What is it with these drag races between cars that have the same letters. A couple of days ago, we saw the Golf R take on the Civic Type R, and now we have a battle between the Mercedes AMG GT S and the Porsche 911 GTS.
These two German sports coupes don't have a lot in common, seeing as they have engines in different places. However, both automakers are based in Stuttgart and Mercedes-AMG engineers took a hard look at the 911 before launching the GT.
These are some of the most precise, finger-tippy cars that you can buy. However, Top Gear wanted to see how they performed in a straight line and organized a drag race.
The displacement of these two cars is similar. However, the 911 has only 430 horsepower thanks to its naturally aspirated engine. It's also rear-wheel drive and offers about 50% less torque.
You can't even buy the GTS right now because it's being... retrofitted with a 3.0-liter twin-turbo engine that would have balanced out this drag race. In any case, the Mercedes-AMG GT offers an extra 80 horsepower. We know it's fast, but can it make up for the weight difference? Of course it can.
The 911 GTS takes an early lead, perhaps due to shorter gearing. However, "power happens" and the AMG wins convincingly with about a car's length between them.
While watching this video, did you ever get a little deja vu? We certainly did, and soon realized there had been a similar race organized in April 2015. The cool think about that one was that it was a Carrera S GTS. So now, we know for sure that all-wheel drive won't save the 911 from the more powerful Mercedes either.
So which one would we buy? Well, we'd get the 911 for its comfortable chassis and the AMG for its power, design and GT qualities. If we can only have one car, the V8 just delivers a superior sense of occasion.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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