Obtaining the pinnacle of my driving life
Hi all,
As I’m fairly new here I thought about giving you guys a short summary of my driving life in anticipation of introducing my newest ride.
I’ve been crazy about cars all my life – starting as a young boy from peering through the windshield from the backseat on the way to the south of France for 8 hours straight. I just couldn’t close my eyes for a second, I found it truly fascinating. In those days one could still push the pedal down without worrying too much about our policing friends waiting behind every corner, so I stared at the speedo climbing to 180 whilst my mother and sister were still prudently awake, until they were vast asleep and the speeds went even higher. I think at that time, cruising at triple digit km/h speeds with a 2 in front meant the world to me. Speed has and will always be a fascinating thing to me.
Then, after a few fairly crappy cars I finally obtained the financial capability to afford on of my Vmax dreams, an Audi RS6 Avant. I had it tuned to about 525 HP and of course, had the limiter removed. Perhaps my age wasn’t all that suitable for that power at the time (I’m still surprised I survived those years) but boy it was fun…I remember a trip where I averaged 251km/h (and on a less enjoyable note, 42l/100km) for a full tank. The car did it all without any sign of fatigue, great stuff and it will remain on of my all-time V8 favorites.
A few years on I got seriously hooked on the Nordschleife and needed something suitable for it next to my daily drive. Something relatively cheap & light, something that didn’t need thousands of mods and that would forgive a few mistakes here and there without killing me instantly. Not that many alternatives were available, but the R26.R from Renault seemed just perfect. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) the most beautiful creation on the road (I always feel the French stopped designing after they finished the front end), but from a driving perspective it is one of the best FWD cars ever made. The fun one can have with it is simply astonishing, and it ticked all the boxes: cheap, light, forgiving and a 100% ready package to hit the track. It was fast too! There was quite little competition on the Nordschleife when driven hard, and a time of 07:53 BTG is the fastest I obtained.
After about 170 laps in the thing, I started to look for a new car to further improve my driving capabilities, and of course the only way to go was RWD. I wanted something special too, hence the M3 CSL came into sight. I found a good one at my dealer in Switzerland, sold the R26.R, signed the papers and went driving. Fascinating, the change in attitude you need to go from FWD to RWD. You can’t hoon it around without experience, you need to feed it into corners and above all – pay damn good attention. Considering that in the RWD line the M3 CSL is still fairly easy to drive , I knew I had quite a lot of work ahead. Slowly I got accustomed to it, using trackdays and driftdays to further enhance my driving abilities. As of today, I am still learning – even got an E36 328i next to it so that I can drift around corners without worrying too much about financial loss.
Then some time ago, I started to look for an additional ride to complete the garage. The M3 CSL will stay anyway since values seem to be appreciating by the day.
As I was still longing for a V8 burble I considered the CLK63 Black Series. However, after checking out a few I dropped the idea due to too many downsides. The gearbox, the offset steering…my love for it slowly eased away. NEVER start it up though since you’ll instantly forget about all the downsides! The sound is incredibly good – I dare to say probably the best V8 sound available.
As the news broke out about the 991 GT3 fires, and as my colleague (member Porker) was looking at 997 GT3RS’s, my attention was drawn to them as well. I preferred a low mileage gen1 since I consider them to be a bit more reliable and esthetically complete, and colorwise it just had to be a kermit. Luckily I found one in Switzerland with about 10K on the clock in the color of my choice – didn’t hesitate a second, signed the papers and am about to pick it up coming Saturday. Then I’ll join Member Porker with his new ride for a dash through the Vosges Mountains in France, so it is going to be a loooong week of waiting ahead!
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M3 CSL / Alpina D3 Bi-Turbo Touring / RS2 Avant / GT3RS Kermit
Your Kermit looks fantastic - IMO the most beautiful RS of the watercooled era 
Looking forward to see this beauty in its natural habitat in the Eifel 
@ Frank: orange ??? I must have missed a thread or two.....I can only imagine one car in orange suiting your hobby.....
: Porsche 997 GT3 Arctic/Black
