Price of Porsche Carrera GT

It isn't the $440, 000 Carrera GT's absurdly quick top speed that awes you-we were aboard however had no fear as Porsche's test motorist clocked 208 mph (with a tailwind) on a Soviet-era military runway into the former East Germany.

It's not this Ferrari Enzo fighter's similarly outrageous accelerative power, either: Porsche modestly claims a 0-to-62-mph time of 3.9 seconds, but it's most likely more like 3.5 seconds.

It isn't perhaps the otherworldly power for the gigantic porcelain brakes that made the maximum impression on united states, although they are strong sufficient at complete clamp to carry the passenger fully from his leather-covered, carbon-Kevlar chair and hard from the locked seatbelt.

No question-all these feats tend to be stratospherically impressive. However they are just extensions of everything you've felt before in a typical automobile. These numbers cannot reveal the character of the Carrera GT anymore than your familiarity with hops, barley, and water describes how they can allow you to intoxicated.

Porsche says it's going to build 1500 among these supercars across next three years. The Carrera GT, which began life as a proposal for a Le Mans race vehicle, is nothing if not uncommon. In truth, it's not even a motor vehicle, truly. It isn't like those ideas we place in contrast examinations and price the ergonomics and assess the fuel consumption of-all those conveyances that run into the vast grey center regarding the overall performance spectrum. The 604-hp Carrera GT is different. It is all vibrancy and immediacy.

It absolutely was in fact turning off the ignition after our brief preliminary drive that very first surprised us. The millisecond the ignition circuit is damaged, there is . . . absolutely nothing. Ordinarily, once you key the ignition off, the crankshaft makes some additional lazy rotations whilst the size of the going components takes a half-beat to send to friction and come to a complete rest. It's a universal experience we neglect.

But in the GT, the crankshaft stops with a brand new suddenness-immediately, now, before your brain even considers the causal commitment between switching one of the keys therefore the engine arriving at rest. It really is as if the crankshaft had seized within a quarter-rotation following the last spark plug fired. There is no mass whatsoever to talk about in drivetrain. Take, for instance, the lightweight porcelain clutch (calculating only 6.7 inches in diameter) as well as the 10 titanium connecting rods within 68-degree V-10. They weigh, by regular commodity-car standards, really absolutely nothing. After a romp in the GT, what you may drive will feel as if it had been running on a big diesel-the kind we imagine running ocean liners-with 10-foot-long metal linking rods.

This works, naturally, backwards, also. Unlike the brawny powerplant of, say, a Lamborghini Murciélago or Dodge Viper, which pummels physics into distribution, the Porsche's race-bred V-10 generally seems to skirt physics completely. It always seems unrestrained. Right here again we can thank low rotational size. The most effective production-car motors in the field accumulate revs in a satisfyingly smooth brush. Therefore fast to rev could be the 5.7-liter Porsche engine which you scarcely know that it is placing forth any energy at all. A stab of this large, floor-mounted gas pedal and-Brip!-you're at 8000-rpm power top. Watch the in-car video footage of an F1 car rising through the gears featuring its brief, staccato blasts through revs, after that slow the video footage straight down by approximately half, and you get the concept.

This audiovisual technique may also around approximate the noise the GT makes. It's comparable in timbre to an F1 engine but brawnier due to its higher displacement. Its note is a register lower since it runs fewer revs, and of course, it will not pierce your eardrums-there's a muffler. There is no time to adjust your mind-set involving the docility of idle in addition to full-on, screaming fury of redline. Holy crap! Not even the standard traction-control system will keep up.