Modern day supercars and supercar brands are stupid. Call me sentimental, but back before 2010, it seemed like every new supercar was a huge deal, something the whole world admired and looked up to as something big. For example, the Gallardo, Carrera GT, LFA, 458 and Veyron, were just some of the incredible cars from that era I can name off the top of my head. Each one feels significant, like they made an impact in the automotive world. Fast forward to 2013, when what I think one of the most pivotal moments of modern supercar history happened: The Holy Trinity.

For those who live under a rock, the holy trinity consists of the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 and Ferrari LaFerrari. These 3 hypercars were the top of the tower for the respective brands, and the publicity followed. According to google’s Ngram viewer, the words “Ferrari”, “Porsche” and “McLaren” were most searched in 2013 for the last decade. These were true halo cars. What happened?

Monty: Maybe, between when you graduate high school and when you start your first engineering job outside of college, your head slowly meanders up your ass until you’ve become too disillusioned with Hyper cars to care about following the hype. But if that’s not the case:

The holy trinity and the batches of “pinnacle” performance cars that came before all represented a clear zenith of performance that felt untouchable for a good while. And yes the 458 was faster than an Enzo, but for a moment, the Enzo, CGT, and “the third one (ford gt, mc12, Zonda, whatever Koenigsegg was making)“ stood atop the world as an example of what an automaker can do when they go all out in a road car. These early 2000’s cars almost all can trace their linage back to either Motorsports derived hardware (cgt’s engine, zonda’s engine) or an involvement in active competition in GT1 (MC12, ford GT, almost the CCX).

When the holy trinity came out, it was right at the time when all these technologies showcased had juuuust started to mature, and were wrapped in shapes no one had seen before. Active aero, active suspension, torque vectoring, hybrid systems in a performance car, and power outputs ranging from 887hp to north of 1000. And all these cars had one single focus: track fun.

All three cars slapped the world across in the face with their focus on being fun and trackable, while also not going the route of the McLaren Senna and being something ungainly to behold as a package. And the way marketing handled these cars, the secrecy of lap-times, the proliferation of super car channels and YouTube reviewers, of top gear clips being shared around and the build up to when people finally got to compare the three. Everything from the technology in these cars to the maturation of online media (both social media and YouTube as a platform actual get well made and creative automotive content off of) by 2013 made for the perfect catalyst of a media hype-storm surrounding three incredible cars.

Magazines in the 80’s and 90’s wish they could have drummed up this amount of hype between the f40/959, McLaren F1/xj220/EB110, and to an extent the Enzo/CGT/Saleen s7 or Zonda or fucking Mosler, whatever you wanna compare here.

After 2013, there was the potential for a similar amount of hype to have built up between two new automotive projects: the Aston Martin Valkyrie and the AMG Project One. Both bringing in f1 and LMP1 inspired tech, one of them promising an entrance in Le Mans, and each manufacture slowly divulging details as development progressed. However development on both these cars took way longer than expected, the Valkyrie’s LMH plans where dropped, the AMG One’s Nurburgring laptime will probably get eclipsed by a lightly tuned GT3 RS, and the Valkyrie’s eventual official on track media coverage didn’t seem to be able to rekindle much interest in a $3,000,000 car that looks like nothing else on the road (until KTM and Praga figured out that an LMP style shaped road car works well on track, and for under a million dollars). And speaking of media coverage, the AMG One is both finished, out, and set a laptime. And the only videos out are from Top Gear in a broken test mule, and I have pay the BBC if I actually want to see the full thing.

And between the holy trinity and the media flop of the AMG One and Aston Martin Valkyrie, it seemed like every day, a new company out of England, Italy, America, Slovakia, or the Middle East comes out guns blazing like some vapor ware EV startup (sometimes one in the same), makes a claim about some usually gaudy hypercar, then disappears probably having sold all five scales they paid Williams, Pinninfarina, or some other engineering firm to develop.

Market saturation is part of the issue, but look back at the 90’s and early 00’s, and you’ll see a decent bunch of other cars trying to fight for the monacre of “the best”.

In 2020, you had the Senna, Speedtail, Chiron, Ford GT making weird appearances, the Valkyrie and AMG One in development, three cars from Koenigsegg, the Pagani Huyra, Ferrari SF90 and SP cars, the announcement of the Aston Martin Valhalla, hope that Toyota was still able to Produce the LMP1 derived GR SuperSport as an LMH homologation, Lotus Evja, the Rimac Nevera and the cars that use its tech, and countless other small projects like the Czinger 21c and SSC Tuatara.

When you can’t figure out what you should choose from mainstream automakers to try and crown as a decade defining or half decade defining achievement, what the hell are you going to do with twenty other misc offerings that also want a share of that market and media coverage? And don’t get me started on the pointless track versions of half these cars.

And with the announcement of the 2000hp awd Evjia and the new announcement from Porsche, it also seems that the highway tier of performance street car is about to fall to EV’s, so what’s the point?

Honestly, it seems that “lower end” or less “looks like a four year designed a time attack cad” cars seem to get more attention and focus now that no one cares about these 1000 hp cars anymore. GMA’s t.50 and t.30 projects hit closer to home prioritizing a dynamically pleasing car that happens to also be fast over something that is specifically aimed to set Nurburgring lap times (a gt3 car at half the price of a senna is quicker anyways). Hot hatches and enter level cars from Subaru, Toyota, VW, Honda, and Hyundai all revel in one last petrol powered hurrah before things like the Subaru STE and Hyundai Ionic N hit the roads. Hell GM released the sequel to the Ferrari 458 Speciale to stick a corvette shaped lump of aluminum up the GT3’s wide rear end and we all hoped on the bandwagon for that battle. And don’t get me started about GR products.

So hypercar interest might be dead for a while. The Valkyrie has more or less achieved it goal of being the ultimate road car with little fanfare, while a fan assisted electric nugget on wheels captivates the world by going up a hill at goodwood faster than an f1 car, an old engineer in a Floral shirt wins over journalists by prioritizing driving enjoyment, and the general public gets spoiled for choice one last time before we drive deep into the electric experiment and hope that someone cracks the hydrogen storage formula. And I’m not really sure this is an issue at all.