96 Fun Facts About Sports Car

Which carmaker's objection made Porsche rename its new 901 sports car as the 911?

Peugeot had protected three-digit model names with a zero in the middle, so Porsche switched to 911 after building 82 cars as the 901.

Where is the engine in a road-going Porsche 911?

Behind the rear axle, where Porsche kept it even when the 911 switched from air to water cooling with the 996 in 1998.

Where did the millionth Porsche 911 end up?

Porsche kept the millionth 911, built in May 2017, in its museum in Stuttgart for good rather than sell it.

What type of engine has powered every Porsche 911?

Flat-six engines power every 911, while the cheaper 1965 version with the 356's four-cylinder engine was sold as the 912.

In which Italian town is Ferrari based?

Maranello took in Ferrari's workshop in 1943, a wartime move away from Allied bombing, yet Allied bombers struck the new factory there twice.

Ferrari's prancing horse emblem was originally painted on the plane of which World War I flying ace?

Francesco Baracca's mother, Countess Paolina, urged Enzo to put her son's prancing horse on his cars because it would bring him luck.

Why is the background of the Ferrari badge yellow?

It is the colour of Modena, Enzo's home town, and the yellow badge made its racing debut at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours, which the Scuderia's cars dominated.

For which company had Enzo Ferrari been a racing driver and team manager before founding his own?

Alfa Romeo gave Enzo his best results as a driver, and his first aim as a carmaker was to beat the Alfas he knew so intimately.

What was the F40 built to celebrate?

The company's 40th anniversary brought the F40, and buyers queued so eagerly before production began that more than 1,300 were built.

What does "Testarossa" literally mean in Italian?

Red head refers to the red-painted camshaft covers, a nod to the 1950s Testa Rossa racing cars whose engines wore them first.

Which 1980s TV series made the white Ferrari Testarossa an icon?

Miami Vice put its white Testarossa on screen from 1986, and the car's cheese-grater side strakes became visual shorthand for the Eighties.

What did Ferruccio Lamborghini manufacture before he started building sports cars in 1963?

Tractors came first: Ferruccio Lamborghini built them from leftover wartime military vehicles, and Lamborghini Trattori still makes them.

Famously, what Ferrari component annoyed Ferruccio Lamborghini so much that he built his own cars?

In one telling, the clutch on his Ferraris kept needing rebuilds, so he set out to build a better car himself.

Which group has owned Lamborghini through its Audi division since 1998?

Volkswagen, through Audi, has run Lamborghini since 1998, but an American carmaker got there first: Chrysler took control of the company in 1987.

The Lamborghini Miura is named after what?

Named for a Spanish fighting-bull breeder, the Miura became a film star when an orange one drove through the Alps in the opening of The Italian Job (1969).

The name of the Lamborghini Countach comes from what?

An exclamation of astonishment in Piedmontese dialect gave the name, by designer Marcello Gandini's account after a Bertone workman's habit of saying it.

The Chevrolet Corvette's original bodywork was made of what unusual material?

Fiberglass was only meant for the first few hundred bodies before a switch to steel, yet the Corvette went on using it for generations.

What engine did the Corvette first offer in 1955?

A V8, the new 265-cubic-inch small-block, arrived as an option in 1955 and helped save a Corvette that GM had considered dropping.

The Corvette was named after what?

GM publicist Myron Scott suggested the name of a small, manoeuvrable warship, the corvette, a type later used to escort wartime convoys.

What did the 2020 Corvette finally switch to?

A mid-engine layout ended a front-engined run dating back to 1953, and Chevrolet dropped the manual gearbox, offering only an automatic.

What is the best-selling two-seat convertible sports car in history?

The Mazda MX-5 Miata revived the light, fun open roadster of the 1960s, a type that had almost disappeared from the market by the 1980s.

Which classic British roadster did Mazda use as the design benchmark for the MX-5?

The Lotus Elan was the model, so the first Miata, pop-up headlamps and all, looked like a '60s Elan remastered for a new era.

Which car did Enzo Ferrari reputedly call "the most beautiful car ever made" in 1961?

The Jaguar E-Type's looks later earned a roadster a place in the permanent design collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

What was Jaguar's 1961 roadster called in North America?

It claimed a 150 mph top speed and sub-7-second 0-60 time in 1961.

The Shelby Cobra was built by dropping a Ford V8 into which small British roadster?

The AC Ace got a new Ford 221 V8 at AC's Thames Ditton works, and Shelby's first Cobra was then tested at England's MIRA track.

In which James Bond film did the Aston Martin DB5 first appear?

Goldfinger's novel had given Bond an older Aston Martin, the DB Mark III, but for the film the car was updated to the new DB5.

What do the letters DB in Aston Martin DB5 stand for?

David Brown's initials name the DB5, and his company lent the Bond film-makers the original DB5 prototype for the cameras.

After Enzo Ferrari backed out of a 1963 sale, which Ford boss ordered a car to beat him at Le Mans?

Henry Ford II, enraged when the deal collapsed, told his team to beat Ferrari at Le Mans, or so the legend goes, and the GT40 did it in 1966.

Which Ford driver lost the 1966 Le Mans win after a staged three-car photo finish?

Ken Miles had to settle for second: McLaren and Amon had started further back, so officials ruled they had covered more ground.

What is unusual about the seating in a McLaren F1?

Driver centred, a passenger on each side: McLaren built that three-seater, and five F1 LM road cars celebrated its 1995 Le Mans win.

What does the 4 in Veyron 16.4 stand for?

Turbochargers, four of them, feed its 16-cylinder engine, which makes so much heat that the Veyron carries around ten radiators and coolers.

The Bugatti Veyron is named after what?

A Bugatti racing driver, Pierre Veyron co-drove a Bugatti to victory at the 1939 24 Hours of Le Mans with Jean-Pierre Wimille.

In which country is the Bugatti Veyron manufactured?

It is designed by Volkswagen in Germany but built at Molsheim in Alsace.

Which Swedish manufacturer's Agera RS set a two-way production-car speed record of 447 km/h in 2017?

Koenigsegg had only just begun building its first production car, the CC8S, when fire struck its factory in February 2003.

The Porsche 959 was originally developed to compete in which motorsport category?

Built for Group B, the 959 passed its all-wheel-drive know-how to the 911, where four-wheel drive became a staple of the range.

What type of engine powered the original Dodge Viper?

A V10, and Lamborghini, then owned by Chrysler, helped turn the engine from iron to aluminium by casting a prototype block.

Which Formula One champion gave input on the Honda/Acura NSX during its final development?

Ayrton Senna helped hone the NSX, which Honda built to rival contemporary Ferraris.

In which country was the fifth-generation Toyota Supra built alongside the BMW Z4?

Austria: Magna Steyr built both cars at its Graz plant, because Toyota developed the fifth Supra with BMW on a shared platform.

The Nissan GT-R (R35) succeeded a high-performance version of which Nissan model line?

The R35 kept the GT-R badge of the Skyline but was the first GT-R not sold as a Skyline, and the last one left Nissan's Tochigi plant in 2025.

Which Chinese carmaker owns the British sports car maker Lotus?

Geely owns Lotus, whose first SUV, the electric Eletre, is built in Wuhan, China, rather than at the company's Hethel home.

The Pagani Zonda was going to be named after which racing driver before his death in 1995?

Juan Manuel Fangio's death in 1995 ended that plan, so the car was named after the zonda, a hot wind that blows over Argentina.

In which city did Ferrari's first car, the 125 S, win its first race?

Rome: after failing to finish its Piacenza debut in May 1947, the 125 S won the Rome Grand Prix two weeks later with Franco Cortese.

Which coachbuilder built the first production Lamborghini, the 350 GT?

Touring reworked the earlier 350 GTV prototype, whose body Franco Scaglione had designed, into the production car's aluminium body.

Which 1966 car was the first sports car to use all-wheel drive?

The Jensen FF paired four-wheel drive with anti-lock brakes, arriving 14 years before the Audi Quattro made all-wheel drive a rally weapon.

Since 1981 the Chevrolet Corvette has been built in which Kentucky city?

Bowling Green made news in February 2014, when a sinkhole opened under a Corvette showcase there and swallowed eight rare cars.

The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray coupe had which feature for that model year only?

Chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov disliked it for blocking rear vision, but designer Bill Mitchell considered it central to the look.

Which stainless-steel, gull-winged sports car served as the time machine in Back to the Future?

The DeLorean wore bare stainless steel partly to dodge a paint-finish problem, and it was built in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast.

Which electric sports car did SpaceX launch into orbit around the Sun on the first Falcon Heavy rocket?

The Tesla Roadster flew as a dummy payload in 2018 with a spacesuited mannequin named Starman in the driver's seat, after Elon Musk promised the silliest cargo imaginable.

Which Chevrolet sports coupé does Bumblebee transform into in the live-action Transformers films?

The Camaro took over from the humble Beetle that Bumblebee had been before, and the 1977 car from the 2007 film later sold for over $40,000 on eBay.

Which movie monster's name did Australian magazine Wheels give the Nissan GT-R as a nickname in 1989?

Godzilla suited a Japanese car with monstrous track pace, and the magazine went on to dub a later generation Godzilla Returns.

Which musician scored his first US top-ten hit in 1983 with the song Little Red Corvette?

Prince took it to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 as the second single from his album 1999, packing the song with car metaphors for a one-night stand.

Florida Chevrolet dealer Jim Rathmann arranged new Corvettes each year for members of which 1960s profession?

Astronauts such as Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom got a pair of new cars a year, and most picked a family car for their wives and a Corvette for themselves.

Which toy company built a drivable, full-size Bugatti Chiron from more than a million of its own pieces?

Lego powered its 2018 model with 2,304 of its small toy motors, which together made roughly five horsepower.

The 40 in the name of Ford's 1960s Le Mans winner, the GT40, records which of the car's statistics?

Height in inches, measured at the top of the windscreen, was 40 because that was the minimum the racing rules allowed.

Which Audi serves as Tony Stark's personal car in the Marvel films, starting with Iron Man?

The R8 changed with each Iron Man film, going from coupé to open Spyder to an electric e-tron prototype in the third.

Which Hollywood actor died in 1955 at the wheel of a Porsche 550 Spyder nicknamed Little Bastard?

James Dean had traded in his older Porsche for the 550 only nine days earlier and was driving it to a race meeting in Salinas, California.

Which style of upward-opening door did the Lamborghini Countach introduce to production cars in the 1970s?

Scissor doors answered a real problem, the car's very wide chassis, and Lamborghini kept them for successors such as the Diablo and Murciélago.

Which German circuit, nicknamed the Green Hell by Jackie Stewart, do carmakers use to benchmark sports car lap times?

The Nürburgring got the nickname after Stewart won the 1968 German Grand Prix there through a rainstorm and thick fog.

What do a sports car's wings and spoilers create to press the tyres harder onto the road at speed?

Downforce works like an aeroplane wing turned upside down, using the principle that lifts a plane in reverse to push the car into the track.

The rearing horse at the centre of the Porsche crest is taken from the coat of arms of which city?

Stuttgart grew from a tenth-century stud farm for a duke's warhorses, which is how a horse came to stand on the arms of Porsche's home city.

Which 1980s TV private investigator drove novelist Robin Masters's Ferrari 308 GTS around the island of Oahu?

Thomas Magnum, played by Tom Selleck, drove the car for eight seasons while living in the guesthouse on its owner's Hawaiian estate.

Which luxury brand built the LFA supercar, whose engine revved too quickly for an analog tachometer needle?

Lexus said the engine could spin from idle to its redline in 0.6 seconds, and it brought in Yamaha to engineer the sound.

Toyota developed its 86 sports coupé jointly with which carmaker, which sells its own version as the BRZ?

Subaru builds both cars at its own plant in Gunma, Japan, so even the Toyota-badged version rolls out of a rival's factory.

Which brand's Project One hypercar, first shown in 2017, uses an engine based on its Formula One car's?

Mercedes-AMG had Lewis Hamilton, then a three-time world champion, unveil the car, whose engine and design are based on the team's W06 racer.

Which Italian hypercar of 2013 was its maker's first full hybrid, pairing a V12 with an electric motor?

LaFerrari delivered the highest power output of any Ferrari road car up to then while cutting fuel consumption by 40 per cent.

Which Ford, unveiled at the 1964 New York World's Fair, gave its name to the pony car class?

The Mustang set the pattern with a long hood and a short rear deck, and Ford kept it affordable by deriving it from existing model lines.

Which Gulf city's police force began adding supercars such as the Lamborghini Aventador to its patrol fleet in 2013?

Dubai went on to earn a Guinness World Record for the fastest police car in service, a Bugatti Veyron capable of 253 mph.

Which actor played car builder Carroll Shelby opposite Christian Bale in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari?

Matt Damon joined after an earlier plan to cast Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fell through; Cruise left because he would not get to drive much in the film.

KITT, the talking car of the TV series Knight Rider, was a modified Firebird Trans Am from which American brand?

Pontiac's 1982 model was reworked for the show by customizer Michael Scheffe, and the name KITT stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand.

Which electric hypercar maker's founder took control of Bugatti when the two brands were united in 2021?

Rimac began as Mate Rimac's garage hobby in Croatia in 2007, and his company took 55% of the joint company against Porsche's 45%.

Ford's second-generation GT supercar, new for the 2017 model year, has an EcoBoost engine with which cylinder layout?

A V6 won out because the compact engine gave the designers more freedom with the body, even though a twelve-cylinder was considered.

The second-generation Honda NSX hybrid supercar was hand-built at a dedicated factory in which US state?

Ohio handled both assembly and much of the engineering, while the engine and hybrid system were developed in Tochigi, Japan.

Which Renault-owned brand returned in 2017 with a new A110 sports car, decades after the original won rallies?

Alpine had been dormant since Renault phased the name out in 1995, and the original A110 took the World Rally Championship in 1973.

The Ferrari 365 GTB/4 picked up which unofficial nickname after Ferrari's 1-2-3 finish in a 1967 American 24-hour race?

Daytona was a name applied by the press, not the factory, and Ferrari itself rarely uses it for the car.

Maserati's trident badge copies the one held by the Neptune statue in which Italian city, the company's first home?

Bologna's Fountain of Neptune stands in Piazza Maggiore, and the logo was drawn by Mario Maserati, the one brother who chose art over racing.

Which creature sits on the shield badge of Abarth, the Italian performance car maker founded in 1949?

A scorpion was chosen because Scorpio was the zodiac sign of founder Carlo Abarth, and it sits on a yellow and red background.

Lamborghini's featherweight Sesto Elemento track car is named after the atomic number of which element?

Carbon sits sixth in the periodic table, and Lamborghini says fibre made from it accounts for eighty percent of the car, holding the weight to 999 kg.

The old Le Mans running start explains why Porsche puts which control to the left of the steering wheel?

The ignition switch sits there so a driver who had just sprinted to the car could start the engine with the left hand while the right selected a gear.

Maserati models such as the Ghibli, Bora and Khamsin are all named after famous examples of what?

Winds supply the names: the Bora blows over Trieste, the Ghibli across the Libyan desert, and the Khamsin through Egypt for fifty days a year.

Which name did Ferrari give its smaller-engined 1960s sports cars in memory of Enzo's late son Alfredo?

Dino was Alfredo's nickname, and the script on the cars' badge was based on his own signature.

Which Ferrari convertible, unveiled in 2017, takes its name from a village on the Italian Riviera?

Portofino also hosted the launch: Ferrari showed the car in the village over two evenings before its public debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

In the 1983 film Risky Business, which Porsche model rolls off a pier and sinks into Lake Michigan?

The 928 is the prized car of Joel's father, and it slips out of gear when Lana bumps it while fetching her purse.

Porsche named its removable-roof 911 body style after which Sicilian road race?

The Targa Florio name does double duty, since targa is also the Italian word for a plate or plaque, and Porsche won the race eleven times between 1956 and 1973.

In which John Hughes comedy does a teenager borrow a friend's father's Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off used replicas for its wide shots because, with only about 100 real cars in existence, one was far too expensive to destroy.

Which Lamborghini, replaced by the Huracán in 2014, was the company's best-seller of its day with 14,022 built?

The Gallardo was only the second car Lamborghini released under Audi's ownership, and it outsold the flagship Murciélago by more than three to one.

Audi's TT sports car takes its name from a famous motorcycle race held on which island?

The Isle of Man TT, short for Tourist Trophy, was a happy hunting ground for NSU, a motorcycle maker that later became part of Audi.

Which country is home to Spyker, the sports car brand whose badge shows an aircraft propeller over a wheel?

The Netherlands gave the brand its history too: the badge honours an earlier Dutch Spyker company that built both automobiles and aircraft.

Which American sports car circuit, home of a famous 12-hour race, was laid out on a wartime bomber training base?

Sebring occupies part of the former Hendricks Army Airfield in Florida, where B-17 pilots trained from 1941 to 1946.

Which Italian designer, working for the Bertone studio, styled both the Lamborghini Miura and the Countach?

Marcello Gandini took the Miura from first sketch to finished prototype in three months, yet he also drew everyday cars such as the Innocenti Mini and Citroën BX.

Which Italian-built De Tomaso supercar did Ford import and sell through its own American dealers in the early 1970s?

The Pantera, Italian for panther, was the firm's most popular model, with over 7,000 built across a twenty-year run.

Which private Italian racetrack, opened in 1972, does Ferrari own for developing and testing its cars?

Fiorano is wired with telemetry sensors, and fans gather at the roadside to watch whenever a Formula One car is being tested there.

Which rare hypercar, kept in an Abu Dhabi tower by a billionaire royal, is destroyed in the film Furious 7?

The Lykan HyperSport wrecked on screen was a cheaper stand-in made for the film, because only seven real ones, valued at $3.4 million, were built.

Which Oscar-winning music composer co-funded the 16-cylinder Cizeta supercar, which at first carried his name?

Giorgio Moroder met the car's engineer, Claudio Zampolli, as a customer who brought his Lamborghini Countach to Zampolli's shop for servicing.

The original Honda NSX was the first production car with a semi-monocoque body structure made entirely of which metal?

Aluminium also went into the suspension, and the bodywork needed a 23-step paint process with an aircraft-style chromate coating to protect it.

Scuderia, as in Ferrari's racing team Scuderia Ferrari, is the Italian word for which kind of building?

A stable reserved for racing horses is the literal meaning, which is why many other Italian motor racing teams carry the word too.

Which American carmaker owned Lamborghini from 1987 until it sold the Italian firm in 1994?

Chrysler bought the firm from the Mimran brothers and oversaw the replacement of the Countach with the Diablo before selling up.