This statement needs closer examination.
The engine/gear box can be considered no longer competitive, but consider for a moment what technology has been applied to modern engine and gear boxes.
*Electronic engine management is the primary one. Pent roof-four valve-twin cam heads... This comes out of the need for emissions, fuel consumption and power expected by the market. Even so, how many modern current production engines can be tunned up to run hour after hour at 8,000 RPM as delivered? How many modern engines are happy being run this way constantly. Yes, the modern engine does produce more power, but it is often more of a numbers specification driven by marketing than an engine with soul and personality.
*For the vast majority of car folks, off the line acceleration is what matters most, not stuff like throttle response, near or at wide open throttle response and all those facts the typical driver will never use in their motor vehicle... and the manufactures know this fact. This is why really great performance production engines today are often an oddity.
How many current production cars today have a traditional shift? Most have paddle shift or 8+ speed automatics.
As for chassis, I'll put the X1/9 up against any current production sports car. Facts are all suspension and chassis designs are a set of trade offs with no ideal solution for a given need. This holds true for mechanical grip suspension chassis. Once the chassis become aero-centric the entire set of trade offs and requirements completely changes in ways that cannot be applied to passenger public road cars unless they are highly unusual like the Radical SR series and others which are more road race chassis than passenger car for public roads.
Cornering can approach 3-4G for current road race chassis with nee 600+ Bhp at under 1200 pounds, question is where and how does one drive a vehicle like this no public roads and at what lints of legal speeds?
Sports car and performance car marketing dictates lots of power, cornering, luxury items and more yet how may owners-drivers actually use the vehicles full potential all the time they driven them on public roads.
What I'm says is car buyers-owners-drivers have self conceived ideas of watch their dream ride must be, yet the reality of what can be is often quite different. The marketing folks know this and use these car fantasies to sell their products by playing to these fantasies.
What makes a great and classes design take a LOT more than acceleration, performance numbers, lap times and all that marketing stuff. Great designs are FAR more than just this, it is an embodiment of and trade off of many artistic, technical and many many other factors..
With all that consider what Government regulations and requirements have done to the modern motor vehicle.
Designs like the x1/9 has a honesty and purity of design that makes it special in ways no modern design can achieve.
Bernice
The X 1/9 is no longer competitive by modern car standards in terms of mechanical design. But the styling.... Nothing like it has emerged since or was present before.
