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Monday, November 24, 2008

They wouldn't need a bailout if all the cars were like this!

Last week, I managed to sneak a pre-production Pontiac G8 GXP out of GM world headquarters. This was easier than it sounds, since everyone in the building was busy learning how to tie nooses or praying that the ground below them would open up and swallow the place whole.

Yes, it's that bad here in the Motor City. This is an especially odd state of affairs when you consider the excellence of GM's current product onslaught. This high-performance version of the G8 sport sedan is the third forehead-smackingly great car I've driven from GM in as many months. The Corvette ZR1, the Cadillac CTS-V, and this G8 GXP — world-beaters all. But today, in Detroit, it's not darkest before the dawn; it's brightest when you see that white light calling you home.

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The G8 is already marked for death. There's no plan for a G8 in the lineup past 2013, when the current Holden Commodore on which it's based expires. Pontiac, in its wisdom, is now reverting to front-drive cars in order to cope with coming CAFE mandates. So alongside this remarkable, 415-hp sport sedan, we'll have the decidedly unremarkable 106-hp G3, a rebadged Aveo. That's quite a showroom, boys. Instead of developing a focused, rear-drive, affordable line-up, Pontiac is chasing fuel efficiency just like everyone else. In doing so, it is abandoning the one niche at GM it could have had all to itself, one that wasn't rife with duplicate products. Look for Pontiac to soon reclaim its position as the most rebadged, and therefore irrelevant, marque at GM.

Enough sad talk — I'm declaring the rest of this story a bummer-free zone. The G8 GXP needs a cheerleader, and it's found several in this office. I'm not sure there's any other way to say this: This car will skullf*** Senator Richard Shelby all the way back to Alabama. To all those congressmen who said GM can't build competitive cars, the G8 GXP stands as a testament to their ignorance. The promises Bob Lutz kept making so many years ago — about Pontiac being an American BMW, a true Euro fighter at half the price — have come true.

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The G8's excellence begins with its structure, which cribs shamelessly from the BMW playbook. For the chassis, that means struts up front and a multilink set up in the rear. GM benchmarked BMW so ruthlessly here that the G8 matches the 5-series in every single body-stiffness metric.

The GXP sits at very nearly the same 4000-plus pounds as the M5, but this car isn't weighed down by its perversions. There's no confusion of set-up pages and shift schedules, just pure, sport-sedan unfussiness. It's like an updated version of the E39 M5.

Sophistication is not a word normally associated with Pontiac, but the GXP is an paragon of chassis tuning. Its steering is firm, progressive, and without any artificiality. Its ride is cushioned like nothing else in this class. It has the body control of a gymnast. This car doesn't get knocked around by potholes or expansion strips or even, probably, speed bumps (I'll have to try that with a non-pre-production car). It only cedes its line when you say so, on occasions when power oversteer may become necessary. In steady-state cornering, the car tracks neutrally, and then phases to tail-out on corner exit. At anytime in the cornering process, you can still make changes in the car's attitude by simply flexing your foot.

You'd expect a car with an only slightly detuned version of the Corvette's 6.2-liter V-8 to be a monster, and it is, but it's a caged one. Puttering around a 40 mph, the engine is muted. Open the throttles, and all 415 horsepower and 415 pound-feet come flooding out. This car gets a numerically higher final drive than the economy rear in the GT version — 3.27 for the six-speed auto, or 3.70 for the six-speed manual. In the manually equipped car, 60 mph rolls up in 4.7 seconds, more than half a tick faster than in the 5.3-sec GT.

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The car I drove had this optional, $695 Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual, which is a version of the gearbox in the ZR1. The aforesaid six-speed manumatic comes standard. But under no circumstances should you consider it for this car. The shifter's action is so perfectly damped and fluid, its clutch engagement so natural, that it banishes from your mind any longing you might have for a dual-clutch automanual. It shames the BMW gearbox, quite frankly.

The brakes are stunning, too. Pontiac replaced the front brakes on the GT with 14-inch, four-piston Brembos, but left on the single-piston 12.8-in rears from the lesser car. Since 70 percent of the braking force is up front, it's easy to ignore what's happening out back and focus on the system's great pedal feel and progressivity.

There's really not much more to the GXP than its perfectly calibrated dynamics and controls. Sure, there are a few cosmetic items that differentiate it from the GT, such as a deeper front fascia and different rear diffuser, a couple of red rings around the gauges and GXP embroidery on the seats. There are also polished 19-inch wheels, but those are also available on the GT. No, this car is about stealth. It would be hard for the layperson (or cop) to distinguish it from a base G8.

It goes on sale by February at a cost, including gas-guzzler tax, intended to come in under $40,000. That's half an M5's price, for a car that is twice as gratifying. All of which is to say that, if Pontiac continues on its intended path, it's about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

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