My, my, the Lotus Evora has changed. The latest version of this now decade-old sports car (there is only one Evora derivative on sale at the moment) is the GT410 Sport – and it’s feisty.  It’s got one of those motorway rides. You know the type: with that collusive, delicious high-speed fidget that can only be made by a short, firm coil spring working in tandem with an expensive, belligerent Bilstein damper – and which gently insists you divert immediately from your intended errand-to-wherever to some proper driving roads. It has a supercharged V6 powertrain that demands you time your manual gearchanges well, with the proper footwork, and that picks up from 4500rpm with raw, unfiltered ferocity. It steers with the weight and feel – and kickback – of a competition racer. It really grips – once the Cup tyres are switched on.  Lordy, this car has put on some muscle. In many ways, it could even compare to a Porsche 911 GT3: for immersive control feedback, track-ready purpose and potential for driver reward.  And that means it ought to be a pretty stern test for the latest, all-new ‘992’-generation Carrera 4S, right? If only the sports car market was so easy to make sense of. Compared with both Evoras I remember driving three, five and nearly 10 years ago now, and with the latest Porsche 911 Carrera, however, the GT410 Sport is certainly different. And difference is your best friend when the opportunity presents to lay a challenge for a car as complete and accomplished as the new 992. Difference is what you need to crack open the lid on this new Porsche’s character and make-up – to find out what it’s gained and given up, how it’s developed and diverged.  We could have looked for less difference among the line-up for this group test – and, for a while, we did. To tell you the truth, the Jaguar F-Type R was indisposed on the dates of our Porsche 911 welcoming party, and the Aston Martin Vantage was washing its hair. I understand the reticence. A ‘991’ Carrera GTS gave the current Vantage a thorough dusting in a group test I wrote only last year, as well as a McLaren 540C. And the differences between that GTS’s partly optional mechanical specification (Carrera 4 ‘widebody’, 444bhp 3.0-litre turbo flat six, lowered PASM suspension, PTV active rear diff, four-wheel steering) and the one about which you’re about to read? Well, you might say they’re incremental.  So the decision was partly made for us. But however it happened, it became clear that picking starkly different opponents for the 992 might be our best route towards learning something meaningful about the new Porsche. If this is the latest version of the sports car that changed the landscape of its segment, decades ago, with its sheer breadth of dynamic talents and its unmatched usability, why not test the outer limits of its range rather than pounding away pointlessly at its He-Man-like core?  Why not give it a really uncompromising, irresistibly simple driver’s car to measure up with on poise, agility, grip, engagement, excitement and reward, I thought; and also a really desirable, exotic, expensively engineered heavyweight German to contend with on material class, usability and everyday ownership appeal? Enter the Lotus Evora GT410 Sport and facelifted Audi R8 V10.  Before we get cracking, a quick review of what’s new and different about this Porsche for those in need of one. There’s quite a lot: more aluminium-intensive construction, a longer front overhang, wider wings and axle tracks (the old Carrera 2 narrow body, which wouldn’t have featured on a Carrera 4S anyway, has been discontinued), mixed-width wheels, retuned suspension, new dampers, quicker steering, electro-mechanically assisted brakes, new stiffer engine mountings, bigger new engine induction and fuel injection systems… the list goes on.  If you want one any time soon, you can only have a 444bhp Carrera S with an eight-speed twin-clutch automatic gearbox, but you can choose between rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive (the latter works via a new hang-on clutch, incidentally), or between fixed-roof coupé and convertible bodystyles. You get a torque vectoring electronic rear differential lock and PASM adaptive dampers as standard; lowered suspension’s an option. And, because this is 2019, even for million-selling, 56-year-old iconic sports cars, you can add four-wheel steering, active anti-roll bars or carbon-ceramic brakes at extra cost, should you want to (our Carrera 4S test car had all three, plus PASM Sport springs).  It’s a mechanical recipe that the Audi R8 struggles to better in some ways, in spite of its higher price tag, more exotic spaceframe construction and behemoth Hungarian-built atmo V10. Weighing 1660kg at the kerb, the Audi’s nearly 100kg heavier than the Porsche; and while it beats it comfortably for power-to-weight ratio, it narrowly loses out to its compatriot on torque-to-weight ratio. The Audi matches the Porsche for driven wheels, but
Origin: New Porsche 911 vs Audi R8 V10 vs Lotus Evora GT410