I truly love the Best&Brightest of TTAC. So much so that one of the common attack vectors used by my involuntarily-celibate, low-T, sub-neurotypical detractors is to parody that affection in a manner that reveals more about their fumbling attempts to interact with their “MLP:FiM” Meetups than it does about my admittedly wide range of personal flaws. Nevertheless, I do occasionally find myself frustrated by the B&B’s relentless desire to nitpick the articles that we put up.
As an example: Due to the distressingly low number of contributors close-knit team at TTAC, it’s often necessary for one of us to pitch in during the off-hours to get a story up. And sometimes that call comes during what I think of as “The Ketel One Hour”, leading me to make inebriated mistakes like referring to deposed Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as “Roy Batty” or “Scott LaRock”. The typical response of the readers is to completely pounce on me (or, more often, Derek) for making these mistakes, forgetting that if we had a so-called “editor” to “edit” what we write, we wouldn’t have any money to rent Camrys for track tests.
So, with that in mind, we’re on our third Supercars To Go test, and not a single member of the B&B has been sufficiently incensed to hit the “Reply” button and e-scream:
“NONE OF THESE ARE SUPERCARS!!”
It’s true. While the use of the word “supercar” is almost as old as Shaw’s use of the word “superman”, it didn’t really stick until, by the agency of one LJK Setright, the Lamborghini Miura was yclept thus. Therefore, a supercar is a mid-engined twelve-cylinder automobile with outrageous styling. It is permissible to exceed the requirements of this formula — hello, Cizeta Moroder V16T! — but not to provide less. I ask you, dear reader, is the Fiero 2M4 a supercar? No? Then how is the Audi R8, with barely twice the cylinder count and no more adventurous an interior design, a supercar?
Nor is the Ferrari 458 a supercar, being the direct descendant of the very non-supercar-ish Dino 246. The Gallardo is not a supercar, being the descendant of the (ugh) Jalpa. The McLaren MP4-12C is not a supercar because the “12” in the number has nothing to do with the number of cylinders. The GT-R is not a supercar in the same way that a fish is not a bicycle.
So why call this a “supercar” test? Well, the company that rents these cars, Xtreme Xperience, calls them supercars. Given that they are basically in the rental business, and the rental business is the one place in the world where a Chevrolet Malibu is a “full-sized” car and a Corolla is a “mid-size” car, it makes sense. Hertz calls the 911 C4S a “dream car”, and who’s dreaming of driving some wack-ass waterboxer with a droptop and a PRNDL shifter?
We also live in an era where people actually refer to a Mustang as a “sports car”. The distributed illiterate intelligence of the Web has bleached the meaning out of words like a decade’s worth of Texas sun at high noon, which is why young women describe “pad thai” food as “amazing!” and Chinese-sewn Lululemon pants that inadvertently display one’s pudenda (Latin: “the shameful thing”) every time you bend over as “awesome!”
When I was about nine years old, Lee Iacocca appeared on the television to show America the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon “Miser” models beneath a sign that said “52 MPG”.
“That’s incredible, if it’s true,” I said to my mother, who snapped back,
“Your use of the word ‘incredible’ means that you do not ‘credit’ it, which means you don’t believe it. Therefore, you’ve managed to contradict yourself quite nicely in a short but indifferently constructed sentence.” Did I mention that my mother spoke seven languages and delighted in exposing my logical fallacies in the harshest manner possible, starting around my third birthday? Not to worry, I’ll tell my analyst, as soon as I can find one who looks like the sexy blonde analysts in the Ratt videos.
Where we we? Oh, yes, the Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4. It’s no supercar, but never was there a Miura that could have seen a distant glimpse of this thing’s origami-folded ass around a racetrack. It runs the quarter in 11.2 seconds. This particular Gallardo being one of the very last built, it has a thoroughly-revised e-gear transmission that works quickly and smoothly around a racetrack. The “paddle” shifters are really long metal handles that will be intimately familiar to anyone who has ever driven a Bentley Continental GT or, ahem, installed and VAG-COM-coded those same paddles to work on their Phaetons. It can be a little difficult to find them when the blood is hot and the pace is hard. Only after this test did I meet a Lamborghini factory driver who showed me the best way to do corner-exit upshifts on cars with steering-column-mounted paddles, like this and the Huracan: you use the left hand to steer the car and the right hand to shift. It’s very suave, when you do it correctly.
The Gallardo four-wheel-driver suffers from the same basic issues as the Audi R8 in terms of front axle activity and tire stagger, but having that 552-horse V10 behind you allows you to adjust these issues on the fly with copious amounts of torque and 8000-rpm power. It’s also possessed of a more responsive and informative steering system, which is odd because I’m pretty sure that the spec sheet has the same parts listed for both cars. I drove two different 560-4s that weekend and they were identical and both very good, so like Timothy B. Schmit I can’t tell you why that’s so.
The Gallardo’s low roof makes it a tight fit for me (six foot two, 32″ inseam) when wearing a helmet. The 560-4 is much more comfortable than the 550-2, however, for reasons I’ll discuss in the article on that car. The interior is a sort of Audi’s Greatest Hits with the addition of some chromed bespoke switches. If you own an old A4, you’ll recognize the temperature controls straightaway. Still, with the addition of some leather and chrome here and there, it actually works as an exotic-car interior. The old Italian cars from the Seventies were black plastic and chrome, and so is this. The difference is that none of the buttons are inoperative. You can track this car all day with the A/C on if you like. It doesn’t get hot, it doesn’t misbehave, it doesn’t flash warning lights at you. Compared to the Ferrari 430, it’s flashier on the outside and more subtle on the inside. If that’s your sort of thing, you’re in luck.
While there’s a “Corsa” mode for the stability control, this LP560-4 is perfectly safe and easy to drive with the ESC completely disengaged. You can feed it full power at any remotely sane point in the corner and though it won’t play differential games like a GT-R to tighten your line, neither will it loop the bitch around on you. The brakes are a bit wooden but they work very well even over the course of a full day’s lapping session. I had several female students who chose this car, none of whom had any track experience, and they were all able to enjoy themselves immediately.
The sense of worrisome size that accompanies the big Lambos like the Murcielago doesn’t exist here. The Gallardo feels smaller than a Corvette when you’re driving it, largely because you’re near the front axle plus it’s both narrow and slab-sided. I’d always thought of the Gallardo as a jerk-off car for jerk-off drivers but as the days went on and I saw just how well it worked for my students I came to really respect it. During my own drives of the car I found it to be superbly stable and adequately thrilling.
In dry conditions, with decent tires, you should be able to show heels to a stock C6 Z06 in this car. Add a bit of rain or poor track surface to the mix and the Lambo will leap away. This is particularly true for drivers without a lot of experience.
So what’s wrong with the car? Well, the styling was never as dramatic as it should have been, even if this final-facelift version looks suitably aggressive. The interior is a little too executive-sedan for my taste. It needs more tire to exploit the power. I’d rather have it with a six-speed manual. Most of all, however, that driven front axle just soaks all the potential drama out of the car. The LP560-4 is just too bolted-down, too safe, too sane, to be maximally thrilling. What it needs is the weight and dynamic gains that would come from ditching the front half of the drivetrain. Luckily, that’s an option, as we’ll see.
“What it needs is the weight and dynamic gains that would come from ditching the front half of the drivetrain.”
Or a pair of turbos….that’s another effective, if less than subtle remedy to the lack of drama.
time to nitpick. if we are going to be reading about the interiors why not a shot of them?
the rest is entertaining as i’ll never own, lease or likely rent any of these cars in the ‘comparison’.
references to arcane aspects of culture always send me to google (tb schmit) as does new vocab – pudenda, who would have known. the grammatical criticism from your mother gets right to the point doesn’t it.
Due to the crummy weather and time constraints of the weekend, I never got a chance to take solid interior shots of the cars. I apologize.
Now by applying an Ohio grammer filter we get:
Due to the crummy weather coming down from the lake where I was *at* and time constraints of the weekend, I never got a chance to take solid interior shots of the cars inbetween drinking my *pop* and snacking on *buckeyes*. I apologize.
I’d settle for a lurid description of an exterior shot of the hypothetical analysts Lululemon glazed pudendum. But, I’m sick like that.
Edited to correct inadvertent pluralization of imaginary genitalia.
It’s very important to have pudenda/pudendum in your vocabulary.
The sentence above where that word appears is one of the best I’ve read this year.
Jack, why do you or Derek or whoever let nonsense BS from readers (including me, VERY INFREQUENTLY) get to you?
As my pops would say, “F**k ’em.”
Just honestly stick to the “no manufacturer will SWAG our soul” pledge (despite the *cough* recent R&T *cough* stint *cough*) and let it go, bro.
Short answer:
The customer is always right, even if they are dense, stubborn or malicious.
Long answer:
Because this is a 24/7 job that consumes you – and when you’re a writer, you are putting your heart and soul out there for everyone to see, and all you can expect are a bunch of nameless know-it-alls telling you how you’re wrong or terrible at your jobs.
I know all of your life stories, the cars you drive, where you live, what you do, which of your nephews bought an ’03 GTI with the bad coilpacks and why you’ll never own a German car out of warranty. I have spent countless hours pulling your comments out of the spam filter and not chewed you out for posting the same reply 7 times, thus making the problem worse. I’ve felt my blood pressure rise when I see that you have replied without reading the actual article.
I’ve also made some real life friends out of the B&B. I know that if I ever needed to bury a body, tresmonos would be there with a truck, a shovel and his AR-15, just to make sure that the corpse was *really* dead, and there were no witnesses left.
The job has consumed my life. If I didn’t take it to heart whenever that happened, I wouldn’t care about this site in the way that’s required to keep it going. None of you, save for Jack, has any idea how close we’ve come to having it all come to a halt – because a site that serves the reader’s interest first is a site that other parties consider a thorn in their side.
Genuinely, that I can appreciate.
“No good deeds go unpunished.”
My pops said that a lot, too.
Derek, Jack, Tim, et al – I honestly (for my .02) believe there’s a major dearth of sources of truly independent sources panning vehicles, and that your concept & commitment of/to do so – completely removing/eliminating the manufacturers’ inputs & influence – makes for a sound business model.
Just ask Consumer Reports, the publication that literally prompts major automakers to break out the emergency refresh plans years early in the wake of a bad CR review (it took CR a while to get to such an enviable position).
People really do not like suck up auto “journalists,” and typically read such trash because there’s little alternative to it.
“The Ritz-Carlton Breakers in Palm Beach was lovely, my flue overflowed with the bubbly, and the VW Polo test car performed on track as a much more powerful sports car would quite comely.”
If someone can pull together the scratch to make a movie about John Penton (Penton – The John Penton Story) and get it shown at the AMA VMDs then “TTAC – The Movie” should be a piece of cake. I, for one, would love to hear “how close [TTAC came] to having it all come to a halt – because a site that serves the reader’s interest first is a site that other parties consider a thorn in their side”. Particularly I’d like to have the “other parties” identified and know what they were doing that threatened TTAC’s existance.
If you ever need someone to lobby for you, let me know.
I would love to be a contributor, but my sole article submission to test the waters didn’t get any feedback. Even a PFO or an “I could contract an ESL-student to write a better article than this thing” is preferable to being ignored or stonewalled.
Re-send it. May have gotten lost in the crush of emails we get daily.
Thank you for your struggles. They are real. They are worth it. We appreciate it.
Please don’t get an editor. Otherwise, we might miss things like where Jack is talking about his Mom, and then says, “Where we we?”
Not in the supercar, Jack!
I am totally with you on the Internet and language abuse, but it’s just not the web. It’s all the media.
Don’t worry jack I still love ya. In fact the only thing that could make me appreciate you more is if you told me you were a Rush fan.
>In fact the only thing that could make me appreciate you more is if you told me you were a Rush fan.
Please,please tell me you meant the band.
Of course!! I’ve been on a huge vapor trails kick lately.
Thanks, that was really entertaining to read! I appreciate your refreshing approach to automotive writing, your economy of words and your (well) above average vocabulary. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series!
There is only one Supercar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJkQD8gCP1E
I’m going to assume without looking that this is a video of the Venturi Atlantique.
I suppose this is the very sort of nitpick you’re frustrated with, but: If you use your entire above-the-jump text space to spew pre-emptive vitriol at your readership, the stresses of the job may be getting the better of you. Caribbean vacations are supposedly lovely this time of year, just saying.
I’ve always found the V-12 requirement for “proper” supercars to be arbitrary and unnecessary. Take a car like the Jag XJ220. As it was originally intended to be with a V-12: supercar! As delivered with the turbo 6: not a supercar! Really? It lost some cylinders and so that changes the complete definition of the car? That seems silly.
The mid-engine requirement though I think DOES make sense, as I think a necessary part of the supercar DNA is a giant FU to any notion of practicality. Front engine cars will likely have some sort of luggage space in the back. That’s not what the supercar is about.
The Audi though I don’t think qualifies, it’s just not quite exotic enough, and it also doesn’t really cost enough either. It competes directly with the 911 Turbo – a sports car, and just because it happens to have its engine in the middle, that’s not good enough.
The Ferrari, Lambo, and McLaren are all in the supercar club. Corvettes and GT3s may be able to chase them on a track, but they aren’t the same.
To me supercar means “no freakin way I can afford it, much less sit in”. Thus the Gallaro here is OFF the list, not only because I have placed my backside into a yellow one, but I even got to drive it!*
*in reverse for all of 2 car lengths to help a buddy get it back into his garage. During which I learned why you NEED someone else to back your Lambo into a garage in the first place. Oh and you need to find the “R” button that puts the car into reverse because you can’t select reverse from the paddle shifters!
The car itself is tiny on the inside but impossibly low and stupid wide on the outside. I have the same inseam as JB and the roof is at waist level. The mirrors stick out wider then my boat trailer. Also the engine appears to be tiny – maybe its an optical illusion due the combination of width of the car vs the length of a rarely seen 10 cylinders, but it actually lacks the “wow that’s a brute” factor. Lots of things about the Gallaro make no sense… which is why people own them.
“The LP560-4 is just too bolted-down, too safe, too sane, to be maximally thrilling.”
It gets worse apparently. The Lamborghini Huracán, according to Chris Harris, is even more bolted down and “safe”. Something else intresting he mentioned. Try to find a Huracán drifting. You won’t as it can’t.
I have a picture that says otherwise — more like twenty of them — and it will be on your newsstsand in February.
Ha! If anybody could make it work, I’d imagine it’d be you.
I guess it wouldn’t be polite to nitpick out that ‘pudenda’ is the plural of pudendum. I have a very crazy image in my mind right now.
Correct, it agrees with “women” and “their”.
Boom headshot!
+25 RP.
You do get that I was being ‘tongue’ in ‘cheek,’ so to speak. Swing.and.a.Miss
But not with “one’s.”
Good call.
I’m going to have to find a video on how to shift with paddle shifters. Once I turn my wheel 90 degrees I can’t find them for squat.
take one hand off the wheel, per the article.
It’s amazing that the average performance car today has more power than the exotic cars of yester-year. The one thing missing from the AMerican portfolio is a rear/ mid-engined RWD/AWD supercar that can compete with a Lamborghini or Ferrari.
The Cadillac CTS-V is a great deal that’s actually practical for America’s horrible roads.
Unfortunately, you don’t get the coolness of having an engine in back and a “jet fighter” appearance.
And then there’s TESLA with their P85D that combines instant torque with AWD and basically turns into a silenced bullet.
TESLA needs to add a coupe to their portfolio using the exact same platform as the Model S – only with a lighter top body and smaller diameter wheels.
I’d buy that.
But then there’s that whole issue of a silent supercar…
Whew! After that wall of text I have to ask one thing:
What did you say?
Between word 1,232 and 1,308, there’s a comment on your momma’s “sugar walls”.
Thanks Jack I almost choked to death on my own saliva.
@Jack: I feel sorry for him if that’s true. But then, there are sexual deviants of all kinds, aren’t there?
“The typical response of the readers is to completely pounce on me (or, more often, Derek) for making these mistakes, forgetting that if we had a so-called ‘editor’ to “edit” what we write, we wouldn’t have any money to rent Camrys for track tests.
“So, with that in mind, we’re on our third Supercars To Go test, and not a single member of the B&B has been sufficiently incensed to hit the ‘Reply’ button and e-scream:
” ‘NONE OF THESE ARE SUPERCARS!!’ ”
Since no one else has said it, I guess I will–yes, they did.
However, their response was eaten by the spam filter.
Boom headshot!
I guess the literary bat has gotten you right between the eyes… Twice!
Since the staff has worked their collective fingers to the bone for the ungrateful B&B I guess it’s highly improbable they were able to pick-up the literary bat that I think I just got hit in the head with.
Thank you for all you do, even if we don’t say it often, we appreciate you :)
Seconded.
I appreciate JB. Making friends with him on LinkedIn ensured that there would be lots of attractive professional women popping up in my suggested connections. ;-)
Screw the introspection. All I know is that I’m two for two on the finishing order so far. Ha!
Me too but I think they were obvious. The first big test is number 3.
I’ll just enjoy the gloat while it lasts thank you.
Although you are right.
Great writing Jack, I’m still laughing.
I pick no nits if I can possibly help it.
And I’d guesstimate I have more MLP:FiM meetups on my CV than anyone else in the B&B. (Contributing writers, maybe not so much.)
I’d consider being a brony if they got some better-looking women at those conventions.
Jack, you have gone straight up mental lately.
And I kind of like it.
Nice work on the last few pieces I have read. Veering a bit to excess of hyperbole, perhaps, but you pulled it back in before it swapped ends on ya. ;)
Indeed. I prefer understated hyperbole.
“The typical response of the readers is to completely pounce on me (or, more often, Derek) for making these mistakes, forgetting that if we had a so-called “editor” to “edit” what we write, we wouldn’t have any money to rent Camrys for track tests.”
Jack, this is a recurring refrain from each of the post-Farago regimes when issues with grammar, spelling, etc. are hashed out in articles or comments. Inevitably, some of the B&B step forward and offer their editorials services gratis, and each time they are rebuffed. So the question is, does TTAC really want to get clean or is the smack still too alluring?
“I’d always thought of the Gallardo as a jerk-off car for jerk-off drivers but as the days went on and I saw just how well it worked for my students I came to really respect it. During my own drives of the car I found it to be superbly stable and adequately thrilling.”
Which raises an interesting question – is the better supercar the one with the highest performance potential or the one with the most easily accessible performance? (Trick question – it’s the one that drops the most panties for the Viagra set!) But seriously, I would argue that it’s the latter when one considers the profile of the average supercar owner. In guitar terms, this would be the old Tele vs Les Paul discussion.
We’ve yet to find someone who is willing to edit at the drop of a hat. There are plenty of members of the B&B who are willing and able to review items overnight or with a week’s notice. Unfortunately for us, the Internet doesn’t work like that, which is why you can find typos in CNN’s coverage as well :)
I know we know today the big engined cars of the 60s and early 70s as muscle cars today. But weren’t they originally called Supercars when they originally existed. Back when the world was in Technicolor. And that nomenclature of “Muscle Car” was added later after the original era ended.
Yes they were called “Super Cars” by many back in the day. I’m forgetting the name of the TV show hosted by Bud Lindeman (sp?) that you can find on youtube where he reviews and does road tests on all sorts of cars. You can tell his favorites are the Super Cars and that is what he called them in the show.
I don’t mind the typos, if we all spelled perfectly and correctly used terminology we’d be little above robots.
Also, I’ve heard some commenters coin their FWD Mommy-Daddy sedans as “Muscle Cars”, a Gallardo is much closer to being a supercar than a Japanese sedan a muscle car.
Nitpickers are just jealous that you have a life, and babes.
I’ve never put much thought into the term “supercar” before reading this. When I hear that word, I think of the exotics of my youth; primarily the Countach and Testarossa. So anything that’s just as imposing, impractical, and, to the average person, unattainable, while also being at least as fast and track-oriented as those, is definitely a supercar to me.
So all in this five car test are supercars in my books. The GT-R is too compromised on weight and layout to be a supercar. It’s a muscle car with supercar performance. I’m also not entirely sure about the SLS, as the engine is in the wrong place. But since weight distribution is solidly rear-biased, I’ll accept it. So if I accept that, the C6 Z06 is the most practical and affordable car that I’m willing to call a supercar. Given that, it obviously doesn’t bother me if people use the term liberally.
“The GT-R is too compromised on weight and layout to be a supercar.”
Call me crazy, but for me the GTRs a bit too much of a parts bin special to be a supercar, plus my definition of super car is basically “Mid engined and really really really fast”. To me the GTRs a really souped up 370z.
This is really wonderfully written.
And yeah, I still want a Gallardo, even though I know they’re relatively common and absolutely douchey.