I know this has been posted, but heres the full article with stats. Found it on another forum and thought everyone might find this interesting as is shows where all these cars stand, and better than the horrible tests being dont by R&T and C&D.

Gallardo:

0-100km/h: 3.9-4.2 seconds
0-160km/h: 8.4-9 seconds
0-200km/h: ~ 13 seconds
0-240km/h:~21 seconds

F430:

0-100km/h: 3.6 (4 without LC) seconds
0-160km/h:8.2 seconds (9 without LC) seconds
0-200km/h: ~12-13 seconds (with or without LC) seconds
0-240km/h 18.4 (22 without LC) seconds

911 Turbo:

0-100km/h: 3.2-3.7 seconds
0-160km/h: 8 seconds
0-200km/h: ~12 seconds
0-240km/h:~ 19 seconds


I decided to make this thread because I read this:


Autocar test: Gallardo vs F430 vs 911 Turbo



We went to Wales, to one of our all-time favorite roads, no less, to find the answer to one very simple question. Is the new 911 Turbo – all 473hp, and 193mph worth of it – really as good as they say it is? If so, it should have few problems taking care of its opposition here, which comes in the form of the fabulous Ferrari F430 and the revised-for-2006 Lamborghini Gallardo.

If not, well, Porsche’s decision to charge so much money for its beloved flagship might well hit a brick wall – because at $184,000 (UK price) the 911 Turbo can no longer be considered a bargain beside its rivals. Especially not when that price jumps to a whopping $202 grand in the case of the test car, which was fitted with no more than most of the options most 911 Turbo owners will specify anyway (such as PCCB brakes, an electric sunroof and the Sports Chrono pack, which provides an extra 50lb ft of torque).

If somehow you’ve missed what the new 911 Turbo is all about, here’s a recap. As per the last two incarnations it’s four-wheel drive, but this time it uses a whole range of active electronic systems to keep it glued to the road and out of the undergrowth, many of which were pioneered by Porsche when developing the Cayenne.

It also has a variable geometry twin-turbo version of Weissach’s venerable 3.6-liter flat six and, in this instance, that means more power (473hp at 6000rpm), more torque (457lb ft between 1950 and 5000rpm, rising to 502lb ft for 10sec bursts if you specify the Sports Chrono pack) and more performance than ever before.

How much more? Try 0-60mph in 3.6sec, 0-100mph in 8.0sec dead, 0-150mph in 19.6sec and a decidedly pessimistic official top speed of 193mph. In reality, 198mph is more like it once tire expansion is taken into consideration.

Yet the new faster-than-ever 911 Turbo is, according to Porsche, also the most civilized so far. Gone is the rock-hard ride and the will-it-won’t-it personality of yesteryear. Nowadays the Turbo is a refined all-’rounder designed for (very fast) everyday use – a car that’s as refined on the highway as it is incisive carving its way across a deserted back road. A car, indeed, to make the rest of the world look second rate.

Not that this is quite how Lamborghini or Ferrari see the situation. The F430 is about as cutting edge as it gets at this sort of price ($224,500 with a manual gearbox or $236,000 with the paddle-shift F1 gearbox as tested). Fast, too, which means no one in their right mind would bet against it competing against a rival as traditional as the 911 Turbo without putting up a monumental performance.

As for the Gallardo, it’s been thoroughly revised for the 2006 model year with more power, better software for its paddle-shift gearbox, bigger brakes and, according to Lamborghini, a 4WD chassis that’s sweeter and sharper than ever. It costs $227,000, has 512hp from its V10 engine and is most definitely the dark horse of this contest.
Sublime sounds and highly characteristic road manners from the threesome.

Cruise missile
And so to Wales, or, to be more precise, so to the long drag along the M4 towards the great red yonder. I drove the 911 first, because this car was the reason we were gathered in the first place – and a couple of things struck me straight away. One, how soothing the Turbo’s ride was as it ambled along at around 70mph. Two, how much tire roar there was from the back under the same conditions.

To understand why this is, you need to realize that the new Turbo has notably bigger rear covers than before – monster great 305/30 ZR19 Michelin Pilot Sports on the test car, though you can specify similar-size Bridgestones if so desired. This extra width of rubber, combined with the 911’s naturally open-plan rear passenger compartment, means you hear more than ever the interaction between rear tires and road surface. Compared with the BMW M6 I’d just climbed out of, the Turbo felt seriously flawed in this one specific respect.

But, it also felt more responsive the first time I put my foot down in fifth gear for a few short seconds. Quite a lot more responsive, which is saying something after the M6. A little later we peeled off the highway and headed the rest of the way towards our destination across country, a much better hunting ground for the new 911 Turbo. And it very quickly became obvious that what the Turbo has in abundance is torque, and it comes at you seemingly no matter how few revs are dialed in.

You want to know what it feels like to be in a new 911 Turbo under full acceleration? All you need to do is put your foot down at 2000rpm in top gear and after no more than two seconds it’s at full steam. And it’s the same feeling, pretty much, if you do the same thing at 5000rpm in third gear.

The size of the shove is monumental in either instance, yet curiously it doesn’t feel much stronger at high revs in a low gear than it does at low revs in a high gear. And that, in a nutshell, is what 457lb ft of torque developed between 1950 and 5000rpm does for you. It flattens out the delivery almost to a point where it is totally linear. For most of the time, and certainly to begin with, this makes the Turbo feel incredibly fast. Faster, even, than it appears on paper, simply because the response is so immediate and so huge when it arrives.

But after you’ve got used to what happens under full throttle at low revs and have wound it up to bursting point a few times, it’s odd, but you end up fairly quickly wanting more – and it’s because there’s no sense of a crescendo to the performance that makes this so. It doesn’t seem to make much difference if you press the Sport button and introduce the full 502lb ft to the party for 10sec, either; the sense of acceleration feels a mite stronger, yes, but the linearity remains.

So what happens is that you find yourself running into the surprisingly low-set rev limiter (6750rpm) surprisingly often, purely because the sense of acceleration is so consistent. Soon after, you realize that to drive the Turbo really well and to get the most out of its vast performance envelope you need to be at least one gear higher than you think at all times – and keep the engine spinning in its premium band, namely between 2000 and 5000rpm. Any higher and there’s little extra reward to be had; it even sounds a bit strained beyond 6000rpm, truth be told.

I therefore climbed out of the Turbo after the first 200 miles feeling ever so slightly bewildered. This car is fast – of course it is, massively so – but it’s also, what? Unexciting? No. Uninvolving? Nope. Too efficient for its own good? Maybe. Time to drive the others and come back to the Porsche a little later.
Ferrari's F430 is a great car with a great cabin, but the game has moved on since this car rewrote the rulebook just two years ago.

Superstylin’
It’s hard to describe how good a Lamborghini Gallardo looks in the flesh, sitting in an otherwise empty turn-out, engine ticking from a recent workout, rolling Welsh hills acting as a backdrop. Right on cue, an ancient Escort diesel wagon clattered to a halt beside us and its occupant, sporting an endearingly broad Welsh accent and an appropriately astonished expression, climbed out and began his sermon.

After five minutes’ deliberation, he liked the driving position of the 911, the interior of the Ferrari and thought the Gallardo looked “the aaabsolute bollocks”.
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He was right. From just about every angle the Gallardo looks precisely how a bona fide supercar should: perfectly proportioned, low to the ground and very, very dramatic. It also looks unmistakably like a Lamborghini, albeit a more compact, neater shape than we’ve been used to over the years.

Beside it the Ferrari, though extremely purposeful what with its numerous cooling ducts and winglets, looked curiously fussy. Delicate, too, and – to these eyes – just not as beautiful. Next to these more exotic shapes, the 911 appeared much the way it always has, its obviously recognizable form bolstered in this instance by various bits of addenda, all of which are designed to make it look tougher/faster/stronger than the regular Carrera.

I drove the Gallardo next, and to begin with it felt heavier, less nimble and not as responsive as the 911. Quite a contrast, in other words. You sit lower and much further back in the Lambo, which immediately makes it feel more intimidating. Like the Porsche, the Gallardo is four-wheel drive but it doesn’t have as much electronic trickery as the 911, even though it can vary the amount of torque depending on conditions. Result? The Gallardo feels much more like a traditional, low-slung supercar than the Porsche.

But then, after a few more miles of acclimatization, you naturally start to click with the Gallardo and realize that it isn’t anywhere near as cumbersome beside the 911 as you first thought. And after half an hour I’d already begun to think I preferred the way it went down the road, period. Its more immediate throttle response (no matter how little lag the 911 Turbo has, it’s never going to respond like an atmospheric 512hp V10), its razor-sharp turn-in, its better steering feel mid-corner, its lack of tire thump and roar by comparison, its frankly superb paddle-shift gearchange, and its crisper personality in general all set it apart from and above the 911.

And that’s to say nothing of the aspect that truly defines what driving a Gallardo is all about: the way it sounds. Which is 100 percent golden delicious. If pushed, I could spend the rest of this story trying to describe the noise that erupts out of the Gallardo’s exhausts as its V10 engine rises from 2000rpm through to its 8000rpm red line. But it’d be a waste of time and effort because you need to hear it for yourself – and from the driver’s seat specifically – to appreciate how loud it is. And how fantastic it sounds.

So sorry about that. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I say it made the Ferrari sound like a tin can and the Porsche like a sewing machine by comparison.

Feast for the senses
And what of the Ferrari? Having established that the 2006 Gallardo is a very different (and very much improved) animal from the car that lost narrowly to the F430 in our twin test two years ago, where does that leave the once unbeatable Ferrari today?

I drove the F430 last because I knew it best, but that still doesn’t prepare you for the onslaught of sensations the Ferrari throws at you the moment you climb aboard. The way it smells, the fabulous way in which its seats nail you into position behind that gorgeous leather-rimmed wheel, those dials. No matter how many times you’ve been here, the F430’s cabin remains a thing of rare charm. It feels a million dollars beside the Lambo and makes the 911 feel no more special than a Focus.

It doesn’t exactly disappoint on the move, either. After the Lambo it felt lighter on its feet to begin with, and more agile, if a little edgier as well. Over the exact same roads it tended to skip and dart across cambers which the Gallardo, in particular, had hardly flinched over. And its steering felt more nervous, more direct and more kart-like than the others – both a good and bad thing when going really quickly. Its brakes (optional carbon ceramics in the case of the test car, so wave goodbye to another $18 grand) were also more feelsome than the Lamborghini’s, though maybe not just as all-powerful as the Turbo’s.

Yet the Ferrari was also the least capable car across those roads, even though in some ways it was the most exciting, and definitely the most edgy. It lacked the 911’s thunderous hit of torque (read acceleration) out of corners and struggled to match the Lamborghini’s startling body control and turn-in stability through the quicker corners. Its paddle-shift gearchange was also nowhere beside the Gallardo’s item, failing to dial up enough revs on downchanges and lacking a surprising amount of refinement on upshifts.

Conclusion: the F430 was definitely the car to be in if you wanted the ultimate wild ride sensation, but it was too flawed in too many areas to live with the others overall – both of which felt more sorted and were plain faster across the ground. Final answer regarding the F430 in this context reads as follows: great car, great cabin, but the game has moved on since this car rewrote the rulebook just two years ago.
The Lamborghini comes out ahead of the pack.

The verdict
So in the end it was between the Gallardo and the 911. Clinical, efficient ground coverer versus highly strung but also surprisingly well resolved V10 supercar. Germany vs. Italy – for the second time of asking this summer.

I drove the 911 again and, after the Ferrari, was amazed to discover just how much body movement there is when you drive this car quickly. It’s not unchecked movement; in fact, it’s always perfectly controlled, and the harder I drove it the more impressive the 911 Turbo became. The way it would just stick under brakes and out of corners was genuinely eye-opening, and the sheer speed it could generate down any straight was enough to pull several yards out of the Ferrari in an instant, seemingly with no more than the twitch of your right foot.

But beside the more sorted Lamborghini the 911 felt (whisper this) antiquated in its demeanor. The Gallardo would carve its way into and through corners with absolute stability and virtually no body roll whatsoever. It also had fantastic body control and – amazingly – much more adjustability available via the throttle if either end started to run wide. The 911, by comparison, rolled more, suffered from more pitch and dive under acceleration and brakes, sounded utterly unmemorable and felt neither as well balanced nor as fluid as the Lambo in the quicker corners.

And here’s the real killer. When a little later we accelerated them side by side from a rolling start at 25mph on an empty dual-lane highway up to a speed we won’t be publishing here, the Lambo stayed with the Turbo every inch of the way. Take the benefits of the 911’s scorching 0-30mph ability out of the equation, in other words, and they’re all but identically matched on acceleration. And the fact that when I drove it back to London at the end of the day the Lambo generated less tire roar than the 911 and felt, by and large, more civilized over the exact same road, well, it just about sealed it for the Gallardo in the end.

Porsche has produced a quite astonishing piece of engineering in the form of the new 911 Turbo, no question; it’s the best of its kind so far by some margin. But the Gallardo, revised for 2006, is something else again. Bugatti Veyron aside, it’s almost certainly the best supercar in the world right now.
-Steve Sutcliffe /Autocar

 

Does LC stand for launch control? If so, why is it such a difference here?
( F430 - 0-240km/h 18.4 seconds (22 without LC)

 

so the ferrari is really faster than 997TT in the 200 to 300 km/h ??

 

Everyone just seems to be giving the 997 turbo lukewarm reviews. This is in stark contrast to what everyone was saying about the 996 turbo.

 

the f430 destroys the 997TT if you drive one, not in performance maybe, but in driving experience

P.S. Sticky no GT anymore?

 

P.S. Its a secret

 

Great read. Thank's

 

I couldn't make up my mind

 

When did you let them test your carZ?
Again, you have nice selectionZ.

 

My hero...

 

Yeah, I let them test drive my cars for the Mag.

NOT!

 

It seems like if you change the 911 into a stage 2 with upgraded suspension, it will address all of the complaints with the writer. Thats what most 6speeders would do asap. Now youve got a decidedly faster vehicle, sounds mean and handles like it should.

 

I think the issue is that you shouldn't have to change this things in the first place, they should already be there. For example, the stiffer more track ready suspension and the more aggressive exhaust. The modders usually take it a step further of course but that is not the majority of P car owners.