Coxxson | Pexxxxx xx
Our favourites | Review
Impress
GANG The class of 2014 has been diverse and packed with talent. So which cars stand out? Relying on blind prejudice, 10 testers name their favourites of the year — and the turkeys PHOTOGRAPHY luc lacEy 50 AUTOCAR.CO.Uk 26 SEPTEMBER 2012
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Our favourites | Review my 2014 TurKEy
It has the footprint, power and chassis for rapid B-road fun
Ford moNdEo HyBrId I like the new Mondeo very much, but the hybrid is dire. Its tepid mix of Atkinson-cycle petrol engine, electric motor and CVT auto makes a Toyota Prius seem fun. Avoid.
rICHard BrEmNEr
BmW M235i HOw MuCH DOES 0.9sec mean to you? Quite a lot, perhaps, if it’s serious performance cars we’re talking about. But is it worth an extra £25,000? Perhaps not, especially if the time difference is set by two cars offering much the same recipe. This year we compared a £34,260 BMw M235i with the £59,145 BMw M4 (and a £58,950 Alpina B4 besides) and determined that the least expensive machine was best, not merely because of the price difference but also because it is easier and more enjoyable to toy with the M235i at its grip limit. That’s what an M car should be about, and what the M4 doesn’t quite manage to deliver. But enough of comparisons, because the M235i is about a lot more than enjoying 90 per cent of an M4 for 58 per cent of the price; this is an old-school entertainer of a BMw. And these are rare machines among the mass of SuVs, diesel saloons, hatchbacks and even MPVs that an ever-enlarging BMw now offers. Its M135i hatch is another
NIC CaCKETT
Jaguar F-type R coupe
my 2014 TurKEy rits make the best villains, Jaguar told us this year. Its A-list-acted ad campaign – intended, of course, to make a splash Stateside during giant, turgid pauses in the Superbowl – appeared a little forced and lacking in selfawareness when it crossed back over the pond. And then, in The Art of Villainy with Tom Hiddleston, it was almost immediately banned for encouraging irresponsible driving. Not an auspicious start, but the theme, created by in-house agency Spark44, was absolutely spot on. Having driven the F-type R coupé around the block, there isn’t an ad
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man in the world who wouldn’t have returned to the office without something like The Art of Villainy taking shape in his head. That’s because although most expensive sports cars have an element of caddishness about them, this 542bhp coupé is so theatrically loud, so lecherously beautiful and perversely fast that its appeal really does seem to verge on the felonious. Done by anyone else, such a car would risk being pantomimic and silly – an oafish, look-behind-you V8 baddie to be booed and barracked – but because it’s a Jaguar, it’s not. It is, in fact, very much more like Tom
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Hiddleston reciting Shakespeare’s Richard II straight to the camera in a £1000 suit: dark-hearted, devilish and knowingly captivating. Certainly, it’ll have made a villain of you before you can say ‘blessed plot’. The Advertising Standards Authority was mostly concerned about the commercial’s portrayal of excessive speed. How fortunate that the Vehicle Certification Agency doesn’t take the same view, because, to drive, the R’s eightcylinder propaganda machine would have your grandma twiddling her moustache and pulling doughnuts. Managing the supercharged
V8 is challenging. Not because it’s particularly hard to drive slowly, but because it is so easy and intoxicating to drive that bit quicker than you should. Think of it like taking off from Heathrow in an RAF Typhoon: sure, you could ease to 35,000ft like an Airbus, but it would be a helluva lot more fun to go near-vertical the moment you’ve cleared the runway. It’s this anti-social influence, whirling and throbbing from the quad pipes with spit and fire, that makes a malfeasant of the R coupé – just as it makes it my favourite car of the year by some distance. Not because I enjoy sliding my licence
across the table like a stack of chips every time I get into it, but because I never feel let down or disappointed or unmoved when I get out of it. Ever. And that’s despite the fact that the car is obviously not perfect. Only Jaguar could tune a dynamic suspension setting that’s more comfortable than the default mode or be quite so dismissive about traction in the wet or fail so conspicuously to eliminate creaks and squeaks from the cabin. But that’s beside the point. If it were completely without blemish, that would suggest respectability and saintliness. No, thank you. Better the R be good at being bad.
mErCEdEs-BENz B220 CdI 4maTIC sporT It does not deserve the ‘Mercedes-Benz’ or ‘Sport’ badges. It’s ugly and uncouth. It rides like a mule and its cabin is barely as inviting as those costing half its excessive price.
Bremner is drawn by its old-school BMW feel. But who isn’t?
sporting gem, but the M235i shines brighter, mainly because it’s your traditional, coupé-like two-door saloon. This car has its genetic roots in classics like the original E30 M3 and even the 2002 tii of the 1970s. Because the M235i is smaller than the M4, it instantly feels more usable; on narrow roads, shorter, narrower cars are quicker, simply because they leave you more wiggle room. Its relative lack of bulk encourages you to drive it harder. And so does a turbocharged straight six whose throttle is so sharp that you’ll barely know this engine is pressure-charged at all, its substantial stream of urge emerging mere moments above idle. At which point you’ll enjoy the mechanical music of the supersmooth straight six, and with an arresting crack of high-rev rort. More than that, your discovery that this BMw is distinctly quick will erupt almost as quickly the machine itself, which smashes
62mph in 5.0sec dead in manual form. That’s only 0.9sec behind the M4, of course. You have more than enough power, most of the time. which applies whether you choose a six-speed manual or an eight-speed automatic, both excellent. But the allure of this car is about a lot more than horsepower. It’s about balance. The balance of power and grip, of performance and economy, of space and size, of ride and handling, of agility and stability, of roar and refinement. It’s a high scorer on every count, making it satisfying to live with and easier to justify to yourself. That leaves your mind – and body – free to enjoy the tactile and aural delights of a chassis, powertrain and steering gear that deliver deliciously delicate, high-precision drifts at the limit, darting agility while you get there and a ride quality rivalling cars far less exciting. The M235i is among the most satisfyingly complete, real-world sports cars out there.
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Our favourites | Review
HIltOn HOllOway
PORSCHE MACAN t’s hard to imagine that car makers could dream up yet another new type of car. But Porsche has managed to wrestle out another niche vehicle, one that really does rewrite the rulebook and offer a genuinely new – and extremely impressive – driving experience. The glib summary would be to call the Macan a Cayman on stilts, but that would fail to do justice to how exceptionally clever Porsche has been with the conception and execution of this car. When news first emerged that Porsche was working on a baby sister for the fantastically successful Cayenne and that it was loosely based on the Audi Q5, there was concern. Would Porsche really adapt the natively frontwheel-drive Audi in the way that it had adapted the Volkswagen Touareg to create the Cayenne? I was at the Porsche technical seminar where the Macan was first unveiled and I remember being bowled over by the audacity of Porsche’s engineers, who had simply fitted a proper rear-wheel transmission into the architecture. It means that the longwaysmounted engine is well back in the engine bay and, in normal situations, 80 per cent of the engine’s torque is sent to the rear wheels. Power for the front wheels is taken off the Macan’s
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my 2014 tuRkEy
PEugEOt 108 I know that building a profitable city car is a near-thankless task, but the 108 is just a hopelessly cheapened, cramped and coarse means of transport.
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transmission and piped forwards by a supplementary propshaft. That’s as much as you need to know about the Macan’s technical layout because, for driving dynamics, it is effectively ideal. The weight of the engine and transmission is closer to the centre of the car and most of the engine’s wallop goes to the rear wheels. But the second part of the Macan’s conceptual genius would have been much less easy to pin down at that technical seminar. The driving position is so brilliantly crafted that piloting this car along, say, a fast, sweeping country A-road becomes a genuinely new type of driving experience. There are two main reasons for this. First, the way that the driver sits in the Macan is uncannily sports carlike, especially the stretched-leg position. Second – and this really makes the Macan a special place to be – there is the position of the ‘H-point’. The hip point (measured from the ground) is always in the same position, no matter the size of the driver, and it has been positioned to perfection on the Macan. Not SUV high, but high enough to work perfectly with the sports car driving position. It all adds up to this: the Macan handles with extraordinary verve and imparts the kind of driving pleasure that no SUV has a right to deliver. The first roundabout that you encounter – which the Macan skates through flatly with no more than a couple of wrist flicks from the driver – tells you what to expect on more challenging roads. In diesel form, it is super-quick and very frugal. On the open road, the combination of the view ahead and the Macan’s agility and pace makes it a superb car for achieving rapid and safe progress. To date, I haven’t driven a car that so brilliantly harnesses utility, sports car agility and long-range comfort. I suppose you might say that it’s a bit like a Cayman SUV…
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Our favourites | Review
maTT prior
bmw i8 T he email’s preview pane had scarcely disappeared from my computer screen before I had replied to it. It read: “Can you nominate your favourite car of the year?” Within seconds I’d written
my 2014 Turkey
NissaN QashQai Nothing wrong with the Qashqai. Of course there isn’t. It’s just that I still don’t really get it. Want an SUV? Buy an SUV. Want a family hatch? Buy a family hatch.
back: “BMW i8”, knowing that if I didn’t, somebody else – everybody else – would beat me to it. Why is it my favourite? The i8 isn’t the fastest or most rewarding car I’ve driven this year. I like light, simple cars that handle predictably and are dynamically engaging. Cars like the Lotus 2-Eleven, Caterham Seven Supersport and Porsche 911 GT3 have the attributes that usually top my personal wish list. The i8 isn’t like any of those. It isn’t simple, for a start. That it has a Mini Cooper engine at one end and a pair of electric motors at the other sees to that. And because of those, its dynamic reward is slightly limited, too. This is a car that handles differently depending on whether its batteries are charged, in which case it understeers quite a lot, or
Prior had to be quick off the mark to bag BMW’s i8 for himself empty, in which case it is slower but understeers not at all. Objectively, to a dynamics purist like me, that should make it about as appealing as a radio that won’t broadcast Test Match Special on one randomly selected day from each test. But somehow it doesn’t matter, because the i8 is just so interesting.
Interesting to look at? Of course. No other mid-engined 2+2 looks as good. Admittedly, that’s a limited field, for the very sound reason that it’s hard to package a mid-engined 2+2 and make it look good. The fact that the i8 has one of the most compelling (and not the least bit awkward) stances of any modern
car makes it an aesthetic triumph. Interesting to sit in? Undoubtedly. Some of our testers thought that it didn’t veer far enough from the BMW norm, especially when compared with the i3, but it hits just the right note for me. Interesting to drive? Yes, and not only for the wrong reasons. Because if you leave its outright handling alone – and to be fair, even though it’s no Porsche 911, that isn’t so bad – the i8 is a fine GT car. It steers with oily slickness and smoothness, it rides soundly, its electric motors fill the considerable torque gap in the heavily turbocharged engine’s delivery, making it quick to respond to the throttle, and its refinement and stability are of the first order. But, more than anything, it is just interesting to study, to be around, to spend time adoring and admiring. Everywhere you turn, there is a detail to be savoured. Every time you fill it with fuel, there is surprise at how little it asks for. And every time you glance at it, you know you’re looking at a car that is a shooin not just for this year’s shortlist, but any other year in history’s, too. The i8 is a car we’ll remember, and remember well, in half a century.
It’s very respectable on the move and immensely practical
maTT sauNders
Ford Tourneo ConneCT I’vE BEEN TO Colin Goodwin’s house. It’s lovely, but it doesn’t have a driveway, so he’ll be waiting an awfully long time to charge his Tesla Model S from an extension reel. Meanwhile, Matt Prior’s horsebox won’t look quite as right towed behind a shiny new BMW i8 as it does behind his Land Rover Defender. Chas Hallett would end up so protective of the cabin of his beautiful Roller that he’d probably make his eight-year-old lad put on a zorbing ball before he got in. These, much as I like them, are not realworld cars. Unlike the Ford Tourneo Connect, which might be the best real-world car I’ve driven in years. If it wasn’t a van, that is. There is no denying it. But it’s a better-handling van – a proper European Ford in most dynamic departments. Incredible hardworking practicality and value for money would be the reasons you’d buy one, of course. But next to utilitarian rivals that often aren’t even very pleasant to drive, never mind engaging or interesting, the
my 2014 Turkey
Ford ecosporT I don’t think that Ford has launched a worse car than the Indian-built EcoSport in a long time. It’s ugly, coarse, slow and well below class standards for ride and handling.
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The back seats and rear windows don’t hide the van origins
Tourneo ends up selling itself on its unlikely dynamism almost as hard. Here’s the figure that matters: 2410 litres. That’s how much carrying capacity this vehicle has, loaded to the roof with the back seats taken out. That’s as much as you can squeeze into your typical large family estate car like a Ford Mondeo or Mercedes-Benz E-class, plus a couple of hatchback boot space worths for good measure. The cargo bay is wide, long, tall and square – and that’s the difference between being able to carry really bulky stuff like lounge furniture, trolley barbeques and hardware panels and having to leave them by the kerb. Pushbikes go straight in, wheels on. Spec your Tourneo carefully and it even comes with a folding front passenger seat. Having bought a Tourneo, you wouldn’t ever think twice about using it, either – wherever you were going. The ride is fine. Its steering is hefty, quite direct and consistently
paced and weighted – damn near as creditable a system as you’ll find on a new Ford Focus, really. And the car’s handling is equally creditable. The body control is remarkably good, grip levels are well balanced, and although the long wheelbase prevents you from calling it agile, it’s still a sight more engaging than it has any right to be. Doesn’t make it desirable, of course, but think of this car as one half of a perfect double act. The Tourneo is the kind of car that makes room in your life for an ambitious restoration project, a mad track special or the modern twoseater that you’ve always hankered after. I’m a big believer in spreading your bets when it comes to your domestic motoring: instead of buying that Porsche Macan Turbo, having the Cayman and a cheeky Tourneo to go with it. That way happiness lies. No car can ever do everything, but this one’ll certainly do everything you need.
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Our favourites | Review
colin goodwin
Tesla Model S he Tesla Model S is something completely new and the car from 2014 that has had the greatest impact on me. Actually, the BMW i8 beats the Tesla on that score, but I was pipped to that car… This is how electric cars should be done. I’m not talking (yet) about the Model S’s performance, styling or outside-the-box thinking, but its price. New technology has historically made its debut in expensive cars in which large profits per unit can pay back development costs. The first cars to be fitted with
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my 2014 Turkey
nissan Pulsar Several times a year, I come across a car so dull and uninspiring that the thought of having to write anything about it fills me with dread. This year the Pulsar wins the tomato.
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ABS? The Mercedes-Benz S-class and BMW 7-series in 1978 (or, if you’re being pedantic, the Jensen FF over a decade earlier). It took well over a decade for ABS to migrate to cheap family cars. Electric drive making its debut in a family hatch? The Nissan Leaf never made sense to me. A big carrot has to be dangled to get me to visit any shopping centre, let alone one as big as London’s Westfield Centre. Glowing reports of the new Tesla and growing curiosity steered me to the firm’s Westfield shop and to the keys to the Model S demonstrator that lives in the car park downstairs. Out pop the Tesla’s silver door handles as I walk up to the cherry red car. It’s a P85+, the one with the most power and range. The pop-out door handles are a bit gimmicky and their finish a bit crude, but you have to remind yourself that this car is from a startup company, albeit one backed by a zillionaire with a wacky name. I love the S’s simple interior. There’s only one button (apart from a few on the steering wheel) and that’s the legally required hazard light switch. The gigantic touchscreen
puts all rivals’ infotainment systems into the last century, although the safety of using it on the move is highly questionable. I’m broadminded enough to embrace new powertrain technology, but not enough to abandon the principle of always having your eyes on the road when driving. We head up the M40 to Buckinghamshire with well over 200 miles of range indicated and, as the Model S is due back the same day, no range anxiety. Smooth power delivery is the electric car’s ace card even if there isn’t much power there, like in Volkswagen’s e-Up, but the Tesla has impressive performance and surges forward at a press of the accelerator. The Model S handles tidily but isn’t as dynamically able as the best sports saloons, but then driving it is such a different sensation that it doesn’t really matter. People won’t be buying one of these for track days or to harry BMW M5s around the Nürburgring. Those who buy Teslas are the sort of people who bought Saabs: thinkers and individuals. A bit like Bristol customers but with less disposable. L
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Coxxson | Pexxxxx xx
D N I W D N O C E S the eagerly ds is T G 8 V o b r in-tu ers fin w d t n u w a e S n t ’s t a G M M . Mercedes-A w-up to the mighty SLS is time around awaited follo has truly hit its stride th out if the firm
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Mercedes-AMG GT | Drive A pointy front end is combined with fine stability and traction
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onfidence is an essential but complex factor for the supercar buyer, and it must be courted, massaged and managed very carefully by a company like the freshly baptised Mercedes-AMG and a car like its new GT. It takes supreme confidence in any brand to spend a six-figure sum on an unknown quantity. Something of a leap of faith, perhaps, considering that purchase means backing an outfit that has made only one ground-up-new sports car before, to the exclusion of established heavyweights such as Porsche, Bentley and Aston Martin. Now add to those loaded odds the following factors: the new Mercedes-AMG GT is smaller than the bombastic SLS that went before it, less powerful and – whisper it – cheaper. Such things will surely do little to immediately address the deficit in ego flattery that supercar buyers inevitably require and tease commitment out of the floating voters. Good job, then, that long-time Mercedes-Benz tuner AMG had the foresight to make this such an attractive car. The SLS’s gullwing doors may have been dispensed with, along with some of its visual attitude as well. But in their place come seductive curves, elegant details and more perfect, longnose proportions than the SLS ever had. The GT doesn’t stop the traffic like the SLS did, but it’s got a
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knockout punch once you’ve got it in your sights. There’s a maturity and a bit of sophistication to this car’s styling, then. More of the same to the driving experience, which we’ll come to. But you have to negotiate the rather crass, unimpressive cabin to discover it. Mercedes-AMG can’t be knocked on the technology, material quality or attentive finish in the car, but it certainly could have executed the cockpit layout with more thorough care – not to mention a more artful flourish. The primary controls are well located and adjustable enough, but the car’s seats are a little narrow, short on cushion length and shy of support. Headroom is
good, but the particularly long limbed will find legroom a touch limited. The centre console, meanwhile, is built up on either side of the high transmission tunnel with all the sculptural subtlety of something tacked on to a kid’s pedal car. The buttons and knobs littered down either side of it are oversized, seem to take up a huge amount of space and yet lack functional hierarchy. The starter button, for example, is smaller than the ‘on’ button for the radio – and in right-hand-drive cars, it’ll end up on the wrong side of the tunnel. The gear selector is smaller and less obvious than the entirely unnecessary touchpad for programming the sat-nav. Elsewhere, the ◊
There’s just as much hot-rod, harum-scarum aggression here as there was in the SLS 26 SEPTEMBER 2012 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 43
MERCEDES-AMG GT S RATING Price 0-62mph Top speed Economy CO2 Kerb weight Engine Power Torque Gearbox
Touchpad for operating the sat-nav seems a superfluous item
AAAAC £110,495 3.8sec 193mph 30.1mpg (combined) 219g/km 1645kg V8, 3982cc, twin-turbo, petrol 503bhp at 6250rpm 479lb ft at 1750-4750rpm 7-spd dual-clutch automatic
Burmester 11-speaker audio system is an option, priced at £2800
There are many configurations available to suit the driver’s mood
∆ chance arose to drive a GT S equipped with the Dynamic Plus additions and carbon brakes and an Edition 1 launch special with all that plus the extra-sticky Michelin rubber. Right-hand-drive sales of both will begin next April, with the less powerful GT following towards the end of the year. We’ll deal with the engine first, partly because it’s the car’s headline feature but also because it’s excellent. It’s perhaps not as brimming with sharpness and red-line fervour as the SLS’s old atmospheric 6.2, but it’s endowed with much more pragmatic and meaningful qualities – and no small amount of effusive character to go with ’em. Economy, emissions and cruising range are three major gains for the GT over the SLS – all delivered by this remarkable engine. It avoids a £500 road tax bill, which is a very rare benefit indeed in a 500bhp performance machine. Furthermore, our road route suggested that an everyday economy return in the high-20s would be realistic. The SLS did 22mpg on a good day, needed every recess of its 85-litre fuel tank and also made do with a fairly pokey separate boot where the GT has a larger, hatchback-accessed cargo bay. The growling, woofling repertoire of noises the V8 makes on start-up, at idle and when punting around at low speeds whet your appetite and, in an instant, confirm every assumption that you’ve made about this car based on where it comes from, 46 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 19 NOVEMBER 2014
what it looks like and what it’s going to be like to drive. There’s just as much hot-rod, harum-scarum aggression about this car as there was in the SLS, and more than an Audi R8 V10 and a Porsche 911 Turbo S combined. And you’ll know it before you have hit second gear. The car’s gearbox functions impressively no matter which mode you put it in, but you’ll be lucky to notice with the engine so squarely the main event. I imagined that the throttle pedal might be a bit soft, just as it is on the A45 AMG. Not a bit of it. Even in the GT S, the engine is running in sufficiently unstressed tune and with such a gentle quantity of boost that the compression ratio can be as high as 10.5:1. So you just don’t feel the torque rush in at low revs, as if struggling to keep up with the position of your right foot. The well of performance feels fathoms deep even at 2000rpm, the response clean enough that you can mete out your rate of acceleration as precisely as you please. At the other end of the rev range, the engine keeps hauling way beyond 6000rpm – not picking up pace as the red line approaches but gently tailing off so that you don’t slam into the limiter as is so easy with AMG’s older twin-turbo 5.5-litre V8. Getting an SLS to hit full stride for an overtake or a fast exit from a bend necessarily entailed either selecting a low gear in manual mode or planting your boot and waiting for the gearbox to kick down.
It wasn’t a slow car by any stretch, but it needed to rev. The GT, in its turn, has torque to spare and an instant, effortless sense of pace about it that’s still visceral but also much more accessible than its forebear’s. In other words, this is a fast car in just about every sense. Perhaps not 911 Turbo S, McLaren 650S fast, but within touching distance. But exploiting that pace somewhere like California’s Highway 1, or even on the steep curves of the state’s wonderful Laguna Seca racetrack, means guiding it through a few corners – and here we come back to the thorny issue of confidence. There’s absolutely no question about the GT’s objective dynamic performance. It not only grips like Hercules but its directional responses are also absolutely uncompromising, on account of its incredible roll control and its savagely fast steering rack. For my money, that steering could do with more weight and feel to correspond with its directness. Because there’s not quite enough of either, it takes a long time to develop trust in the chassis and to begin to really lean on it and unearth the staggering handling potential that it offers. AMG’s biggest dynamic success is in having engineered much better high-speed stability into the GT than the standard SLS had, despite the new car’s almost frighteningly pointy front end. This means that you can drive the car as fast as you can get away with on the road, and an awful lot faster
GT tops SLS in almost every way, but it still demands respect
on a circuit, and find barrel loads of excitement to enjoy without ever scaring yourself. The Race mode electronic stability aids in this car are excellent. Drivers content to operate within their governance all the time will come away with little but a sense of dumbstruck awe for the car. But going beyond that safety net, digging deeper into the GT’s handling character, is something to be done very respectfully indeed. Spikey handling on the limit was certainly a charge that you could
level at the SLS, but if, like me, you thought that the broader-batted GT would answer it with more benign manners, think again. AMG evidently doesn’t believe that skids should come easy, or that liberties should be taken lightly, in its own headline performance machines. Such things are fairly puerile entertainments anyway, of course, and you can argue that cars asking for ultimate precision of input are all the more satisfying when you do master them. But
the bigger observation to note is that when the GT runs out of grip – because you’ve driven it beyond its limits deliberately, because you hit black ice or simply because you’re avoiding a hazard at speed – it’s no pussycat. The breakaway characteristics of that rear end are sudden and building up a good feel for them demands patience and restraint. Neither does the car come off a slide as obligingly as an Aston Martin V12 Vantage S or a Jaguar F-type R. Suffice to say that it wasn’t yours truly driving for the perfect 100-yard powerslide on the cover of this magazine but Mercedes-AMG DTM legend Bernd Schneider. When Schneider volunteers to do your stunt driving, you say “yes please” and “thank you very much”. Ten laps of Laguna weren’t quite enough for me to get the measure of this blood-andthunder hero car – although I was greatly enjoying wrestling with the job when the whistle went. Another 10 laps might have done the trick. Does this make the GT the best-handling super-sports car that money can buy? In the most rounded sense, probably not. Delicate, it ain’t. I dare say that it’ll ride a touch firmly for plenty of UK roads, although we’ve yet to sample the greater compliance of less firm versions of the car. But the GT certainly looks and sounds very special, its powertrain is remarkable, its usability and maturity represent progress for AMG in important areas, and it’s nothing if not heart-stoppingly exciting. L 19 NOVEMBER 2014 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 47