Let's get one thing out of the way: We wanted the C7 Corvette Stingray to be here. We begged Chevrolet, but a last-minute delay in the start of production meant there was no car available in time for our test, and rescheduling 11 other cars and one of the world's most famous racetracks just wasn't possible. The Corvette will be invited again next year.

Right, then. Let's get down to business. After years of trying, we've finally fulfilled editor-at-large Angus MacKenzie's dream of getting 12 of the best-driving cars on sale in the U.S. together in one test. They come from all backgrounds, from the affordable Ford Focus ST to the stately Bentley Continental GT Speed to the absolutely wild SRT Viper. But how do we compare such diverse competitors?

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I often tell anyone who'll listen that there are two kinds of car people: numbers people and experience people. For numbers people, data is everything, and a car that produces the highest or lowest numbers in the greatest number of categories is therefore the best. For experience people, it's all about how the car drives and how good it makes you feel behind the wheel. As they say, lap times only truly matter if they're putting food on your table.

Best Driver's Car is a bridge between these two factions. We subject every competitor to our regular battery of instrumented tests and an all-out hot lap at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca at the hands of one of the winningest drivers in America, Randy Pobst. We collect more data about how the cars behave than we do in any other comparison test, but the numbers inform our decision rather than dictate it. As MacKenzie is fond of saying, if numbers were all that mattered, we'd test an F1 car and be done with it.

Best Driver's Car is also about the experience. A truly great-driving car, we believe, must make its drivers feel confident in pushing their own and the car's limits. It must communicate with its drivers, clearly informing them about what the tires are doing, what the suspension is doing, what the brakes are doing, and how to respond to those inputs to get maximum performance in each and every corner. A great driver's car should make any driver, from the novice to the F1 pilot, better. To gauge this, we asked the California Highway Patrol to close a twisty section of rural highway to create a 4.3-mile hill climb and descent on which each judge drove every car. And, of course, we also lapped them at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to see how differently they perform in an ideal environment.

Finally, a Best Driver's Car contender must be all-new or significantly updated, and it must be on sale now in the U.S. or arriving soon. Naturally, last year's winner

was invited back to defend its crown.

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12th Place: SRT Viper

Heavy Lies the Crown

You have two questions: Why didn't we test the Viper T/A, and why is the Laguna Seca lap record-holder in last place?

The first is easy to answer. We asked SRT for the Viper T/A, and the guys decided to send us the base SRT Viper with the Track Package instead. Why? We haven't gotten a straight answer from the SRT people, so we can't say.

The second question can be answered mostly with one word: quality. This Viper had a number of mechanical issues that sank it in voting. Key among these was a serious brake problem. During figure-eight testing, one of the motors that moves the adjustable pedals broke off under braking and jammed the brake pedal to the floor. Thankfully, the figure-eight course is a controlled environment, but had this happened during road testing or lapping at Laguna Seca, the results could've been bad. Couple that with the fact that two of the four bolts holding the driver's seat to the car were not even finger-tight, and we had a serious safety issue.

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The Viper is like a supercar off its meds. -- Scott Burgess

There were other problems, too. One of the hood vents flew off on the freeway and caromed off the windshield. There was a persistent rattle in the right side of the cabin that was never identified. The Performance Apps froze the infotainment system. The paint on the edges of the rocker panels was being burned by the exhaust. Finally, the Viper arrived mounted with standard Pirelli P Zeros on the front and P Zero Corsas on the rear.

Set aside these issues, and the story is marginally better: Judges had originally placed the Viper in eighth. Many complained about an uncomfortable driving position and narrow footwell with closely spaced pedals that were easy to misapply. The shifter drew ire for needing a very strong shove to get into the next ratio, and the word "earplugs" appeared in many judges' notes.

Far and away the Viper's biggest fault, though, was how it communicated with the driver. While the nose was always stapled to the pavement, the rear end liked to do all sorts of funny dances when you lifted off the throttle and went to the brakes. That's disconcerting in a 640-horsepower car, to say the least, but what makes it truly frustrating is the car is lying to you. The back end isn't going anywhere. It's glued down nearly as well as the nose is, but the car is telling you it's about to come loose and fling you off the road. You have to constantly remind yourself the car will stick, and ignore what every sense is telling you.

"That Viper generates a lot of g's," says Randy Pobst. "In every direction. It accelerates hard. It stops hard. It corners hard. And most of the things it does are quite sudden, and it is a full-attention car to drive. You have to be on the ball, on top of that car all the time."

At 1:36.43, this Viper was the slowest we've ever tested at Laguna Seca, partly because SRT sent a worn-out set of P Zero Corsas for lapping and partly because it rattled Randy by getting loose at the crest of Turn 1 at nearly 140 mph. "I broke a sweat driving fast in the car today," he said. Some people think it's manly to wrestle a car around a corner, but to quote editor-at-large Angus MacKenzie, "I've never met a race car driver who wanted to fight a car around the track."

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11th Place: Ford Focus ST

Don't Stop Me Now

After reading about the Viper, this might feel like déjà vu. The other American car, the only other manual transmission, and a car on which Motor Trend has heaped praise in the past is sitting at the back of the pack. Again, it's a braking problem.

More specifically, a lack of braking. While the Focus ST performed fine in road driving, it was done in by the incredibly demanding nature of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. The track demands big power and bigger brakes, and it's claimed more than a few brakes since we began doing this. Randy reported that the brakes were going out after a lap and a half, and by the time he parked the Focus after three laps, the brakes were completely gone. Not just boiled, but ruined. We wonder if Ford's brake-based torque-vectoring was the culprit. The ST returned to Los Angeles on a trailer and had to have its rotors, pads, and fluid replaced. We've cooked the brakes on everything from an Aventador to a 1M and a BRZ at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and all were able to be driven back to MT HQ. Thus, the Focus' standing dropped from ninth to eleventh. What good is a driver's car if it can't finish a track day?

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It's up there with the Jag and GT-R for precision. -- Ron Kiino

Actually, when you don't use the brakes, it's very good. The road test portion made use of a closed section of public highway, creating a 4.2-mile hill climb and descent on which the light, nimble, and comparatively slow ST needed little braking. Here, you could keep the throttle nailed in third or fourth gear for most of the run, up or down, and let engine braking do a fair amount of work when needed. Still, disparaging comments were lodged against the brakes, even on the street.

What wasn't disparaged was the handling. "There's an immediacy to every input and reaction," wrote Lago. "Never turns the fun dial down." Kong was more emphatic: "What the Focus ST does is recalibrate how we think about front-wheel-drive performance cars." Judges loved the way you could throw it into a corner and use the throttle to steer it, behavior generally the domain of rear-drive cars. When you turn in, the rear end lifts and rotates a few degrees, especially if you trail-brake it. The first time it happens, you wonder if it's going to come around on you, but it never does. Once you realize it isn't going anywhere, you want to do it in every single corner.

Good steering and compliant damping are dependable partners to the lively chassis. The former was quick and precise, reacting immediately to inputs. The latter allowed the ST to soak up big bumps and bad roads without upsetting the grip or handling. Not even a notoriously big, mid-corner bump on the hill descent could shake it. "The most benign handling of the bunch," said Loh. "You can drive it like a rally car, sawing the wheel back and forth in a corner to adjust your line."

At the track, though, some assets became liabilities. Randy thought the soft damping made the car imprecise, and he didn't care for the brakes from the start. It only got worse from there. "It was enjoyable while it was drifting, but once something changed when everything got good and heated up, it became just an understeerer and it lost that terrific entry rotation that it had originally," he said.

In price-competitive company, the ST is a great driver's car. In this company, though, it's not the best.

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10th Place: BMW M6

Bigger Than Better

Unfortunately for the M6, there's no mechanical issue to blame for its standing. Save some significant brake fade on the track, the M6 functioned exactly as it was designed. Assuming, of course, that BMW intended to design a car that is too heavy, too complicated, and unable to put the power down.

Before we go any further, it must be said that the M6 has some very redeeming qualities. Every judge remarked about how much he enjoyed the big, broad powerband and raucous noise from the (officially, but likely underrated) 560-horsepower engine. Praise was likewise heaped on the transmission. "The dual-clutch is the best part of this car," Lago wrote. Shifts were imperceptibly quick and smooth with no interruption of power. "I really enjoyed the drivetrain," Randy said. "The transmission is fantastic."

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It's not the most powerful engine here, but it feels like it. -- Benson Kong

Like the rest of us, though, Randy had trouble finding other nice things to say about how the M6 drove. "Driving the car fast ends up being a lot of work," he reported. "It's kind of like a feeling of wrestling, and it's not a finely balanced car through the corners. You're using both hands and working it, and it's just not on the level of M cars that I'm used to seeing in terms of handling."

It was the same report from the road. Judges dinged the M6 for being too heavy and unsettled in corners. Moreover, the car felt numb and isolating, like there was always a barrier between you and the road. Loh described it thus: "The M6 tunes out nearly every chassis response, and then tries to dial it back in to your liking."

Ah, but there's a button for that, isn't there? Actually, there are about a hundred of them. The M6 offers a wide range of options for fine-tuning the car's various computers to dial in performance for any given situation. On its face, this seems like a good thing. In practice, you end up fiddling with settings forever. We calculated 125 possible combinations of throttle, suspension, transmission, and other settings. Somewhere around combination 26, you realize that none of them is really making the car much of a better driver's car, and you're just wasting time.

As an example, take Randy's experience on track. "I tried the car in Sport Mode once to see if it affected the handling, because it had so much oversteer on exit, but it also had a tendency to understeer a lot. Only tried a couple of corners in Sport because it understeered heavily. I put it back in Sport Plus, and all of a sudden it was oversteering." In the end, the M6 was slower around the track than the much less powerful 911.

An inability to use its massive power reserve would plague the M6 everywhere it went. It struggled in instrumented testing, especially on the figure eight. If you can get its nine-step launch control to work, at 4 seconds flat to 60 mph it's nearly as quick as a Corvette in a straight line. Anywhere else, though, the M6 is constantly spinning its tires in frustration. Several editors complained that the stability-control light was flashing constantly during road driving, fighting every single bump. "If you can't go WOT into fourth gear without ESC intervention, you either have too much power or your rear axle isn't setup properly," said Lago.

BMW's illustrious M division built its name on cars that were light, nimble, communicative, and begging to be driven as hard as possible. The M6 is the antithesis of that ethos.

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9th: Bentley Continental GT Speed Le Mans Edition

Decadent Dance

Yes, that's right. We've put the Bentley ahead of the BMW in a driver's car contest. Despite all the comments about the BMW's weight, and the fact the Bentley weighs just shy of 1000 pounds more, the big Bentley was simply more engaging.

"The Bentley is bizarre, because it sort of works," wrote Lago. "Feels like I'm going 20-30 mph faster than I have any right to through corners. Strangely easy to point around and guide up the hill at terrific speed." This was a common refrain. Said Loh: "The W-12 means muscle in abundance, but it's also surprisingly surefooted, even graceful, with a lot of character -- like Emmitt Smith on 'Dancing with the Stars. '"

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It's like speed skating in a Michelin Man suit. -- Ron Kiino

The Bentley charmed us in no small part by performing far better than anyone expected. Pushed through a corner, it wasn't the sloppy mess we thought it would be. It rolls a lot and the tires can only do so much to change the direction of that much mass, but body movement was well-controlled and bumps were handled with the distinct lack of drama you'd expect from a car with this much leather. The Bentley made everyone smile just for being so willing to play rough. As Lago put it, "I like this more than I should. There's something about giving a Bentley a good slap, and it saying, "Harder."

That's not to say it was without flaws, though. The behavior that garnered far and away the most ire from our judges was the throttle hang. Where you might expect a car to begin engine braking when you lift off the throttle, the Bentley doesn't. Rather, it stays at the last rpm for 1 to 2 seconds before beginning to decelerate, and even then without much engine braking. The judges found this extremely disconcerting, as it would cause us to be traveling faster than we'd anticipated entering the braking zone. Couple that with brakes that didn't engage in earnest until well into the pedal travel, and the 616-horsepower Bentley consistently felt as if it had no intention of stopping for anything short of Judgment Day.

Randy's take from the racetrack was equally mixed. "I think what we have here is a splendid road car that does not belong on a racetrack," he said. "On the racetrack, in the corners, the weight is very obvious. And there's a lot of body roll, even in the stiffest setting on the shocks. It's very much a comfort-oriented car with a tremendous amount of power and a tremendous amount of acceleration traction. The all-wheel drive works really well. I think the gearbox shifts very well for a regular-style automatic. The brakes are really quite powerful. The tires are not. There's not a lot of tire grip. There's a lot of roll, and it's just not a quick-responding car at all."

Despite a poor showing at the racetrack (only the 250-horsepower, FWD Focus was slower), the Bentley won us over with its incredible everyday performance. It seemed to shrink (slightly) when driven hard, provoking several editors to opine that it was more controlled and maneuverable than the BMW.

Randy summed up what we were all feeling succinctly: "I feel guilty. I think I'm going to burn in Bentley hell for driving the car the way I just did." Put in perspective, Lieberman wrote, "I noticed Randy had the biggest smile on his face after he climbed out of the Bentley." We all did.

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8th Place: Aston Martin Vanquish

Resting on its Laurels

If the Bentley was best characterized by exceeding expectations, the Vanquish was the opposite. Put simply, the beautiful body and intoxicating engine note write checks the rest of the car can't cash.

To be fair to the Vanquish, though, it was one of the most-debated cars in this competition. Some judges, the author included, found the steering numb and artificially heavy. Others found it direct and responsive. Some said the ride was too stiff and jittery, while others called it composed and well-damped. Ranking it ahead of the Bentley involved quite a bit of disagreement.

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My favorite of the big GTs, which is a surprise because I've been generally immune to the charms of the larger Astons. -- Ed Loh

There were things we absolutely agreed on, though. For one, the transmission is well behind the times. The six-speed automatic is slow to shift and even slower to respond to inputs when left to its own devices. Using the paddle shifters solves the latter problem, though they're hindered by a lack of an indicated redline on the tachometer. The gear position indicator in the gauge cluster turns red when you're getting close, but by the time you see it, you're in the limiter.

Another point of harmonized ire was the brakes. The pedal travel is long and the feel uncertain. You're never sure if it's fading or if you just haven't gotten to the real engagement point yet. You must retrain yourself to go much harder on the brake pedal than you think to get the stopping power you expect. It was Randy's biggest complaint on the track. "Not only is it inaccurate when the braking actually starts and gets strong -- it's pretty good once it finally starts to get with the program -- but you can't tell when it's going to release either," he said.

There were other issues, too. Beautiful exhaust howl notwithstanding, the Vanquish simply didn't feel 565-horsepower-fast on the road or the track, where at 1:40.71 it was only a 0.1 second quicker than the Jaguar despite having a significantly better-rated weight-to-power ratio. On the road, it struggled for grip on rough pavement, inducing constant stability control warnings. It was better on the track, but there it liked to hang the tail out in second gear, which, while cool, isn't fast. When it wasn't sideways, the Vanquish was actually much more rewarding to drive on the smooth track with no bumps to upset it.

For Randy, though, it just wasn't up to snuff. "It was not a heavy-feeling car, even though I say it seems at times a little ponderous. That was more a steering response/brake response issue. It's very stable on the way in. Quite a bit of understeer through the middle, combined with some noticeable roll. It's a carving knife, not a scalpel. The car's behavior is reasonably good, but not the best."

Lieberman agreed. "The Vanquish is a great car. A GT for certain, and not a sports car, but a great Grand Tourer." Lago was less charitable. "This is a car I really want to like and one I find myself making a lot of excuses for, if only for how it looks and sounds. Both of those traits are great. But driving the Vanquish hard isn't. It's an OK GT car, but even then, there are better ones out there."

Add up the underwhelming performance and a rash of small mechanical issues, including a stereo that worked intermittently and a passenger window that refused to roll up for a few days, and all the good looks and glorious noises couldn't help the Vanquish climb any higher in the standings.

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7th Place: Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG S Model

Best Driver's Wagon

As you know, we're big fans of wagons here at Motor Trend. Not only can modern wagons perform just as well as their sedan counterparts, but they can do it while hauling as much as or more than many SUVs. You think that extra roof on the back of this E63 was a handicap? Check the stats: This 577-horsepower E63 Wagon is quicker to 60 mph and through the quarter mile than a C6 Corvette Z06, doing the former in just 3.4 seconds and finishing the later in 11.7 seconds. It mopped the floor with our old favorite, the CTS-V Wagon, in every category but braking, and did it while weighing 4700 pounds. Handicapable is more like it.

"This is probably the best station wagon ever made," said Jurnecka. "I like it even more than the CTS-V." Burgess agreed: "It may be the best-driving wagon ever to come to America."

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It doesn't ride like a hard sports car, and then you get into the turns. For its size, it breezes through them with alarming ease. -- Benson Kong

The E63's trick was driving much lighter than its curb weight implies. It's stupendously quick in a straight line and buttery smooth in corners. The weight, when you notice it, comes across more as solidity and a planted feeling than being bloated and heavy. Not many cars with this kind of power can make a driver absolutely confident in keeping his foot flat on the floor while cresting the Turn 1 hill at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, but I did it with a smile in this wagon. Then I gave it a flick exiting Turn 2 and hung the tail out. "Extra points for the crew that did the 4Matic integration, because you can get a good amount of rotation on power," said Kong. "On an AWD station wagon!"

Where the E63 faltered was at the edge. Driven all the way to the limit, it begins to fall down. "Steering is best with slow inputs," said Lago. "Quick transitions feel weird, vague." Martinez was more critical: "Not the Best Driver's Car due to its numb steering, heavy build, and understeer." Loh summed it up best, noting it was "an absolute riot in a straight line, but corners, especially ones that stack up, are another story. Understeer is nicely masked in some early corners, but going AWD means you lose a lot of the on-demand rotation the RWD E63 had. In its place, well, it's not quite as fast cornering, but not all understeer either -- it's a computer-governed, torque vector-like netherworld that purists will find unpalatable."

Randy's on-track assessment mirrored Loh's insights. "Best wagon ever. Love it. Really powerful. Handles well. But honestly, it understeers too much. It's just when the fun starts to happen, which makes me suspect maybe the stability control nannies are not completely off. Because it understeers a lot if I push it. You know, it needs to be driven with a light hand, and it gets this beautiful rotation and if I try for anything more, powerful understeer."

That's not to say he didn't have any fun. "It needs to be driven like a rally car. What I like best about the car was tossing it in and getting the tail coming out, and then going to the power, and just smoothly drive off the corner, putting all that torque down. It's not obviously an all-wheel-drive car. I did not notice the AWD."

Too much understeer and a slow, pokey transmission were all it took to keep the superwagon from climbing any higher. It can take solace in knowing that the cars that placed ahead of it are truly world-class sports cars.

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6th Place: Nissan GT-R Track Edition

Too Fast for Its Own Good

How the mighty have fallen. The GT-R has been a serious Best Driver's Car contender for years and nearly walked away with the title more than once. Not this time around. This time, it failed to live up to expectations in a big way.

Just take a look at the lap time. This, the Track Edition, was at 1:36.63 the second-slowest GT-R around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca of the four we've tested here. Both last year's Black Edition and the prior year's standard GT-R were quicker.

Next, listen to what Randy had to say about it: "I was surprised at the amount of understeer. This car is understeering a lot here at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, for whatever reason, and that actually slowed the car down -- middle of the corner, and not on power. It's actually a little better when you're on the power. It was late in the entry phase. You got out of the corner before releasing the brake, it starts to understeer and you're looking for the apex, and it just won't come to it. The front just wasn't responding. Never any power rotation and just a surprising amount of mid-corner understeer.

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It's not the most refined, well-appointed, stylish, or comfortable, but it's just so fun and fast. I need more GT-R in my life. -- Nate Martinez

There was another problem, too. Once the engine got hot, the computer started pulling boost. All the dozens of customizable gauges would read normal (temperature included), except the boost gauge. Suddenly, it would be peaking at 10 psi rather than 15, and it would peak as low as 7 psi as it got hotter. Let it cool down, and everything would be fine again. Nissan says the car will pull boost if you put low-octane fuel in it, but after it happened to us several times on several successive tanks of premium, we started to wonder. The GT-R's power has increased every year without any major mechanical change, and we can't help but wonder if Nissan has tuned it to the ragged edge, to the point where any inconsistency in our California-grade 91 Octane is enough to trip the computer's engine preservation triggers.

Losing boost might as well be like taking away the tires. It completely changes the GT-R's capability. That stunning surge of power that rockets you out of a corner is a big part of what makes the GT-R so special. Without it, it just feels like a fast car.

The only other consistent criticism from our judges was over the ride. Many remarked that the GT-R was jittery and bouncy on the public road, eroding confidence. Like the Viper, it would grip despite the jostling, but you had to grit your teeth and push through it to get real speed.

And speed it had. "The GT-R always has more," waxed Burgess. "It never mattered what you were asking from it, the GT-R just had more. Its engine could always go faster, just push that fantastic, linear accelerator, and it would give you more. The extremely stiff suspension can always handle more. The steering is taut and returns nicely to center, but it will do more."

"Absolutely no drama, just pure confidence," wrote Loh. "You are 100 percent stuck to the road from corner to corner, entry to exit."

Lago took it home. "Getting into the torque and surging through a corner is like few (if any other) driving experiences I've known. I wish there were more finesse though, more sense of balance and precision. As is, the GT-R was always in "it's clobberin' time!" mode, and while that can be fun, it's more of a flash in the pan than something for the long term."

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5th Place: Porsche Cayman S

The Conundrum

It's a well-worn gripe in automotive circles: The Cayman needs more power. It's a fine day when you can say "only" 325 horsepower isn't enough, but that's where the world has taken us. Being the second-least powerful car here isn't what really sank this former Best Driver's Car champ, though it did come up. What really did the Cayman in was, as the Germans would put it, a lack of emotionalism.

In updating the Cayman for 2014, Porsche seems to have lost a bit of its personality. Said Lieberman: "Needs a bit more character. There's almost something clinical, perhaps sterile, in the way it drives. It's not engaging enough; it's not flawed enough. It's too well-thought-out. I'd like a sharper edge."

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No fear. No lift. No hesitation. Just enjoyment. Everything about this car is balanced perfectly. -- Carlos Lago

Jurnecka agreed. "I can't help but feel let down by the Cayman. I was expecting greatness, but I came away feeling flat. It's a tremendously capable car, perfect in so many ways, but it just doesn't grab me the way the old one did."

Then again, those same editors also had glowing praise for the Cayman. Lieberman: "Great handler. Excellent brakes. Very well behaved. Good damping. Doesn't squirm around. Allows mortals to go flat every once in a while." Said Jurnecka, "If I had to choose a car to run an unfamiliar road with at speed, it would be the Cayman S. I'd also pick it for a 24-hour endurance race just because it's so easy to drive quickly."

Randy, for his part, was far less conflicted. "You know, this version of the Cayman is a little looser on entry than the last version, and I actually like it. It is a rotator. You get into the corner with the Porsche, ease off the brake, and the tail moves out just a little bit, rotating the car and pointing the nose at the apex. Extremely enjoyable experience driving the Cayman S. That car might be the definition of good handling. I feel like I can do almost exactly what I want. The Cayman is an excellent car at the limit. It can be driven there and live there happily." Happily enough to post a 0.4-second-quicker lap time, at 1:41.26, than the last-gen's hardcore Cayman R.

He did have one complaint, though. "The Cayman is sensitive to being on-power causing some understeer. You can't go to too much power too soon. Under power, the front gets a little light, but I think it's a little more than I remember in the last generation. With a lot of power in the right corner, you can actually free the car up and get less understeer because of slight wheelspin or wheel slide and a bit of rotation."

Such was the conundrum of the Cayman. It was nearly perfect and seemed to do everything right, but still fell just short. It wasn't for lack of trying. Most of what the Cayman did thrilled us, but we couldn't help wanting for just a little more. Not because we were feeling greedy, but because the car was so good, it could handle more. It's like that star player who has the talent to embarrass everyone else on the field, but always seems to be stuck in a rut where he's trying hard and performing well, but the trophy-winning moves just aren't coming out. You know the Cayman can do just a little better and be truly brilliant, but for some reason, it's just not quite there.

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4th Place: Jaguar F-Type V-8 S

The Spoiler

As it was with the Vanquish and GT Speed, we saw the F-Type exceed expectations where the Cayman failed to meet them. This time, though, the overachiever was also the spoiler, and the judges' reactions couldn't be more different.

Burgess: "It performed beyond all my expectations. Jaguars are usually straight-line fast but too heavy in the corners. But this Jag is different. It buckles down in the corners, and that engine can push it out of anything." Lago: "The words 'capable, solid, and tight' come to mind. It's kind of like a powerlifting Miata, with way more muscle than the Cayman/Boxster." Jurnecka: "What a fun little car! It's not as serious as a Boxster/Cayman S, and I like that." Kong: "The pleasant surprise of the group. The F-Type is a lively plaything that plays a little fast and loose." Lieberman: "F-Yeah!"

Where the Cayman simply got down to business and went around the corners, the Jag made it an occasion. It was sharp and nimble, quick to turn in on the road. The suspension was compliant, dealing with the bumps without being harsh or jittery but still handling like a sports car. The two-ton curb weight be damned, this car drives much lighter than the numbers suggest. Jurnecka again: "I'm told this car weighs well over 3900 pounds, but it doesn't feel like it from behind the wheel. Light steering probably helps, but the car also has a nimble quality to it that really belies its true weight."

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The F-Type is exactly what I'm looking for in a sports car. Sure, it's not perfect, nor as precise as the Cayman. But I love its flaws. -- Jonny Lieberman

Randy's track take differed slightly, though was no less enthusiastic. "It's actually the most fun I've had in a loose car in a while. It's definitely a power-oversteer car, and it needs to be driven really smoothly with a gentle throttle foot. You don't want to muscle this car around. It doesn't respond well to that at all. You release the brake and just give it a little steering input, and then go to the throttle, and the throttle balances it. If you're not in the throttle yet, it can generate a pretty big push, and if you generate that big push and then to go to power, then it really wants to come around."

Randy's trick -- braking, turning in, then immediately going back to a little bit of power -- was the ticket to big thrills on both the track and the road. It takes very careful control of your right foot to keep from creating a big drift (which it will do all day long), but do it right and you can exit every single corner with just a little rotation, driving right on the edge of the rear tires and feeling like an absolute hero.

Then there's the noise it makes. Open up the pipes via the console button, and it unleashes an absolutely wicked howl. Lift, and you're treated to an ensemble of cracks, snaps, and snarls that Lago likened to small-arms fire. The icing on the cake was listening to that music while hitting 60 mph in just 3.9 seconds and running a 12.1-second quarter mile, all with just 488 horsepower.

Aside from the careful balance needed to corner on the limit, the Jag's only other serious flaw was an occasional refusal to upshift when commanded by the paddle, something we all found odd, as we're used to rejected downshifts.

In the end, we wondered if the less powerful, less oversteery F-Type V-6 S might've been the better choice for this competition, but then, would it have been enough better to eclipse any of the top three? Read on.

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3rd Place: Audi R8 V10+

The Car That Would Be King

As with the Cayman, we see here another former champion that couldn't quite recapture the throne. Where the Cayman in this year's competition has become cold and calculating, the R8 just went back to being awesome. In any other crowd, this car is a winner, but in this group, it has to settle for a podium finish.

Three issues dogged the R8 and held it down. The first, mirroring its mid-engine Porsche cousin, was a persistent plea for more torque. As much as judges loved running well into the R8's 8700-rpm redline, they longed for more than just 398 lb-ft on the hill climb. The complaint showed up in most judges' notes, often with the explanation that the chassis can clearly handle it. Case in point, Loh noted, "Chassis is so well-balanced I found myself wanting more torque on the uphill; it could definitely handle more."

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This car made me feel like my road loops were being timed. -- Rory Jurnecka

The second issue was the steering, which while incredibly quick was also rather numb. While it received grumbles from several judges, they were also willing to cut the R8 some slack because the near-perfect seating position, commanding view of the road, and instant steering response made it feel as though the car was pivoting around the driver's seat. The way the car changed direction was so near telepathic that many were having too much fun to fuss about the steering feel. Said Kiino, "Steering is a bit numb, but I certainly don't hate it. Doesn't impede your speed, let's just put it that way."

The R8's final issue showed itself at the track, where Randy was able to push it far harder than could any of us mere mortals. As was the case with the R8 GT a few years back, the new R8 requires oddly high tire pressures that seemed to lead to trouble with grip at the limit. Randy: "I was leaving skid marks, which is unusual for ABS, and so I had to get used to that immediately. The tires were sliding around so much. For some reason, the tire grip just was not there. It felt very squirmy, and I don't understand that, and what it meant was I had to brake less hard." But "what I did was start braking earlier, releasing the brake sooner, and the car did this marvelous rotation, just beautiful. It's very easy to get it to point down to the apex, and by the second lap, I was learning how to use this pointiness to get a nice drift on the way in until I get nice and aimed at the apex, and then I'd roll into the power." As such, its 1:38.7 lap time is just a few tenths quicker than the 911's.

Then there was the good stuff. Everyone raved about the new transmission, at least in Manual mode. "The transmission is the best here; I think the best I've ever driven," said Randy. "It shifts so quickly and so smoothly, manually, but the automatic mode is kind of dumb." Kiino concurred: "I'd grade it slightly above the 911's PDK." "It's the kind of gearbox that'll always make you want to shift even when it's uncalled for, just to feel the smoothness, hear the throttle blip, and get another dose of immediate shove," said Martinez. The suspension received nearly as much praise for being completely unfazed by bumps in the road.

"Control interaction, grip, and reaction, and acclimation to the car's behavior comes near-subconsciously," Kong summarized. Unfortunately for the R8, there were two cars here that were just a little better.

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2nd Place: Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series

The Comeback Kid

According to my notes on the SLS, at full tilt, it "sounds like the engine is trying to leap through the dash and strangle you." Lieberman said it sounded like "two chainsaws fighting each other." Jurnecka said it was "the best exhaust note this side of a DTM car." Randy simply said it "makes me want to drive the car harder and harder and harder." Any of those descriptions is also an acceptable analogy for the SLS.

In much the same way the F-Type edged out the Cayman, the SLS slipped ahead of the R8 by the slimmest of margins, and it likewise owes its success to its intensely visceral driving experience. Many likened its hard-charging, hair-on-fire performance to the Viper's (which was slower across the board), but with an exponentially greater level of control and refinement. As Lago put it, "It still has the crazy, but it's actually a decent car to drive." Simply put, it was a race car for the street in the best possible way. The steering was lightning quick, the grip was off the charts, the power was mind-blowing, and the brakes were strong enough to make even Randy take notice. Other callouts from the judges included a dual-clutch transmission nearly as good as the Audi's and Porsches', minimal body movements, well-tuned damping, and a general feeling of the massive car shrinking around you, becoming smaller and lighter the harder you drove it.

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The SLS Black Series should come with a reminder to breathe because it's so much fun. -- Scott Burgess

What was most shocking, though, was just how much better the SLS Black Series drives, relative to the standard SLS we had a few years ago that finished eighth. Said Loh: "Easily the most improved here. I went on the launch back in 2009 at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and found the SLS brutish to the point of undrivability. Some things, like the limited visibility were impossible to change, but managing the oversteer through torque reduction and massively improved tires has sent this driver's confidence through the roof. I now love this car. So much smoother, so much more refined, yet insanely fast and controllable. No fear charging up and down the hill. You can attack the corners so much confidence and control."

The transformation wasn't quite perfect, though, which is why it sits in second. Lago: "Still very much an SLS, and it still has the core attributes and faults of that car, only here they're happening at a much higher rate of speed. There's a slight nervousness to this tail. It's not snappy, but it can let go quickly." Randy got the same impression lapping the SLS. "This car is just set, but trying to go fast with it like that, it still has its movements. You know, you need to be really perfect with it. It doesn't do the driving for you. It hangs on real tight right to a certain edge and then poof! It lets go. Once in a while, not real often. It's not a predictable kind of slide. I think part of what we're dealing with here is we've got 622 horsepower on street tires that you can only be so predictable. I just don't think the grip is there to handle that kind of power under all loads."

The application of AMG's best tuning, aerodynamic aids, and tires that stick to the road better than gum to hair resulted in the best SLS ever, but they weren't quite enough to tame the car's inherent tendency to snap-oversteer at the limit, and that was just enough to keep it out of the winner's circle.

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1st Place: Porsche 911 Carrera 4S

The Once and Future King

It was inevitable. Sooner or later, there was going to be a repeat Best Driver's Car winner, and with three former champions all competing head to head, the odds were good this would be the year.

Of course, you shouldn't be surprised. Technically, the 911 was already a repeat winner, with the 911 GT3 having won our inaugural Best Handling Car competition, the precursor to Best Driver's Car. (This Carrera's 1:39.19 lap time was nearly half-a-second quicker around Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca than that 2007 GT3's.) Then there's the fact that the 911 Carrera S won unanimously last year. This year, the 911 Carrera 4S faced stiffer competition, and both the SLS and R8 stole a few first place votes, but not a single judge ranked the 911 lower than second. While the Star fought with the Rings, the Crest walked away with the girl.

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This may be the best sports car of our time. -- Carlos Lago

I'll let the judges explain it.

Kong: "The 911 urges you to beat on it. You feel the urge to push the accelerator and brake pedals hard, pull the paddle shifters hard, and bend into that corner a little faster than the previous run."

Lieberman: "It's just an incredible machine to drive. I kept thinking to myself, 'This is the big boy Porsche.' If you need proof at just how outstandingly good the 911 is, this year's Carrera 4S gains weight compared to last year's 2WD model, yet lapped Laguna faster (1:39.19 versus 1:39.30)."

Martinez: "The harmony between chassis, suspension, engine, and dual-clutch transmission is uncanny."

Kiino: "When I said the Cayman S left me wanting more, I guess I was talking about the 911."

Lago: "The difference between writing in cursive and printing. Feels repeatable; lap after lap, I can improve and be consistent. Feels like a car I could learn for a long time, like the start of a great, long relationship."

Loh: "The most unstoppable, confidence-inspiring vehicle I've driven yet."

Burgess: "A couple of times, the person behind me was catching up to me. At first, I took this as a condemnation of my driving, but then I realized that everyone catching me was driving the 911. After that, I never got in line with the 911 behind me, and no one caught up."

Jurnecka: "This car is unflappable at any half-sane speed. There's just too much here to exploit fully on the road."

Randy: "I hate to use the word 'driver's' car, but that's what comes to my mind after having just driven it. The 911 is just so much better on the race rack than anything else we have here."

As for me? I'd bet real money my cornering speeds were higher than in any other car. It just kept telling me I could go faster, push harder, and it would take it.

Was there a downside? Leave it to Randy to find one, because we were stumped. "If I were going to race that car, I'd take a little bit of the oversteer out of it. I think it's still a smidge too much. I think that it is sporty and it is fun, but I think it would be faster with a little less oversteer."

The 911 won by being supremely confident at all times. Even with all the nannies off, you could wait until beyond the last second to torpedo the brakes, ride the smooth oversteer at turn-in, keep the nose dead on the apex through the middle, and go to wide-open throttle on the way out. In every single corner, every single time. Hail to the King.