That Was Great Fun!!

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W8PMC
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That Was Great Fun!!

Post by W8PMC » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:25 am

Was invited to attend a Market Research event at Millbrook Proving Ground yesterday & got to play out with the following cars.

Bentley Continental Flying Spur
Maserati Quattroporte
Mercedes S63 AMG

Got to take all 3 cars on the 1 mile straight to test 0-100, 100-30 & 30-100, then the Bowl at speeds between 130MPH & 150MPH & finally the Hill section which as you've seen from the TV, has undulating & off camber corners & a variety of twists & turns.

Overall the day was great fun & Millbrook is a great venue.

My Summary is as follows:

The Merc was by far the quickest car & it's performance is mind blowing for it's size, as are the number of toys in this car. It also performed very well on the twisties for its size & i managed to hang it's ar$e out safely in a number of places. Overall i put this as the best of the 3 cars.

In second place was the Flying Spur, which was the biggest shocker as its gargantuan size is just not becoming with the way it performed. Marginally slower in a straight line that the S63, but the added traction from it's 4 wheel drive was obvious on the twisties & you'd really never imagine it's so fecking big & weighs 2 1/2 tons.

The biggest dissapointment was the Maserati, which just sucked & was a huge let down. By far the slowest car (stats proved this), steering was numb, brakes were shocking & generally by far the worst car. It's only possitive was it being by far the prettiest of the 3 cars. The derivative was Sporti GT (had never heard of this) & although i'd have to say it was the most sports car like of the 3 cars, overall it was also the worst performing on all the 3 tests by a big margin.

That's about it really, great fun & got paid £200 for my efforts (would have done it for free). The Sponsor was Jaguar, as they wanted opinions on the potential XJ replacement & from the pictures they showed, it looks like a serious contender in this space if launched. The Sports variant, which would no doubt be the R derivative looks interesting, with syling cues from the Maser, Merc & Lexus. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for it 8)
Paul
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kies4
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RE: That Was Great Fun!!

Post by kies4 » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:37 am

it's a hard life :)
S4 Crazy Horse. Ringsticker & MRC black magic.

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derdle
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RE: That Was Great Fun!!

Post by derdle » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:21 pm

Millbrook is a fantastic venue for car testing, been there a couple of times myself....but nothing as exotic as those cars!

You lucky g*t.

Paul
RS4 in the only colour to have - Misano Red | MRC Remap | RS6+ brakes | H&R and Custom Performance Parts suspension |
Huge Grin :biggrin3: If you dont "do it now" you never will.

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