

I also indulge the six-speed manual’s rev-match feature on downshifts, freeing mental bandwidth that can be devoted to steering, braking, and humming my favorite Dokken song.
#Nfs run police chase driver
Civilians catalog the tells for police vehicles, like steelies on an Explorer, but maybe this could work the other way around: Cops should know that a matte-black hood signals the 1LE, a Camaro that will smelt any municipal ore barge.Īrmed with GM’s Performance Traction Management, the 1LE makes it easy for the driver to simply flatten the throttle at corner exit and let that trick diff and sophisticated traction control figure out the rest. It’s a Camaro that’ll pull more than 1.00 g in a turn. Verdict: The rich get away with everything.ĭoesn’t “1LE” sound like something you’d yell to call a hog? “WONN-ELLL-EEEEE! Slop’s in the trough!” Maybe it’s not the catchiest nomenclature, but that alphanumeric signifies a Camaro with all the track-slaying accouterments-magnetic ride control, six-piston Brembos up front, and an electronically controlled limited-slip diff. By the end of a lap, the 488GTB is so far ahead you could have it valet parked. In our made-up escape, you’d need to get only far enough away to pull up behind some bushes as the cop car flies past.

For our distant pursuing officer, they’re graffiti by an unseen artist, a Banksy in rubber. Exiting a 70-mph corner about halfway through the lap, the 488’s tail slides gently wide, scribing twin stripes on the pavement. The 488’s chassis can handle the power, with colossal carbon-ceramic brakes, gluey Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s, and an electronically controlled limited-slip differential that makes you feel like a driving god. In a lesser car, you might worry about what’s behind you, but in the 488 you’re consumed with the constant onslaught of corners. The 3.9-liter V-8 revs so quickly-BLAAP! BLAAAAP! BLAAAAAAAP!-that you pull that paddle like a kayaker fighting the Saltstraumen tides. When the Charger’s light bar comes to life, the 488 puts on a show of its own, the red LEDs across the top of the steering wheel firing left to right to signal the imminent need to pull the upshift paddle. Ferrari quotes a zero-to-124-mph time of 8.3 seconds. Apparently, its Fiorano lap time beats the 458 Speciale’s by half a second, but I’d wager that its zMAX Dragway elapsed time would torch most anything this side of a Bugatti Chiron. But it always does, and the 488GTB is a whole new kind of quick. Where’s my pickax?Ī few years ago, it was hard to imagine that Ferrari would build anything faster than the 458. At the current price of gold, I’d need to set aside about 18 pounds to secure this particular Ferrari. Fun fact: There is a huge gold mine just down the road from CMP, and, after a few laps in the 488, I wish I owned it. Is the 661-hp Ferrari 488GTB quicker than a police car? Sure, that’s the way the numbers look, but we figured we’d better get them both on the track and drive around real fast just to check. Nonetheless, the data confirms that it isn’t much of a fight: The Charger catches the Yaris in three seconds. Sure, those drifts happen at 40 mph, but style points must count for something. We finish the lap and I discover that the little Yaris is actually hilarious on the track, given to huge lift-throttle drifts.

You can be as cool as you like, but a lit-up Charger in your rearview mirror would turn Norm MacDonald into Bobcat Goldthwait. From the moment the lights went on to the moment I went off: 10 seconds. With my nervous system short-circuited by dreams of freedom, I drive way too deep into the first corner, skid off, and plow into the overrun area in a geyser of sand. Sudden-onset bad judgment is a disease to which I’m far from immune, and surely the root cause of most police chases.
#Nfs run police chase torrent
The act of fleeing, of indulging the taboo, unleashes a torrent of adrenaline that has me thinking, for a moment, that maybe I can whip this horse hard enough to make my escape. It feels so unnatural to open the throttle instead of hitting the brakes.

The blue and red lights go on behind me and, for the first time in my life, I do something other than pull to the shoulder. It’s hard to overstate the level of anxiety surrounding the events that follow. “It’s a color that says, ‘I’m not ready for full-on red, but I’m a sporty fellow,’ ” says Haas.Īfter a lap to get rolling, we hit the front straight with the belligerent Charger filling the Yaris’s mirrors. Even the burgundy hue of its paint seems calculated to temper our expectations. We included the Yaris iA as a baseline, a representative of the caliber of hardware that you’d normally see in a police chase.
