Comparison Tests
From the June 2015 issue
For the last five decades, the toughest question for any buyer of a high-end sports car has been: “How do I not end up with a 911?” To describe Porsche’s most famous product as a default choice is a faint-praise damning of what has become the world’s most iconic sports car. But it’s also an acknowledgment that to get a car as capable and well-rounded as a 911, you have to get, well, a 911.
There have been many challengers, of course, including one made by Porsche itself (the 928). But despite what every boxing movie has assured us about plucky underdogs, none have succeeded in wholly unseating this champ, certainly not in the hearts of the people who actually write checks for real cars. It’s a point proven by a trawl around the paddock of any upmarket track day or the parking lot of any plastic surgeon’s clinic.
Only now, for the first time, the 911 faces a direct challenge from Stuttgart’s other native carmaker. Having failed to set the supercar world alight with the gullwing SLS, Mercedes-Benz has opted to move down a segment with the AMG-engineered GT, a car that targets the 911 with almost stalkerlike intensity. The range-topping GT S we’re testing here has the most powerful version of AMG’s new 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V-8—503 horsepower—and it carries a base price of $130,825, which buys what is, by the sometimes stingy a la carte standards of the segment, a rather generous list of amenities.
All of which limits our choice of 911. The 520-hp 911 Turbo is closest in terms of pure oomph, but it is about $20,000 more expensive before you’ve ticked a single option box. The Carrera GTS is $15,000 cheaper than the AMG GT S, but well down on power. Knowing that even a moderate options workout would push the Porsche beyond price parity with the Mercedes-AMG, that’s the version we picked. Despite its name, the GTS is more of a Carrera S-plus than a junior GT3, bringing the fractionally wider Carrera 4 bodyshell and the drive-sharpening Sport Chrono kit and PASM adaptive suspension, plus a 30-hp increase in output to 430.
That brings us to the odd one out, because it’s not German and not rear-wheel drive—but it’s still the next-closest thing to a 911. Despite being on sale for less than a year, the Jaguar F-type R coupe has just received a four-wheel-drive system that will, henceforth, be standard on all U.S. versions. In this company, it’s a performance bargain, with a 550-hp version of Jaguar’s supercharged V-8 and a $104,595 base price. And when we requested a representative U.S.-spec car in Germany, Jaguar went to the considerable trouble of shipping this one straight from the factory, complete with Yankee-red rear turn signals and a navigation unit that reckoned we were 4000 miles from the nearest road.
After gathering performance figures on the runway of the Adolf Würth Airport, our chosen driving location is the Black Forest, about an hour west of Stuttgart and home to most of Germany’s spa towns, from Baden-Baden to Bad Herrenalb and even Bad Wildbad, which is so Bad it has to be good. The region is also known for its eponymous kirsch-soaked cake that, by trying really hard, we managed to avoid. A home-field advantage to the Germans then, although some of the mountain roads around here would be considered driving nirvana wherever they were situated. Let the battle rage.
