Pitting an Audi A1 city car against the almighty Nissan GT-R sounds silly, even if said A1 is the limited run Quattro model with a 253HP engine, a 0-62 mph (0-100 km/h) time of 5.7 seconds and all-wheel drive, and the venue is a twisty and wet track.
The GT-R is much more expensive and has double the power, probably double the electronics, too, and is the car to have under those exact circumstances. Put simply, it’s probably the fastest production car bar none in such a scenario.
British publication Autocar and Editor Steve Sutcliffe beg to differ. Sutcliffe pitted those two cars against each other in a section of the MIRA test track that’s located in the former RAF Lindley airfield.
His verdict was that the Nissan GT-R Track Pack, fine supercar that it is, was all over the place as it was too heavy and couldn’t put its excessive power down on the road. The A1 Quattro, on the other hand, was much more composed and it could run rings (pun intended) around the Nissan.
To prove his point, he even did timed laps in both cars. You may want to sit down, because the A1 was way faster than the GT-R (no spoilers; you’ll have to watch the video to find out by how much).
Don’t check your calendar because it’s not April Fools’ Day. If you live in the West Midlands in England, though, you might want to check the sky for flying animals that go “oink, oink”…
Though in no way do we mean to be disrespectful to Mr. Sutcliffe and Autocar, but the verdict seems a bit weird, to say the least. Perhaps some more information, e.g. about the GT-R’s tires and whether both stability control systems were fully deactivated, would help clear things up a bit.
You can draw your own conclusions after watching the video that follows the break.
By Andrew Tsaousis
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