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Road Test: Comparison Test
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2005 Sports Car Comparison Test
Introduction
By
Scott Oldham, Inside Line Editor in Chief
Date posted: 01-09-2005
This is humiliating, but an office poll revealed that our entire staff had only seen The Godfather 347 times collectively. And there's 12 of us.
With that shameful fact now out in the open, our qualifications to test and judge the Chevrolet Corvette and the Porsche Carrera S, two of the fastest cars on the market, were obviously suspect.
We needed to watch The Godfather, and we needed to watch it now, over and over, then, and only then, would we be capable of judging these two very powerful, very expensive sports cars properly.
Why The Godfather?
Because it's the best of its kind. Pure genius. The greatest movie ever made. When you watch it, your standards go up. You demand more. You expect the very best. You can't help but get wrapped up in its excellence. As the credits roll, Louis XIII tastes a touch flat, Pamela Anderson is a touch flat and Beethoven's Fifth needs a little something.
So we watched it. And we watched it. And then we watched it again. After the fifth viewing in a row, with nothing in our stomachs except bad coffee and cold pizza, we were ready. Our eyes were burning like flaming shots of Sambuca, and we were all craving fennel, but we were ready.
Bring on the cars.
Two Legends Renewed
The Chevrolet Corvette and the Porsche 911 have both been redesigned for the 2005 model year. Chevrolet and Porsche each says its new model shares little with last year's version, although both cars deal their ancestries a lot of respect. At the curb and from behind the wheel, the Carrera S is clearly a 911, and you'd have to be dead, dumb and blind not to recognize the sixth generation of the Chevrolet Corvette as anything but a Corvette.
As it has been for half a century, the 2005 Chevrolet Corvette is a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive, two-seater powered by Chevy's small-block V8, in this case an all-aluminum 6.0-liter that cranks out 400 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. And the 2005 911, as it has been for over 40 years, is a rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive, 2+2 powered by Porsche's horizontally opposed six-cylinder, in this case a water-cooled, all-aluminum 3.8-liter cranking out 355 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque.
In other words, they couldn't be more mechanically or philosophically different from one another if they were a man and a woman. Still their missions have always been the same. Be fast and be sexy. Comfort, reliability and practicality just don't matter as much as the athletics and the aesthetics.
To find out which is the gun, and which is the cannoli, we ordered up an example of each with a manual transmission and lots of optional luxuries. The Corvette showed up in rich Le Mans Blue with Magnetic Selective Ride Control, DVD navigation, a transparent roof panel, heated seats, a head-up display and a sticker price of $54,045 with destination. Porsche sent over a subdued Seal Grey Metallic Carrera S with heated seats, navigation, the Sport Chrono package, which is an onboard stopwatch, power seats and an MSRP of $88,690.
If neither price makes you grab your wallet with a sweaty claw, te salute, Don Corleone.
We drove each for two weeks. They saw our commutes and our favorite canyon roads. We hit drive-thrus, the dry cleaners and the dog groomers. We cruised Sunset Boulevard after dark, and L.A.'s crowded freeways in the warm glow of the rising sun. We asked our significant others what they thought, and our neighbors which they liked better.
Early in the process, the Porsche gained points for its universal crowd appeal, its everyday usability, its upscale interior, its surprising refinement and its awesome performance. At the end of the two weeks it was in the lead and pulling away.
That dominance continued at the test track, where it out-accelerated, out-braked and out-turned the Corvette, but it was at the racetrack, where the Corvette was shot down like Sonny at the causeway. On the twisting Streets of Willow course in Rosamond, Calif., the Chevrolet Corvette needed three more seconds to cover a lap than the 911.
Conclusion
In the Corvette's defense, our tester did not have the Z51 package, which stiffens the suspension, adds larger cross-drilled brake rotors and stickier tires. If it had, it may have been a different outcome at the track, but we're sure the outcome of this test would be the same. The 2005 Porsche Carrera S is just that good. It's wicked fast, shockingly livable and turns heads like a "Free Money" sign. It's one of the few cars in today's world that is undeniably worth its price tag. It is The Godfather of sports cars.
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