Greatest GT car
Discussion
juicy sushi said:
Byker28i said:
A performance and luxury automobile capable of long distance, spirited driving.
But, that isn't a GT. A GT specifically means 2-doors, a hard top, luggage space and relatively high performance. A 4-door Porsche may be all of what you describe, but it isn't a GT. There is a difference.
It was tongue in cheek Actually on reflection I have now changed my mind from my 550 to :
free picture upload
as one went past my house today .... sadly not for me !!!!
Phib
free picture upload
as one went past my house today .... sadly not for me !!!!
Phib
Quite so. We haven't talked enough about car seats but they can absolutely make or break the GT experience. And in any other type of car, come to that.
My own 928 S4 was specified at new by a consultant orthopedic surgeon. I didn't know this when I bought it but only found out later when doing some back-checking on the car history. Naturally, this being Porsche, they charged big ££££ for the so-called "orthopedic option" with your seat. It mean't you could adjust absolutely every aspect of seat rake, height, squab inclination and back pressure points. And then "freeze" the settings by using the controls on the door card. Four seat "frozen"settings were available, so one for yourself, one for your partner and then other two for the garage mechanics or whoever. Said surgeon went for all the seat options, Recaro built them (to special order, apparently) and hey presto, the best car seats I have ever used, to date. Very rare option to be fitted, so every Porsche person who noticed them told me.
The standard industry test for a car seat, apparently, is that it can be sat in for up to 2 hours. If you are driving UK - toe of Italy, and I've done this for business trips several times, then a 2 hour seat duration is just not good enough. But in most cases when you're trying a different car you get, what, a 20 to 30 minute test drive?
That's a key reason why I was so taken by my try-out in a Bentley Continental V8. I learned that Bentley design and build their own seats, whereas none of the other GT-type car suppliers do this, I think. So; if you can afford one of those at the new-build stage, well, lucky you, and I rather think they'll make a seat to your own specification. That's a big step down the road to getting a perfect GT Coupe for proper long haul, cross-Europe road work.
My own 928 S4 was specified at new by a consultant orthopedic surgeon. I didn't know this when I bought it but only found out later when doing some back-checking on the car history. Naturally, this being Porsche, they charged big ££££ for the so-called "orthopedic option" with your seat. It mean't you could adjust absolutely every aspect of seat rake, height, squab inclination and back pressure points. And then "freeze" the settings by using the controls on the door card. Four seat "frozen"settings were available, so one for yourself, one for your partner and then other two for the garage mechanics or whoever. Said surgeon went for all the seat options, Recaro built them (to special order, apparently) and hey presto, the best car seats I have ever used, to date. Very rare option to be fitted, so every Porsche person who noticed them told me.
The standard industry test for a car seat, apparently, is that it can be sat in for up to 2 hours. If you are driving UK - toe of Italy, and I've done this for business trips several times, then a 2 hour seat duration is just not good enough. But in most cases when you're trying a different car you get, what, a 20 to 30 minute test drive?
That's a key reason why I was so taken by my try-out in a Bentley Continental V8. I learned that Bentley design and build their own seats, whereas none of the other GT-type car suppliers do this, I think. So; if you can afford one of those at the new-build stage, well, lucky you, and I rather think they'll make a seat to your own specification. That's a big step down the road to getting a perfect GT Coupe for proper long haul, cross-Europe road work.
Completely Left-Field
Renault's best kept secret - and only 125 of the 205GT in the UK
makes it very rare. Cream leather and Bose sound... They're now
beginning to hold their price, so it's definitely a future classic.
Oh, and build quality was superb. Not quite on a par with
jet-propulsion, but its turbo ensures that you're no slouch...
I've had mine 7 years and it's not missed a beat. A new cam belt
has made it smoother and more responsive still. For around £3k
a year, it's a total bargain!
Regards,
Steve
Renault's best kept secret - and only 125 of the 205GT in the UK
makes it very rare. Cream leather and Bose sound... They're now
beginning to hold their price, so it's definitely a future classic.
Oh, and build quality was superb. Not quite on a par with
jet-propulsion, but its turbo ensures that you're no slouch...
I've had mine 7 years and it's not missed a beat. A new cam belt
has made it smoother and more responsive still. For around £3k
a year, it's a total bargain!
Regards,
Steve
TBH if it was my money I would prefer an 1M Coupe E82.
And let me tell you why.
- Compact, park it anywhere. Also, compact, drive it everywhere on any road.
- It will go sideways everywhere. Come on, admit it, when you've found that perfect empty road all for yourself, you want to hooligan the crap out of your car!
- Manual gearbox is both a plus (less boring) and a minus (more tiring) on long trips. I'm okay with manual GT
- Unassuming, if you happen to end up in a bad neighborhood most wouldn't give you a second glance (I'd take mine in black, not signal orange...)
- Unassuming, park it unattended without losing sleep
- It's practically a 2 seater but the rear seats are great just in case
- They got the torquey punch for efficient passing on the motorway
- And they got decent ride when you will cruise around
Any thoughts? I really, really like the XKR X150, 550 Maranello, LFA, CLK Black and Wraith also, but with my own money, I prefer to fly under the radar
And let me tell you why.
- Compact, park it anywhere. Also, compact, drive it everywhere on any road.
- It will go sideways everywhere. Come on, admit it, when you've found that perfect empty road all for yourself, you want to hooligan the crap out of your car!
- Manual gearbox is both a plus (less boring) and a minus (more tiring) on long trips. I'm okay with manual GT
- Unassuming, if you happen to end up in a bad neighborhood most wouldn't give you a second glance (I'd take mine in black, not signal orange...)
- Unassuming, park it unattended without losing sleep
- It's practically a 2 seater but the rear seats are great just in case
- They got the torquey punch for efficient passing on the motorway
- And they got decent ride when you will cruise around
Any thoughts? I really, really like the XKR X150, 550 Maranello, LFA, CLK Black and Wraith also, but with my own money, I prefer to fly under the radar
Edited by drivingaddict on Saturday 7th May 01:44
Speaking from personal experience an S5 does the job nicely but oh so dull and 300 miles to a tank is dreaming....but as others have already mentioned....the 550 Maranello is hard to beat for elegance (people seem to love them now and theres not much hatred!), performance, noise with the right setup - stock is a little quiet, and the combination of relaxation and driving experience.
2000 miles through Europe is the highlight of my year...every year and I will certainly not be swapping it for an FF(ugly) any time soon even with money my way! Giving how crazy prices have gone.....perhaps an Aston DB7 GT for a similar combination.
2000 miles through Europe is the highlight of my year...every year and I will certainly not be swapping it for an FF(ugly) any time soon even with money my way! Giving how crazy prices have gone.....perhaps an Aston DB7 GT for a similar combination.
andybu said:
At last a PH topic where I can speak from real experience....
The best GT I have run (so far) is the Porsche 928 S4 auto. That one was so good I kept it in service with me for 9 & 1/2 years. Bought at 4 years old and 35K miles, sold at coming up to 14 years old and with 147K miles on the odometer. An excellent GT with two wonderfully-comfortable front seats, +2 (seats for midgets) accommodation behind and a reasonably useful boot space. 22mpg however you drove it and very capable at long-haul work. Noisy at 130mph plus, however.
I currently run a 2011 MY Jaguar XK Coupe. My first - ever Jaguar. I tried the XK and XK-R variants but concluded that the normally-aspirated XK is the better GT car. What you lose in acceleration you recover in superior fuel consumption, thus a longer-range between stops is achieved, which in turn improves your average journey times. So far, comfortable , reliable and quieter than the 928 (this is a big plus on proper long-haul work; noise is cumulatively very, very, tiring).
However, the fuel tank could do with being 20% bigger and the sat-nav is out of the ark when it comes to using it for long-haul continental work. Get to the French -Swiss border and you have to take the luggage out and change a CD in the Sat-Nav unit in the boot to get Switzerland & Italy loaded. Doh......
The seats in the XK (made by Lear) are inferior to those in the 928 (were Recaros) after 2+ hours at the wheel. The XK however has better boot space; can get 19 cases of Burgundy/Chablis into this car on the usual route back through France. Also, it's quite good value for money compared to any of the exotica alternatives...
My other top tip is to get yourself a SANEF electronic tag and fit it high up on the windscreen behind the rear view mirror. This spot avoids signal confusion with heater filaments and means you can drive through the auto-pay channel on the French auto-route peage sections. Having run in convoy the first year I had this unit with a Maserati GT it was quite surprising to see how much time I was saving at the tolls compared to those paying manually. Double that time saving too if you are travelling solo... .
Very annoyingly, the electronic tags for Italy are not compatible with the SANEF units and you need a different one for the autostrada. A true Common Market is clearly still some way off then..........
The other true GT I have (all too briefly) tried is the current Bentley Continental GT V8. I had not expected to like it all that much, but to my surprise I did. A lot. Seems as if the smaller engine has taken a ton of weight out of the nose and you can actually feel what the car is doing now.
Wonderful seats (Bentley make their own), quiet, accelerative, + 2 rear seats and a good boot. Didn't have the opportunity to try my wine-box test but it looked to be better than the XK. But, they're way out of my budget.......
Four-wheel drive would also have been very handy on my UK -Geneva drive this March for the Motor Show. Tiptoeing through the Jura mountains in a RWD XK Coupe on ordinary tyres in the snow and ice was a bit too exciting for comfort...
It's pleasing to read that several contributors here have given the 2006 - 2014 Jaguar XK Coupe the "best value GT in the real-world" award. It's not a perfect GT but Jaguar got pretty much all of the basics right and I regret they've taken it out of production now. If it were to be modernized in a few key areas then I'd have another one in a heartbeat.
An intelligent post. You are dead right about the SANEF tag: if you want to increase your average speed, this is the cheapest and easiest mod and it works on any car!The best GT I have run (so far) is the Porsche 928 S4 auto. That one was so good I kept it in service with me for 9 & 1/2 years. Bought at 4 years old and 35K miles, sold at coming up to 14 years old and with 147K miles on the odometer. An excellent GT with two wonderfully-comfortable front seats, +2 (seats for midgets) accommodation behind and a reasonably useful boot space. 22mpg however you drove it and very capable at long-haul work. Noisy at 130mph plus, however.
I currently run a 2011 MY Jaguar XK Coupe. My first - ever Jaguar. I tried the XK and XK-R variants but concluded that the normally-aspirated XK is the better GT car. What you lose in acceleration you recover in superior fuel consumption, thus a longer-range between stops is achieved, which in turn improves your average journey times. So far, comfortable , reliable and quieter than the 928 (this is a big plus on proper long-haul work; noise is cumulatively very, very, tiring).
However, the fuel tank could do with being 20% bigger and the sat-nav is out of the ark when it comes to using it for long-haul continental work. Get to the French -Swiss border and you have to take the luggage out and change a CD in the Sat-Nav unit in the boot to get Switzerland & Italy loaded. Doh......
The seats in the XK (made by Lear) are inferior to those in the 928 (were Recaros) after 2+ hours at the wheel. The XK however has better boot space; can get 19 cases of Burgundy/Chablis into this car on the usual route back through France. Also, it's quite good value for money compared to any of the exotica alternatives...
My other top tip is to get yourself a SANEF electronic tag and fit it high up on the windscreen behind the rear view mirror. This spot avoids signal confusion with heater filaments and means you can drive through the auto-pay channel on the French auto-route peage sections. Having run in convoy the first year I had this unit with a Maserati GT it was quite surprising to see how much time I was saving at the tolls compared to those paying manually. Double that time saving too if you are travelling solo... .
Very annoyingly, the electronic tags for Italy are not compatible with the SANEF units and you need a different one for the autostrada. A true Common Market is clearly still some way off then..........
The other true GT I have (all too briefly) tried is the current Bentley Continental GT V8. I had not expected to like it all that much, but to my surprise I did. A lot. Seems as if the smaller engine has taken a ton of weight out of the nose and you can actually feel what the car is doing now.
Wonderful seats (Bentley make their own), quiet, accelerative, + 2 rear seats and a good boot. Didn't have the opportunity to try my wine-box test but it looked to be better than the XK. But, they're way out of my budget.......
Four-wheel drive would also have been very handy on my UK -Geneva drive this March for the Motor Show. Tiptoeing through the Jura mountains in a RWD XK Coupe on ordinary tyres in the snow and ice was a bit too exciting for comfort...
It's pleasing to read that several contributors here have given the 2006 - 2014 Jaguar XK Coupe the "best value GT in the real-world" award. It's not a perfect GT but Jaguar got pretty much all of the basics right and I regret they've taken it out of production now. If it were to be modernized in a few key areas then I'd have another one in a heartbeat.
The XK is superior to the XKR in one further respect, being more discreet and less vulgar. Too many of the vehicles recommended in this thread are cringeworthily vulgar. A GT must always and above all be a gentleman's conveyance, not an estate agent's chariot.
The XK also scores in my book being relatively narrow. Excess girth is a real world handicap for many of the cars put forward here, in particular the Ferrari 599 and 612. A narrow car is much easier to conduct once off the autoroute.
The Ferrari 550 and 575 work for me, especially in a dull colour. Perhaps the achingly beautiful 456 GT, too. Despite being expensive Ferraris, they are almost invisible, they are sensibly sized, and they have a long touring range courtesy of a large capacity fuel tank. They are, however, immediately disqualified if fitted with a silly exhaust: the purpose of the exhaust apparatus is to eliminate the engine's noise, not to amplify it.
Mercedes-Benz 450 SL C 5.0? 560 SEC? AM DB9 auto? BMW 850 CSi?
The Bentley Continental GT should qualify but they tend to be driven by the wrong kind of people: nobody wants to be guilty by association.
Finally, I should prefer a full-size spare wheel and tyre in my ultimate GT. Runflats and space savers are useless when you have another 500miles to your bed for the night.
Edited by r129sl on Saturday 7th May 10:36
![](http://thumbsnap.com/sc/aF5qWPXk.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/H5BZK3Qx" Target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/H5BZK3Qx.jpg[/img]</a> <a href="http://thumbsnap.com/TIbxdQCS" Target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[img]http://thumbsnap.com/sc/TIbxdQCS.jpg)
Have to say the XKR convertible has a really good boot,
I have the deleted space saver option so can fit luggage for a week away for me, the wife and two kids. Also went away for a week to Tenerife and could fit 1 full size suitcase and a slightly smaller one in the spare wheel recess for the airport run
OH - how right you are... I gave no thought to the desirability - indeed, necessity - for having a space saver spare wheel on a serious GT car until the 928 and I were in rural Germany near the Polish border and a sharp metal object went through the sidewall of a rear tyre. Can of foam? - completely useless in those circumstances.
It took one and a half days that time to get mobile again. Then I bought a space-saver, jack, etc and got sorted. And yes, had it happen again a few years later but this time I could get myself mobile again.
Lesson learned I researched this point when looking for my XK. And found that JLR had "decontented" their standard car specification and stopped fitting a space-saver wheel as part of the standard specification on the 2011 MY and later XK XK-R cars.
Naturally, when then negotiating the price, this deficiency of specification led to a further downward adjustment. JLR wanted about £350 for a wheel & kit, if memory serves, so I sourced a clean one from e-bay. And yes, I have had to put it to use since, for the same reasons as the 928 story earlier.
The other feature I miss from the 928 is that a tyre pressure warning system came as standard, in part due to Porsche learning the hard way at the Le Mans 24 hour race that telling their drivers which tyre had gone was a handy piece of information to present to said driver when they were travelling at 150 mph and upwards. I am convinced to this day that my 928 telling me that the LH front had a problem was material in keeping me out of the barriers on that autobahn, on another, later occasion.
JLR did offer a tyre-pressure warning feature on the XK and XK-R, but only as an optional extra. But, I couldn't find any UK cars fitted with it when I was researching and shopping, so I presume customer take-up was very low. A pity, because it is a real safety feature for all long-distance high speed driving work.
Curiously, my daily "workhorse" car" , which is an S205-generation MB C-Class C200 estate, does have a tyre pressure warning system, even though you wouldn't class it as a particularly sporty car. But again, it came with a can of foam in the boot. I haven't got around to haunting e-bay for a space-saver yet but it's on my to-do list when I get the time.
Fully agree re the XK being less loud than the XK-R and yes, that also influenced my buying choice. Discreet progress is what I want to make; I do not want a "shouty, look-at-me" sort of car. Classic, elegant looks and quick, inconspicuous progress is the goal.
Re the current Bentley Continental model, well, yes, I too had them pegged as "footballer's car" but I'm hoping that time, and the eventual workings of depreciation (which is of course the impecunious car enthusiasts' friend) will bring about a re-assessment of their image. I can readily agree that they are presently a bit too flash, safe in the knowledge that I can't afford one (yet) anyway. But, they are surprisingly compact and in V8 guise, quite wieldy..
I should close by adding that JLR are not the only guilty manufacturer when it comes to quietly "decontenting" their standard car specifications. To my annoyance this time, having had an S203, S204 and now an S205 - generation C-Class estate over the years, I find that Mercedes has decontented the standard-specification seat adjustment on the latest generation car and you can no longer alter the angle of the seat squab. Seat height and rake? Yes, but squab? No.
Full, three-axis adjustment was standard on their earlier cars, but no longer. To get it back you now have to pay for an £1,800 "Comfort Option". For which sum you get another set of buttons, now located in the door card & not on the seat itself. I have a rather more anglo-saxon name for it than "Comfort Option"..
Fortunately, the squab setting is one that I can live with but I was very unamused to find the usual/traditional seat squab adjuster is now missing. It used to be that all this stuff was standard but you paid more for a stereo system and air-con. Now the fancy stuff is in the spec and the essentials for the real motorists are the extras. I must be showing my age...
It took one and a half days that time to get mobile again. Then I bought a space-saver, jack, etc and got sorted. And yes, had it happen again a few years later but this time I could get myself mobile again.
Lesson learned I researched this point when looking for my XK. And found that JLR had "decontented" their standard car specification and stopped fitting a space-saver wheel as part of the standard specification on the 2011 MY and later XK XK-R cars.
Naturally, when then negotiating the price, this deficiency of specification led to a further downward adjustment. JLR wanted about £350 for a wheel & kit, if memory serves, so I sourced a clean one from e-bay. And yes, I have had to put it to use since, for the same reasons as the 928 story earlier.
The other feature I miss from the 928 is that a tyre pressure warning system came as standard, in part due to Porsche learning the hard way at the Le Mans 24 hour race that telling their drivers which tyre had gone was a handy piece of information to present to said driver when they were travelling at 150 mph and upwards. I am convinced to this day that my 928 telling me that the LH front had a problem was material in keeping me out of the barriers on that autobahn, on another, later occasion.
JLR did offer a tyre-pressure warning feature on the XK and XK-R, but only as an optional extra. But, I couldn't find any UK cars fitted with it when I was researching and shopping, so I presume customer take-up was very low. A pity, because it is a real safety feature for all long-distance high speed driving work.
Curiously, my daily "workhorse" car" , which is an S205-generation MB C-Class C200 estate, does have a tyre pressure warning system, even though you wouldn't class it as a particularly sporty car. But again, it came with a can of foam in the boot. I haven't got around to haunting e-bay for a space-saver yet but it's on my to-do list when I get the time.
Fully agree re the XK being less loud than the XK-R and yes, that also influenced my buying choice. Discreet progress is what I want to make; I do not want a "shouty, look-at-me" sort of car. Classic, elegant looks and quick, inconspicuous progress is the goal.
Re the current Bentley Continental model, well, yes, I too had them pegged as "footballer's car" but I'm hoping that time, and the eventual workings of depreciation (which is of course the impecunious car enthusiasts' friend) will bring about a re-assessment of their image. I can readily agree that they are presently a bit too flash, safe in the knowledge that I can't afford one (yet) anyway. But, they are surprisingly compact and in V8 guise, quite wieldy..
I should close by adding that JLR are not the only guilty manufacturer when it comes to quietly "decontenting" their standard car specifications. To my annoyance this time, having had an S203, S204 and now an S205 - generation C-Class estate over the years, I find that Mercedes has decontented the standard-specification seat adjustment on the latest generation car and you can no longer alter the angle of the seat squab. Seat height and rake? Yes, but squab? No.
Full, three-axis adjustment was standard on their earlier cars, but no longer. To get it back you now have to pay for an £1,800 "Comfort Option". For which sum you get another set of buttons, now located in the door card & not on the seat itself. I have a rather more anglo-saxon name for it than "Comfort Option"..
Fortunately, the squab setting is one that I can live with but I was very unamused to find the usual/traditional seat squab adjuster is now missing. It used to be that all this stuff was standard but you paid more for a stereo system and air-con. Now the fancy stuff is in the spec and the essentials for the real motorists are the extras. I must be showing my age...
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