Who Killed The Sports Coupe?

Trends in the automotive market seem to come and go on a fairly short-term basis. At least in the American market, that is, where we've got the collective attention span of ADD-riddled 4th graders.  What was hot last year is old news this year, and anything from the year before that has long since been forgotten.  And while this is easily applicable to individual cars - witness the dramatic rise in popularity and precipitous fall of cars like the PT Cruiser, Thunderbird, New Beetle, Audi TT, and about 14 million other "cars of the minute" -  if you look at the market as a whole, it's applicable to entire segments. The minivan was the preferred mode of family transportation for a good decade and a half - starting around 1984 - but these days only one out of three of the mainstream domestic brands even bother to make a minivan.  The Sport Utility Vehicle exploded onto the scene, with cars like the Ford Explorer, Jeep Cherokee, and Isuzu Trooper (remember Isuzu?) being the faces that launched a thousand clones, from Acura to Volvo.

And while very little of this really saddens me all that much (you can't tell me you miss the road being clogged up with body-on-frame SUV's being driven by one tiny housewife going to get the groceries!), what truly saddens me is the apparent death of the small, light, inexpensive sports coupe.  It was once one of the most hotly contested market segments, with just about every major mainstream manufacturer dipping their toe - or their whole foot - into the water.  Today, it's a segment that's deader than Lindsay Lohan's  career prospects.

The sports coupe segment used to be a churning, active, busy segment - because that's what people (at least, young people) wanted.  It's hard to admit, but 20-somethings lost the plot when their interest moved from Integra to Xterra.  Still, this is perhaps due to the gullibility of young people - who believe they want whatever it is that's being marketed to them, even if it's a Nissan Frontier with a bunch of plastic glued to it that's supposed to grant you some sort of crazy "lifestyle."

There's more to it than just marketing, though.  The focus on cars has gone from size, horsepower, and luxury (all good things in my mind!) to environmental friendliness, efficiency, and the lifestyle the car's supposed to portray.  Quite why people got tired of sharp handling and handfuls of horsepower is beyond me, but maybe we can chalk that one up to rising gas prices and skyrocketing insurance premiums across the industry.

Still, the almost full-scale death of the sports coupe is a hard pill to swallow when you compare the past to the present.  Let's take a look at how the market has slowly died.  I'm going to start with the brand that was long considered the king of the sports coupe market: Honda.

Back in the 80's and 90's, Honda basically owned this market.  They had a fun 2-door for basically every need.  The CR-X was a midget-wheelbase 2-seat liftback based on the Civic, available in hyper-mileage (HF) or lots-of-fun (Si) format.  The Prelude was Honda's testbed for hot new technology, and it was always a harbinger of what was to come in the industry, technologically speaking.  4-wheel-steering?  Prelude.  Variable Valve Timing?  Prelude.  Active torque-vectoring differentials?  Prelude.  (Yup, the Prelude Type SH in 1998 was the very first.)  You get the point.  Then there was the Integra, which I hardly need to explain - think Prelude technology in a smaller, lighter package.  It's still a massively popular car (with suitably ridiculous resale values) nearly a decade after it went out of production.  See Edmund's comparison of an Integra Type-R and a brand-new Civic Si if you don't believe me.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3c-wHB15KU

Is it a coincidence that the Prelude died about the same time that Honda brought out the Element?  Apparently the market wanted a box based on the CR-V with rubber bumpers and no power.  Think of this: the special edition of the Prelude had that trick torque-vectoring front differential.  The special edition of the Element has a ramp for dogs.  This is progress?

How about Mitsubishi?  Once upon a time, the three diamond brand was swimming in money and couldn't keep Eclipses on the showroom floor long enough to vacuum the carpets and fill the gas tank.  Turbo 16v motors with tons of power, sophisticated four-wheel-drive, cool interiors, sexy styling, and a low price tag.  They replaced the real Eclipse (and by real I obviously mean DSM) in 1999 with an automotive abortion still clinging to the Eclipse label, a Chrysler Sebring Coupe in drag with a duller-than-dirty-dishwater 3.0 V6 as the optional powerplant.  It gained a bunch of weight, lost all it's driver appeal, and went to the mass market.  I think they still make the Eclipse, but I'm not going to pretend to care.  And how's Mitsubishi doing today?  Hanging on by a thread, thanks for asking.  Let's not even talk about the Starion, I don't feel like crying.

The worst offender is obviously Toyota.  Let's go back to, say, 1993.  Go to a Toyota dealer looking for a sports coupe and you had tons of choices.  Want to spank Ferraris?  $40k would buy you a 320bhp twin-turbo Supra with a 6-speed.  Want to pretend you're a rally driver?  About $25k would buy you a Celica all-Trac, which had four-wheel-drive and a 16v Turbo 3S-GTE motor good for 200+bhp.  Want a lightweight, reliable, mid-engine RWD two-seater?  $20k or so would get your butt in an MR2 Turbo.  Hell, you could even get a Paseo with a drop-top!  What about today?  A whole lotta nothing.  Can you honestly say that there's a fun-to-drive Toyota today?  Not to mention that it'll probably try to kill you as it accelerates through your neighbor's lawn.

The saddest part of Toyota's sports coupe story is undoubtedly that of the Celica.  When it left production in 2005, the Celica was perhaps one of the best-handling and most fun-to-drive front wheel drive cars out there, especially in GT-S form.  With the Yamaha-engineered 2ZZ-GE under the hood (which I've proclaimed my adoration for multiple times) spitting out 180 screaming valve-lift horsepower, a shockingly light curb weight, and an interior that fit like a glove, it was a car for people that loved to drive.  With a few choice suspension modifications (and some sticky tires!) the last of the Celica GT-S's could attack an on-ramp like nothing you've ever seen.  It's "replacement," the Scion tC, was a mass-market sororitymobile based on the boring European Toyota Avensis, powered by an even more boring 2.4L Toyota Camry engine.  While the Celica GT-S bragged about it's 8500rpm fuel cut, rifle-bolt 6 speed manual, and corner-muching abilities, the tC bragged about things like fancy stereo head units, a long sunroof, and back seats that reclined.

America once new how to build a decent lightweight sports coupe, too.  Remember the original Ford Probe GT Turbo?  Sure, it was mostly Mazda, but it was a hoot.  The Dodge Daytona of the 80's, at least in Turbo Shelby form, was an amusing torque-steering little bastard that liked to munch on Z-28's.  Hell, even the early Neon ACR coupes are still prized by (their admittedly unusual) fans for light weight, sharp handling, and easy modification.  Today, not so much.  The Camaro and Challenger are both overweight, undertalented and oversized Retro-mobiles with no real sporting pretensions beyond 1/4 mile ET's.  The Mustang is the same as it's ever been, which is great for Mustang fans, but not for people that like turning.  The last coupe Chrysler made that handled well (the Crossfire, remember that?) wasn't even a Chrysler, being a reskinned Mercedes Benz SLK320.

Nissan forgot, too.  I'm not going to say that the 370Z and the GT-R aren't totally awesome; they are.  But neither are affordable or uncomplicated or particularly light.  How about in the early 90's?  You had your choice of the hellacious twin-turbo 300ZX, the nimble and simple rear-wheel-drive 240SX, the egg-shaped but corner-carving NX2000, the Sentra SE-R Coupe, and even that funky Pulsar deal with the changeable back end.  Today?  Mmm, Altima Coupe.  That's just what we want, Nissan - a family sedan with a sexy roofline.  Thanks, but no thanks.

But despite making no sense at all, the SUV brigade rolled in with huge knobby tires, horrible mileage, and fabricated usefulness.  And the sports coupes died off, one-by-one.  There are no more mid-engined turbocharged Toyotas; but your dealer will happily sell you a Matrix!  The Integra is dead, but Acura's got the jack-o-lantern RDX cute-ute, which does nothing well besides making Honda enthusiasts cry that such a sweet motor went into such a goofy contraption.  Mazda's rotary wonder gained two doors, but lost two turbos as well as any convincing reason for existance.  Sure, the lithe two doors remained in some places, but only with disproportionally large price tags:  The Audi TT has always been gorgeous, but why pay twice as much for a less useful GTI?  The Z4 M Coupe was fantastic, but not many 20-somethings can afford a 50+ thousand dollar rocket.

It seems though, as reality sets in these days ("My Jeep Liberty is smaller than a Taurus inside but gets 15mpg, and I never go off-road.  Why'd I do this?") that perhaps the tide is turning back towards affordable cars that are fun to drive.  Hyundai's 2010 Genesis Coupe (video review) may not be perfect, and it may not be setting the sales charts on fire just yet - but it's the real deal.  Manageable price tag, sexy styling, a choice of appealing powertrains, and balanced handling thanks to rear-wheel-drive make it the kind of car we've been missing here for years.  Toyota swears up and down they're going to produce the FT-86 concept, a small rear-wheel-drive coupe powered by a 2.0L Subaru boxer engine, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  And while it may not make much sense on paper, initial reports on Honda's CR-Z Hybrid sports coupe have been very promising - imagine it with the 2.0L K20C from the Civic Si and no hybrid garbage!

So it seems that the market is finally recovering from the confusion of many years of pointless SUV's and cute-utes and crossover nonsense.  The future is indeed bright for people that like to drive.