Daniel
Donnington
- Joined
- 2 Feb 2005
- Messages
- 12,181
"
The mood for this drive of a lifetime ran the gamut from joy to dismay and from dismay to ecstasy. The joy came from"”what, are you daft?"”simply being in the presence of a new BMW M3, the new Audi R8, and the new Porsche GT3, all together and only for us to drive for two days. Dismay crept in as we faced a torrentially wet Austria for the entire midsection of the drive. This sad chapter suddenly shifted to a surprise ecstatic conclusion as we entered a small valley on the afternoon of day two. It was as if the sports car spirits had decided to cease toying with us and create a sunny eye in the Tyrolean hurricane.
It occurred to us that a manual-shifting R8 would fit the bill to a tee, and this apparently limited us to a Brilliant Red exterior and no Magnetic Ride (AMR) suspension, which is standard on U.S.-spec cars. Brilliant Red is an un-great color for this car, but the standard suspension proved terrific. We were expecting a Carrara White GT3, but the GT Silver Metallic didn't faze us. And the semi-slick Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires on the Porsche did a strangely good enough job at healthy speeds on the twisting roads-turned-rivers. Finally, some key contacts at BMW in Munich didn't entirely understand our wanting to pit their M3 against these other two. They mentioned cars like the Jaguar XKR coupe. We understand why, but the point is to jam together the three hottest two-door sport coupes of the moment from the three hottest German houses, and do so on the roads for which they have been engineered. The fact that they are all three dead close on both power and torque doesn't hurt.
And need we mention the copious amounts of hands-on racing data that have contributed equally to the creation of each of these three dapper street hooligans? It was exactly like having Woods, Nicklaus, and Hogan, all in their primes and for eighteen holes at Pebble Beach, egging each other on all the way, and you're the caddy.
NO LIMITS FROM MUNICH TO THE AUSTRIAN BORDER
While every year the authorities are eliminating more and more of the famous no-limits autobahn, all around Munich you can still do pretty well if you avoid the commuter hours. Right at the start from the Munich airport, we had long stretches of free autobahn all the way to the Austrian border, and the weather cooperated nicely.
At 187 miles per hour, the R8 is an amazing piece of stability research. The GT3 at 193 mph is stable while requiring healthy driver attention and alertness at all times. This is due mainly to the 911 family's traditional small and nimble footprint between the wheelbase and front and rear track widths. The new M3 is a fabulous sport coupe and, as it is limited to 155 mph (our car didn't include the non-North American option of removing the top speed limiter), stability is on par with Alcatraz during a heavy gale.
Although the Porsche boasts the lowest coefficient of drag here at 0.29, it causes, by a significant margin, the most wind noise while at the speed of sound. This is a chief challenge of the 911 shape, since the vacuums created behind the passenger-cabin rear pillars are difficult to deal with without uglying up the design. The R8 shows a drag coefficient of 0.34 and yet it is the slipperiest criminal here, creating only a normal amount of noise from the outside at any time. This higher coefficient is testament to the R8's desire to be a supremely stable car (even with only one hand on the wheel) thanks to clever down force touches in the company wind tunnel. At a reported 0.32 coefficient of drag, the M3"”this one colored Melbourne Red"”is a lot like the 335i Coupe only with more down force aerodynamics built in to its beautiful designer clothing.
INTO THE AUSTRIAN WILDS AND, OH, THOSE MOUNTAIN CURVES
Though things eventually turned wet and wild, we had sufficient dry pavement and dramatic skies to really flog the three six-speed manual gearboxes, the three very different chassis arrangements, and three sets of road rubber. We needed to be careful in Austria as it is a strictly policed state with masses of roadside cameras to hoodwink the unsuspecting, but we got away with a lot.
A key part of the GT3 legend is that it remains a purist approach, even though some of you might look askance at the Porsche Active Suspension Management included here for the first time. We'd say lay off Stuttgart's case, as PASM is felt minimally in the end and the GT3 is by far still the most fatiguing (read: demanding and raw) car of these three. Chief evidence of what awaits the driver or passenger in the GT3 is its quoted curb weight of 3075 pounds against the R8's 3440 pounds and the M3's 3650 pounds, while it gets close on power at 409 horsepower as compared to the latter two at 415 horsepower each. So the Porsche is bullet-fast out of every curve and when downshifting (or not) to overtake Herr and Frau Slow.
We have gone on before regarding the immortalize-able qualities of the nineteen-inch Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires used on this very car, as well as on its RS version. They are damned near perfect performance tires for the capable sports driver, whether on smoother roads or on the track on weekends. They are somehow sticky as Velcro once heated up, while also allowing just the right amount of induced oversteer in moments where oversteer is sought. Play with this setup for a while and you're almost left disillusioned with any other arrangement on any other car, since the GT3 in these hairier circumstances becomes a part of your body and brain.
Being smooth with a console-mounted traditional stick-shift while at speed and under hard pressure is, these days, ever more a niche science than before. Clutch pedals are fast disappearing"”even in Europe"”and it's a shame. The serious performance single-plate clutch setup in the GT3 makes for authoritative old-school gear switches, and the more you put yourself in charge of it the better. Best of all is that the positioning of the Porsche shifter is just right in relation to the driver seat and forearm reach, while the throws on the M3 shifter are a bit long and we were scrunching up our right arm to shift the R8's box.
Speaking of the R8, we'd put it at the opposite end of the spectrum from the GT3, since a chief goal for Audi in the creation of this terrific first supercar-without-the-stratospheric-price was to render it everyday drivable despite its impractical layout. Though we mention the nonideal positioning of the gear lever, the only other item on the R8 that's up for mild criticism in our notebooks is the Lamborghini-influenced shifter gate on this test car. On the other hand, we prefer this manual dynamic to the optional R tronic sequential manual gearbox, with its lack of authority and excitement. When the RS8 with V-10 engine debuts in 2008, we trust it will get some version of the hearty Bugatti Veyron twin-clutch automated manual transmission that would cure everything and perhaps eliminate the manual from the mix (boo-hoo) for good.
To repeat, we did not have on our R8 the much-lauded Magnetic Ride dampers with their normal and sport settings; however, in all honesty, we never commented about it or missed the technology. By giving us the optional nineteen-inch wheels and Pirelli PZero tires, the standard damper and control-arm setup fore and aft provided us feedback and comfort somewhere midway between the two Magnetic Ride settings, and it felt right on the money under all conditions. The lengthy wheelbase of 104.3 inches and wide tracks of the R8 for its size in this group, at 64.3 inches front and 62.8 inches rear, combined with the rear-mid placement of the 4.2-liter V-8 and the most exciting version of Quattro traction yet at a default 15:85 torque split, all come together to let the R8 seem capable of anything at all and with no sweat. Even while showing off for some oversteer drama photos, the R8 slid out to the right sweetly through a hard curve we'd found to use as the impromptu studio. Just knock off the stability control and traction control (hold the button down a few more seconds for the latter), and the throttle and steering do the rest up to a high 8250 rpm, but with studied simplicity.
We agree with several other opinion-givers that the flat-bottom steering wheel on the R8 is silliness, especially in curves requiring more of the rack's prodigious 3.2 turns lock-to-lock, but the interior is generally typical irreprehensible-Audi and is here heavily reminiscent of a stretched TT coupe. Again, even the folding performance seats are well engineered right out of the box. And even though luggage space under the front lid is limited at just more than 3.5 cubic feet, we used the 3.2-cubic-foot rear shelf space behind the seats much more often; large soft bags sit there especially well without obscuring rear visibility. (We can also say the same about the GT3 with its two deep cavities in back where there used to be useless pup seats.)
While the direct-injection dry-sump 4.2-liter V-8 of the Audi doesn't out-explode the famous 3.6-liter dry-sump flat-six in the Porsche, it responds to the throttle with a muscled and mature smoothness that is the most sophisticated-feeling here. The R8 also benefits from the most showy exhaust sound coming from these three German tailpipes, the M3 challenging it acoustically only for a few seconds from lower revs.
And so we come to the spanking-new BMW M3 due in North America by the start of spring 2008"”and the ultimate reason for this test trio happening right now. As opposed to the GT3 or the R8, the M3 has its power unit in a front-mid arrangement BMW has perfected beyond all other challengers. It has two real seats in back and ample traditional cargo room in the trunk as a direct result. It also starts at a price more than 40 percent below the other two contenders. Yet it surely can give the Audi and Porsche a massive fright under many circumstances.
After jumping several times between the driver's seats of the R8 and GT3 (the latter possessing the most obnoxious seatbelt clip on the planet as it buries itself directly into our lower back every time we fall into the seat), we have to say the comforts of the M3 are much appreciated on longer stretches when you're not necessarily in competition mode. After a few thousand revs and up to the 8400-rpm redline, the exhaust note from the 4.0-liter V-8 is fairly unexciting, on par with"”yet different from"”the GT3. For the truest and rawest 3-series models, we're keeping our eyes peeled for the new M3 GTR track racer and lightweight M3 CSL road-muncher for all markets but North America.
Heel-and-toe shifting is not actually easy on any of these cars, which is another pity, but we did it by breaking our right ankle in three places. (Hey, it's worth it!) The M3's only current transmission is the six-speed manual since North American customers still prefer this traditional interface in this segment of the performance market. Though the unit works as well as we ever remember, the shift throws, as already mentioned, are too long to assure really optimal pacing between gears while in the heat of the moment. There will be a dual-clutch manu-matic, M-DCT, with paddles coming sometime in 2008 and this, again as in the R8, should significantly threaten the continued existence of the manual on this 'base" M3.
It's no surprise that the M3 is the longest (181.7 inches) and tallest (55.8 inches) car here, in addition to its aforementioned added weight. Due to this, and specifically in order to tighten up all driving dynamics as much as possible to rival cars like the R8 and GT3, the beefy Bimmer comes loaded with onboard technology to help free us up to stay neck-and-neck with lower-lying cars. There's a power button, an Electronic Damper Control button, and a Dynamic Stability Control button right at the driver's right thigh, plus a couple more adjustable parameters within the MDrive menu of the iDrive program. And, even if you dial in everything and switch off all policing devices, the new M Variable Differential Lock hung at the rear axle keeps things rock-steady, provided you haven't gotten utterly crossed-up at the tight-ratio steering wheel.
We've weaseled aloud before regarding the BMW M division's love affair with single-piston floating caliper brakes, and while they were still our least favorite set of stoppers during these two days, it's only because our R8 came with the optional ceramic stop-monsters and the GT3 packs the best standard braking in the business, especially given its lighter weight. Feel at the pedal on all three is not too different, and all three beg an aggressive leg and late braking. We want a ceramic option soon from BMW.
It also looks as though BMW has married itself to the idea that as much deep technology as possible to fiddle with is the right way to go for the proper image in the sporting segment, while both the GT3 and R8 (especially in this manual version and without the AMR suspension) are much easier to embrace with more abandon more quickly. It is genuinely difficult for us to say which is better, because learning the M3's hidden delicacies is a load of fun and it all works superbly once it's all as we wish. We also feel the tremendous pride of the Monday morning M.I.T. grad once we do figure out all of the gadgets. Call us blithering early adopters, go ahead, but it's as much fun this way as it is doing it more quickly in the R8 or GT3.
Along the lines of one's interactions with each car, there were the onboard computers to deal with. We have a brief opinion on this topic. All three systems are good and useful stuff"”iDrive, Multi Media Interface, and Porsche Communication Management. We used the navigation functions a lot, especially as we had to improvise a bit as the rain refused to give quarter. Only the MMI system in the R8 gave us destination entry headaches and the occasional counterintuitive menu, but we found our way through this by trial and error. Each of these cars takes time to understand, even at the surface level. We're not going to whine these systems out of existence since the companies make way too much money on them to cut and run, but the overall interface between dash buttons, console mouse, and screen functions needs more attention.
JUST A MOMENT ON THE RAIN
It's summer, Austria. Couldn't you play fair just for these two bloody days?
At any rate, we used the water park conditions to see how the various safe traction bits performed under the worst non-snow circumstances. Not surprisingly, the R8 took the award home here with its fast-acting viscous Quattro differential that sends up to 30 percent of traction to the front when needed. The Audi's Pirelli PZero tires, while certainly not all-season, are good in the wet as well. After the R8 came the M3 with the standard eighteen-inch set of Michelin Pilot Sport treads, M Variable Differential Lock, and the best steering response. And then, as we said before, the GT3 in rain is to most drivers like tossing a cat in the pool, but the Cup tires and limited-slip differential did a damned good job so long as we were really good with those bodacious brakes.
Best part, again, about the crud weather is that it showed us a side of these cars that most tests don't even consider.
And then the sun came out again."
The mood for this drive of a lifetime ran the gamut from joy to dismay and from dismay to ecstasy. The joy came from"”what, are you daft?"”simply being in the presence of a new BMW M3, the new Audi R8, and the new Porsche GT3, all together and only for us to drive for two days. Dismay crept in as we faced a torrentially wet Austria for the entire midsection of the drive. This sad chapter suddenly shifted to a surprise ecstatic conclusion as we entered a small valley on the afternoon of day two. It was as if the sports car spirits had decided to cease toying with us and create a sunny eye in the Tyrolean hurricane.
It occurred to us that a manual-shifting R8 would fit the bill to a tee, and this apparently limited us to a Brilliant Red exterior and no Magnetic Ride (AMR) suspension, which is standard on U.S.-spec cars. Brilliant Red is an un-great color for this car, but the standard suspension proved terrific. We were expecting a Carrara White GT3, but the GT Silver Metallic didn't faze us. And the semi-slick Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires on the Porsche did a strangely good enough job at healthy speeds on the twisting roads-turned-rivers. Finally, some key contacts at BMW in Munich didn't entirely understand our wanting to pit their M3 against these other two. They mentioned cars like the Jaguar XKR coupe. We understand why, but the point is to jam together the three hottest two-door sport coupes of the moment from the three hottest German houses, and do so on the roads for which they have been engineered. The fact that they are all three dead close on both power and torque doesn't hurt.
And need we mention the copious amounts of hands-on racing data that have contributed equally to the creation of each of these three dapper street hooligans? It was exactly like having Woods, Nicklaus, and Hogan, all in their primes and for eighteen holes at Pebble Beach, egging each other on all the way, and you're the caddy.
NO LIMITS FROM MUNICH TO THE AUSTRIAN BORDER
While every year the authorities are eliminating more and more of the famous no-limits autobahn, all around Munich you can still do pretty well if you avoid the commuter hours. Right at the start from the Munich airport, we had long stretches of free autobahn all the way to the Austrian border, and the weather cooperated nicely.
At 187 miles per hour, the R8 is an amazing piece of stability research. The GT3 at 193 mph is stable while requiring healthy driver attention and alertness at all times. This is due mainly to the 911 family's traditional small and nimble footprint between the wheelbase and front and rear track widths. The new M3 is a fabulous sport coupe and, as it is limited to 155 mph (our car didn't include the non-North American option of removing the top speed limiter), stability is on par with Alcatraz during a heavy gale.
Although the Porsche boasts the lowest coefficient of drag here at 0.29, it causes, by a significant margin, the most wind noise while at the speed of sound. This is a chief challenge of the 911 shape, since the vacuums created behind the passenger-cabin rear pillars are difficult to deal with without uglying up the design. The R8 shows a drag coefficient of 0.34 and yet it is the slipperiest criminal here, creating only a normal amount of noise from the outside at any time. This higher coefficient is testament to the R8's desire to be a supremely stable car (even with only one hand on the wheel) thanks to clever down force touches in the company wind tunnel. At a reported 0.32 coefficient of drag, the M3"”this one colored Melbourne Red"”is a lot like the 335i Coupe only with more down force aerodynamics built in to its beautiful designer clothing.
INTO THE AUSTRIAN WILDS AND, OH, THOSE MOUNTAIN CURVES
Though things eventually turned wet and wild, we had sufficient dry pavement and dramatic skies to really flog the three six-speed manual gearboxes, the three very different chassis arrangements, and three sets of road rubber. We needed to be careful in Austria as it is a strictly policed state with masses of roadside cameras to hoodwink the unsuspecting, but we got away with a lot.
A key part of the GT3 legend is that it remains a purist approach, even though some of you might look askance at the Porsche Active Suspension Management included here for the first time. We'd say lay off Stuttgart's case, as PASM is felt minimally in the end and the GT3 is by far still the most fatiguing (read: demanding and raw) car of these three. Chief evidence of what awaits the driver or passenger in the GT3 is its quoted curb weight of 3075 pounds against the R8's 3440 pounds and the M3's 3650 pounds, while it gets close on power at 409 horsepower as compared to the latter two at 415 horsepower each. So the Porsche is bullet-fast out of every curve and when downshifting (or not) to overtake Herr and Frau Slow.
We have gone on before regarding the immortalize-able qualities of the nineteen-inch Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires used on this very car, as well as on its RS version. They are damned near perfect performance tires for the capable sports driver, whether on smoother roads or on the track on weekends. They are somehow sticky as Velcro once heated up, while also allowing just the right amount of induced oversteer in moments where oversteer is sought. Play with this setup for a while and you're almost left disillusioned with any other arrangement on any other car, since the GT3 in these hairier circumstances becomes a part of your body and brain.
Being smooth with a console-mounted traditional stick-shift while at speed and under hard pressure is, these days, ever more a niche science than before. Clutch pedals are fast disappearing"”even in Europe"”and it's a shame. The serious performance single-plate clutch setup in the GT3 makes for authoritative old-school gear switches, and the more you put yourself in charge of it the better. Best of all is that the positioning of the Porsche shifter is just right in relation to the driver seat and forearm reach, while the throws on the M3 shifter are a bit long and we were scrunching up our right arm to shift the R8's box.
Speaking of the R8, we'd put it at the opposite end of the spectrum from the GT3, since a chief goal for Audi in the creation of this terrific first supercar-without-the-stratospheric-price was to render it everyday drivable despite its impractical layout. Though we mention the nonideal positioning of the gear lever, the only other item on the R8 that's up for mild criticism in our notebooks is the Lamborghini-influenced shifter gate on this test car. On the other hand, we prefer this manual dynamic to the optional R tronic sequential manual gearbox, with its lack of authority and excitement. When the RS8 with V-10 engine debuts in 2008, we trust it will get some version of the hearty Bugatti Veyron twin-clutch automated manual transmission that would cure everything and perhaps eliminate the manual from the mix (boo-hoo) for good.
To repeat, we did not have on our R8 the much-lauded Magnetic Ride dampers with their normal and sport settings; however, in all honesty, we never commented about it or missed the technology. By giving us the optional nineteen-inch wheels and Pirelli PZero tires, the standard damper and control-arm setup fore and aft provided us feedback and comfort somewhere midway between the two Magnetic Ride settings, and it felt right on the money under all conditions. The lengthy wheelbase of 104.3 inches and wide tracks of the R8 for its size in this group, at 64.3 inches front and 62.8 inches rear, combined with the rear-mid placement of the 4.2-liter V-8 and the most exciting version of Quattro traction yet at a default 15:85 torque split, all come together to let the R8 seem capable of anything at all and with no sweat. Even while showing off for some oversteer drama photos, the R8 slid out to the right sweetly through a hard curve we'd found to use as the impromptu studio. Just knock off the stability control and traction control (hold the button down a few more seconds for the latter), and the throttle and steering do the rest up to a high 8250 rpm, but with studied simplicity.
We agree with several other opinion-givers that the flat-bottom steering wheel on the R8 is silliness, especially in curves requiring more of the rack's prodigious 3.2 turns lock-to-lock, but the interior is generally typical irreprehensible-Audi and is here heavily reminiscent of a stretched TT coupe. Again, even the folding performance seats are well engineered right out of the box. And even though luggage space under the front lid is limited at just more than 3.5 cubic feet, we used the 3.2-cubic-foot rear shelf space behind the seats much more often; large soft bags sit there especially well without obscuring rear visibility. (We can also say the same about the GT3 with its two deep cavities in back where there used to be useless pup seats.)
While the direct-injection dry-sump 4.2-liter V-8 of the Audi doesn't out-explode the famous 3.6-liter dry-sump flat-six in the Porsche, it responds to the throttle with a muscled and mature smoothness that is the most sophisticated-feeling here. The R8 also benefits from the most showy exhaust sound coming from these three German tailpipes, the M3 challenging it acoustically only for a few seconds from lower revs.
And so we come to the spanking-new BMW M3 due in North America by the start of spring 2008"”and the ultimate reason for this test trio happening right now. As opposed to the GT3 or the R8, the M3 has its power unit in a front-mid arrangement BMW has perfected beyond all other challengers. It has two real seats in back and ample traditional cargo room in the trunk as a direct result. It also starts at a price more than 40 percent below the other two contenders. Yet it surely can give the Audi and Porsche a massive fright under many circumstances.
After jumping several times between the driver's seats of the R8 and GT3 (the latter possessing the most obnoxious seatbelt clip on the planet as it buries itself directly into our lower back every time we fall into the seat), we have to say the comforts of the M3 are much appreciated on longer stretches when you're not necessarily in competition mode. After a few thousand revs and up to the 8400-rpm redline, the exhaust note from the 4.0-liter V-8 is fairly unexciting, on par with"”yet different from"”the GT3. For the truest and rawest 3-series models, we're keeping our eyes peeled for the new M3 GTR track racer and lightweight M3 CSL road-muncher for all markets but North America.
Heel-and-toe shifting is not actually easy on any of these cars, which is another pity, but we did it by breaking our right ankle in three places. (Hey, it's worth it!) The M3's only current transmission is the six-speed manual since North American customers still prefer this traditional interface in this segment of the performance market. Though the unit works as well as we ever remember, the shift throws, as already mentioned, are too long to assure really optimal pacing between gears while in the heat of the moment. There will be a dual-clutch manu-matic, M-DCT, with paddles coming sometime in 2008 and this, again as in the R8, should significantly threaten the continued existence of the manual on this 'base" M3.
It's no surprise that the M3 is the longest (181.7 inches) and tallest (55.8 inches) car here, in addition to its aforementioned added weight. Due to this, and specifically in order to tighten up all driving dynamics as much as possible to rival cars like the R8 and GT3, the beefy Bimmer comes loaded with onboard technology to help free us up to stay neck-and-neck with lower-lying cars. There's a power button, an Electronic Damper Control button, and a Dynamic Stability Control button right at the driver's right thigh, plus a couple more adjustable parameters within the MDrive menu of the iDrive program. And, even if you dial in everything and switch off all policing devices, the new M Variable Differential Lock hung at the rear axle keeps things rock-steady, provided you haven't gotten utterly crossed-up at the tight-ratio steering wheel.
We've weaseled aloud before regarding the BMW M division's love affair with single-piston floating caliper brakes, and while they were still our least favorite set of stoppers during these two days, it's only because our R8 came with the optional ceramic stop-monsters and the GT3 packs the best standard braking in the business, especially given its lighter weight. Feel at the pedal on all three is not too different, and all three beg an aggressive leg and late braking. We want a ceramic option soon from BMW.
It also looks as though BMW has married itself to the idea that as much deep technology as possible to fiddle with is the right way to go for the proper image in the sporting segment, while both the GT3 and R8 (especially in this manual version and without the AMR suspension) are much easier to embrace with more abandon more quickly. It is genuinely difficult for us to say which is better, because learning the M3's hidden delicacies is a load of fun and it all works superbly once it's all as we wish. We also feel the tremendous pride of the Monday morning M.I.T. grad once we do figure out all of the gadgets. Call us blithering early adopters, go ahead, but it's as much fun this way as it is doing it more quickly in the R8 or GT3.
Along the lines of one's interactions with each car, there were the onboard computers to deal with. We have a brief opinion on this topic. All three systems are good and useful stuff"”iDrive, Multi Media Interface, and Porsche Communication Management. We used the navigation functions a lot, especially as we had to improvise a bit as the rain refused to give quarter. Only the MMI system in the R8 gave us destination entry headaches and the occasional counterintuitive menu, but we found our way through this by trial and error. Each of these cars takes time to understand, even at the surface level. We're not going to whine these systems out of existence since the companies make way too much money on them to cut and run, but the overall interface between dash buttons, console mouse, and screen functions needs more attention.
JUST A MOMENT ON THE RAIN
It's summer, Austria. Couldn't you play fair just for these two bloody days?
At any rate, we used the water park conditions to see how the various safe traction bits performed under the worst non-snow circumstances. Not surprisingly, the R8 took the award home here with its fast-acting viscous Quattro differential that sends up to 30 percent of traction to the front when needed. The Audi's Pirelli PZero tires, while certainly not all-season, are good in the wet as well. After the R8 came the M3 with the standard eighteen-inch set of Michelin Pilot Sport treads, M Variable Differential Lock, and the best steering response. And then, as we said before, the GT3 in rain is to most drivers like tossing a cat in the pool, but the Cup tires and limited-slip differential did a damned good job so long as we were really good with those bodacious brakes.
Best part, again, about the crud weather is that it showed us a side of these cars that most tests don't even consider.
And then the sun came out again."
