2019-10-01_CAR_UK

(Marty) #1

100 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | OCTOBER 2019


inertia in the steering’s speedy response and pinpoint accuracy. You don’t
so much turn the Megane into a corner as think it. And there’s witchcraft at
play in the front suspension; clog-down out of a tight corner there’s barely
any torque-steer, nor wheelspin. Despite nearly 300bhp coursing through
them, the tyres grip and go exactly where they’re bidden, and despite the
Megane’s obvious racetrack focus it feels very much at home on these wild
B-roads. Gavin Green describes it as ‘effervescent’ to drive, which feels
an appropriate sum-up. Ben Pulman wonders why Renault’s graphics
designers are so keen to make its driver look silly to bystanders. He has a
point (though the decals can be deleted as an option). But it’s something
of a one-trick pony. Fantastic for dissecting a great road, or a circuit, but at
the exclusion of more or less everything else. That, and it’s a Megane that
costs £70k. The established rule of SCGT is that price shouldn’t enter the
equation: it’s purely about how a car drives, not how much it costs. But in
this case price is tapping on the equation’s window pretty firmly to be let in.
But we hold fast to the formula, which is how the Porsche 911 and the
Lamborghini Huracan Evo, more than £100k between them (not to
mention a sizeable gulf in shape, power and philosophy), wind up tied on
points for third place once all the votes are counted.
Everyone emerges from the Lamborghini in awe of its big-lunged,
turbo-free engine. In sound, in response and in charisma it stays with you
long after its 10 cylinders have shut down. The chassis also leaves its mark.
There’s an awful lot of computing power at play in the Evo, with torque
vectoring, all-wheel steering, electro-mechanical dampers and variable-
ratio steering all in constant communication to direct its pointy snout
and its 631bhp to best effect. But it’s to its credit that the Evo doesn’t feel
unnatural or synthesised to drive. While the steering is remarkably direct
(unnervingly so at first), you quickly tune into it and begin to relish the lack
of lock required to guide the Huracan from point to point at speed, all the

Sports Car Giant Test 2019

while enjoying the smoothness, and the sheer accelerative force, of that
V10. Lamborghinis of old like the Countach and the Diablo worked your
biceps and forearms; the Evo works your neck muscles while you drive with
your fingertips. It still possesses much of the visual and experiential theatre
of its ancestors, however. ‘If you were a kid who grew up with a Lamborgh-
ini on your bedroom wall, it fits that completely, doesn’t it?’ Chris Chilton
says. ‘You sit in it and see that outrageously flat screen stretching away in
front of you – which in a way is a bad thing, because it doesn’t make for an
ideal driving position.’ Ben Pulman is in agreement on the driving position:
‘Why is it that Lamborghini still can’t make a car I can fit in properly? The
McLaren is no less a supercar yet might have the best driving position here.’
In terms of road noise, ride and civility the Evo is a big step on from the
original Huracan, but the seats still give me a bad case of ‘Lamborghini
back’ within minutes of sitting in them, and Gavin’s less than enamoured
of its cluttered digital instrument cluster. Both Ben Pulman and I rate the
Lamborghini higher for driving thrills than the 911, while Gavin and Chris
find its shortcomings run too deep to ignore.
The 911, too, splits the room. Chris and Gavin are both fans: ‘It can play
the part of the GT convincingly, then switched to its most aggressive Sport
Plus drive mode it’s a genuinely exciting sports car,’ Green says. Having
driven this new 992-generation 911 Carrera S to north Wales from London,
Ben Pulman’s more agnostic about its sports car credentials: ‘There are so
many memories in my bank of what a 911 is, going back through the gener-
ations of models we’ve tested. This has become more rounded, less raw, but
moved further away in character as a result.’
On first acquaintance I feel the same, as if this new 911 is concentrating
more on being a luxury car than a sports car, not just in terms of its plush,
Panamera-in-miniature interior but also in the way it drives. Maybe it’s my
imagination but the steering seems more stable but a little less talkative
than that of the previous 991.2-gen Carrera S, and the engine note more
muted, distant. But the more time I spend in it, the more the breadth of its
abilities becomes clear. ‘It still drives better than everything else in its class,’
Pulman notes, ‘and it’s so well-rounded it can also compete with more
expensive GTs further up the market too.’ And, he adds perceptively, it’s the
car that everyone here would choose to drive home in tonight.
In many ways, the 911 is the best car here. But the best driving experience?
For goosebumps, spine-tingles, for out-and-out exhilaration – the sensa-
tions that SCGT is scored on – two cars remain head and shoulders above
the rest of 2019’s crop. Over to Gavin Green to settle the final scorecard... ⊲

6 0 0 LT d r i ve r
expressions flit from
blissfully satisfied to
mildly terrified

Track-focused
McLaren tyres
require respect
in the wet

Heating controls
set just-so, Gavin
refused to leave
the Cayman
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