AMG GT S, i8, F-TYPE R & R8 V10 PLUS
The sportscar is evolving and we want to know where it’s headed
LLET ME TELL YOU A STORY, OF WHEN I first met my colleague Ouseph. It was 2007, a cold winter’s evening on the edge of the desert, in the days before the Jaipur/ Jodhpur/ Jaisalmer troika was discovered and subsequently ruined by car companies demanding our weekly presence at launches. He was at Autocar, yet to earn his #OffRoadChacko spurs; I was at Overdrive, next in line to edit it; and with our mags engaged in a staring match we barely spoke that evening.
The next morning we discovered a shared passion for shredding tyres.
While the other journos slept off the strong malts required to endure the evening’s ‘cultural’ programme, O use ph and I hammered the firs tS L 63 AMG to arrive in the country over deserted, well, desert roads. It was our first experience of an AMG, of the wrath an 8-cylinder AMG motor can unleash on unsuspecting rear tyres and press fleet budgets. For four hours that morning we laughed like idiots until the inevitable what-were-you-thinking phone call arrived from our editors. No matter. That black SL, crackling on the overrun, gave our jobs a new meaning. Not that we weren’t thankful to have road-tester printed on our visiting cards, but yet another new Esteem (Fuel injection! Tubeless tyres! Spoiler on the boot!) or another chrome-laden Bullet was only going to sustain our interest for that long. We needed direction and that AMG drive through Rajasthan promised us a future where we’d be expected to acquire the wheelsmanship necessary to put a very powerful car a little bit sideways.
It has, like everything else in this country, taken time but, boy oh boy, have those days arrived. Today our words are printed in a magazine devoted to performance cars; a magazine where we are expected to drive with vigour and manufacturers are (generally) happy to indulge us by investing in stacks of tyres. Stories like the how-to-drift piece with the C 63 S AMG last month, or flinging the same C 63 S down the quarter mile in a competitive drag race would not been imaginable even a year go. When we unleashed seven M cars on a runway, no explanation was demanded for the steel belts peeping through the M3’s boot. Our knuckles are no longer rapped for long-pressing the ESP switch or not sticking to convoys, in fact at the Mustang launch last month, rally-ace and part-time driving instructor Sunny Sidhu made it a matter of pride that I spare no ponies in hunting down the lead car at the BIC. We even discovered that Audi India’s RS press cars don’t have a 250kmph limiter!
I labour this introduction because, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, assembling the four cars you see here was just, so, easy. Apart from Porsche having sold their 911 Turbo press car just before we made the call, the others just turned up at the appointed day and hour. No cajoling, no discussing story lines, no commitment on cover or pages, they just turned up – and what an eclectic mix we have here: natural aspiration, forced induction and a petrol-electric hybrid; V8, V10 and a 1.5-litre turbo (!); rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive and all-wheel drive when it feels like it; an exhaust note to make Pakistan scramble their jets and no noise at all. It really is a great time to be a fan of the performance car, even better if you make it your ‘job’ to pen a few words on them.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but assembling the four cars you see here was just, so, easy
The fast
I have a particular fondness for the F-Type and it has nothing to do with the ESP switch. In fact, there’s a lot of terror associated with that switch, but I will come to that. The button I like is the one adorned with the tailpipe graphic, the one that turns thunder into the kind of apocalyptic day that has the BMC declaring a public holiday in Mumbai, railway tracks turning into an outdoor swimming pool and the indefatigable Bombayite wading through chesthigh water because s/he cannot understand the concept of staying at home. It’s nonsensical, just how loud the Jag is, borderline illegal I assume, but then again the cat on the rump isn’t a furry pussycat, is it? You wanted a beast, you got enamoured by all those #GoodToBeBad posts, and that’s what you get – a villain! – when you press that sport exhaust button. Along with the sweep of Ian Callum’s pen I think the pops, bangs, crackles and barely controlled explosions are the F-Type’s greatest triumph. It’s awesome; it brings out the four-year-old in me. I took my mum out for a spin (she loves Jags, her first job involved selling Jags and Landies) and she suspected the exhaust had fallen off. She couldn’t understand why you’d want a car to sound like that, especially when a biker almost fell when the exhaust rattled off another machine gun salvo, but then again she never liked Amrish Puri. The F-Type is a hooligan, a damn sexy hooligan. And you don’t even need to fiddle with that ESP button to know fear.
Up in that long sexy nose is a big V8 forcefed by something of a rarity these days – a supercharger; a V8 that doesn’t use tricks or (worse!) the music system to synthesize intake and exhaust sounds in to the cabin. This is old school, 543bhp from five litres, kicking up Pirelli’s share price every time you step on the gas. And the chassis is wholly incapable of reigning in that ridiculous power, as hilarious as it is alarming. I was in Track mode with ESP still on, yet I exited a toll-booth sideways. Switch off ESP and you’re more sideways than straight, the rear spinning up with anything more than three-quarters application of the throttle. And if it’s raining, well, you better be wearing your big-boy pants. For a while I even drove it in Ice mode until Ouseph inquired about the size of my family jewels.
It’s a frisky kitty then, and it needs cat-like reflexes to avoid snapping the other way round. You need to be precise and accurate with both the corrective lock and the amount of throttle. It’s immensely playful, like a cat on catnip (this is the last feline reference, I promise), but you have to be careful when the claws come out.
It might not have the dynamic polish of the Germans, or maybe it’s just the Brits having a laugh, but you do have to be more alert. What’s undeniable is that the F-Type Coupe is still a very beautiful car. Maybe not from the front anymore, and definitely not on the inside that is showing its age, but the hind-quarters, the sweep of the E-Type-inspired roofline (which has very obviously inspired the AMG GT’s coupe roofline too), the haunches, that muscular tail with four big fat pipes… it leaves you with a tingle in your pants.
This is old school, 543bhp from five litres, kicking up Pirelli’s share price every time you step on the gas
The present
I’m going a little Autocar on you but this is one of those occasions where brushing up on engine codes will do you no harm. BNS – that was the 4.2 V8 in the B7 RS4. Never came to India but it was the first RS, actually the first car, we Indian journos maxed out on the German Autobahn, and so spectacular (8250rpm! Manual g’box!) that it only required dry-sumping to migrate into the back of the first R8. S85 – that was the motorsport-derived 5-litre V10 that made the E60 M5 a legend, an engine that even now, over a decade later, revs so hard, fast, and high that your hair stands on end. And M156 – the ginormous 6.2-litre V8 that also came from the world of motorsport, was also naturally aspirated, and with a dry sump (and badged M159) powered the SL 63 AMG that introduced us desi journos to the wonderful, maniacal, insanely noisy world of AMGs.
Now they’re all gone. The R 8 no longer has aV 8. Formula 1 dumped the V10. BMW’s M Division dumped natural aspiration altogether. And AMG’s ‘63’ nomenclature no longer refers to that 6.2-litre motor. Apart from a very, very big V12 that is made in very, very small numbers for Pagani (and once found itself in the nose of an SL 73 AMG!), the boys and girls at Affalterbach now make only turbo motors. And the engine code to remember is M178.
This is a downsized 4-litre V8 that has two turbos nestled in the vee of the motor hence the rather cool-sounding, hot-vee. The regular wet sump motor, if you can call a hand-built, high- performance, exclusive-to-AMG motor that, is used in the C 63 S while the more hardcore dry sump version sits way, way behind the front axle of the ultimate AMG, the GT S. And, unlike Porsche or BMW, AMG requires no piped music to make the BMC issue a thunderstorm-related circular.
That the AMG GT S sounds mega isn’t its greatest triumph though. Its big brother, the gull-winged SLS AMG, was even more of a handful than the F-Type – it was scary and I admit to spinning it when I switched off ESP and attacked the BIC at full clip. The GT S might be down on power but, because it can use all of the power, is quicker and – crucially – doesn’t scare you on a quick lap. The chassis is so well tuned, so responsive, and the electronically controlled
limited-slip rear differential so quick to act, that you can hold long progressive slides and still not spin; still set quick lap times. Till the AMG GT S came along I always thought of AMGs as overpowered muscle cars built by Germans. The GT though is a beautifully honed driving machine. It involves, immerses and bends your mind with ludicrous corner speeds. Yet on the road there’s a fluency and pliancy over bumps that won’t shatter your teeth.
I drove this yellow GT S on the BIC late last year and it remains the best thing I’ve driven there (a rider, I’ve yet to drive the new R8 at the BIC). It has such a darty, hyper-responsive front end that it brings to mind a Ferrari. Traction from the rear is at the other end of the scale to the SLS or the F-Type. It is more sports car than grand tourer. And with the diff knowing exactly when you want a locked axle, you’re looking at a drift machine in the right hands.
Unlike that SL 63 AMG, or even the SLS AMG, you don’t go looking for a nice long straight in the AMG GT S. You look for a wide, open corner and smearsomerubberover.Allthoseyearsofpatience and practice, the GT makes it all worthwhile.
Time warp
If Ferrari, Porsche, AMG and BMW M, all have adopted turbo-charging, why is Audi stuck in a time warp? Why haven’t two turbos been shoved into the back of the new R8? Doesn’t Vorsprung Durch Technik have something to do with being at the sharp end of engineering?
Good questions I say to myself, but it all becomes irrelevant the first time you stick your foot through the firewall of the R8 V10 Plus. Fuck. 8750rpm is apocalyptic. It makes your nerve endings explode. And it is relentless. Bang, bang, bang, gear after gear, the V10 is inexhaustible. You will run out of road before the V10 runs out of breath. This is the answer to those stupid Facebook questions on what you’d do with the last litre of petrol. You’d stick it in the fuel tank of an R8 V10 Plus and experience 8750rpm one last time. Even if it is raining.
You see, the modern performance car has become incredibly friendly. Every journalist who has driven a Veyron has claimed their grandmas could drive it, and though no grandma will ever have driven one, it is the truth. Weather, though, is the great leveller.
For all the incredible traction in the dry, when it starts raining, you switch the AMG from Sport+ to Sport. You switch the F-Type into Ice mode. In the R8 you come down to 200kmph. As Pirelli says, power is nothing without control, and the R8 can use all of its power, all of the time. Towards the end of our test the skies opened up, the rains got torrential, and everybody backed right off, yet the R8 continued to shriek and assault our senses. It’d have been madness to switch off ESP but the yellow triangle blinked only once or twice. There’s just an incredible, otherworldly amount of grip in the chassis. And it’s not the blind-trust kind of grip, where you throw it into a corner and hope that quattro will pull you through. The R8 tells you what’s going on. It feels rear-wheel driven and allows you to play with the throttle to adjust its attitude in a corner, invoke yaw moment – that rotation about its axis as the outside rear wheel spins up faster to trace a wider arc, the differentials maximise grip, and you exit in a lovely fourwheel drift with hardly any corrective lock necessary. Unless you are vicious, violent or deliberate there are no slides to be had because, as every rally driver will today tell you, sideways is slower. In this new R8 everything is programmed for maximum speed, minimal wastage, and it does all this without being aloof or disconnected. There’s no lag. The carbonceramic brakes do not know the meaning of fatigue. And the consequence of all of this is the driver knows not when to stop. There’s so much confidence that you keep it pegged over dry roads and over wet roads. The earlier R8 redefined the term ‘everyday supercar’. This new R8 continues to be that rare breed that can be used every day of every month.
Except you might not use your R8 V10 Plus everyday. The beauty of the R8 was that it looked great but wasn’t over the top. The V10 Plus, with that forest of carbonfibre all over it,
does everything other than fly under the radar. The R8 used to exist somewhere in the cusp between sportscar and supercar; this new V10 Plus graduates firmly into supercar territory.
Even the cabin is astonishingly fabulous. The Virtual Cockpit that replaces the speedo cluster with a full-width digital screen looks just insane in Dynamic mode where the rev counter changes colors and then flashes manically as it approaches 8750rpm, imploring you to grab another gear. The steering wheel now gets a Ferrari- esque engine start button and more knobs to change the dynamic attitude and open up the exhaust. The air-con knobs hang from beautifully crafted hangers, and the optional carbon-shelled seats are equally stare-worthy. It is the ultimate expression of Vorsprung Durch Technik-ery, the last stand for engines that rely solely on atmospheric pressure.
The future
So you burn through the last litre of petrol. Then what? You call BMW and ask for an i8, or whatever the successor to the i8 will be called. This is the future of the sportscar, no question, and what a fantastic first attempt! Let’s address the way it looks because it is the most outlandish of the four, all space-age cuts, flicks, vanes, crevices and peep-holes. The tub is carbonfibre, and just so that you don’t forget it, there’s a huge sill you have to swing your leg over before flopping unceremoniously into the seats. Then you pull down those ridiculously dramatic butterfly doors. The e-Verito is not the future because it doesn’t look like a future you’d sign up for. The i8 looks like a future you’d enthusiastically participate in. Wear a full-face helmet, whirr off in a faint whine of electric motors, and you almost feel like you’re sitting
The i8 looks like a future you’d enthusiastically participate in
in a spaceship, ready to engage hyperdrive. I imagine one day the novelty of buzzing off silently on the batteries will wear thin. Not today though.
Give it a little more gas and the motor kicks in. Not a V10, or a V8 or a V6 or even a fourcylinder. This is a three-pot, displaces a litre and a half, and is boosted by a turbo. How is that the future, you ask? Umm… I don’t know. It sounds a bit strange too, a little gruff, but knock the gearlever to the left to activate Sport mode, work it a little harder and there’s this weirdly futuristic sound – of the whine of electric motors overlayed with the whooshing and whistling of a turbo petrol as all 357bhp is deployed. I’m no green terrorist but it is rather pleasing, knowing you’re saving the planet while still having fun.
But how much of your own cake are you eating?
The chassis is brilliant. You can sense the rigidity of the carbon tub, which in turn permits a suppleness to be dialled in to the damping that makes it the most comfortable over a typical Indian road. The tyres are skinny – 195-section to the R8’s 305-section – but because the masses and centre of gravity are so low this is no ambassador of understeer. This is an agile sportscar that has a fantastic handle of its own weight, allied to terrific body control. And with the immense instant-on torque of the electric motor there’s an urgency to its initial acceleration that makes you a believer.
It’s all up to a limit however. Push through the envelope and the skinny tyres begin to understeer. Switch off DSC but there’s no getting the rear to kick out and curb understeer. The electric motor works on the front axle and every time you boot it the front comes in to play to pull it out of the corner. This makes exits quicker, but if you’re already understeering it only leads to more understeer, making it a zero sum game. There’s no throttle adjustability, no sliding around. It’s also not that fast. An M3/M4 is quicker and significantly more entertaining. The steering too is vague though the brakes aren’t what I expected of a hybrid.
This is how the tech works. The i8 harvests the energy usually lost under braking by using the electric motor as a generator. This energy is stored in the batteries to be re-deployed under acceleration, turning the RWD i8 into an AWD sports car – same principle as the new Le Mans prototypes (same as F1 too, without the AWD). On electric power you get 129bhp while the petrol motor adds in another 228bhp (which, in itself, is super-impressive from a 1.5 turbo) for a total that is still some 150bhp off the AMG GT S. Being a plug-in hybrid you can also recharge the batteries by sticking it into your socket and on a full charge you get 37km of guiltfree motoring. The batteries also recharge via regenerative braking that kicks in every time you get off the accelerator and coast so you can charge the batteries on the move by driving, counter intuitively, with vigour and using regen (rather than use the brakes) to slow down the car and charge the batteries.
Managing all this requires an immense amount of computing power and fly-by-wire everything, which is one of the reasons for the vague steering and usually also results in a typically vague and lifeless (for a hybrid) brake pedal. The i8’s though feel surprisingly normal, though a little more bite would have been welcome.
So the i8 can’t keep up with the other cars here. But does that really matter? There are things the i8 can do that the others can only dream of. This is the first stab at a sportscar of the future, and things can only get more exciting. Sure the auditory sensations will be all artificial and NA will stand for Not Available, but even if petrol runs out (which looks unlikely in our lifetime) the petrolhead is still in safe hands. With cars like the i8, the next generation of automotive writers will still have stories to recount, of when the future first presented itself.
There are things the i8 can do that the others can only dream of