CLIMBING MOUNT AWESOME: Plotting Super-Car Performance Through the Years

I've always wondered about this, going so far as to revisit what top automotive performers looked like in 1988. But Car and Driver has put together the ultimate set of comparison charts:

As far as we’re concerned, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL was the first supercar. Why the 300SL? Funny doors, of course—plus a tricky mix of brawn and performance with intangibles such as outlandishness and rarity. It was a wobbly road from that 220-hp, 138-mph gullwing coupe to today’s aluminum-and-carbon-fiber wedges, but we’ve mapped the progression of the defining exotic-car stats here with data from our test archives.

Shhh. No one show this chart to the kooks at the EPA: their heads might explode, and I don't want to be responsible for the resulting clean-up.


Hat tip: BadBlue Car News.