Ralph Nader warned us about style without safety. History is rhyming as automakers fight to the death over which one can build the most powerful, fastest accelerating crossover that gets 229 miles to a charge. Tesla’s cheap shot made great internet: a Cybertruck dragging a 911 on a trailer on a strip next to a second 911. Tree goes green, the stainless doorstop wins, twitter goes nuts. Of course that was the Cybertruck “Cyberbeast” (gag), the top trim, and the 911 was a base model. Try towing in the real world and watch the Tesla’s range plummet into double digits.
In 1982 a Lamborghini Countach needed roughly 5.9 seconds to hit 60 mph. Today a Hyundai Ioniq 5 does 5.2, and a Volvo XC40 Recharge can dip under five. The poster car of excess loses to the Swedish grocery run. Progress, or have we misplaced the plot? We live in the era of school‑run supercars: minivans and mall crawlers flashing numbers once reserved for exotica. Raw speed is now everywhere and, at the top end, weirdly meaningless. A microwave beating a charcoal grill. A 2024 Honda Odyssey getting to sixty quicker than a Ferrari 308.
Historically, supercars and true sports sedans earned their pace. You paid for intent, or you gave something up to get it. Before the BMW M5 taught cars to multitask, most machines forced a choice between comfort and capability. That trade felt honest. What is off now is the indiscriminate handout of extreme performance to drivers who neither need nor want it. It is engineering talent poured into a dragstrip arms race on the school run.
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I. School‑Run Supercars (The 0–60 Arms Race)
Not long ago, a sub‑4‑second 0–60 lived with the Ferrari F430 and Porsche 911 Turbo. It took hardware, calibration, and a driver who could launch without tripping over physics. Now, dozens of anonymous sedans and crossovers breeze past that mark. For 2025 you can line up a Tesla Model Y Performance, a Lucid Air, a Porsche Macan Electric, a Kia EV6 GT, or a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and watch threes flash on the timer. The biggest plot twist: GMC’s Hummer EV, descendant of the rolling bunker that once needed forever to hit 60, now does it in about three seconds. The absurdity index is pinned. The 0–60 dash has become a spec‑sheet party trick, easy torque masquerading as mastery.
Then what? Where do you use a three‑second sprint in a commuter crossover? Urban and suburban limits are trending down. New York City moved to 25 mph in 2014, and most of its streets sit there now. Seattle, Charlotte, and others are peppered with 20 mph residential zones. Daily driving is congestion, cameras, and caution. On this stage, launch control is a jet engine on a lawnmower.
Plenty of owners never even mat the pedal. A driving instructor with a 200‑horse Hyundai Kona EV calls it “insanely powerful for a family car.” Students leave it in the softest mode. A UK advanced‑driving chief says even in a Mach‑E or Volvo EV the performance is rarely “too quick,” because normal people do not press that hard. Result: capability that sits unearned and unused, a trophy engine idling in traffic.
In a supercar or a true sports sedan, those same numbers exist for a reason. You chose the fast one and accepted the costs. The capability is the point. In a school‑run crossover, it is garnish. Pretty on paper, irrelevant on the plate.
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II. Performance Without Purpose (Who Is All This Speed For?)
Here is the split: purposeful performance versus accidental performance. Democratizing capability is great. What we have now is different. Supercar stats arrive not because buyers asked, but because the tech makes them trivial. An electric motor does not care if it moves a two‑seat coupe or a three‑row cube. Feed current, fit tire, achieve neck‑snap.
Automakers know big numbers trend. So they twist the knob and tout sub‑three launches in vehicles whose owners neither requested nor meaningfully benefit from that extreme. The “performance” is not integrated into a complete machine. It is cranked for headlines because it is easy and it photographs well.
We have seen this movie. Late‑sixties Detroit stuffed big blocks into anything with doors. You could buy a bargain Road Runner with dragstrip power and drum brakes. After the accidents, insurance spikes, regulation, and an oil crisis, the credits rolled. Today’s EV acceleration war rhymes with that arc. Insurers already flag higher crash rates in early EV ownership as proud new pilots demonstrate their prowess and find ditches. In the UK, the Tesla Model 3 lives in the top insurance band, shoulder to shoulder with exotics, because misused speed is still misused speed.
Crucially, most of these mega‑quick EVs go to families, commuters, and tech shoppers hunting range, software, or a badge. The pace comes bundled with the big battery or premium trim. It is capability by accident. Nobody clicked “quarter‑mile bragging rights.” They clicked “larger pack.” The result is point‑and‑shoot speed. Traction and stability sort the chaos. There is no learning curve, no demand that the driver rise to meet the car. It is impressive, then oddly empty. Dessert for dinner.
In a genuine performance car, capability is the reward for a deliberate choice. You seek it, you pay for it, you accept the compromises, and you meet the machine on its terms. Without that intent, coherence never arrives. Purpose and execution never line up.
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III. Intentional Speed: When Performance Has a Purpose
Now meet the cars that mean it. Dodge pitched the Challenger Hellcat as “707 horsepower for the price of a full‑size pickup.” Buyers knew exactly what they were signing: tire smoke and grins. The Demon doubled down, shipping a crate of drag parts and a race‑tune PCM. On 100‑octane it made 840 horsepower, could do 0–60 in 2.3 seconds on a prepared surface, and yank the front wheels three feet in the air. Nobody bought one by accident. Every choice on that car serves one mission: quarter‑mile domination. It is ridiculous. It is coherent.
Or take the Cadillac CT5‑V Blackwing. Six‑speed manual. 668 horsepower. Rear‑drive, track‑capable, and repeatedly on 10Best lists because it pairs outrageous shove with a chassis that speaks in full sentences. Buyers are not paying for numbers alone. They are buying dialogue: steering feel, brake consistency, thermal management, the noise and texture of a supercharged V8. That is earned performance. It asks something of you and pays you back.
Even in EV land, coherence is possible. Porsche’s Taycan was not built only to vaporize stoplights; it was honed on the Nürburgring with real cooling and real brakes. And yet, line a Taycan Turbo S against a classic 911 and a curious truth emerges. The electric car will dust hypercars, but many testers remember the 911 more vividly. Why? Because great performance is a symphony, not a single sustained note. The best cars orchestrate acceleration, grip, braking, sound, and feedback into one story. In a purpose‑built sports car, every system pushes toward excitement. In a quick but ordinary EV crossover, the launch is just a magic trick. A rocket strapped to a refrigerator. Hilarious once or twice. No one confuses the fridge for a sports car.
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IV. The Costs of Incoherence (Culture, Safety, and Design)
Giving supercar speed to the uninterested is not just philosophically sloppy. It has opportunity cost. Every hour spent shaving tenths off a 0–60 in a 5,000‑pound crossover is an hour not spent on range, charging, price, or ride and handling.
Enter the GMC Hummer EV. One thousand horsepower. “Watts to Freedom” launch mode. About three seconds to 60. Also 8,673 pounds and a battery north of 200 kWh. Even with air springs and four‑wheel steer, it is a heavy, ungainly performer. MotorTrend measured 142 feet to stop from 60, and called it laughable next to a still‑hefty Rivian R1S at 107. Physics does not negotiate. A 4.5‑ton brick can launch like a cannonball. It also lands like one. Hence the reviewer’s line: there is only so much mechanical grip can do until physics takes the wheel.
Safety aside, the thing guzzles electrons. MotorTrend again: “grossly inefficient despite being battery‑electric.” Real use equates to low‑teens miles per gallon in energy terms. In an era when teams could be making EVs lighter, cheaper, and easier to live with, building a dragster you cannot turn or stop well is misallocation disguised as progress.
Culturally, we are in a strange place. Performance is everywhere, and yet almost no one pursues it. Spec sheets read like theater programs. The stage lights brighten, but the house is empty. Regulators notice weight and power, not intent. Europe is already grumbling about super‑heavy EVs on public roads. Some U.S. states require heavier registrations; in places like North Carolina, Hummer owners end up with weighted plates. Insurance is adapting to the reality that a novice in a three‑second missile is not the same risk as a novice in a nine‑second hatch. Enthusiasts long feared a crackdown on performance. Irony says the crackdown may arrive not because of the cars that earn it, but because of the cars that do not.
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V. Toward Coherent Performance (Conclusion)
Performance does not belong to a priesthood. Accessible pace is a win. Getting to speed cleanly, merging without drama, shortening exposure when overtaking, these are real benefits. The point is not to ration speed. The point is to deliver it with honesty and intent.
Coherence is the product of that intent. If you give a crossover supercar acceleration, give it the brakes, tires, cooling, and steering to match. If your buyer does not care, invest the budget where they do: comfort, range, safety, price. Celebrate true advancement, not spec‑sheet cosplay.
What should we demand? An electric sports sedan with absurd acceleration and world‑class handling is the rightful evolution of the performance car. A gargantuan SUV with dragster numbers and no other dynamic virtue is a party trick at best and a liability at worst. We should not toast a 0–60 in isolation any more than we would cheer a car that hits 200 mph and falls apart when you turn the wheel.
The magic of a great machine is how it earns its speed and how it shares that feeling with you. As enthusiasts, as customers, as engineers, it is time to move past incidental horsepower. Applaud the cars that are quick and communicative, accessible and engaging. Call out the ones that are fast and empty. In a world where nearly any EV can be ludicrously quick, quickness is no longer special. Intentional performance still is. When speed has a purpose, it stops being a number and becomes an experience. That is worth preserving, even as the future arrives on a torrent of silent torque.
No gatekeeping here. If you want power, you should get it. But someone at the rental counter, someone’s new teen driver, someone who just drives to church and back, should have to ask for it, not get it bundled with heated seats and a bigger battery. The industry seems to have forgotten its learned lesson, cranking out one-car accidents, one crossover at a time.