From the August 2005 issue of Car and Driver.
The makers of the world’s greatest sports cars probably should not seek alternative employment in stockbrokerage. It seems like every time we get a bumper crop of fabulous new supercars from the purveyors of these highly desirable vehicles, it coincides with a weakening global economy.
Maybe that’s how it works. Ferrari, Aston Martin, and others see a booming economy and immediately set to work on a gloriously indulgent new coupe or convertible, only to have the ticker numbers steadily decline during the car’s development period. By the date of the new car’s introduction, everyone has cashed out of the market and is sitting tight for a new administration to change the picture.
For the ultra-rich, protected from market vacillations by eight-figure assets, this matters less. Ask Jay Leno, who continues to collect cars with enthusiasm. Or Steve Knappenberger, owner of Porsche Santa Barbara (www.sbautogroup.com), who saved this giant street-racer shootout from certain impossibility when he lent us a Ferrari F430 after our anticipated test car was T-boned at a New Jersey intersection by a driver running a red light. Knappenberger also provided us with a Porsche 911 Turbo S cabrio when the Porsche fleet managers pronounced no test cars were available.
That’s what you call real generosity, folks. Most Ferrari owners don’t permit strangers within spitting distance of their swell cars. This guy let us put his personal silver F430 through all the hard tests we run for comparisons. Ferrari North America and Porsche Cars North America owe him big time, and so do we, so thanks, Steve.
The basis of this comparison was simple. Assemble the latest crop of sub-200K high-powered sports cars, and see how the various flavors titillate the editorial palate. To get an idea of how strong those flavors are in this group, consider the fact that the car with the least horsepower among them is the Porsche 911 Turbo S, with 444.
Proceeding alphabetically, the Aston Martin DB9 is the latest addition to Aston’s three-model lineup, flaunting a svelte new shape in aluminum and enjoying thrust from a 449-hp V-12 driving through a six-speed automatic with paddle-operated manual override. Slathered in beautiful leather and wood, the Aston offers the best of classic British opulence at an all-inclusive price of $164,500. But they’re not easy to come by-ordering a DB9 coupe in the U.S. involves a four-month wait, and it’ll be a year for the convertible Volante. Perhaps 600 of a 1500-car worldwide production run will be sold here this year.
The F430 is the newest of Ferrari’s hot-selling mid-engined models, now packing 483 horsepower from a 4.3-liter V-8 and a sleek new shape from the artists at Pininfarina. Although there is some carry-over of basic components from the beloved 360 Modena, the execution has made the F430 feel like something quite special. This car was a new experience for a number of us, and its performance was as startling as its $191,225 as-tested price. Not that you can buy one for that amount.
No test of this kind would be complete without the Ford GT. After all, it emerged victorious in all performance categories in our three-car challenge of January 2004. And almost all the automakers featured here have competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans—the race for which the Ford GT’s progenitor was specifically designed. Were it not for the presence of the Lamborghini Gallardo in this group, this could almost be a rematch. With a potent, supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 doling out 550 horsepower, the Ford GT is pretty much in its own league for its $156,945 price-second lowest in this group.
Anyone owning a Saeco espresso maker will attest to the benefit of a joint German/Italian engineering exercise. You get Italian flavor with German technology, and isn’t that the best of both worlds? Lamborghini’s Gallardo is something like that, with its Audi-sourced body shell (from the A8 plant in Gyor, Hungary) and Italian-tuned engine and chassis. The evolution of the original Gandini-designed wedge concept seen in the Diablo and Murciélago (revised in the Gallardo by Luc Donckerwolke) is pretty flawless in fit and finish, and the 493-hp V-10 trumpets its theme like the horn section at La Scala. And at a base price of $177,600, the Gallardo is, comparatively speaking, an affordable Lambo.
Mercedes’s SL65 AMG is a powerful combination of luxury and horsepower. Call it the rocket-assisted limo in this group. Replete with every luxury gadget in the Mercedes arsenal-including a power convertible hardtop-and weighing in at 4480 pounds as a result, the SL65 shrugs off the mass when its 604-hp twin-turbo V-12 answers the call. Although it is the second-most-expensive car in the group—$189,970, as tested—the AMG-modified SL works just fine as an everyday driver.
Finally, as a perfect example of how the world turns, we have Porsche’s 911 Turbo S cabriolet. A coupe would have suited this comparison better, but a cabrio was all Knappenberger had on hand. Even with an engine upgraded in “S” spec to 444 horsepower as a result of higher turbocharger boost pressure, the venerable Swabian sports car tails this field in output as well as alphabetical placement. The Turbo model still uses the previous-generation body design and interior, but it remains a highly desirable car. For 2005, ceramic-composite brakes are fitted as standard equipment.
That’s the lineup. This is how we rated them.
5th Place (tie): Aston Martin DB9
This new car from Aston Martin is a peculiar mix of gentility and macho manliness. Endowed with a sculpted aluminum shape that stops the masses in their tracks and a silky 5.9-liter V-12 that snarls like a vintage Le Mans racer, the car has street presence in spades.
It also has an interior that is as carefully tailored as a Savile Row suit, with flawless leather hides, lovely contours, and handsome wood accents. With 449 horsepower on tap and a broad torque delivery, the Aston DB9 feels like a very fast car—until you get to the drag strip and find these other guys lined up, too. Then, the DB9’s 13.2-second quarter-mile is about a second off the pace.
Will the stalwart pillars of the community who aspire to these cars care about that? Probably not. The Aston will strafe the fast lane with the best of them. And if you restrain your street-racer instincts a little in the mountains, the DB9 also makes a pleasing high-speed tourer. But it doesn’t like being hurried in the twisties, and it works best with a smooth, deliberate driving demeanor.
Chassis calibrations seemed a bit paradoxical to us, with relatively high spring rates producing a fairly gnarly ride, yet there was noticeable roll gain in corners. Every participating editor noted the car felt heavy and a bit ponderous. Even so, it beat the stability-control-managed AMG SL65 in our lane-change test, despite the slowest lap time at the Streets of Willow, 0.6 second behind the Porsche.
The controls seem unusually heavy for a car of this caliber, with a steering wheel that was hard to pull off-center and was always resistant to quick inputs. Ditto the brake pedal, which was wooden in feel and took considerable pressure to produce strong retardation. Although the six-speed automatic transmission did a fair job of emulating a paddle-shift manual—with a taut step-off and snappy upshifts courtesy of its tight torque converter and quick lockup—the transmission fluid overheated several times in hot conditions when driven hard, flashing a warning light and defaulting to higher gears, where it ignored requests from the paddles.
As one editor noted, on its own, this car feels great. It’s the fast company it kept in this test that highlighted its shortcomings.
In aesthetic terms, the DB9 is a delight. It surrounds the occupants with a sense of well-being and privilege. But we did find a few ergonomic contradictions. For one, the tachometer needle rotates in a counterclockwise direction. Also, although the pushbutton transmission selectors mounted high on the dash were easy to see and use, many of the secondary switches are small pushbuttons in the silver-tone center console. The tiny white pictographs and script are extremely hard to see against the silver background and certainly will be so for the bifocaled, middle-aged clientele we believe are the likely customers for this car.
Our final complaint was about the air conditioning, which struggled to provide a comfortable ambience in the admittedly hot conditions of our test and then would quit temporarily when the engine temperature began to climb. Perhaps these are signs that we were asking too much of this neoclassic chunk of British tradition. If we’d driven like gentlemen, maybe none of this would have happened.
2005 Aston Martin DB9 GT
449-hp V-8, 6-speed automatic, 4040 lb
Base/as-tested price: $164,500/$164,500
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.8 sec
1/4 mile: 13.2 @ 111 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 168 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.90 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 12 mpg
5th Place (tie): Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG
Anyone driving the SL65 for the first time will report back—probably with big eyes—that the thing accelerates as if it had a military ramjet in the back. But the real story with this car is that it is intended as a high-speed luxury convertible capable of hauling you and your luggage to your vacation home in comfort and relative quiet.
The thrust available from this 604-hp monster with 738 pound-feet of torque is its calling card, and it helps the SL65 keep up with nimbler cars in the mountains, where its 4480-pound weight starts working against it. The Benz isn’t particularly ill-mannered in the hills, understand, it just won’t be jammed into corners. Even with the active roll-control system switched to sport, the SL65’s large mass produces understeer, and the driver is soon admonished by the electronic stability program (ESP) to back off. As boss Csere noted, the rule here is: slow in, fast out.
You can tighten the line during moderately fast cornering by simply giving the Benz some gas. Our editors quibbled about steering quality in this car, but most felt that although the effort was light, the mechanism produced accurate results. In character with the rest of the car, refinement takes precedence over involvement.
Nonetheless, the car’s skidpad performance was respectable at 0.92 g, as was its lane-change speed of 69.1 mph—faster than the Porsche 911 Turbo S, despite the fact that the ESP cannot be disabled entirely. Or perhaps because of it. The integration of the various electronic systems has been meticulously engineered to save overly enthusiastic drivers from themselves.
The sound the V-12 makes as it comes on boost is an extraordinary blend of mechanical and pneumatic acoustics—a giant, percussive whoosh as the engine pins you back in your seat between 2000 rpm and the 6000 redline, in every gear. Check out the passing-acceleration figures. Even counting the downshift that greets a big prod at the pedal, a 2.3-second 50-to-70-mph time speaks of being able to pass anything, anytime.
Ironically, our acceleration results are slower than expected, even though the car meets the factory claims for zero-to-60 times. That may be due to the intense heat (over 90 degrees) at our desert test site, where repeated runs had the car’s coolant gauge reaching the top of its scale, whereupon the engine computer cuts boost and probably retards ignition spark, too, for good measure. That slows the SL65 right down.
It did the same thing at the Streets of Willow, where we could record only one lap before an identical situation arose. One look under the hood suggests an explanation. There’s a tightly packed cluster of hot plumbing under there, and engine-bay airflow is clearly not up to the task of scavenging it. Still, we can’t think of anywhere you could use full power for long periods of time in this car in normal circumstances. Except maybe on the autobahn, where high-speed airflow would doubtlessly cure the problem.
Where the SL65 stood apart from the others was in the quiet, smooth way it goes about its business. The others get in your face. This one plays it cool.
2005 Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG
604-hp V-12, 5-speed automatic, 4480 lb
Base/as-tested price: $185,820/$189,970
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.2 sec
1/4 mile: 12.1 @ 120 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 177 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.92 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 12 mpg
4th Place: Porsche 911 Turbo S
This 911 Turbo S may not be the fastest car in the group (with the second-highest power-to-weight ratio after the Aston), but it does boast a convertible top that has been wind-tunnel-tested to 210 mph. That’s comforting in a car that builds speed with the determination this car shows. Despite having the lowest horsepower in this test, the Porsche’s zero-to-60-mph time of 4.0 seconds was second quickest. It would probably have been even faster were it not for the serious rear-wheel hop that occurs just about at the point of maximum hookup.
A concerted high-intensity thrust in each gear is achieved without any fuss and is accompanied by a roar like a jet on full afterburner, with an overlay of that resonant exhaust blare so familiar from 40 years’ worth of racing 911s. Surprisingly, the Turbo S is the third-heaviest car here, due in part to its all-wheel-drive system and steel bodywork. But it never feels anything other than fast and responsive.
Another surprise: The Porsche felt quite lively and communicative. We remember the car’s being almost sterile in comparison to a Ferrari 360 Modena it competed against in an earlier engagement. Perhaps it’s just the passage of years, but the somewhat jiggly ride and tendency to dart off-course at high speed contradicted our earlier impressions. True to Swabian form, the Porsche has taut, well-damped controls and responds best to deliberate inputs.
The proximity of the windshield and the short nose with its prominent fender bulges lend the driver a pleasant sense of intimacy with the car, and even if the dashboard retains that old blob-on-a-log design, its textures and color scheme have been vastly improved. Without the handsome new classmates in this group, the Porsche might seem to be all any enthusiast could wish for.
But there are the inevitable shortcomings of a rear-engine design. We ran the Turbo S through our lane-change test several times with the Porsche Stability Management (PSM) switched on. Once we’d established a baseline, we switched it off. One run with the system off was enough. Although the 911’s handling is much improved these days, especially with all-wheel drive, physics cannot be denied. We could almost match the PSM-conducted runs without electronic supervision, but the car felt spooky. Porsche pro driver Hurley Haywood might have done significantly better, but he wasn’t around at the time.
Similarly, when we ran timed laps at the Streets, we discovered that the car bobs and pitches a fair amount, preferring a slow-in, fast-out cornering strategy. Because the car is set up to quell oversteer, getting back on the power too early causes the 911 to simply push wide.
The best thing about the Porsche is its everyday driving virtues. There are no fussy frills here. The car starts with a key rather than a button — albeit the key slot is left of the wheel—and it performs much like a regular car. You don’t worry about driveway ramps. You can see out the back. There’s enough space for tall drivers, and getting in and out isn’t a limbo dance.
Best of all, in this company the 911 Turbo S seems almost cheap.
2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet
444-hp flat-6, 6-speed manual, 3840 lb
Base/as-tested price: $143,695/$147,435
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.0 sec
1/4 mile: 12.1 @ 117 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 166 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.94 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 14 mpg
3rd Place: Ford GT
Don’t think you can go about your business in a Ford GT and not be noticed. Trust us, you will spend a lot of time acknowledging the gestures of approval from people on the road. Clearly, they like the car, and so do we. After all, what’s not to like about 550 horsepower in an artful recreation of Eric Broadley’s classic design?
This is particularly true when it accommodates drivers of all sizes—helped by a tilting and telescoping steering wheel—and can be driven easily at the first attempt. The idea of a two-seat supercar with 500 pound-feet of torque can be intimidating. The reality is a friendly car with good throttle response, a clutch with a wide span of engagement, and a shifter that moves obediently at your bidding. The whole entity is almost as easy to drive as a Focus.
Simple to drive it may be; it is still a 200-plus-mph car with massive potential. Respect is in order here, even though the Ford showed no evil-handling tendencies anywhere. At the car’s limit of adhesion it would transition benignly into a four-wheel drift, as long as nothing abrupt was done to the throttle or steering. This neutrality helped the GT narrowly edge the Ferrari in the lane-change and track-lapping tests, despite its fractionally lower skidpad number.
Not surprisingly, the Ford was quickest in a straight line in every measured test other than the top-gear intermediates (due to its high gearing and the fact that two other cars here had automatics). It reached 150 mph in 19.1 seconds, beating the 604-hp SL65 by 1.4 seconds.
Although not wanting for power, the Ford could use a little more sound insulation. Or not, depending on your idea of what a sports car should be. The tires transmit a fair bit of road noise into the cabin, banging quite loudly on pavement breaks and drumming vociferously over ripples. Big impacts make their way through the steering column, too, and there’s nearly always a prominent wind gush at the windows. This may have something to do with the way air is angled out of the radiator ducts up front to miss the windshield, done deliberately to improve aerodynamic performance.
On the fast mountain roads of our test route, the GT was magnificent, steering keenly to corner apexes, holding its line with determination, and offering up boatloads of reassuring communication to the driver. Thrust out of corners is naturally copious, even in relatively high gears, so you don’t constantly scramble for the right ratio. Just as well—the brake pedal was too high for dependable heel-and-toe work in the hills. At the track, heavier and more frequent brake applications had the pedal sinking to a useful height for that technique.
You sit low in the Ford, almost buried behind the windshield, and the thick A-pillar (necessary to compensate for roof rigidity lost due to the door cutouts) obstructs the view of shorter drivers. The side mirrors are small and high, and rear vision is a real problem while backing up. Also, when glancing over your shoulder, reflections in the divider glass produce spooky distractions.
These are minor beefs. The Ford GT is all about the essence of a sports car, and this GT is essentially good.
2005 Ford GT
550-hp V-8, 6-speed manual, 3520 lb
Base/as-tested price: $143,345/$156,945
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 3.6 sec
1/4 mile: 12.0 @ 123 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 173 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.94 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 12 mpg
2nd Place: Lamborghini Gallardo
At 8000 rpm in the Lamborghini Gallardo, the exhaust broadcasts a magnificent V-10 fanfare. Where the Aston Martin utters a quintessential staccato bark, the Gallardo trumpets a mostly unbroken timbre. Only occasionally do you hear a warble something like that of the old five-cylinder Audi Quattro rally car.
The sound is entirely in line with the car’s amazing visual presence, which is a wholly updated evolution of the unique Lamborghini look and is pretty spectacular in the pearlescent yellow you see here. Forget about going unnoticed by police and public alike. This is the extrovert’s exotic.
Convenient for the extrovert, then, that the Gallardo works so well as actual transportation. Conventional doors gape wide to provide access, and although the seats are low, reasonably limber drivers and passengers should have no problem getting in. Space is an issue only for very tall drivers, particularly with the manual-transmission model (the so-called e-gear paddle-shift system is a $10,000 option), where you need room to dance on the pedals.
The manual shifter lives in a metal maze in classic tradition and suffers from the clackety-clack action shared by most of those mechanisms. But selections are reasonably quick and positive after a little practice. Acceleration testing brings out the worst of the system and resulted in the death of the clutch after one too many slipped-clutch starts. Thus, our test data are from an e-gear model tested in ’04.
Blame that dead clutch on an otherwise excellent all-wheel-drive system that operates transparently to optimize traction and stabilize handling. Lamborghini says the Gallardo is tuned for initial understeer followed by neutral handling characteristics, and none of us would gainsay that. Although the steering might have a more stolidly Germanic feel than the Italian name might suggest, the Gallardo prompted plenty of praise for its precision and weighting once we took to the mountains.
With less communication than the Ford or Ferrari, the Lambo’s stability during high-speed cornering was more a matter of trust than sensory assurance, but it still made excellent time on our mini-Targa Florio, handicapped more by the visual impediment its A-pillars present to drivers than its handling limitations. Equipped with a variable-volume intake tract as well as variable valve timing, the 5.0-liter V-10 has an excellent torque spread, providing strong thrust throughout the rev range. It is pure aural indulgence to spin the V-10 to its 8100-rpm redline.
This car is not really about practicality. The seats are a little hard for long-distance work, and there’s not much luggage space. But the climate control and other mechanisms are straight out of an Audi and are thus pretty dependable. In fact, the whole package seems durable and well put together. Apart from when backing up—when most of these cars are not in their element—all-around visibility is good for a vehicle with these proportions.
It always comes back to the look of this car, but with that great V-10, modern assembly techniques, and all the updated technology, there’s no doubt this is the best Lamborghini ever.
2005 Lamborghini Gallardo
493-hp V-10, 6-speed automatic, 3520 lb
Base/as-tested price: $177,600/$181,350
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.1 sec
1/4 mile: 12.4 @ 118 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 158 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 1.00 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 10 mpg
1st Place: Ferrari F430
Even in the exalted company this car shared during our search for the perfect sports-car environment, a drive in the F430 was a transcendental experience. This is surely the most interactive high-performance car on the road right now, combining vivid acceleration, sensational engine sounds, razor-sharp steering, and lucid feedback in one charismatic package.
Having driven the 360 Modena variants, we expected the F430 to be good, but all of us were flat blown away by how good it is. From the moment you turn the red-fobbed key and thumb the red wheel-mounted start button, the pleasure trip starts. There’s a whoop from the flat-crank V-8 as it bursts into vigorous life, then a hearty throb as it settles to an idle.
From as little as 2500 rpm, the Ferrari surges forward with real urgency, gaining revs fast until it is seeking the 8500-rpm redline with a long, loud snarl. If you fail to shift in time, the F430 does it for you with a fast, firm gear swap, and right at redline.
The F1 paddle-shift system is much improved over the previous generation, both in speed and smoothness, but full-throttle shifts are still fast and occasionally abrupt. You can find some back-and-forth driveline shuffle, too, at moderate speeds if you’re tentative with the controls.
The car feels light and stiff, and it responds quickly and accurately to movements at the steering wheel. Although firmly suspended, the Ferrari’s chassis damps sharp edges off most bumps, and it keeps the ride flat and devoid of all but small body movements. You hear and feel big bumps as single, muted impacts with no reverberation.
Out on the fabulous mountain roads we found near Knappenberger’s dealership, the F430 was a sheer delight, turning in like a kart, clinging to the line (at 0.96 g) with a clearly transmitted sense of what the contact patches are doing, and blasting out on a clean burst of sound, the V-8 yelling like a modern inline-four sport bike in full voice.
It’s hard to explain exactly how well the Ferrari is integrated. It’s like a perfectly fitted glove. It goes where you merely suggest it go. It encourages faster corner entries than you would have anticipated, and it builds the driver’s confidence, with some initial understeer giving way to a touch of throttle-induced oversteer at corner exits. That the interior is a pleasantly arranged space with plenty of room and a natural driving position is just sauce on the pudding. The F430 even swallows a fair bit of luggage.
Because U.S.-bound F430s are not equipped with Euro-spec launch control, our car was put through its paces with a normal launch, using comparatively low revs as the clutch engaged. So our 60-mph and quarter-mile figures are not as quick as those of the car tested in Italy by tech editor Aaron Robinson in January. The F430 is still scary fast and utterly seductive. The only quibbles were about its styling, and nobody liked the imperative warning beeps. Other than that, our judgment was unanimous: This is the world’s most desirable sports car, bar none.
2005 Ferrari F430
483-hp V-8, 6-speed automatic, 3380 lb
Base/as-tested price: $180,785/$191,225
C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 4.1 sec
1/4 mile: 12.5 @ 116 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 162 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: .96 g
C/D observed fuel economy: 11 mpg
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