Top 10 street sleepers

Many performance cars advertise their credentials like a badge of honour, but others are more low-key about spruiking their abilities.

Known by those in the know as street sleepers, these are some of the most loved, cherished and often underrated cars on both the new and used car markets.

Indeed many of the discontinued examples now attract something of a cult following these days, compared to the more modern examples that are often overshadowed within their respective model portfolios.

The recipe for making a sleeper is very simple: bless an unassuming looking passenger car or SUV with supercar-beating or at least sportscar-like performance.

Smiling back at the baffled face of a person you’ve just smoked or pushed – up to the speed limit – as they wonder what just happened is one of the great driving pleasures of everyday motoring.

As we discovered at carsales HQ, ask 10 different people to name their greatest sleeper of all time and you’ll probably get close to 10 different answers, but advancements in turbocharging and electrification technologies have led to a growing number of modern sleepers on our roads.

This led us to compile this list of what we think are five of the best new and discontinued sleepers available in Australia.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a snapshot of just a few of the unassuming performance cars on our roads – a mere starting point for the games to begin among our readers.

CURRENT

1. Volvo XC40 Recharge Pure Electric

The Volvo XC40 is one of the friendliest and most unassuming looking SUVs on the market and has been for a while now, but the dual-motor Pure Electric version quietly packs not-insubstantial outputs of 300kW/660Nm.

All that power, torque and all-wheel drive grip yields a claimed 0-100km/h acceleration time of 4.9 seconds, which is faster than the vast majority of current hot hatches, sports cars and late-model muscle cars.

What’s more, it delivers its performance almost silently and doesn’t advertise is credentials in the slightest – beyond it small ‘Twin Charge’ tailgate badge.

2. Volkswagen T-Roc R

Volkswagen’s penultimate R-Line trim level can make it tricky to tell the luxury variants apart from the performance grades within its various model lines, especially when colour is thrown into the mix.

The Volkswagen T-Roc R is another compact SUV that hides genuine performance – 0-100km/h in 4.9sec – behind a poker face, with the only real tell-tale signs being the quad exhaust outlets and blue brake callipers.

The cut-price Grid Edition is even harder to spot because of its subtler alloy wheel design, which really does make it look like an R-Line – especially in Indium Grey metallic body colour.

3. BMW M550i xDrive

This could well be the ultimate sleeper of the modern era.

The BMW M550i xDrive looks like a bog-stock 5 Series from just about every angle, but it’s powered by a 390kW/750Nm twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 that yields a claimed 0-100km/h time of just 3.8sec.

All-wheel drive helps keep everything neat and tidy and the real kicker is the M550 costs more than $100,000 less than the full-fat M5 Competition, which is only 0.5sec faster to triple-digit speeds in ideal conditions.

4. Skoda Superb 206TSI

It’s the new highway patrol car of choice for the WA Police force, even if most people wouldn’t give the top-spec Skoda Superb a second look at the lights, but they probably should give the big Czech wagon packs 206kW/350Nm and stops the 0-100km/h clock in 5.9sec.

The 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine is paired with a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission and all-wheel drive, which makes for clean and crisp performance – both in a straight line and in the bends.

Sedan and wagon body styles are available, but the latter is WA Police’s preference.

5. Mazda6 turbo

Another stealthy family car is the Mazda6, the turbocharged versions of which develop a respectable if not headline-grabbing 173kW of power and a rather handy 420Nm of torque.

All that pulling power instils the Clark Kent-like Japanese mid-sizer with immensely tractable performance on the open road, which makes it quite the point and shoot family bus. 

DISCONTINUED

1. Ford Escape

The last-generation Ford Escape arrived Down Under as a facelifted version of the Kuga and sitting atop its engine line-up was a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine outputting 178kW/345Nm and driving all four wheels via a six-speed automatic transmission.

Paired with a surprisingly taught chassis set-up, the hot hatch-derived powertrain made the ZG Escape one of the more athletic offerings in the booming mid-size SUV market and more than capable of surprising complacent performance car drivers.

Zero to 100km/h in around seven seconds is very much on the cards for the 2.0L Escape, whereas all-paw examples of the newer ZH generation stop the clock in the mid-sixes.

2. Holden Commodore SV8

We wouldn’t be Australian if we didn’t include at least one locally-built sleeper and it’s hard to think of a cheekier one than the Holden Commodore SV8.

The recipe was very simple: take a VY Executive and shove the 235kW/465Nm 5.7-litre V8 from the SS sports sedan under its bonnet, with the only real visual clues to its rumbly identity being an SS rear bumper, spoiler and subtle 17-inch alloys.

What you couldn’t see was the FE2 suspension hiding underneath the body, which made the SV8 handle just as well as the pricier SS when fitted with comparable rubber.

3. Subaru Liberty GT

Turbocharged Subaru Libertys have always been the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing, and none more so than the fifth-generation GT that retained a fat stormtrooper body and used it to hide a boost-happy 195kW/350Nm 2.5-litre turbo-petrol boxer engine.

Symmetrical all-wheel drive grip allowed the WRX in disguise to hit 100km/h in 6.2sec, while Bilstein dampers enabled it to chase sports cars though the twisties as well.

The only ways to tell a fifth-gen GT apart from its lesser – non-turbo – Sports Premium stablemate were the factory bonnet scoop and twin exhaust outlets.

4. Volkswagen Amarok 580

It’s not often you can label a dual-cab 4x4 pick-up truck as a genuine sleeper, but the first-generation Volkswagen Amarok 580 is an exception to that rule given its creators claimed it could hit 100km/h in 7.3 seconds.

That might not sound very quick (and in reality it was about half a second slower), but a sub-8.0sec 0-100km/h time is pretty quick for a two-and-a-quarter-tonne off-roader in a dual-cab 4x4 market where most rivals struggle to crack 10sec.

And to put the Amarok V6’s performance into perspective, the Golf GTI of the day took the same amount of time to hit 100km/h. Go-juice was provided by a 190kW/580Nm 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 that developed up to 200kW on overboost and drove all four wheels all of the time via an eight-speed automatic transmission.

5. Hyundai i30 SR

The PD-series Hyundai i30 SR was the car that largely kick-started Hyundai’s surge to hot hatch greatness in that it built on the shortcoming of the Veloster Turbo and served as the more subtle alternative to the Elantra SR sedan.

Looking almost identical to the lavish Premium save for its grey 18-inch alloys and twin exhaust outlets, the SR packed the same 150kW/256Nm 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine as the current N-Line and Kia Cerato GT, and could reel off the 0-100km/h sprint in less than 7.5sec.

The Korean warm hatch also had a 10mm lower ride height than the standard i30, plus a multi-link rear-end to ensure its dynamics matched its peppy powertrain.

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