2020 Porsche 911 Carrera vs. 2020 Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe

The one upside to being stuck in a four-hour-long traffic jam is that it gives you more than ample time to think. We were stranded in just such a jam on I-75 in the middle of Ohio cornfields during this comparison test.

We had time to consider, for example, the fragility of human existence and the seemingly random, violent end that can be visited upon you through no fault of your own. When semi trucks tangle at high speed, causing devastation to man and machine, it's pretty hard to remain in your car-magazine idyll of twisty roads and roaring engines and limit handling, even while at the wheel of one these two preeminent performance cars.

But death and devastation were too much to consider for too long, so we busied ourselves with less grave questions, such as: How, after three hours at a total standstill, have we not seen more stranded drivers peeing on the side of the road? And, more urgently, where are we going to pee? And what would possess someone to affix fluffy seat covers topped with teddy-bear heads to the front seats of their car? Also, who is smoking weed right now? We can smell it, you know.

We also spent some of our unexpected downtime considering a response to the question you're surely asking: Where the hell is the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette? The short answer is that the new Corvette is here. The less flippant answer is that there will be all manner of Corvette stories in the future, including comparison tests. There will be so many, in fact, that you will begin asking why all stories have to have a Corvette in them.

For now, we must first sort these two contenders in what might be called the everyday-supercar class. The cars we've gathered here, the new-generation Porsche 911 Carrera S and the familiar Mercedes-AMG GT, straddle the divide between day-to-day commuting comfort and back-road friskiness. Both carry prices that blast through the $100,000 mark by a considerable margin, making them ineligible for 10Best competition and perhaps a little too dear for head-to-head competition with the five-figure Corvette.

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