The case of voiture

Question

There is a lesson named "Le nôtre, le vôtre, le leur, etc = Ours, yours, theirs (possessive pronouns)", in which there is a sentence as "J'aime bien ta voiture, elle est mieux que la leur" which now seems perfectly convincing as "mieux" is used ingeneral statements with être. However, when we think of "pire", it seems partly as the correspondant of "mieux" since it is used when we are talking about general statements with être and to this respect, I anticipated that "mieux" should be used in the sentence "Ces voitures sont les pires du monde/Ces voitures sont les plus mauvaises du monde.". This sentence is given as an example of the rule "qualifying something as bad/worse/the worst at what it does", but it seems to me that this sentence is comparing "these" cars with the other ones in the world in a general context.

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Hi Emre Can,
In grammatical terms, the case of the cars being 'les pires' is a superlative rather than a comparative.
It is what you use when you have compared everything and that in your opinion something is 'the best',  'the tallest' or 'the most expensive' and as in this case,  'the worst'.
Hope this helps!

Maarten Kamp · Answer

I can see how this may seem to be a comparison but it isn’t - at least not in the grammatical sense. It is an opinion expressed in absolute terms. A grammatical comparison needs to take a particular form.

If you search comparisons in the recently enhanced QandA search section, you will see many lessons covering comparators.