What's your fastest drive?
Posted by Michael Harvey at 10:00AM on Friday 13 April, 2007 11 Comments
OK, no one's looking... what's the fastest you've ever driven? I reckon I achieved my personal best in a Clio Williams (or was it a 172?) way back when that car was new.
Or it might have been the previous gen Merc CL when that car was introduced to the world.
Or even - and this was back in the Eighties - when Rover introduced the 600, and the mag I worked on at the time had taken that car, a bunch of its rivals and the Honda Accord on which it was based to Mull.
We'd spent too long taking photos and it was touch-and-go whether we'd make the ferry. There was just enough time, just enough light, just enough gaps in the traffic to give us a chance of making it.
I've never travelled faster, although I'm not sure our convoy ever actually even broke the speed limit. My point being 'fast' is not about vmax or lap times or even relative speed A-B. It's about context, about the way a car makes you feel.
That's why you'll not find a Bugatti Veyron at the head of our 100 Fastest Cars list in this month's edition of Top Gear magazine, but you'll find a disproportionate amount of space dedicated to just three cars - lightweight versions of the 911, the Gallardo and the V8 Vantage.
With the exception of the Vantage which, to be honest, sounds like a bit of a nightmare, each is devoted not just to shaving seconds off a split time or deleting incremental 10ths from a top speed but to intensifying the experience of driving.
They're fast but that ain't really the point, which is the point. And I like that. Oh hell, I had as many supercar posters on my wall as you did as a kid, but let's face it, the only place the 200mph club really still has any credibility left is the Middle East and we all know that means no credibility.
So, just as we've all learned to realise that a car's cool is something only you can judge, so too is its performance. And I'll stop there before I talk myself out of a job.
You can read our full run-down of the 100 fastest cars in this month's mag, but we want your suggestions as well. What was your fastest drive? We don't care if it's a track-honed Caterham or a rusty old Nova. It's all about the way it makes you feel.
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I once drove my family from London to the north of Italy in a Rover SD1.
It might have taken the best part of 3 days, and it certainly could've been done quicker by other cars, but it was the experience that mattered and putting my new car through its paces.
Sailing down the autobahns, through the forests of Germany, and across the mountains into Italy was an unforgettable journey.
I'd driven tatty little Metro's and cast-off cars all my life and was desperate to get into something a little more satisfying - I'd have settled for anything with more than a full litre of engine!
When my new job's payrise kicked in (and still at least 10 grand short of an Evo or similar) I test drove a 1-year-old MG ZS 2.5l V6 down the three miles of motorway from the dealer to the next junction.
I bought the car that day and spent two happy years skirting the lines of legality up and down the UK's road networks.
But nothing I did and nothing I have driven since has equalled the first feeling of hurtling up the M66 sliproad like a jet-fighter pilot.
Some years ago, I had to attend a meeting at the Richmond Hill Hotel in Surrey.
So one very dark, wet and windy February morning I set off in my Rover 820 turbo. The car seemed to fly that day, settling down on its haunches as it ate up the miles. There was no fuss, or hairy moments, just an immensely satisfying and determined press-on speed.
The journey from South Devon took little more than 3 hours and I arrived feeling exhilarated rather than stressed.
On the return journey, the clutch started to slip as I drove through Honiton and the car limped the final 40 miles home. Rovers eh!
Having had my dependable '96 VW Passat TDI come to the end of its economic life at 200,000 miles last year, I had to downsize to a left hooker banger here in Switzerland.
But what a car, a '95 Renault Twingo, back to basics fun machine, 55bhp, no power steering, no servo breaks and an absolute hoot to drive.
I have 50 miles of whindy country roads and autoroute on my daily commute to Geneva and it's just fab. I can't help grinning every time I get out of the car as it's so much fun to drive.
I've been in the Bugatti EB110 and in the Corvette Z06, but I think the fastest, maddest, reckless things i've done in car were driving my mother's Fiat 600 or my first car, a glorious Citroen AX Ten.
It seems, the better car you drive the more you expect from it and at the end of the trip you think "fast, yes, but..." while from a tiny useless city car you don't expect anything and in the end you'll find more than you think and paid for.
When I finally got my hands on my Ford Puma, I couldn't believe how good it was to drive. I'd had a crappy 1.2 Corsa ls 18 months beforehand, so getting into a 1.7 Puma was a bit different.
I've never driven something that feels so alive, and it's so happy to sit on the 7000rpm red line all day in 3rd gear. It's an amazing little car, especially when you get it on some tight and twisty back roads.
A couple of years back I drove my E39 523i touring in 8 hrs 18 mins from Rotterdam, Holland to Cannes, France on the Cote d'Azur, a distance of about 900 mlies.
Now keep in mind this was before the French started their rigourous crusade against speeding but stil.
I've never been able to top that average, not even in with my current BMW E60 M5, which is much faster but has the drawback of having to refuel every 300 miles or so. So.. there yo have it.. nothing i ever drove has given me a better average speed than my old 523i. Still thinking about having a crack at it with a 535d on a sundaymorning very very early,, oh yes.. and a radardetector 2...
I'm going to sound a bit of a philistine here BUT, my Clio diesel has probably given us our best drives. Ok, I've had big BM's and some V8 cars but leaving Spain after breakfast and getting home to Swansea early the next morning is etched in my memory as a classic 'mile muncher'.
The journey down to Spain will live with me forever for more worthwhile reasons. Watching the sun come up in the early hours with Pink Floyd wafting quietly through the car (lest it wake my family, )while catching glimpses of the deep blue Atlantic coast off Biaritz to my right, with the car sitting at a business-like 100mph for hour after hour... good times.
Being an 18 year old in 1988 and discovering that cars like the Alfasud exsisted.
After seeing it in Auto mart, the wife of the owner trusted a couple of us to take it out on a drive. To realise that cars actually made sounds from the exhaust and engine that could make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up was a brilliant feeling.
It also had a level of handling that was light years away from the Escort Mk2's that we all drove.
When we took the car back to the owner's wife, it was overheating and very tired,and we told her it wasn't really what we were looking for.
My Vectra would leave it for dead now - but will also bore you to death at the same time.
A time long ago, when Mr Gatsonides was still just a rally driver and cameras hadn't been invented, I was in a land far away, well Wales actually.
I had to deliver a small load of steel sheets, about half a ton, on a well secured pallet in a 3-metre long wheelbase Transit van.
Excellent power for the time, very low centre of gravity, but high enough to see over cars and hedges. I drove from Chepstow to Merthyr Tydfil via the old Heads of the Valley road before the M4 was invented. Absolutely the best drive of my life ever, and I have done several historic rallies in minis and escorts, and now drive an Impreza road car.
But you just couldn't beat that trip for BIG GRIN factor, it must have been good, I remember almost every detail still, nearly 40 years later.
A bit of a cheat, but the fastest I have ever felt in a car was when I was a small boy, being driven by my dad at huge speed down a road on a steep hill in a 1.8 Vauxhall Calibre.
It was exhilarating enough until upon reaching the bottom where a small humpback bridge popped up over a stream approached.
The calibre proceeded to rocket over it, gaining serious altitude on the way, until connecting once more with the road with an almighty metalic "THUD"!!.
Many years later when I got my own car, I returned to that road and found it was no longer there - a very special memory for me.