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A friend of mine is a big car nut and has a lot of high-end cars. One of his recent acquisitions is a Carrera GT. He wanted to run it at a driver education weekend. He was nice enough to ask me to instruct him and allow me to drive it myself for a few sessions.
What a car! It is amazing. It is HUGE. It looks as wide as an eighteen wheeler in the back. It is EXOTIC. I poked around the car trying to find anything steel on it. I can only come up with the crank and the axles as the only substantial steel parts in the whole car! It is a LOUSY street car. The clutch is absolute crap at launch. You WILL stall it the first and most subsequent times you attempt to launch it. Eventually, you learn to just drop the clutch slowly with NO, and I mean, NO throttle. Even the slightest hint of throttle and it stalls. Instantly. The other option would be to do a big 4-5K RPM drop. But, you go ahead and do that in YOUR $450K car... The car feels like it has no flywheel whatsoever. Blipping of the throttle causes the tach to jump to redline and fall back instantly. The ride is a little harsh on the street (I drove it to the track), a little harsher than an Elise. On track, the suspension felt great, though hampered by the stock tires.
The V10 makes an awesome sound, with a howl that is just a few notes below that of an F1 car (and much quieter).
On track, the car shrinks down and gets down to business with very little fuss. The transmission shifts smoothly, the brakes are totally kick-ass. Best I have driven. The steering is fairly communicative. The response to the big pedal is BIG SPEED NOW. The car just continues accelerating like there is no such thing as drag. At the end of the straight, we were touching 175. The best thing about it is the absolute stability at silly speeds. The car is sucked down onto the track like a leech. The tires are not up to the level of the rest of the car and are by far the weak link on track. We were running T1-class speeds on street tires with no drama (I was being very conservative on corner entry in the high speed corners). The car is very neutral with good response to pedal action when you are looking to change the car's attitude. Barring the thoughts of crashing someone else’s very expensive car, it is an easy car to drive fast.
On the way home, I drove his GT3. It is one of my favorite cars of all time, but it felt like a rental car...
Ara
What a car! It is amazing. It is HUGE. It looks as wide as an eighteen wheeler in the back. It is EXOTIC. I poked around the car trying to find anything steel on it. I can only come up with the crank and the axles as the only substantial steel parts in the whole car! It is a LOUSY street car. The clutch is absolute crap at launch. You WILL stall it the first and most subsequent times you attempt to launch it. Eventually, you learn to just drop the clutch slowly with NO, and I mean, NO throttle. Even the slightest hint of throttle and it stalls. Instantly. The other option would be to do a big 4-5K RPM drop. But, you go ahead and do that in YOUR $450K car... The car feels like it has no flywheel whatsoever. Blipping of the throttle causes the tach to jump to redline and fall back instantly. The ride is a little harsh on the street (I drove it to the track), a little harsher than an Elise. On track, the suspension felt great, though hampered by the stock tires.
The V10 makes an awesome sound, with a howl that is just a few notes below that of an F1 car (and much quieter).
On track, the car shrinks down and gets down to business with very little fuss. The transmission shifts smoothly, the brakes are totally kick-ass. Best I have driven. The steering is fairly communicative. The response to the big pedal is BIG SPEED NOW. The car just continues accelerating like there is no such thing as drag. At the end of the straight, we were touching 175. The best thing about it is the absolute stability at silly speeds. The car is sucked down onto the track like a leech. The tires are not up to the level of the rest of the car and are by far the weak link on track. We were running T1-class speeds on street tires with no drama (I was being very conservative on corner entry in the high speed corners). The car is very neutral with good response to pedal action when you are looking to change the car's attitude. Barring the thoughts of crashing someone else’s very expensive car, it is an easy car to drive fast.
On the way home, I drove his GT3. It is one of my favorite cars of all time, but it felt like a rental car...
Ara