[Cmicasa the Great XvX]

A few more facts to twist your synapses: The Porsche weighs exactly 3500 pounds and makes 500 horsepower. That's a computationally easy-to-figure 7 pounds per horsepower. The Corvette, on the other hand, weighs just 3329 pounds and makes 638 horsepower or 5.2 pounds per pony, a clear advantage. Yet the Vette takes a relatively leisurely 3.5 seconds to crack 60 mph and 11.5 seconds to run the quarter mile. Not only all that, but the Corvette is still half a second behind the Porsche at 100 mph (7.1 seconds versus 7.6).


The Porsche's laws-of-physics-defying, catapult-like capabilities can come from only one place: traction. The 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six routes all its power to all four wheels, whereas the ZR1 has to make do with just two. True, the 335/25/20 Michelins on the ZR1's rear-wheels do provide more than 2 feet of rotating rubber, but the Chevy's just not as good at hooking up as Stuttgart's four wheels driven approach. After digesting the numbers, we began referring to the 911 Turbo as "Baby Veyron."

While the Corvette's launch mode provided a succession of very easy takeoffs at a governed 4000 rpm, we were able to achieve a slightly faster result (0.1 second better) with everything switched off, while launching the ZR1 from 1800 rpm. It did, however, take several aborted, tire-smoking attempts to nail it. The Porsche requires about 4000 rpm and a fast side-step of the clutch pedal to hit such audacious numbers. Simple, in fact, and surprisingly repeatable. Most of our test crew agreed they'd never treat their own $150,000 car in such an abusive manner. I was the lone holdout, arguing that Porsche seems to have designed the Turbo's clutch to be beaten repeatedly. With an axe.

As we expected and you imagined, the Corvette ZR1 did phenomenally in the mile, hitting 177 mph. That's extremely fast, though only 3 mph faster than a Corvette Z06 we tested in 2006. Still, faster is faster. We actually got the plastic fantastic up to 190 mph before running out of runway. That latter figure is only 5 percent off the ZR1's top speed of 200.4 mph. The Corvette then did 0-150-0 in 25.6 seconds. Sounds good to us, but what do you compare that number against? For the sake of silly, the brand-new, 1200-horse Bugatti Veyron Super Sport takes 25.6 seconds to go 0-200-0. So, there's that.
What about the Porsche? Well, it broke. The twin variable-vane turbos stopped spooling and the boost went bye-bye as we were warming the car up for its runs. Why? As of this writing, we don't know. Porsche speculates that a hose buried deeply within the nearly inaccessible engine bay "popped off." Maybe, but not a single warning light flashed, yet the boost gauge indicated zero. All we know is the 3.8-liter flat-six reverted back to natural aspiration and the Turbo couldn't participate in our big boy tests. Bummer.


The Porsche Turbo is a world-class car. There's nothing it does poorly, and, as far as we can tell, it has no weak points, busted scrolls notwithstanding. Some of my colleagues prefer the Porsche to the ZR1, saying the Turbo is the better all-around car, less brassy and ostentatious, and thereby better suited for adults. The rest of us are apparently more intimately in touch with our inner child, because we feel the Turbo is a tad...dull. Can a car that hits 60 mph in 3 seconds be dull? No, but in comparison to the screaming banshee thrills doled out by the ZR1 every time you bury the go-pedal, the Porsche felt stodgy. In fact, when we ran the Turbo against the Audi R8 V-10 and the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG, the only real gripe concerning the Porsche was that it's a little...dull.


The ZR1, on the other hand, is a hot mess of excitement sitting on four big chrome wheels. The noise is lascivious; the looks are sinister bordering on subversive; and the way it rockets down the road with the profligate torque almost overwhelming the rubber with every shift is habit-forming. On the other hand, the ZR1's build quality is suspicious; the fuel consumption is sinful; and the seats are, as always, terrible for corner-filled driving. Still, just sitting in the best-ever Corvette is an event, never mind the gallons of blood that start pumping through your system when you press the starter button, or the foot-wide smile that appears when you shift into second gear at full throttle.

Back to reality for a moment: You can't go wrong with either supercar. They both give you something that 99 percent of the other cars on earth simply can't, and I for one would be thrilled to own either. The Porsche did break, so maybe this comparison gets an asterisk. And maybe next time Stuttgart shows up with a car more up to the gauntlet dropped by the ZR1, like the RWD 620 horsepower GT2 RS. Until then...the Porsche Turbo is an incredibly potent and precise scientific achievement, but the Corvette ZR1 is a fever dream.




1ST PLACE: CHEVROLET CORVETTE ZR1
We're still red-eyed, white-knuckled, and blue in the face over GM's most powerful super-duper car.
2ND PLACE: PORSCHE 911 TURBO
The thinking man's supercar and dragstrip missile fails to tug at our heartstrings. It's flawless to a fault.

Read more: http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/...#ixzz107QQcDFD