I know I've beaten this horse to death, but the notion that there's going to be a return to the dark ages for performance cars is demonstrably false. It really kind of started when the first comparisons occurred between the 00 Cobra R, 01 Z06, and the Viper GTS. At the time those cars were 385, 385 and 460 hp, and people thought "they really can't unleash things much faster than this on the general public." By 2006, the GT was really about 580 hp, the Z06 was 505 hp, and the Viper was 510 hp. Now you can get a 638 hp ZR1, a 662 hp Mustang and a 640 hp Viper. That's an insane acceleration in a nuclear hp war. The Mustang, which is based on a vastly inferior platform, will soundly outrun a Ford GT on a race track with a competent driver, so 8 years after the end of GT production, it's hard to rationalize that the GT was the beginning of the end. If you think horsepower levels are going to level off or decline, you're right. Outside of the super duper ultra cars like the 900 hp Ferraris and McLarens, there's not a lot of point in escalating past 500-600-700 hp. But total performance is going up. Better tires, better transmissions, less weight, higher efficiency, launch control, faster lap times. Across pretty much all vehicle segments, performance has increased dramatically, and will continue to do so. Even my wife's Flex would whoop my first V8 Mustangs ass in a drag race. That's pretty wild. A 616 hp McLaren on 305 tires will run mid 10's in the 130s out of the box. Little more than a decade ago we were excited to build snotty drag cars that did that on Mickey Thompsons.
There's definitely truth to the notion that analog supercars are dead. No more high hp, no nannies, manual trans, high risk high reward widowmaker cars. When even Porsche is abandoning the manual trans in their purist models, you know things look bleak for it That will certainly play in the GTs favor and make it highly desirable for people that know what that experience is like. It's exciting to drive no matter what in a way that most of the video game supercars aren't. Same for cars like Carrera GT.
People would freak out if they saw the current crop of benchmark vehicles sitting over in Allen Park.
