Porsche Carrera GT: The Carrera GT comes with quite an intimidating reputation for being a fiendishly difficult car to drive in the real world. You may have read or heard much about the clutch made from er, Silicon Carbide and the 612 bhp, 5.7 liter V10 monstrosity originally developed for Le Mans racing and the world’s first all-carbon fiber chassis. While this uncompromising combination maybe the perfect recipe for a take-no-prisoners hypercar, it also means it can bite seriously hard as Top Gear’s superhuman test driver “The Stig” found out. For instance, it is said that for all practical purposes, there is no flywheel in the Carrera GT’s engine which means the revs climb and fall with ridiculous ease which in turn means just getting this car rolling from a standstill is a challenge. If you apply too little throttle, you’ll stall the car which will be embarrassing and if you apply too much, you’ll find yourself in orbit around a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, which will be rather more inconvenient. And this car comes only with a manual gearbox and few bells and whistles which is good because it scares away rich snobs who neither have taste nor the balls to drive a frantically, frighteningly fast car like this one. They’d be better off with an SLR McLaren. Ok, back to the game now…
Power Lap [+1 min 46 sec]: Well, I told you this car is quick - quicker than any other car in the game in fact. Anyway, you need to floor the throttle at the last possible moment to get a Perfect Launch and when you do, there’s literally an explosion of revs, noise and power that’ll make you whimper pitifully and hang on for dear life as the Carrera GT goes into Warp Drive [Oh look, Microsoft Word thinks “Warp Drive” could be part of an address! Cho cute…]. As you move along and overtake USS Enterprise, you can almost feel the downforce pressing the car into the tarmac and marvel at the excellent aerodynamic properties of the car’s seemingly no-frills exterior. Expectedly, mid-engine layout means the car feels alive in your hands, responding instantaneously to even the tiniest of inputs giving you incredibly responsive and razor-sharp handling. Since the car weighs so little, all that power from the insane V10 just eats up straight sections with indecent gusto and catapults you out of corners with alarming acceleration. Speaking of the V10, the noise it makes just can't be described. All I can think of now is "Oh-My-God". The awesome howl will not only give you goosebumps but also tons of feedback and help you use the gearbox quite effectively for engine braking.
But that said, getting used to the savage power and violent acceleration of this Cruise Missile is not easy for beginners because you need lightning-quick reflexes to avoid getting in trouble and greeting the walls. Even for seasoned drivers, it takes phenomenal amounts of concentration to drive this car flat out without losing control and unlike the BMW M3 GTR, you will be asked to display considerable skill if you want quick laps. The incredibly free-revving V10 will not stay in any gear for more than a few seconds while you’re accelerating and unless you’re on a particularly long straight section of track, you will find yourself relentlessly shifting up or down as you just obliterate one corner after another. When you’re at the helm of this car, there will not be a single dull moment till you finally finish the race or just die of sheer terror and mental exhaustion.
And that’s what makes this car so addictively mind-blowing. After driving the Carrera GT at full tilt nudging 230+ mph and listening to the engine which sounds like Amy Lee having an orgasm, you will be left gasping for breath and perilously light-headed from all the white-knuckle fast dashes down the freeway and frantic sprints through the city dodging muggle cars all along. And you’ll want to do it again. And again. And again...
But why isn’t it #1? The only flaw with this car I can think of is the fact that you are not allowed to buy it until you’ve almost completed your career. When you finally get to buy it, you will be asked to shell out freaking 280,000 for the car alone and then half a million more on ultimate upgrades. But if you think about it, you don’t really need to spend so much on a seriously fast car like the Carrera GT coz you’ll be skilled enough to manage with slower cars that you already own. It’s really hard for me to say this but to be brutally honest, it feels a little pointless to buy the Carrera GT at the fag end of the game where it won’t play a significant role in your career. How I wish I was allowed to buy this car sooner… How I wish it was not a Forbidden Fruit…
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