Here we go again. Dante should have made the question 'Do Supercars Make any Sense?' one of his levels of hell near Sisyphus, since so many people love to wail and moan and gnash their teeth on it in circular fashion. James May, a.k.a. Top Gear's Captain Slow, has taken up the query and come to the conclusion that the speedy little devils are pointless.
He intends to make his point by asking, "what benefit has accrued to Italy, principal arbour of the mechanism of the Renaissance, by their existence?", and then by comparing the effect that supercars have have on the world to the effects produced by Gore-Tex and penicillin and the radio and the Maxim gun. Mr. May, you have us there – we'd rather our doctor prescribed us antibiotics and not a Ferrari if we had a staph infection. That is, unless we had at least seven days to live, in which case we'd take the Ferrari and trade a ride in it for a prescription.
Most supercars are as useful and as pointless as marshmallows, with little technology actually trickling down to more affordable machinery – at least on a consistent basis. In fact, we're mildly surprised there's any debate left in this issue – even in jest. If May wants to talk about pointless things, let's start with the Salad Shooter or anything else sold by infomercial. We'd live without a Lamborghini Murciélago as soon as we'd live without s'mores, which means that we'd do it but we'd really rather not. Maybe the world hasn't been changed by supercars, but our world has, and that's good enough for us. Ergo, when May ends his piece with "Prove me wrong," we'll admit we can't. But we can prove his article pointless.
