BY AARON ROBINSON, PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID DEWHURST
Day 2 Second and First Place: Extremists
2008 Porsche 911 GT2
Second Place: Extremists
Check it out: Black leather, red seatbelts, splashes of fuzzy Alcantara, deep-scallop buckets in glossy carbon-fiber shells, fish-gill vents, and flaring air snorkels on the wing posts. The GT2’s visual cues mix the subtle with the animal.
All the familiar 911 delights are here: the intimate cockpit with control-tower visibility, steering that carves pavement with seismometer sensitivity, and the precision interplay of German parts clicking, sliding, and otherwise cavorting expensively under fingertips and toes.
In the GT2, the rear seats were broomed for weight, the fronts locked in an upright posture ideal for track work but not for backache-free sightseeing. An exotic price purchases exotic materials and noises. Carbon-ceramic brakes will not dust the wheels or fade, while the carbon-fiber airbox is worth cracking the engine lid to inspect. The titanium exhaust bugles an elating wail, and the blowoff valves exhale in long, lurid sneezes.
While big-bore power is instant, big-turbo power is a process. The windup to GT2 detonation starts at 3000 rpm, the full wallop arriving around 5000 rpm when up to 20.3 pounds of boost explode in neck- wrenching fury. Employing the launch control, the GT2 ties the high-drag Viper for briefest quarter-mile time—11.8 seconds—with the Viper hitting 126 mph to the Porsche’s 121. However, all that heaving and surging thrust also revives old 911 demons, especially the tail-wagging and the sudden steering faintness under acceleration as the weight rocks rearward.
Unlike the all-wheel-drive 911 Turbo, the GT2 has no drive gear up front to weigh on the tires. Over-goose the throttle off a corner—it’s easy, Porsche fits a short-throw gas pedal, no doubt to cut lag—and the wheel can go dead in your clammy paws just as the road shoulder rushes up.
Drivers burn more calories in the GT2. Shorter gearbox ratios trigger the yellow triangle of the tachometer’s upshift light with frenetic frequency. That means more leg presses on the unyielding clutch pedal and more trips to the racquetball-shaped shifter, which doesn’t move without a firm forearm behind it. A two-mode shock adjuster switches between “comfort” and “sport,” the latter cutting the GT2’s restless bounding over bumps to short, clipped motions, which can be no less unnerving. Traction and yaw angles remain under computer management until the system is disabled by the dash buttons. Rookies shouldn’t even think about it.
Did Porsche cross a line by packing 530 horses into its fanny-engined flagship? Three days in the GT2 brought forth gushing praise. Not for the GT2 but for the 415-hp 911 GT3 RS. Besides being more than $65,000 less, the equally stiff GT3 is remembered as a more entertaining harmony of power and rear-engine eccentricity. At times, taming the GT2 feels suspiciously like work.
2009 Nissan GT-R
First Place: Extremists
Nissan’s million-microchip masterpiece is a sumo in this group, half a foot longer than the GT2 and 500 pounds heavier than the Viper. Meanwhile, claimed horsepower is 25 fewer ponies than the Z06’s total, producing the portliest power-to-weight ratio. And while earlier GT-Rs we’ve tested outpaced everything here, this particular silver example was a relative woofer. It was the only car in the test—and the only GT-R we’ve tested—needing more than four seconds to hit 60 mph and more than 12 seconds to reach the quarter-mile.
On the road course, the GT-R floundered at first. Bawling, irrepressible understeer was all the bulky Bridgestone run-flats could muster in slower turns. Along twisty byways, it was cited for being colder and less thrilling than the other mega-personalities in the test. “It’s a 500-hp Prelude,” grumped one editor.
As the notebook pages flipped, however, the comments started thawing. On track, the GT-R comes alive when manhandled rally-style, like a two-ton STI. Lean heavily on the brakes, saw the wheel hard, then mash the throttle and let the all-wheel-drive system’s rear bias point the nose. It never shows stress under such thrashing or slack in its controls. A firm pedal governed the Nissan’s progressive brakes up to the final lap, with more instant bite than supplied by even the GT2’s boutique carbon-ceramic discs.
The wheel feels direct, changing course with curt responses and reading back the road in little tugs and flutters. The two leather-fringed bananas on the column shift the automated twin-clutch six-speed seamlessly and with heady throttle blips.
Perhaps, in this group, the twin-turbo, 3.8-liter V-6 is short on power, but it makes it back in flexibility. Torque ramps up evenly off idle, supplying a long, linear shove to the 7000-rpm redline. We said big turbo power is a process. Not in this
machine. It’s almost instant. Unfortunately, so is the low-fuel light when it’s being stroked. And the V-6 is also somewhat quiet and antiseptic, leaving a sound vacuum filled by dull tire roar.
The GT-R looks best at night, a UFO—unidentified fast object—burning the darkness with its four large LED taillight rings. In its element on open roads, the GT-R runs up the bumpers of the other cars as their drivers struggle to summon as much courage as the GT-R pilot enjoys. Loose surfaces, wavy pavement, blind hairpins: The speeding is easy as the GT-R’s computerized driveline and near-transparent stability system clean up whatever its wide stance and limber suspension can’t fully digest. “I have never driven a car that was so stable at speed,” one convert enthused.
Happy days are here when the lowest price buys a supercar that everyone, down to your Aunt Phyllis, can enjoy.
By All Weather Floor Mats on Jul 12, 2008 | Reply
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By Pooja on Jul 14, 2008 | Reply
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