No engineering definition exists. There is no displacement, output, top speed or price above which a car becomes a supercar, and no organisation that rules on it. What the word actually points at is a cluster of things arriving together: performance well beyond what the road can use, a low and deliberately dramatic shape, a price that puts it out of ordinary reach, and production numbers small enough that seeing one is still an event.
The bar has also moved. Performance that defined the category decades ago is now matched by cars sold as ordinary fast saloons, so the label leans more heavily on rarity and theatre than it used to, and less on the numbers. That's why the 0-60 figure attached to the argument settles less than people expect.
Treat it as a description rather than a specification and it stops being frustrating. The neighbouring words work the same way: hot hatch and GT aren't classifications either, they're press categories that stuck.
Written by Craig Fearn, Petrol & Ink. Last updated .