#any ways i had an induction for a museum today and the lady was so nice. she had a teacher way of speaking and that calmed me down hdsjkfhs

[orcixs]

me: im so nervous

a woman with glasses, hair tied up, wearing a cardigan: *talking enthusiastically*

me: suddenly i feel so safe

[amphibious-thing]

Thanks for the insight!

The they/them thing is very much a recent phenomenon. The take seems to more or less be that we should use gender neutral pronouns for her because we can't really know her true gender or how she would identify and what pronouns she would use had she lived today. My stance is that, whenever possible, we should use the pronouns a historical figure was last known to use. When writing in English post-1777 d'Eon used she/her for herself so thats what I use for her. (see British Museum D,1.272 for an example)

D'Eon's comment about on comes from one of the drafts for her autobiography. And while I do understand that on is more akin to one than they/them from the context of this statement she seems to dislike it specifically because it's gender neutral. Unfortunately I only have the English translation (The Maiden of Tonnerre) but this is the section I'm talking about:

The pronoun one is stupid. One cannot give birth when one would like. Did not the misfortune that befell the learned Popess Joan during her fine procession at St. Peter's in Rome occur all of a sudden like thunderbolts from the Vatican to the great scandal of the whole Church and of all the honorable devout women who were witness to the fine miracle that took place because of an improperly situated bulge?

A translation note clarifies:

The French word on is a third-person pronoun referring to others without designating any person in particular. It can be translated as "one" in such expressions as "one says" or "one does".

D'Eon seems to be saying that on is stupid because you're either male or female. Which seems like an odd statement not only considering who is saying it but also because she says this in the very next paragraph:

I did what I said I did. Hardly had I succumbed to the power of society when God came to my aid and the Lord lifted me up and gave me the strength not to turn red upon seeing my name erased from the catalogue of men and inscribed on the list of women; and moreover, I saw with my own eyes, without crying, the captain of the dragoons inducted into the religious order of the Daughters of Holy Mary and into the company of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting.

It's important to understand the context; d'Eon's autobiography was written for an audience who believed d'Eon was afab and is thus written from that perspective. While we know d'Eon was amab thats not what d'Eon was telling the entirety of France and England. D'Eon claimed that she was afab but that her parents had raised her as a boy for inheritance reasons. She lived as a man until the secret of her female sex was discovered and she was forced to live as a woman by Louis XVI and while she was reluctant at first she ultimately realised that she must live as a woman because that was her true nature and and God's will and ultimately what made her happy.

The problem is that as soon as you know d'Eon had a penis the whole story unravels. How much of what d'Eon says in her autobiography is true and how much is fiction?

My guess is that d'Eon is overcompensating here. Throughout these drafts she repeats the lie that her "true sex" was discovered. Here she is talking about Pope Joan who according to legend was a female pope whose sex was discovered. This in some ways mirrors the fictionalised story of d'Eon's life. My guess is that she is basically saying on is a stupid pronoun because sex is binary and immutable. The subtext being also remember I have a vagina. D'Eon wanted the public to see her not just as a woman but as a cis woman.

However the comment still seems a bit odd to me as the pronoun one isn't really used to denote nonbinary gender/third gender and from what you and the translation note says I gather this is also true of on. So why did d'Eon dislike on? This is what makes me wonder if there was something more to it. Like maybe people had be phrasing things oddly to avoid using gendered language for her. But this is pure speculation. It might just be a terrible segue or a random thought and I don't even know if this makes sense in French.

TBH this post wasn't that serious I just thought it was kinda ironic that the clearest statement d'Eon seems to have made about pronouns (that I'm aware of) is that on is stupid seemingly because its gender neutral yet it feels like so many people these days use gender neutral pronouns for her.

do we really think that Geneviève 'the pronoun on is stupid' d'Eon would be super stoked about people using they/them pronouns for her

[warforthecrown]

Session 1: All The King’s Men

It promised to be a day for the ages, the exaltation of a commoner to noble status, an historic vote in the Senate, and possibly a new way of life for the people of Taldor. Just how influential this day would be could not be overstated.

They had each been hired separately by Lady Martella Lotheed, to assist her in her political ventures this Exaltation Day. Working towards the removal of the ancient law of primogeniture, the law that only the firstborn son could inherit, was a dream nearly made reality. Only this vote in the Senate remained. However for this to be made so, certain political alliances had to be formed, and broken. The need for “senatorial aides” was clear.

Gladius Auger was hired to find the true motives of Duke Centimus and Countess Aribelle Pace.

Alphonse Hallace had been hired to make sure certain donated artifacts would... disappear, to embarrass Earl Calhadion Vernisant, and weaken his position.

Norelor had been hired to convince the popular Baron Nicolaus Okerra to come around to a more forward thinking position, so that he in turn could influence others.

Jaul Stonebarry was hired as an assistant, to run between the others, and make sure that all jobs were completed in time.

Each of the “aides” were given a senate aide badge of an extinct family line, the Voritas family. These would allow them access to the gala, though make it clear they were guests and not able to vote, and also give them the ability to communicate with Lady Lotheed.

While standing in line to be allowed in, Jaul practiced his skills as a cutpurse, relieving a nearby noble of a few gold pieces, which he then immediately spent on commemorative flags being sold by a nearby merchant, distributing them amongst his new co-workers. Thankfully, before any more mischief could be done, they were pulled out of line by a guard for a random search, actually a guard with whom they shared a “mutual friend”. Having been cleared to enter, the group was allowed to ascend the steps into the Senate.

At first the group spread out to mingle in the Arcade of Triumphs, a small museum of Taldor’s history and military might. Norelor seemed somewhat bored as she scanned the crowd for anyone of note. Gladius quickly engaged the curator in discussion about the care of the artifacts within the Arcade, while Jaul and Alphonse quietly found the objects donated by Earl Vernisant. They were able to remove a couple of objects with no trouble, but it would take time and skill to take all of them.

Soon a crowd began to gather in the courtyard, as Princess Eutropia had arrived without being announced. She climbed atop a wall, giving an impassioned speech about the events to be held. While this was happening, Gladius noticed a servant taking some kind of alchemical creation towards a nearby apiary. The servant had been told it would calm the bees, but Gladius knew it would do the opposite! By stopping the servant, he narrowly averted disaster. After the speech, the group had some time to mingle, or to go about their assigned duties. Jaul easily stole another two artifacts, but the final one proved difficult for both him and Alphonse, until a clever plan using Alphonse’s raven familiar led to the buckler being taken and simply tossed over the courtyard wall. One task had been completed!

Norelor was not much of a politician, and she found herself exploring the Senate building more than talking, though she eventually found her way to the Senate Floor itself, where she found Baron Okerra, and the soon to be made Lord Kalbio. Her impassioned speech about the change of laws, and great beauty impressed the Baron, and entranced Kalbio, who had been feeling somewhat overwhelmed by all the attention. Baron Okerra began to understand that holding onto laws for laws sake was not helpful. Kalbio continued to follow Norelor throughout the night, and was delighted when she gave him the flag that Jaul had bought while they had been in the queue! Everyone was very surprised when Princess Eutropia was able to recognise the two of them, even in the crowd.

Gladius first made his way to the archives, where Duke Centimus was. A friendly, if awkward half-elf, Duke Centimus had lost the use of his legs in a riding accident some years ago, and hated being seen as only his injury. Gladius and the Duke were able to connect on their shared love of history, and the Duke revealed that a lot of the history of Taldor was actually struck from record, especially more... controversial subjects. The Duke was strongly on the side of Lady Lotheed and Princess Eutropia, as he believed that someone’s ability to rule was determined by their ability, not their gender or physical condition.

Lady Lotheed then called her aides together to discuss where things had gotten to, and to warn them of the presence of known bully Dame Malphene Trant. The aides would have to keep an eye out for her, her lackeys, and any trouble they may cause.

Soon Jaul found a small, out of the way area, and knew exactly what to do with it. He pulled a minor noblewoman away, and had some fun. Soon, another (her choice) joined them.

As Countess Pace was in the Gallery, Gladius and Alphonse attempted to entertain the children along with Wyssilka the Fantabulous and her troupe. Gladius was surprisingly good at entertaining children, but Alphonse was not. However between the two of them, they found that the Countess was willing to do whatever it took to gain influence, including voting in whatever way they majority went. Clearly, more work would be needed to influence her within the Senate.

It was then that Dame Trant appeared on the Gallery, roughly pushing a Junior Senator into a side room. The aides rushed to assist Junior Senator Dou, and were able to diffuse the situation before a fight could break out. They were then all distracted by the sudden arrival of the Grand Prince.

Trumpets sounded, red carpets rolled out, as Grand Prince Stavian III arrived at the Senate Building... and promptly disappeared into private meetings. In order to calm the confused guests, a light supper was brought out. Alphonse found he did not enjoy the food very much, and Jaul found he much preferred the serving staff, inviting another two people into his now very full “Nookie Nook”.

Following supper, the Senate convened. A number of minor votes and reports were held, and finally the vote that all had come to see. A great deal of arguments and debates occurred, and finally the vote was held. The final vote ended with 36 abstentions, 107 votes for, and 79 against. The law of primogeniture was repealed, and the Senate recognised Princess Eutropia Stavian I as the heir to the crown.

While waiting for the final statements by Grand Prince Stavian, Lady Lotheed pulled her aides aside and thanked them for all the work they had done this night, though she seemed a little exasperated with Jaul. There would be the Exaltation of Kalbio the Weaver to nobility, and the night would be done.

Everyone crammed into the Senate Floor as Stavian stood above them, Kalbio by his side, as Stavian made his speech 

“I’m sure many of you have had the opportunity to meet Kalbio here. He is a man of the people, elevated at the urging of all the ladies, lords, senators, and aides present in this chamber. I think we should all give him a rousing applause, to commemorate this momentous change in his life.”

After the applause abated, Stavian continued

“I understand your parents sacrificed everything to help you reach this day, my boy. Saving up for your apprenticeship and the tools you needed to achieve greatness. And today you are a grateful son, no doubt making them proud. I too understand what it is to sacrifice; I have given so much for the people of this nation: a brother, a son, a lifetime of service. Even my own daughter’s loyalty. But unlike you, Lord Kalbio, these Taldans—my children, truly—are not grateful. They scheme and plot, dream of hanging their dutiful father and placing a woman—a woman, sir!—on the Lion Throne! And they have seen fit this very day to induct you into their conspiratorial ranks. And that is why here, now, you, Lord Kalbio, will be the first among them to die.”

Stavian plunged his dagger between Kalbio’s ribs, and the Senate was sprayed with his blood.

In the sudden rush of anger and confusion, Prince Stavian’s guard began attacking the assembled nobility. Those who had weapons or magic jumped to fight, but the guards had been better prepared. Blood made the floor of the chamber slick, and the aides attempted to help fight, but as the guards came with their greatswords... a flash came from the aides badges, and there was only darkness and the smell of earth.

[nytcap]

Press preview for Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll by j- No Via Flickr: The Metropolitan Museum of Art April 1, 2019

A groundbreaking exhibition presenting a spectacular array of iconic instruments of rock and roll - "one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century and the objects that made the music possible" - go on view at The Met on April 8, through September.

“Rarely Seen Guitars, Bass, Drum Kits, Keys, and Horns from More than 80 Renowned Musicians Celebrate the Unique Role of Instruments in Rock.” Christie's and Sotheby's must be kicking themselves for missing out on what surely would have netted them millions in auctioneer's commissions, if placed on the market instead of donated to a museum.

On April 1, the press was treated to a preview of the show, teased with what many of us thought to be an April Fool joke: appearances by musicians Jimmy Page, Steve Miller, Tina Weymouth, and others.  Nope, it wasn't a joke. Towering over the packed hall were Greco-Roman statues of (appropriately) shamelessly full-frontal nude men and ladies, lit by sunlight streaming through the skylight and floor-to ceiling window.  

Typically, for rock & roll, the start was delayed, but eventually out strode those very rock stars. Remarks about the year-long labor of putting together such a monumental exhibition were made by museum staff and a rep from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who sponsored the exhibit.  Following brief, anecdotal remarks from the Led Zep guitar god, the original Space Cowboy, Steve Miller, gave a long walk-through about putting the show together, as well as much technical tidbits that no doubt flew way over the heads of all who are not guitarists themselves. He also promised that he would be working with the Met to improve their music-hostile acoustics.  Talking Head and Tom-Tom Clubber Tina Weymouth read from a very long essay by a Catholic priest about, basically, the importance of finding your own rhythm.  The audience perked up from nodding off completely, when she worked in a quote of the title of TTC's "Happiness Can't Buy Money", which, given the head-nodding, hardly anyone present was familiar with, despite it being one of her biggest hits.

After the formalities, there was a completely unexpected solo performance by Don Felder on his truly iconic (sorry for the overuse of this adjective, but it's true) double 12- and 6-string white guitar used on just about every performance of  "Hotel California" the Eagles ever gave. video links: https://flic.kr/p/2fpobAn https://flic.kr/p/2eiqZpW

Room after room featured worshipful displays of performance setups, surrounded by walls completely covered - like my teenage bedroom - with concert posters from back in the day when those were actually serious works of art (not to mention when rock stars were accomplished serious musicians and composers, unlike the majority of today’s autotuned stars who can’t play anything, drone over lifeless iMac-generated beats, and require an entire village to compose and score their songs).

As a strictly Ibanez person myself, I was disappointed to see the only representative of my (let's face it, budget-minded) brand, was one donated by Joni Mitchell.  I can only hope that it was used on the two or three songs of her's that I like.

The exhibition begins with Chuck Berry's  ES-350T (1957) electric guitar, which was used to record "Johnny B. Goode"; followed by Lady Gaga's custom-designed piano; Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Texas Flood" composite Stratocaster "Number One"; the guitar that Keith Richards is known to have used when the Rolling Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1966;  Flea's "punk" bass used throughout RHCP's career, and Jimmy Page's dragon-embroidered costume, which he wore during Led Zeppelin's live performances from 1975 to 1977.

In addition to Prince's iconic gold 'love symbol' guitar, included in the exhibit is the Purple One's 1980s "cherub" suit, and the famous "disappearing" Tele-style H.S. Anderson Mad Cat guitar he played on his 2004 show-stopping, jaw-dropping solo during the all-star tribute performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for the induction of George Harrison into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  A performance which provides a perfect bookend to Hendrix's "flaming" finale, opening for The Who.  OK, blue-eyed soulsters, lemme see ya top this! Boom. https://youtu.be/6SFNW5F8K9Y 

The remains of Kurt Cobain's Fender used on Nirvana's In Utero tour are on display, which he destroyed upon spotting Eddie Van Halen (another renowned guitar killer) in the audience.

Wall cards accompanying many of the instruments testify to the comradery among musicians in that so many classic instruments were passed from one to another out of respect for their craft and contributions, as well as collaborations that led to technological advances, e.g. Keith Emerson and Robert Moog, Les Paul with Gibson guitars, and Todd Rundgren's restorations for Eric Clapton and others.

*view many more photos at https://flic.kr/s/aHskTsXCvJ 

And no history of electric guitars would be complete without the reverse-strung Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" on at Woodstock, as well as at the Monterey Pops festival, AND the shard that is left of the Strat that he incinerated at Monterey Pops.  

A bit of trivia that was new to me was that the reason so many early guitars had hideous pale yellow finishes was because it looked better on television in the days of black & white.  Many musicians had theirs repainted after color tv came in in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Axes from other rock stars of note include The White Stripes' Jack White, Gerry Garcia's singular "Wolf" Irwin, Bo Diddley's candy apple red hambonin' "Twang Machine" self-modified box Gretch, Cheap Trickster Rick Nielsen's insane 4-bodied Hamer, many from Eric "God" Clapton, Ravi Shankar's sitar, Muddy Waters' "The Hoss" blood red Telecaster, the original and hugely influential erotic gospel axe-shredder Sister Rosetta "rock me" Tharpe (whose modified light Les Paul Gibson was later copied for Jimi Hendrix, The Who, AC/DC, and the Allman Brothers), and of course, the Beatles.

All together now: in one photo, appearing for the first time, the signature guitar used by Elvis Presley, flanked by those of George Harrison, and 50s rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson.

Drums and bass take a back seat (beat?) in the show, as do keyboards and brass, but still, respect is given with displays from notable kits from Keith Moon, Patti Smith's clarinet, the Mellontron used by the Stones on "2000 Light Years from Home" (which, for you youngsters, was an analog keyboard-operated instrument that played acetate taped notes recorded from any source, including human voices, used heavily by late psychedelic bands like Tangerine Dream and Genesis, and even a band that I was in [dating myself]), Louis Jordan's alto sax, Ray Manzarek's organ used on the Door's ""Light My Fire", Keith Emerson's knife-embedded "raped" Hammond organ and massive Moog synth, B-52 Kate Pierson's Farfisa organ (I stupidly sold mine for a mere $50, to buy drugs, of course) and a gold Steck grand piano used by pioneering rock pals Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

The exhibit's promo postcard features Joan Jett's guitar "Melody Maker" girl power guitar, which remains an important part of her onstage (& offstage LGBT) identity.

Creators and innovators of amps, pedals, and effects like feedback, distortions, fuzz, wah-wah and sequencing, were almost totally absent, despite their overwhelming influence on the development of rock.  No Ike Turner, Link Wray, Dick Dale, or any surf guitar innovators whatsoever. No Frippertronics or Enosification. Then again, the absence of any mention of sex and drugs in a show about rock stars is pretty glaring, also.

Contemporary rock is mostly absent, as is most post-80s, save Cobain and White and an obviously egregious curatorial plug for St. Vincent, who seems to be way out of her league surrounded by Clapton, Townsend, Beck, Hendirx, and Page.  And aside from Joe Strummer's Telecaster, with it's duct-taped strap and Jett’s Melody Maker, punk is not represented here at all, either because it was not deemed part of rock and roll (Johnny Rotten famously declared that punk was meant to be the death of rock and roll, but admitted that it failed by actually reviving it) or deemed unworthy. Or maybe they simply could’t afford to give up their instruments. But being enshrined in the Metropolitan Museum, though, would not be very punk, now would it?

#MetRockandRoll #guitar #rock #rockandroll #musician #musicalinstruments

[jesusvasser]

The 700 Horsepower Club

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — Nashville is no stranger to spectacle, a place that serves as a mecca to rhinestone-gilt pop-country singers and outlaws alike. The town, and its neon-laced Broadway District in particular, has seen everything but this: three of the most powerful production cars for sale today, all in a tidy row.

There’s nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of carbon fiber and forced induction between us, better than 2,100 horsepower split among the three. The Broadway crowd couldn’t get enough of them, taking photos and video, cheering and begging for any one of us to be delinquent enough to snap a throttle open and let our miracle engines shriek above the blaring honky-tonks. When we inevitably obliged, all eyes for two blocks were on us, the cheers nearly as loud as the drums and guitars spilling from every open bar. Behold the mad, reality-distorting power of these three goliaths of automotive engineering: the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, and McLaren 720S.

These are the standard bearers for the new frontier of performance. There are more machines surpassing 700 horsepower for sale today than ever before, even now, as electrification and regulation conspire to snuff out piston-driven automobiles altogether. But a handful of manufacturers are committed to pressing the internal combustion engine relentlessly forward in a heroic and dumb and perfectly human gesture. None of these machines will give your mind the half second it takes to send a curse to your lips. Each has a way of consuming mental bandwidth and asphalt in equal proportion, gathering them until you’re forced to choose between remembering to breathe or brake. That’s what happens when there’s 700 or more horsepower tethered to your big toe, when the bolt to 60 mph takes less than 3 seconds, and when 150 mph snaps past in a blink.

We spent three days in these cars. Three days ripping around the gorgeous and twisting asphalt south of Nashville, hunting out perfect, lonely two-lane apexes and ragged ridge sides trying to wrap our minds around these machines. At times they didn’t seem real, but rather a fantasy dreamt of across decades, an unrealistic vision of performance not long ago reserved for true racing sports cars. Performance levels and experiences that for most of the automobile’s history were off limits to all but officially licensed professional race drivers, those talented men and women who were at times left grasping for ways to explain to the rest of us just what true speed is all about.

The GT2 RS is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

To that end we stopped at the National Corvette Museum’s Motorsports Park (MSP) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s not a track that forgives transgressions. The full course shoves 23 turns into 3.15 miles, the asphalt a rippling ribbon that works its way up and over the rolling countryside. Blind crests and close barriers mean a mistake might cost you more than some body panels. But where else can you get to know the upper capabilities of cars like these? Their limits are so far beyond the bounds of public-road legality that to explore even some small fraction of them requires the freedom only an open track provides.

We added water to the 911’s reservoir as needed then hit Broadway and felt plenty cool ourselves.

It was 80 degrees at 8 a.m., the midsummer humidity a heavy exhale on our skin. Aesthetically, the cars could not be more different. The 911 GT2 RS might be the sleeper of the bunch despite its wild, exposed carbon-fiber wing, fender vents, and NACA ducts. The car is gorgeous, but only in the way that all 911s are. To anyone unfamiliar with the smattering of letters and numbers stuck to the doors and tail, it might simply look like another Porsche. That’s a shame, because as of this moment, it is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

The GT2 RS is more than that blistering engine, a modified version of the 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six found in the 911 Turbo S. Larger turbos, more boost, a unique intake, and new pistons help produce 700 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but less obvious tricks borrowed from Porsche’s motorsports arm make the car a functional weapon. Steel ball joints in place of the usual rubber suspension bushings throughout, dynamic engine mounts, and control arms robbed from the 911 GT3 RS help make all that power usable. And massive Michelin Sport Cup 2 R tires, essentially the same compound as the Corvette wore. The rears are 325/30-R21, the exact size as found on Porsche’s hyper 918 Spyder.

If the GT2 RS appears familiar, the 720S looks and sounds like the future. Low and tidy with beautiful, organic curves, it is not ostentatious or brash in the way so many supercars are. Dipped in our tester’s dark blue paint, it reeks instead of quiet competence, an impression that’s only underscored by its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with 710 hp and 568 lb-ft, numbers that help give it the best power-to-weight ratio of the three. It is a machine that has nothing to prove— until it’s time to prove it.

The ZR1 is a shout by comparison, its tall, vented hood hiding a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 good for 755 hp and 715 lb-ft. In this group of hammers, this is the sledge. And with its wild, canard-laden fascia and towering rear wing, it wants everyone within a city block to know it. It needs the power. At 3,560 pounds, the ZR1 weighs 319 pounds more than the Porsche and is heavier than the McLaren by 432. The fact it is here at all is a marvel. Chevrolet has made a habit of punching above its weight with the Corvette, but this car takes that American notion to a new plane. As equipped, it costs less than half of either of its more svelte rivals.

As we watched from the flag tower, Pilgrim lit the Chevy’s fuse, the V-8 snapping at the sky like glory as he ran out the half-mile straight. By Turn 10, the car’s hazard lights were flashing. It wasn’t until he returned to the pits that we figured out why. The repeated, abrupt change in lateral g force was enough to trick the car’s OnStar system into thinking Pilgrim had collided with something. He spent the lap yelling over the screaming exhaust, trying to convince the nice lady on the other end of the line that he was just fine, all while on his way to a lap of 2:08.77. The time was still exceptionally fast considering the ambient temperature was now in the 90s, and it landed the ZR1 smack between the GT2 RS and 720S. Pilgrim had, weeks before, set MSP’s official production car track record of 2:05.59 in a different ZR1; he put the time difference on this run down to seeing lower speeds on the straights, most likely due to the temperature being 35 degrees hotter, and this test car’s automatic transmission not always giving him the lower gears he wanted. (He set the lap record in a manual-gearbox car.)

The Porsche recorded the fastest time, an impressive 2:05.92, just more than 0.3 second off the lap record. The GT2 RS’ power was seemingly unaffected by the brutally hot conditions, thanks in part to its system that sprays the intercoolers with cooling water.

Three cars, and three philosophies—front engine, mid engine, and rear engine—prove equally thrilling at speed.

On this day, the McLaren set the slowest lap of the three, for several reasons. First, Pilgrim only had a chance to do one timed lap, 2:12.06, before a thunder cell rolled over the horizon, the only thing more powerful for miles. Additionally, in the 720S Pilgrim felt a lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to both the Chevrolet and the Porsche, which are similar to each other in terms of their downforce-to-speed ratio. The 720S also sports narrower wheels and tires, which result in almost 20 percent less rubber on the road. Plus, this particular car’s tires were the less sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsas, not the optional Pirelli Trofeo R tire. The harder tires alone probably gave away 2 seconds or so to its playmates, especially at a place like MSP, which features numerous long, sweeping turns. Pilgrim believed the 720S would run close to the ZR1’s time with the stickier tires; even on the Corsas, he would have probably clocked a 2:10 if he’d had a chance to run a second hot lap.

The lap times, though, are irrelevant to the fun. With the three cars clawing and ripping their way around corners, it was hard to tell what was lightning and what was a downshift, the bark of both echoing off of the buildings behind us.

These cars are the mechanical deep end, and with that in mind, I belted into the ZR1. From the driver’s seat, the only indication you’re in something other than a standard C7 Corvette is the towering hood rising up from the cowl and turning the windshield into a thin slit. It’s like looking at the scenery from between the folds of a bandanna—the outlaw’s view. On the track, Turn 3 opens up into a long straight, followed by an easy right, and the sight of that wide road was too much temptation. I planted the throttle, the supercharger got busy cramming Kentucky air into those eight eager cylinders, and the world cracked wide.

These aren’t wild rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed, but with fangs as long as your middle finger.

The thrust was eye-widening and lung-arresting, a brief moment of traction loss followed by an eruption. I was upon the right-hander in a blink, positive I’d overcooked the thing. I tucked in anyway, and by the grace of General Motors, the car obliged. That’s the real miracle of the ZR1. It’s not some knuckle-dragging hot rod. It’s simply more Corvette in every way. There’s more power. More grip. The massive carbon-ceramic brake rotors have no problem bringing the machine back to sane speeds after dipping a toe into the car’s ludicrous acceleration. But there’s the sense that this is the Corvette pulled taut, all of the performance Chevy can possibly squeeze from the platform. This tester’s optional eight-speed automatic transmission delivers quick shifts, but they sometimes lack the immediacy this engine deserves, and the gearbox, as Pilgrim noted, doesn’t always yield the requested shift, especially when temperatures are blazing hot. Both the 720S and the GT2 RS benefit from seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes.

Extracting maximum performance requires a maximum driver, seen here getting ready to engage the afterburners.

Wherever you might choose to uncork these devils, the downforce levels—until relatively recently not something significant when discussing road cars—are a more important variable to consider. The GT2 RS arrived in its most aggressive aerodynamic configuration, the same one it used to blister the Nürburgring on its way to the production car lap record (a lap of 6:47.3, bested just weeks ago by a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at 6:44.9), and at 124 mph it generates 313 pounds of downforce. That’s more than double what the present 911 GT3 manages, and on a quick layout, it matters. Like a race car, the faster the GT2 RS goes, the stickier it gets.

It was a strange thing to step from the Corvette to the 911. The ZR1 is fast around a track, but it requires a certain amount of daring from the gambling end of your lizard brain. The GT2 RS is a wicked enabler, effortlessly quick. Swinging the car through NCM’s decreasing-radius, off-camber challenge of Turn 6 at what I thought was the upper limit of adhesion, the Porsche strolled through without so much as a twitch of its wide hips. Given the lack of an engine over its front axle, the steering is delicious and immediate. The brakes, also carbon ceramics, have near-perfect pedal feel. The power is one long, zealous pull, free of the peak and twitch that earned this car’s old 930 predecessor its dark nickname: Witwenmacher. Widow maker. It all combines to create the most confidence-inspiring machine of the litter, whether you drive it on a public road or a closed course. Whoever imagined saying such a thing about a 700-hp, rear-drive 911?

Gorgeous in green, the new Porsche 911 GT2 RS is one of the world’s most devastating road cars.

The only thing that could pry me from the German’s seat throughout our three days of Kentucky and Tennessee touring and raging was the promise of the 720S. Of all the brazenly capable cars on hand, the McLaren is the least orthodox. Its cockpit is open and airy, and the windscreen wraps around you like a bubble that sits as far to the center of the vehicle as possible. As for the track, Pilgrim offered a word of advice: “It doesn’t have the grip of the other two.”

Nor should it, due to the less gooey rubber and lower downforce. But these tires are perfect for this car. Of the three, none executes the sense of speed as well as the 720S. The world wraps past the big, open windshield in a blur, the gasp and thrust of the engine in your ear. And it’s playful because it isn’t welded to the pavement, sliding and dancing around its perfect center, a gift of that mid-engine layout. Turn 19 is a nail-biter, an off-camber drop into what’s affectionately called The Sinkhole. The road simply falls away. It’s a tricky bit to manage for any car, but the 720S made it the most hilarious part of the track. Simply point the nose with your toe, dive down, and ride up the other side. If roller coasters were this fun, Disney World would have a line all the way to Georgia.

Once upon a time, cars like these were at home only on the track. Not so nowadays.

Most astounding is how quickly the cars coaxed us into real speed. These aren’t wild hares or rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed but with fangs as long as your middle finger and jaws strong enough to crush your skull. It’s incredible. As much as purists love to rant and rail against the heedless press of technology, the microprocessor is a godsend in these cars. Exquisite traction and stability control not only make each of them wieldable but also make them faster. There might be no better display of just what can be accomplished by the marriage of man and machine.

That’s why none of us thought twice about pointing the cars south for a run to Nashville and a day of romping around the winding two-lanes south of town. There, gunning down Natchez Trace or winding our way out toward the small town of Franklin, Kentucky, the cars showed themselves ever more impressive. Even with its buckboard spring rates, thin glass, and lightweight carpeting, the GT2 RS proved acceptably civil, thanks in part to its active dampers and switchable sport exhaust. There are compromises to be made, for sure, starting with the front trunk. Porsche hides the reservoir for the intercooler water sprayer up there, and on our hot day, there was enough condensation up front to soak one of our bags. Such is the price of dominance.

This trio should feel underwhelmed by legal speeds, but that’s not what we found whatsoever. Each is a joy to spit through traffic or waltz up a country byway. Out there, the 720S came into its own. If it is a good and fun track car, it is a blissful street car. Light and playful even at posted speed limits, it feels like real progress, how those of a certain age hoped cars would be when they gazed toward 2018 from the dim horizon of childhood. The car is also occasionally infuriating, with cabin controls that seem to have been designed by someone who has never seen or interacted with a human form. Basics like adjusting a from Performance Junk WP Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2oqd4kP via IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

The 700 Horsepower Club

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — Nashville is no stranger to spectacle, a place that serves as a mecca to rhinestone-gilt pop-country singers and outlaws alike. The town, and its neon-laced Broadway District in particular, has seen everything but this: three of the most powerful production cars for sale today, all in a tidy row.

There’s nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of carbon fiber and forced induction between us, better than 2,100 horsepower split among the three. The Broadway crowd couldn’t get enough of them, taking photos and video, cheering and begging for any one of us to be delinquent enough to snap a throttle open and let our miracle engines shriek above the blaring honky-tonks. When we inevitably obliged, all eyes for two blocks were on us, the cheers nearly as loud as the drums and guitars spilling from every open bar. Behold the mad, reality-distorting power of these three goliaths of automotive engineering: the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, and McLaren 720S.

These are the standard bearers for the new frontier of performance. There are more machines surpassing 700 horsepower for sale today than ever before, even now, as electrification and regulation conspire to snuff out piston-driven automobiles altogether. But a handful of manufacturers are committed to pressing the internal combustion engine relentlessly forward in a heroic and dumb and perfectly human gesture. None of these machines will give your mind the half second it takes to send a curse to your lips. Each has a way of consuming mental bandwidth and asphalt in equal proportion, gathering them until you’re forced to choose between remembering to breathe or brake. That’s what happens when there’s 700 or more horsepower tethered to your big toe, when the bolt to 60 mph takes less than 3 seconds, and when 150 mph snaps past in a blink.

We spent three days in these cars. Three days ripping around the gorgeous and twisting asphalt south of Nashville, hunting out perfect, lonely two-lane apexes and ragged ridge sides trying to wrap our minds around these machines. At times they didn’t seem real, but rather a fantasy dreamt of across decades, an unrealistic vision of performance not long ago reserved for true racing sports cars. Performance levels and experiences that for most of the automobile’s history were off limits to all but officially licensed professional race drivers, those talented men and women who were at times left grasping for ways to explain to the rest of us just what true speed is all about.

The GT2 RS is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

To that end we stopped at the National Corvette Museum’s Motorsports Park (MSP) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s not a track that forgives transgressions. The full course shoves 23 turns into 3.15 miles, the asphalt a rippling ribbon that works its way up and over the rolling countryside. Blind crests and close barriers mean a mistake might cost you more than some body panels. But where else can you get to know the upper capabilities of cars like these? Their limits are so far beyond the bounds of public-road legality that to explore even some small fraction of them requires the freedom only an open track provides.

We added water to the 911’s reservoir as needed then hit Broadway and felt plenty cool ourselves.

It was 80 degrees at 8 a.m., the midsummer humidity a heavy exhale on our skin. Aesthetically, the cars could not be more different. The 911 GT2 RS might be the sleeper of the bunch despite its wild, exposed carbon-fiber wing, fender vents, and NACA ducts. The car is gorgeous, but only in the way that all 911s are. To anyone unfamiliar with the smattering of letters and numbers stuck to the doors and tail, it might simply look like another Porsche. That’s a shame, because as of this moment, it is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

The GT2 RS is more than that blistering engine, a modified version of the 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six found in the 911 Turbo S. Larger turbos, more boost, a unique intake, and new pistons help produce 700 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but less obvious tricks borrowed from Porsche’s motorsports arm make the car a functional weapon. Steel ball joints in place of the usual rubber suspension bushings throughout, dynamic engine mounts, and control arms robbed from the 911 GT3 RS help make all that power usable. And massive Michelin Sport Cup 2 R tires, essentially the same compound as the Corvette wore. The rears are 325/30-R21, the exact size as found on Porsche’s hyper 918 Spyder.

If the GT2 RS appears familiar, the 720S looks and sounds like the future. Low and tidy with beautiful, organic curves, it is not ostentatious or brash in the way so many supercars are. Dipped in our tester’s dark blue paint, it reeks instead of quiet competence, an impression that’s only underscored by its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with 710 hp and 568 lb-ft, numbers that help give it the best power-to-weight ratio of the three. It is a machine that has nothing to prove— until it’s time to prove it.

The ZR1 is a shout by comparison, its tall, vented hood hiding a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 good for 755 hp and 715 lb-ft. In this group of hammers, this is the sledge. And with its wild, canard-laden fascia and towering rear wing, it wants everyone within a city block to know it. It needs the power. At 3,560 pounds, the ZR1 weighs 319 pounds more than the Porsche and is heavier than the McLaren by 432. The fact it is here at all is a marvel. Chevrolet has made a habit of punching above its weight with the Corvette, but this car takes that American notion to a new plane. As equipped, it costs less than half of either of its more svelte rivals.

As we watched from the flag tower, Pilgrim lit the Chevy’s fuse, the V-8 snapping at the sky like glory as he ran out the half-mile straight. By Turn 10, the car’s hazard lights were flashing. It wasn’t until he returned to the pits that we figured out why. The repeated, abrupt change in lateral g force was enough to trick the car’s OnStar system into thinking Pilgrim had collided with something. He spent the lap yelling over the screaming exhaust, trying to convince the nice lady on the other end of the line that he was just fine, all while on his way to a lap of 2:08.77. The time was still exceptionally fast considering the ambient temperature was now in the 90s, and it landed the ZR1 smack between the GT2 RS and 720S. Pilgrim had, weeks before, set MSP’s official production car track record of 2:05.59 in a different ZR1; he put the time difference on this run down to seeing lower speeds on the straights, most likely due to the temperature being 35 degrees hotter, and this test car’s automatic transmission not always giving him the lower gears he wanted. (He set the lap record in a manual-gearbox car.)

The Porsche recorded the fastest time, an impressive 2:05.92, just more than 0.3 second off the lap record. The GT2 RS’ power was seemingly unaffected by the brutally hot conditions, thanks in part to its system that sprays the intercoolers with cooling water.

Three cars, and three philosophies—front engine, mid engine, and rear engine—prove equally thrilling at speed.

On this day, the McLaren set the slowest lap of the three, for several reasons. First, Pilgrim only had a chance to do one timed lap, 2:12.06, before a thunder cell rolled over the horizon, the only thing more powerful for miles. Additionally, in the 720S Pilgrim felt a lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to both the Chevrolet and the Porsche, which are similar to each other in terms of their downforce-to-speed ratio. The 720S also sports narrower wheels and tires, which result in almost 20 percent less rubber on the road. Plus, this particular car’s tires were the less sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsas, not the optional Pirelli Trofeo R tire. The harder tires alone probably gave away 2 seconds or so to its playmates, especially at a place like MSP, which features numerous long, sweeping turns. Pilgrim believed the 720S would run close to the ZR1’s time with the stickier tires; even on the Corsas, he would have probably clocked a 2:10 if he’d had a chance to run a second hot lap.

The lap times, though, are irrelevant to the fun. With the three cars clawing and ripping their way around corners, it was hard to tell what was lightning and what was a downshift, the bark of both echoing off of the buildings behind us.

These cars are the mechanical deep end, and with that in mind, I belted into the ZR1. From the driver’s seat, the only indication you’re in something other than a standard C7 Corvette is the towering hood rising up from the cowl and turning the windshield into a thin slit. It’s like looking at the scenery from between the folds of a bandanna—the outlaw’s view. On the track, Turn 3 opens up into a long straight, followed by an easy right, and the sight of that wide road was too much temptation. I planted the throttle, the supercharger got busy cramming Kentucky air into those eight eager cylinders, and the world cracked wide.

These aren’t wild rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed, but with fangs as long as your middle finger.

The thrust was eye-widening and lung-arresting, a brief moment of traction loss followed by an eruption. I was upon the right-hander in a blink, positive I’d overcooked the thing. I tucked in anyway, and by the grace of General Motors, the car obliged. That’s the real miracle of the ZR1. It’s not some knuckle-dragging hot rod. It’s simply more Corvette in every way. There’s more power. More grip. The massive carbon-ceramic brake rotors have no problem bringing the machine back to sane speeds after dipping a toe into the car’s ludicrous acceleration. But there’s the sense that this is the Corvette pulled taut, all of the performance Chevy can possibly squeeze from the platform. This tester’s optional eight-speed automatic transmission delivers quick shifts, but they sometimes lack the immediacy this engine deserves, and the gearbox, as Pilgrim noted, doesn’t always yield the requested shift, especially when temperatures are blazing hot. Both the 720S and the GT2 RS benefit from seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes.

Extracting maximum performance requires a maximum driver, seen here getting ready to engage the afterburners.

Wherever you might choose to uncork these devils, the downforce levels—until relatively recently not something significant when discussing road cars—are a more important variable to consider. The GT2 RS arrived in its most aggressive aerodynamic configuration, the same one it used to blister the Nürburgring on its way to the production car lap record (a lap of 6:47.3, bested just weeks ago by a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at 6:44.9), and at 124 mph it generates 313 pounds of downforce. That’s more than double what the present 911 GT3 manages, and on a quick layout, it matters. Like a race car, the faster the GT2 RS goes, the stickier it gets.

It was a strange thing to step from the Corvette to the 911. The ZR1 is fast around a track, but it requires a certain amount of daring from the gambling end of your lizard brain. The GT2 RS is a wicked enabler, effortlessly quick. Swinging the car through NCM’s decreasing-radius, off-camber challenge of Turn 6 at what I thought was the upper limit of adhesion, the Porsche strolled through without so much as a twitch of its wide hips. Given the lack of an engine over its front axle, the steering is delicious and immediate. The brakes, also carbon ceramics, have near-perfect pedal feel. The power is one long, zealous pull, free of the peak and twitch that earned this car’s old 930 predecessor its dark nickname: Witwenmacher. Widow maker. It all combines to create the most confidence-inspiring machine of the litter, whether you drive it on a public road or a closed course. Whoever imagined saying such a thing about a 700-hp, rear-drive 911?

Gorgeous in green, the new Porsche 911 GT2 RS is one of the world’s most devastating road cars.

The only thing that could pry me from the German’s seat throughout our three days of Kentucky and Tennessee touring and raging was the promise of the 720S. Of all the brazenly capable cars on hand, the McLaren is the least orthodox. Its cockpit is open and airy, and the windscreen wraps around you like a bubble that sits as far to the center of the vehicle as possible. As for the track, Pilgrim offered a word of advice: “It doesn’t have the grip of the other two.”

Nor should it, due to the less gooey rubber and lower downforce. But these tires are perfect for this car. Of the three, none executes the sense of speed as well as the 720S. The world wraps past the big, open windshield in a blur, the gasp and thrust of the engine in your ear. And it’s playful because it isn’t welded to the pavement, sliding and dancing around its perfect center, a gift of that mid-engine layout. Turn 19 is a nail-biter, an off-camber drop into what’s affectionately called The Sinkhole. The road simply falls away. It’s a tricky bit to manage for any car, but the 720S made it the most hilarious part of the track. Simply point the nose with your toe, dive down, and ride up the other side. If roller coasters were this fun, Disney World would have a line all the way to Georgia.

Once upon a time, cars like these were at home only on the track. Not so nowadays.

Most astounding is how quickly the cars coaxed us into real speed. These aren’t wild hares or rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed but with fangs as long as your middle finger and jaws strong enough to crush your skull. It’s incredible. As much as purists love to rant and rail against the heedless press of technology, the microprocessor is a godsend in these cars. Exquisite traction and stability control not only make each of them wieldable but also make them faster. There might be no better display of just what can be accomplished by the marriage of man and machine.

That’s why none of us thought twice about pointing the cars south for a run to Nashville and a day of romping around the winding two-lanes south of town. There, gunning down Natchez Trace or winding our way out toward the small town of Franklin, Kentucky, the cars showed themselves ever more impressive. Even with its buckboard spring rates, thin glass, and lightweight carpeting, the GT2 RS proved acceptably civil, thanks in part to its active dampers and switchable sport exhaust. There are compromises to be made, for sure, starting with the front trunk. Porsche hides the reservoir for the intercooler water sprayer up there, and on our hot day, there was enough condensation up front to soak one of our bags. Such is the price of dominance.

This trio should feel underwhelmed by legal speeds, but that’s not what we found whatsoever. Each is a joy to spit through traffic or waltz up a country byway. Out there, the 720S came into its own. If it is a good and fun track car, it is a blissful street car. Light and playful even at posted speed limits, it feels like real progress, how those of a certain age hoped cars would be when they gazed toward 2018 from the dim horizon of childhood. The car is also occasionally infuriating, with cabin controls that seem to have been designed by someone who has never seen or interacted with a human form. Basics like adjusting a from Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2oqd4kP via IFTTT

[eddiejpoplar]

The 700 Horsepower Club

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — Nashville is no stranger to spectacle, a place that serves as a mecca to rhinestone-gilt pop-country singers and outlaws alike. The town, and its neon-laced Broadway District in particular, has seen everything but this: three of the most powerful production cars for sale today, all in a tidy row.

There’s nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of carbon fiber and forced induction between us, better than 2,100 horsepower split among the three. The Broadway crowd couldn’t get enough of them, taking photos and video, cheering and begging for any one of us to be delinquent enough to snap a throttle open and let our miracle engines shriek above the blaring honky-tonks. When we inevitably obliged, all eyes for two blocks were on us, the cheers nearly as loud as the drums and guitars spilling from every open bar. Behold the mad, reality-distorting power of these three goliaths of automotive engineering: the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, and McLaren 720S.

These are the standard bearers for the new frontier of performance. There are more machines surpassing 700 horsepower for sale today than ever before, even now, as electrification and regulation conspire to snuff out piston-driven automobiles altogether. But a handful of manufacturers are committed to pressing the internal combustion engine relentlessly forward in a heroic and dumb and perfectly human gesture. None of these machines will give your mind the half second it takes to send a curse to your lips. Each has a way of consuming mental bandwidth and asphalt in equal proportion, gathering them until you’re forced to choose between remembering to breathe or brake. That’s what happens when there’s 700 or more horsepower tethered to your big toe, when the bolt to 60 mph takes less than 3 seconds, and when 150 mph snaps past in a blink.

We spent three days in these cars. Three days ripping around the gorgeous and twisting asphalt south of Nashville, hunting out perfect, lonely two-lane apexes and ragged ridge sides trying to wrap our minds around these machines. At times they didn’t seem real, but rather a fantasy dreamt of across decades, an unrealistic vision of performance not long ago reserved for true racing sports cars. Performance levels and experiences that for most of the automobile’s history were off limits to all but officially licensed professional race drivers, those talented men and women who were at times left grasping for ways to explain to the rest of us just what true speed is all about.

The GT2 RS is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

To that end we stopped at the National Corvette Museum’s Motorsports Park (MSP) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s not a track that forgives transgressions. The full course shoves 23 turns into 3.15 miles, the asphalt a rippling ribbon that works its way up and over the rolling countryside. Blind crests and close barriers mean a mistake might cost you more than some body panels. But where else can you get to know the upper capabilities of cars like these? Their limits are so far beyond the bounds of public-road legality that to explore even some small fraction of them requires the freedom only an open track provides.

We added water to the 911’s reservoir as needed then hit Broadway and felt plenty cool ourselves.

It was 80 degrees at 8 a.m., the midsummer humidity a heavy exhale on our skin. Aesthetically, the cars could not be more different. The 911 GT2 RS might be the sleeper of the bunch despite its wild, exposed carbon-fiber wing, fender vents, and NACA ducts. The car is gorgeous, but only in the way that all 911s are. To anyone unfamiliar with the smattering of letters and numbers stuck to the doors and tail, it might simply look like another Porsche. That’s a shame, because as of this moment, it is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

The GT2 RS is more than that blistering engine, a modified version of the 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six found in the 911 Turbo S. Larger turbos, more boost, a unique intake, and new pistons help produce 700 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but less obvious tricks borrowed from Porsche’s motorsports arm make the car a functional weapon. Steel ball joints in place of the usual rubber suspension bushings throughout, dynamic engine mounts, and control arms robbed from the 911 GT3 RS help make all that power usable. And massive Michelin Sport Cup 2 R tires, essentially the same compound as the Corvette wore. The rears are 325/30-R21, the exact size as found on Porsche’s hyper 918 Spyder.

If the GT2 RS appears familiar, the 720S looks and sounds like the future. Low and tidy with beautiful, organic curves, it is not ostentatious or brash in the way so many supercars are. Dipped in our tester’s dark blue paint, it reeks instead of quiet competence, an impression that’s only underscored by its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with 710 hp and 568 lb-ft, numbers that help give it the best power-to-weight ratio of the three. It is a machine that has nothing to prove— until it’s time to prove it.

The ZR1 is a shout by comparison, its tall, vented hood hiding a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 good for 755 hp and 715 lb-ft. In this group of hammers, this is the sledge. And with its wild, canard-laden fascia and towering rear wing, it wants everyone within a city block to know it. It needs the power. At 3,560 pounds, the ZR1 weighs 319 pounds more than the Porsche and is heavier than the McLaren by 432. The fact it is here at all is a marvel. Chevrolet has made a habit of punching above its weight with the Corvette, but this car takes that American notion to a new plane. As equipped, it costs less than half of either of its more svelte rivals.

As we watched from the flag tower, Pilgrim lit the Chevy’s fuse, the V-8 snapping at the sky like glory as he ran out the half-mile straight. By Turn 10, the car’s hazard lights were flashing. It wasn’t until he returned to the pits that we figured out why. The repeated, abrupt change in lateral g force was enough to trick the car’s OnStar system into thinking Pilgrim had collided with something. He spent the lap yelling over the screaming exhaust, trying to convince the nice lady on the other end of the line that he was just fine, all while on his way to a lap of 2:08.77. The time was still exceptionally fast considering the ambient temperature was now in the 90s, and it landed the ZR1 smack between the GT2 RS and 720S. Pilgrim had, weeks before, set MSP’s official production car track record of 2:05.59 in a different ZR1; he put the time difference on this run down to seeing lower speeds on the straights, most likely due to the temperature being 35 degrees hotter, and this test car’s automatic transmission not always giving him the lower gears he wanted. (He set the lap record in a manual-gearbox car.)

The Porsche recorded the fastest time, an impressive 2:05.92, just more than 0.3 second off the lap record. The GT2 RS’ power was seemingly unaffected by the brutally hot conditions, thanks in part to its system that sprays the intercoolers with cooling water.

Three cars, and three philosophies—front engine, mid engine, and rear engine—prove equally thrilling at speed.

On this day, the McLaren set the slowest lap of the three, for several reasons. First, Pilgrim only had a chance to do one timed lap, 2:12.06, before a thunder cell rolled over the horizon, the only thing more powerful for miles. Additionally, in the 720S Pilgrim felt a lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to both the Chevrolet and the Porsche, which are similar to each other in terms of their downforce-to-speed ratio. The 720S also sports narrower wheels and tires, which result in almost 20 percent less rubber on the road. Plus, this particular car’s tires were the less sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsas, not the optional Pirelli Trofeo R tire. The harder tires alone probably gave away 2 seconds or so to its playmates, especially at a place like MSP, which features numerous long, sweeping turns. Pilgrim believed the 720S would run close to the ZR1’s time with the stickier tires; even on the Corsas, he would have probably clocked a 2:10 if he’d had a chance to run a second hot lap.

The lap times, though, are irrelevant to the fun. With the three cars clawing and ripping their way around corners, it was hard to tell what was lightning and what was a downshift, the bark of both echoing off of the buildings behind us.

These cars are the mechanical deep end, and with that in mind, I belted into the ZR1. From the driver’s seat, the only indication you’re in something other than a standard C7 Corvette is the towering hood rising up from the cowl and turning the windshield into a thin slit. It’s like looking at the scenery from between the folds of a bandanna—the outlaw’s view. On the track, Turn 3 opens up into a long straight, followed by an easy right, and the sight of that wide road was too much temptation. I planted the throttle, the supercharger got busy cramming Kentucky air into those eight eager cylinders, and the world cracked wide.

These aren’t wild rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed, but with fangs as long as your middle finger.

The thrust was eye-widening and lung-arresting, a brief moment of traction loss followed by an eruption. I was upon the right-hander in a blink, positive I’d overcooked the thing. I tucked in anyway, and by the grace of General Motors, the car obliged. That’s the real miracle of the ZR1. It’s not some knuckle-dragging hot rod. It’s simply more Corvette in every way. There’s more power. More grip. The massive carbon-ceramic brake rotors have no problem bringing the machine back to sane speeds after dipping a toe into the car’s ludicrous acceleration. But there’s the sense that this is the Corvette pulled taut, all of the performance Chevy can possibly squeeze from the platform. This tester’s optional eight-speed automatic transmission delivers quick shifts, but they sometimes lack the immediacy this engine deserves, and the gearbox, as Pilgrim noted, doesn’t always yield the requested shift, especially when temperatures are blazing hot. Both the 720S and the GT2 RS benefit from seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes.

Extracting maximum performance requires a maximum driver, seen here getting ready to engage the afterburners.

Wherever you might choose to uncork these devils, the downforce levels—until relatively recently not something significant when discussing road cars—are a more important variable to consider. The GT2 RS arrived in its most aggressive aerodynamic configuration, the same one it used to blister the Nürburgring on its way to the production car lap record (a lap of 6:47.3, bested just weeks ago by a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at 6:44.9), and at 124 mph it generates 313 pounds of downforce. That’s more than double what the present 911 GT3 manages, and on a quick layout, it matters. Like a race car, the faster the GT2 RS goes, the stickier it gets.

It was a strange thing to step from the Corvette to the 911. The ZR1 is fast around a track, but it requires a certain amount of daring from the gambling end of your lizard brain. The GT2 RS is a wicked enabler, effortlessly quick. Swinging the car through NCM’s decreasing-radius, off-camber challenge of Turn 6 at what I thought was the upper limit of adhesion, the Porsche strolled through without so much as a twitch of its wide hips. Given the lack of an engine over its front axle, the steering is delicious and immediate. The brakes, also carbon ceramics, have near-perfect pedal feel. The power is one long, zealous pull, free of the peak and twitch that earned this car’s old 930 predecessor its dark nickname: Witwenmacher. Widow maker. It all combines to create the most confidence-inspiring machine of the litter, whether you drive it on a public road or a closed course. Whoever imagined saying such a thing about a 700-hp, rear-drive 911?

Gorgeous in green, the new Porsche 911 GT2 RS is one of the world’s most devastating road cars.

The only thing that could pry me from the German’s seat throughout our three days of Kentucky and Tennessee touring and raging was the promise of the 720S. Of all the brazenly capable cars on hand, the McLaren is the least orthodox. Its cockpit is open and airy, and the windscreen wraps around you like a bubble that sits as far to the center of the vehicle as possible. As for the track, Pilgrim offered a word of advice: “It doesn’t have the grip of the other two.”

Nor should it, due to the less gooey rubber and lower downforce. But these tires are perfect for this car. Of the three, none executes the sense of speed as well as the 720S. The world wraps past the big, open windshield in a blur, the gasp and thrust of the engine in your ear. And it’s playful because it isn’t welded to the pavement, sliding and dancing around its perfect center, a gift of that mid-engine layout. Turn 19 is a nail-biter, an off-camber drop into what’s affectionately called The Sinkhole. The road simply falls away. It’s a tricky bit to manage for any car, but the 720S made it the most hilarious part of the track. Simply point the nose with your toe, dive down, and ride up the other side. If roller coasters were this fun, Disney World would have a line all the way to Georgia.

Once upon a time, cars like these were at home only on the track. Not so nowadays.

Most astounding is how quickly the cars coaxed us into real speed. These aren’t wild hares or rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed but with fangs as long as your middle finger and jaws strong enough to crush your skull. It’s incredible. As much as purists love to rant and rail against the heedless press of technology, the microprocessor is a godsend in these cars. Exquisite traction and stability control not only make each of them wieldable but also make them faster. There might be no better display of just what can be accomplished by the marriage of man and machine.

That’s why none of us thought twice about pointing the cars south for a run to Nashville and a day of romping around the winding two-lanes south of town. There, gunning down Natchez Trace or winding our way out toward the small town of Franklin, Kentucky, the cars showed themselves ever more impressive. Even with its buckboard spring rates, thin glass, and lightweight carpeting, the GT2 RS proved acceptably civil, thanks in part to its active dampers and switchable sport exhaust. There are compromises to be made, for sure, starting with the front trunk. Porsche hides the reservoir for the intercooler water sprayer up there, and on our hot day, there was enough condensation up front to soak one of our bags. Such is the price of dominance.

This trio should feel underwhelmed by legal speeds, but that’s not what we found whatsoever. Each is a joy to spit through traffic or waltz up a country byway. Out there, the 720S came into its own. If it is a good and fun track car, it is a blissful street car. Light and playful even at posted speed limits, it feels like real progress, how those of a certain age hoped cars would be when they gazed toward 2018 from the dim horizon of childhood. The car is also occasionally infuriating, with cabin controls that seem to have been designed by someone who has never seen or interacted with a human form. Basics like adjusting a from Performance Junk Blogger 6 https://ift.tt/2oqd4kP via IFTTT

[jesusvasser]

The 700 Horsepower Club

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — Nashville is no stranger to spectacle, a place that serves as a mecca to rhinestone-gilt pop-country singers and outlaws alike. The town, and its neon-laced Broadway District in particular, has seen everything but this: three of the most powerful production cars for sale today, all in a tidy row.

There’s nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of carbon fiber and forced induction between us, better than 2,100 horsepower split among the three. The Broadway crowd couldn’t get enough of them, taking photos and video, cheering and begging for any one of us to be delinquent enough to snap a throttle open and let our miracle engines shriek above the blaring honky-tonks. When we inevitably obliged, all eyes for two blocks were on us, the cheers nearly as loud as the drums and guitars spilling from every open bar. Behold the mad, reality-distorting power of these three goliaths of automotive engineering: the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, and McLaren 720S.

These are the standard bearers for the new frontier of performance. There are more machines surpassing 700 horsepower for sale today than ever before, even now, as electrification and regulation conspire to snuff out piston-driven automobiles altogether. But a handful of manufacturers are committed to pressing the internal combustion engine relentlessly forward in a heroic and dumb and perfectly human gesture. None of these machines will give your mind the half second it takes to send a curse to your lips. Each has a way of consuming mental bandwidth and asphalt in equal proportion, gathering them until you’re forced to choose between remembering to breathe or brake. That’s what happens when there’s 700 or more horsepower tethered to your big toe, when the bolt to 60 mph takes less than 3 seconds, and when 150 mph snaps past in a blink.

We spent three days in these cars. Three days ripping around the gorgeous and twisting asphalt south of Nashville, hunting out perfect, lonely two-lane apexes and ragged ridge sides trying to wrap our minds around these machines. At times they didn’t seem real, but rather a fantasy dreamt of across decades, an unrealistic vision of performance not long ago reserved for true racing sports cars. Performance levels and experiences that for most of the automobile’s history were off limits to all but officially licensed professional race drivers, those talented men and women who were at times left grasping for ways to explain to the rest of us just what true speed is all about.

The GT2 RS is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

To that end we stopped at the National Corvette Museum’s Motorsports Park (MSP) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s not a track that forgives transgressions. The full course shoves 23 turns into 3.15 miles, the asphalt a rippling ribbon that works its way up and over the rolling countryside. Blind crests and close barriers mean a mistake might cost you more than some body panels. But where else can you get to know the upper capabilities of cars like these? Their limits are so far beyond the bounds of public-road legality that to explore even some small fraction of them requires the freedom only an open track provides.

We added water to the 911’s reservoir as needed then hit Broadway and felt plenty cool ourselves.

It was 80 degrees at 8 a.m., the midsummer humidity a heavy exhale on our skin. Aesthetically, the cars could not be more different. The 911 GT2 RS might be the sleeper of the bunch despite its wild, exposed carbon-fiber wing, fender vents, and NACA ducts. The car is gorgeous, but only in the way that all 911s are. To anyone unfamiliar with the smattering of letters and numbers stuck to the doors and tail, it might simply look like another Porsche. That’s a shame, because as of this moment, it is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

The GT2 RS is more than that blistering engine, a modified version of the 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six found in the 911 Turbo S. Larger turbos, more boost, a unique intake, and new pistons help produce 700 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but less obvious tricks borrowed from Porsche’s motorsports arm make the car a functional weapon. Steel ball joints in place of the usual rubber suspension bushings throughout, dynamic engine mounts, and control arms robbed from the 911 GT3 RS help make all that power usable. And massive Michelin Sport Cup 2 R tires, essentially the same compound as the Corvette wore. The rears are 325/30-R21, the exact size as found on Porsche’s hyper 918 Spyder.

If the GT2 RS appears familiar, the 720S looks and sounds like the future. Low and tidy with beautiful, organic curves, it is not ostentatious or brash in the way so many supercars are. Dipped in our tester’s dark blue paint, it reeks instead of quiet competence, an impression that’s only underscored by its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with 710 hp and 568 lb-ft, numbers that help give it the best power-to-weight ratio of the three. It is a machine that has nothing to prove— until it’s time to prove it.

The ZR1 is a shout by comparison, its tall, vented hood hiding a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 good for 755 hp and 715 lb-ft. In this group of hammers, this is the sledge. And with its wild, canard-laden fascia and towering rear wing, it wants everyone within a city block to know it. It needs the power. At 3,560 pounds, the ZR1 weighs 319 pounds more than the Porsche and is heavier than the McLaren by 432. The fact it is here at all is a marvel. Chevrolet has made a habit of punching above its weight with the Corvette, but this car takes that American notion to a new plane. As equipped, it costs less than half of either of its more svelte rivals.

As we watched from the flag tower, Pilgrim lit the Chevy’s fuse, the V-8 snapping at the sky like glory as he ran out the half-mile straight. By Turn 10, the car’s hazard lights were flashing. It wasn’t until he returned to the pits that we figured out why. The repeated, abrupt change in lateral g force was enough to trick the car’s OnStar system into thinking Pilgrim had collided with something. He spent the lap yelling over the screaming exhaust, trying to convince the nice lady on the other end of the line that he was just fine, all while on his way to a lap of 2:08.77. The time was still exceptionally fast considering the ambient temperature was now in the 90s, and it landed the ZR1 smack between the GT2 RS and 720S. Pilgrim had, weeks before, set MSP’s official production car track record of 2:05.59 in a different ZR1; he put the time difference on this run down to seeing lower speeds on the straights, most likely due to the temperature being 35 degrees hotter, and this test car’s automatic transmission not always giving him the lower gears he wanted. (He set the lap record in a manual-gearbox car.)

The Porsche recorded the fastest time, an impressive 2:05.92, just more than 0.3 second off the lap record. The GT2 RS’ power was seemingly unaffected by the brutally hot conditions, thanks in part to its system that sprays the intercoolers with cooling water.

Three cars, and three philosophies—front engine, mid engine, and rear engine—prove equally thrilling at speed.

On this day, the McLaren set the slowest lap of the three, for several reasons. First, Pilgrim only had a chance to do one timed lap, 2:12.06, before a thunder cell rolled over the horizon, the only thing more powerful for miles. Additionally, in the 720S Pilgrim felt a lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to both the Chevrolet and the Porsche, which are similar to each other in terms of their downforce-to-speed ratio. The 720S also sports narrower wheels and tires, which result in almost 20 percent less rubber on the road. Plus, this particular car’s tires were the less sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsas, not the optional Pirelli Trofeo R tire. The harder tires alone probably gave away 2 seconds or so to its playmates, especially at a place like MSP, which features numerous long, sweeping turns. Pilgrim believed the 720S would run close to the ZR1’s time with the stickier tires; even on the Corsas, he would have probably clocked a 2:10 if he’d had a chance to run a second hot lap.

The lap times, though, are irrelevant to the fun. With the three cars clawing and ripping their way around corners, it was hard to tell what was lightning and what was a downshift, the bark of both echoing off of the buildings behind us.

These cars are the mechanical deep end, and with that in mind, I belted into the ZR1. From the driver’s seat, the only indication you’re in something other than a standard C7 Corvette is the towering hood rising up from the cowl and turning the windshield into a thin slit. It’s like looking at the scenery from between the folds of a bandanna—the outlaw’s view. On the track, Turn 3 opens up into a long straight, followed by an easy right, and the sight of that wide road was too much temptation. I planted the throttle, the supercharger got busy cramming Kentucky air into those eight eager cylinders, and the world cracked wide.

These aren’t wild rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed, but with fangs as long as your middle finger.

The thrust was eye-widening and lung-arresting, a brief moment of traction loss followed by an eruption. I was upon the right-hander in a blink, positive I’d overcooked the thing. I tucked in anyway, and by the grace of General Motors, the car obliged. That’s the real miracle of the ZR1. It’s not some knuckle-dragging hot rod. It’s simply more Corvette in every way. There’s more power. More grip. The massive carbon-ceramic brake rotors have no problem bringing the machine back to sane speeds after dipping a toe into the car’s ludicrous acceleration. But there’s the sense that this is the Corvette pulled taut, all of the performance Chevy can possibly squeeze from the platform. This tester’s optional eight-speed automatic transmission delivers quick shifts, but they sometimes lack the immediacy this engine deserves, and the gearbox, as Pilgrim noted, doesn’t always yield the requested shift, especially when temperatures are blazing hot. Both the 720S and the GT2 RS benefit from seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes.

Extracting maximum performance requires a maximum driver, seen here getting ready to engage the afterburners.

Wherever you might choose to uncork these devils, the downforce levels—until relatively recently not something significant when discussing road cars—are a more important variable to consider. The GT2 RS arrived in its most aggressive aerodynamic configuration, the same one it used to blister the Nürburgring on its way to the production car lap record (a lap of 6:47.3, bested just weeks ago by a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at 6:44.9), and at 124 mph it generates 313 pounds of downforce. That’s more than double what the present 911 GT3 manages, and on a quick layout, it matters. Like a race car, the faster the GT2 RS goes, the stickier it gets.

It was a strange thing to step from the Corvette to the 911. The ZR1 is fast around a track, but it requires a certain amount of daring from the gambling end of your lizard brain. The GT2 RS is a wicked enabler, effortlessly quick. Swinging the car through NCM’s decreasing-radius, off-camber challenge of Turn 6 at what I thought was the upper limit of adhesion, the Porsche strolled through without so much as a twitch of its wide hips. Given the lack of an engine over its front axle, the steering is delicious and immediate. The brakes, also carbon ceramics, have near-perfect pedal feel. The power is one long, zealous pull, free of the peak and twitch that earned this car’s old 930 predecessor its dark nickname: Witwenmacher. Widow maker. It all combines to create the most confidence-inspiring machine of the litter, whether you drive it on a public road or a closed course. Whoever imagined saying such a thing about a 700-hp, rear-drive 911?

Gorgeous in green, the new Porsche 911 GT2 RS is one of the world’s most devastating road cars.

The only thing that could pry me from the German’s seat throughout our three days of Kentucky and Tennessee touring and raging was the promise of the 720S. Of all the brazenly capable cars on hand, the McLaren is the least orthodox. Its cockpit is open and airy, and the windscreen wraps around you like a bubble that sits as far to the center of the vehicle as possible. As for the track, Pilgrim offered a word of advice: “It doesn’t have the grip of the other two.”

Nor should it, due to the less gooey rubber and lower downforce. But these tires are perfect for this car. Of the three, none executes the sense of speed as well as the 720S. The world wraps past the big, open windshield in a blur, the gasp and thrust of the engine in your ear. And it’s playful because it isn’t welded to the pavement, sliding and dancing around its perfect center, a gift of that mid-engine layout. Turn 19 is a nail-biter, an off-camber drop into what’s affectionately called The Sinkhole. The road simply falls away. It’s a tricky bit to manage for any car, but the 720S made it the most hilarious part of the track. Simply point the nose with your toe, dive down, and ride up the other side. If roller coasters were this fun, Disney World would have a line all the way to Georgia.

Once upon a time, cars like these were at home only on the track. Not so nowadays.

Most astounding is how quickly the cars coaxed us into real speed. These aren’t wild hares or rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed but with fangs as long as your middle finger and jaws strong enough to crush your skull. It’s incredible. As much as purists love to rant and rail against the heedless press of technology, the microprocessor is a godsend in these cars. Exquisite traction and stability control not only make each of them wieldable but also make them faster. There might be no better display of just what can be accomplished by the marriage of man and machine.

That’s why none of us thought twice about pointing the cars south for a run to Nashville and a day of romping around the winding two-lanes south of town. There, gunning down Natchez Trace or winding our way out toward the small town of Franklin, Kentucky, the cars showed themselves ever more impressive. Even with its buckboard spring rates, thin glass, and lightweight carpeting, the GT2 RS proved acceptably civil, thanks in part to its active dampers and switchable sport exhaust. There are compromises to be made, for sure, starting with the front trunk. Porsche hides the reservoir for the intercooler water sprayer up there, and on our hot day, there was enough condensation up front to soak one of our bags. Such is the price of dominance.

This trio should feel underwhelmed by legal speeds, but that’s not what we found whatsoever. Each is a joy to spit through traffic or waltz up a country byway. Out there, the 720S came into its own. If it is a good and fun track car, it is a blissful street car. Light and playful even at posted speed limits, it feels like real progress, how those of a certain age hoped cars would be when they gazed toward 2018 from the dim horizon of childhood. The car is also occasionally infuriating, with cabin controls that seem to have been designed by someone who has never seen or interacted with a human form. Basics like adjusting a from Performance Junk WP Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2oqd4kP via IFTTT

[jonathanbelloblog]

The 700 Horsepower Club

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — Nashville is no stranger to spectacle, a place that serves as a mecca to rhinestone-gilt pop-country singers and outlaws alike. The town, and its neon-laced Broadway District in particular, has seen everything but this: three of the most powerful production cars for sale today, all in a tidy row.

There’s nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of carbon fiber and forced induction between us, better than 2,100 horsepower split among the three. The Broadway crowd couldn’t get enough of them, taking photos and video, cheering and begging for any one of us to be delinquent enough to snap a throttle open and let our miracle engines shriek above the blaring honky-tonks. When we inevitably obliged, all eyes for two blocks were on us, the cheers nearly as loud as the drums and guitars spilling from every open bar. Behold the mad, reality-distorting power of these three goliaths of automotive engineering: the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, and McLaren 720S.

These are the standard bearers for the new frontier of performance. There are more machines surpassing 700 horsepower for sale today than ever before, even now, as electrification and regulation conspire to snuff out piston-driven automobiles altogether. But a handful of manufacturers are committed to pressing the internal combustion engine relentlessly forward in a heroic and dumb and perfectly human gesture. None of these machines will give your mind the half second it takes to send a curse to your lips. Each has a way of consuming mental bandwidth and asphalt in equal proportion, gathering them until you’re forced to choose between remembering to breathe or brake. That’s what happens when there’s 700 or more horsepower tethered to your big toe, when the bolt to 60 mph takes less than 3 seconds, and when 150 mph snaps past in a blink.

We spent three days in these cars. Three days ripping around the gorgeous and twisting asphalt south of Nashville, hunting out perfect, lonely two-lane apexes and ragged ridge sides trying to wrap our minds around these machines. At times they didn’t seem real, but rather a fantasy dreamt of across decades, an unrealistic vision of performance not long ago reserved for true racing sports cars. Performance levels and experiences that for most of the automobile’s history were off limits to all but officially licensed professional race drivers, those talented men and women who were at times left grasping for ways to explain to the rest of us just what true speed is all about.

The GT2 RS is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

To that end we stopped at the National Corvette Museum’s Motorsports Park (MSP) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s not a track that forgives transgressions. The full course shoves 23 turns into 3.15 miles, the asphalt a rippling ribbon that works its way up and over the rolling countryside. Blind crests and close barriers mean a mistake might cost you more than some body panels. But where else can you get to know the upper capabilities of cars like these? Their limits are so far beyond the bounds of public-road legality that to explore even some small fraction of them requires the freedom only an open track provides.

We added water to the 911’s reservoir as needed then hit Broadway and felt plenty cool ourselves.

It was 80 degrees at 8 a.m., the midsummer humidity a heavy exhale on our skin. Aesthetically, the cars could not be more different. The 911 GT2 RS might be the sleeper of the bunch despite its wild, exposed carbon-fiber wing, fender vents, and NACA ducts. The car is gorgeous, but only in the way that all 911s are. To anyone unfamiliar with the smattering of letters and numbers stuck to the doors and tail, it might simply look like another Porsche. That’s a shame, because as of this moment, it is the sharpest point of the model’s history, the notion of a 911 drawn out to its wildest fulfillment.

The GT2 RS is more than that blistering engine, a modified version of the 3.8-liter twin-turbo flat-six found in the 911 Turbo S. Larger turbos, more boost, a unique intake, and new pistons help produce 700 hp and 553 lb-ft of torque, but less obvious tricks borrowed from Porsche’s motorsports arm make the car a functional weapon. Steel ball joints in place of the usual rubber suspension bushings throughout, dynamic engine mounts, and control arms robbed from the 911 GT3 RS help make all that power usable. And massive Michelin Sport Cup 2 R tires, essentially the same compound as the Corvette wore. The rears are 325/30-R21, the exact size as found on Porsche’s hyper 918 Spyder.

If the GT2 RS appears familiar, the 720S looks and sounds like the future. Low and tidy with beautiful, organic curves, it is not ostentatious or brash in the way so many supercars are. Dipped in our tester’s dark blue paint, it reeks instead of quiet competence, an impression that’s only underscored by its 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 with 710 hp and 568 lb-ft, numbers that help give it the best power-to-weight ratio of the three. It is a machine that has nothing to prove— until it’s time to prove it.

The ZR1 is a shout by comparison, its tall, vented hood hiding a 6.2-liter supercharged V-8 good for 755 hp and 715 lb-ft. In this group of hammers, this is the sledge. And with its wild, canard-laden fascia and towering rear wing, it wants everyone within a city block to know it. It needs the power. At 3,560 pounds, the ZR1 weighs 319 pounds more than the Porsche and is heavier than the McLaren by 432. The fact it is here at all is a marvel. Chevrolet has made a habit of punching above its weight with the Corvette, but this car takes that American notion to a new plane. As equipped, it costs less than half of either of its more svelte rivals.

As we watched from the flag tower, Pilgrim lit the Chevy’s fuse, the V-8 snapping at the sky like glory as he ran out the half-mile straight. By Turn 10, the car’s hazard lights were flashing. It wasn’t until he returned to the pits that we figured out why. The repeated, abrupt change in lateral g force was enough to trick the car’s OnStar system into thinking Pilgrim had collided with something. He spent the lap yelling over the screaming exhaust, trying to convince the nice lady on the other end of the line that he was just fine, all while on his way to a lap of 2:08.77. The time was still exceptionally fast considering the ambient temperature was now in the 90s, and it landed the ZR1 smack between the GT2 RS and 720S. Pilgrim had, weeks before, set MSP’s official production car track record of 2:05.59 in a different ZR1; he put the time difference on this run down to seeing lower speeds on the straights, most likely due to the temperature being 35 degrees hotter, and this test car’s automatic transmission not always giving him the lower gears he wanted. (He set the lap record in a manual-gearbox car.)

The Porsche recorded the fastest time, an impressive 2:05.92, just more than 0.3 second off the lap record. The GT2 RS’ power was seemingly unaffected by the brutally hot conditions, thanks in part to its system that sprays the intercoolers with cooling water.

Three cars, and three philosophies—front engine, mid engine, and rear engine—prove equally thrilling at speed.

On this day, the McLaren set the slowest lap of the three, for several reasons. First, Pilgrim only had a chance to do one timed lap, 2:12.06, before a thunder cell rolled over the horizon, the only thing more powerful for miles. Additionally, in the 720S Pilgrim felt a lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to both the Chevrolet and the Porsche, which are similar to each other in terms of their downforce-to-speed ratio. The 720S also sports narrower wheels and tires, which result in almost 20 percent less rubber on the road. Plus, this particular car’s tires were the less sticky Pirelli P Zero Corsas, not the optional Pirelli Trofeo R tire. The harder tires alone probably gave away 2 seconds or so to its playmates, especially at a place like MSP, which features numerous long, sweeping turns. Pilgrim believed the 720S would run close to the ZR1’s time with the stickier tires; even on the Corsas, he would have probably clocked a 2:10 if he’d had a chance to run a second hot lap.

The lap times, though, are irrelevant to the fun. With the three cars clawing and ripping their way around corners, it was hard to tell what was lightning and what was a downshift, the bark of both echoing off of the buildings behind us.

These cars are the mechanical deep end, and with that in mind, I belted into the ZR1. From the driver’s seat, the only indication you’re in something other than a standard C7 Corvette is the towering hood rising up from the cowl and turning the windshield into a thin slit. It’s like looking at the scenery from between the folds of a bandanna—the outlaw’s view. On the track, Turn 3 opens up into a long straight, followed by an easy right, and the sight of that wide road was too much temptation. I planted the throttle, the supercharger got busy cramming Kentucky air into those eight eager cylinders, and the world cracked wide.

These aren’t wild rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed, but with fangs as long as your middle finger.

The thrust was eye-widening and lung-arresting, a brief moment of traction loss followed by an eruption. I was upon the right-hander in a blink, positive I’d overcooked the thing. I tucked in anyway, and by the grace of General Motors, the car obliged. That’s the real miracle of the ZR1. It’s not some knuckle-dragging hot rod. It’s simply more Corvette in every way. There’s more power. More grip. The massive carbon-ceramic brake rotors have no problem bringing the machine back to sane speeds after dipping a toe into the car’s ludicrous acceleration. But there’s the sense that this is the Corvette pulled taut, all of the performance Chevy can possibly squeeze from the platform. This tester’s optional eight-speed automatic transmission delivers quick shifts, but they sometimes lack the immediacy this engine deserves, and the gearbox, as Pilgrim noted, doesn’t always yield the requested shift, especially when temperatures are blazing hot. Both the 720S and the GT2 RS benefit from seven-speed dual-clutch gearboxes.

Extracting maximum performance requires a maximum driver, seen here getting ready to engage the afterburners.

Wherever you might choose to uncork these devils, the downforce levels—until relatively recently not something significant when discussing road cars—are a more important variable to consider. The GT2 RS arrived in its most aggressive aerodynamic configuration, the same one it used to blister the Nürburgring on its way to the production car lap record (a lap of 6:47.3, bested just weeks ago by a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ at 6:44.9), and at 124 mph it generates 313 pounds of downforce. That’s more than double what the present 911 GT3 manages, and on a quick layout, it matters. Like a race car, the faster the GT2 RS goes, the stickier it gets.

It was a strange thing to step from the Corvette to the 911. The ZR1 is fast around a track, but it requires a certain amount of daring from the gambling end of your lizard brain. The GT2 RS is a wicked enabler, effortlessly quick. Swinging the car through NCM’s decreasing-radius, off-camber challenge of Turn 6 at what I thought was the upper limit of adhesion, the Porsche strolled through without so much as a twitch of its wide hips. Given the lack of an engine over its front axle, the steering is delicious and immediate. The brakes, also carbon ceramics, have near-perfect pedal feel. The power is one long, zealous pull, free of the peak and twitch that earned this car’s old 930 predecessor its dark nickname: Witwenmacher. Widow maker. It all combines to create the most confidence-inspiring machine of the litter, whether you drive it on a public road or a closed course. Whoever imagined saying such a thing about a 700-hp, rear-drive 911?

Gorgeous in green, the new Porsche 911 GT2 RS is one of the world’s most devastating road cars.

The only thing that could pry me from the German’s seat throughout our three days of Kentucky and Tennessee touring and raging was the promise of the 720S. Of all the brazenly capable cars on hand, the McLaren is the least orthodox. Its cockpit is open and airy, and the windscreen wraps around you like a bubble that sits as far to the center of the vehicle as possible. As for the track, Pilgrim offered a word of advice: “It doesn’t have the grip of the other two.”

Nor should it, due to the less gooey rubber and lower downforce. But these tires are perfect for this car. Of the three, none executes the sense of speed as well as the 720S. The world wraps past the big, open windshield in a blur, the gasp and thrust of the engine in your ear. And it’s playful because it isn’t welded to the pavement, sliding and dancing around its perfect center, a gift of that mid-engine layout. Turn 19 is a nail-biter, an off-camber drop into what’s affectionately called The Sinkhole. The road simply falls away. It’s a tricky bit to manage for any car, but the 720S made it the most hilarious part of the track. Simply point the nose with your toe, dive down, and ride up the other side. If roller coasters were this fun, Disney World would have a line all the way to Georgia.

Once upon a time, cars like these were at home only on the track. Not so nowadays.

Most astounding is how quickly the cars coaxed us into real speed. These aren’t wild hares or rabid dogs. They are playful big cats, happy to have their bellies rubbed but with fangs as long as your middle finger and jaws strong enough to crush your skull. It’s incredible. As much as purists love to rant and rail against the heedless press of technology, the microprocessor is a godsend in these cars. Exquisite traction and stability control not only make each of them wieldable but also make them faster. There might be no better display of just what can be accomplished by the marriage of man and machine.

That’s why none of us thought twice about pointing the cars south for a run to Nashville and a day of romping around the winding two-lanes south of town. There, gunning down Natchez Trace or winding our way out toward the small town of Franklin, Kentucky, the cars showed themselves ever more impressive. Even with its buckboard spring rates, thin glass, and lightweight carpeting, the GT2 RS proved acceptably civil, thanks in part to its active dampers and switchable sport exhaust. There are compromises to be made, for sure, starting with the front trunk. Porsche hides the reservoir for the intercooler water sprayer up there, and on our hot day, there was enough condensation up front to soak one of our bags. Such is the price of dominance.

This trio should feel underwhelmed by legal speeds, but that’s not what we found whatsoever. Each is a joy to spit through traffic or waltz up a country byway. Out there, the 720S came into its own. If it is a good and fun track car, it is a blissful street car. Light and playful even at posted speed limits, it feels like real progress, how those of a certain age hoped cars would be when they gazed toward 2018 from the dim horizon of childhood. The car is also occasionally infuriating, with cabin controls that seem to have been designed by someone who has never seen or interacted with a human form. Basics like adjusting a from Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4 https://ift.tt/2oqd4kP via IFTTT