I recently had the pleasure and good fortune of spending three days with a Porsche 997 GT3. Most of the test cars I get I only have for a day, two at the most. When you have a car for one day, especially something like a GT3, you never really get a sense of what the car would actually be like to live with. In the three days I had the car, I used it for canyon driving, I got some track time in it, and I even used it for the daily commute. I put several miles on city streets as well as highway and freeway miles, I even got to drive it in rain and shine, I really got the full experience.

Some people just don't "get" a car like the GT3, yes it's fast, yes it handles amazingly but it does much more than those things. One such person that doesn't get this car approached me while I was getting some interior shots outside the office at work. He drives an Acura RSX, which was turbo charged. The first topic of conversation was obviously; how much power does it have. Which of course lead to; if I still had the turbo on my car it would be a really good race on the highway.

Now he may very well have been able to keep up with the GT3; from a rolling start, in a straight line, until he red lined in his tallest gear which would be WAY before the GT3. But who cares? This car isn't for the wannabe Vin Diesels out there who live their lives a quarter mile at a time. This car is amazingly good on the race track; it may very well be the best production car I have ever driven on the track. The more amazing part is that as good as this thing is on the track, you could actually use this car as a daily driver. I have had several cars with aftermarket suspension upgrades that neither handled nor rode as comfortably as the GT3. The only thing that would really tell the average person that this isn't your ordinary car is how heavy the clutch is, other than that, anyone could get in and drive this thing.

To say this car had a hard day at the track would be an understatement. Several people drove the car, we did acceleration runs, and no one was taking it easy during hot laps. At the end of the day, the car was fine. I can't tell you how many stock cars I have seen that have limped home after a day the track, most cars just aren't built for it. The GT3 however just kept asking for more.

At the end of the third day I had to turn this car back in. I have done this several times with several different cars. This was the first car that I really regretted giving back. I found myself missing the car the next weekend. I am counting the days until we get our hands on a GT3RS.