Copyright © 1999

Porsche Club of America Out For A Spin November, 1999 Bruce Corwin Bruce968@PorscheNet.com

Prediciting the near-term car market is not too complicated. For example, the most popular vehicle over the next few years will be a hybrid SUV-pickup truck with rally lights, although none of them will ever go off-road, haul a load of dirt or compete in a rally.

But who cares about SUVs in the year 2005? Let's instead predict the distant future of sports cars for the year 2050. Our formula for prediciting the future will be to track historical changes in sports car design and then project where this will take us in the future. As a benchmark, we can look at the Porsche 911 and its ancester the 356, which have been in production for over 50 years now.

Porsche number 1, built in 1948 had 35 HP. This was soon replaced by the 356 with 40HP. The 911 was introduced in 1963 with 130 HP. Ten years later we were up to 210 HP at which point things slowed a bit. The mid 80's brought 231 HP, then we got to 250 HP in the early 90's, finishing the air-cooled legacy with a 285 HP 993. The 996 has 300 HP and the new 996 Turbo is expected to have 420 HP. A similar trend exists with car weight increasing over the years from 1287 pounds for Porsche number 1 to 2910 pounds for the newest 996 model. Resulting top speeds have increased from 85mph to 189 mph for the new Turbo.
 
But there's more to sports cars than just the mechanical specs. We want to know what the cars will look like. Porsche number 1 was quite spartan by today's standards, and although the trend seems to be towards cars being more luxurious, I'm going with a theory similar to the big bang, where the universe expands to a certain point, then begins collapsing back on itself. I think certain models such as the Viper, Prowler and Elise hint toward a sports car future where cars are generally open-top, simpler and allow the driver to experience the "machine" in a more raw manner.

Other trends are more obvious lately, such as wheel sizes growing. Not many years ago 15" wheels were the standard. Then came 16" and 17". Now 18" wheels are readily available with some cars sporting 19" or even 20" wheels! Meanwhile wheel widths continue to grow in a similar fashion. While this is happening, tires, which in the old days were tall and skinny, have grown wider and with much lower profiles.

With this information, we are now able to accurately predict the sports car of 2050. So here is what we have: Over the past 50 years, horsepower is up 1100%, weight is up 126% and top speed is up 122%. Meanwhile tire profiles will keep getting lower until the year 2035 when they will resemble a rubber band stretched around the wheel and finally in the year 2050 tires will be eliminated completely. This advanced technology has already been implimented on the world's fastest car, Richard Noble's Thrust SSC, which broke the sound barrier on solid aluminum wheels with no tires. Likewise, wheels will continue to become wider until no space exists between the left and right wheels, and we go with front and rear rollers, similar to Fred Flintstone's car. Of course wheel diameters will quickly exceed 20" and should reach 60" by year 2050.

So thus we can conclude that the sports car of year 2050 will be a 6600 pound steamroller with 5040 horsepower, a top speed of 420 miles per hour, and at least 12 cup holders.