Porsche GT3 battles BMW M6
The Autocar Archivist
It’s Stuttgart brains versus Munich brawn in this German heavyweight title fight at the most gruelling and (in)famous test track in the world: the Nordschleife at the Nurburgring. Chris Harris refereed





Ah the joys of low frontal area and 415bhp. Heading north from Stuttgart on the A81 and the GT3 has been the splodge of tomato ketchup in a grey rabble of large German saloons for the past hour. The speed limit seems to alter every few kilometres: 100km/h, then a burst of 130km/h, then a sneaky fillip of 120 and a bank of cameras to catch those napping.[/intro]

Eventually the de-restricted sign appears and the Mercs, BMWs and Audis squabble and jockey for immediate superiority. It’s an entirely justifiable activity, because in these few crucial moments they justify the extra expenditure incurred going for a 535d over a 530d. If they don’t do it now, they’ll never find inner peace.

And so they swarm about, four of them. Lights ablaze in sparkling sunshine, jinking left then right, using every move from the Berndt Schneider school of irritating your quarry.

And the GT3? Well, like I said, that’s the beauty of knowing you have the key to a particular area of the toy cupboard that nothing in the immediate vicinity does. The 535d takes a few kilometres to subjugate its foes, by which time it is travelling at just under 150mph.

The driver calmly shims right into the middle lane, brings the diesel super-saloon up to a 155mph simmer. And we truck through at 180mph.



The GT3 is an extraordinary car from Porsche. I didn’t expect it to be like this. Conventional thinking was that the car would occupy the hardcore heartland between regular Carrera and Turbo.

I thought it would continue on the slightly irascible course taken by its predecessor – a car that always hinted at usability because of the practicalities it offered, but one that was too unyielding to use daily.



Autobahn ally
Okay, the 997 GT3’s ride isn’t about to gain itself a tog rating for softness, but I’ve been driving it for three hours now and I have no headache, no body ache and the radio is audible at 150mph. Three years ago I completed the same journey in another red GT3 – the second-generation 996 – and it was grating by comparison. Four years before that, with a Groundhog Day sense of repetition, I drove an early original GT3 back to the UK. Cruising in it on these same stretches of autobahn was torture compared to this car.

Version 997 is exceptional at high speed. As we watch the 535d wobble with submission in its wake, you notice how little steering correction is needed at these speeds. How the rear axle movement and front lift that have blighted fast Porsches for generations just don’t figure. Eventually it cruises up to 185mph, at which point the claimed 192mph maximum seems cautious.

There is a purpose to this journey. Another German manufacturer has
slightly different ideas on the matter of the performance coupé. The BMW M6 has almost identical straight-line performance, its mass-reducing measures hint at occasional circuit use and it costs the same money. By chance, Autocar has an M6 in the office, but where to meet? Well, halve the distance between Teddington and Zuffenhausen and, with the beautifully choreographed sense of inevitability that would suffix a Blue Peter presenter saying, ‘Here’s one I made earlier’, the pin drops on a place called the Nürburgring.



But not the circuit itself, although it would be unprofessional not to sample a few laps in each car. If there’s one thing people should know about this driving Mecca, it’s that the roads around here are some of the best in Europe. Perfect for powerful rear-drive coupés, but technically challenging enough to uncover underlying issues.

I drove the M6 at the launch in Spain a year ago, and although its sheer pace and thuggish presence were captivating, every move it made was undermined by the obligatory M5-is-£15,000-cheaper concern. Twelve months later, those misgivings have been confirmed: more people seem to be buying the saloon.

It takes three-and-a-half hours to arrive in the beautiful Eifel mountains, whose peaks provide the obstacles for the Nürburgring to weave around. Time being tight, I have to jump straight into the M6 and for a few minutes I wonder if during the morning session I’ve forgotten how to drive.

The BMW feels so inert after the GT3; every control surface seems muffled. This is partly because the M6 requires far less arm strength than the Porsche, but mainly because having pumped heavy clutch and brake pedals for hours, brushing the M6’s postage stamp foot brake and lightly pulling a lever behind the steering wheel is an anathema. I nearly ripped it off. Likewise the steering itself: so light at first you wonder if the arms haven’t detached themselves from the wheel hubs.



Light control weights are contrasted by heavyweight pace in the M6. Porsche is making some big claims for the GT3’s straight-line speed. We had a brief attempt ◊ ∆ at matching the 8.7sec 0-100mph time and scored a best of 9.4sec – some way off the factory time. I’ll concede that it might just nip under the 9sec mark under ideal conditions, but I just can’t see where those extra tenths will come from. What isn’t in any doubt is that on the road the M6 can slug with it all the way to 155mph. Whereupon its speed limiter calls time, leaving the GT3 with a further 37mph to play with, and on the autobahn that’s a facility you find yourself using regularly.

Both are normally aspirated high-output motors designed to work at crank speeds at odds with their cylinder capacity. And both are, in very different ways, quite stunning.



Porsche’s historical immunity to widgets is sadly on the wane and the GT3 now has a Sport button that alters the throttle mapping, adjusts the anti-lock and traction control parameters to allow more slip and releases an added 25lb ft of torque. Why this extra shove should require a button is anyone’s guess. But I protest loudly because there is nothing else to criticise in, on or around this engine. It pulls from 2500rpm, steams through 5000rpm (at which point, in Sport mode a butterfly valve opens in the induction system) and pulls with fevered energy all the way to 8200rpm.

The M6’s power delivery is quite similar. It, too, revs into the eights, pulls from low down and possesses that linearity of delivery we all crave. It makes significantly less noise, though, and its transmission just isn’t in the same league as the Porsche’s. This M6 was showing 6000 miles and in the faster shift modes each change resulted in a metallic clank from the rear axle that really made you feel for its health.

On the road, SMG is an easy system to use, but this car needed upchanges smoothed slightly by the driver’s right foot, and it rarely executed the perfect downshift. The Porsche’s manual ’box is superb, even if the brake/throttle spacing isn’t ideal for heel-and-toe shifts with the brakes at road temperatures. The short shift is a touch too difficult to engage, though.

Credit where it’s due: for something bearing in on two tonnes, the M6 is surprisingly agile. Through the sequences
of second- and third-gear turns that characterise these roads, it carves accurate, rewarding lines. It responds well to direction changes and carries impressive speed. There is a definite level of detachment in the M6, though; you operate it, but you rarely feel an intrinsic part of the action. And why, given that BMW has spent millions releasing the left foot from the burden of clutch duty, is the brake pedal canted so far to the right of the footwell?

Controlled aggression

Now acclimatised to the M6’s bluff responses, the GT3 seems to fidget and scuttle. But unlike its predecessors, the 911 is a superb road car in its own right. With the PASM set to soft (there are just two stages available: hard and soft) it is firmly damped but always completely controlled.



The 997 isn’t a small bodyshell, but the GT3 seems minuscule after the BMW. There isn’t another tin-top I’d rather drive on these roads: it fires out of turns, the optional ceramic brakes are epic and, unlike the M6, you feel intrinsic to the task at hand.

Tyres play a big part in this performance. Porsche has developed a completely new Michelin Pilot Sport Cup for the GT3. It has more grooves to move water, but in compound and construction it is pure track day tyre. Unsticking it requires abject brutality.

Now, BMW did the same thing for the M6 – with a Pirelli P Zero Corsa – but unfortunately this car runs a set of regular Continental Sport Contacts. This is the first time I’ve tried them on the car, and the truth is that the Pirelli adds a sizeable dimension to its overall handling abilities. The small amount of ride comfort they sacrifice is repaid with far superior grip.

Fast laps of the Nordschleife confirm as much. On Continentals, the M6 just doesn’t have the front end you need; it understeers heavily, doesn’t turn in well and can struggle for traction on the exit of tighter turns. Having 500bhp doesn’t help, either, because the M6 links the turns very swiftly indeed. And those brakes were finding the going very tough after two laps.

And the GT3? Predictably excellent. Far more forgiving than the previous car, especially in the way the rear axle behaves over bumps. The factory has been cautious with the amount of understeer built in to the chassis, but there’s a whole range of adjustment to sort that out should you want to.

I’d just leave it where it is, bar adding the optional carbon buckets, because the standard sports seats just aren’t up to track work. Even on a busy public day, punctuated by somersaulting bikers, shunted Alfas and some Armco repair works, it ran an 8min 27sec lap.

But the telling moments in the GT3 are on the road. We all know Porsche can make a fast, invigorating track car. But I just didn’t credit how amenable the GT3 could be as everyday transport.

And that alone is why it makes the £80k BMW charges for an M6 look even more questionable now than it did a year ago. Pare it back to £65k and the M6 would be an incredibly appealing, cost-effective super-coupé. But at GT3 money it is cruelly exposed, and ruthlessly dismissed.