Playing With Fire: Test Driving Two of The World's Fastest Cars

by Eric Anderson

There are some exotic automobiles today so far removed from what Gottlieb Daimler ever envisaged they almost defy the concept a car should make sense. Yet two of the most beautiful and exciting cars in the world need no defending. Admirers surround them anywhere they park, staring in awe, peering inside, and, if nobody's watching, touching the forbidden fruit.

The awesome BMW M1

The BMW M1 could only be German. It has a typical Teutonic efficiency about it. Squatting on the pavement, hunched up, with a high back and a low front, it exudes mechanical perfection. The technical excellence is so obvious at first glance that it almost distracts from the astounding performance.

Jochen Neerpasch, the force behind the M1, always said his intent was "to build a normal car, but normal at a higher speed than other cars."

The M1 is not normal. It's a glorious example of what can be produced when engineering brilliance is backed by a manufacturer's enthusiasm that makes cost no object. You don't really road-test cars like the M1. You simply take a big breath, turn the key, and drive away in something that costs a bit more than your net worth hoping you won't damage anything.

The M1 is comfortable-the Recaro bucket seats are so laid back, I feel I might be on a psychiatrist's couch. Maybe that's where I should be, taking an M1 costing $100,000 out on the Autobahn on an Easter Sunday.

My hair is rising from my scalp and sticking uncomfortably to the low roof-not because of electrostatic force, but be cause of fear. So low is the roofline and so high the back that visibility is rather poor, except in front. But in front is, of course, where I need it. It's not likely that anything will come up behind an M1-the car itself is speed personified.

I'm in orbit within seconds. The car completely takes over the Autobahn. Other traffic scampers from me, taking national pride in letting me by. Although only 430 M1's were ever built, the car is instantly recognized and, ahead of you, small boys in the backs of station wagons turn and tell Dad to move over for the flagship of Germany.

The needles spin around the gages. The lanes empty before me. Blurred, big-eyed faces in other cars, blurred thumbs-up signs from rear seats, blurred road signs, and blurred treetops all flash past. It's as if everything around me had suddenly been glued to the planet, and I alone had been set free in space.

The speedometer steadies on 235 kph. My brain begins a slow calculation: 235... divide by 10--23.5... multiply by 6--141. Yipes! 141 miles per hour! Gosh, what if it's divide by 6 and multiply by 10? And what did the book mean when it stated that the cornering ability of this car is greater than the centrifugal force of the earth? And what did Herr Schimpke mean when he said that there is no speed limit for cars of this kind of power on the Autobahn, but under certain conditions of negligent driving, insurance might be invalidated at speeds over 130 mph? And what if...

I swing to an off ramp-almost unaware of my exit speed. The M1 sweeps round the curves, handling better than anything I've ever driven before -- better even than the Lotus Esprit, a previous passion. I gently try the brakes and almost go through the windshield.

Easing back into the Easter traffic heading for Munich, I drive past the Olympic Stadium and return to reality. The car purrs along, content to have had yet another magic moment on one of the world's finest highways among some of the world's fastest drivers.

A Frightening Ferrari

German drivers are certainly different from Italian drivers, who flutter along like butterflies and suddenly accelerate through a nonexistent gap like a hornet.

I swing my Lancia Gamma off the highway at Modena and cruise the streets looking for a cafe called Montana, where Pietro de Franchi, my interpreter, likes to take American journalists. There, Signor Morini, who used to work lovingly on Ferrari engines, now gives the same care to his prosciutto pasta. I decline the offer of the local wine -- I'll need all my wits for the Ferrari Mondial 8 and the pista di Fiorano.

Fiorano, Ferrari's test track, lies before me an hour later. The 1.8-mile course has 14 corners, the worst with a radius of only 44 feet, yet Paolo Guidetti, the test driver demonstrating the car before me, is averaging 100 mph around the track and hits 170 mph at the end of the long straightaway.

That seems awfully fast. The black skid marks on the track seem awfully long, and suddenly the sfogliata in my stomach seems awfully heavy. I look up, because those around me have suddenly become silent. Enzo Ferrari has appeared. I smile, confidently I hope, at the tall 83-year-old figure who is reputed to know everything that happens at his factory. Was that a nod I discerned?

Before I realize what is happening, il Commendatore has disappeared back into his car, and I am now alone with the latest Ferrari-apparently the first American to be allowed to drive it.

Guidetti grins at me and hands over the keys. He demonstrates the car, indicates the apex for each corner, and even shows me what will be most expensive if I hit it on the electronically monitored track.

The car is so new that the seats are still covered in plastic wrap. I slide in, tearing something-the polyvinyl plastic, I hope. Then I'm off.

All the exotic sports cars are the same. They are not machines. They are snorting, snapping, snarling animals. They growl with excitement as soon as you allow slack on the leash and roar with anger each time you miss a gear.

Thus, the laps are a tangled confusion of whining gears and screeching tires, punctuated by a dust-swirling, gravel-scattering realization that the car skidding below me is the first Ferrari made in which the rear end of the chassis frame carries engine, gearbox, and suspension in one complete separate unit. Does that mean that if I drive badly, I'll lose my engine? And the remote-controlled computerized television camera hurtling toward me on each bend is a piece of expensive test equipment that will wipe out Fiorano testing for weeks, should I hit it. Does that mean I won't be invited back?

Finally, the beast is quieted. I stagger from the cage, strips of plastic wrap fluttering around me.

What does it all mean? Well, the two rear seats in the Mondial 8 are much roomier than in most other exotic sportscars, so you'll have a place to put your children when you sell your house to buy one.

And you won't have the grass to cut.