Road Thrills
What’s the mesmerizing appeal of the supercar? Car-crazy Club Members explain.
If you’ve never taken a ride in a Lamborghini, you might consider it for your bucket list. Even those who aren’t devotees of high-end sports cars will find something irresistible about these marvels of automotive engineering.
Sitting alongside Club Member Stephen Greenall in a Lamborghini Huracán Avio recently, I was so gobsmacked by the car’s looks, the smooth ride and the growl of the engine that I almost expected it to leap off the streets of Tokyo and take to the skies.
With its low, aerodynamic profile, fighter jet livery, cockpit-like interior, matte-blue finish and 610-horsepower, 5.2-liter, V10 engine, the Avio is like a plane masquerading as a car. No surprise then that its design was inspired by the supersonic jets of the Italian air force. Autocar magazine described it as among “the very best Lamborghinis of all time.”
Of course, the Avio is not just a car. It’s a supercar. The term refers to the most opulent of luxury cars, particularly limited-edition sports cars from elite manufacturers. The Avio, for example, is produced in a run of just 250 and carries a price tag of more than $200,000.
There has been increasing demand for such high-performance vehicles over the past few years, especially in Europe. According to Motorway, a car price comparison website, last year saw 40 percent more supercars on UK roads compared to five years earlier, including a 69 percent rise in the number of registered Ferraris and a 54 percent increase in Lamborghinis. The Avio and other vehicles of impeccable pedigree are a common sight at the Club as well.
Growing up near Brighton, on Britain’s south coast, Greenall was enamored from an early age with sports cars like the Porsche 964 and would collect brochures and posters from local dealerships. After working at a Japanese bank in London, he moved to Singapore. Prohibitively high taxes on luxury cars forced him to defer his dream of indulging in supercars until he arrived in Japan, where he now works as a yen derivatives broker.
Last year, Greenall, 46, and three partners established Tokyo Supercars, a club in which members have access to some of the most expensive cars in the world. Aside from the Avio, the club has another seven cars for rent, including a Ferrari 458 Spider, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and a McLaren MP4-12C. The venture’s flagship car is a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta, which boasts a neck-snapping 730 horsepower.
“We wanted to create a community of car enthusiasts in Tokyo, so people could experience these amazing cars through a car-sharing platform,” says Greenall. “The great thing about Japan is that people here have passion and respect for cars, so it’s a great place to do this.”
Japan already has multiple car-sharing platforms, such as Anyca, which has some 80,000 members, but no one is offering a service for supercars, according to Greenall. The club also offers workshops on how to drive supercars, night drives around Tokyo and Odaiba, tours to Hakone, south of the capital, and circuit driving with Toyota GT86 racing cars.
“These cars are very easy to drive,” says Greenall. “They’re automatic like regular cars and the only real difference is you’re sitting on the floor, the sound is absolutely amazing and they can go a lot faster than a regular car. The great thing about our tours is when you have eight supercars in a line. That’s pretty special. The noise, the look—heads are turning.”
British motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson highlighted the potential pitfall of this newest generation of supercar. “Even the Bugatti Veyron is no more dramatic to drive than a Volkswagen Golf,” he wrote. “This lulls people into a false sense of security. They think they can handle the savagery that lives under the bonnet.”
The results of such motoring overconfidence were seen in 2011, when a convoy of supercars—together worth nearly $4 million—crashed on a highway in southern Honshu. Among the dozen totaled cars were eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo.
Tokyo Supercars co-founder and Member Naeem Iqbal, who has lived in Japan for 24 years, stresses that the club requires all prospective members to undergo a supercar driver awareness course to ensure they can handle the vehicles properly.
“It’s not about driving fast, it’s about driving safe,” says Iqbal, 46, who owns a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante, one of only two or three cars of its kind in Japan. “You have to know how to handle understeer and oversteer. When the back comes out, you need to correct the car. And to do that, you need to learn to drift.”
As a kid, Vikram Shahani was something of a car geek. He was fascinated with performance stats like the acceleration of a Lamborghini. Growing up in a middle-class family in India, though, his parents put all their extra money into education, not cars.
Moving to Japan 20 years ago, the Club Member eventually met friends who would lend him their supercars for a day. And a few years ago, he took the plunge—in modest fashion—and bought a used Aston Martin DB9 convertible.
“The whole status thing about owning one of these cars doesn’t last long,” says Shahani, 41, a Tokyo Supercars co-founder. “I really began to appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making one of these machines. You can call it engineering or craftsmanship, but it’s just excellence. These cars come alive when there’s a nice stretch of open, smooth road, and Japan has a lot of them.”
One of the first people to take advantage of the platform was Member Andy Morgan. Originally from Britain, the 12-year Japan resident has a passion for health and fast cars in equal doses: he owns a fitness website and drives a Porsche 911.
When he can, he buckles up for laps on the Fuji Speedway race track in Shizuoka Prefecture or drives along remote stretches of Japan’s many mountain roads, such as the picturesque Koya-Ryujin Skyline Road in Wakayama Prefecture. Even though his 911 costs well over $100,000, Morgan is quick to distinguish it from the more exclusive bracket of car that can command eye-watering sums to buy.
“With Porsche, the build quality is second to none, and they represent some of the best value for your money you can get,” says Morgan, 34. “But they make sports cars, not supercars. The difference is that with a supercar, the thrills are dialed up to 10. The sound is amazing [and] the throttle response and the steering are all lightning quick. However, you pay double and I can’t afford that. This is why I’m part of the Tokyo Supercars car-sharing scheme.”
With the number of visitors to Japan continuing to swell, and major international events, such as next year’s Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, around the corner, the club’s founders are looking to capitalize on the tourism boom.
“We want people to understand that a supercar is not something that’s unattainable,” says Shahani. “You can be part of this without the full-on expenditure.
Words: Tim Hornyak
Image: Benjamin Parks
