Who is Michael Cooper? M3 driver in CTS-V Challenge!

[Jaypod]

Originally Posted by foosh

It deserves to be called a world-class sedan, because it is, but it does suffer from the GM stigma (unfairly). GM is building a number of world-class vehicles now.

Completely agree.

I dont think the previous gen CTSV was all that popular here. Honestly really dont see many. An 06 CTSV for example only fetches a few thousand more than its CTS counterpart with similar mileage etc. on the used lot. Very similar to the Jag S Type and S Type R. If you can find a used one, you typically dont pay that much more.

[dhoggm3]

The chicane was no doubt added to deep speeds down at the request of the lawyers (or Monticello instructors). The GM PR dept would have had a hard time explaining the rank amateur ex-customer in the balled up CTS-V at the end of the long straight.

[lopealle]

Originally Posted by dhoggm3

The chicane was no doubt added to deep speeds down at the request of the lawyers (or Monticello instructors). The GM PR dept would have had a hard time explaining the rank amateur ex-customer in the balled up CTS-V at the end of the long straight.

exaactly

[Gearhead999s]

Here is video of some the goings on of the day.

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[nusevad]

go mike!!!

[Gearhead999s]

Originally Posted by dhoggm3

The GM PR dept would have had a hard time explaining the rank amateur ex-customer in the balled up CTS-V at the end of the long straight.

Good way to cull the herd

[Heat00]

m3 FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hans Delbruck]

Sounds like GM put on a great event and found the right drivers with the right attitude!

Mike, congrats - your skills made up for the M3's weaknesses vs a faster car with better brakes. In your opinion, is the CTS-V just as well balanced as the M3? I'm thinking the answer is yes... although perhaps the power makes it more intimidating to drive? But with seat time... well

Chris, congrats on your first track day in your CTS-V, great post. There are car enthusiasts with every brand. BMW, GM, Audi, MB.... and as you experienced we can get along.... just ignore the punks on the net, they don't necessarily speak for the marque. The track is a great place to meet other "car people." I hope you get a chance to go again. Thanks for posting here.

[m3_love]

Originally Posted by Hans Delbruck

Sounds like GM put on a great event and found the right drivers with the right attitude!

Mike, congrats - your skills made up for the M3's weaknesses vs a faster car with better brakes. In your opinion, is the CTS-V just as well balanced as the M3? I'm thinking the answer is yes... although perhaps the power makes it more intimidating to drive? But with seat time... well

Chris, congrats on your first track day in your CTS-V, great post. There are car enthusiasts with every brand. BMW, GM, Audi, MB.... and as you experienced we can get along.... just ignore the punks on the net, they don't necessarily speak for the marque. The track is a great place to meet other "car people." I hope you get a chance to go again. Thanks for posting here.

+100

Thanks for sharing and congrats

[grizzy727]

great video--can you post any clips or sound of the m5 around the track?

[the///Mthree]

Originally Posted by Hans Delbruck

Sounds like GM put on a great event and found the right drivers with the right attitude!

Mike, congrats - your skills made up for the M3's weaknesses vs a faster car with better brakes. In your opinion, is the CTS-V just as well balanced as the M3? I'm thinking the answer is yes... although perhaps the power makes it more intimidating to drive? But with seat time... well

Coming from a c6z06, the power did not intimidate me at all. I just wasnt expecting it to be as quick as it was. I would say the cars are very pretty in balance, I think the m3 has a better balance coming into the corner and through a long corner, but the ctsv has a better balance off the corner.

[330CIZHP]

So asking the question more directly, do you feel that if you had given your M3 to GM professional tester and former race car driver John Heinrichy, he would have turned in a substantially quicker lap than your's very close to the CTS-V??

Originally Posted by the///Mthree

Coming from a c6z06, the power did not intimidate me at all. I just wasnt expecting it to be as quick as it was. I would say the cars are very pretty in balance, I think the m3 has a better balance coming into the corner and through a long corner, but the ctsv has a better balance off the corner.

[King Tut]

Okay I have read this entire thread. To me there are some points that should be made:

1. The challenge was to bring a production sedan and beat Bub Lutz in a CTS-V.
2. Michael Cooper in his E90 M3 was the only person to beat Bub Lutz and therefore WON the challenge.
3. The CTS-V is DEFINITELY a faster car than the M3.

I'm proud to be an M3 owner and proud of Michael Cooper.

[foosh]

Originally Posted by 330CIZHP

So asking the question more directly, do you feel that if you had given your M3 to GM professional tester and former race car driver John Heinrichy, he would have turned in a substantially quicker lap than your's very close to the CTS-V??

He's answered that question in some sense. See post #158.

No doubt that BMW's equivalent of Johnny O'Connell (the "mystery driver" who bested Henricy's time by 1 second with a 2:45) would be a bit closer. 5 seconds in 1 lap is an eternity on a short course like that one.

I think some people are forgetting that the V's straight-line performance advantage was compromised by the chicane placed on the long straight by track management, which I'm sure GM didn't like, but was forced to accept.

At any rate, this has been a very entertaining thread, which sure as hell beats reading about the latest bling wheels from Miami. If Michael were given the chance, he might well be good enough to challenge people like O'Connell some day. I very much enjoyed seeing the video with O'Connell complimenting him on "hitting his marks." He clearly has some serious talent. Good job Michael, and it's great that you joined the conversation.

[ideliver]

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e60...ml#post1674276

from the M5 driver

[domobrown]

Who was the douche in the Evo X? He thought he could get close to a CTS-V? He was amongst the slowest.

[cjfairman]

Originally Posted by Hans Delbruck

Sounds like GM put on a great event and found the right drivers with the right attitude!

Mike, congrats - your skills made up for the M3's weaknesses vs a faster car with better brakes. In your opinion, is the CTS-V just as well balanced as the M3? I'm thinking the answer is yes... although perhaps the power makes it more intimidating to drive? But with seat time... well

Chris, congrats on your first track day in your CTS-V, great post. There are car enthusiasts with every brand. BMW, GM, Audi, MB.... and as you experienced we can get along.... just ignore the punks on the net, they don't necessarily speak for the marque. The track is a great place to meet other "car people." I hope you get a chance to go again. Thanks for posting here.

Thanks I just wanted to make sure you guys knew I was a fan of Mike. Actually everyone there was cool. It was just a ton of fun. The M5 guy has a great website. He sounds like an average suburban dad like me who just loves cars, but he's taken his hobby much further to actually reviewing cars. Sounds like he's driven tons of cool stuff.

Mainly, I just wanted to sign my name to the posts. I can't stand people posting on these sites annonymously and making ridiculous claims and putting people down. If you can't sign your name to it, you are a coward.

My buddy Dave and I drove 9 1/2 hours from Michigan to be there. We had this talk all the way home. We predicted exactly what the blogs would read. If you are a BMW fan, you say the challenge was Lutz and his CTSV against the world. If you are a Caddy fan, you say the challenge was the car against any car,(4 door stock) and any driver. If you were there, you would have heard Lutz conceed defeat before the competition even began. He knew there were at least 5 or 6 "whipper snappers" in the room who would best him. But he also knew they could not beat the car when put in capable hands.

Before making another post claiming BMW victory, read the www.ctsvchallenge.com website. Never, ever, ever, does it claim that Lutz is the only CTS V driver. In fact it clearly states professional drivers will be on hand. All the talk is about John H being at the top, but fact is Aaron Link is also an amateur and he's near the top as well. Aaron is an engineer and does have lots of track time. Call him a ringer, maybe, but he's not a pro. Basically, I'm asking that you don't disqualify everyone above your guy until he's at number 1 and claim victory. I will sum up the leagal mumbo jumbo, unless you care to read the ten pages. It says, you don't have a chance, we set up the challenge and we can choose our competition and we can choose our drivers. By clicking the button below, and submitting your entry, you accept these terms. Mike accepted the terms, (actually he told me his brother signed him up). So don't accept the terms and later cry unfair. I'm not saying Mike is crying. In fact, at 21, he's been far more mature than a fair amount of posters here. I'm saying the posts claiming put this or that driver here or there or on this or that track and we win is just silly. You can talk "what if" all day long, but it's a waste of energy.

Mike had a great day and I think everyone gave him his due and he deserves every minute of his 15 minutes of fame. Lutz wanted to accomplish one thing, and he said it in several interviews. To his credit, he did not want to run the race in a straight line because people already know americans can build a car to go straight. He wanted to prove Cadillac could make a car that could run with the euros who have been doing it for a hundred years or more. I think Bob did it and in the process got tons of free publicity. Mike also got some serious recognition and that is way cool. Cadillac hasn't ignored Mike, they gave him credit left and right. And Mike also gave Caddy credit, praising the V in some of his posts above. We can argue symantics all day long. Was the challenge Lutz vs. Mike? or Car vs. Car? But you cannot argue that everyone had a great time and there were some very cool cars going round the track that day.

It seems like much more fun to talk about the stuff on the M5 forum like how cool the different cars sounded coming down the straight in front of the clubhouse. The caddys had a thunderous deep growl, while the bmers had a higher pitched throaty whine. The audi was a tighter tuned sound and the Jag was just like a quiet storm of smooth effortless power.

Chris

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Rick

GO LAKERS 2009-2010!!!!

Viva Michael Cooper!

Attachment 320640

wat

[bobbyd1961]

michael cooper for president!!! yeah! great job defeating all at their own track.

[OBI_agent]

Michael Cooper, I salute you .

I'm 23 and I still drive an Accord

[mkoesel]

Originally Posted by cjfairman

Hi guys,
I'm the guy who posted on the caddy forum. Please read my post carefully.

First off - GO BLUE!

Second, props to you for hiking it all the way to Monticello for this challenge. Definitely a chance of a lifetime to be involved with something like this.

As far as your comment about everyone just getting along - I really think that pretty much people are. Actually, I am sort of proud of the enthusiast community at large for keeping things clean. Sure, there are a few fanboy-ish and hater comments in this thread, and probably some more in the other forums and blogs across the internet. But for the most part people are giving props where props are due - both to the drivers and their machinery.

As for the CTS-V vs. the M3, well its no secret which is the faster car. But, you have to admit with less than four seconds between Michael and Heinricy, there wouldn't be much room for Heinricy to improve on Michael's time in an M3 without encroaching on his own CTS-V time. I think this has significance, and its worth talking about. You have to give the M3 some props for that, with its 10% disadvantage in power-to-weight. Sure there was the chicane. Sure four, three, two or even one second is still a lot of time on ~3 minute course. But the results are still a testament to the M3's abilities. And I think it's pretty fair to say that while GM obviously knew exactly what they were doing here, no one, not even Lutz, expected to see a 21 year old with an M3 come in and put up such a challenge like he did. I should add here that, as a corollary to that, if Michael had gotten an actual timed lap in CTS-V, there's little room for him to improve over his own time in his car without encroaching on Heinricy's as well. Huge props are due there as well.

But definitely, at the same time, no one can deny that the CTS-V is a hell of a car also. No question. In fact, I am drooling over the upcoming CTS-V wagon myself because I would love to have one in the garage next to the M3. I am working on convincing the wife. But even if not the V, we may well end up with the standard CTS wagon. It's in the running for sure.

There's bound to be some difference in opinions about how legitimate the whole thing was and who the real winners were. It's ok. Not everyone has to agree on everything, and its clear where everyone's biases are going to be. That said I think everyone involved - including all of us enthusiasts - have gotten more positive's than negatives out of this. It was a great event, and I hope that more events like this will follow.

Cheers

[paddyrx8]

The Cadi V logo is such a rip off of the BM M logo.