On-track car shootouts are pretty commonplace in this industry and the formula is generally the same: get a bunch of journalists who think they’re hot shoes, throw them in cars, turn them loose on a track and time the ensuing chaos. While this U.S. version may seem a little tired by now, Japan has always done things differently and that’s why Best Motoring/Hot Version’s track tests never get old. These are some of our very favorites.
This race features a bevy of Japan’s finest homegrown performance cars from Mazda, Subaru, Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi. The best part is that many of these cars are reasonably affordable and importable today, so you and a bunch of similarly obsessed nerds can recreate this battle at your next local track day.
From the mostly reasonable, we now journey to the pinnacle of ‘90s and early-2000s motoring goodness featuring Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini and Nissan. This is arguably one of the coolest collections of road cars to ever hit a circuit and it’s one of our favorite track battles ever.
This battle isn’t really much of a battle at all, or, rather, it wouldn’t normally be one because the McLaren would just eat all the other cars’ lunches. However, this battle is in the rain and the rain changes everything.
Who wouldn’t want to see a bunch of Japan’s hottest shoes duke it out in a C6 Corvette ZR-1, a 370Z, an NSX-R and a couple Ferraris? This is hilarious because the delta in power between the ‘Vette and everything else is gigantic, but can it put any of that power down?
You can’t talk about cars in Japan without talking about tuner culture and this battle is exactly why. The ides of taking a car, even a boring one, and making it into some kind of fire-breathing monster is exciting, but do the cars hold up on track?
This may as well be a clown car race. Seriously. It’s a bunch of kei cars, an SUV and some minivans — including the world’s greatest minivan: the Toyota Estima (aka Previa). This should have the Benny Hill theme playing over it. It’s glorious.
Hatfields and McCoys. Meek Mill and Drake. Some feuds are just legendary and there is perhaps no automotive feud so great as the the one between the Subaru Impreza WRX and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. This battle sees multiple generations of both try and settle that feud once and for all.
Sometimes Best Motoring’s track battles don’t even have to make sense. This is a good example of that because I don’t think anyone ever asked which car out of the Toyota Crown, Mazda RX-8, Honda S2000 and Subaru Legacy was faster around a track, and yet here we are.
From the superest of supercars of the ‘90s, we move onto the slightly tamer supercars of the early aughts. This battle sees perennial enemies like the BMW M3 and the Porsche 911 squaring off against the Gallardo and the Ferrari 360. Obviously, because Best Motoring, there’s an NSX-R there too, and I’d probably pick that one over everything but the Challenge Stradale.
Of course, there’s no rule in Best Motoring that the cars have to be reasonable or even street legal, so in this battle we have the Radical SR4 going up against the KTM X-Bow, the Lotus 2 Eleven and Exige as well as an R35 GT-R and, inexplicably, an AE86 Corolla. I don’t understand it, but I love it anyway.
Thank God someone was finally brave enough to answer the question that’s been plaguing car enthusiasts for decades: Is a Viper RT/10 faster than an F40, a MkIV Supra, a Ruf CTR, an NSX-R and a Ferrari 456GT? As usual, this is just Best Motoring doing what it does best: being awesome for no real reason.