Sports Car Buyer's Guide

Are You A Sports Car Person?

by STEPHAN WILKINSON, ForbesAutos.com
Sports Car Buyer's Guide
Are You A Sports Car Person?
      To Drop a Top or Not
      Absolute Power
      Shifty or Shiftless
      Rim Shot
Hottest Sports Cars for 2006
Sports Cars We Recommend
Hidden Costs
Mad Mods
Hot Car, Cold Road
Sports Car 101
Glossary

Virtually all sports cars are either convertibles or come in a drop-top version. Purists would say a real sports car has to be open-air. Others would point out that a coupe offers the ultimate in chassis rigidity and tight handling, thereby making it the truest sports car form.

Mercedes Benz SLK
2006 Mercedes-Benz SLK55 AMG
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Besides fixed-roof coupes, like the Chevrolet Corvette, there are minimalist manual-top roadsters (Mazda's MX-5 Miata, for example), motorized padded-roof cabriolets (Porsche's 911, Jaguar's XK, etc.) and remarkable folding-metal-roof quasi-coupes (Lexus' SC430, Mercedes SL and SLK).

Sports cars carry a cargoful of assets and liabilities. The pluses are obvious — mainly the fun factor of top-down driving (in the case of convertibles), exhilarating performance and head-turning looks. But they tend to cloud the minuses, which can include cramped accommodations, a stiff ride and high fuel consumption.


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