Top Car

84 TOPCAR.CO.ZA|January 2016STORIL CIRCUIT, PORTUGAL.Today theymeet as rivals, McLaren and Porsch e, 570S and911 Turbo. Britain’s newest sports car andGermany’s longest lived, prowling through thesopping wet paddock of a storied circuit once amainstay of the Grand Prixcalend ar, now a merefootnote inits history. But almost exactly 31 yearsago on this verytarmac, it was a different story. A story ab outthe collective might of German an d British motorsport brainsworking together to produce a car that decimated theopposition. A story ab out the closest F1 championsh ip inthehistory of the sport.By October 1984, and the last raceof the year, McLaren’sPorsch e-engined MP2/3 had dominated the season, theconstructors’ championsh ip already firmly inthe bagfollo winga 1-2 win at Zandvoort three ro unds earlier. But the realexcitement was inthe drivers’ championsh ip. Veteranchampion NikiLauda, lured out of retiremen t by McLaren forthe 1982 se ason but so far unable to claim his third drivers’title, was paired with rising Frenchstar Alain Prost, chompingat the bit to get his first.There’s an analogy inthere somewhere. Although it’s fouryears since McLaren Automotive launched its first car, and thequality, ab ility and capacityof those cars to thrillhas improvedwith every year, this is stilla young company. Like Prost in’84,it’s stilllearning, and it’s stilllooking for its first decisivecomparison test victory inthis magazine.Porsch e meanwhile, the wise old man of sports cars, has beenmaking 911s for 52 years; Turbos for over 40. Straddling theline between pure sports cars and laid-backGTs, the 911 isn’tmere ly a great ba ckroad scratcher, it’s an everyday propositionwith spac e for junk, visibilityand reliability. Little wonder it’sthe default choice, and was always the car inthe 570development team’s crosshairs.‘We had 911s inthe studio during the processto make sure our car was at least as good,’McLaren’s designchief, Fr ank Stephenson hadtold me earlier. ‘The idea was to make it doeverything the 911 can do but better. It’s almostlike we started from the inside out. We lookedat visibility, comfort, storage capabiliti es,everything like that had to be the first priority.Whenyou look at the pyramid, the ba se wasusability.’Over the next couple of days we’ll be puttingthat to the test, piling on motorway miles, slicingthrough citytraffic and carving up some fastopen roads up and downthe length of Portugal.And since these aren’t fair-weather sports carswe’ll be taking inal l sorts of weather conditions,from torrential rainto even torrentialler rain.That we’d be bringing a 911 to the Faro launchwas a given. But which 911? A Top-Trumps-styleinvestigation reveals the Turbo S to be as bang on the moneyas it is on the power, which is why James Taylor is joining us inone as we make our way north from Faro inthe McLaren.Bringing an extra 29kW to the table for a R451000premiumover its non-S brother, the 911 Turbo S costs from R2.89-million and delivers 412kW. McLaren’s 570S makes 419kWand willset you ba ck an estimated R3.25m. Not much inthat,you’llagree, and though the Porsch e’s flat-sixgives its fourdriveshafts a 750Nm Chinese burn, and the McLaren inflicts acomparativel y limp-wristed 600Nm attack on its two, theGerman weighs inat 1680kg, or 250kg morethan the Brit.Our man ChiltonatEstoril, aplacerichwithracingheritage.Mostofhistimewas spentinthe fillingstation,howeverOn-paper figures put the Porsch e a tenth ahead to 100kph, at3.1sec, but its 319kph top speed falls 9kph shor t. That’s closeenough to be inconsequential, but my shove-in-the-back -o-meter is telling me that the McLaren is a decisively moresavage accelerator. Not quite as savage as the 478kW 650S, butquick enough to pres s me deep into the bucket seat when theblowers start boosting. It likes to rev too, pulling to 8500rpm,long after the 911 has given up. Later, a morethorough digthrough the 570 technical info turns up 0-200kph figures thatbear this out. Porsch e: 10.3sec, McLaren: 9.5sec. Lamborghini’sfar moreexpensive Huracan, by the way, needs 9.9...The leveller today though is the weather. That and thePorsch e’s four-whe el-drive system. Aswe cruise downthesopping wet IC15 heading for Lisbon, Portugal’s shabby chiccapital, I radio James telling himto pullalongside for a ro llingdrag race. Whenthe hammers drop, so does the 570S, by acouple of car lengths as the all-wheel-drive Porsch e stormsahead leaving the McLaren struggling for purchase on theslimy bitumen.Four-whe el drive is but one of the ways thesecars differ from one another. Un der dramaticallydisparate skins they’re every bit as different asthey look, a shared 3.8-litr e capacityand use oftwin turbochargers about the only commonconnections. A two-plus-two with its engineslung unfashionably far beyond the rear axle, the911 is constructed around an aluminium-intensive steel structure. A pumped up version ofthe regular 991, it looks too similar at the front,but the way the rear tyres tuck into those hugearches is exquisite. Swollen? Blistered?Anaphylactic shock, morelike.But even a bootylike that isn’t enough togarner it much attention as we pick our waythrough streets that mix tiled facades like a 1970skitchen, and peeling paint. All eyes are on theMcLaren. I doubtmost of those eyes know this isthe babyMcLaren, and many probably don’tknow what it is at all. They almost ce rtainlywon’t know that it’s built around a carbon fibrechassis tub and flat-plane-crankV8 that cantrace its parentage to the mightyP1 hyperca r.They might have noticed that the softer rear endstyling, with its wraparound super formedaluminiumpanels and coquet tish lamps, seemssurpri singly non-threatening – a deliberateattempt to target female customers. But all theyreally know, or think they do, is that the greencar, with its Ferrari-esque styling, its better-tha n-Ferrari dihedral doors and its growly engine, isboth faster and significantly moreexpensive.Only we know that they cost similar money.Looking like a million dollars when you’ve spen ta third of that has undeniable appeal, but drivingcars like the 570 intownhas its problems,particularly ina countr y so deprived of tastymetal as Portugal. Thumbs-ups and cameraphones I can live with, but when you’ve gotpeople banging on the windowlike you’re somekind of scab breaking through a picket line,demanding you blip the throttle intr affic, youstart to wonder whether the 911’s seat isn’t themore appealing.And that’s no reflection onthe strides McLaren