The horsepower war is over. The handling war is on. Cars like the Audi RS 5 Coupe and Sportback with the Competition Plus package and Porsche’s stunning new GT3 RS—vehicles we’ve driven in just the past few months—suggest a paradigm shift is coming in the performance car business.
In an era when modern EV technology means pretty much anyone can build a 2,000-horsepower car that will launch so hard it’ll shred your intestines on the way to an insanely quick 0–60 time, developing internal combustion engines that pump out ever more power to deliver marginal improvements in acceleration times and top speed is increasingly a zero-sum game.
But building a road car chassis with hardware and software that allow enthusiastic and engaged drivers to be whole seconds faster around a racetrack than their rivals? That’s a more complex skill set. Which perhaps explains this emerging focus from brands keen to polish their performance credentials on chassis tuning that delivers driving precision and driver exhilaration in equal measure.
The 2023 Lamborghini Urus Performante, scheduled to arrive in the
