of the cost.
Modern cars are apparently 'very curvy' but if you look closely you will see that the curves are done in plastic, not metal. The metal parts have relatively simple curves to them, when painted the same colours as the plastic bits it all looks good and far from 'boxy'.
As for tolerances - 'fit and finish' - there is more to it than the gaps in the panels. There has to be some tension in the panels for them to hold their shape. A bit of curve is important for this. Compare with vehicles that have totally flat panels, e.g. a Land Rover, where the panels are 'wrinkly' and far from smooth, even if fresh out of the factory.
There is also the matter of platform engineering. In the VW group the bolts that hold the engine in place are the same no matter what the model or the engine size. The Golf has dozens of same but different variants on the same 'platform' : Audi A3, Audi Q3, Audi TT, VW Golf, VW Jetta, VW Eos, VW Tiguan, VW Touran, VW Scirocco, SEAT León, SEAT Toledo, SEAT Altea, Škoda Octavia and so on...[1]
All the other volume manufacturers have the same platform based approach, the fundamentals of the car are worked out for the 'Golf' version and then after that the marketing folks and some kids with clay put together the 'remixes', e.g. the Audi TT for the 'hairdresser' market, the Jetta for the 'minicab driver', the SEAT Leon for the 'younger sporty buyer' and so on.
I believe a trip to the paddock at Silverstone is probably the best place to get appreciation of the Ferrari grade cars. The fit and finish on them is not what you would expect when inspected close up. Furthermore, the actual engineering is quite crude compared to the 'Golf'. But, if you are racing and need to fix the car between races then 'crude' is pretty good. If you are going to be rebuilding the engine all the time anyway then who cares that the bushings are primitive and prone to wear out after a few hundred miles? With the 'Golf' there will be rubbery bits mounting the engine, on a Ferrari it is bolted straight onto the chassis with no effort made to damp the vibrations, again not important if you are setting lap times around Silverstone.
Ferrari cars were styled by Pininfarina and the coachwork built by Scaglietti back in the 60's, Fiat subsequently bought the coachworks bit (as per Rolls Royce and Park Ward). Those panels on a Ferrari are very much 'coachworks' built, even if nowadays with carbon fibre composites etc. This is a very different way of building a car to the mechanical press + bits of plastic approach that mass produced cars use.
So yes, the shape is part of the cost. Personally I would prefer the 'Golf' to the 'Ferrari' and this comes down to childhood experiences of visiting car plants. The mass produced cars (MINI) fit together PERFECTLY every time. In the olden days, next to the MINI production line a smaller amount of panels were made for the Jaguar and other brands that used the same body shop for historical reasons. These panels for the deluxe cars had teams of people hammering them into shape as the tooling for them wasn't any good. They didn't fit perfectly!!! Sure the posh cars might have had leather seats and other fancy things but the basic shell was not good - 'lipstick on a pig' is the phrase that springs to mind.
As mentioned it is worth visiting 'the paddock at Silverstone' to look at some of these Ferrari type of cars close up. Also on the track. The Porsche 911 is a relatively tall and 'road car looking' compared to anything that it races against, e.g. the Ferraris, Mclaren things and what-not. Cars for the track are a very different breed to those designed for 'sitting in traffic'. Ferraris obviously have the race heritage and the track mechanical starting point, plus they are still 'coach built' and therefore 10x expensive (which is a minor cost if you are out racing).
It gets even costlier when you take into account that the purpose of the shape of those cars is to increase downforce for better handling around corners. This causes the air drag and the fuel consumption to go through the roof, which is the opposite of what you want out of a four door Mazda.
Not sure that's true. Low drag is incredibly important to the top speeds of those cars. For example a `03 Golf has a CdA of 6.89[1] while a new Ferrari 458 is 0.330[2]. Also, most modern supercars have active aerodynamics to create more downforce at higher speed.
You're comparing CdA for the Golf with Cd for the Ferrari. According to that table, the '03 Golf has a Cd of 0.32, actually lower than 0.33 Cd of the Ferrari. Without knowing the frontal area of the Ferrari, I don't know if its CdA is higher too.
Why not have both? The answer is active aero, which is also expensive to design, implement, and test. Unless it'll be on a track, be cornering at >1G, or going >140mph, it's pretty moot. A cheaper car wouldn't do any of these.
Is this still true nowadays with almost entirely automated manufacturing? If you look at modern car models, even the cheapest ones have way more "shapes at odd angles" than sports cars.
Nowhere near as much of automotive manufacturing is as automated as people think. Fitting panels etc is often a robot assisted job but not 100% machine. During production trials for new cars ALOT of time is spent trying to get the panels to fit together correctly, even getting the doors to seal correctly and be water proof isn't a given to begin with.
Indeed. I once temped at a car plant where I wore chain mail gloves to manually remove body panels coming out of the die, place them on a cart, and spot check a random sample for defects.
I have a Nissan LEAF and have owned it since new (so I know it's never been hit). Looking at the panel fit between the rear bumpers and the quarter panels, that car looks worse than some cars I've seen that have been hit.
>Tesla forums are littered with complaints about fit and finish. Have a look at the .pdf in this thread, which shows bad sealing, poor parts fitment and even rust on the rear seat brackets. [0]
And that is for the Model X, from what I've heard, the Model S was even worse.
Except Fiat, which owns Ferrari, also makes Fiats, so they have the expertise, the design chops, and the machines yet still do not use it for their lowest end cars.
Do they use the same equipment and plants that make Ferrari's to make Fiats? If not, then that wouldn't be true as they'd have to use more expensive equipment for Fiats than what they need.
Don't Maserati's also cost a lot of money like Ferrari's? Or can you get them the price of Fiats? Might point is more about what using weaker tech in plants does for them on low end than the high end. I assume Ferrari is a rip off financially supported by their branding.
I don't know about tolerances but it is a viable argument. What I do know is that almost all of your super-cars are built using some form of composite material, Carbon Fiber and Kevlar being the two big ones. These material extremely mold-able but also prohibitively expensive when it comes to mass produced cars.
It's still more labor intensive. You can stamp metal, any kind of composite has to be laid in a mold in several steps and then infused with resin (the resin is a big part of the cost). Further one the part is finished it has to be trimmed out usually with grinders and sanders. Even with fiberglass the cost of production is going to be higher than the equivalent steel, aluminum or plastic part.
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 class cars, because their goals are completely different.
Cars like Hyundai are building their own brands based on great technology, reliability, strong MGP etc. If they attempted to simply through that out the window and look like a ferrari, they would lose their core customer base and also not attract ferrari's customer base because they don't want a something lat looks similar on the outside but has lawn mower on the inside.
This is a good answer. It boils down to what you're paying for. My dad was a suspension and steering engineer at General Motors years ago, and he impressed upon me the number of evolutions these designs go through. The current shape of a standard "middle class car" is highly optimized to give the best trade-off between aerodynamics, fuel efficiency, interior capacity, structural strength, etc. That's what a typical middle class buyer wants to pay for. A Ferrari is entirely optimized to look hot and go fast, and makes a huge number of concessions to those goals. Just try using one as a daily driver and grocery hauler and you'll see why few people do that.
> A Ferrari is entirely optimized to look hot and go fast, and makes a huge number of concessions to those goals. Just try using one as a daily driver and grocery hauler and you'll see why few people do that.
But then there are sports cars that are meant as daily drivers, like the BMW M5. The former CTO of Intel said he owns one and uses it as such.
The M5 is visually very similar to the rest of the 5-series, though. A Ferrari is instantly identifiable even if you can't see the badge and don't really know cars - a low wedge thing is either a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. An M5 looks like any other large BMW saloon.
The M5 makes the same tradeoffs but in a different way. It takes a very good sedan and makes it even better. But, there's no question that it would be even better to drive if it wasn't limited to being able to comfortable seat 5 people or fit golf clubs. We might still even have a lovely NA motor like in the E60 =[
Also I don't think the M5 is actually a sports car? I mean don't get me wrong, it's completely awesome and I would absolutely love to have one, but it's also nearly 4400 pounds and a sedan.
Ferraris are reflections of their owners. If you're actually driving one to work every day, the point of that exercise is to let the world know that you're the alpha ape.
BMW 5 series is the Accord for rich people. An M5 is your "I like cars" model.
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 cars in the absence of regulation, and don't understand why cars look so much more boring than a few decades ago.
That explains why you don't see track-inspired designs but not why you don't see cheap clones of Bentleys and higher end Mercedes.
Hyundai actually seemed to break with convention a few years ago and make their cheap cars resemble more expensive competitors, presumably because they didn't have anything in that market to devalue.
Pontiac launched the 'Fiero' with styling inspired by the Ferrari 308 in the mid 80s [1]. Around the same time, VW also launched the 'Corrado' as a possible 'successor to the Porsche 944'. Both models were pulled from the market after a few years of production and now have somewhat of a cult following among car collectors. They had good initial interest and sales, but were regarded as too expensive and unreliable, and so eventually so lost out to other, more practical competitors.
In my opinion, cheap luxury clones don't work because the market is too small. Plenty of people like the idea of a 'cool' car, but the car is a big ticket item for most people, so practical, reliable and having a good resale value tend to trump 'cool' as an important feature. You'll also note that classic, 'boring' colors tend to outsell flashy, 'cool' colors. Even the best selling sports cars in the mid-price segment, e.g. VW GTI, tend to have a hatchback and a large, useful interior that is workable for a family car.
Fun fact: The Fiero was featured in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the car owned by the feature character's sister.
I had a 1986 Fiero SE v6 that we bought used in 1990 for $3000. I traded it in 3 years later for a Honda and they gave me $4500 off. Super fun car and looked great!
This. As a recovering(?) car nut, the GTI was about the best compromise I could make for a) Bay Area constraints b) more kids than adults c) huge bags of sports gear / bulky items / trips to lumber yard / etc.
Once the last kid is out of house, I'll return to living the dream of a track car (+ multiple sets of tires) as my daily driver.
For reasons of economics, they need to be able to share parts with other models so they can't deviate too much in terms of design. When regular car companies do build unique sports cars (e.g. Nissan GTR, Lexus LFA, Ford GT, Acura NSX), they end up being more expensive anyway, so they would have to put in the performance to match to justify the cost. Even swapping in a cheaper drive train wouldn't make the car dramatically cheaper.
In the documentary Objectified (recommended!), a BMW designer brings up the point that a car design should express what the car is. If there's a mismatch between the look, and how it feels to drive, it will be rejected by customers.
The counterpoint to this is the "Aston Martin" Ford [1a and 1b] which I think most people would agree looks much better than the Ford design it replaced [2]. It literally steals the design cues from a $100k+ sports car and adapts them to an economy car and it seems to work quite well as a design (admittedly a bit of design plagiarism).
Yes, this is the very practical definition of "tacky" design. It's when something visually promises something that it isn't in performance. Form and function are very much tied together and a car that looks like a Ferrari but feels like a civic would cause a negative cognitive dissonance
This is a good answer. Hundai comes to mind as a brand that puts overly slick bodies on underpowered cars. It looks silly. And yes there is the Genesis, but that car is not cheap.
What would be fun is if manufacturers took more liberties with design. I loved my Scion xB because it was "ugly beautiful" and also very functional. I really like the new Civic: aggressive yet understated. More of this would be really nice.
A Scion minivan could easily be the VW microbus of our generation.
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.
Porsche sports car owner here. I don't need to drive daily, but when I do, that's what's used.
People who have sports cars tend to have a second (or third or fourth) car because they have the funds available to afford being able to have other options available. Some Porsche sports cars are tremendous daily drivers -- a 911 Turbo is simultaneously a race car, a Toyota Camry, a snowmobile and a Bentley.
Sold Porsches in a former life. Third car was most typical, with it only being used for pleasure and special occasions. 911s were usually used most often as daily drivers, as opposed to the mid-engine cars, even though the MR layout cars have more cargo space (10 or 15 cubic feet). I'm a very rare breed, considering I live in New England and mine doesn't even have a proper roof (manual "procedure" to remove/install instead of a single button, and is always driven top down, regardless of weather).
Porsche are pretty much a normal factory car. They have low volumes and go fast. But that is pretty much where they stand. Ferraris and Laborghinis are far closer to being hand made.
Factory made cars are more reliable than hand built cars. People who have owned these cars have told me using a Porsche for a day to day car is doable. A Ferrari or Lamborghini probably isn't reliable enough.
An old supervisor of mine was a Jaguar fan, and due to the large amount of time they spend having repairs done: "There's two days when you love your Jag: the day you buy it, and the day you sell it"
I've never seen anyone doing a daily commute in a Ferrari or Lambo but I've known a few people who drove their 911s every day. 911s are lot more practical (and a good bit cheaper) than their exotic Italian cousins.
I used to live in a very expensive area of London [1] (my university owned about half this block, my room in first year was probably worth £0.5M...).
Many people on the street owned Porsches, Ferraris, and there were two Lamborghinis, most were used daily. But, I think there was a restriction of one car per household parked on the street, and most would only have been driving a very short distance through central London -- usually at about 5-6am, before there was much traffic.
BMWs, Mercedes and Lexus cars were more common than the sports cars, and Porsche cars more common than Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
[1] https://www.google.dk/maps/@51.488953,-0.1788157,3a,75y,230.... (take left turns, I think there are five Porsches, and something I don't recognize. But this is probably the weekend, when most of the rich people were away, and normal people "borrowed" the parking spaces. A Porsche shop is 2 minutes walk away, the Lamborghini shop about 5 minutes.)
I've never seen anyone doing a daily commute in a Ferrari
There's a retired F1 driver who uses a Ferrari Mondial as a daily driver. That's the opposite of the concept in the op question: A Ferrari that looks somewhat more conventional, yet is a true Ferrari under the bodywork. (It was also quite a bit more reliable than its peers.)
The Toyota GT86, Mazda MX5, and Nissan 370Z are examples of that. However, looking at how many models were discontinued (Honda S2000, Toyota Supra, Toyota Celica, Mazda RX8), maybe the market opportunity is not as big.
Additional current cars in this category include the Hyundai Genisis Coupe, Nissan 370Z, Porsche Cayman/Boxster, Alfa Romeo 4C, Chevrolet Corvette and BMW Z4. (Criteria: under $60K base price, looks like either a classic sports car or an exotic in my completely subjective opinion, actually likely to appeal to enthusiast drivers, also in my completely subjective opinion)
More previous cars in this category include the Toyota MR2, the second generation of which looked extremely Ferrari-like, Pontiac Fiero, Pontiac Solstice/Saturn Sky/Opel Speedster, Fiat X1/9, Mazda RX-7, Mitsubishi 3000GT.
X1/9 might look a lot like a Ferrari because Pininfarina did the body design. Too bad the rest of the car was typical '70s Fiat (hope you weren't relying on it to get you to work). Which I guess makes it even more Ferrari-like.
Ah, the Fiero, aptly named given its tendency to explode upon impact from the rear. It's what killed one of my father's friend's wives back in the very early 90s.
The Pontiac Fiero had a tendency of catching on fire, in the rear, because of engine failures. Specifically, the 1984 Models with the 2.5l 'Iron Duke' 4 cylinder engine. The connecting rods in the engine would fail, blow a hole in the engine block, leak oil onto the hot engine/exhaust components, and then catch on fire.
The Fiero had several issues but the biggest one was the poorly-protected passenger compartment. If the car got rear-ended, it would likely explode due to how hot the engine ran and there was no suitable firewall to protect the passengers. General Motors, being the jerks that they are, blamed every single fire, including ones that happened at GM proving grounds, on improper owner maintenance.
(Ferrari have since moved a bit more upmarket; the replacement for the 456 is the 612 (so says Wikipedia), which I think looks a bit more like a Porsche Panamera.)
You apparently haven't if you can't see that the newest body model (and there are 2016 Celicas on the dealer lots right down the street from me, $35,000) is a Viper without bubbly-ass wheel wells.
It hasn't been brought back. The GT86/FR-S (AKA Subaru BRZ) is Toyota's current car in the same market segment. I see no reference to it ever having been sold under the Celica name.
They're not terribly practical. They are fairly large, only seat two, and have no cargo capacity. Low suspensions have...difficulties in many situations. They are also not especially aerodynamic compared to most modern sedans.
I have a Corvette, which is a freaking hatch back compared to most high end sportscars.
A Ferrari is not a terribly comfortable car to drive. Tuned well, it's got a hard suspension and you feel the road in order to drive it properly. It can be unforgiving if you make a mistake. It's got no room for the crap a mother or a father needs to haul around. Difficult to put a car seat in there.
Middle class cars don't look like a Ferrari because the Ferrari body and look enforces some decisions on the designers and the drivers of that car. No hauling around of crap for you. Even if you manage a child car seat, the kid will be screaming the entire time when it feels every hard bounce in the road. Your body is jarred as well. It's a sensitive car that requires an alert driver. Will you enjoy having that alertness day after day drive to work and back in congestion? Probably not... You want an easy driving car with a comfortable ride and room for crap. And voila you have a modern sedan.
Edit: voila and not viola. I've got orchestra on the brain.
Aerodynamically, they do to a meaningful extent although there is often a lag of several years due to the length of development cycles: for example the Datsun 240z and the Ferrari 275GT or the wedge shape of a 2012 Civic Coupe and the Lamborghini Countach of 1980's college dorm room walls. And there's decades of Camerys and Regals sporting spoilers on their trunk.
On the other hand, a lot of supercars are mid engine (or depending on your definition of 'supercar' sometimes rear-engined) and this dictates some of the features.
Everyone is talking about gaps, manufacturing limitations, etc..
Growing up in the Detroit area where literally everyone works for the big 3 or a molding plant for them, I guess I could give a little more insight...
The answer is a lot simpler. Car companies have a pre-defined set of models. A lot of work and planning goes into new models. Part of that planning is a pre-determined quota of estimated cars sold during 6 months, 12, 24, etc. if they don't feel they can hit this rather large quota, the project is scrapped.
So..to answer the question: It's because cars are built to favor the mass general public, both visually and on price-point. People have so many different tastes that it turns out this task is rather quite hard. Ferraris are a niche product, even if they were sold for $20k the Impala would still outsell it by leaps and bound (assuming a Ferrari and Impala were both sold by chevy and that Ferrari didn't have a huge luxury reputation behind it).
It's simply to appeal to the masses to sell millions of cars.
this is coming from a mechanical engineer working at one of the big 3's in Detroit. the car development process is very expensive. making one part affects lot of different parameters, for e.g. change in hood design will affect aerodynamics, noise paths, crash, durability, manufacturing complexity, cost of each part {bold}, fuel economy. in car industry, people fight for every dollar that is spent on a car. for a consumer, a simple led costs 1$, but for a manufacturer, if they sell half a million cars, the expenditure is very high.
changing anything on a car platform is very expensive, aesthetics are not always priority.
on other note, i think the ford fusions look like aston martins. kia interiors are very close to Audi's.
People buy Ferraris for the status as much as the performance.
Something that looks the part but doesn't have the gravitas just doesn't appeal to a large enough audience.
Pantera tried to make something like a cheap Ferrari in the 1970's. It was about $10k when average cars were $3k, and a Ferrari was $20k+. It did okay, but not a spectacular success.
And, there have been a few cars that tried to look the part, without the performance, but they did about the same. Pontiac's Fiero, for example.
Basically, the people that want that look also want you to think they paid a lot of money.
This, and if it's cheap at least it must be as fast as the real thing or faster, to silence the people laughing at the owner of what they think is a fake.
Good point. You can do well if you make a relatively inexpensive fast car, and you don't even need to make it look like a supercar to run with that pack.
The Mitsubishi Evo has been highly successful, and keeps up with much pricier cars...even bone stock, with no performance parts added. It looks like a typical 4 door economy car with some spoilers added. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ees2aZcDUn8 (BBC's Top Gear: Evo on a track versus a Lamborghini)
Add a bigger turbo and these things are scary fast.
Edit: That golf below is hilarious, but wouldn't fare well on a road that wasn't straight.
Of course, you could also have any type of car and just get dominated by someone who's crammed a huge HP engine into an old-looking Golf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE5x9vlb0ss
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 that should be particularly expensive. It just needs to look good.
There are many answers in this thread about performance, manufacturing tolerances, undermining your high-end brand etc., but none of that should apply here.
I'm asking partly because I think almost all modern cars are hideous, but I also can't afford a 911.
There are four generations of Miata. I think the newest looks better than most of the stuff on the street today, honestly. (how do you not like the Miata RF?) It's all shockingly generic looking now, IMO. Somehow, incredibly, Maseratis have become popular where I live, but they seem to have done it by looking like Toyotas. (at least they still sound incredible) Even Aston-Martin and Jaguar make stuff that barely rates above "cool."
I spend a fair amount of time wondering why nobody makes anything with a more bug-eyed look similar to either the classic 911 or even the classic 60s sports cars (Lola, GT40, 904, etc.). Modern safety standards and crumple zones probably have something to do with it.
The RF is pretty good looking, though the newer generations tend to have "evil reptilian eyes"-type [1] headlights and bodies with a kind of blunt chunkiness that a lot of modern cars have. I assume the intention is to impart a sense of muscularity, but to me that just looks misguided and embarrassingly macho, like the car equivalent of body building. I like the round front of the version shown in this 2012 article, was it ever made? [2] The RF's hood has those muscular side ridges which I think look terrible. Edit: The 2005 model has a round front like that [3], and is less evil.
(Agreed about the rest. I don't really know cars, so before I commented I just googled the various Miata generations and seem to have misread Wikipedia.)
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 stupid enough to want to do so. The stealth approach is better for me.
Sure, a small sports car is less practical than a big one. But sports cars exist, so that is irrelevant to the whole question; clearly there are some people who don't want a big, ugly car.
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?
I was trying to answer the question from my perspective but I did a poor job.
Impractical cars exist, but they sell in low volumes, so they have to be expensive because the tooling for any car is horrifically expensive -- much more so than for a laptop computer. A cheap 911 clone cannot exist because the body style is too impractical to sell in high volumes.
As others have mentioned, there are some. My 1993 Toyota MR2 Turbo [0] bears some resemblance to a Ferrari F355 [1].
As far as models currently on sale go, I think the prize for the best-looking economy car easily goes to the Honda CR-Z [2]. Alas, as they say, its performance can't cover the checks its styling writes, which is probably why sales have been extremely poor. (You can get it with a performance package including a centrifugal supercharger, but then it's $30k.)
> As far as models currently on sale go, I think the prize for the best-looking economy car easily goes to the Honda CR-Z
That and the Toyota/Subaru FRS/GT86/BRZ. At least a few times my heart rate has increased a bit seeing those cars at a distance (from the front). Nice to have Honda and Toyota making such good-looking cars
Well, I wouldn't call that an economy car, but with 200hp I suppose it does qualify as underpowered relative to a Ferrari. I agree, it is nice-looking.
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.
A lot of people buy Mazda MX-5s. They can carry speed through corners pretty well, but aren't really fast by other metrics even compared to other cars in the same price class. The first couple generations were slower to accelerate than many midrange cars with essentially no sporting pretensions.
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.
Costlier cars need to stand out from the ordinary. And to stand out designers come up with fancy curves, shapes etc. From a manufacturing point of view these 'non standard' items result in more cost which the mid-range cars cant afford. For example there is more wastage in cutting a curvy door from the sheet metal as compared to a standard rectangle shaped one.
It is interesting to note that as time goes by, what was fancy once eventually becomes 'standard' and the features get into the mid-range priced cars as well. Auto-shift is probably a good example. Automatic rear trunk opener is another and so on.
> It is interesting to note that as time goes by, what was fancy once eventually becomes 'standard' and the features get into the mid-range priced cars as well. Auto-shift is probably a good example. Automatic rear trunk opener is another and so on.
Is that because the high-end carmakers invest R&D in reducing costs of making these fancy door panels, which trickles down into mid/low-end cars? (I've heard similar things said for other more software-related car features like traction control or abs, but I'm interested if this is also the case for manufacturing)
A lot of high-end carmakers these days are owned by big car-manufacturer conglomerates. For example, Volkswagen owns Lamborghini, Bugatti, Bentley, Audi, and Porsche; Chrysler owns Maserati and owned Ferrari until a couple years ago; Ford owned Jaguar and Aston Martin in the 90s and 00s. So the trickle-down is really very direct: From the luxury makes of a conglomerate into the consumer makes.
Yes. Auto makers don't build cars all by themselves in one single factory. There is a huge supply chain.
So initially supplier 'A' may create a non-standard item for a new niche car. Eventually they make it available for other cars too. As more and more manufacturers pick up the 'new item' for their cars, the cost of manufacturing starts coming down as economy of scale kicks in.
The above is just one example, my point is that non-standard items cost high to manufacture, and as others start to improvise/ replicate the cost starts to come down.
There are also cars like the Stingray Corvette, which have dramatic visual designs and are still attainable by middle class individuals who have done pretty well, if they want. If you debadge a red Corvette Grand Sport and take it to LA, people will very likely mistake it for a "lambo" or a Ferrari.
Additionally, outside of the complexity required to bend the alloy to shape a Ferrari - I would imagine a car that looks like a Ferrari, but behaves like a Civic would feel ridiculous, or out of place, from a cultural standpoint (much like driving an F1 car around your neighborhood).
I think sports cars balance their aesthetics as a compliment to their function, whereas a Mazda dressed like a Lamborghini would almost feel "phony" as the aesthetic value would not be in line with functional purpose of the car at all. Thus, they are optimized for their functionality, which is to store stuff and to be safe.
Economy and practical cars are getting more racy looks these days too though, because not everyone wants to drive a half-gallon-of-milk-tipped-over minivan just because they're practical.
The premise of the quedtion is wrong--they do make these cars. See the Scion FRS. Also Subaru has a car that looks just like it, but I cannot remember the name.
Also I would argue the Mazda Miata targets this style, and I have seen a Honda car that looks quite similar to the Miata as well.
I have seen a Honda car that looks quite similar to the Miata as well
That would be the S2000. It was a bit upmarket from the Miata and remained on the market longer (10 years) than anything else that tried to compete head to head with the Miata.
Gosh, I'd love another S2K. Hopefully once the Supra launches, Honda will be more motivated to do a more hardcore sports car, possibly with the Type R Civic drivetrain in a RWD roadster configuration.
Typical super-car designs embrace wider chassis and lower-sitting suspension. Both are impractical for daily driving. Not to mention the absence of space for occupants or lack of trunk space. Try to sit in any coupe with the second row of seats and you'll instantly feel like a sardine.
I think an even bigger issue is that you can't have a car with the super-car design but without the matching horsepower. They just wouldn't sell. And if you added the corresponding horsepower you all of a sudden created something that most people won't be able to drive daily without major safety concerns, which is why these cars are in their own class to begin with. I drive a modified WRX with slightly over 300 ponies and I can tell you that when i first started driving it there were times when i'd gun it to get around someone and would just have a hard time slowing the car down. Same with taking quick turns where giving a bit of gas can send your car for a wild spin. This is why youtube is full of lambo and ferrari owners crashing their cars while trying to show off at intersections and turns beause people have no idea how to drive with so much horsepower lol
Lotus Elise, BRZ, Alpha 4C, and others are very nice cars with lower horsepower to match the handling. It's nice to be able to drive something to it's full potential without electronics or loss of license. I haven't owned any of these cars but I do own a 600cc sport bike. Modern 200+ hp litrebikes are now mostly just computers on wheels.
And let's not forget the Miata! The best compromise IMO is to have a dedicated sports car (2-seater, manual transmission, low, light, optionally with ridiculous power depending on budget) and a second vehicle for everything else, like a Honda Element (wish they still made those, compact but roomy, handles well for what it is, truck bed liner in the interior, many seats if you need them) or a quad-cab pickup if you need to e.g. tow heavier stuff. There are some ideas like fast station wagons (Volvo v40 Polestar for ~$60k, automatic only, WRX STI wagon that they don't make anymore, E63 AMG wagon at >$100k also automatic only), fast trucks (SVT Raptor, Chevy SSR, SRT10 RAM), or hot hatches (A45 AMG, M140i, Audi RS1, Megane Trophy-R, Astra VXR, Leon Cupra, Civic Type R, none of which are available in the US...we get the GLA45 which is higher and handles worse, and the M240i which is a coupe), sporty SUVs (Cayenne, Macan, X5M, etc who cares), but all make huge compromises and end up mostly being heavy and/or expensive. For ~$50k new, you could have a real sports car and a real truck or utility vehicle.
I wouldn't put BRZ in this category, but Lotus Elise and the 4C are definitely perfect examples of super-cars with manageable horsepower. I stand corrected, sir! I do wonder, however, if people are still choosing 350z, BRZs and STIs over something like a Elise because, ironically, you get more ponies for your buck.
Arguably this is what Delorean tried to do. But think: what are the advantages of the shape, as opposed to the rest of the Ferrari-ness? It looks cool. What are the disadvantages? Well, you lose a lot of luggage space and visibility, and you have a low driving position. People seem generally to prefer a high driving position - it's why SUVs are so popular.
There are a few intermediaries; the Jaguar X-Type is a Ford Mondeo with a Jaguar badge and some trim improvements. Personally my favourite was the Pininfarina-designed Peugeot 306 Cabriolet; it's not a Ferrari, it's an affordable sportscar that goes in at the sides and is done by the same designer.
There's also something to be said for cutting your own style rather than trying to be an imitator. People don't respect imitation. Few people want to drive a car known for being specifically for those who can't afford Ferraris.
> People don't respect imitation. Few people want to drive a car [...] for those who can't afford Ferraris.
I thought so too, but on the other hand, the success of cheap wannabe SUVs like the Qashqai shows that the "aspirational" market can be very rewarding if you can find the right balance.
It's a bit like nobody wants an iPhone-like chinese replica, but quality Android "slabs" can be very desirable.
Because it's dishonest. You also get all the discomfort and impracticality of a supercar with none of the benefits. You just project some status until people discover what car you're actually driving.
There is a middle class car shaped like a ferrari: The Lotus Elise and even more so, the Alfa Romeo 4C. Now let's see what happens when they do this: No one buys it! Wow. It seems, relatively few people want that. And with such a small number of people, car companies don't have the economies of scale to build those cars.
Car enthusiasts make up a small percentage of the car market, even here in America. People want practical, with a bit of badge.
And there are other really awesomely styled cars: Hyundai Veloster, SLK 55 AMG and I don't see these selling out really fast.
As other answers have essentially already said- because Ferrari is a brand, and past a certain price point brand names often matter more than the physical object. Its the same in cars as in designer handbags.
The opposite question is equally interesting; why doesn't Ferrari produce a relatively cheap car, so that they can offer the Ferrari cachet to a broader market? Presumably as to not dilute their brand. But it means we might see such a thing if the company starts having problems (e.g., finds itself competing against superior electric vehicles or similar.)
But for basically any given designer handbag I can find dozens of bags at a fraction of the price which are largely indistinguishable from the original if you're standing across the street.
The basic function and use of both purses are basically indistinguishable - the customer's needs are the same in both products.
Sporty-looking cars that are low-to-mid priced really can't afford to handle like a sports car, since it is likely to be someone's main car - or back up when a car is in the shop. The expensive car is likely to be difficult to handle, especially in city driving and on the snow/ice. In addition, some of the cars perform poorly in city landscapes with potholes and speed bumps. If you've the money for the high-end car, those thigns are likely less of an issue.
In other words, the customer's needs are different with the cars. Now, I'm not an expert, but I don't think you can get the same sort of look/feel while still making it a practical enough car for the lower end market.
Not the low-end market, no, cars require a bit more technical expertise than handbags. But I imagine you'll find that there are cars 2/3rds the price of any given Ferrari model that have roughly the same level of performance, from objective measurements. In which case you're "only" paying something like 30k to participate in the word "Ferrari."
Under Ford ownership, Jaguar did the same thing with the X-Type, and in my opinion, started the decline of the brand. The X-Type was [apparently] designed to allow them to cater to a mid-market customer, but they produced an objectively inferior car with a little bit of Jaguar look, but the fit and finish of a slightly-nicer Ford.
I drove one after having owned other Jaguars and the cheap switchgear, loud engine, excessive road noise, and poor performance put it in sharp contrast to the rest of their line.
They could have produced a car equivalent to their full-size sedans, but they couldn't have done it for that price point.
Undoubtedly part of the appeal for the corporate parent was the sharing of (IIRC) the Ford Mondeo platform, saving them the development costs of an entirely new vehicle.
The problem with that approach is that people who like a brand for the brand's sake don't want the 'Cheap' version, and people who can afford the expensive version as a status symbol don't want their prestige reduced by sharing the same marque as someone with the less-expensive version.
It's human psychology, and part of the reasoning behind 'Lexus' being a separate brand vs. just an expensive Toyota.
Mercedes also has the CLS and CLA now. LandRover did a model, the FreeLander (LR2 in NA), which was a Ford Escape with a nicer interior and different body panels. The LR2 SUV was built on a mid-size car platform, as many "compact SUVs" today are. They're very much built to American tastes of "some kind of truck thing, definitely not a minivan" while having about the same interior space as a decent sedan / hatch. Because of these tastes, we also don't get many of the hot hatches from Europe, because apparently no one except a few enthusiasts here want a small-ish vehicle with good power, great handling, good fuel economy, and enough room for a mountain bike or two in the boot. Americans want a hatchback with a lift kit, like the GLA45 AMG (since we don't get the lower, better-handling, lighter A45 AMG here) with just as little space, more weight, and much more body roll all for aesthetic reasons. It still has basically no true off-road capability.
> we might see such a thing if the company starts having problems
IIRC manufacturing numbers have gone back and forth on several lines of Ferrari more or less on this sort of need. While Enzo Ferrari was alive, Ferrari produced cars only to fund the racing team; it's probably not a coincidence that the most famous and best-selling Ferrari model ever, the Testarossa, was in production at a time when the team had no answer to the domination of Japanese turbo engines in F1. The team needed money to fight, and more and more Testarossa were made.
This said, Ferrari has been substantially bankrolled by FIAT "sight unseen" since the '60s. Things might change now that they are a public company. We'll see.
As an example of what happens when this is attempted, I give you the Mistubishi GTO (AKA 3000 GT overseas, and also Dodge Stealth in USA) [1] According to someone's dogged research it seems that 130K units were sold during its existence [2]. According to an annoyed woman's opinion I heard on the street, "Eeewww it looks like a Ferrari". I know that the cheapest Stealth version sold for under $20K in 1991. The Wikipedia article mentions the various competitors, several of which have strong followings to this day, and of which at least one has been semi-revived. I of course did own one of the cheapest models of the Stealth. I personally consider the most engaging alternative to be the ca-1991 300Z, which was too expensive for me, but still I think a middle-class car.
I think the current middle-class gearhead car is either a full-on Q-ship (it's fast but you can't tell by looking), or a sports sedan like BMW 3xx or Audi A4. Whether that is because no more hatchback coupes are sold or because customers decided to give up hatchback coupes I do not know.
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've got some ad copy ready for you if you decide to produce one:
"You'll begin to hear the laughter the moment you step into your brand new Poseur 550 Sports-ish car. And for some time thereafter, since the acceleration is barely discernable."
The Ford Mustang was a middle-class sports car. Models are still in production. Lee Iaccoca pushed that product line forward. It was cheap to build and popular with young people. Any Chevy dealer can sell you a Corvette. Fiat-Chrysler makes the 124 Spyder, with list price under $25K.
None of them sell all that well. But they're all available.
Excellent insights from the replies. I would like to offer my own.
There is a philosophy that says design for function. Let's say there is a sleek shape for a car that does not walk the talk, what are the social aspects of owning that car?
Think of modded watches , or the Toyota Celica, with a little modification it can be made to look like a decent sports car , would you buy it if it didn't perform?
I thought about the same thing! I was excited about concept cars, but bored by their mass production counterpart. I always thought that I don't care about the engine or the interior, I would buy it just because of the shape.
I'm also into jeep wrangler. but I it's too fuel hungry. I wonder why they don't make a version without any off road capability with smaller engine but same body style, I would buy it.
I don't think OP intended to mean exact replica, but more or less, why aren't mid-range sedans made to look more like the exotics. In other words, more corvettes, less impalas.
It's more nuanced than that though, because OP presumably is not talking about a specific model, but rather one with the likeness (and possibly sound) of a Ferrari.
For example, I don't know what the next Porsche model is, but I know I'll be able to recognize it when I see it because they are so distinctive.
No it's not like Ferrari but the concept seems cool. Build carbon fiber cars with Ford engines and sell for a good price. No roof or openable doors though.
Because it's a terribly inefficient use of space if you have any needs beyond going fast. Most of us drive much, much slower than a Ferrari is capable of, and carry more people and things than a Ferrari can.
Btw, an example of a 'middle class' Ferrari is the Alfa Romeo 4c.
Hyundai does this to an extent making some of their models look kind of like Bentleys. Ford has done this somewhat making some of their models look like Aston Martins. The one thing missing in this is the removal of the "Hyundai" and "Ford" logos...
There used to be a fairly inexpensive car, I think it was the Hyandai Coupe, that had an advert where they showed it next to the Ferrari 456 and the two did look very similar.
[Actually that reminded me of a QC that my wife knew who did commute in his 456].
One point not yet mentioned is that the Ferrari shape is assisted by the engine placement and drive configuration. A front-engine and front-drive Hyundai has too much packaged under the hood to shape similar to a Ferrari.
I think the same market that is interested in the Toyota 86, Subaru BRZ or Miata would be interested in a car like you describe - but with more horsepower and with a mid mounted engine. Like a poor mans Porsche Cayman.
I always wondered why car companies like Mazda or Hyundai or Honda don't produce cars that may not have the performance capabilities of a Ferrari but resemble one in their shape?
Electric cars change the whole logic since you need a relatively simple drivetrain (similar to that solar powered car built in high school) and a whole lot of batteries. So there's a lot more room for creativity and design I think. But from Tesla's perspective, they started out looking like a lotus to appeal to rich people and have kept design as a core part of their product so they probably will try to keep some part of that even in their more affordable car.
Also keep in mind that the 3 series isn't exactly for the mass market. Its price range is more like a BMW 3 series with some bell and whistles.
What do you mean? It's not as if the Model 3 offers anything near Ferrari-level design nor performance. In my (admittedly biased, like anyone's) opinion, designwise it's very similar to the Mazda 3 4-door sedan:
https://www.mazdausa.com/vehicles/mazda3-sedan
And before you quote 0-60 times: they are a tiny, tiny part of performance; if you look at actual racetrack performance, even the Model S P100D is miles behind a Ferrari, it's behind the top-spec Honda Civic in Nurburgring lap times. Which Tesla don't even measure nor publish, unlike all other sports car manufacturers ever. The Model 3 will be even worse off.
Come to think of it, we used to have a word for big, heavy American cars that go fast in a straight line and not otherwise: muscle cars.
> And before you quote 0-60 times: they are a tiny, tiny part of performance; if you look at actual racetrack performance
Benchmarking has been on my mind this morning. I think you're pretty clearly off base here with your "tiny, tiny part of performance" comment.
0-60 times roughly reflect what people will see when they're getting on to the freeway. It's a useful exercise to contemplate how often people get on to the freeway and how often they drive around Nürburgring, or any race track.
This point pretty much holds true even among sports car owners. Guys who track their cars are very much an exception. (and for the most common case of that, drag racing, the Tesla you were putting down actually performs quite well)
As mentioned upthread & here, yes, the early Fieros did have a habit of catching fire. There were primarily two reasons for this:
GM refused to budget for a new engine for the car-it never really wanted to have a two-seater outside the Corvette, but after the second gas crisis, the turkish engineer who'd been agitating for what would become the Fiero sold it to management as an economic commuter car.
The idea was to save money by using components (including the existing engine) from GM's A-body front-wheel-drive sedans, amongst others. The Pontiac 2.5L engine was too tall to fit properly in the mid-engined Fiero, and with no money for a complete redesign, the solution was to install a shallower oil pan, making the whole engine run a quart low (at least) at all times. That four was also not especially resistant to burning/leaking oil; so it was always a risk that the engine would be starved of lubricant, overheat, seize and catch fire.
I also understand that there were problems with the factory wiring on the electric radiator fans, such that airflow was never properly managed in the engine compartment, leading to... overheating and fire.
These problems were eventually fixed, but a reputation for burning up at stoplights is a hard one to overcome with normal consumers.
(I say 'normal consumers' here. Lamborghini has made many fire-prone models, but Lamborghini buyers are Not Normal.)
Radiator is at the front of the car, not in the engine compartment. If you bottomed out, you could break your coolant lines, as I had done with mine 20 years ago.
Cool shapes usually encroach on interior space. The most space efficient vehicle that you could fit in a parking spot would be cubic shaped, perhaps not so pretty or aerodynamic. A better question might be, why are these new cars so terribly ugly in general. Like the Pontiac Aztek and Citroen Picasso.
I've often wondered about that. In fact, I've come up with an utterly
ridiculous theory to explain it, which is total bull but quite entertaining,
so here goes:
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 :)
____________________
[1] Evolution of Honest Signaling by Social Punishment
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.
My uncle is building prototypes for a large company that produces parts for most german cars (I can't disclose where or at which company, sorry). And he worked there half his life, so he knows a thing or two. I asked him the same question and he laughed at me, saying that it's a dumb question. I was flabbergasted at his answer. He continued, by saying how it's against the interest of any car manufacturer to undermine their own business with such "flsah-sale" like hot product. It would create "unwanted dynamics" (I think he meant competition, but I'm not sure).
Also he asked why would you buy a cheap supercar? I said, because it looks good and brings me from a to b. He then asked, what happens if everbody drives the same cheap supercar? I said it's not bugging me, but it would bug others probably. He alluded that it may be different now, but we won't do that. All of my friends at the management level know about this and we don't focus on this problem anymore.
I've summed up (hopefully correctly) some of the most compelling arguments here and tried to bring counter arguments. Which I'll elaborate below the list.
• Tolerances can be solved by optimization (CAD + Solver / +EA-Algorithm / +ML) @giarc
• Goal Oriented Design and Years of Experience don't hinder a great looking body and frame @heavymark @markbnj
• Outer body and frame have no such limiting influence on the interior design @dagw
• 3rd party party reliance is a thing, but you could overcome most of these price drags by using alternatives, 3d printing or self-fabrication @byoung2 anyway that's a good argument @DeBraid I agree, but altough it answers the question it doesn't feel satifying for our curiousity
• Yes, the industry's car design tools don't help with parameter complexity @garyfirestorm you are right there, sir. We need better integrated tooling and part optimizers/solvers.
• Status and Image is important, thus such gravitas have some, but it's not the deal-breaking argument @tyingq You can do it like Asus and create Apple'esque hardware at the fraction of a cost and thrive due to the price gap.
• "Because it's dishonest. You also get all the discomfort and impracticality of a supercar with none of the benefits. You just project some status until people discover what car you're actually driving." @gaze I don't understand what you mean here to be honest, can you elaborate?
Arguing with tolerances just means that the design process isn't automated or not integrated into the production process properly. Otherwisee there would be a user friendly solver and optimization tool for CAD that uses Evolutionary-Algorithms, a Contraint-Solver and/or Machine-Learning.
Simply put you can use an existing battle tested car and just change the body with a supercar alike one. This usually means also you have better and not worse aerodynamics (given that you don't blindly ignore aerodynamics just for a better looks).
And who (in his right mind) drives 300Km/h at all on American Streets? That's just unneccsary and arriving 1-5min earlier is no compelling reason for driving at such risky speeds. It's not even allowed from what I know, except in Germany (where I live), but even here we don't usually go significantly over 220Km/h for short periods of time. Thus a big enging and huge horsepower isn't even the selling point of a SuperCar per se, but it's looks and exclusivity.
Tl;Dr Answer: One conclusion I derive is that the Car Design Process and Car Production Process, altough almost fully automated, are really not well integrated and appear to lack essential, albeit usually complex to use tools like Machine-Learning/EAs and Contraint-Solvers. The Industry needs a change urgently in this area, but it's already been explored from what I know :)
There's a number of reasons. Those cars are expensive to manufacture and making an affordable car that looks like that is extremely difficult. You'd have to cut costs elsewhere compared to a more "boring" looking car.
Additionally part of why those cars look cool is that they are very low to the ground and generally sacrifice visibility (especially rearward) for aesthetics and aerodynamics. People buying mid range cars want something more practical, even in a sports car.
The last thing I would point out is that modern affordable sports cars do have more complex body panels, lights, bigger wheels, etc compared to affordable sports cars of the past. Body construction techniques make their way from exotics down to affordable cars over time much like engine technology. But the exotics will always be ahead. That's one of the things you can do if you are targeting a $100k+ price point.
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Therefore, my theory is that mid range car companies don't want to build complex designs as they will increase the price of their car needed to satisfy their tolerance specs.