What is a "touring car?"

[Greg Amy]

...let's not pretend the Miata somehow snuck in the back door to this party.

Concur, it was always invited to the party. However, in our ongoing - and decisively not yet resolved - quest to enable parity between FWD and RWD cars, we've consistently increased the RWD adder from (I think?) 2%, to 3.5%, to today's 5.5%. And, of course, IMO we're not there yet (I think it needs to be 7.5% minimum).

However, it is only recently that we're finally realizing that one reason we're not there yet is not necessarily FWD vs. RWD; in fact, it's becoming more apparent that there's additional characteristics beyond RWD that make them a better package. It is because of this recent realization that we're now discussing implementation of an additional characteristic, one that does a better job of taking into account "better than the sum of its parts". The Miata is just one clear, obvious, and numerically advantageous illustration of that concept. Other examples include the Honda S2000, Acura NSX, etc.

In other words: "sports cars".

So the questions at hand are...do "sports cars" actually exist, do they have a performance advantage over "non sports cars", and if so how - or if - should they be appropriately classified?

GA