People who know me know my love for cars. My obsession with cars started at a very young age. My favorite toy as a three-year-old was a police toy car, which I would run around “driving” and catching bad guys with. In grade school, I would doodle my own futuristic designs for sports cars on the back of my reading comprehension sheets (think of these designs as crosses between jet planes and sports cars – they were quite interesting…). I played the first Gran Turismo on my PS1, learning about racing physics and tuning up my race cars for the track.
But the key year for me was fifth grade. That was the year I really got into sports cars, set off by my teacher’s 365-day car calendar, which had pictures of sports cars for every day of the year. Every week without fail, I would ask him for the ones he tore off, hoping that I’d get a really cool car to add to my collection. From that point on, I knew for certain that I’d found one of my passions in life.
In middle school, I browsed Cars.com and AutoTrader.com just to find pictures of sports cars for sale and printed them out, making collages to decorate my binders. And who could forget my subscription to Automobile Magazine, which I’ve faithfully subscribed to every year without interruption since sixth grade? Cars were and are a huge part of my identity, and I think it’s safe to say that I’m a car lover. For this post, I wanted to share three of my all-time favorite sports cars – not in a very technical way that would risk boring readers – but in a way that captures the emotions, experiences, and thought processes behind my choices. So without further ado, three of my personal favorites in no particular order!
Nissan 240SX (S13)
The Nissan 240SX is one of the most popular drift cars out there. But the reason I picked this car as one of my tops is a much more personal one – my dad owned this car and it was one of the first cars I remember riding in. With its very-80s pop-up headlights, automatic seat belts, and distinctive ignition sound that I can still hear in my head, the Nissan 240SX was beautiful in its simplicity. Its design was nothing too fancy, just a classic, timeless sporty body without too many bells and whistles.
I think one of the saddest days was when my dad sold that car. I’d always envisioned myself taking it as my first car, so I’ll probably never get the experience to drive one again. Still, the 240SX brought along a lot of great memories, from the time a cop stopped us because he thought I wasn’t wearing my seat belt (I was) to the time I graduated from the back seats and was finally allowed to sit in the front seat. Who knows? Maybe one day in the near future, I’ll find myself at the front seat once again, this time behind the steering wheel overlooking a beautiful empty road.
Dodge Viper GTS
The first time I laid eyes on a Dodge Viper was when I got my first calendar sheet from my fifth grade teacher. I still remember him saying something along the lines of “This is a good one.” My eyes were immediately drawn to the blue with white racing stripe paint job – it had such a sophisticated yet aggressive feel. Since then, I started referring to the Dodge Viper as my favorite car. I always told my friends that I would buy one in the future – blue with white racing stripes, of course.
Even thought it gets a lot of flak and there are much better sports cars out there (I was sad when the Corvette Z06 beat it in a comparison article), the Dodge Viper was one-of-a-kind. With its monstrous engine, spartan interior, and legendary lack of any electronic assistance such as traction control, this car was an absolute beast, the epitome of a modern-day muscle car. From what I’ve gathered, the Viper is extremely hard to drive, and it’s this difficulty to tame the car that makes it legendary.
Ferrari F40
If you asked me to name the one car that is a sports car of the purest form, I would undoubtedly list the Ferrari F40 as that car. With a flawlessly beautiful aerodynamic shape, a signature massive wing, and one of the most satisfying engine sounds I’ve ever heard, this red beauty is perfect, just perfect. I had a jigsaw puzzle as a kid with the F40 racing through the night surrounded by galloping horses, and that image has stuck with me throughout my life and perfectly encapsulates Ferrari’s finest effort in modern times.
As the last car personally approved by founder Enzo Ferrari, the F40 was an engineering marvel, the first road-legal production car to break the 200 mph barrier. But technical achievements aside, the fact that Ferrari could make such a culturally-relevant, highly-desired, and universally-acclaimed sports car just adds more legitimacy to the prancing horse nameplate. One of my life goals is to drive an F40, in all its glory and splendor, on a race track or on the autobahn. We’ll see if that ever happens, but one can dream, right?
Bonus video of Chris Harris driving an F40 and F50:
That’s it! Cogito ergo zoom.
Zoom zoom at www.RandomTidbitsofThought.com.
