The recipe is the appeal. Start with a practical five-door built for shopping and school runs, fit a considerably more powerful engine, stiffen the suspension, upgrade the brakes, and leave the boot and the back seats exactly where they were. What comes out still does the weekday job and is genuinely quick on a good road at the weekend, which is a combination very few other kinds of car manage.
Where the definition ends is the interesting part. There's no standards body issuing the term and no power figure or weight limit a car has to clear, so it's a description the motoring press settled into rather than a class anybody administers. That isn't a criticism of the word, but it does mean two enthusiasts can disagree about a specific car and both be right.
The same is true of the supercar and of GT. Where the language does get precise is the measurements, so horsepower and torque are the words to reach for when you want to compare two cars rather than categorise one.
Written by Craig Fearn, Petrol & Ink. Last updated .