Best Brakes: The Shortest-Stopping Cars We've Ever Tested

You could make a case that the brakes are the most important part of your car whether you're on the street or the track. And brakes are often the major limiting factor in how many hot laps you can do consecutively. When the brakes get too hot, the pedal gets soft, and the brakes might not bite enough when you need them to. That can be a challenge when hauling down a car from triple-digit speeds; just ask any of our Lightning Lap drivers (especially the one who ended up in the Turn 1 tire wall due to brake failure on a Nissan 370Z NISMO). Braking isn't just about brakes, either. The car's weight and especially its tires also play a huge part in the process. With every vehicle that Car and Driver tests, we perform a 70-mph-to-zero braking test to determine, as the name suggests, how many feet it takes for a car to come to a complete stop from 70 miles per hour, using a GPS-based VBOX data logger from Racelogic. For context, full-size pickups often need nearly 200 feet, whereas sports cars are down in the 150-foot range, with the best even lower. Without further ado, we present a list of the 16 shortest-stopping cars we have tested: