This will for sure be one of the most memorable car-experiences i had in my life ever.Also luckily guys at ac-schnitzer made the inspection of my 325i 2.8 - 240 ps conversion really quick. Nearly half of the parts in the engine were replaced , it costed some big $$$ , but i think it was worth. If i wanted to sell this car (260 000 km E36 from early 90's) i would get really little money. And this car is pretty special , and it has some sentimental value for me. But they really made it well , also fitted ac-schnitzer 17" ( i decided to buy a new set , because the old ones "had enough"
)
with new tyres. The car was running like new , i drove it home from germany in the morning and then at night went to italy. The road was wet because it had been raining pretty much recently in central europe , so we weren't speeding that much. In austria there were autobahns so we could make it go a little faster (they are restricted to 120 km/h , but you have to watch out for "gendarmerie" vw-vans and it'll probably be ok) Not many interesting cars were going by , expect a porsche turbo racing with some brabus-merc , althoght it was easy for the porsche , but we couldn't keep after them. We killed a S430 from around 120 to 190 , the guy was really suprised and showed us thumbs up (strange acting for a merc-driver , whatever). But s430 isn't really any sports car , it was our 240 hp 325i (2.8 enigne , as said before) manual trans and 279 hp 4.3 V8 in a really heavy car with auto trans. We made it safely to trento where my friend lives in early morning.We slept in his house , and the next day we checked the f360 a little and gone to milano for our business-meet.Nothing too interesting. Then we got back to alessandro's place and had some fun with the spider and his another car , the B10 V8 touring , also cool. After that we went to sleep. We had the test of the 550 maranello in the plan for the first day. My friend and the local ferrari dealer are close friens so we were kind of special treated. After getting up and breakfest we went to the local ferrari dealer for the test of the V12 485 hp beast. We arrived at the local dealer , my friend Alessandro arrived in his modena , and we in the bmw. He (alessandro) also wanted to take his car to the track , but the dealer said it's to fresh and it shouldn't be driven that hard , but the dealership boss who was his friend gave him his 355 challenge for that time. So he went to the track , and we got the 550. It was red with tan interior. We were treaten on special rights as "friends" so we could drive the car ourselves with no time or km limit , we just had to give it back before next day. So we (me and my cousin , that is) left the bmw at the dealership and driven the car on public roads. It was amazing , so much power and tourque , and those pepole smiling to us wherever we were. As we got used to it , we pushed it into the limits when the road was empty. On every stop there were lots of pepole asking us about the car. Unluckily they were speaking italian , so we couldn't talk much with them as they mostly didn't speak english. But this car really turnes heads , forget about any merc or bmw , there's noone who wouldn't at least look at it. And all those beautiful italian girls ...
but we didn't have time for that stuff. We made it to the track , and there we could see how fast it really is. It was a little track , but it was well-designed , a long straight some fast-curves , some sharp corners , some chicanes , 1 u-turn so you could test the car (and yourself) in everything. It wasn't crowded actually there were 5 cars at the track for that time , 2 young guys in alfa 145s , our 550 , alessandro in the 355 challenge and some guys from the porsche dealership testing the 3.6 liter 996 (the newest one , quite nice also , but not when compared to the ferraris
) Everyone was having lots of fun and guys in the 145s always let us go , and there was a really friendly atmosphere. Then it started getting dark , so we had to leave and bring our 550 back to the dealer.When i got in back in my bmw and floored it i was like "is something broken" before i realesed i'm in the "wrong" car. This bm is cool and i love it , but after driving over 2 times more powerful car you feel strange when getting your car back.Then we made it back to trento we made some rounds on the twisty mountain roads in the bmw and the ferrari spider before going to sleep. While we got back in the house of alessandro we talked about cars and drinked wine until early morning. The next day after shower , breakfest etc. we made it to Luigi (the ferrari dealer) , he got a maserati 3200GT for us , you know ferrari-fiat-lancia-maserati all in one family so he just got it there for us. Unfortunatelly alessandro had to make some business that day , so he didn't join us. But he probably has driven the car before , but that's not the point here. This car was cool , but after testing the f550 the day before it seemed kind of slow for us. But this one is at least affordable if i really wanted to have it. The ferrari-engineered 3.2 L Biturbo V8 is a really good engine and it makes super-nice sound. It had a nice-working 6-speed man.trans. In performance it is at least comparable to the M5 in my opinion. I mean the E39. We had a little race with testarossa on local roads , so we weren't going too fast but we could keep up after it on the straights and on corners the car sticked to the ground well.On the track it was easier to control than the overpowered (in my opinion) 550 , in which i had some wipeouts
. But also not that fast. In the evening , after returning the car we was taken to a restaurant that Alessandro told us that it was the best in here. We didn't want to drive 2 cars so Alessandro took us in his B10 V8 touring , and this is a really nice and fast car I must say. The restaurant was good i also have to say. The next day we had a test of the new diablo vt 6.0 , and allessandro didn't know the dealer so we were treaten normally here. So we got some guy from lamborghini who was looking out for the car. It was kind of annoying , but i can understand that you won't give a over 200,000$ car to pepole you don't know. So we arrived in the B10 , because allessandro also wanted to test the lambo. Then i got into the lambo with that guy from lambo dealership , he showed me everything in the car , it was really amazing, especially the 6.0 V12 powerplant , so after checking the car we (me and this lambo guy , forgot his name) headed to alessandro's place , where he and my cousin waited ready in the modena spider , we took it because all of us wanted to drive the lambo , and it had only 2 seats , and one was always ocuppied by the lambo guy. We took the modena becasue if they were going in the b10 which we arrived in the lambo would have to wait to much. First impression after driving the lambo : Torque , torque , tourqe. For calm yet fast driving you could just start form the 2nd gear and then switch right into the 5th. But unluckily it started raining , so we could test if the lambo's awd really works fine where it is supposed to , and also we could check if allessandro's soft top is leaking
. Everyone had really good fun and we were impressed by the car , it's a shame we couldn't push it to the limits due to slippery conditions. But we could on the track we could so we headed there earlier than we thought we would , and what can i say ... lots of sideways action
, thank god we didn't crash this car , the lambo guy was really relaxed , on public roads he let us go well-over the speed-limit and on the track he didn't say nothing about those wipeouts in corners. We thanked him for driving , returned back to alessandro's house and after a not-so-long rest we said goodbye and drove back home.
Oh , because i didn't say it before:
cars driven during the trip:
99 Alpina B10 4.6 touring Alpina blue/black (man.trans)
93 BMW 325i Ac-schnitzer dark blue/white
99 Ferrari 550 maranello red/tan
01 Ferrari 360 F1 spider argento nurburgring(silver) / black
00 Maserati 3200 GT silver/red (man trans)
01 Lamborghini Diablo 6.0 vt awd black/black
It's just too much too write , if you have any questions i'll give you the answers.
P.S Gustav is it the longest post so far?:p
My trip to italy
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