Top Gear’s Top 9: cars called ‘GT’ that aren’t really GTs

Porsche’s mid-Noughties supercar has the 5.7-litre V10 from a cancelled Le Mans racing car, a manual gearbox, and some rather spikey handling beyond the limit (now calmed by more modern tyres). A beautiful, savage, sensational supercar – but not ideal for wafting to Saint Tropez. Especially as the boot is usually full of roof panels.

The McGT is basically a 570S that’s been to elocution lessons. Yes it’s got more soundproofing, posher leathers inside and the suspension has been tailored a little more for loping than lap times, but it’s still a mid-engined V8 supercar with a carbon tub and a 200mph top speed. Apparently it sells extremely well in China, but it’s never quite found its place among McLaren’s talented range of supercars over here.

A sort of eco-conscious mini-GTI, the BlueGT was a 148bhp Polo with cylinder deactivation tech that could do a claimed 60 miles per gallon when cruising. So, you only paid £20 a year in road tax, but you got 18-inch wheels and the ‘XDS’ fake limited slip diff behaviour from the GTI.

A road-going version of a supercar designed specifically for class wins at Le Mans, the Ford GT is not for schlepping. It’s a fixed seat turbocharged aero-mad weapon with active suspension and about as much in common with a Ford Fiesta as a supermarket firework has with a cruise missile.

The now-discontinued GT86 is a back-to-basics sports car. It doesn’t have any torque whatsoever, and the cabin is – how to put this – built down to a price. So it’s not what you’d choose to leap across Europe in a single bound. But if you wanted to go the long and twisty way, this 1200kg rev-mad hoot would be worth the effort. Roll on the new GR86…

What’s weird here is the standard Jag XK was a classic GT car: long, pretty, comfy and elegant. The XKR was faster, but still fitted the GT brief. Then came the XKR-S, which was all scoops and wing and attitude, and made a Porsche 911 GT3 look about as aggressive as a labradoodle. But still Jaguar felt there was more to come from the XK, which sprouted flicks, stripes, and a rear wing straight from a Fast and Furious movie props bin. When exactly is Jaguar going to apply said treatment to the F-Type?

There are no longer any apostrophes or underscores in the name, which is a good thing, but the Ceed GT is a naming cop-out, a nod to the fact Kia isn't calling its warm hatch a ‘GTI’ because then we’d pitch it against the likes of the VW Golf GTI.

Funny thing is, the Ceed’s cousin from Hyundai is a true GTI-killer – the Hyundai i30N is just way more fun to drive and much easier to operate inside these days.

AMG’s front-mid-engined twin-turbo V8 supercar is a hard-riding, hard-drinking muscle car with razor-sharp steering and a tail-happy rear axle. The optional bucket seats have all the give of Russian foreign policy, you can’t reach the gear selector properly unless you have four elbows and there’s next to no stowage space inside. The boot’s pathetic too. And you can’t really see out.

So, for taking away on a grand-touring holiday, it’s pretty much useless. Best to buy one when you get there, and then sell it in return for plane tickets and a back massage when you leave.

Only one road-going GT-One was built, so Toyota could satisfy the rules of Le Mans stating that GT1 cars were somehow road-related. This prototype had no boot (Toyota argued the luggage space was in the fuel tank), a 3.6-litre bi-turbo V8 connected to a manual gearbox, and sills so wide you could host a medium-sized tennis tournament just on the door shuts alone.

The GT-One wasn’t very successful at racing, and was killed off as Toyota poured money into F1 instead. In fact, if you were compiling a list of most useless road cars ever, this would be up there with the best (or worst) of them. But we’re still glad Toyota was mad enough to make it.