The Bulldog emerged from a desire to showcase Newport Pagnell’s ability to make a supercar – as if Aston Martin needed to prove anything.
The Volvo LCP2000 was a Swedish engineering showcase that attempted to foretell what a car of the year 2000 would be like – back in 1983.
Ford had another pop at Ferrari in the mid-1980s with a fully realised, Italdesign-penned, mid-engine sports car.
All of Lotus’ F1 innovations were to be thrown at it, including traction control, active suspension and even noise cancelling.
Before the NSX wowed the world in ’89 – showing that Japan could make world-beating supercars – Nissan toyed with the same idea.
Yet in this climate, behind the scenes at Weissach, engineers had been building a V8-powered super saloon that could take on the very best that BMW and Mercedes-Benz could throw at it.
Billed as offering ‘F1 on the road’ the Caspita (Italian for ‘good heavens’) was the brainchild of lingerie magnate Yoshikata Tsukamoto and the president of Dome Motors, Minoru Hayashi.
Ever since the introduction of its game-changing M1, BMW made its supercar intentions clear. Fresh from a financially buoyant 1980s.
This is probably the most painful ‘what might have been’ here. With Mazda’s MX-5 taking the world by storm, Daihatsu.
By the early 1990s, gullwinged Mercedes-Benz sports cars had almost passed out of all recollection. The marque had largely moved away from the sector.