A) To enjoy them on public roads at slightly extra-legal speeds, while looking fabulous when I want to cruise through town.

B) To race at sanctioned road courses and tight autocrosses.

Neither of these comes close to the Nurburgring, so I really don’t give a crap about it.

A truer statement was never made…but what a rush!!

As for the track times, it is devolving into a pissing match, but they do have value in terms of designing a good suspension. Besides, advertisers needed something new to take the place of “torsional rigidity”, Cd’s, etc. Certainly the 0-60 figure is out, at least for bread and butter appliances…MPG’s are back, though…love the never ending cycle of history..

It could be something like:

The Ring
Laguna Seca
Suzuka

I think comparing the Ring times of the Lexus LF-whatever, the BMW M-whatever, and the Ferrari F-whatever is more meaningful than watching Ferrari, BMW, and Toyota duke it out in Formula 1.

It’s not the Green Hell itself that I care about. I just like having some kind of common basis for comparison.

I mean, hell, without ‘Ring times I would have to rely solely on Top Gear Power Laps to gauge cars’ relative performance!

My bad

13-miles

Am fortunate to have driven 5 laps of the Nürburgring in a E36 328i plus a passenger lap in Cayman S. The owner of the Cayman modified the suspension but it was slower then stock so modified was removed until he could come up with Plan B.

I was a little apprehensive that the ‘ring would not be all it is cracked up to be but 5 seconds of looking at Pflanzgarten was all it took to put that notion to bed. As I get over the rush of seeing the Nürburgring for the first time the Ring Mini came flying thru Pflanzgarten with its tires squealing almost as loudly as its B16A1 engine was screaming, awesome. It is impossible to over sell the ‘ring, do not pass up the opportunity to visit the ring, you will not be disappointed.

Thousands of laps in GT4 prepared me not getting lost but it doesn’t prepare one for the bumps or elevation changes.

It’s 11.7 miles from Bridge to Gantry which are the landmarks the littles use to time their laps during touristenfahrten. My best lap was 9:50 while Sabine can do 10:08 in a Transit van.

Youtube lap of a busy day.

Youtube lap of Kurosawa driving 2000 Prototype. 7:45 BTG

A Canadian who shipped his 997 GT3RS to Germany to drive it on the ‘ring.

I would be totally behind that. This is one reason why I actually consider the Top Gear Power Lap times to hold more weight than Nurburgring times. While the Top Gear track is completely flat, at least it’s more scientific than random drivers going around the ‘Ring.

Just have Sabine Schmitz do all the driving, then.

Why would I despair!!!!! I’m proud to see an American car hold the record!

Funny, I was earlier today involved in an e-mail discussion about ACM (air-combat maneuvering, the three-dimensional equivalent of driving the Nurburgring) with a very opinionated and initially knowledgeable person–he knew all the numbers–who, it ultimately turned out, had never flown a real airplane, much less a fighter aircraft, in his life.

He plays flight-sim games of great complexity, while I fly actual airplanes, full-size, with real engines, actual stick forces and G loadings, that make you sweat and get a headache and feel like scheiss after rat-racing.

So tell me again about “driving” the Nurburgring?

Oh, as as for whether or not I care about the ‘Ring, it has at least become a useful metric for the comparison of high-performance cars, thanks to the recent widespread fascination with it–probably generally attributable to Cadillac, which originally took the CTS there and greatly widened what had been a European concept.

Remember when we used to argue whether the Pontiac GTO was better than the Ferrari GTO? Wouldn’t happen today.

It’s only a matter of time until a test driver or engineer will have a fatal crash trying to best the ‘ring time of a rival manufacturer. After that most car companies will disassociate themselves with hot ring laps.

I say do it for every car, (minivans included,) but as someone already suggested, it would be cool to see the MPG on the run as well. It would certainly serve to highlight the importance of weight, since light cars would turn in low times and decent (relative) mileage.