Wednesday, April 18, 2012

"Nothing like that anywhere in the world"

He's very right -- this is from an episode of Epic Drives where they take a ZR1 Corvette to 200 mph on the Autobahn. Nowhere on earth is there a place that I'm aware of where you can casually drive topped out in a high end sports car for miles and miles without a worry in the world. Several years ago I was cruising as a passenger in a BMW M3 with a friend on our way to Zurich, and he kept the car safely pegged at 155 mph for nearly an hour; the only concern we had was keeping an eye out for faster traffic, as 190 mph Porsches are as abundant in Germany as Civics are here, and I saw one Ferrari F40 and several assorted Lamborghinis drive by in downtown Mannheim. And unlike here in America, "regular" traffic stays to the right for the most part, so there's not miles of cars backed up in the passing lane.

"Ohhh. . . . I was almost there!"

In a 630 horse Corvette, I would have been!!


***ETA: I just clicked through some of my Germany pics and found this one of a Testarosa that drove by in Mannheim:



I remember hearing it from far off like a pissed off grizzly bear coming my way, the sound ecoing off the buildings. Also, 4-wheelers are tagged and legal to drive on the street. One morning on the Autobahn outside of Mannheim we were passed by this guy on his quad while he took the exit ramp. . . . we were doing 90 mph in a crappy rental car at the time and he blew right by:




Germany is a way cool place.

2 comments:

Broken Andy said...

Well, if we wanted to we could open up some roads in the US to unlimited speed and they would be EPIC. I see a bunch of progressives having heartburn over that.

Old NFO said...

Yeah, but when the wreck, it's a HELLVA wreck :-0