Back in the 90s a Japanese sports car actually offered a noticeable performance advantage relative to regular passenger cars. The regular passenger cars generally had weak engines, terrible suspensions, slow shifting automatic transmissions, and little in the way of driver assistance features. Now any generic modern crossover SUV can be driven well beyond the legal speed limit on any public road without really approaching the vehicle's limits, so except for hard core enthusiasts who intend on tracking their cars there's just not much advantage to buying a sports car any more.