The morning after the night before, between full Welsh breakfasts and strong cups of coffee, we mull over our top three, and the missed opportunities that might have been. Everyone agrees that the Vanquish is possibly the finest Aston ever built. Yet context is critical, and the Ferrari hammers it, doing the loping GT stuff just as well, then morphing into a ballistic supercar the Brit can’t match. The F12 gives the Lamborghini the same bruising working over: the Aventador looks and sounds and accelerates like a true supercar, but it’s the front-engined Ferrari that actually drives like a supercar should. The brilliance of the red Italian sends two good cars towards the bottom of our order.
_rt.jpg)
And it’s the 911 GT3 and 12C Spider that squeeze two mid-engined masterpieces, the R8 and the Cayman, out of the top three. The Audi was a last-minute addition to this test, yet until the last minute Ben Barry and I both had it on our top three, only to bump it down for the superior McLaren. And as exquisitely balanced as the Cayman is (Gavin Green declares it ‘the world’s best value supercar’ and puts it first) the 911 GT3 shows up its curiously numb steering.
The 12C leaves with the bronze medal. It’s incredibly impressive, the chassis stiff but the ride still fluent on challenging roads, the steering superb and the twin-turbo V8 providing an almighty punch. ‘It’s nuanced, brisk, talented and understated, a truly superb supercar,’ says Ben Whitworth. Steve Moody is smitten too: ‘You can’t call it soulless, because there are a lot of emotions involved when you can do light speed. Fear is the main one.’
It’s not impeccable though, Ben Barry declaring the throttle response too tardy, and Gavin Green reckons the 4.5-litre V8 out of the Ferrari 458 would make it ‘the world’s best fast car.’
_rt.jpg)
You find faults when you truly push the 12C, whereas you find perfection when you do the same with the F12. At first it feels unwieldy, nothing like as alive and intoxicating as the smaller 458, but come the first corner taken at speed the quick steering pivots the long nose with a delicacy and precision you just weren’t expecting from a big GT, and thereafter the Ferrari gets better and better. It’s devastating on open roads, and shrinks around you on twisting Tarmac, that imperious V12 just ramping up and up and up as the F12 does some quite incredible things. ‘It has an insane amount of power, but the handling is so delicate,’ says Ben Oliver. ‘This is Ferrari showing off.’ And if it wasn’t for the finest Porsche 911 ever, it would be our winner…
_rt.jpg)
GT3, huh? The hardcore 911 that no longer has a manual gearbox or a race-bred engine, just feedback-destroying electric steering? Yes, that one, and after the first brief drive I had it down in my notepad as the winner, as did Ben Barry, Ben Oliver, Steve Moody… pretty much everyone.
_rt.jpg)
The steering doesn’t communicate quite as vividly as the last GT3, but much of what the latest 911 Carrera filters out, the Porsche Motorsport R&D team has put back in, and threading it through corners via the thin Alcantara-trimmed wheel is an immersive delight. The new 3.8-litre flat-six is epic too, with the same chuntering idle as the previous Mezger-engined GT3s, yet it’s even more hyper-responsive. It perhaps doesn’t howl quite as hard as before, but it has an altogether different personality with a stratospheric 9000rpm redline that takes real balls to access. Second and third (and fourth if there’s space) are devastating gears, and you’ll be amazed at how hard the PDK gearbox punches through the changes, how good the short-travel paddleshifters feel, and how you don’t miss a clutch pedal.
_rt.jpg)
The GT3’s still small enough to tackle every road, and it’s nimble and agile thanks to the rear-wheel steering that never corrupts the driving experience. The extra chassis compliance is welcome too, lending composure on roads where its predecessor would start to struggle.
Is it better than the last 911 GT3? We’re not completely sure. We still love the 997 GT3’s truculent gearbox, its legendary engine and feelsome steering, but the new GT3 does things differently. It’s less uncompromising, yet none of the GT3’s essence or character has been sacrificed, and although it’s perhaps no more special to drive than before, it’s definitely no worse either – and with a wider breadth of ability that means it’s pretty damn incredible. The McLaren’s steering is better, the Ferrari’s dual-clutch gearbox sharper, but as an overall package nothing tops the 911 GT3. Among our testers, the verdict is pretty much unanimous, even Cayman-loving Gavin Green admitting: ‘It’s the best 911. Ever.’
_rt.jpg)
Ben Oliver welcomed you to this test, so I’ll leave the last words to him: ‘After 50 years of development, the new GT3 makes the 911 officially perfect.’
Words: Ben Pulman Photography: Charlie Magee & Richard Pardon