Star Road

One of the most worn out cliches in the automotive world is, “It’s more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.”

But is it really? What if you pootle down to the local sandwich joint, fling open the dihedral doors, and climb out of the fixed-back carbon fiber bucket seats of your McLaren 675LT? Would that experience be less fun than flogging a Honda Civic down the street?

Is it more fun to drive to the track in a Miata, where you redline the first three gears just to get on the highway, than it is in a GT3 RS? Is the GT3 RS driver having less fun going several seconds faster a lap than that Miata while using less of the car? Well, that’s how the maxim goes.

How did this phrase come about? Many enthusiasts will claim that supercars are boring.

It’s true, the places you normally see a supercar, such as “exotic” meets, are usually pretty boring. Supercar culture can be unimpressive to many automotive enthusiasts, with cars that are minimally driven and mostly used for showing off. From the factory, supercar performance and quality are by definition at an extremely high standard, so reasonable owners tend to leave them stock. You often end up playing a game of “spot the difference” between subtle variations in specifications and trim. And when they are modded, it’s often to a ridiculous extent, way past the bounds of what most would consider tasteful.

I think a lot of us would look at that picture and say, “but what’s the deal with the red EF and Dakar Yellow E36?” I believe that’s because spiffed-up econoboxes such as the Civic Si or E36 M3 are more relatable to the majority of people; that’s what we see every day, and they are somewhat in the realm of affordable, so that’s what we have the most experience with and can actually imagine ourselves owning. Plus, the reality of a car with lower performance limits is that those limits are more accessible to more people. No one wants to make a mistake in a car, but the stakes are amplified when the car has race car performance and costs as much as a house.

To me, the “fast” part of “Slow Car Fast” is in the relative sense: being fast or slow in a car relative to its own abilities. This is opposed to going fast in an absolute sense, like reaching 200 miles per hour or performing a two-second 0-60 run. The relative-to-the-car pace is very important; for example, is 1:40 at Laguna Seca a good lap time? That would be hauling ass in a stock GR86: slow car fast. But in a McLaren 765LT? That would be cruising pace, at more than 10 seconds under its potential: fast car slow.

That concept can be applied to the road. You can get from A to B in the same amount of time as someone else, but it will be “fast” or “slow” depending on what you’re driving.

Hey, that’s not a supercar. Right? It’s a pretty “super” car, though. You can go really fast on a twisty road, then get out and look at your tires that are barely worn. While the slower car you’re driving with is running at full chat, you might barely need to tap into the Evora’s potential to achieve the same pace. So you might be going down the road “fast” in the absolute sense, but “slow” relative to what the car could do.

Some people will say that you can never approach the limit of a supercar’s performance on public roads. Well, those naysayers probably couldn’t reach the limit of a Prius on public roads. The truth is, you can go there, just less frequently, and for shorter amounts of time: due to the speed, the experience is over quicker.

Wringing the neck of a slow car unlocks the experience of being at or near the car’s limit at a lower speed, which means it can happen more often. And if that’s what you like to do, that directly equals more fun.

But reaching a car’s performance limit on a public road is not everyone’s idea of fun. There are plenty of reasons why you might feel no need to push your car outside the bounds of a race track; there are plenty of things to enjoy from a car that don’t involve pushing the boundaries of grip. Supercars and top-spec performance variants tend to have better engines, transmissions, seats, interior materials, and more: things you can appreciate at any pace.

I’ve never gotten out of my car after driving a public road and gotten a trophy or even a lap time. There’s no competition based on performance; the winners are the ones who make it to the end with a smile on their face; the losers are the ones who don’t.

Fast car, slow car, driving fast, driving slow. What’s the most fun combination? It’s driving your car, at your pace, with a smile. That’s what driving on public roads is all about.

And if you still can’t figure out why someone wants to drive a supercar, find someone who owns one and ask them for a ride, or better yet, a drive. Another cliché is that ignorance is bliss, but the supercar experience is one that every car enthusiast should have.