MISSING THE SECOND "SUPERCAR" ERA

It’s an old cartoon cliché: A long-bearded "prophet" wearing a sandwich board with the inscription "The End is Near."

For millennia, there’s seldom been a time when some self-appointed doomsayer wasn’t predicting the death of some aspect of life as we know it.

They’re usually wrong. We mostly ignore them.

So against that backdrop, are the "signs of the times" suggesting the collapse of the "second supercar era?"

The anecdotes seem ominous:

• According to Automotive News, Ford Motor Company’s Volvo division is cancelling its high-performance "R" models after this model year.

• Ford’s SVT division is down to one vehicle (the Shelby GT500) that virtually no blue collar worker has any hope of affording. The transaction price (including obscene dealer mark-ups) for an "SVT Mustang" has risen TWO HUNDRED SIXTY PERCENT since 1998.

• According to the Social Security Administration, the median wage in the U.S. in 2005 was $23,962.20. Yet the number of high performance new vehicle choices for under $30,000 u.s.d. can be counted on one hand (missing several fingers).

• DaimlerChrysler is fielding takeover bids for its Chrysler division. Chrysler, of course, is the maker of all things "HEMI" and the parent of the low-volume, high-performance SRT group. Some of the takeover artists are rumored to be "slash and flip" profiteers who likely won’t see any advantages in keeping the SRT "boutique" line. Of course the cheapest vehicle in the SRT lineup starts at well over $30,000.

• The Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress is seriously talking about raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards to as much as FORTY MILES PER GALLON.

• Even the Republican politicians – who were the last holdouts on the global "Kyoto" madness – are jumping on the "global warming" bandwagon and threatening harsh, performance-killing restrictions on fuel use.

• The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, virtually insuring significant increases in vehicle fuel economy as the only realistic means of limiting "carbon emissions."

• The dwindling number of 1960s "supercars" (now known as "Muscle Cars") often sell for the price of a small house (and the rare ones are selling for the price of a fairly large one). Ever fewer enthusiasts can even dream of owning one in this rarefied air of "investment-grade" collector cars.

• Each of the "Detroit 3" is working to cut the number of dealerships, which will further reduce the availability of high performance models and impede consumer bargaining power.

• Publishing mogul Primedia reportedly is attempting to unload its automotive magazine divisions, including such storied titles as Hot Rod, Popular Hot Rodding, Car Craft and Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords. Draconian cost cutting and consolidations are sure to follow.

• Primedia’s Turbo magazine laments malaise in the Tuner scene, with more kids interested in "JDM" styling parts than in building serious high performance machines.

• The complexity of building a smog-legal performance car has lead to drastic increases in the cost of some traditional bolt-on parts. For example, tubular exhaust headers for a late model "supercar" often sell for five to ten times the price of headers for an older model. Intake manifolds for current models (if they’re available) sell for two to five times as much as for 1960s models. And the horsepower increases are often in the low double digits.

• The average age of vehicles in the U.S. is now over nine years (the highest ever recorded), suggesting that escalating sticker prices and artificially-restrictive supplies of desirable models have quelled demand.

• Sales of Ford’s Mustang–the only affordable four-seat sports model currently built in America– are down over nineteen percent from 2006 (and three-fourths of the Mustangs sold are pedestrian V6 models).

The bottom line is that the "second supercar era" seems to be drawing to a close in an eerie echo of the collapse of the first supercar era.

The first supercar era began in the post-WWII optimism of the 1950s. It was nurtured by an explosion in popularity of "stock class" racing on ovals and drag strips and the factory "superstocks" necessary to homologate racing equipment. It came of age in 1964 with the introduction of both the affordable "pony car" (Ford Mustang) and the mass-market "supercar" (the Pontiac GTO).

But in 1967 and 1968, the signs began appearing that the era of affordable muscle cars couldn’t sustain itself. By 1970, economic and legal pressure had pummeled the first "muscle car" boom. By 1975 (the halcyon year that some Congressional environmentalists want to use as a baseline), the factory-built American "supercar" had vanished from the new car marketplace.

(Consequently, the slow, bland, highly-regulated vehicles from the mid to late 1970s are perhaps the least popular of any era in automotive history among enthusiasts and collectors.)

It wasn’t until 1982 that the "automotive dark ages" began to abate. Technology developed to meet the demands of fuel economy and emissions was then adapted to improve performance. Regulatory stability allowed for the new, smaller second supercar era to take root. Although participation this go-round was more limited, momentum began to build with several milestone vehicles, such as the 5.0 Mustang and the Buick Grand National. A brief dip in the market surrounding the first Gulf War shook out some of the weaker players, but served only as a temporary respite before dramatic escalation. And in recent years, the objective performance numbers of several "street machines" from the Detroit 3 have eclipsed most of the legendary limited production "supercars" from the 1960s.

But what’s worse this time around is that most auto enthusiasts are already missing out on the last gasps of the second supercar era.

Many enthusiasts harshly judged those who lived through the first supercar era for not hoarding a Boss 302 or Boss 429 or Shelby or other "legend." Now, three and a half decades later, they’re living the other side of this story. With the crushing load of $1,000+ a-month mortgages, medical and college costs escalating at two and three times the rate of inflation, and other "necessities" of modern life, many, if not most enthusiasts see no chance to participate in the second supercar era.

And when the regulators and the corporations turn off the tap of new supercars in the next few years (does anyone really believe GM, Ford or Chrysler could sustain 500-650 h.p. vehicles under a 40-m.p.g. fuel economy regulation?), even the faint hope of buying a used and abused supercar will be quashed.

Certainly, when factory muscle becomes extinct again, a few underground stalwarts will keep hacking together ways to go quick and fast–just like they did in the 1970s. But this time, harsh environmental and zoning laws will drastically raise the costs. And perhaps technological evolution will permit a third supercar era – someday. However, most of those who are missing out on the second supercar era will be too old to enjoy any reprise. Moreover, a future third wave will undoubtedly be even less accessible to the ordinary wage-earning enthusiast.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so hard on those who couldn’t sock away a Talladega, a Superbird or a Hemicuda back in the day. We’re living through faintly similar times, yet most us won’t be able to take any advantage of them.

The end is near, don’t you think?