For Fun Petrol Cars In The 2030s, Look To The Little Guys

With mainstream manufacturers hurling themselves into electrification because they have to, niche car-makers could reap the rewards in petrol's final decade of freedom

Matt Kimberley

05 Jan 2018

For Fun Petrol Cars In The 2030s, Look To The Little Guys

We all know that internal combustion bans are coming. The UK has set a deadline of 2040 for the non-electrified petrol engine, but we also know that most manufacturers will electrify all but the smallest and cheapest cars in their ranges before then. They have the tech and the motivation, so it’s going to happen.

So where does that leave the petrolhead of the future in terms of really desirable petrol-powered machinery where the only battery powers nothing more serious than the dashboard clock? It could be left to low-volume specialists to fill the gap.

Take the excellently-named Vins Duecinquanta two-stroke motorbike as an example that should be fresh in your memory. Designed and built by a small team of ex-Ferrari F1 engineers in Italy, it’s the very definition of niche. Two-strokes haven’t been allowed for emissions reasons since shortly after I got a 49cc moped at 16 years old.

A lot of people, mostly older guys, still harbour a secret semi for the days when they couldn’t step onto the street without catching a whiff of mixed, burned oil and petrol. Legendary strokers of the 1970s, like the Yamaha ‘Fizzy’ FS1E stoke the fires of nostalgia deep in the loins of people who are now old enough to have a bit of money to spend.

Caterham has always sold its cars on that same principle. By all logical arguments a Seven is an anachronism in 2018. No roof, a seat practically at floor level, interior space that would make tinned tuna feel cramped and all the creature comforts of a night sleeping rough under a motorway bridge create a product that really shouldn’t exist in a world where people think any car without a soft-touch dashboard is basically a Cold War relic.

It does exist, though, here and now, and the world is a better place for it. After something like 2030, though, you probably won’t have much choice in brand new cars that don’t have at least a mild hybrid setup, except for pockets of good old-fashioned wonderment like you see in Caterham. At this stage there’s no provision to make exceptions to the combustion engine bans for low-volume producers, but for that decade or so, the little guys might come to the fore as the only people to buy from if you really love driving.

When Volkswagen is peddling its electric cars, Toyota has moved almost its entire portfolio to full hybrids, plug-ins and hydrogen power and Mazda has finally been forced to put some kind of electrification in its cars, the likes of Vins, Noble, Morgan and Caterham might be the still-shining beacons towards which we have to turn in search of exploding liquids-based fun.

This presents some problems. Firstly, that 250cc motorbike costs €40,000. Even the cheapest Caterham, the Seven 160, is just about £20,000 if you get the factory to build it. A Seven 270, the next-cheapest, is almost £24,500. You can buy a new AC Cobra, identical to the 1962 car that sold at auction for $13.75 million, but it’s price on application…

You can see where we’re going with this. Small-volume car makers might be our only hope of clinging onto fun petrol-only cars beyond about 2030, but right now they don’t exactly build terribly affordable things.

This article is an open invitation to them all: please start developing fun cars to a £15,000 maximum. Make them simple and light, make them compact and give them whizzy little petrol engines with enough power to make them quick, but not so much that they’re hard to insure. In the 2030s, if you’ll forgive the irony in the phrasing, what a breath of fresh air that would be.

Comments

Right now the car industry for enthusiasts is like someone with cancer.
You know it’s going to die but still have some hopes for revival.
In the end you try to relish every moment till the end.
cries

This is so sad but so true , you ruined my day ;(

Did you see the Rimac accelerate? Like IDC about ICE give me more of that speed

But yes, It’s sad that car sound will die

Hybridization doesn’t mean no more noise

I had many relatives over for the holidays and they knew I like cars, so they asked me questions such as “isn’t it awesome that by the time the kids grow up they won’t have to drive anymore?” And, “ does Ferrari make an SUV? That would be cool!” Makes me have no hope for the future of cars since those are the people who are the common main costumer while car enthusiasts aren’t the main customers.

Yes and no. For someone dying, the car industry seems surprisingly healthy today in terms of enthusiast cars. Porsche currently sells at least 5 enthusiast models, in the style they used to back in the day. BMW are making homologation specials and topping those with a production model 3 months later, you have small, independent manufacturers of exciting cars popping up almost daily. The present is VERY exciting, but I know what you mean, the typical “ICE will be dead in 10 years so I want to die before that happens” fluff. A real car enthusiast knows a car is more than it’s motor, and an exciting car is a lot more than it’s motor. Otherwise Lotus would not sell a single Toyota powered car. Electric cars are not marketed as enthusiast vehicles right now. But once people realize just how exhilirating and exciting a purpose built enthusiast EV can be, they will embrace it fully. Then there will always be those who prefer a horse and carriage, because there is nothing quite like the pungnant smell of manure at 6 in the morning when you’re taking the carriage to the twisties for true enthusiasts, right?

There was an article that I remembered on Car Throttle a year or so ago comparing cars to horses: horses haven’t been used on the road for a hundred years now as a mean of transportation, they were replaced with cars for obvious reasons. But they are still used, if only for recreational use and sports.
Here’s the deal: in twenty years, combustion engines won’t be on the road anymore, either by law or by obsolescence, but there’s still a chance that these small cars like the Lotus Eleven or any classic car actually, will be preserved and still be driven. Not for means of transportation, that would be an anachronism (as the article above calls it), but purely for the people who want to have fun with it.

That’s exactly what I’m hoping for. I don’t mind using an electric car as means of getting from A to B as long as I have a second petrol-powered car that I can enjoy on a Sunday afternoon

I think eventually the whole concept of the car (at least in cities) will be overhauled in favour of some kind of autonomous, possibly flying transport which is shared use, like a taxi. Right now most cars spend 95% of their life sat there doing nothing which is inefficient. The car as we know it will become reserved for enthusiasts only.

That reminds me of MF Ghost (the spinoff made by the same guy that made Initial D). It’s set in the future where electric/self driving cars have taken over, but petrol cars are still used for Motorsport.

Exactly what I hope for: A small electric car (probably autonomous) as a daily driver and perhaps a Mustang for the weekends.

Exactly how I see it as well. Not to mention a car can be exciting even if it doesn’t sound amazing. The E30 M3 has a 4 cylinder motor, which according to gurus can’t sound good, and according to most BMW gurus, 4 cylinder motors are not for BMWs…. Still the M3 is considered one of the definitions of an enthusiast car. So I must draw the conclusion that all this talk about noise, is just that, noise.

This is one of my dreams - start up two very different car companies. One would be a mass production company making hybrids MPVs and Crossovers while the niche one would focus on making cars for the enthusiasts. I have planned the mass production one for 2040 while the niche one I plan to get up by 2020 or so… or at least I hope so. Hopefully by then there will be some other alternative fuel for us to enjoy so there’s plenty of time to plan out. 😃

Well, good luck. Car startups are extremely expensive, especially mass-production ones. Even Musk is struggling and he has billions to get him started. Niche is pretty much the only way to go.

I think what people are mistaking is that the ban only consists of selling NEW cars from 2040 onwards, anything else that’s already been made is still legal. Yet, I have the feeling that people who don’t know this will try and get rid of the kind of cars petrolheads want. The country needs reassurance if you ask me. But I don’t know about any bans later than that, so could be a pointless comment 😕

New cars with internal combustion alone, that is

maybe but here in belgium there already are places you can’t enter with a car older than 15 years so it wouldn’t make that much of a difference since they already stopped making new affordable fun cars

Ah but think about all the possible ways governments will try to deter the majority from owning the old cars. Higher Taxes than EVs, insurances, pollution charges, barring them from town centers (except retro parades where you need show cars, not daily drivers) etc etc.

After the bans in Europe, i wonder how long gas stations will remain open. Granted, you can produce your own alcohol(and run higher compression or boost), but that’s a bit of work. I also wonder how long it will take for the US to catch that EV-only bug.

you can probably make it yourself but (at least here) you can’t use it (legally). and with all the numberplate scanners everywere it’s impossible to just ignore the rules (just driving without plates is even less of an option, at least here were you can’t drive 5 mins without encountering a cop)

I definitely agree, but petrol-only shouldn’t be a prerequisite for fun. I’m sure that by 2030 there will be affordeable hybrid and electric sports cars. Still, if we see a return to small, fun, affordeable lightweights like those from the 60s, then I’ll be happy. And even if the ICE does die, long live the sports car!