Chevy Corvette Z06 vs. Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR, Nissan GT-R, Porsche 911 GT2 - 1

Jul

4th

Chevy Corvette Z06 vs. Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR, Nissan GT-R, Porsche 911 GT2 - 1

Files under Cars Comparisons, Coupe, SuperCars | Posted by admin

BY AARON ROBINSON, PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID DEWHURST

It’s man against motherboard in this four-way flog of max-horsepower machines.

Behold four machines sitting on the pointy end of a horsepower skyrocket that lifted off sometime in the 1980s and hasn’t hit the chutes yet.

For now, anyone can buy these vehicles by flashing a valid driver’s license and a healthy checkbook. But this may be it. The last act. The apogee right before reentry, when post-peak oil prices and carbon-emissions limits and general economic malaise threaten to make memories out of 500-horsepower cars. Maybe someday you’ll bore grandchildren with tales of Porsche GT2s practically falling out of trees for just $198,875. Is it 1971 all over again? Who knows? Maybe you’ll be telling them from the back seat of their parents’ 700-hp minivan.

These days, the only certainties are that factories still make fast cars, magazines still review them, and the public still buys them. Determined not to shirk our duty, we gathered these sharp darts for some track work and desert road running. They have little in common except being the heaviest ordnance currently sold by their respective brands. We didn’t say our duty was particularly tough.

With the new 638-hp 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 still months off, the 505-hp Corvette Z06 became the old man in our quartet, new in late ’05 as an ’06. Aluminum-frame trusses, a cast magnesium roof, and carbon-fiber floorboards and front fenders help make it a very special Vette, as does the 505-hp, LS7 7.0-liter dry-sump V-8. Chevy fitted $5545 in convenience and Bose-audio options to our Jetstream Blue Metallic example (the stratospheric paint option runs $750).

The American Club Racer (ACR) badge was first pasted onto Dodge Vipers in 1999, and the mission brief hasn’t changed: Put Viper owners on the track. The newest ACR upholds the legacy with an assortment of name-brand racer bits, including KW Suspensions coil-over shocks with jounce, rebound, and ride-height adjustment; StopTech slotted rotors with Brembo calipers; Michelin Pilot Sport Cup pseudo-slicks (size 295/30—in front!); and a carbon-fiber front splitter and rear wing that produce a claimed thousand pounds of downforce at 150 mph. The single option on our car: a red stripe down the driver’s center line, $1650.

Our third instrumented test of Nissan’s freshly unwrapped GT-R starts here. By now you should be able to quote the relative percentages of steel, cast aluminum, and carbon fiber in the GT-R’s body (roughly 80, 15, and 5, respectively), recite the front-axle torque-split spread in the electronic all-wheel-drive system (10–50 percent), and name the brake-caliper paint supplier (we have no idea). The big option is the $2050 Premium pack, including navigation and an 11-speaker Bose audio boombox. This car has it.

Porsche’s long staircase of models currently tops out at the 911 GT2. Its 3.6-liter boxer-six has 50 more horsepower than the 480-hp all-wheel-drive 911 Turbo, but the GT2 uses two fewer wheels to apply its 505 pound-feet of torque to the pavement. Sounds like a formula for carnage-filled YouTube videos, except that the GT2 has fast-acting traction and stability control, plus launch control. We’ve got $6315 in options here, including $1815 black-painted wheels, $1250 in body-color console and dash trim, and $340 in risqué red seatbelts. Every car would go quicker with red seatbelts.

We have four dissimilar cars with a $126,350 price spread. Their collective technology is such that only one, the Viper, carries a gas-guzzler penalty ($1700). Actually, ranking them proved quite tough, but we do this for God and country.

2008 Chevrolet Corvette Z06
Fourth Place: Extremists

Like the Nissan, the batwing Z06 isn’t trying to be a racer with a license plate. A “grand touring” badge belongs on this relatively plush and button-filled cruiser, certainly far more than the slingshot Porsche GT2.

You’ll find no ranting here about dumb American dream machines. The second-cheapest car has its triumphs, starting with the 3180-pound curb weight, lightest by 120 pounds and barely 300 pounds heavier than our last standard Honda S2000 test car [July 2004]. The 7.0-liter V-8 was the second-thriftiest fuel burner, after the six-cylinder Porsche, actually beating the 911 on one leg of our afterburners-on trek with a 16-mpg return. Only the Vette and the track-rat Viper could pull more than 1.0 g on the skidpad, but the Z06 does it on narrower, more deeply treaded rubber. It also takes on 22 cubic feet of cargo under its glass hatch.

Our first miles were run on a track (Buttonwillow Raceway Park, north of Los Angeles), for which the Vette’s toolbox is less well-stocked than the Viper’s or the Porsche’s. In the deep foxhole of the driver’s seat, everything feels softer, from the flat, foamy buckets that allow sideways sliding to the artificial steering to a suspension tuned for compliance. Turn quick, and the direction change waits while the body slumps to the outside. Poke the mighty V-8, and the Z06 squirms on its rear. Call on the brakes, potent but pulsing and jittery in our 2725-mile test car, and the nose leans forward to sniff pavement.

Confidence that welled up in the other cars was challenged by the Z06’s wallow and its proclivity to whipsaw unpredictably. Some cars drift out cautiously, patient for your corrections. This Z06 offered little between glued fast and black-ice breakaway. We suspect the Goodyear run-flats suffer a weakness here, though the Vette also proved to be out of alignment. A shop eventually corrected excessive rear toe-in, and we fitted a new set of rear tires, which settled it down some.

Long road legs were less punishing in the Z06, thanks to the easy clutch and shifter, a fast-cooling air conditioner, and satellite radio, but the cockpit’s acrid aroma of curing resin made it smell “like driving a body shop,” groused associate editor Tony Quiroga. Cabin noise at full whack is turned down the most, though no car here would be confused with a Lexus. The bellowing LS7 has broad flexibility with no obvious peaks or pits on the way to its 7000-rpm redline. Only the V-10 Viper offers more instant gratification.

The Corvette is the lightest, but when worked beyond its comfort zone, it can feel heaviest. With 505 straining horses, we’d prefer more chassis discipline with which to harness them.

2008 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR
Third Place: Extremists

Dodge isn’t being coy. “Complete a high-performance driving school prior to operating this vehicle,” demands the separate 24-page owner’s manual on the ACR’s special features. “Competitive driving and track outings can cause serious injuries or death.”

Whoa, they’re talking about death—not a subject usually raised in the manuals of expensive driveway candy. The 600-hp ACR is not a car to fool around in. Check the performance stats: It’s the fleetest to 60 mph at 3.4 seconds and the flattest at the skidpad, pulling 1.08 g. It’s also quickest through the lane change by a wide margin and stops in the shortest distance. And no electronic helpers besides ABS are there to save you from YouTube humiliation.

For those with patience, that’s the joy of this plaything. There’s no skipping to the last page, no jumping straight to level 11. You must start slow and peel it back by layer, probing the hellbent grip of the huge tires, tinkering with the nitroglycerin under the hood, discovering where the ferocious brakes deliver good corner-entry speed instead of spontaneous parking. Play the process out, and a better, more methodical driver emerges.

For all the ACR’s menacing glower, it welcomes newcomers. Lightness in the clutch and steering and a high, Rat Fink–style shifter free up concentration for the road. Good thing, too. There’s precious little stuffing between driver and machinery. Small palm motions bring slashing changes of direction. A short throttle abruptly busts the power wide open, and untrained nerves shrivel as the Viper bounces and pitches over lumpy sections of track.

Downforce would squash the car into the pavement without a rigid suspension. But the shocks have 13 compression settings and 18 rebound settings. Jeff Reece, an attending Chrysler engineer, suggested relaxing them back a notch or two for our undulating venue while jacking the ride height a quarter-inch to keep the body off the bump stops. As the Viper became more pliable, our courage returned and lap times fell. Car setup is in the ACR’s lesson plan, too.

For the street, Reece unbolted the front splitter (illegal for the street, it removes easily with eight bolts and fits under the hatch), dialed everything back to full soft, and raised the ride height further. Though booming with tire rumble, the V-10’s Archie Bunker snore from the side pipes, and the occasional whap! of a backfire, the Viper can be endured for short trips. Tall gearing takes advantage of the big torque but renders sixth all but useless. The Viper seems to lug in its top gear at any speed between 80 and 140 mph. It has air conditioning to lessen the onslaught of sun on black paint (other colors are available) and a barely audible radio, though you can delete both with the optional Hard Core package.

It needs no trailer to reach the track, which is where the ACR belongs, far from life’s distractions. Engaged to be married? Park it. Expecting a baby? Sell it. Getting divorced? Burn it. Don’t bring your preoccupations into the ACR. Only your full attention makes this toy safe.