I kept tossing and turning that night, but I couldn't get the sounds out of my head. Between the click-clack-click of an Audi R8's six-speed manual, a 911 Turbo's whistle and a CLS 63 AMG's V8 thrum in a tunnel, my mind was just running riot to the hooves of 1400-plus horses galloping hard. At several points, I would wake up, try to discern the sounds and then try and catch a few more winks before, somehow, the replay button was hit again.
It happens when in the span of one day, you drive three supercars back-to-back at speeds that send shivers down one's spine. Okay, it was two supercars and one mother of a super saloon, but you get the drift. It doesn't happen every day and when it happens, you are left with haunting noises that don't seem to disappear even four days later.
These three, ladies and gentlemen, are among the finest and most powerful cars you can buy from the land of Germany in India, and all three follow very distinct engineering philosophies. The Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG is a front-engined, rear-wheel driven naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V8 that throws AMG's supercharged tuning philosophy into the paper-bin. The Audi R8 on the other hand is Audi's first supercar, a mid-engined all-wheel drive work of art that shares enough and more from the fire-breathing Lamborghini Gallardo, except for its 4.2-litre V8 engine. And finally, there's the Porsche 9ff 911 Turbo, essentially a slightly tweaked 911 Turbo, with a 500 bhp 3.6-litre boxer six resting above the rear axle, in what seems like 45 years of engineering to correct a mistake. In what seemed like a stroke of luck, fate or any other synonym to that effect, the task of choosing a winner among the three fell on me. Leaping with joy was easier than making a decision, because at the end of it all, when your mind selectively remembers all the good bits of each of them, it's harder to find faults.
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