evo’s Car of the Decade: Have you voted yet?
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 5 January 2010
Oh yes dear readers, welcome to the first few days of 2010 and, guess what? The jolly interwebs are awash with annual reviews, summaries and predictions. Most of them – including our own it must be said – our pretty samey. But we think evo Magazine has gone out of its way to produce a really good interactive retrospective.
Over the past two weeks they’ve been narrowing down the 50 best cars of the last decade down to ten, via polls on the evo Community. They now have a top ten – the car their readers have voted as the best from each year’s evo Car of the Year competition – ready to compete for the title of evo Car of the Decade. The shortlist? Vauxhall VX220, Pagani Zonda C12 S, Honda NSX-R, Ferrari 360 CS, Lotus Exige S2, Renault Clio Trophy, Porsche 997 GT3, Porsche 997 GT3 RS, Nissan GT-R, and Lamborghini Murcielago SV.
May we suggest that you head on over to their site and let your voice be heard?
For our money? It would have to be the Porsche 997 GT3. Why? Because, much as we admire the enormous entertainment quality of cars like the Lotus Exige, the Nissan GT-R and the Pagani Zonda, when it comes to judging a car, we also consider two other criteria, two qualites that the Porsche has in spades: heritage and real-world useability. Cars like the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale or the Lamborghini Murcielago have entertainment and heritage in abundance but, honestly, would you want to live with them day in day out?
No, for a car to call itself Prodigal it needs to deliver a fantastic ownership experience as well as driving pleasure and thoroughbred heritage. For this reason, the 997 GT3 gets out vote.
So, please head on over to evo to leave your vote but let us know what it’s going to be and why by leaving a comment below first.
evo’s Car of the Decade: Have you voted yet?
Oh yes dear readers, welcome to the first few days of 2010 and, guess what? The jolly interwebs are awash with annual reviews, summaries and predictions. Most of them – including our own it must be said – our pretty samey. But we think evo Magazine has gone out of its way to produce a [...]
5 Responses to “evo’s Car of the Decade: Have you voted yet?”
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The GT-R represents incredible value – no argument there. But put the money to one side for a minute (we’re prodigal after all!) and ask yourself: If someone offered to give you one of these two cars: GT-R or GT3, no cost to you, would you really point at the GT-R and say “that one please”? Would you really prefer to live with it (and it’s, eh, interesting interior, brutish styling and questionable provenance) when instead you could have similar performance in a car that also enjoys bullet-proof heritage and classic stlying?
A gentleman would choose the GT3. A lout, a thug, would choose the GT-R.
Now, of course, bring the money back into the equation and you might be spot on! I could live with that interior and the styling if it were my own money I was saving.
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Straight-Six
6 January 2010
Ah, how the stereotypes come to the fore! Must we really engage in this sort of gent vs. lout thinking which is so tedious? Or can we instead think out of the box…
As I tweeted earlier, I’m generous, and confident, enough to put aside the question of price tag. The GT-R has impeccable engineering too, something Porsche fans believe belongs to Stuttgart alone. It doesn’t. Insiders know that the previous Skyline GTR engines were virtually blueprinted, meaning they were built to impossibly high standards that meant they could survive the tuning that unfortunately followed.
As someone who has met and interviewed Walter Rohrl and driven the 996 GT2 in his company, I cannot communicate my passion for Porsche sufficiently. But I tire of their lack of truly groundbreaking thinking. The Cayenne and Panamera speak loud enough on this front, while the 911 keeps getting endlessly fettled without ever really changing. Increments, not steps.
That’s why the GT-R does it for me. And where you see brutish looks I see the first ever Japanese sports car that can proudly park itself in a stable of supercars and hold its head high. That it will kill virtually all of them in a head-to-head race is just so damned delicious. Don’t think the performance of the GT3 is “similar” to the GT-R. It ain’t. Not by a long shot, my friends.
I’ve posted before about the milking of a brand’s heritage long after it became irrelevant. Porsche clearly aren’t there and they stand with the best. But the game is moving on, and I want to see Porsche make a seismic shift with the 911 to regain my loyalty and confidence.
In the meantime, I salute the GT-R and call it the Car of the Decade!
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[...] evo Car of the Decade results are in: We’ll continue to argue 2010 January 13 tags: Evo Magazine, Nissan, Nissan GT-R, Porsche, Porsche GT3 by The Prodigal Fool We couldn’t resist drawing your attention to evo’s Car of the Decade poll just once more. You see, the results are now in and, interestingly, they mirror the debate we had here at Prodigal Towers after our initial post. [...]
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It’s Friday. Show me something Prodigal… « The Prodigal Guide
15 January 2010
[...] You will have no doubt already seen the intense and self-righteous bickering the Prodigal Guide has resorted to over which car deserves to be crowned evo’s Car of the Decade. [...]
Straight-Six
6 January 2010
I thought about this long and hard, being long-time devotees of Porsche’s GT3 and having driven several generations of them as well as a RUF RGT.
Now, much like its design, the GT3 has been successively honed over the years to a razor-sharp edge. What you have today is a GT3 that is a racer that can handle the road, rather than the reverse – which marked the Mk. 1. That you also enjoy the pedigree, heritage, build quality and “liveability” of a Porsche 911 are all cream on this automotive cake. And almost no-one walks away from a proper drive in a GT3 without thinking that this may just be the best sportscar on the planet, and most definitely one of the purest.
And then Nissan decided to create a road-going Godzilla that stomped right over to the Porsche pantheon, crouched down and unleashed an almighty tech-fest that Stuttgart are still crawling out from under from.
Seriously: it takes some balls to offer to teach Porsche how to drive the GT-R around the Ring, following Porsche’s inability to match Nissan’s official laptime. And that’s just the beginning of a battle that has changed things forever.
Let’s be clear: where the GT3 is the resulting balance of sheer mechanical purity and a direct communicator of driver talent, the GT-R employs an armada of technology to get you from point A to point B as of Satan himself were on your tail. But don’t go making the mistake of thinking this is some remote driving experience that has the feel of a PS3. evo has universally praised the GT-R as a driver’s car too, one that needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck and driven…hard in order to uncover the brilliance beneath.
The price of the GT-R, at half that of a 911 Turbo that it so resolutely trounces, is unbelievable. Really. This thing is built like a brick shithouse and you can be sure things will be well screwed together for years to come. Practicality? The GT-R has almost usable rear seats, a vast boot and the ability to toodle around in Auto mode. And few know what this beast from the East actually is, so we can add a certain Q-factor too. You also don’t need to hump the increasingly ridiculous rear spoiler that the GT3 is mounted with.
But what really clinched this for me was something Japan’s sportscar nuts had never quite cracked: the design. For the first time, here was a design that rejected the aping of European products and mined the catalogue of glorious Japanese design – modern and ancient – to give us the samurai blade we waited so many years for. Part manga, part ancient warrior but all original, the GT-R is not the yawn-inspiring refining of a design that has been around for some 50 years i.e. the 911. It’s fresh, different and unique.
The presence of the GT-R and its truly incredible ability and honest-to-God value come together to give Porsche a licking.
Change, or die, Porsche. Change or die.