adfiognionio

You just said it's not a sports car. It's a sedan.

No one would dispute that it's a performance car. No one would dispute that it's very fast. But none of that matters here, because it weighs 5,000 lbs and has four doors. A Spitfire is not a muscle car, a Camaro is not a superbike, a 917 is not a performance sedan, and a Plaid is not a sports car.

You can, of course, use the word however you want. Words change meaning over time. But if you want to claim that sports car enthusiasts have moved the goal posts, you need to know where they were set in the first place. I am using the word in roughly the same way enthusiasts have always used it, and you are not.

Also, the Tesla Plaid is not the fastest sedan on the Nurburgring. It is the sixth fastest. Note that the top five times were set before Tesla's run.

https://www.hotcars.com/fastest-sedans-around-the-nurburgrin...

This is really quite wrong.

Performance car /= sports car. Sports cars are light and nimble by definition. They are usually fast, but this is not a rule. There have always been sedans that are faster in a straight line than most sports cars. There have always been sports cars that are not very fast at all. None of this is new, and claiming otherwise is ahistorical. Even back in the '60s, a sports car enthusiast would have chosen an MGB over a much faster Camaro, because the MGB is a sports car and the Camaro is not.

Engagement, dynamics, and "feelsomeness" are not vague at all. Handling is the product of engineering. It is largely objective. Some cars really are easier to control than others. Some really do hold on better in the corners. Cars really do have more or less body roll and more or less oversteer. What "character" is best is a matter of opinion, but the car really does have that "character". The fact that something is hard to measure does not mean it doesn't exist.

Sports car fans mean exactly what they say: they value handling over acceleration. If they didn't mean it, they wouldn't buy sports cars.