Our five best sports cars of 2023

Chris de Burgh sang about being high on emotion and that’s what the cars in this list are about. While the commuting masses seek cars with the best practicality, price and fuel economy, the lucky one percent get to buy motorised exotics solely for their performance, drop-dead good looks and charisma.

It has been a momentous year for sports cars with Ferrari launching its first “SUV”, Lamborghini entering the hybrid realms and Lotus launching a family electric sports car. That said, not every brand has shaken the tree in terms of new tech, instead sticking to regular petrol-engine cars to provide the emotion.

Here are five of our top sports car picks for 2023:

Ferrari Purosangue

Ferrari’s “not SUV” family sports car has all-wheel drive, a raised ride height, and weighs two tonnes. It has space in the boot for golf bags. Whatever you might say about Maranello selling its soul, it’s what Ferrari customers have clearly been waiting for as the Purosangue has a long waiting list — even at its R10m price.

The Italian firm has dipped deep into the tech bin to make this high-riding four-seater drive like a true Ferrari. The all-wheel drive powertrain is supported by rear-wheel steering, active suspension and torque vectoring to keep the big car handling sharply and pointed in the right direction.

The 6.5l V12 engine is mid-front mounted with the gearbox at the rear to create a sporty transaxle layout, a set-up that delivers a balanced 49:51% weight distribution. With 533kW and 716Nm underfoot, the big car can scorch from 0-100km/h in 3.3 seconds, and the V12 sounds glorious at 8,000rpm.

The Purosangue is a car of two characters. When high-adrenaline driving gives way to leisurely cruising through mountain villages, it turns into a civilised commuter with a comfortable ride. 

Lamborghini Revuelto

Representing Lamborghini’s electrified future, the petrol-electric supercar is the replacement for the Aventador and the most powerful road car to come out of Sant’Agata.

Translated as “unruly” in Spanish, the Revuelto is the Italian brand’s first plug-in supercar and wields a 6.5l V12 engine paired with three electric motors for mighty outputs of 745kW and 725Nm of torque.

It is the most powerful roadgoing Lambo yet made, and the two-seater coupe accelerates from 0-100km/h in a claimed 2.5 seconds with a top speed in excess of 350km/h.

The hybrid car can cruise through suburbs without waking the neighbours with its 10km all-electric range. The electric motors provide four-wheel drive and enable electric torque vectoring, a first for Lamborghini.

The price is expected to be about R10m.

Porsche GT3 RS

The GT3 RS is the most purist, track-focused Porsche 911 you can buy. It sports the biggest rear wing yet to sit on a road-legal 911’s tail. A Formula One-inspired drag reduction system opens the rear wing to improve top speed, but when you brake hard the DRS closes the wing to turn it into a large air brake.

Additional aero trickery gives the new GT3 RS an impressive 409kg of downforce at 200km/h — three times as much as a regular GT3. 

PDK shift paddles with motorsport-derived magnet technology gives gear shifts a more noticeable “click”.

The 4.0l six-cylinder naturally aspirated boxer engine wails like a crazed beast and pushes out 386kW and, capable of 0-100km/h in 3.2 seconds. Everything is purpose-built to improve laptimes and the GT3 RS recently became the third quickest production car around the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany. Did we mention it revs to an emotional 9,000rpm?

Lotus Emeya

What would a modern supercar list be without an electric offering?

The battery-powered Emeya is the Lotus answer to the Porsche Taycan. It is a four-seater family sports car and the top-spec R model whips out 675kW and 985Nm, good for a swift and silent 0-100km/h run in 2.8 seconds.

Plugging it into a fast charger can add 150km of driving range in about five minutes.

Active aerodynamics, wind-cheating devices like rear cameras instead of wing-mirrors and adaptive air suspension are standard. An active front grille reduces drag and cools the batteries and brakes, while an active air lip increases high-speed downforce.

Production is set to begin in 2024 when the Emeya will join the Eletre SUV and Evija hyper coupe as the brand's electric vehicles. The price will be an estimated R20m, but at least it won’t cost anything in fuel.

Toyota GR86

A humble entrant in this fire-spitting league, the Toyota gets the nod for being one of the most improved sports cars of 2023. We get that the Toyota 86 was meant to be more about a fun-to-drive nature than outright power when it was launched in 2012, but the original 2.0l naturally aspirated boxer engine was a little too underwhelming.

The new 2.4l flat-four addresses this by boosting outputs from 147kW to 174kW, giving the sweet-handling rear-wheel drive coupé decidedly more spring in its step — and the ability to get it sideways easier. It has undergone suspension tweaks too and is available in automatic guise with paddle shifters, or as a more purist manual.

With its sub-R800,000 price the GR86 brings genuine sporting thrills to the (relative) masses. The car is used in South Africa’s one-make Toyota GR Cup racing series, which has its final round of 2023 at Zwartkops this weekend.