CAR’s Sports Car Giant Test (2013)

Welcome to CAR’s 2013 Sports Car Giant Test. Over four parts, we’ll bring you the definitive group test to decide the best performance car we’ve driven this year. Over to Ben Oliver for introductions…

I worry about the effect these tests have on other road users. A couple of times every hour, another Zafira or C-Max would come around the corner and its occupants would be confronted with the sight of our eleven candy-coloured cars parked by the side of an otherwise deserted, grey-green Welsh mountain road, looking as if they’d been beamed there from a motor show. Dad, driving, would wobble over the white line and there’d be at least one kid with his face pressed hard against the side window in shock and awe as the car passed.

Kid, we share your excitement. Some of us (Gavin Green) have been writing about supercars for CAR for 30 years (he started aged 12) but the thrill never lessens. ‘When I was 14,’ said Steve Moody, motioning to his Crunchie bar and the cars around us, ‘this was pretty much all I wanted.’

Chocolate aside, there is a degree of self-indulgence here: we haven’t picked these cars with any science, but have simply invited the performance cars launched within the last year that we most wanted to drive again, over the same roads, and from them vote a winner. We don’t feel obliged to have every fast-car category represented: there are no hi-po saloons or estates, for example. There are few direct rivals, although the less obvious comparisons can be the more instructive. Can the McLaren 12C justify its £70k premium over the Audi R8 V10 Plus with the same configuration and two more cylinders?

The Mercedes A45 AMG might have 128bhp more than the Golf GTI Performance, but when it requires four-wheel drive and another 143kg and £10k, is it really worthwhile?

And can anything compete with the Ford Fiesta ST, which at £17,995 is expensive for a Fiesta but very cheap for a car that delivers this much simple excitement? We’re not concerned with price here, but we are with value. Buy an eighteen-grand car that drives as well as one at twice the price and you feel like a genius. A £300k car will (almost) always be more visually and viscerally exciting, but if it gets shafted by a £100k car you’ll feel like a dunce. That’s how a Fiesta competes with a Ferrari, and if you think we’re just trying to sound pious as we half-run towards the open door of the Aventador, I’ll tell you now that each tester’s ranking was remarkably consistent, and our final order bears no relation to price.

Welcome, then, to our snapshot of the performance car, 2013. With five of the 11 using forced induction, steering often muted by electric assistance, and attention-seeking exhausts to dial the excitement and involvement back in, there are clear changes and common themes here. Not all of them are welcome, and some are sure to be more noticeable next time we do this. But of all the fast cars we drove this year, these were our favourites. We hope the following communicates the excitement of finding out which was our favourite of all…

Ben Barry takes up the story…

The F-Type rolls to a stop in a quiet layby and I knock off the supercharged V8 so only its hot tick-ticking breaks the silence and the sickly stench of wilting brake pads fills the air. It’s late and I’m hungry and my face is flushed with sunburn and tiredness. But I want one more run. One more chance to hear the Jag’s thunderous V8 rip the air, to feel its rear end arc through corners. And to make sure that I’m completely happy that one of the best, most extrovert sports cars of the year is about to finish this test mid-pack. Engine on, traction off, paddles to manual…

Three days earlier and I leave Peterborough for Wales in the Porsche Cayman S with designer Matt Tarrant. We’re on our way to meet some proper big-boys stuff – Ferrari F12, 911 GT3, Lamborghini Aventador Roadster, McLaren 12C Spider – so a chance to warm up in what is probably the benchmark affordable sports car suits me fine, a reality check before trying to tell you that you need £200k to have fun. A few miles on local back roads confirm that you absolutely don’t, that for £49k you can get a car that’s not only going to give some of the richer stuff a hard time, but rub their noses in the dirt to boot.

It’s the sensory stuff that a Cayman does so well: the flat-six’s crisp responsiveness and its seemingly unending appetite for revs, the oily gearchange and pedal weights; the way it feels busier on the road than a 911 Carrera, more in touch with the surface; how its limits are much more liberal, so you can work those tyres and feel like you’re getting everything out of them without going berserk. The Cayman is so nicely balanced that breaching its limits is never scary, so well resolved that the traction control rarely intervenes, even if you are pushing hard. Cruise about and you’ll still appreciate how special it feels.

Okay, so it could punch harder down low and the steering is eerily sterile given the tactility that floods from every other interface, but there’s only one other car for this money and even more money that can challenge the little Porsche coupe and that’s a little Porsche convertible. You’ll drive away from the dealership thinking they’ve scanned the wrong barcode.

I’m already convinced the Porsche is a contender, but there are ten more cars to drive, and the small matter of Ben Whitworth pressing his immaculate shirts on the south coast while he waits for a new 911 GT3 to be shipped across The Channel. It’s a fascinating prospect: could we actually prefer a Cayman to a twice-the-price 911? Does Mr Whitworth really have a shirt to match every car?
Over-enthusiasm means we’re early to meet the others at the BP garage near the Welsh border – the last stop before the search for 97 octane becomes a Mad Max death race and phone signals wither – and the workers at the hand car-wash quickly gather around. Nice car, they say, eagerly dipping into their buckets. Then a flare of revs crackles in the distance and soon heads are spinning as the F-type lines up behind. Then a Ferrari. Then an Aston. Then a Lambo. The fuel station goes into meltdown, passers-by parking up wherever they please, smartphones clicking, strangers incessantly demanding stat-based information while the 13 of us try to form a plan. The Cayman remains half-clean.

It’s time to slip into something less conspicuous, so I grab the Fiesta ST’s keys and set out to re-familiarise myself with these roads. Besides, Steve Moody looks happy chatting to those builders.
If you’re cynical you could say the Fiesta ST is a sop to balance all the top-end stuff, like the token Hollywood black man who’ll bite the dust long before the credits roll. Not a chance: the ST is as likely to be killed off early as Will Smith. After the Cayman you’re aware of how upright you’re sitting and that the dash is cheap and that the whole car feels far less together, but the Fiesta is riotous fun and – despite these roads being fast and empty – never feels too slow or under-braked.

It’s just one of those cars that comes along once in a while and transcends its humble origins to feel inherently right, something that even its big brother – the Focus ST – can’t pull off.
The engine is zesty, the brakes strong, the steering deftly weighted, the front end bitey, the rear end slidey. If you’re on a budget and you want to experience the thrills served up by the toppy stuff, the ST is your gateway to that otherwise inaccessible world.

>> Click here to read Part Two of CAR’s 2013 Sports Car Giant Test

Words: Ben Oliver & Ben Barry Photography: Charlie Magee & Richard Pardon