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What’s The Least Sporty Sports Car Ever Built?

Was there a sports car that was all style and no substance, or another that never quite lived up to the hype?

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A photo of a yellow Porsche 914 with its roof down.
Is this the least sporty sports car out there?
Image: Porsche

I’m sure most of us agree that no matter the style, sporty cars are the best kind of cars. Whether it’s a hot hatch that’s been tuned for ultimate fun, or a drop-top coupe that puts a smile on your face whenever you hop behind the wheel, they’re all great. But are they really all great?

Apparently, the world’s first sports car was the Vauxhall ‘Prince Henry’ Sports Torpedo, which premiered in 1914 with a mighty 25 horsepower engine. So that means there’s almost 110 years of sports car history to look through. Can we honestly say they’ve all been great? To find out if that’s the case, we’re turning to you to try and uncover the least sporty sports cars ever built. So, what have you got?

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Obviously, the easy car to poke fun at here is the Delorean, which launched in 1981 with as much sporty personality as the Panhard ERC tank with which it shared an engine. But it’s far from being the only car that promised performance it couldn’t deliver.

What about cars like the Ford Capri, which promised Mustang performance for buyers in Europe, and while we’re talking Mustangs, what about the MKII ‘Stang? That hardly set the world alight.

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I’ll throw the Porsche 914 into the mix, I think. Sure, it had quirky looks that set it out from the other cars Porsche was making at the time, and with its Targa top you were guaranteed a few fun rides out in the sun. But its flat-six engine only made 110 hp in its top spec, which wasn’t quite enough to hurl around the car’s weight. This left the 914 with a top speed of just 129 mph and a sluggish zero to 60 time of 8.7 seconds. Come on Porsche, you can do better than this.

But what sports cars from the past 109 years would you throw into the mix here? Head to the comments section below to let us know your picks for the least sporty sports cars ever built.