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Extremists: 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.
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.
Chevy Corvette Z06 vs. Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR, Nissan GT-R, Porsche 911 GT2 - Coupes/Comparison Test/Reviews/Car and Driver - Car And Driver
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