Passion doesn’t sell anymore and the numbers don’t lie.

When The Pedal Met the Heart

Sixty years ago you didn’t buy a car to get from A to B with soul-crushing efficiency. You bought it to feel something. The 1960s and early ’70s were a neon-paint, V8-in-your-face era where manufacturers treated cars like rock stars: long hoods, short rear decks, and soundtracks made of cast iron and glorious waste. The Mustang, Charger, Camaro, GTO, Firebird and their global cousins weren’t just transport, they were declarations of intent. Sales were massive because those cars scratched a very public itch: power, noise, and swagger.

Through the 1980s and ’90s, sports cars kept their little islands of magic. Porsche iterated the 911 into a long-running love affair; Ferrari and Lamborghini built myths; little surprises like the Toyota MR2, Celica and Supra  told us that even the most “boring” badge could learn to flirt. Passion was still profitable enough that mainstream brands occasionally placed a bet on emotion and (most of the time) the market rewarded them.

Fast forward to the 2010s and early 2020s and the rare bright lights of genuine engagement still exist. Toyota revived the spirit with the 86 and its sibling the Subaru BRZ, a cheap, focused, rear-wheel-drive two-seater that said “we care about steering.” Toyota teamed up with Subaru and BMW for projects that were, if nothing else, ideological: keep the small-sports-car experiment alive. Those collabs aren’t corporate charity, they’re a recognition that fun-to-drive engineering costs money and needs scale to survive.

Then The Spreadsheet Ate The Showroom

Here’s the bit nobody wants to say at parties: cars stopped being built primarily for drivers because being profitable became more important than being loveable and Auto Manufacturers are not non-for-profit charities. Look at the numbers and the product lines of the last decade: SUVs, utes and crossovers dominate. Park in any suburban car park in 2025 and you’ll be surrounded by trucks with badge-stitched confidence. Practicality sold; passion dwindled.

Why? Start with the boring but vital things. Regulations got stricter (safety, emissions), materials and R&D costs climbed, and global supply chains made single-model gambles extremely risky. Most of all, profit margins pushed brands toward models that sell in bulk and command high prices: SUVs. When Lamborghini, Bentley and Aston Martin discovered SUVs bring in the cash, they shrugged civility and built the Urus, Bentayga and DBX. If you’re Ferrari, you’re frantically asking whether the next V12 will be enough to keep the accountants happy. So now even the makers of mid-engined fantasies sell family wagons with a lipstick-on-the-prancing-horse look to pay for the one-off hypercar that the billionaires will buy.

Meanwhile, driving engagement is expensive. Dedicated sports cars mean tighter suspensions, less packaging, poorer fuel economy and higher service costs. In a world where people value usable boot space, family practicality and running costs before a corner-entry narrative, it’s a hard sell. (The Mustang, now, while still somewhat affordable, is just so impractical in the modern age, and to me, the car lover it’s so very sad). Customers need (desire) 5 to 7 seats and grocery capacity over heel-toe thrills.

Add electrification to the mix and the story gets complicated. EVs are brilliant in some ways (instant torque, simpler drivetrains) and an existential threat in others (regulations force rapid change, manufacturing tolerances and battery costs demand scale). Some purists say EVs kill character; others point out they open new possibilities for handling and performance, if you design for it. But again: R&D for EV sports cars eats money, and investors prefer predictable SUV revenue.

So yes, the mainstream sports car is a shrinking island. The people who still buy them are fewer, and manufacturers react the way animals do at a buffet: they follow the biggest plate. That leaves driving enthusiasts feeling squeezed, hearing the hollow echo of camshafts past.

But It’s Not All Doom, Sorta…

Don’t light the funeral pyre just yet. Passion hasn’t died; it’s found new habitats. First: niche collaboration and clever engineering are keeping the spark alive. The Toyota-Subaru marriage that produced the 86/BRZ was practical love: low cost, shared development, lots of smiles. BMW and Toyota did the Supra thing partly because standalone economics for halo sports cars rarely make sense anymore. Collaboration doesn’t mean capitulation, it’s survival with style and we (the enthusiasts) maybe need to embrace this more. The Supra returned and we criticised before we knew what we really had. A gift. Because a major manufacturer like Toyota said this makes no fiscal sense but here you go! It is to the best of our ability in a niche market that is shrinking by the year.

Second: the supercar world, while increasingly SUV-addled, is also innovating. Money from high-margin SUVs funds hypercar research and bleeding-edge tech. That’s how we end up with cars that can teleport you to 0-100 km/h with a sonic boom and, just as importantly, fund craftsmen who still make things that matter to enthusiasts. Yes, being a wealthy collector now looks like owning both a Purosangue and a Revuelto but the existence of that V12 keeps a certain craft alive.

Third: aftermarket culture, restomods and grassroots movements are thriving. If factory lines won’t make the perfect analogue sports coupe, small firms and enthusiasts will. You’ve got boutique shops building modern drivetrains into classic shells, clubs that keep track days alive, and a whole sim-racing ecosystem that teaches precision throttle control to the next generation, often before they ever buy a car.

Finally, technology is a two-edged scalpel. Autonomy and connectivity may reduce raw driver engagement in commuter cars, but they free up manufacturers to make dedicated performance machines more extreme and niche. Batteries and electric motors can be tuned for driver feel, and why not? There’s room for both: practical daily mobility and expensive, beautiful toys that scratch the same emotional itch the Mustangs and Chargers used to hit at diners.

The Long Game

So where are we after 60 years? Cars that sing to the soul are rarer, but they’ve gone underground or boutique rather than extinct. The market’s logic pushed the mainstream toward SUVs and practicality, but the craft of passionate car-making persists in partnerships, hyper-niche manufacturers, restomods and the aftermarket. Money and safety rules changed what mainstream brands could do, and yes, that left less room for reckless, cheap thrills. But when you look closer you’ll see enthusiasm split into new forms, tighter communities, clever collaborations, and makers who refuse to let driving engagement disappear entirely.

If you’re worried that “passion doesn’t sell” take a breath. It might not fill every showroom, but it still fills garages, racetracks and YouTube channels. The car industry learned to survive by becoming pragmatic and profitable; enthusiasts learned to survive by getting creative. The compromise? A future where the family crossover does the school run and the midnight-garage project still carries the torch. That’s not a loss. It’s evolution; scrappy, loud and occasionally beautiful.