Hi Guys
Did my breakin service just over a week ago and took the car out on track last Friday.
Meant to put a review up earlier but have been travelling from europe to mexico and have limited internet access so this will be brief.
Basically, I would give it a qualified "awesome", but the qualification is potentially a major one for some people.
Firstly, the car handles brilliantly and is incredibly balanced. For people more used to cars defaulting to understeer, this might make you feel its very tail happy but IMO its neutral, much more so than the E46. It is very easy to drift, and the Sport suspension setting is perfect for track work with very little body roll. I can understand where the ground control people are coming from on this one. I suspect many folks on this forum are going to ruin their car by changing springs and putting coilovers on it before even driving it in anger. I would urge anyone thinking of doing this to take the car out on track first. I never had such a blast at a track day before and by the end of the day was drifting the car at will. The very direct steering helps with this. I cant really understand the initial reviews on this: in sport the steering is very direct but very well weighted and it is easy to know what the front wheels are doing at all times. So for handling, I give the car an A+.
Next the more problematic review and I will choose my words carefully here, because I know the tendency of such forums to blow things out of all proportion. The gearbox. Firstly, upshifts. Truly amazing. As quick as you could possibly imagine. The delay that was reported on the net is a non-issue on track IMO. When you are full on the throttle, there is practically no delay in upshifting. I drove mainly in S5 and S6 and could tell no major difference between the two modes. Both are fantastic. I never once hit redline due to any supposed shift delay. I found the shift lights work really well, and while you are not staring at them, they are there at the corner of your eye and perfectly positioned. Shifts are so smooth compared to SMG its unreal. I had a go in a couple of E46 m3's between driving my own car and couldnt believe how jerky they were in comparison. A+ on upshifting.
Downshifting. er can I just leave now?
I wil cut to the chase on this. The car will not always downshift for you under heavy braking. Its true. Initially I found it very frustrating. I got a friend with an E46 M3 SMG to drive my car to check I wasn't imagininig things and he found the same. Now just to verify: this is not the computer preventing a money shift; sometimes you will hit the down paddle when engine revs are less than 5k (so it should be no problem downshifting) and it would not do it. Now this does not occur every time and I found I hard to tell with any accuracy whether it was going to exhibit this behaviour. Sometimes the shifts were perfect with awesome rev matchng and in such circumstances it is a delight. The only conclusion I could draw at the end of the day, was that if the abs is triggered the car prevents dowshifting to avoid upsetting the cars balance. I can also say that for some reason, the only time this happened was going (or attemting to go) from 4th to 3rd. 3rd to 2nd was money every time. I should also point out that I had a full day on the track and towards the end of the day, I noticed this happeneing less and less, as if I subconsciously had adjusted to it, but without knowing why. Also, in the interests of balance, I must point out that in general the box worked exactly as you would want; amazing throttle blipping on downshifts and you can go up and down the box like a true sequential. This "problem" didnt in any way spoil my enjoyment of the day.
So in summary, I think this car has the potential to be a beast on track. THe balance & handling is awesome. It can either be a track day weapon or a drift god, depending on whether your idea of fun is shaving tenths of a second off your best lap or just having a laugh going sideways all day. The gearbox is amazing 95% of the time, but IMO still has some software issues to be ironed out.
Mick