2010 Aston Martin Rapide vs. 2010 Porsche Panamera Turbo

2010 Aston Martin Rapide vs. 2010 Porsche Panamera Turbo 2010 Aston Martin Rapide vs. 2010 Porsche Panamera Turbo
Comparison Tests

“You never ease off. You never ease off...not when there’s money involved.”

The pool hustler “Fast Eddie” Felson, played by Paul Newman, uttered those words in the 1986 movie The Color of Money. And in this comparison test, yes, there’s definitely money involved—base prices of $201,300 for Aston Martin’s spanking-new Rapide and $133,575 for Porsche’s Panamera Turbo.

In the movie, “Fast Eddie” has retired from hustling—he drives a white Cadillac with the license “TK6”—and is teaching a young and cocky Vincent Lauria, played by a young and cocky Tom Cruise, to hustle like a pro. The two lay waste to pool halls across the Midwest, notably in wintry Chicago, where they wind up in the GingerMan Tavern, one block north of  Wrigley Field.

The GingerMan is a very real place. Also a very cool place. It’s an old-style joint, built in 1918, still sporting the original hand-laid tile floors. The bar’s in the front (with 40 brands of beer), pool tables in the back. No food is served. If you’re hungry, you’re encouraged to bring your own or have it delivered—Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Ethiopian, Chicago-style pizza, an apparently endless array of ethnic edibles. But mostly we love the GingerMan—named after J.P. Donleavy’s darkly comic novel of the same name, published in the ’50s—because it’s owned by Dan Schnitta, 65, a funny and eccentric Chicago-born Czech who makes up for his lack of height with a towering fascination for fast cars.

“Before they filmed the movie, [director] Martin Scorsese examined the place,” recalls Schnitta. “I caught him staring at a wall that was all busted up. I said, ‘I can fix that.’ Scorsese replied, ‘I’ll pay you $1000 a day to shoot here. But if you fix that wall, the deal’s off.’ ”

Between takes, Schnitta befriended Newman. “Paul saw me basically loitering a lot and finally said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I own the joint.’ Next thing I know, we’re sipping beers and talking about fast cars.”

When the film was released, the GingerMan became the north-side watering hole. “Every night it was packed, a lot more women showed up, and everyone was better dressed.”

The result? Schnitta, too, became familiar with the color of money, which enabled him to indulge his passion for a slew of high-velocity automobiles. “But I wanted to race them whenever I felt like it,” he says. “So I bought 360 acres near South Haven, Michigan, and built my own track.” Naturally, he called it GingerMan Raceway. And that’s where the C/D staff, always in need of tracks for testing, first met him. Whenever we showed up, Schnitta always said, “Next time you bring a couple of cool cars, come with me to the tavern afterward—drinks are on me.” Odd that it took us so long to accept.

Aston Martin refers to its new Rapide as the “only four-door sports car in the world.” Porsche refers to its Panamera as the company’s “first sports car for four.” When two manufacturers so coincidentally match boasts, our response is: “comparison test.

And, in truth, these two front-engine supersedans are similar in dimensions and weight. The differences? Well, the Rapide’s naturally aspirated V-12 transmits its 470 horses through a carbon-fiber driveshaft to the rear wheels, whereas the Panamera’s twin-turbo V-8 doles out its 500 to all four. Of course, you’ve got to disregard that walloping variance in base price—a guy like Schnitta would, and he’s pretty much Aston’s and Porsche’s target buyer, familiar with “Fast Eddie’s” observation: “Rich can be arranged. Rich can come fairly easily. ”

Otherwise, the mission for these four-seaters is identical: Match blinding speed with outrageous elegance. “You gotta have two things to win,” Felson opined. “You gotta have brains, and you gotta have balls.” Then you sell both traits to a rich hustler who, along with his wife, occasionally transports another rich couple to, say, Chicago’s Rosebud Steakhouse (filet mignon, $41.95). Suggestion: Park next-door at the Drake Hotel. One of the Drake’s valets said to us: “Cars like these? We let ’em linger out front for a while. Classes up the place.”

Thus, it was Rapide versus Panamera Turbo, to and from the GingerMan Tavern via fast interstate blasts, interspersed with a thousand stop-and-go frustrations in downtown Chicago. Then, to determine a winner, we lit off to indulge our own form of  hustling at GingerMan racetrack.

“It’s even, but it ain’t settled,” reckoned Eddie Felson. “Let’s settle it.”