By Tim Harris, Blair Smith & Shinoo Mapleton · May 8, 2026

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Tim Harris is still in Puerto Rico. He is still not on the show. And he is, somehow, still finding novel ways to deploy capital into hypercars.

This week's target: ZR1Xs. With his neighbor, Bad Bunny. As one does.

The dispatch:

For those wondering: a curb feeler is a small flexible metal rod that mounts to the side of a car and scrapes against the curb to warn you before you damage the wheel.

Tim's spec sheet aside, the broader car industry isn't exactly playing it cool either this week. The naturally aspirated GT3 may be on borrowed time. The gas Macan is being killed two summers early — by a regulation almost nobody saw coming. China's auto industry is now sized for global supply, not domestic demand. GM is doubling down on V8s. And Blair and Shinoo capped the show with six underrated sports cars worth buying while everyone else is figuring out which side of all this they're on.

But before any of that — the shop and the lot.

Shinoo's shop, three cars:

Blair's week highlights:

The naturally aspirated GT3 may not stay that way.

Andreas Preuninger, head of Porsche's GT department, gave a recent interview to Car and Driver about the future of the GT3 and its naturally aspirated flat-six — the engine Blair has called the crown jewel of the modern Porsche lineup. Asked how long Porsche can continue to build the motor, Preuninger's answer: in America, indefinitely; in Europe, "probably only a few years without any substantial changes."

When the journalist followed up by asking whether turbocharging was a path forward, Preuninger said it might be.

For people whose ears just perked up: yes. Last week Blair spent the better part of a segment on why he finds turbocharged 911s emotionally muted. This week the head of Porsche's GT department is openly entertaining turbocharging the only Porsche Blair currently believes is worth a damn.

The cause is European emissions regulation. The motor is one of the last unforced expressions of what an internal combustion engine can do, and the regulatory cost of keeping it that way is approaching the threshold where Porsche has to choose. The choice has not yet been made. But it has been named — and named publicly, by the person who would be making it.

The Macan ICE is being killed by a cybersecurity rule.

This one isn't speculation. The internal combustion Macan — for years one of Porsche's best-selling vehicles globally — is being discontinued this summer. The reason is not emissions. The reason is an EU cybersecurity regulation that just took effect, requiring vehicles sold in Europe to meet a software security standard the original Macan platform — on the road since 2014–2015 — simply cannot satisfy without a major retooling.

Porsche's response: don't bother retooling. Keep the EV Macan running. Replace the ICE Macan with a new gas-powered model — but not for two years. There will be a two-year gap during which Porsche has no gas Macan to sell. Anywhere.

Here is where it gets wild: the United States does not impose this cybersecurity rule. By Shinoo's count, roughly 31% of Porsche deliveries last year went to the US, and the gas Macan was a meaningful slice of that volume. Porsche could, technically, keep building and shipping ICE Macans to America for the next two years. They are not going to. The complexity of running a US-only production line for a model that's being phased out anyway is apparently not worth the volume.

This is what regulatory fragmentation looks like in practice. The EU, the US, and China are now pulling manufacturers in incompatible directions, and the auto industry has reached the point where some sales just get walked away from.

China is building 60 million cars a year. We're not.

The Beijing Auto Show is happening right now, and per Shinoo, the products on display are world-class. Trucks. Jeep-class SUVs. Sports cars. And — most importantly — affordable cars at a price point the US no longer offers.

The numbers, as Shinoo laid them out:

China sold 34.4 million vehicles in 2025, roughly half of them EVs, with 7 million exported. Manufacturing capacity in China now stands at 60 million vehicles per year. The United States, for context, sold 16 million cars total last year — close to its all-time peak — and is currently trending down.

Roughly $230 billion in Chinese government subsidies has flowed into the domestic auto industry over the past decade, funding battery technology, EV infrastructure, and manufacturing scale. Labor costs sit at roughly 25% of US labor costs. Ten years ago Chinese cars were derided as ripoffs and clown cars; in the years since, Chinese OEMs hired European and American designers and engineers en masse, and the products that came out the other side bear no resemblance to what the world was laughing at a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the average new car in the US now costs about $50,000, and the average household income is roughly $80,000. The math no longer works for a middle-class family. There is a vacuum at the affordable end of the US market that nobody domestic is filling.

Shinoo's historical parallel is the early 1900s in the United States — a period when dozens of US automakers competed, the technology was new, and within a generation the industry consolidated into a small handful of dominant players. China, in his read, is in the boom phase. Consolidation is coming, and the survivors will have global ambition baked in.

The most likely path forward, in Shinoo's view, isn't direct imports — those would displace too many US auto jobs to be politically tenable. It's Chinese manufacturers buying US factories and employing American workers, the same playbook Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes ran in earlier decades. Whether or not that comes to pass, the affordable-car gap in the US market is real, and somebody is going to fill it.

GM, meanwhile, is doubling down on V8s.

The counter-note: General Motors announced over $1 billion in new ICE V8 powertrain investments in the past six months. One of the largest automakers in the world, employing some of the most aggressive future-trend analysts the industry has, is committing serious capital to internal combustion. Their read is clearly: EVs are not going to take over the world on the timeline activists or regulators thought.

Both can be true. China can be racing toward a 60-million-car affordable-EV future and GM can still be right that V8s have years of life left. The world is large enough for both bets. What it's not large enough for is the assumption that the next decade looks like the last one.

For enthusiasts, the message is the same it's always been when the industry is in flux: protect what already works.

Which brings us to the segment.

Last week, the overrated list. This week, the cure. Three picks each, all available used at prices that look more reasonable every time the average new-car number ticks up.

The 986 Boxster. Shinoo aligned a modified 2001 Boxster S in the shop this week and got out of it impressed. The car has been called a hairdresser's car, a secretary's car, and "not a real Porsche" by enough people for long enough that the punchline has become its own running joke. None of it survives a drive.

The handling is genuinely sublime — mid-engined, balanced, communicative. The flat-six sounds exactly like a flat-six should once you put a proper exhaust on it. Clean examples now trade between $15,000 and $20,000. This is one of the cars that saved Porsche in the late '90s, and it remains one of the most affordable real Porsche experiences on the used market. If a 986 doesn't put a smile on your face, check your pulse.

The Dodge Hellcat (Charger or Challenger). Shinoo's caveat: this one's underrated by sports car people. Mopar guys think it's the holy grail. But for the average canyon-and-track enthusiast, the Hellcat gets dismissed as a one-trick muscle car.

Then you drive one. The rumble, the look, the sheer absurdity of having that much power available — it's a different kind of fun than apex-hunting in a Cayman, but it is fun. The Challenger is also one of the few modern American performance cars you can still get with a manual gearbox. A 700-horsepower V8, three pedals, and a slightly tilted shift lever is the kind of car you should at least drive once before deciding it's not for you.

The Ford Mustang SVO. The genuinely obscure pick. The SVO was Ford's attempt to build a Euro-style Mustang — turbocharged 2.3L four-cylinder, asymmetric hood scoop, biplane rear wing — at the same time Ford was selling the 5.0L V8 Mustang GT. It was more expensive, less powerful on paper, and confused buyers who didn't know what to make of a four-cylinder turbo Mustang in the mid-'80s.

It also handled. Road & Track and Car and Driver gave it real praise at the time. Clean examples now trade in the $20,000–$25,000 range. It's a Fox Body that drives like nothing else in the Fox Body world. And as Blair pointed out, you will be the most popular guy at any cars and coffee within 200 miles.

The C5 Corvette Z06. Blair has nearly bought one of these so many times he's lost count, and somehow always talks himself out of it. He shouldn't keep doing that.

400 horsepower and torque in an early-2000s car. Comfortable, wide, low — the anti-Elise in cabin space. Good shifters. Real texture in the controls. Clean examples for $25,000. Drop in a short shifter from MGW, call up the Callaway specialists for an exhaust, and the car straddles GT and hardcore-sports-car territory in a way that's genuinely rare. Yes, the interior is dated. No, that doesn't matter if you're not daily-driving it. One of the best budget track cars on the used market — and the depreciation has done all the heavy lifting for you.

The 981 Cayman/Boxster S. Blair's first Porsche. The generation right before the 718 went to the four-cylinder turbo. Naturally aspirated 3.4L flat-six, around 330 horsepower, sport exhaust available, classic Porsche driving position, clean and timeless interior.

Why underrated when they hold value at $50,000–$60,000? Because every time Blair drives one back-to-back with a contemporary 911, he comes away thinking the Cayman is more fun. Mid-engine, shorter wheelbase, more playful, and — crucially — not penalized by the modern 911's drift toward GT-car refinement. He once drove a 981 Cayman S to test-drive a 981 GT4. It took him a full minute on public roads to feel a meaningful difference. The GT4 only pulls clearly ahead on track, where its arrow advantage and stiffer setup actually matter. For most drivers, on most roads, the base car is more than enough.

(One caveat Blair will die on: the long gearing in the 981 generation is its Achilles heel. You can fix it for about $10,000 in shorter-ratio gearset money. Save up for that.)

The BMW Z4M Coupe. The slept-on sibling of the Z3M Coupe. The Z3M is the cult car. Prices reflect that. The Z4M sits in its shadow despite carrying the same renowned S54 inline-six from the E46 M3 — the high-revving motor that pulls to 8,000 RPM and makes around 330 horsepower — but with stiffer chassis dynamics, better track manners, and a more elegant, less polarizing silhouette.

The Z3M's rear trailing-arm suspension and odd weight distribution made it tricky to drive hard. The Z4M fixed all of that. Same legendary engine. Better car. Around $30,000 buys a clean example. There is no good structural reason these aren't more expensive — only the gravitational pull of the Z3M cult, which has eaten all the oxygen in the room.

A few episodes back, the discussion turned to Lotus reliability and the Toyota-sourced powertrains. Listener Sean wrote in with the follow-up:

Shinoo's read: most of the gremlins are concentrated in the new Emira, the car Lotus designed to attract buyers from BMW M, Porsche Cayman, and Toyota Supra territory. To do that, Lotus added complexity — phone connectivity, more comfort tech, more electronic systems generally — and Lotus has historically been stronger at chassis engineering than at electronics integration. (Most British sports car companies have been, to be fair.)

The good news: new Emiras come with a factory warranty, and as long as you're within striking distance of a Lotus dealer, the gremlins get sorted out. The bad news: the Lotus dealer network in the United States is sparse. If you're in Nebraska and you want an Emira, the math gets harder.

Shinoo's recommendation for buyers outside dealer range: go back a generation. An Evora or Evora 400 is a dramatically simpler car, the early electronic issues have long since been debugged, and a competent independent European-car mechanic can usually handle most service items. An Elise or Exige is even simpler.

Blair's take, from talking to multiple Emira owners — including one with a 60-plus-911 collection who recently bought an Emira used under $100K — is that the issues exist, but they're nuisance-level rather than catastrophic. Check engine lights that go away on their own. Sensor faults that clear. Nothing that's actually stranded anyone. Every owner he's talked to has said some version of the same sentence: "I'm not selling this car."

So: real concerns, real workarounds, and at the end of the day a car the people who own it refuse to give up. Take that for whatever it's worth.

If you're considering a modern Lotus and you're close to a dealer, the warranty is your friend. If you're not, go back a generation and you'll get most of the magic with a fraction of the headaches.

🎙 Listen to the full episode here: https://youtu.be/EYi2r4q8x4A?si=sAQKLDzg6EzmVLu2

– Tim, Blair & Shinoo

🏁 The Full Throttle Talk Team
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