The supercar has come a long way since it first appeared in the middle of the twentieth century. Many of the earliest ones had the engines in the front, but in 1966, the Lamborghini Miura shifted the layout entirely, its rear-mid-engine configuration creating the outline for every supercar that would follow.
One of the best things about old supercars is the way they look. Coming from a different era of design, they have this unmatched quality and aesthetic that modern supercars simply can’t top.
Make no mistake, modern supercars are still lovely things, but there’s just something about the classics. A certain je ne sais quoi.
Now, how many times have you heard internet debates — sometimes angry ones — that people should actually drive and use their supercars instead of locking them up as garage queens?
A great example is Mate Rimac, CEO of Bugatti-Rimac, who urges exotic car owners to use them regularly. To show the method in his madness, he uses his Nevera company car to do mundane errands and everyday driving, despite the car having almost 2,000 hp and being able to achieve 171 mph… in reverse.
While we would love to see more supercars on the road, as far as classic supercars go, we think they’re better off as garage queens.
Classic Supercars Are Not For Everyone
What does this mean, exactly? Why are classic supercars not for everyone? As well as coming from a time when styling was completely different, they’re also from a time before all the blessings that modern cars, and especially supercars, enjoy.
AWD, torque vectoring, Ferrari’s five-way stability control, power steering, dual-clutch paddle-shift transmissions? Forget it. You get a steering wheel, a shifter, and some pedals. Good luck.
Richard Hammond summed things up very well when he drove an original Lamborghini Miura on Top Gear. As he says, when you’re behind the wheel of the Miura, you’re still “at the wheel of a bit of a dog’s breakfast.”
Classic supercars have notoriously heavy clutches, heavy manual steering, and transmissions that are difficult to shift regardless of your technique. Any sort of assistance systems were just foreign words to European supercar manufacturers — that’s if these aids were invented in the first place!
Top Gear also took the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GTO SWB, one of the most valuable cars in existence. We’ll get to the prices soon, don’t worry. As they claim in their review, while it is wonderful to look at, it is certainly a challenge to drive.
Doug DeMuro claims that the Lamborghini Countach is not all that difficult to drive, and sure, it may not be, but it’s still a challenge. There is the aforementioned lack of driver aids (aka “nannies”), but also a total lack of visibility, especially if you have one of the later Countach models with the big wings.
Now, I know there will be many experts who claim that the car’s lack of electronic aids is part of the experience and that you need skills to truly harness the power. But there’s a fine line between needing to put in some effort to get the most out of the car and having to put up with a lot of foibles just to enjoy it.
Look at the Lotus Elise and the Porsche Carrera GT, for example. Analog experiences, but not annoying ones in the slightest. Actually, they’re quite brilliant, as Car Magazine can attest to. Then, there’s the other notable problem with classic supercars…
Serious Reliability Concerns
The other painful part of owning and driving a classic exotic car is the reliability. Or rather, the lack thereof. As singled out by Road and Track, stuff like the original Aston V8 Vantage, Lambo Miura, the DeTomaso Pantera, the old Ferrari 308 GTB, and GTS are notorious for being maintenance and reliability nightmares.
Going back to Hammond’s experience with the Miura, he went deeper when talking about the car’s wonderful talents like the front end lifting as the fuel ran low (due to the fuel tank being mounted over the front axle), and of course, the spontaneous combustion due to the carburetors leaking gas on the engine.
It’s not just the Miura, though. Other classic supercars are infamous for causing headaches related to reliability and maintenance. The maintenance itself is stupidly expensive, and many parts weren’t really designed to last all that long.
Of course, Matt Farah partially disproved this. As he explained to Jalopnik, the Countach actually works fine if you use it relatively regularly.
However, things can still go wrong. If and when they do, you’re looking at thousands of dollars in maintenance and repairs. That is, of course, if you can even find replacement parts, or somebody willing to put in the work and time to do it properly.
There’s also the fact that classic supercars are obscenely valuable. Yes, obscenely! As car market evaluation site Classic.com tells us, one Ferrari 250 GTO recently sold for $51.7 million. That’s enough money to buy roughly 10 new 2025 Rolls-Royce Phantoms, which, according to Car and Driver, is set to start at around $510,000.
Countaches are going for well over half a million, the Ferrari F40 market comes in at an average sale price of $2.4 million, you get the idea. Driving one of these cars means constant worry and fear that you’ll scratch the paint or somebody might ding it in a parking lot, not to mention potholes and careless drivers.
There will always be a dedicated group of people who enjoy the experience of driving a classic supercar. We respect that dearly, and there are many, many reasons why it’s an experience worth having at least once.
However, to own one, it’s a different story. If you want a supercar experience with far fewer headaches, maybe it’s a better idea to keep the classics in the garage and just buy a new one to use as a daily driver.