Maxton Rollerskate

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed over time. If any etymologists are reading this, what do you make of the term “sports car”?

Does the term still mean the same thing? I’m not so sure.

Some say sports cars are whatever the marketers dream up — everything from automatic Toyota GR Corolla hatchbacks to the latest Pagani, the Vaffanculo Povera Gente Spyder.

I think a sports car is determined by process of elimination. All track cars are sports cars, yet all sporty cars are not. If it’s on a shared bodystyle to a pedestrian model (think Subaru WRX), designed with little consideration for track use, or given a powerplant so large as to be unusable in a racing series, I am less inclined to say the car hits my sports car sweet spot.

Like how we have the International Prototype of the Kilogram safely housed in France, perhaps the auto industry archives its own standards of each body style. 

To set the standard for “sports car”, may I humbly submit the Maxton Rollerskate?

It exists in a sweet spot between new and old, simple and complex, folksy and professional. See it as a sporting car that can compete in grassroots motorsports, or as a sporty car to cruise around in on the weekend. 

Surviving for only three years, Maxton was a Colorado, USA-based quasi kit car manufacturer. Good components were sourced from elsewhere, including Mazda RX-7 rotary engines, and the rest — including bodywork and frame — was proper Maxton, to be assembled by professionals closer to a buyer’s place of origin.

I’ve been doing this long enough to spot the flaw…it’s nearly impossible to change two things at the same time. Revolutionize the sports car, get that business humming, then work out how to assemble them. 

Having one new thing predicated on the success of another is a surefire way to fail quickly. Think I’m insane? Why are the most successful generative Artificial Intelligence interfaces using text-based chat windows?

Anyway, the Maxton Rollerskate: I have thousands of cars driving around in my head, but the one I feel is undeniably a sports car — perhaps more than any other — is the Rollerskate.