When it comes to comparison road tests, Road & Track has always led the way among the world's automotive magazines, as we have consistently devised unique and innovative ways to pit one automobile's performance traits against another's. Features such as "The World's Fastest Cars," "0–100–0," "Kings of the Quarter Mile" and "The Standing Mile" have become R&T trademarks, often forcing other publications to imitate our ideas outright. Well, here's another one to add to the list.
Despite the soaring cost of gasoline, the popularity of high-performance sports cars is alive and kicking, and we thought it would be intriguing to see how the latest and greatest fared against one another in what could be our most grueling format ever, an all-out romp on four challenging layouts: an autocross, a short road course (Streets of Willow Springs), a long road course (Willow Springs International Raceway) and, for a unique twist, an oval (Auto Club Speedway, formerly California Speedway). We invited experts in each field to get the most out of these 10 cars at each location: eight-time national autocross champion Gary Thomason, former champion road racer Steve Millen and IRL driver Roger Yasukawa. Because of the large-scale nature of this story, not to mention the wear and tear on the cars involved, we asked each of our hotshoes to jump quickly from one car to another, without much by way of familiarization, and provide us with consistent levels of aggression at each challenging venue, stressing safety as the main order of the day. They delivered with flying colors.
So with the stages set and the players assembled, let the melee begin: Aston Martin DBS vs Audi R8 vs BMW M3 Coupe vs Chevrolet Corvette Z06 vs Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR vs Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 vs Lotus Exige S 240vs Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution MR vs Nissan GT-R vs Porsche 911 GT2
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