The Greatest Cars of The 20th Century | The Greatest Ever | Spark

[Music] [Applause] [Music] they are the ultimate toys for grown-up boys it's purpose designed just to have fun built to appeal to the rebel in all of us it is a very very special sensation of courting death it's as simple as that most cars are made for getting where you're going sports cars are about the thrill of the journey it's outrageous it's passionate it's emotional can i say it's better than sex through the years there've been some gems but which one deserves the title greatest ever to help us narrow it down to 10 we ask the world's top drivers collectors critics and enthusiasts what they thought our experts looked at performance and pedigree style and technical innovation and along the way showed us what makes a truly great car [Music] more [Music] britain's favorite aristocrat will put the james bond car through its paces actor steve mcqueen's son chad takes his famous father's wheels out for a curtain call and we'll find out why he's using simple garage tools to explain some revolutionary technology we're also going to try and get ferrari's latest supercar to triple the speed limit on a louisiana interstate so brace yourself for a red hot ride as we count down the greatest ever sports cars we begin our greatest ever countdown at number 10 with a car whose name literally says it all the legend has it that when the designer first brought it out to the factory one of the workers which means wow my god incredible the lamborghini countach was an outrageously deliberately provocative sexy car you looked at it and went wow i mean it was quite uh jaw dropping a countach is you know every teenage boy's wet dream of a sports car the countach qualifies for our list because it broke new ground for sports cars it looked like nothing else that had ever come before it it was very dramatic car it was angular and it was all sort of carved out of a piece of rock and then put on the road and low down and it was supposed to stop you short and say that's different which it was the reason it looked the way it did was the formula one technology that made its way into the car pirelli designed the tires for the car that were extremely wide i mean they're one of the largest tires that were ever put on a production car in fact that's the secret to this car because the tyres were almost double the normal size the body had to be built around them helping to give the countach its outrageous shape the space age doors were real head turners but they are more about styling than engineering the car's chassis was extremely rigid and that meant the body didn't bend or flex much in the corners with no need to compensate for a flexing body the suspension could be set up very tightly just like a race car keeping the contact level through turns at high speed it's designed for ultimate performance in mind [Music] only three were produced each week which meant the waiting list to get one was a year it also came with a price tag of 150 000 inspiring the phrase supercar supercars is a name given to a car that goes above a certain speed i sort of somewhere um between here and mars and will go faster than anyone needs to go so we're talking 150 plus it's certainly in the mid 70s but the contact was more than just the fastest sports car of its day just like farah fawcett it was also a pin-up one that ended up in teenage boys bedrooms all over the world including mine i just dreamed of having one eventually after a two-year search i found one in alberta canada i found out fortuitously that this particular car was the actual car that was in uh the poster that i had as a kid it was from that period in the 70s where the big hairstyles were in the padded shoulders girls looking sort of big and brazen in hollywood and the car looks a bit like that it's italian it's kind of but it's busty sexy glamorous [Music] to drive i would have to say it was thrilling but not relaxing it was not a great long distance car the noise level was very intense there's one of those cars that you could say one of the best moments of your life is the first hour you drive you could touch and but the second hour is one of the worst experiences of your life because you've got no real vision you can't see what you're doing most of the time bad visibility while driving forward was one problem but with a tiny rear window reversing was even trickier you know the lamborghini factory taught people how to back the car up and you actually have to put the door up crawl out and sit on the sill with one foot on the gas and one hand on the wheel and then look over your shoulder she had to hang out of the car to drive it it's silly but for the for the 15 year old boy and you it's absolutely fantastic but what seems fun to a teenage boy was definitely not for everyone's tastes it's a car you know you take from your house around and then come back to your house and wasn't meant to be reversed like many things that got our attention in the 70s and 80s the contact doesn't necessarily stand the test of time for a lot of people this car is downright ugly it was it was a cross between star trek and something your the hairdresser would really want to travel around it so when you look in a contact if you can get lower down on the learn up down the road and actually look in the window you expect to see some of the big gold chain around their neck and you know two hairs poking out and a shiny shirt uh looking frightfully pleased with himself is the car was meant to be aggressive but it's kind of bg on wheels you always imagine the person that drove it like robin or barry gibb and had big buffalo hair of the time and a medallion down here a big flared trousers that's what it was like it's flamboyant it's for rock it's a combination of liberace and hugh hefner it sums up the 80s and 70s it's just gross i'm sorry yes it was one of the first supercars it turned heads wherever it went and just looking at it helps revive the 80s but looking at it ultimately is the problem with the contact that's why it goes no higher up the list than number 10. coming up nine more amazing machines including the fastest road car in the world as our search continues for the greatest ever sports car in our quest for the greatest ever sports cars the lamborghini countach claimed the number 10 spot with its mixture of f1 technology and outrageous italian design at number nine a car so fast so intimidating it wasn't allowed on the streets of north america skyline for me is a is a dream car it's like the heartbeat of japan you know it's the ferrari of the orient youth market today can look at and go that's my dream car it's been described as a playstation on wheels normal cars tell their drivers about oil temperature and battery power the nissan skyline has its own computer system that tracks and controls everything from g-force to turbo boost to the amount of torque to the front wheels this car has an engine management system that controls all of the sensors the injectors everything banned from us roads the skyline has become a much better match for the racetrack in north america the few that are imported usually end up in competitions like this one it's called drifting drifting is basically all about car control it's sliding the car sideways on a marked course the skyline is a good drift car because of its ability to channel enormous power to the rear wheels the true secret behind the success and popularity of this car is that it can be hacked into or tuned you can change it according to the rpm first the car's computer system is hooked up to a laptop next the factory installed power and emissions controls are removed in a way it you could consider it hacking without any governors tuners can then boost horsepower and speed through a simple entry in their computer in theory you could do it to your own car the difference with a skyline is that the engine has so much capacity it can tolerate increased horsepower without blowing up you could get a thousand horsepower out of these engines without blowing them up so it it became the benchmark of all tuna cars it looks very discreet it's rather like um a japanese nine-to-five businessman going home on the metro in tokyo is that sort of discreet and yet it punches this real bow you know it's a very powerful very fast car [Music] besides all that power the skyline also has four-wheel steering and all-wheel drive huge assets for controlling a sliding car if your front tires are spinning too much the car's onboard computer transfers energy to the back and then when they entered the touring car series it was just incred so successful i had to put a weight handicap on it it was just a very very good car and what an irritated everybody was it was japanese well now they built someone that's just looks ordinary is ordinary just gets better than anything else the italians of the brits could make i love it i think it's brilliant [Music] it looked fairly benign from the outside but it was as fast as a ferrari and actually better behaved through the corners going into the first turn this car is slow it needs more power at the low end or low rpm to make the drift last hacking back into the car's computer system steve can effectively alter the characteristics of the engine it doesn't have much knock so it's way low so i'm going to change the timing on it rivet [Music] okay i gave it a little bit more timing so i'd have a little bit more power on the bottom end okay at one stage that would have required an engine rebuild but these days it can be done with a few keystrokes on a laptop that was enough to give it a little more power it felt good to her she noticed it i could notice it from outside so we're still in the safe zone and adjustments we'll see how the next run goes [Music] tell you what i take my hat off to these kids that do it with their computers and things and get these things running sometimes as good as a formula one car runs [Applause] the japanese had a name for it which meant the monster we christened at godzilla because this car was so fast so awesome so powerful and the name lived on so godzilla lives [Applause] yes godzilla lives but not everyone's a big fan i have done a 20 second perfectly controlled drift in a skyline and marveled at the technical prowess but there's part of me that does not connect with that car it's a big heavy lump um it's not particularly good looking the drifting uh it's fun to watch you know i'm sure it's fun to do but it's not my bag that was awesome i was like whoa i'm like okay last run i'm gonna see and then i got around a little and it felt so good and then right when you know it started feeling real good then of course you're like your mind says more power and you put more and too much but it was good [Music] this nissan earned the nickname godzilla for its power and its use of ultra high technology is revolutionary for sports cars but it filled a niche that appealed only to the true techno head because of that the skyline will have to settle for number nine in our list of greatest ever sports cars [Music] for more than 50 years this next car has been making dreams come true for sports car lovers all over the u.s in automotive terms the corvette stingray is the original american idol i still remember pulling the car magazine out of its sleeve and looking at it and saying oh wow [Music] this car was an exquisite package that came from nowhere and just slapped the hell out of the european competition at just over 4 000 us it was a supremely capable two-passenger sports car basically as competent as any sports car in the world at a price that most people can still afford unlike everything else on the road this car oozed americana i mean it's got america written all over the united states written all over it it's a kind of stars and stripes in automobile form really and you can't help but sing that car and you think everything that's big blousy powerful go ahead and a bit excessive about the united states it's represented in that car it's patriotic it's blue blooded it's american we will buy this in our droves because it is it is that and it offered what america wanted which was fast straight line performance reasonable reliability at low cost and a thumping great v8 the earliest vets had the traditional inline six cylinder engine six cylinders lined up in a row and connected to a crankshaft that turned the wheels with a top speed of 120 miles per hour it was a popular motor for the time but the brass at chevrolet wanted something with more power something that would earn them respect to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the v8 showing up in the corvette why don't we imagine that these are the cylinders the question was how to get more cylinders under the hood without radically changing the size and shape of the engine but how are we going to do it because we're tied into a package to a size to a weight to a chassis we're going to change everything about the car in order to fit two more straight cylinders the answer was a simple repositioning of the cylinders so what basically what they were able to do is create a v8 design where they had eight cylinders [Music] feeding into the crank still down the middle in a better package a little bit wider but not long they could fit wide they couldn't fit long more power same cake happy birthday 50 years v8 and a corvette great engine lots of torque and that's th that's the american way because you know it is stop light the stop light here there's not so many corners it's not like europe critics claim the chassis wasn't rigid enough to resist flexing at high speed the result was that its feet in effect weren't as well planted on the ground it's great on that lovely road to santa monica out of la highway one you've got the eagles playing on the eight track and it's fine the slightest curve in the road the slightest pimple or clevity in the contours and you're all over the place [Music] [Applause] it's a car that's not really designed to be thrown around tight mountain bends but it's the car for cruising along one hand on the wheel and a gorgeous girl next to you along you know a highway that's forever california and the coast i know uncle sam it it's your only sports car but they drive them with any sort of gusto on anything but a perfectly billiard smooth road and you know you'll destroy a small suburb before you stop spinning there's a crude rough just unrefined quality europeans would call me a bit crude and you know they would sniff at something that came in and beat their pants off that's what i say to them you know we're all a bit crude in america but we're crude but effective how's that nobody can accuse the stingray of refinement it just doesn't have that it's really the polar opposite of a european or japanese sports car it is muscle bound it's aggressive it's showy has great fairground qualities to it it's like a fairground ride on wheels in some ways um but come on that's it's just such great fun i mean that is like let's get out there and have fun boys car and that's what it's for if a corvette was interviewed by a psychiatrist the corvette would tell the psychiatrist where to get off it would tell a psychiatrist psychiatrist for whims that's the kind of car corvette is no other sports car has captured the american imagination the way the stingray has none has lasted so long but critics are right to point out that it can be hard to control in the corners that's why the vet hits the brakes at number eight at number seven the car made famous by double 07 the aston martin db5 aston martin db5 will be forever associated across with james bond i mean it always will be the goldfinger film everyone's imagination every kid's imagination the real car of course doesn't have an ejector seat but it's the guy that thinks themselves probably to be um a fighter pilot or an airline pilot or a great international spy or a playboy i mean it is the playboys express it's the sort of car where you could jump in catch the boat train from dover to calais and speed through the night and arrive at a grand hotel somewhere on the italian riviera stirred but not shaken and ready for that first dom perignon on the terrace it is heart-stoppingly gorgeous it is pretty enough to stop a speeding train it has a fantastic cylinder twin overhead cam engine it would in you know in 1961 62 do 150 miles an hour which made it great but much more than that it had this wonderful tweedy british elegance aston martin was one of a number of small proud english companies known for hand-built craftsmanship james bond made aston martin glamorous of course bond was too busy so instead we asked britain's favorite aristocrat to put the car through its paces he's better known for his ferrari collection but lord charlie brockett has never been one to shy away from the camera we did get a reputation for making cars that were wacky different but well built and well you know it's huge attention to detail that's what people liked [Music] yes they were hand built and very elegant but you couldn't always count on them to actually work uh this is what happens in electric's electric windows in old cars well it's going up eventually okay now the red light is on permanently i have a feeling that we might have lost the fan belt i didn't see anything on the road behind us there's another thing you see when you switch the wiper off does it center to its next cycle oh no it goes off precisely when you turn it to go off which is in the middle of the windscreen and stopping them down there becomes an art no it's not going to do it you know why oops it's just done something happy because oh it's wonderful if you light up a cigarette you might go bang and explode because the fumes are so great inside the cockpit um always they had a harsher suspension like that uh you can feel it you have to remember these things don't have brakes you do have to push quite hard to get to any reaction at all but all of that makes you feel that it's more of an experience it just requires more effort and concentration to keep the damn thing on the road of course not everyone has a little bond in them it's an old man's car the greatest thing i'd ever achieved was being in the bone movie if it wasn't in a bowl movie it probably wouldn't be remembered that highly it's a relatively heavy car it's a luxurious car but it is the epitome of the grand touring car it is absolutely radically not a sports car a sports car has a singleness of purpose it is meant to drive i mean it should be ultimate driving enjoyment with no compromise you don't need to bring along your golf clubs or your family a gt car gran turismo car absolutely gives a nod to those creature comforts on the road it is definitely right up there in the top 10 coolest cars of all time just because of james bond but you know doesn't make it a sports car in my book the db5 is on our list because it represents the old spirit of craftsmanship that made english sports cars adored worldwide it's stuck at number seven because some argue it's more a coupe than a sports car and for that other reason britain's cars are famous they break down inspired form and revolutionary function come together in the mercedes gullwing sl at number six it's such a work of art it really is you know it's stunning it's better than any picasso the lines the gull wing are pretty much perfect the theme the car has it's wonderfully taut shape and yet has rather voluptuous curves but they're not the voluptuous curves that um like chevy corvette which are a bit over the top and brazen and showy these are curves kept in check and you know that the car's been designed to be super aerodynamic and yet it's hugely glamorous at the same time ava gardner had one clark gable drove one some favored the convertibles but for me the goal wing with those doors is just so cool it is the pick of the bunch to arrive in a car and then the doors go up on little gas struts was really quite spa you want to make a stir in those days you arrive in a golden you've made it certainly the gull wing is a milestone car aesthetically technologically i mean it stunned the world when it came out everybody just went holy mackerel look at the technology they've put in that thing its tubular space frame made the gull wing extra rigid crucial for control at high speeds and at only 82 kilograms the frame was as light as a feather but those same tubes took up room where the bottom of the doors would go so instead they would hinge on the roof and lift up as opposed to out it was a practical piece of design but wound up becoming the car's exotic signature i mean those doors were just unbelievable literally look like a bird with the window with the the doors open and when you pull them down you're in this cocoon oh getting out is more difficult because you actually got to get your bottom on the ledge back up from the seat and swing out but um you see mercedes adjustments are so clever yeah i just think of all these things because what happens if the woman is driving wearing a skirt there's a there's a bar under the steering wheel you pull it out the steering wheel goes up like that so now you can raise yourself flip your legs over see the germans think of everything damn them yet another innovation this was the first production car in the world to use fuel injection it was one of the most important high-tech advancements in the history of sports cars and yet the concept of fuel injection is deceptively simple with a carburetor you've got pressure from the fuel tank via a pump but it's low pressure and when you put your foot on the accelerator the fuel falls into the manifold like that mixes with the air explosive mix and the car accelerates that was fine for normal cars but again the gull wing wanted to use race technology with fuel injection it's different because the fuel is actually propelled at high pressure into each cylinder mixed with the air and it's the exact amount of fuel so it's efficient it is the most combustible fuel air mix so that you get the biggest explosion and therefore the greatest amount of acceleration and no wastage it's an engineering driven car not a styling driven car and the styling comes after the engineering and it's wrapping up the engineering it's not that the styling's there not to sell and the cars of course didn't need to sell many of these cars they're a rarity and they have a single purpose driving hard and fast while renowned the world over for its glamorous looks and technical achievements it wasn't always the easiest car to drive [Music] driving it it's a truck you know it's a big heavy thing the brakes you gotta push your you know the pedal through the floor to get it to stop and the exhaust ran right underneath the car so the floorboard get gets really really hot it'll melt your tennis shoes and it had its big swing axle in the back so when you really got holland butt you could get it squirrely very easily so it was sort of like riding the bull it was unpredictable on the corner and the suspension wasn't actually very good which is pretty because the rest of it was brilliant it's not the nicest engine note it's not the nicest looking it's not the nicest interior but as an overall package it's one of the greatest [Music] halfway through our countdown we've had cars that epitomize style speed and groundbreaking technology still ahead the machine that saved the sports car business as we searched for the greatest ever sports car so far in our top 10 greatest ever sports cars we've had the most outrageous most glamorous and coolest cars of all time what could top that how about a car that literally brings the formula one experience right to your front door it's pretty hard to beat a car that can do everything [Applause] if you collect ferraris you have to have one of these ferrari is the ultimate sports car company and it's the ultimate ferrari at the minute today [Applause] i think i would probably spend a lot of time in the garage just sitting out there just going yeah to get to number five on this list you need something really special how about this everything ferrari has ever learned about racing cars on a track has been applied to their latest creation for the road the enzo named after enzo ferrari himself they are the quickest at putting a track race technology into the road car so last year's race technology will literally be in next year's road car no company has a greater singleness of purpose than ferrari all of their cars are sports cars that's all they are there are two seats and a giant engine they are only meant to do one thing and that's drive hard and drive fast under the hood a six liter v12 capable of 660 horsepower double the stingray a top speed of 220 miles per hour is too scary for most drivers to contemplate naught to 60 in 1 2 3.6 seconds for a street car it's about as close as you can come to formula one [Applause] [Music] shifting gears with a flick of the fingers just like in f1 the enzo only needs 150 milliseconds between shifts to respond regular cast iron brakes would melt stopping from high speeds but the enzo's carbon ceramic brakes can handle the high temperatures that's because carbon ceramics don't conduct heat like metal does 60 to zero in 106 feet when you buy a ferrari you're buying the badge you know the prancing horses is a great symbol um you're buying the heritage you're you're buying the italian flavor you're buying india lifestyle in the way but buying a ferrari is of course much easier said than done money is not the object it's whether you're part of this exclusive club whether you're fit to drive an enzo that's great and in terms of marketing fantastic a lot of it has been a brand building exercise to now they can comfortably uh demand an enormous price premium and they still have people lined up for them one person who knows firsthand about buying one of these rare supercars is ray maranje's they want the people that are true enthusiasts to have it they they just don't want somebody who can come up to the dealer and write a check i wanted the car and i was prepared to do just about anything for it i had to become part of the the ferrari family i had to prepare a resume of all the cars that i had owned i had to get letters of recommendation it was like trying to get accepted into harvard at first i was rejected and i persisted and through cajoling and politicking and buying lots of lunches and going in and shaking a lot of hands i was able to um get on the list i walked in when i saw the car uh i just couldn't believe it that a guy like me could get a car like that by the way the car ray bought cost roughly 300 000 pounds most of that money goes to f1 style technology and because of that the car's looks at least in some ways have suffered we know in formula one aerodynamics don't necessarily make for beautiful shapes so we've got an automobile in terms the enzo that is an incredibly high performance automobile brilliantly designed beautifully engineered but built around a body that demands raw physics in terms of aerodynamics so we don't have it particularly in my opinion a pretty automobile as a ferrara is actually very blousy and very vulgar it looks like a big sort of hair dryer on wheels and i think it's a great shame in a way because ferraris at their best are these live smooth neat rather neat machines this thing is clearly meant to be a racing car for the road a modern racing car for the road and because of that it's too wide too big altogether and just blatantly vulgar and you feel like an absolute idiot driving one everything on these cars chassis suspension brakes motor all of it derived from formula one that's what makes it special but even if you liked its looks and were able to get your hands on one where would you drive it the greatest ever asked the state police to shut down part of the interstate just so he could film the enzo stretching its legs [Applause] and not one to miss an opportunity ray takes full advantage pushing his ferrari to nearly triple the speed limit but where are you going to do that here in america we're in the wrong place to own one if you're pushing it on you'll be over 100 miles an hour too often and eventually someone will pull out a dog and pull like something will happen and you'll slice it in half on a lamppost so it doesn't really make a lot of sense rarely out of first on the track this ferrari will have to settle for fifth on our list [Music] 1960s england the nation is finally breaking out of its post-war austerity a new generation of hipsters mods and beatniks are turning heads all over london at the center of that swinging scene is a positively groovy sports car unlike anything that has come before the e-type jaguar here was a car that signaled hey britain was at the center of the hip and hop happening 60s and the e-type was part of that the e-type to me it is the most beautiful car in the world no other car before or since has been so beautifully beautifully designed when we buy these cars now when we wax lyrical over them when we spend all the money we haven't got rebuilding them it's because we're trying to recapture that seminal moment of march 1961 when this car changed the way the world thought about sports cars it was just the most dramatic thing anybody had ever seen when the e-type hit the world it just was a collective gasp i mean this car was pure sex we like to say that if birth control pills hadn't been invented when the e-type came out they would have needed to invent them very quickly the most phallic of all cars ever produced the e-type it was you know it was a what was they say a horizontal expression of man's intention or something the e-type was one of the first production cars to do 150 miles per hour it was a direct descendant of a long line of racing jacks that had dominated circuits in the 1950s the reason why it was special was not only its design and its looks it had a classic improved engine that was a originally in the d-type that was a famous racing car but also it was ridiculously cheap and this was the democratization of the racing car anybody could buy one of these cars doesn't mean you didn't have any driving skill you could just go in pay your jack your dealer two thousand pounds and you were driving around lit by your own personal spotlight everywhere you went there was a shaft of gold because you had an e-type the e-type was famous for its unique beauty unfortunately it also had a reputation for falling apart in many ways the e-type was style over content rust proofing was not a very advanced science back in those days and they just literally rust from the inside out go to start your car after a week turn the ignition the fuel pump wouldn't go tick tick tick so you take a small hammer and just tap the fuel pump and startle it into life jaguar always had a lot of mechanical problems and back in those days lucas electricals were the butt of many jokes like why do the british drink warm beer answered because they have lucas refrigerators it was a good idea to be really close friends with your mechanic because you were going to see them a lot yeah so you might as well put them on the christmas card list it overheated the there wasn't enough room for your feet the brakes were heart-stoppingly bad the headlights that you couldn't see at night but that's what it's all about as far as i'm concerned with a sports car you couldn't make this car now because of all the product liability or the lawyers all the solicitors if they just wouldn't wouldn't allow you to too fast too dramatic too dangerous too wonderful [Music] so we've overtaken everything on the road we've touched 105 miles an hour this is a 44 year old car and it feels great it's fantastic it's still as captivating still as exciting still as sexy as it was in 1961. now do you understand the e-type makes our list because it's quite possibly the best-looking car ever made but the fact that it was moody and couldn't always be counted on to show up confines this supermodel to number four [Music] i think this is the best car ever built certainly the best car of the 20th century at number three record-setting mclaren f1 the mclaren f1 is really the field of dream supercar it makes it into the bronze metal spots because this is the fastest road car in the world a car that cost a million dollars the engine is actually encased in gold for heat protection basically the premise behind it is build it and they will buy it this was a car where basically money was no object and they just made the car that they thought would be perfect and what they came up with was the car that will still at the high end outperform a formula one car the car is so much better than you are you know it's a bit like having sex with a robot instructor you're never going to wear her out do the best you can and she's going okay you're done let me throw it out yeah okay great yeah i mean that's that's that's how good it is compared to normal cars the f1 is as light as a feather that's because it's made with an all carbon composite body combine that with a 627 horsepower engine and you can go from naught to 60 in just over 3.2 seconds just like the enzo this really is a race car very thinly disguised for the street oh it's wonderful to drive this is one of the few cars where oh my god i'm going 175 sorry sorry give me i mean it's it's literally that fast and it's the fastest car in the world to this day there's not a ferrari or a porsche that can beat it in top speed a beautiful technical tour de force and it occupies a very very special place it's mount olympus as far as cars go i don't believe any manufacturer will have the money the wherewithal or the the justification to ever do that again but we'll see but i don't think so the research and development is too huge it can only really be done by a current formula one or indie car producer if there is ever artistry in mechanical engineering mechanical things this is it i mean there's no silly wing on it it doesn't look outrageous it just looks sensual it isn't like a countach where his 12 year old boys are salivating over it i mean it's a mature expression of an engineering design and concept still can't find the floor well some of our contributors have yes extremely interesting but considering the price that's asked it is accessible to so few people to me it's it's an interesting car but it's an irrelevant one it's not a beautiful looking machine it's a really functional little machine and it will always be remembered i think as an engineering classic rather than a design classic why three seats you know sitting in the middle yeah it's formula one a lot but i it's i don't want to sit in the middle of a road car i was you know i want to sit on one side and i want to have the hottest chick i can have sitting on the net in the seat beside me i don't want one the hair and one there because the two of them are going to squat will distract me and um insurance i don't know can you get insurance on cars like that i shouldn't think so um apart from anything else it was very difficult to get an order so like ferrari they had to approve you not you bring them up and say can i have one so is it attainable no you have to leave it high up on the list it is a spectacular achievement and just because people can't get one doesn't make it you know any less important day i got this car i drove it home i drove up my street i saw another one two doors down so i said hey wait a minute so i don't even know the guy just knocked on the door says that you're mclaren he goes yeah i got one too i think he was visiting this this woman who lived in the house it just just made me laugh i said well there's only 64 of these in the world wow this is pretty cool [Music] next on our list the sports car that literally saved the sports car business some of the sexiest names on the street like mercedes and bmw owe a huge debt to the modest little mazda miata the biggest selling two-seat convertible of all time i think the miata is the most influential sports car of its time it actually brought back the idea of having a personal sports car when we were lost we had nothing so cars today like bmw z4 mercedes slk all owe their existence to the success of the mazda miata the miata did for the sports car movement what uh the british sports cars did in the 50s and early 60s in that it re-popularized the concept of a two-door two-passenger roadster there is an example of a sports car that's not a high performance car out of the box but it's absolutely perfect you are down to the ground it's still under 2 500 pounds the power to weight ratio is perfect the balance is perfect it's an absolute joy to drive because it was so light and evenly balanced front to back the miata handled superbly it wasn't expensive um it handled brilliantly was cheap to run and it performed well and lastly and most irritatingly japanese again it was reliable when they tested prototypes they went out over to santa barbara and they were literally being pursued by joggers waving checkbooks and things like this you know what is this car we want to buy it you know this is this is great not exactly the most macho of sports car the miata is known more for its social clubs than setting speed records it takes a sluggish seven plus seconds to get from naught to 60. i normally use it for going to the grocery store and back so i don't usually go over 40 miles an hour i know every woman has a dream of being able to get on a race track and go fast and beat the guys and prove that it's not just a a man's sport it can also be a woman's sport too greatest ever set up a day at the track with a former race car driver to see if judy could learn to transform her mild-mannered roadster into a genuine race here we go okay first judy's instructor puts her miata through its paces or at least gets it going over 40. it's fun when you're driving [Music] no it gives people a watered-down version of of owning a sports car you know for for a limited budget and it drives better for many much bigger much more powerful much more showy sports cars but it doesn't have one it's a chick car it's a girl car you know i you know i see a guy driving that down the highway and i just feel bad for him [Laughter] would i be seeing one good lord no my friends never speak to me again okay so it's not a high performance ferrari but these cars can touch 130 miles an hour of course the driver has to be willing [Applause] alas a total transformation was not to be on this day the miata stereotype of being essentially a girl's car held true that was fun still in typical miata fashion they had fun number of people think that the miata is a girl's car because it only has a little four-cylinder engine but i think that's missing the point a great sports car is not just about the numbers it's about how it makes you feel when it's you're driving it along and it is a man's sports car not just a woman's car i wouldn't call it a girly car no and i think it's also i i would say it's uh it's a unisex car it's a different feeling no less a sports car but just a different it's a lightness of being unbelievable it was so much fun i just think the miata has everything in a car it just it can do everything you ask it to do are you kidding right we've counted down nine amazing automobiles in our top 10 search to find the greatest ever sports car when we come back we'll find out which one tops them all all the cars on our list can boast amazing pedigrees they represent the very best in engineering and design but there is one that always seems to silence the critics it's been hailed as an engineering marvel a legendary racer and at the same time a 24 7 supercar for the masses at number one the porsche 911 i think the greatest sports car of all time probably would be the 911 really because of its longevity this car has been around for 40 years in basically the same soulful package the porsche 911 is probably the most worthy sports car to put at the top of the list the greatest sports car of all time it's a success story in america it's success story in europe japan you know it has gone around the world and been appreciated in every country i guess this is where it all started i guess the uh the 911 came out first production year is 19 what 64. and this car here uh is a 69 2 liter short wheel base fires right up 40 years ago steve mcqueen made this car famous in the movie le mans today his son chad takes us on the car for a little drive down memory lane this car was a car that my dad used in le mans in early 1970 they it came out uh and this was actually the car that he drove up to the church and and did all that and it's all it's all original it's got i just turned 47 000 original miles on the car to create room for two small back seats the motor was placed over the rear axle it was completely revolutionary but it led to a unique problem for the 911 it was known to suffer from something called oversteer the early ones were pig i didn't like them at all because again lose your concentration whatever gets something wrong hit a bit of damp bit around the corner god forbid a bit of oil and you are definitely going the wrong way around the corner it was a car that was always slightly fundamentally flawed it never really steered or went around corners as well as it should have done in the early days thing about the porsche are tricky to drive fast especially the vintage ones the older ones uh their race cars i mean you've got a massive weight in the rear say you're you're going into a right hand corner you turn the car in it's a pendulum effect you go into a corner and the car wants to rotate it's the same thing as if say you throw a hammer this is what i'm trying to explain the head of the hammer is going to always want to hit the ground first because it's the heaviest so the car does have a natural tendency to want to oversteer [Music] i just love the sound of this motor that's a smile on my face since the early days porsche has worked extensively on controlling the car's tendency to slide over the years the the wheelbase is extended [Music] of course wider rims entire setup they would push the motor a little further in front of the axle get a better balance [Music] all they've done is taken that essence of the car with the you know more than 50 of the weight in the back in its beautiful just organic shape and made it a little better and a little better and sometimes they tweak it a little too far next year they come back a little back a little just a great car the 911 was also the first production car to have a turbocharged engine recycled air from the exhaust is forced back into the cylinders under pressure where it mixes with the fuel to create a hotter more explosive reaction to understand turbo charging think of what happens to a fire when a big wind comes along or if you happen to be near a garage how about a simple air hose and a gently smoldering cigar what we're about to do here is basically a real simple version of uh how a turbo charger works what we have here is a fuel and then we have our compressed air so when you step on the accelerator say this is your recycled gases compressed here's your fuel and super hot that's a purple throughout its history the 911 has been a peerless innovator at the same time the car never lost its original spirit it's just a natural evolution you know [Music] that car became successful because it deserved its success it really did you just touch it and it fails quality you close the door it feels quality you close the boot it's quality the seats are quality the switches are quality you know they're very simple inside over 40 years the idea of this strange little car which in its classic days of the rear engine and a very strange rear engine 2 was made to behave perfectly and so we could all watch this car developed better and better over the years you don't lose the lineage from this car to this one [Music] you know [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 15,785

Keywords: motorcycle, honda, discovery, c90, cub, kawasaki heavy industries (business operation), motorcycle (automotive class), kawasaki, motors, history, documentary (tv genre), vintage, classic, caferacers, cafe, racer, greece, hellas, athens, japan, supersport, racing, museum, discovery channel (tv network), z1000, mach iii, z1, ninja, sports, motogp, c50, c70, c100, brommer, bromfiets, moped, charlie boorman, charlie boorman crash, charley boorman, charley boorman imdb, best motorcycle, greatest motorcycles of all time

Id: FodQB-EWbEk

Length: 51min 33sec (3093 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021