The 600hp Club- Which Would You Choose?
Remember when 600 horsepower was the province of pure racing cars and dragsters? Even the biggest and meanest late-'60s' muscle cars topped out at somewhere between 390 and 500 bhp. And those cars were thought to be right at the edge of driveability, shuddering monsters that went sideways and hit things if you got a little too happy with the throttle.
Cars like this faded away in the early '70s, like dinosaurs caught in a meteor shower of gas station lines, safety legislation, emissions laws, recession and high insurance costs. They put their tails between their legs and slunk off to their lonely caves, apparently to be seen no more.
Then dawned the '80s, and horsepower started creeping back. Fuel got cheaper and Americans suddenly rediscovered fun. ("What do you mean, convertibles are unsafe? Whose life is this, anyway?") Meanwhile, a decade of emissions research helped engine labs find more power — and more manageable power — in smaller beakers of gasoline. Horsepower and efficiency have been on the upswing ever since.
And now, here in 2009, we suddenly find ourselves able to gather together no fewer than six luxury GT and sports cars that are able to produce 600 or more horsepower.
No one, in 1973, would have predicted such a thing. We thought we'd all be commuting on hydrogen-powered unicycles by now, and dining on seaweed. Further proof that the only thing we ever know about the future is that we don't know anything. Just ask my stockbroker.
And now these cars...
A cynic — or simply an alert realist — might point out that some of the same conditions that killed off those '70s' muscle cars are back today — along with a consumer mood that discourages throwing brandy tumblers into the fireplace. Depending on your alarmist tendencies, we are either living through the Last Days of Babylon or the Golden Age of High Performance. Maybe some of each. Either way, these are six great cars worth driving and examining.
To wring them out, we spent three days on the road, driving from our Newport Beach offices up into California's Coastal Range around the little towns of Buellton, Solvang and Los Olivos — the scenic wine country where "Sideways" was filmed, forever raising the price of Pinot Noir, not to mention food and lodging, in this area. Nevertheless, armed with company credit cards, we pressed onward in our research.
This is not a comparison test, but more a survey of how these cars drive — and how they put all that power to the ground. I doubt anyone is really undecided between, say, a Lamborghini Murciélago LP640 and a Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG. Car buffs in this high-end market tend to have their personal tastes well channeled. Still, it was interesting to see how these cars struck our staff, and we all emerged with our own — sometimes unexpected — favorites. Here, in alphabetical order, are the cars:
Mesmeric, I believe, is the word. If there was one car here that caused photographers and art directors to linger a little too long in the fading light of evening, shooting just one shot, it was the Bentley. The shape is somewhat understated in this crowd, yet it somehow defines quality and the spirit of speed in a way few other cars can manage.
The interior is nice, too — beautiful two-tone soft leather seats and dash in red and charcoal, classically simple instruments and just enough chromed fiddly knobs to remind you this car comes from the same country that made the plumbing fixtures at the Savoy. Very British, without being stuffy.
All this elegance adds up to a 5170-lb. chunk of a car, but fortunately it comes with plenty of engine. The twin-turbo 6.0-liter W-12 (two narrow angle V-6s with a shared crankcase) feeds 600 bhp through all four wheels and moves this solid, vault-like mass down the road with silken ease. The VW-designed engine is turbine-smooth, mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission that can be paddle-shifted in either Normal or Sport mode. Turbo effect is essentially invisible, and the W-12 produces deep reserves of irresistible power, like an ocean wave. This is a "How fast do you want to go?" car. Just depress the accelerator and your orders will be quietly carried out.
But not too quietly. Wind and road noise are nil, but the exhaust has a nice snarl under acceleration and a wonderful throaty thrum on the highway, as though the car were powered by the world's largest tuning fork. Steering is light and neutral, and the VW/Audi awd system seems to have no noticeable effect on steering feel.
Handling is crisp and precise on mountain roads, and the Bentley is surprisingly nimble for such a well-padded luxury car. There's a bit more body roll than on some of the low, pure sports cars in this group, but the car can be hustled along at remarkable speed, with very little drama.
There's good interior room, the seats are supportive and comfortable ("offering more adjustment than a chiropractor," as one editor noted) and the ride is nicely damped without being harsh. When you're traveling, the Continental GT is simply a great place to be. A place that goes from 0–60 in 4.0 seconds, hits the quarter mile in 12.5 sec. and costs $199,900.
Elegant, refined, understated and very fast. You could easily live with the Bentley as an everyday driver — and then experience something very close to the outer limits of usable performance on your next road trip.
You might say the automotive world is schizophrenically agog over the ZR1 right now. Half of us can't believe any Corvette could cost $102,450 and the other half can't believe you can buy this much technology and performance for "only" $102,450.
I subscribe to the second view, even if I don't have that much money to spend on a car. Or on anything else, now that I think about it.
Corvettes have always been pretty good at generating numbers, and this one produces 638 bhp at 6500 rpm and a stunning 604 lb.-ft. of torque at 3800 rpm, all from a supercharged 6.2-liter pushrod V-8. It weighs only 3325 lb. and reaches 60 mph from a dead stop in just 3.3 sec. and goes through the quarter mile in 11.4 sec. at 125.5 mph. Just a tick slower than the Ferrari 599 in the quarter mile (at about one-third the price) but it generates more grip on the skidpad and gets through the slalom faster.
But the best thing about the Corvette's impressive numbers is that it generates them so nicely. The engine is almost as smooth as the Bentley's W-12, with a pleasing "on-song" exhaust note at cruising speeds, and when you put your foot in it the supercharger comes in with a whine reminiscent of one of the great '30s' GP cars. Best of all, it makes big torque and power everywhere, at all times.
Suspension compliance with the Magnetic Ride Control system is excellent — not quite as fluid as, say, the Lambo's — but the system's pitch and yaw control provides tremendous grip and very good feedback for the driver. When set to Sport, the suspension stiffens up slightly but remains surprisingly civilized — less jarring than the more track-oriented Z06.
Steering feel is also nicely weighted and quick, for a lively, nimble feel in tight corners. The car is highly tossable, and probably more fun under 100 mph than any car here. Perfect pedal position and a slick, quick-shifting 6-speed manual transmission make you feel instantly at home in this car, as if you could get away with almost anything. Excellent, highly adjustable seats add to that one-with-the-car sensation.
In a way, the Corvette is the most "conventional" car here — a front-engine, rear-drive, 2-seat sports car with a standard transmission and clutch, a standard-spec sports car that just happens to have an incredible engine and highly refined suspension. There's nothing exotic or fussy to restrict day-to-day usefulness of the car; it's immediately as comfortable and familiar as your favorite pair of running shoes (if you could run about 200 mph). It's that very familiarity — combined with an engine whose role in life is providing unlimited wish fulfillment — that made the ZR1 one of our favorites on this trip. It might just be the best "regular" sports car ever made.
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If the Corvette ZR1 revels in new science, the Viper SRT10 goes in the opposite direction and catapults the driver back into the sights, sounds and sensual pleasures of the muscular, knock-off-the-crap Sixties. This is a car for people (i.e., nearly all of us) who missed a chance to buy a Cobra Daytona Coupe — and drive it to breakfast. The Viper is about as subtle as a punch in the mouth, but a lot more fun.
This is not to imply that the car's hard-hitting honesty is technically archaic in any way — only that a thematic choice has been made. And when some modern marvel — such as dynamic stability control — seems superfluous to the Viper's rugged personality, it's simply deleted. This is a car you drive with the human brain and foot — though it's more fun if you favor the foot.
Especially when it's connected to an 8.4-liter V-10 rated at an even 600 bhp at 6100 rpm, with 560 lb.-ft. of torque on tap at 5000 rpm. Not as uncannily smooth as the Corvette's watch-like V-8, the Viper V-10 gives you the visceral impression — and sound — of big pistons hitting hard, with each combustion stroke carrying the car a fair distance down the road. Some of that big-bang sensation comes from very tall gearing. You could drive this car all of your life in the first four gears without much inconvenience. In 5th and 6th the car is just idling at legal highway speeds; it wants to go at least 100 mph, and then just keep going. Like a fighter after takeoff, it isn't meant to stay in the traffic pattern. As ex-racer Steve Millen said in an earlier test, "the harder you run it, the better it is."
Unfortunately, you can't drive real fast all the time — especially with the CHP stalking your fancy little train of supercars — and the Viper is noisier and rougher riding than the other cars at cruising speed. There's a radio and a CD player, but why would you try to listen to them over that great brutish engine note, even if you could? The Viper is an uncompromising sports car meant to be driven hard as a form of entertainment in itself.
An ideal cross-country GT car it's not, but on the twisty back roads it works pretty well. Grip is excellent — if a little busy over mid-corner bumps — and the balance is good. Steering kickback is less filtered than with the other cars, but there's a satisfying sense of driving the car with your own seat-of-the-pants instincts. It'll generate over 1.0g of grip on the skidpad and get through the slalom almost as fast as the Ferrari 599, so you've got plenty of traction to work with. And tons of power from this naturally aspirated ohv V-10 — unique to this group. Its sub-100-grand price tag is also unique.
Overall, the Viper is what used to be called "a man's car," and when it's gone we may not see its like again. Nothing else is quite like it even now  |
Ferrari didn't have one of these 611-bhp beauties sitting around for us to test, so we borrowed one from a friend of the magazine who shall remain unnamed, yet should be canonized for his generosity, just as soon as we get another Italian Pope installed.
Here we go up slightly in price ($302,584) and complexity. Outwardly, the 599 is a classic Ferrari GT Berlinetta with a big 6.0-liter dohc V-12 up front, two seats, an elegant leather interior and a svelte body from Pininfarina.
Underneath that '60s-clean aluminum bodywork, however, the 599 is a spear-carrier for the full range of Ferrari's F1-derived technology. The rear-mounted transaxle houses a 6-speed "F1-SuperFast" sequential box operated with paddle shifters at the steering wheel (a manual 6-speed box is also available). A transmission/engine management program shortens shifting time as the car is driven harder and faster. It can also be operated in a straight automatic mode, for less frenetic motoring.
The semi-active suspension system uses fluid with magnetically varied (magnetorheological) viscosity for very fast response to roll, pitch and surface changes. It also has F1-Trac stability and traction control, with a steering wheel-mounted dynamic control switch with settings for Ice, Low Grip, Sport and Race. In other words, you may want to buy a shop manual now if you plan to restore this car in 40 years. There's a lot going on under the skin.
But the result is an intense, focused, pure Ferrari driving experience. This car may have GT in its name, but it's more race-car-like than anything here, except, perhaps for the Lamborghini. The 611-bhp (at 7600 rpm) V-12 makes big, linear power, but still accelerates with a high-pitched ripping sound as the rpm climb. Ride is moderately stiff, even in its softest damping position, and the car is low enough to scrape its underpinnings occasionally, but balance and feedback through the wheel are superb. At first the steering feels a bit darty, but — with familiarity — it merely seems quick and taut.
The paddle-shift mechanical box is a mixed blessing. On winding roads it throws big, whooping perfectly matched downshifts and quick, succinct upshifts — better than most humans can manage. Parking or maneuvering in city traffic, however, it's still a slightly clunky distraction. The Ferrari wants to go fast and doesn't understand why you're horsing it around town or jerkily backing into a parallel parking spot. It senses — as Kurt Vonnegut once said of a friend's Russian Wolfhound in Manhattan — that some terrible mistake has been made.
The 599 is a pure dose of sports-car aggression, busy and charismatic. And maybe a bit high-strung and nervous if you've just climbed out of, say, the Bentley. Both these cars make good standard-bearers for their respective national traditions. It's Mountbatten versus Pavarotti.  |
Let me say this: If you were a high school teacher and pulled into the school parking lot with a Lamborghini Murciélago on your first day at work, your students would probably sit through class in stunned, respectful silence for the rest of the year, their eyes twitching nervously toward the parking lot. The car has that effect on people. Wherever you park, it's like bringing the cast of "Oh, Calcutta!" to Peoria.
Here is a total refutation of logic in the name of glory. The $354,000 Lamborghini almost defines the term "exotic car." Wide, brawny and colorful, it's powered by a 6.5-liter V-12 that makes 632 bhp at a siren-like 8000 rpm. And it sends all that power to all four wheels.
Easy to forget, then, that under all that Bird of Paradise glamour is a very tough, fast and well-developed sports car. On our 2-lane Central Coast roads it was magnificent — a go-kart with huge wide tires, superb suspension and 632 screaming horsepower. Wide, yes, but it's a car that gets smaller and nimbler the faster you go.
The engine builds power steadily toward its 8300-rpm redline, but it also has huge wallop in the 3000–6000-rpm range. Actually, it simply makes power everywhere, and is never caught flat-footed at any rpm. Step on it, and it lunges effortlessly forward, instantly. It feels torquier than the Ferrari (and the numbers confirm it), and it gets around the skidpad and through the slalom just a little quicker.
Steering feel is excellent, turn-in quick and intuitive and the suspension damping superb over the rough stuff, as if the front bumper were reading the road and telegraphing messages to the tires. Switch the damping to the Sport mode and it gets decidedly stiffer (as it should), making the car feel even more race-car like. The sound, cabin layout and low seating position of the Lambo can easily lead to delusions of being on the Mulsanne Straight. You sense it wants to go 200 mph and would gladly hunker down and do it.
The seats, incidentally, are excellent. Essentially semi-reclined shells, they have few adjustments but fit our wide variety of editorial types quite comfortably. The paddle shifters, like the Ferrari's, can be a little clunky around town but work nicely on the back roads, throwing downshifts with a quick howling whoop followed by race-car-like mutterings. Some of us downshifted unnecessarily, just for the sound. Yes we did.
In this group, the Lamborghini may be the most exhilarating car (in close competition with the Ferrari), but — with its swing-up doors and low ride height — it's also the car least likely to get driven to dinner after a hard day on the road. It uses up your adrenaline as you drive. Gloriously.  |
Now, here is a car that doesn't puff its chest out, strut around and pretend to be doing anything — it just does it, sort of like von Richthofen giving a quick demonstration on how to shoot down a French barrage balloon without wasting a lot of time or energy. There's a cool perfection here that's stunning.
Soon after climbing behind the wheel of the $194,700 Mercedes on a rural valley road full of sweepers, hairpins and undulations, I realized that I could drive the SL65 faster and with less effort than any other car here, humming from point A to B like a big hefty electron flowing smoothly through a wire. A thick, beefy wire that could light up a city.
Part of it is the engine. This is a 6.0-liter twin-turbo V-12 that cranks out 604 very smooth and accessible horsepower — with a mind-boggling 738 lb.-ft. of torque on tap from 2000 to 4000 rpm. As with the Bentley, there's no old-school waiting around for the turbos to do their thing. They're always ready to prod that big V-12 past the apparent limitations of physics and throw your 4555-lb. car down the road with startling immediacy. Mated to a seamless, crisp-shifting 5-speed automatic transmission that can be paddle-shifted or left in Drive (or switched to a Sport mode) and a multi-disc limited-slip rear end, this whole driveline works as a harmonious single piece to get the job done.
Mercedes' ABC (Active Body Control) suspension provides a civilized and supple ride while eliminating body roll and brake dive, and the effect is a combination of serenity and absolute leech-like grip in the corners. A few of our editors who have track-tested this system don't like it much, criticizing its slightly artificial feel and poor early-warning feedback for the approaching limits of grip. That may be, but on public roads you have to drive this thing like a maniac before any limits are reached. And the local grape-growers and farmers don't like it much when you do.
For all that insular suspension technology, the steering is surprisingly live, with good feedback. The car slices accurately through corners, and the immense cast-iron brake rotors haul it down quickly and safely when a stack of pallets falls off a vineyard truck.
Add the usual sumptuous Mercedes interior with wood, leather and aluminum trim, great seats and that patented block-of-titanium solidness, and this is one of the world's most impressive conveyances. Not quite as visceral to operate — in the traditional sense — as some of the other cars here, but the SL65 makes its own charisma, a beautifully integrated hyperkinetic perfection.
Conclusion
In an episode of "A Prairie Home Companion" several years ago, Garrison Keillor had the Lutheran minister and his wife from Lake Wobegone on a vacation in Italy, taking a tour of Rome. When they came out of the Vatican, the minister's wife turned to him and said, "How come the Catholics got the Sistine Chapel and we Lutherans got the plaster praying hands?"
Philosophically and financially, these cars may not make much more sense than the Sistine Chapel did in its own troubled age, but we're still glad that somebody made them. And quite happy to go on a tour.
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