List: The Top Ten Winding Road POV Test Drives

We launched Winding Road’s POV Test Drive series in the hopes of bringing all of you something that can’t be found anywhere else on the internet: videos that show what it’s like to be behind the wheel of your favorite cars. We don’t do soundtracks, or voiceovers, or anything that takes away from the pure exhilaration that comes with hearing amazing cars exercised in crystal-clear binaural audio.

 

Considering it’s Friday, and none of us want to do actual work, this makes today’s list a perfect time sink. We’ve corralled our most popular POV test drives, and have assembled them in one place. There’s roughly an hour’s worth of video here, with everything from affordable rear-drive coupes, to full-bore sports cars, to a pair of very powerful muscle cars. There are few better ways to spend an hour of your day then watching these videos (make sure you have headphones!).

 

There’s another purpose to this list, though. We want to know what you think. Where do we go from here? What cars are you dying to see and hear from behind the wheel? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll be sure to reply back and let you know if and when we can make it happen.

 

 

Ford’s new, turbocharged hot hatch is our first entry in the top ten. Its throaty 2.0-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder is a real charmer, with a deep, vociferous induction note and plenty of power to back up its bark. Easily one of our favorite hot hatches.

 

 

With the renaissance of small, affordable, rear-drive coupes, we felt the best thing we could do was get the lot of them together for a little comparison test. You can read the full story here, but our video takes a brief look at the BRZ, FR-S, and Genesis Coupe from the driver’s perspective. Which would you choose? 

 

 

Porsche’s polarizing sedan has generated plenty of comments (and sales) for the German brand. The GTS is based on the V-8-powered Panamera, and features a host of upgrades to up the fun factor.

 

 

BMW’s M6 ditched the F1-derived V-10 for 2013, and replaced it with the same 4.4-liter, biturbocharged V-8 found in the X5 and X6M. While we grieve for the loss of another V-10 (the things are the white rhinos of the automotive world), the V-8-powered M6 is just a rocket ship. We’re talking supercar performance in a package that you’ll genuinely enjoy driving every day. In this particular vid, we bum around on the roads near Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. 

 

 

One of our favorite luxury sedans, we tested the 750Li on the same roads as the M6. For such a big vehicle, the 7-Series is remarkably agile and light on its feet. Power, provided by a 4.4-liter, biturbocharged V-8, is abundant, allowing the big sedan to get up to speed with surprising alacrity.

 

 

Well this is puzzling. Here, among the sports cars, sits Honda’s mainstream family sedan. Perhaps that’s just a sign of the anticipation that surrounded the launch of the new Accord, a vehicle that Honda desperately needed to succeed. By and large, it has, representing the logical, affordable, and comfortable choice in the hotly contested mid-size sedan segment.

 

 

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. This is the Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG, yet another bruiser with a turbocharged V-8. It offers a silly kind of speed, and when optioned like our tester, with the AMG Performance Pack, things get even crazier. 

 

 

The muscle car to buy from last year, the Boss 302 is quite possibly the best Mustang since the glory days of the first-generation car. It takes every aspect of the Mustang GT and sharpens it to a fine degree. The result is something that feels far less like a muscle car, and instead comes across as a more thoroughbred performance machine. Also, the V-8 revs to the stratosphere, which is nice.

 

 

If you weren’t sold on the Porsche 911 with a PDK automatic, then you’ll need to watch this video. There’s perhaps no better example of just what a performance advantage the PDK offers. The shifts are almost seamless, giving the 911 C2S a racecar-like report as it travels down the road.

 

 

Really, was there ever any question that this video would be the king? Ford and Chevy are locked in the kind of horsepower war that would make the late 60s blush, with 200-mile-per-hour, 660-horsepower Mustangs and track-minded, hardcore Camaros, both of which utilize superchargers as opposed to the newfangled turbos that the Germans so enjoy. This video gives each car a thorough shakedown. Enjoy the supercharger whine.