The Sports Car : With the high price tag that comes with sports car look alikes you might as well buy the real thing.

Epic Sports Cars:

Your Guide In Telling the Difference Between Sports and Basic Cars

By: Edward Carr

Posted: 11/23/09

These days, a lot of words get thrown around so much that they start to lose some of their meaning. I remember a time when the word "epic" was only used on things that were monumental in scale, majestic even. I was on the train the other day and I actually heard a girl turn to her friend and say, "Have you heard the new Lady Gaga song? It's totally epic." Volcanoes are epic. Tsunamis are epic. The Iliad was an epic. Hell, Quentin Tarantino's movie-making career could be considered epic. Your Lady Gaga song isn't the least bit epic.

The automotive world has its own word that falls into the "epic" category; "sports car."

The most recent example of the misuse of the word I can think of comes in the form of the advertisements for the new Nissan Maxima. The ads laud the car, its handling and power and deem it a "four-door sports car." Yeah, right. When you think of a sports car, do you think of a four-door family sedan not even making 290 horsepower and weighing in at a whopping 3,600 lbs? I didn't think so. Sports car sure sounds nice, though, and it's sure to get some uninformed buyers into the showrooms.

You also see the word used on cars that look the part but don't play the part. I'll concede, the Mitsubishi Eclipse and Hyundai Tiburon are pretty cool looking cars. Beyond their looks, however, lie mild-mannered front-wheel drive coupes that aren't that fast and don't handle well. They're like the sheep in wolf's clothing, talking the talk but not walking the walk.

Tated to false advertisements and false classifications put forth by manufacturers, people have a habit of calling cars "sports cars" when they definitely aren't. I completely understand if you think your car is special (even though it was mass-produced on an assembly line along with thousands of other examples), but let's not get crazy here. Your Toyota Corolla with a body kit and 24" wheels is not a sports car. Even though it might be supercharged, your Buick Regal is not a sports car. Your bright orange Honda Accord with a four-foot spoiler and racing stripes is not a sports car. Could these examples be turned into sports cars? Possibly, but with all that money being spent on the engine, suspension and bodywork, you'd be better off buying a real sports car.

So now that we all know what aren't considered sports cars, what is a sports car? A sports car is a small two-door (the word small is relative here) speedy car with excellent handling and braking characteristics. The particulars of this definition can be debated, but that's the basic gist of it. Because about 90 percent of the cars on the road today don't exhibit these characteristics, they aren't considered sports cars. Some examples of real sports cars are the Chevrolet Corvette, the Porsche 911 series, almost any Ferrari or Lamborghini, the Dodge Viper or the Honda NSX, to name a few. They all are high-power two-doors that are fast and handle well. You don't need a lot of power to be considered a sports car, either, like in the case of the Lotus Elise. The Elise uses the same engine found in the Toyota Corolla. It doesn't make that much power, but because the car is so small and light, it still can go very fast.

Just like the girl in the first paragraph misusing her words, I think everyone's confusing "sports car" with a "sporty car." The difference between the two is, sure, the latter probably looks or performs better than a lot of the other cars on the road. It might be a little faster, handle a little better or look a bit more aggressive, but at the end of the day, it's just a prettied-=up version of a less sporty car. A true sports car is in a class of its own. It dominates most of the other cars on the road in terms of performance. The only competition for sports cars are other sports cars.