Automotive history is littered with failures that were often predicted early on.
For example, Volkswagen going ahead and trying to sell a sedan with a six-figure price tag, Chrysler trying to sell a last-generation Mercedes SL with a horrific body for the price of a current-generation Mercedes SL, Nissan pioneering the convertible crossover segment with the Murano Cabriolet, and the Tesla Cybertruck.
But there are also a lot of cars out there that succeeded and proved the doubters and critics wrong.
Porsche Cayenne
2016 Porsche Cayenne
ENGINE
3.6L V6 Gas
TRANSMISSION
6-Speed Manual
HORSEPOWER
290 hp
TORQUE
273 lb-ft @ 3000 rpm
The poster car for proving the doubters wrong is the Porsche Cayenne. It was viewed by many as Porsche selling out, and that an SUV couldn’t possibly be both an off-roader and an on-road performance vehicle at the same time. It arrived to mixed reviews, but mostly agreeing it handled well for an SUV.
That could have been enough for Porsche, but as we know from the 911, Porsche is a master of iteration. By the time the Cayenne Turbo GT arrived in 2021, the Cayenne could hang with sports cars, but the Turbo GT version showed the Cayenne could now step into supercar territory.
Honda Ridgeline
2026 Honda Ridgeline
DRIVETRAIN
All-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
9-speed automatic
HORSEPOWER
280 HP @6000 RPM
TORQUE
262 lb.-ft. @ 4700 RPM
In the US, the pickup truck was blown up by popular culture and marketing to the point where people believed a vehicle can’t be a “real” pickup truck unless it has a ladder-frame chassis that can tow a lot of weight and take severe punishment off-road. Which is all well and good for people that tow large loads or go bang around in the wilds. But the Honda Ridgeline is an American-designed truck that has been quietly going about its business of being a pickup truck on a monocoque chassis since 2005.
The Honda Ridgeline has been selling steadily for over a decade now because it does what the majority of truck owners need – it’s got a pickup bed and a crew cab. But it also has the economy benefits and comfortable ride of a crossover. And Ford likely took a long, hard look at it before putting pen to paper and designing the Maverick.
Toyota Prius
2008 Toyota Prius
DRIVETRAIN
Front-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
Continuously Variable Automatic (CVT)
HORSEPOWER
76 hp
TORQUE
82 lb-ft
When Toyota started to manufacture the Prius, it was largely written off as a cute experiment. In 2007, in response to the Prius’s growing popularity, right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh declared that “These liberals think they’re ahead of the game on these things, and they’re just suckers.” In 2012, Bob Lutz, then General Motors’ Vice Chairman but already an industry veteran through leadership positions at BMW, Ford, Chrysler, and even a North American supplier of automotive batteries, said that hybrids wouldn’t reach more than 10% of the car market.
All the critics and doubters were spectacularly wrong. The Prius demonstrated that hybrid technology worked, and could be reliable and cost-effective. Now, hybrid cars are taking up around 20% of the light vehicle market share, and the rise has been steep over the past few years – to the point that Toyota is making its most popular vehicles only available as a hybrid. And the Prius is still selling.
Tesla Model S
2026 Tesla Model S
DRIVETRAIN
All-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
Automatic
HORSEPOWER
670 HP
BATTERY TYPE
Lithium ion battery
BATTERY CAPACITY
100 kWh
Before Elon Musk bought Tesla and pumped a huge amount of money into it, the Tesla Roadster was seen as an interesting idea, but not realistic in the long run. After Musk bought the company, to cut a long story short, he started pushing hard to build a mass-market electric vehicle. People either bought into Musk’s big bet it could be done, or thought electric vehicles were a pie-in-the-sky idea.
When the Model S came to market and started selling well, it was polarizing – either people bought wholesale into an all-electric vehicle future or predicted EVs would never have significant market share. There’s been a long road littered with controversy, but the fact of the matter is that the doubters were wrong – all-electric vehicles are here to stay.
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Honda Civic Type R
2017 Honda Civic Type R
DRIVETRAIN
Front-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
6-Speed Manual
HORSEPOWER
306 hp
TORQUE
295 lb-ft @ 2500 rpm
If you asked on a forum in 2014 how much power a front-wheel-drive vehicle could have before it became dangerous or even undriveable, you would have got a lot of numbers under 300 hp. The most common belief was between 200 and 250 hp. The problem is torque steer, which is literally the engine torque having an effect on the steering under acceleration. Then, in 2015, Honda started to sell a production front-wheel-drive hot hatch making 306 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque. And people found it didn’t torque steer them off the road and into the nearest tree.
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On paper, the FK generation Civic Type R should have been a mess of torque steer. It should have been a tree-seeking missile, but Honda’s engineers wrote a whole new chapter in the suspension geometry book on mitigating torque steer. Essentially, Honda moved the steering axis close to the centerline of the tire, reducing its scrub radius dramatically. While it didn’t eradicate torque steer, it reduced it dramatically and made it as manageable as a lesser powered car.
Honda NSX
Honda/Acura NSX (First Generation)
Drivetrain
Rear-Wheel-Drive
Engine
3.0-liter V6
Transmission
five-speed manual
Power
270 hp
Torque
210 lb-ft
We head into our pure performance car section with the car that proved Honda could build a supercar better than Ferrari. The Japanese company famed for its economy cars was also at the tail end of its second era of competing in Formula 1 when the first-generation NSX went into production in 1990. But rather than build anything larger than a V6 for a road car, Honda went to war with Ferrari with a naturally aspirated all-aluminum V6 and engineered an aluminum semi-monocoque chassis while leaning into its motorsports division’s expertise to make it as light and agile as possible. The result was a world-class Japanese supercar that rivalled Ferrari’s V8 offerings at a price that embarrassed the Italian supercar specialist.
2005 Ford GT
2005 Ford GT
Engine
5.4-liter supercharged V8
Transmission
Six-speed manual
Drivetrain
Rear-wheel drive
Power
550 hp
Torque
500 lb.-ft
When an American car company decides to build a supercar, the rest of the world shrugs its shoulders. American automakers are great at making cars go fast in a straight line, and have built some decent sports cars, but a legit world-class supercar? It didn’t seem likely. However, Ford had the legendary GT40 race car in mind and a centenary to celebrate, so they poured time, money, and talent into the Ford GT’s development. It pioneered some unique technologies at the time and did what it did with the GT40 – leaned on Carroll Shelby and British specialists, but the results were spectacular.
Chevrolet ZR1X
DRIVETRAIN
All-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
8-speed auto-shift manual
HORSEPOWER
1064 HP @7000 RPM
TORQUE
828 lb.-ft. @ 6000 RPM
If people didn’t think that an American automaker could build a supercar, then the idea that one could build something for around $200,000 that could go toe-to-toe with multi-million dollar hypercars is unbelievable. But the Corvette ZR1X exists to shove preconceptions down people’s throats. Its high-revving twin-turbo V8 mixed with a hybrid system makes 1,064 horsepower and 828 pound-feet of torque. In addition to Chevrolet claiming 0-60 mph in under two seconds, it’s built to devastate road tracks. It’s the logical progression of the supercar—adversary Corvette ZR1 that has been embarrassing exotics for decades.
Porsche 911 GT3
DRIVETRAIN
Rear-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
6-Speed Manual
HORSEPOWER
502 hp
TORQUE
346 lb-ft @ 6100 rpm
Porsche has gone in a different direction, and proved that you don’t need insane horsepower to build an insane performance car. The current Porsche 911 GT3 makes 502 hp, which, for perspective, is 2 hp more than a 2007 BMW M6. But Porsche’s flat-six engine is a modern engineering marvel that revs out to 9000 rpm, while the rest of the car is tuned to race car-spec while being just about comfortable enough to drive on reasonably well maintained roads. By race car spec, we mean serious lap times and Porsche tuning the steering and chassis for absolute driver’s delight.
Bugatti Veyron
Bugatti Veyron 16.4
DRIVETRAIN
All-Wheel Drive
TRANSMISSION
7-Speed Direct Shift automatic
HORSEPOWER
1,001 hp
TORQUE
922 ft-lb
CURB WEIGHT
4,167 lbs
History isn’t good at remembering that an awful lot of people, including Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame, were skeptical that the Bugatti Veyron would ever be produced, let alone able to crack 300 mph. The legendary McLaren F1 designer, Gordon Murray said: “The most pointless exercise on the planet has got to be this four-wheel-drive, thousand-horsepower Bugatti.” Both, and many others, went on to change their minds, with Clarkson going on to compare it with the leap forward in airplane design that was Concorde, and Murray giving it a positive review for the UK’s Road & Track magazine.
Sources: SFgate / MarketWatch / EIA.gov / Road & Track / Engineering Explained (YouTube) /
