And yet, it feels somehow inevitable that the Nissan GTR Nismo, and Chevrolet Corvettte Z06 should meet, and do battle in the media. By being top-tier, uprated products, and flagships for their respective brands, they meet at a nexus of marketing philosophy, and corporate peacocking. They are the identity cars for the current incarnations of the marques from which they spring.
They are also both cars that I, as an unemployed car blogger, cannot hope to afford, and which I would be unlikely to purchase if I could. With the near $80K it would take to buy a new Z06, I would be looking everywhere for both a Matra Djet, and a Tornado Talisman. Had I the $150K necessary to secure a Nismo, I would drop nearly everything else in life, and go in search of a derelict De Tomaso Valellunga, the services of an old guard race engineer/fabricator, and a drivetrian composed of a Cosworth FVA, and a Hewland MKIX in a effort to produce my dream fast road/track day beast.
And yet, I find myself thinking about which car I'd want. Maybe it's because neither tick all the right boxes. Maybe it's because I like variety. Somehow, this completely irrelevant video caught my attention this morning, and kept it. These two are poles apart in the way they go about creating speed. They're also quite close in terms of overall performance. Neither is really my thing, both are quite neat, and for once the test doesn't succeed in making me want the loser more, except maybe when I listen to it. Both are quite expensive. Both are relatively cheap. And both are more than fast enough to render which is faster a moot point; which is fortunate, because as points go, it's far from clear.
Some days all it takes is a couple neat cars, a nice road, an open, fast track, and a racing driver who talks like your conspiracy theory spouting uncle...
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