Last night, we reported on a new –um, we’ll call it a car, sure – that was called Roadster. The Roadster that was shown was, and I want to make this very clear, not a roadster. This is because words have meanings, specific meanings, and while words can evolve and change over time, you can’t just change the meaning of words arbitrarily. That’s not how language works. And the word “roadster” does not mean what that car called a Roadster is.
Words matter! I feel like we’re already in danger of losing the fight for the word “coupé” which is – and I want to make this abundantly clear – a two door car. If it has four doors, it’s not a coupé. In much the same way, a roadster has a clear definition: it’s a small, open-topped car.
The open-topped thing is a big deal! It may be the biggest deal, the whole raisons d’etre of the car itself! It’s open! Here’s how I described roadsters in our definitive taxonomy of sports cars, which is, I believe, ratified by the UN or UNESCO or the National Bureau of Weights and Measures or something as the official guide to such things:
Roadster:
Perhaps the first true category of sports car. Quite small, open-topped, power is less important than the overall handling and driving experience, which leverages the small size and light weight to create a very visceral and connected experience. Sometimes the power can be comically low, like how a Bugeye Sprite makes only 43 horsepower.
Examples: 1898 Bollée, Mazda Miata, Toyota MR-2, Porsche Boxster, Speedster, 914, MGB, Austin-Healey Sprite/3000, Triumph Spitfire/TR series, Crosley Hot Shot
Sure, you can add a hard top onto a roadster, and there may be some variants with closed roofs, but fundamentally, a crucial aspect of roadsterhood is the openness.
See what’s going on there? In a roadster, you can drive somewhere and have a comfortable, casual conversation with the local honeys that are roaming all around you in their swimwear. This is because in a roadster, you’re not inside your car so much as you’re out in whatever environment you’re driving in. Being in a roadster is like going for a walk, just much faster and more fun, and you can bring a friend. Like our friend Mr.Tweednuts here, in his Austin-Healey:
That’s prime roadster behavior right there; sure, they usually have some kind of top, should it rain or hail or whatever, but you only would put up the top because you absolutely had to, because, again, the point of a roadster is not to be ensconced in some little travel pod, it’s to be whizzing along through wherever you are, seeing everything, smelling the world, catching peoples’ envious eyes, all of that.
Not crammed, alone, in a little wedge-shaped box that can flip around with reaction-control rocket jets to the point where your drink dumps onto the headliner and you puke on your own pants, then face.
How are you going to see wild herds of polo-centaurs if you’re cooped up in some closed car? You’re not, that’s how. Real roadsters make this happen, because, again, they are open.
Look at this little MG! Prime roadsterhood! And what’s going on in this picture, anyway? Did British Airways once offer a roll-on/roll-off service for small roadsters? Drive on the back of the plane in Liverpool, drive off in Paris or Milan or Pisa? That sounds pretty fun.
Also, I had to include this famous Triumph Spitfire ad/brochure image because I always thought it sent the wrong message. Even if we ignore the somewhat misogynistic notion that the lone woman doesn’t care about the workings of the car, when I see a group of dudes clustered under the hood of a British car, my assumption isn’t that they’re all admiring the engine, but rather wondering Why the Hell Won’t This Thing Start? or something along those lines, maybe Should That Wire Be Smoking Like That or Is It Normal For That SU Carb to be Dumping All That Petrol on the Exhaust Manifold?
Anyway, the Tesla Roadster is not a roadster. Words have meanings. Anyone who has a problem with this can go, as my dad used to say, scratch.
Top graphic image: Triumph
It’s not a roadster, a car, or anything else. It is entirely vaporware at this point and is the result of a Musk wet dream.
It’s literally vaporware, lol, imagine someone pushing the cold gas thruster button at the traffic light. They would deafen the whole block of course but also fill it up with dense vapor and high-speed debris.
The lady in the Triumph is thinking bad thinks.
She knows that whacking the starter motor with a suitable sized whacking implement will free up the bendix thing. ( I was going to mention a cheque book cover as the ideal tool but realised that the level of explanation required would take hours of typing).
Also she is on her way home to her wife, five men will not fit in the car and her dad, he of the tweed jacket will give her a lift in his Armstrong Tiddly anyway.
Dude thinks the letter “X” can be a social media platform so I wasn’t expecting a tight grasp of vehicular terminology.
No roadster have I, but “whizzing along through wherever you are, seeing everything, smelling the world, catching peoples’ envious eyes” is a perfectly concise expression of my wife’s insistence that Car B be a convertible.
Our Car B is a B.
An MGB, that is.
A couple of weekends ago I let a friend drive my MX-5 to go pick up pizza for the game, and when she got back, she demanded that their next car be a convertible.
I am blessed to have both a proper roadster and a drop-head coupé, in the form of my Spitfire and 1-Series BMW, respectively.
I could never be without a topless car at this point. At one point i had three – the aforementioned Spitfire, an Alfa Spider, and a Saab C900CVT. Life was very good those years.
I believe that train has sailed. Once we lost the word “literally” the war was more or less over.
However, I shall continue to write in the manner I believe is proper. To do anything else would be a pain in the diction.
Us what cares, care a lot!
Thems what don’t care are a bunch of bastids any road, tell ya that fer nowt!
Me think, why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
The train may have sailed, but it didn’t sail very far before it sunk.
Obligatory Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
That was my first reaction to the new Tesla… thing. A “roadster” is designed as an open car, usually small, lightweight, and handling-focused. Torch is 100% right on the mark here.
The Triumph image reminds me of Mom talking about my Dad’s Spitfire when they first met. “He was always waiting on some part from Europe” she would say.
Well off bros of a certain generation used to like to follow names with the suffix -ster, Chad-ster, for example. That’s how I like to imagine the Tesla Roadster got it’s name. Maybe we should all start calling it the Chadster.
Choadster.
Love it. A perfect complement to Tesla’s other edgelord folly, the Incel Camino.
So… if we want an actual roadster that can do the flippy-flying shenanigans, Flyin’ Miata should be right there with an aftermarket solution.
There was indeed a company that would move your car by plane in the UK:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_United_Air_Ferries
Also, if you drive an MG Midget at over 55mph or so the rain is thrown high enough by the windscreen that it doesn’t come into the cabin. It’s probably more weatherproof that way than using the actual roof.
“Like our friend Mr.Tweednuts here,” made me chuckle more than I’m comfortable with. I used to wear a paddy cap in my Ghia.
Peak Torch! When I first saw it in the clips I muttered, that’s not a Roadster.
The sad thing is that this isn’t even the first time this word has been misappropriated.
You go to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and, sure, a Roadster has an open top. It also has open wheels, an Offy (or Novi) in front of the driver, a single seat, and is not street legal in the slightest.
This is the roadster of Jason rants. Modest proportions, just the essentials, gets the job done.
Preach.
Scrolling for the good Torch stories reminds me of Jalopnik
Tesla. Where we’re going, we don’t need roadsters
I’ll just add “roadster” to the list of other words whose meanings have been slaughtered by the evil forces of marketing:
Organic
Evolution
Synthetic
We hardly knew ye.
Also, natural.
And Innovation.
You forgot synergy.
Synergy has always been a bastard of marketing.
As well as “genuine” leather. (See Amazon steering wheel covers, among others.)
Or almost all Mercedes.
It’s a roadster in the same sense that the family truckster was a truck.
Or that the VW Phaeton was a phaeton
We could resolve the issue of determining what the new Tesla thing is by giving its own unique category: Fascistmobiles. That or shooting asshats. Or Führerwagons. So many possibilities!
Carny sideshow freak. Oh, you meant the car.
Are these fascists in the room with us now?
Doubtful, I’d tell you where he is but he threatened the kid that was tracking his plane into turning off the site.
They’ll be in the comments soon enough, but they’re a little slow and hungover so be patient
This is the only real discourse that should arise from yesterday’s event.
Roadster. Coupe. SUV. Shooting brake. Light truck. Hatchback. Wagon.
Manufacturers are out here attacking every established category. It’s stolen valor, and they don’t care. Just sign on the line.
Does a Targa qualify as a Roadster, or is it it’s own class?
I think a Targa is a different class of convertible. Because it has a removable roof section, it is not as open with the roof off as a roadster is with the roof down (if it has one at all).
That Spitfire ad just kills me, it’s the most honest ad I’ve seen from BL and that’s saying something.
You absolutely correct! And anyone but the most ardent of Tesla stans will scoff at the very notion that this will reach production within the next decade.