It should have been so different for Lotus. Given the clear pent-up demand for small convertible sports cars in 1989, its ahead-of-the-curve Elan M100 should have cleaned up and finally provided the company with the kind of volume-seller that it could only have dreamed of during Colin Chapman’s luxury-GT era
Porsche was in an even greater degree of trouble than BMW by the early Nineties. As well as suffering the same set of economic woes, it had no volume-built products in its range to bail it out.
While the MX-5 was under secret development at Mazda, over in Longbridge MG was looking to the future. Antiquated Sixties-rooted sports cars had given way to hot hatches, but Roy Axe’s design team was tasked with dreaming up a halo model to reintroduce the idea of an MG sports car to the buying public.
Recession, war and punitive emissions legislation rarely make for decent sports cars. But ironically that’s precisely what happened in the Nineties. Car-wise, the Eighties came to an end some time between August 1990 and September 1992.
The R170 Mercedes-Benz SLK is another German recession-baby. Its big-brother R129 SL was considered one of the finest cars in the world upon its 1989 launch, retaining R107 deportment while adding Corvette-like sportiness.
No other car here – not even the MX-5 – sums up the Nineties roadster revival quite like this unmissable Dakar Yellow BMW Z3. The Z3 seemingly picked up where the odd, conceptual disappearing-doored Z1 (1986-1991) left off, but there was much more to it than that.
