Autocar magazine recently took three of the most popular and exciting entry-level supercars and pitted them against one another at the famed Castle Combe circuit in the UK. Steve Sutcliff took the Nissan GT-R, Audi R8 V10 5.2 FSI and the Porsche 911 Turbo around the track to see which of these dynamos could produce the best lap time.

The 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo packs 500 hp and 479 lb-ft of torque from its newly reworked 3.8-liter flat-six engine, tipping the scales at a svelte 3,495 pounds, the lightest of the bunch. The Nissan GT-R also uses a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6, with its engine good for 480 horsepower and 434 ft-lb of torque, but is much heftier at 3,814 pounds. The Audi R8 has the most power of the three with its 5.2-liter V10 good for 525 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque. It is also pretty light at only 3,571 lbs. The 911 Turbo has a base price of $132,800, fairly close to the $146,000 (manual) price of the R8 V10. However, the Nissan GT-R is almost a fraction of the cost of both cars with an MSRP of only $81,790.

When all was said and done, after each car had its time on the track, the results were all within 1 second of each other. Mitigating factors such as worn brakes and poor grip were cited as to why some vehicles performed better than others. And time in and out of the turns was a good indicator of overall quickness. But at the end of the day the results were not as surprising as you might think. That said, Sutcliff was Chatty Cathy around the Castle Combe track and we would have liked to have seen some helmeted and harnessed, balls to the wall driving. But Autocar produced an excellent high-def video and overall, we say bravo!

Source: Autocar Via YouTube