McLaren 570S 2016 vs Porsche 911 GT3 RS 2016 (Part 2)

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Respiration strategies up in the thin air of the supercar class

McLaren 570S 2016 vs Porsche 911 GT3 RS 2016

McLaren 570S 2016
All modern mid-engined supercars live in the long shadow of the Lamborghini Countach, a magically outlandish vehicle that was, to put it bluntly, a bit of a handful. A wedge shape and goofball doors remain as hallmarks of the genre, but supercars as actual cars have improved hugely. The 570S fully upholds McLaren’s reputation, begun with the original McLaren F1, of taking the supercar business seriously and building both a voluptuous screaming doorstop and a legitimate handler. But a supercar is not a race car, not when you have an almost–race car to compare it against.

That’s not meant as a criticism. There are different ways to get your jollies, and what you have here is basically a Lotus Elise built to go to the moon. In the best British tradition, the steering is hypersensitive, the wheel jumping in your hands as the tires squirm for grip. The chassis reacts vividly to load transfer, sometimes wiggling as you brake, sometimes stepping two feet to the left if it also finds a rut while you’re gassing it. The car performs best when buttered with the smoothness of a polished driving technique, but you can be going at 80 percent of the Porsche’s pace while feeling like you’re doing 150 percent. Which is both hysterically fun and eventually exhausting.

McLaren 570S

The two turbochargers do the job they were assigned, helping the V-8 make truly jaw-dropping output. Coming in 20 pounds lighter and packing 62 more galloping Clydesdales, the McLaren handily clobbers the Porsche to the 60-mph mark, completing the job in 2.7 seconds. The turbos aren’t slow to wake up, either. Compared with the towering 8800-rpm Porsche, the McLaren gives you more torque in the lobby and lower floors before you start the long elevator ride up the tach. The Brit is a spinner, too, capable of 8100 rpm. But the big shove is over by then, the 443-lb-ft torque peak arriving at 5000 rpm. You could happily upshift in that neighborhood and never feel as if you’ve left the best part of the engine on the table, there’s so much torque waiting for you after the revs drop with the next gear.

The 570S looks fast, it is fast, and it sounds fast, the $3860 sport exhaust ensuring that everyone hears the lions-fighting-chainsaws startup. But when someone noted that the V-8 isn’t so much an engine as a powerplant module, there were knowing nods. In the pursuit of more power, turbos are a Faustian bargain that trades away some of the soul. Plainer, more anodyne music is heard in the McLaren’s cockpit, for example, and the throttle response will never be perfect. It is very good, a popgun with a deliciously elongated explosion, but it can’t match the Porsche for direct response. The 570S felt quicker off the corners at Button­willow, but when we looked at the GPS data, the Porsche actually built speed sooner.

And that is fine. The McLaren doesn’t want to be a racer; it’s trying to create a 5000-volt arc between your ears using your eyeballs as the electrodes, and it fully succeeds.Source by caranddriver.com

Tag : Comparing, News, Supercar