Today was German Car day at Brooklands. Sadly, the apathy of the Porksters group continues and I could only persuade one other person from the group to come along. I padded it out with another from the Boxa forum and another from the PPCC club for a grand total of 4 - oh well...
I suppose one advantage of this small group was the superb location we were allocated, right outside the famous clubhouse, opposite the beautiful Napier Railton barn:
The Napier is in that green building in the background but my camera wasn't good enough to sort out the contrast.
The rest of the meet was very good, although surprisingly few Porsches - I counted only about 5 other Boxsters and a similar number of 911s; quite strange. There were a huge number of beemers, Audis and Mercs, as expected (apologies for the lack of pictures), including the huge group of C63s my son is a member of - or should I say, was!
Yup, after 18 months of ownership (a record for him), the thunderous C63 is sold and it all happened within 12 hours; my son told me on Saturday morning that he had decided to sell, partly because of the cost of the thing but also because the Nurburgring has given him a taste for the track and the C63 can't get on any tracks because of the noise. So, he spent Saturday searching, found what he wanted, drove to Bournemouth (2 hours away) and did the deal! He doesn't hang about, my son...
So what's he got, I hear you say? A sensible-sounding BMW M4, completely stock, 425bhp. I thought, "OK, that's better than the mental, C63", right? Nope...
The C63 has a rep as an animal because of its headline 6.3 litre engine and it is - but it's NA, so all the power comes in high up the rev range - 0-60 is 4.3s which is obviously quick BUT the M4 is 3.8s. It has 2 turbos, a small one for low revs, a bigger one at higher revs, no turbo lag at all and has more torque and less weight than the C63. Because of those turbos, all that torque is available at 1k revs - the thing spins it's wheels in the first 3 gears in the dry! It is absolutely nuts and scary as hell as a passenger as it crabs sideways up the road - far worse than the C63 ever was. I now understand all those YT videos of people crashing in a straight line. My son, however, seems to have it under perfect control after less than a day with the thing and is ecstatic...hopefully, he won't wrap it round a tree.
It has occurred to me that my recent wobbles with Barry is because of the new brake pads because thats when it started - are the fronts now much better than the rear (although same EBC pads) and the weight transfer is unsettling the car? Because it's worst as I brake hard for corners....hmm...maybe in combination with the new rear tyres?
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