CAR’s Sports Car Giant Test (2013) Part Three

The Ferrari F12 has a better solution: you turn off the traction control in a second, and you can combine it with the softest suspension setting. And then everything goes mad. In fact, everything about your first moments with the F12 suggest you really should leave the traction control alone: the steering is so ridiculously fast that you can’t believe it won’t upset the rear end in a quick corner; and if the steering won’t do it, you just know that the V12 will, 730 rampaging ponies tearing at those rear tyres with their fat, juicy sidewalls.

Then, slowly, you build up the confidence, twirling the steering-wheel-mounted manettino through its various stages until, at last, your right thumb holds it all the way round to the right. A harsh little beeep rings out; you’re on your own. And you find that there is traction, that you can wind that V12 right out and hear it scream like an F1 car, revving beyond 8000rpm in one long linear sweep round the dial that thwacks you back in your seat until the shift lights crowning the steering wheel flash insistently. Then you pull that gearshift paddle and sense the crisp thunk of engagement and the whole, shocking process repeats itself over and over again. Carbon brakes, gearshift, engine – the responsiveness of all these crucial elements monsters the McLaren.

But it’s what happens when you turn into corners that’s really special: the F12 feels like it pivots around your knees, as if the dynamics weren’t paying attention in class and have completely forgotten there’s this big lump of metal ahead of the driver.

You get cocky and lean on the front end harder and start to squirt the throttle and then… there you go, the back end sweeps round and the revs fly up with a yelp and you’re painting black lines down the road and still accelerating hard. A minute later you’re cruising around like you’re in a Merc SL. There’s nothing like an F12.

I park up with two grumbles: the steering needs more feel, and the steering wheel indicator/wiper buttons are a disaster. But… wow.

Faced with this kind of opposition you can only wince when the Aston Vanquish walks out to the Rocky theme tune as the F12 glowers at it from the ring. Don’t dismiss the Brit, though. Once again this is a DB9-based Aston, yes, but there are some seriously significant changes afoot, including the switch to a carbon bodyshell that makes the structure lighter and stiffer and even frees up more interior space.

And you know what, the Vanquish is a great drive. Road-surface info telegraphs cleanly up through the steering rack, the V12 sounds glorious as you dip into the long-travel throttle, and the chassis soaks up the bumps but also digs in and insists you trust it, giving you confidence to brake deep and hard into corners then light up the rear tyres like a pair of Swan Vesta’s scorching across a matchbox.

‘The Vanquish is so much better than the DB9,’ says editor Phil McNamara, and it really is, but in this company we’re all agreed that it also feels a little too GT-like, a little too soft to make the cut. Worse, the paddleshift gearchanges are too lackadaisical and there’s an awful slurring when you run into the rev limiter, like a pair of drunks trying to let each other out of the pub toilet. It needs to be sharper, more positive.

And while the Aston does compete with the F12, you have to remember that not only does the Ferrari’s performance whack it on the chin and leave it reeling by the side of the road, the Jag F-type’s does too, plus the Jag looks gorgeous, feels fresher and costs less than half as much too. Are the Aston’s two tiny rear seats and a larger boot really going to lead the fightback at this end of the market?

I take the Vanquish back into Betws-y-Coed as the sun dips behind the mountains and it still feels like one of the year’s best cars, something I’d feel privileged to drive each and every day. But it’s not going to make our podium. Not even close.

We retire to the Dragon restaurant knowing that tomorrow’s going to be a big day: we’ve got to stop dithering and start firming up our final order, and there’s the small matter of that Porsche 911 GT3 arriving. I know, I know, we work very hard indeed.

The alarm chimes as the morning dawns bright and clear, we grab some breakfast and head straight back out. I’m in the R8, a car that’s easy to forget given it’s relatively advanced age, but it’s recently refreshed and still feels incredible. We’ve got the V10 Plus: for an extra £12k over the standard car you get 542bhp compared with 518bhp, revised spring and damper rates, plus ceramic brakes, bucket seats and carbonfibre trim to help whittle away 50kg. Our car is also optioned with the new S-tronic dual-clutch gearbox, which shifts quickly and far more cleanly than the jerky old R-tronic single-clutcher. It won’t ever annoy, but could still learn from the Ferrari’s mechanically crisp engagement. And the R8 might just teach the McLaren a thing or two, the pair of them both competing for the all-round usable supercar crown. Could the R8 do it better for £70k less? Actually, I had a quick drive yesterday and told everyone it could. They mostly all disagreed. I looked at my notes and scuffed my shoes.

So here I am striking out on my own just to double-check. And you know what, the Audi is pretty bloody special, slipping around town as happily as a Golf, just a deep burble from the V10 letting you know there’s some serious hardware back there. And it is serious: blip the throttle at a standstill and there’s an instant, deep sucking from the induction plenums. Then you accelerate hard and the deep burble morphs into a fast, high-tech, almost chainsaw-like thrash. The delivery is unfalteringly linear, the revs rising like a helium balloon you just can’t catch. No question, I’d take this engine over the McLaren’s; the brake feel on these carbon ceramics too.

Yet this long, early-morning drive confirms that the others are right. The McLaren’s front-end response and steering easily shades the R8 – ‘The R8’s steering feels dead,’ says Ben Oliver – and the 12C feels altogether lighter, more cohesive, more able to pick apart a road in devastating little chunks than an Audi that suddenly feels slightly clunky in its shadow.
The Audi will still blow you away, though, flattering the novice and thrilling the expert alike. ‘I feel happier going hard down a road I don’t know in the R8 than any of the other big cars,’ says Damion Smy. It’s easy to understand why, because while the R8 rides well and its four-wheel drive offers massive reassurance, it’s also very playful and will actually grip and slip over the surface in a much more relaxed way than the endlessly efficient McLaren.

For that we can thank Lamborghini, the Italians of course doing the R8 groundwork long before the Teutonic supercar was a twinkle in Ferdinand Piech’s eye. Not that you’d guess after driving the Aventador.

Sink down into the Aventador’s cabin and you are, in effect, putting on a superhero costume and walking around in public. It’s ludicrously outlandish, ‘like riding a peacock’ as Ben Oliver has it.
Crank open the fighter-jet-style red cover and press the engine start button and the instrument binnacle beams up flashy digital renderings of analogue dials with racey fonts. I want to get a quid out of my pocket, stick it in the centre console and go for the high score. Instead you press that button again and the V12 erupts, a big angry bear of an engine that lashes out every time you prod the throttle.

 The Aventador is properly old school: unwieldy, muscular, intimidating. The four-wheel drive and huge tyres do offer a comfort blanket of traction and grip, but this is not an easy car to punt down a demanding road: the ride is firm, the steering solid, so where you coax a Ferrari F12 or McLaren 12C, you wrestle the Lambo. You’re holding on for a wild ride, squirting the throttle for as long as your dare, sitting over the white lines on the straights before desperately trying to rein it in for the bends. You feel a bit breathless and panicky driving the Aventador at speed. And through a car park.

Select the most extreme Corsa gearbox mode and every change feels like you’ve traded places with a cricket ball just as it’s met Kevin Pietersen’s bat. Even the Sport mode is pretty full-on. But what an experience, the response, the sound, the brutality – all of it consumes the Aventador drive.

As I pull back in to our meeting spot, Ben Pulman’s just returning in the recently arrived GT3. He climbs out with the raised eyebrows and puffed cheeks of a man who’s dipped a foot in scorching hot water. ‘Good?’ I ask. ‘Oh yes,’ he grins. ‘The engine’s amazing too. I don’t think it sounds quite as good as the 997, but it’s not bad!’

If you’re into your 911s, you’ll know 2013 marks a turning point for the iconic GT3: a new 3.8-litre flat six replaces the long-standing Mezger engine; out goes hydraulic steering, in comes electric assistance; the manual gearbox has been ditched for a PDK dual-clutcher; and the rear wheels now do some of the steering too. Yet the GT3’s aim remains the same: 911 racecar thrills for the road.

There’s so much to take in that I try to break it all down and think about it at low speed first. The steering’s perhaps the first thing you notice, with far more surface noise percolating up through the rack and tickling your palms, proof at last that Porsche can make these electric systems satisfyingly tactile after the mute Cayman, Boxster and 911. No, it’s not quite as perfect as its predecessor, but it’s so good that there’s no cause for complaint.

The gearchanges don’t feel particularly positive at a cruise, but they are swift and obedient. Rear-wheel steering? Honestly, if I didn’t know, I wouldn’t’ve guessed.

And that new flat-six feels pretty special to me. It idles with a fast, wet ticking, and as you move off it’s bassy and mechanical and then gradually takes on a harder, more metallic edge. At 5500rpm there’s a little step in the power delivery, up from 4000rpm in the old car, and the pitch hardens, the revs flying giddily up and up. Mostly you’ll shift at 7000rpm or so, which feels pretty demented, then you realise there’s another 2000rpm – 2000rpm! – to go and try to tap into it but, really, you rarely do. It feels like a bottomless pit of performance – I only once hit the limiter, and it’s to reassure myself that the madness does stop somewhere. It’s like dancing on hot coals.

But the GT3 isn’t scary, it’s just thrilling. There’s massive traction, instant response from the engine, huge grip and speed. You fire the GT3 into a corner and let the front end lap up the abuse, knowing there’ll be no roll, that you’ve got huge reserves of lateral grip, that this amazing 911 will go wherever you point it. Seriously, the way the GT3 swipes at an apex with unruffled clarity is astonishing. And then you go harder and accelerate earlier and still those Michelin Cup tyres are digging in and transferring every last drop of power.

Eking out little slides, I at last feel that rear-steer system working, a push from the rear that turns me into the corner with a supernatural-like agility, something that would have made me question what was going on whether or not I’d known the system was present.

At high speed, with the PDK in Sport, those gearchanges feel far more positive too, just a little interruption between an otherwise continuous engine pitch – like a needle briefly skipping off a record – signalling the switch between gears. Standing at the side of the road, Matt Tarrant describes it as ‘like being back at the Nürburgring’. It’s true, the GT3 road car shifts cogs with a soundtrack to mimic the racers.

Only four cars here have less power than the GT3, but you just know that it would’ve been right in the mix for the fastest lap if we’d given it chance. Perhaps more amazing is that, while the GT3 is essentially a racing car with numberplates, it also does the day-to-day banalities without fuss – it rides well, it’s easy to park, the seats are comfy… Only the fact that those tyres don’t function in the wet (you can spec others) and that we had to back it out of the car park to stop the chin spoiler being ripped off count against it.

The F-type attacks this going fast business in a completely different manner. In fact, first impressions suggest that – like the Ferrari – you should leave the traction control on because it’s just so feisty and it will light up its rear tyres from a standstill and give you a bit of a shock. The rear end also feels quite hyper, as if it’ll be easily upset. Yet, in the dry at least, it’s perfectly benign at faster speeds. You can charge into a corner and work the steering hard and you’ll feel the rear relinquish grip, but it does so progressively and predictably and then it’s all down to you as to whether you want to back out of it or shroud Wales in a musty fog.

Everyone’s been saying that the V6 S is the best F-type, that it’s the better-balanced car, but I disagree. The V8 is the one, it gives you the power to play with the chassis where the V6 is just a bit too contained and mild-mannered.

I like the F-type, the extrovert handling and engine, the punchy gearchanges, the sophisticated ride, the sense of occasion. Not all the CAR team are singing its praises, though. Damion Smy neatly sums up the malaise by describing it as ‘soft and doughy’. It sounds strange for a car that is in some ways so hardcore, but he’s right: there’s a bit of roll and squidge, a sense of detachment from the otherwise excellent steering, a feeling that you’re sitting on top of the road rather than keying right into it. It’s a conundrum, the F-type.

That evening we settle in for beer and food. Someone passes around slips of paper so we can vote. Quite a few of the slips are scrawled with GT3, F12, Cayman, R8, 12C, but a lot of the others say curry or steak or beer. It’s going to be a long night. It’s best if I hand over to teetotal Ben Pulman to make sense of it all…

>> Click here for the fourth and final part of CAR’s 2013 Sports Car Giant TestWords: Ben Barry Photography: Charlie Magee & Richard Pardon