Everyone says it's the end of the petrol car, but is it really?

Everything is ‘the last’ at the moment. The Emira is the last combustion-powered Lotus. The Porsche 718 Spyder RS is the last ICE Boxster. No marque is sacred, no model spared. In the US, even Chevrolet has said the next Camaro will be an EV. Closer to home, the great new plan to make Alpine a success is to bring out a range of electric sports cars. So, a concept that literally nobody has proven to work will somehow magically overcome Alpine’s real problems: brand awareness, the poor dealer network, badge snobbery… All you need is a plan that says so. Alpine’s revenue in 2030 will be €8 billion. Because it says so.

Of course, Alpine’s fantastical plans powered by the voracious demand for EV sports cars (that people in boardrooms all over the world are inventing and exaggerating as you read this fine magazine) shouldn’t be singled out. Everyone is making ‘the last and final’ sports car before they uncover untold riches in the brave new EV world where all problems will melt away.

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It’s a bit like McLaren’s and Aston Martin’s and Ferrari’s and Audi’s absolutely watertight plan to win in F1. It’s inevitable. Because they said in a boardroom that they’d win by 2027 or ’29 or ’31. Meanwhile I will be winning the EuroMillions in 2025 and will, without a shadow of doubt, discover the key to immortality by 2031. Because I said so. I thought about curing something terrible, but couldn’t be bothered. Plus, I want to buy a 458 Speciale and enjoy it for at least 1000 years.

Yet for every ‘last’ there seems to be a little backtrack. Porsche downsized Boxster and Cayman engines to four-cylinder turbos all the way back in 2016. The 981 generation would be the ‘last’ to feature a naturally aspirated flat-six (although the GT-division cars did get a stay of execution). After people drove the new four-cylinder turbocharged 718s and vomited a little bit in their mouths, things changed. Now you can buy a six-cylinder 982. More recently it’s been reported that AMG will revert to V8 power (hybridised) in 2026 after customers and the press struggled to get their heads around a four-cylinder C63. Real demand and real economics beat dreamt-up business plans every single time. So maybe all of these cars won’t be the last at all.

The Speciale I mentioned earlier got me thinking about the dangers of jumping too soon to new technologies. It looks like Mercedes tried to pre-empt the market but actually took a giant leap away from what forms the very core of its car’s appeal. Ferrari survived the transition to turbocharging much more smoothly. But did it need to at all? And would customers and fans alike have enjoyed even better, wilder, more intense and more exciting mid-engined Ferraris if they’d just hung on a bit longer?

Lamborghini – long seen as lagging behind the likes of Ferrari and McLaren in terms of technology and power – has played it brilliantly. In the years since Ferrari launched the 488 GTB, the Huracán’s ear-splitting V10 engine has provided joy and entertainment to nearly 20,000 new customers. And now Sant’Agata has launched its next V12 ‘dinosaur’, the Revuelto, with a naturally aspirated engine that revs to 9500rpm for the full supercar sensory overload and electric motors for torque. Who needs turbos?

At the same time, Chevrolet has admitted that the 5.5-litre flat-plane-crank V8 powering the new Corvette Z06 is inspired by and took many lessons from that savagely beautiful 458 Speciale engine. It produces 670bhp at 8500rpm. Ferrari had a smaller displacement V8 spitting out 597bhp at 9000rpm on sale in a road car in 2013. Imagine what a decade of development of that engine could have achieved. For reference, the 6.2-litre V12 in the F12 launched in 2012 produces 730bhp. That V12 is now 6.5 litres and in the Daytona SP3 it’s good for 829bhp. The mind truly boggles at what we’ve missed with Ferrari’s early switch to forced induction for its V8 models.

There was no U-turn by Ferrari. That company’s incredible pursuit of progress is something I truly admire, even if I sometimes disagree on where it goes looking for it. But I foresee more U-turns to come by other brands. Driven by customers wondering why their fun weekend car has just got heavier, quieter and less convenient. Driven by the EU’s creeping realisation that the EV path isn’t the only solution. Driven by real sales figures.

But let’s not vilify those who suddenly make a new version of a car we were told was the last. U-turns are good if they’re powered by the ingenuity of engineers finding new and better solutions rather than the whims of politicians. There’s still hope, is what I’m trying to say. I mean, didn’t Pagani say it was building the very last Zonda once or twice or 37 times before? And I’ve just ordered one for delivery in 2026. Just after that EuroMillions win that I’ve scheduled for 2025 on an Excel sheet on my laptop.

This story was first featured in evo issue 314.