The rules for a sport car in my opinion is convertible, manual gearbox, low to the ground and very small and feel like it is fast.
Honda S600 was almost perfect as the problem with 90% of cars are they feel slow at the speed limit, but not so the Honda, you had to wring it out in every gear just to get to the limit and it felt like it was doing 200kph when doing 100kph. Pity during the time I owned it I spent 90% of the time fixing it and only 10% driving it.
My first real car and the car I learnt to drive in was a Honda S800 coupe, they were really amazing cars not that reliable but could rev to about 8-9k rpm........very much in vogue again and going for ridiculously serious money if you can find a good one without rust.
regards
Yes an amazing car and the S600 with the chain drive was very interesting, I learnt to use the slack in the chains for very smooth take offs and gear changes but if anyone else drove it they bunny hopped the thing all over the place. Also even back in the 1980's it was virtually impossible to get parts for the cars, even things you think wouldn't be that hard being metric. For example there is a oil seal in the distributor that is very important to stop oil getting on the points and while you can get a seal with the right inside and outside diameters you can't get one thin enough to fit
Back on topic this sums it up reasonably well.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28225/sports-car-definition/Tell me about it, mine was a 1968 S800 I bought in 1971 to learn to drive in.......it hadn't done many miles and within weeks of it having a regularly good thrashing (as learner driver)it developed an oil leak from a head gasket that allowed oil to collect in the spark plug valley......an interesting fire hazard. When the head was taken off I had a few slightly bent inlet and outlet exhaust valves, I remember waiting about 2 months for them to come from Japan and they cost what seemed a princely sum at the time of over £10 each when a BL valve would be a couple of pounds by comparison. The chain sprockets has also lost a few teeth and new chains etc cost me a kings ransom, the engine rebuilt was about £400, but on reflection worth every penny. Often tempted to buy one again but realise the parts were difficult to get just after production had ended in the early 70's, goodness knows what its like today. This was the only car that came close to matching my Norton 850 motorcycle race time from Bridgnorth (favourite pubs)to my house some 19.5 miles away half and half countryside and 30mph urban conurbation of with lots of traffic lights in 17 minutes late at night. Those were the days.
Coming back to topic one brand I rarely get excited about is Ferrari, having driven quite a few older models including the twin headlamp 330GT 2+2 ruined new pair of new shoes with cramped footwell and tight pedals. the Dino 246, the Testarossa ((thrashed by Mercedes CLK 500 on M58) and had a terrible cramped cockpit. 348 and 355.I understand why people like them, but for me I can find more enjoyable ways of burning my money than on maintenance charges and questionable reliability but when in the sweet spot can be a joy to drive.
