Nurburgring

After an accident at the Nürburgring Nordschleife claimed the life of a spectator, speed limits were imposed on three sections of the famous racing circuit. The owners of the track have announced that those speed limits are now being lifted.

Another of the car brands that folks in Europe can get hands on that we can’t here in the US is Renault. Most of their car’s are pretty boring, so we don’t lament that fact much.

The Camaro ZL1 is a cool car built for the track, but I have never been a big fan of that car. The problem with any forced induction car for road racing work is that when they get hot, you lose power.

The first time I ever drove a BMW M car at the track was a bit of a revelation for me. I never really liked BMW until that spin around the track in a late model M3 with a V8 and flappy paddle gearbox.

Earlier this month, I talked a bit about a beat up little yellow Mazda Miata that some guys had purchased for 1000 Euros (~$1125 USD), dubbed the RingBanana. Their objective was to make the car hit a 9:00 flat time on the Nürburgring, with as little money invested as possible.

Given the fact that my daily driver is a Jaguar F-Type, you might say I’ve got a bit of a bias towards this instant classic British sports car. And in the two years since Jaguar first released the F-Type, it’s continued to up its game, adding all-wheel drive, electric power steering, torque vectoring, and even offering a manual transmission model for purists.

With its supercharged V6 engine cranking 450 horsepower, and featherweight aluminum/composite construction, the open cockpit Lotus 3-Eleven clocks a 0-60 time below three seconds with a top speed of 180 miles per hour. That’s fast, as in the fastest street-legal Lotus ever built.

I used to have a 1994 MX-5 Miata, known as the NA version to Miata geeks. It was an ugly, caged, turbo race car, with silly pop-up headlights. The reactions were the same at the track, lifted eyebrows and chuckles.

I don’t know about you, but I can watch Shaguars (as Austin Powers says), or… Jaguars race around a track all day. Especially when it’s the F-Type going all-out on the Nürburgring. Thanks to YouTuber cvdzijden, we have this video of F-Type prototypes tackling the storied German track.

While I’d like to race around the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife in something fast, like maybe an AMG GT S or a Ferrari 488, it seems you can actually drive the track in just about any vehicle you want.

We all know that F1 drivers all have an expiration date. Driving cars with that kind of performance is a young man’s game and the drivers eventually lose enough steps that they can’t be competitive any longer.

Nissan’s awesome GT-R NISMO is an incredible street-ready performance-tuned racer which was able to set a Nürburgring lap time of just 7:08.69 – record time for a production car. But Nissan isn’t resting on its success, bringing the successor to the 2015 Tokyo Auto Salon: the 2015 Nissan GT-R NISMO fitted with the N-Attack Package.

The new BMW M4 looks to be an impressive performance coupe both on and off the track. We wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of buyers took advantage of BMW’s European delivery program and, while they were waiting for their new BMW to roll off the line, they pay a visit to Nürburg for a few laps of one of the most vaunted circuits in the world, the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

While there’s little chance we’ll see Renault cars sold in the U.S. any time soon, cars like the Renault Megane 275 Trophy make us wish they would reconsider. This incredible little hot hatch has demonstrated its aplomb, its stripped down track variant, the 275 Trophy-R turned in the top front-wheel drive Nurburgring time – just 7 minutes 54.36 seconds, and frankly the car just looks like a ton of fun.

Driver Fredrik Sørlie took on the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife, with its unforgiving 13 miles of twists, turns and hills and had the nerve to drift what seems to be every one of the circuit’s 70+ corners while driving a Toyota Cressida.