Porsche will have pulses racing

The Porsche 911 GT3


2007 Lotus Exige S

Base price: $60,815

Powertrain:
Mid-mounted supercharged and inter-cooled 1.8-liter DOHC inline four cylinder with variable valve timing; six-speed manual transmission; rear-wheel drive

Horsepower:
220 hp at 8,000 rpm

Torque:
165 pound-feet at 5,500 rpm

Curb weight:
2,077 pounds

0-60 mph:
4 seconds

Wheelbase:
90.5 inches

Overall length:
149.5 inches

EPA fuel economy:
23 miles per gallon city, 29 mpg highway



2007 Porsche 911 GT3

Base price: $106,860

Powertrain:
Rear-mounted, naturally aspirated, horizontally opposed DOHC six cylinder with variable induction and valve timing; six-speed manual transmission; rear-wheel drive

Horsepower:
415 at 7,600 rpm

Torque:
300 pound-feet at 5,500 rpm

Curb weight:
3,031 pounds

0-60 mph:
4 seconds

Wheelbase:
92.9 inches

Overall length:
176.9 inches

EPA fuel economy:
17 miles per gallon city, 24 mpg highway


If you think "low polar moment" has to do with melting ice caps, these cars are not for you. These cars are turnkey club racers, factory-prepped competition cars that you can drive to the track, hot lap and drive home on what's left of the tires. They are toys, although in general lethality, more in line with those made by General Dynamics than Mattel.

These cars -- the Lotus Exige S and the Porsche 911 GT3 -- belong to an esoteric subset of performance cars: stripped down, tweaked to the gills, barely legal. You could count among them the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera and the Ferrari F430 Challenge Stradale. How barely legal? The Exige S has a rear-view mirror -- for purposes of Department of Transportation approval -- but you can't see anything because the rear canopy is filled with the enormous intercooler.

Road cars are compromised. The steering is slower, more assisted and more self-centering. The springs and shocks are softer. The cabins are packed with heavy, noise-dampening insulation.

In the Exige S and the GT3, all that gets tossed like Imus Fan Club buttons. The Porsche has a stall-happy, dual-mass flywheel and a towering, leg-wearying pedal to engage it. Getting into the tiny, low-slung Lotus is like climbing into a desk drawer. Both cars have hair-trigger steering. A good sneeze can send you across three lanes of traffic.

These cars remind me of an O. Henry short story that was never written: A man, seeking revenge, gives his mortal enemy a gift of one of these cars -- free, no questions asked. The only condition: He has to pick it up in Baltimore and drive it home. On second thought, it's more like Stephen King.

But at the track? They're bliss, perfection, automotive Orgasmatrons.

The $60,815 (base price) Exige S -- the new supercharged version replacing the soft-on-power Exige -- is an elementary particle in sports-car physics: No power steering, no stability control and no adaptive damping to sooth the cat-o'-nine-tails sting of its suspension. The $106,860 GT3 -- a lightened and tightened version of the 997 with the naturally aspirated engine set to kill -- is more sophisticated: It has variable-rate power steering, traction control and adaptive damping. But what the Porsche giveth in terms of civility -- alcantara seats and optional DVD-based navigation, for instance -- it taketh away in protective overrides. Unlike standard 911s, the GT3 doesn't come with stability control; tease this rear-engine dragon's sliding, opposite-lock limits and you may find yourself going backward in a major hurry.

You could not ask for two unalike cars to be more alike. For example, both lunge -- and that's the only word for it -- to 60 mph in about 4 seconds. Both scream red-faced arias up to 8,500 rpm, and both reach peak torque at 5,500 rpm. Both use hand-stirred gear sets -- in fact, these are two of the quickest production cars in the world that still use a conventional six-speed manual gearbox (another is the Porsche Turbo). Both come shod with race tires (Yokohama ADVAN A048s for the Lotus, Michelin Pilot Sport Cups for the Porsche) that are stickier than a House subpoena. Both have adjustable suspensions: The Lotus has one-way adjustable Eibach/Bilstein coil-overs and rear anti-roll bar, while the GT3's whole geometry can be tuned (camber, toe, ride height and roll stiffness). Both have race-proven brakes: Brembos for the Lotus and, on our test GT3, Porsche's full-on land anchors, the optional ceramic composite brakes.

Oddly, both brands' American operations are based in Atlanta. How weird is that?

And both claw the air in search of track-holding downforce and radiator-cooling breezes with wings, splitters, intakes -- a dog's breakfast of scoops and aero-foils. The Exige S generates 100 pounds of downforce at 90 mph. The GT3's biplane rear wing is adjustable and includes a Gurney flap on the trailing edge of the deck lid. Top speed is a brisk 193 mph.

To paraphrase Bill Murray, what we have here are two heavily armed recreational vehicles.

A couple weeks ago, I took the Lotus Exige S to Willow Springs Raceway -- thank you, Los Angeles Shelby American Automobile Club -- and it was just phenomenal. Once I got there. I barely survived the 90-minute beating delivered by the Exige S's spine-zinging, concussive ride. Sweet suffering Jesuits!

Then I pulled onto the Streets of Willow circuit and it got all better.

Many words have been spilled trying to describe Lotus' distinctive handling, of which the Exige S is the best example. Low and wide-stanced, the car has its roll centers deep in the Earth. Being that it's a mid-engine car on a 90.5-inch wheelbase, with a 38/62 front/rear weight bias, you'd expect it to snappishly oversteer (translation: that it would fishtail abruptly). Instead, the Lotus' deeply neutral handling -- and the seamless transitions provided by the progressive-rate Eibach springs -- allows you to trail-brake like crazy, rotate the car and, as it points toward the apex, get right back on the gas. This car lives for slip angles. No car, anywhere, has such confidence-inspiring cornering poise.

The steering -- and the comically small steering wheel -- that seems so nervous on the road is perfect on the track: light, quick and laser accurate. The aluminum-cased gearbox that seems clunky and unrefined on the street now slips between ratios like a greasy knife. The pedals are close and easy to heel-and-toe.

The no-profile Yokohama gumball tires that beat your brains out on the street now seem like magic. It would have been tempting to load this car up with monster tires whose lateral grip would overwhelm the chassis; instead, Lotus matched the tires perfectly, and when this car is in its fervid, opposite-lock moments, it's as much fun as driving an old British sports car on bias plies.

Howling and hissing like a Harrier just inches from your head, the Toyota-built 1.8-liter engine is supercharged -- 30 hp more than the standard Elise -- and chipped so that 80 percent of maximum torque (165 pound-feet at 5,500 rpm) is available at just 2,000 rpm. Put the power down mid-corner and the Exige S digs like crazy (our test car had optional traction control, but it's almost completely transparent). Punchy, lively, free-revving, this twin-cammer has a cute trick: It provides a two-second overboost, temporarily raising the redline from 8,000 to 8,500 rpm. This came in handy at the end of Street's single longish strait heading up the hill to Turn 2.

Our test Exige S had a few domesticating features, including air conditioning and the optional Touring pack, which included electric windows (useful) and a stereo (useless). With all that, the car weighed about 2,100 pounds, I'd estimate.

The GT3 comes at the performance equation from another angle, starting life as a rather plush GT and simplifying. Gone are the back seats, the sound insulation in the headliner and about 100 other odds and ends. Added are a dry sump lube system and all manner of exotic engine internals to make the reciprocating parts lighter and faster. Redline is a ferocious 8,400 rpm (although it looks like 8,500 from the cockpit) and specific power is an astonishing 115.2 hp/liter. With variable induction geometry and stepless variable valve timing, the 3.6-liter just vomits howling gouts of German horsepower in every gear. I rather like that.

The beautifully balanced GT3, obviously, has higher absolute limits than the Exige S, more bite on turn-in and more lateral road holding from its huge 19-inch tires. If you put the adjustable suspension in Sport mode, the car gets very racy and non-elastic, which can provoke it to skip and trammel in corners over less-than-perfect pavement. Too much of that and the car's computer will revert to the more compliant damper settings. The steering is massively heavy but has superb feedback. The variable-ratio algorithm means that the farther off-center you turn, the more direct the steering response becomes, but the effect is so subtle I didn't detect it.

I don't love the pedal arrangement in the GT3. To heel-and-toe the accelerator, the brake pedal has to be pushed down pretty far, and with the ceramic brakes, that means gonzo, 10-tenths braking, which can take you out of your driving rhythm, not to mention hang you from the seat belts.

New for this year's GT3 is standard traction control. With its sky-high thresholds, the system allows lots of power-on oversteer and won't step in unless you well and truly spool the tires. The more adventurous can switch off traction control.

Unlike the hero-making Exige S, the GT3 is likely to leave you feeling slightly humbled. There's a lot of car here. Getting the most out of it would require many laps and a dozen sets of tires (at $1,500 a set). Still, it's one of the half-dozen greatest track cars ever to host a license plate.

Had enough yet? If not, Lotus offers the track-only, non-DOT Exige Cup, with an additional 37 hp ($86,190). Porsche offers the GT3 RS, a weight-shaved street-legal racer with a rear wing the size of a coffee table ($123,200). Prepare to have your face melted.

Buick Skylark 1953

The Buick Skylark (first use of the name for a production vehicle) on one of three specialty convertibles produced in 1953 by General Motors; the other two were the Oldsmobile Fiesta and the Cadillac Eldorado. All three were limited production vehicles promoting General Motors' design leadership. Of the three, the Skylark had the most successful production run with 1,690 produced. This was considered quite an amazing sales feat, for the car had a list price in 1953 of slightly in excess of US$5,000. However, many languished in dealer showrooms and were sold at discount.

All 1,690 regular-production Skylarks built in 1953 (and all in 1954) were convertibles. The 1953s were based on the 2-door Roadmaster convertible, having identical dimensions (except height), almost identical convenience and appearance equipment, and a Roadmaster drive train. In 1953, the model designation for the Skylark was 76X, while the model designation for the Roadmaster convertible was 76R. The few options available to the Roadmaster convertible buyer were standard equipment to the Skylark buyer, albeit the base price for the well-equipped Roadmaster convertible was only about US$3,200.

The 1953 Skylark featured V8 power and a 12 volt electrical system, both a first for Buick, as well as full-cutout wheel openings, a styling cue that would make its way to the main 1954 Buick line. Also making its way into the 1954 Buick line was the cut-down door at the base of the side window line that bounced back up to trace around the rear window (or convertible top). This styling clue stayed with Buick for many years and can be found on any number of automobile brands to this day.

The 1953 Buick Skylark was a handmade car in many respects. The stampings for the hood, trunk lid and a portion of the convertible tub were the same as the 1953 Roadmaster convertible (and Super convertible, model 56R). The stampings for the front fenders, rear fenders, the outer doors, and a portion of the convertible tub were unique to the Skylark. All Skylark convertible tubs were finished with various amounts of lead filler. It is not unusual to find a substantial amount of lead filler just behind the doors near the bottom of the window line. The inner doors of the Skylark were made from the inner doors of the 2-door Roadmaster and Super by cutting the stamping in half approximately parallel with the ground and then welding the two pieces back together in a jig at an angle that produced the necessary door dip (see photos of finished car).

Although there were many unique design features of the 1953 Skylark, one that goes almost unnoticed today is that the top and seating of the car were lowered a few inches below the Roadmaster and Super convertibles. This was achieved not by changing the frame, body or suspension, but by cutting the windshield almost three inches shorter and lowering the side windows and convertible top frame. To accommodate people without bumping their heads with the top up, the seat frames and steering column were lowered.

The wheels of the 1953 Skylark were true wire wheels, produced by Kelsey-Hayes, with everything chromed save for the plated and painted "Skylark" center emblem. Although this was high style in 1953, the wheels were heavier than the regular steel wheels, would require periodic truing to keep them straight and balanced, and required tubes within the tires just when tubeless tires were becoming the norm, as they were throughout the rest of the Buick line.

For 1954, the Skylark returned, although radically restyled [1]. This Skylark featured elongated wheel cutouts, the interior of which were available painted a contrasting color to the body color. For example, black cars could receive white or red wheel wells. The trunk of the restyled Skylark was sloped into a semi-barrel shape. Tail lights were housed in large chromed fins that projected from the tops of the rear fenders.

The car was now based on the all-new shorter Century/Special chassis and not the top-of-the-line Roadmaster/Super chassis, also all-new for 1954. However, it did share the Roadmaster and Century powertrain, the highest output in the 1954 Buick model lineup. This powertrain was an evolutionary improvement, but very similar to the 1953 powertrain.

The model designation for the 1954 Buick Skylark was "100", a completely unique designation. The short wheelbase cars were the Buick Special: series 40, the Buick Century: series 60, and the Buick Skylark: series 100, albeit a series of just one model. All production Buick Skylarks were built as 2-door convertibles. They had the same luxury equipment as the 1953 Buick Skylarks.

Like their 1953 counterparts, the 1954 Skylark had a number of unique sheetmetal stampings, but without the hand labor that went into the 1953 Skylark production. In addition to unique front and rear fenders with the elongated wheel cutouts, the 1954 Skylark had a unique trunk with its semi-barrel shape and huge, rounded chrome fins. Interestingly, the hood was also unique to the 1954 Skylark in a small way. The hood ornament was quite different from all other Buick models for the 1954 model year. However, this same hood ornament, although unique in size to just this one model in 1954, was to portend the design of the 1955 Buick hood ornament used on all models of that year.

The cost of the Skylark, mixed with the public's dislike for the restyle and its perceived step down in rank to the Special/Century series versus the 1953 rank with the Super/Roadmaster series resulted in poor sales and the car's demise at the end of the 1954 model year.


Engines

* 322 in³ (5.3 L) Nailhead V8