Another Top Gear challenge! This time the guys have 1500 pounds (~$3000 USD) to find a Porsche which must be driven and tested with various challenges.

Edit: These videos have been deleted. Check out the other Top Gear videos while we try to locate a good version of this episode.

If you couldn’t tell, I love old Le Mans racing. Here’s a great capture featuring about an hour of the 1988 24-hour Le Mans race.

Part 1:

Click here to view the whole post.

The same guy who’s featured in another video hot-rodding around the Los Angeles area is shown here in an interview where he talks about what it’s like to own this $500,000 beast. He races against one of the Supercar.net guys’ AC Cobra with 400+ RWHP and points out some of the flaws of owning a supercar.

Jan Fatthauer’s goal was to beat a Bugatti Veyron. The results? 0-60 in a modest 4.2 seconds (traction and maybe turbo-lag limited) from his 3000 lb Porsche, but it’s only 17.6 seconds from 0 to 186 MPH. The GT9’s claim is that it goes from 125-186 MPH 2.6 seconds sooner than a Veyron. “I’ve driven a Veyron, that’s not possible.” says Chris Harris in this video.

If you want to see the car in action, skip to about 3 minutes in. It looks like he’s wearing a normal seat belt. I wonder if that’s a good idea. About 5 minutes, 20 seconds in, it looks like Harris shifts from 3rd to 2nd causing a mechanical over-rev.

Also, it should be noted that while this car is faster than a Veyron from medium to high speeds, the Veyron rips it up bad from a stop. And comparing a stripped out Porsche to the Veyron is like comparing a luxury yacht to a drag boat — when the yacht is actually as fast. The Veyron might lack that grunt (and handling), it’s an ultra-refined engineering marvel that this car has nothing on in this respect. Basically, think of this like one of those dyno queen 900+ RWHP Supras or Skylines, that while they can certainly boast some incredible performance numbers and speeds, they are simply not the type of a car that the Veyron was designed to compete with. Er, maybe nothing’s really competition with the Veyron at this point that doesn’t fly.

Just for the heck of it, here’s the Veyron racing a McLaren SLR (the 626 HP supercar from Mercedes):

Here’s a battle I’ve been waiting to see for a while, especially with all the hype around the new ‘Skyline’ - Nissan’s R35 GT-R vs. Porsche’s 911 Turbo. If you skip this one, at least watch the first minute or so of Part 2 — it includes a great smokey burnout and drifting in an M3.

Part 1:

Part 2:

The article is here. Part 2 is here.

Top Gear tries to find the best road in the world for car enthusiasts.

(this video was deleted from Youtube, sorry!)