As you'll know if you've been reading Dale's Ringside Seat updates from Germany, life at the Nurburgring has more or less been on hold waiting for the
snow to clear
Mountune Focus ST looks tasty
It's meant cancelled races, closed public sessions and a huge dip in income for the businesses that depend on the above. The manufacturers have been feeling the pinch too - a closed track, be it for snow or painting out
giant penises
- means no testing for the prototypes that pound the track many weekdays on essential shakedown sessions.
So with the sun out, the track open at last, and the manufacturers in town, Dale had a very fruitful day lurking by the Karusell with his camera.
What did he snap, then? Well, the German marques are having to share space with an increasingly diverse and international crowd. In other words, Lambos duelling with Ferraris, Camaros shaking the Eifel pines with thunderous V8s and hot Kias literally chasing down Golf GTIs. And a load of BMWs, which we'll deal with in a standalone story.
F12 only managed one lap before ... issues
The Camaro
is an interesting one, Dale reporting that it sounds incredible, with a very raw, crackling V8 soundtrack that would support suspicions this is the highly tuned,
normally aspirated Z/28
as revealed a few weeks back in New York. If so, though, why the camo? Who knows, but maybe they'd expected to get out on track before the show and had it disguised ready. And it's certainly possible that Chevy has its sights set on bettering the supercharged
ZL1's 7:41 lap time
And the Italian exotics? As you'll hear from the video the Lambo's job seemed mainly to leave very expensive divots in the concrete at the Karusell, while the F12 did one fast lap and then one slow one in limp mode with the hazards on, which can again be seen in the video (complete with sniggering Germans just out of shot).
The car industry, expressed in one photo
Kia Cee'd GT
Golf R
is an amusing analogy for that car's showroom ambitions, even if the 204hp Kia is going to struggle holding on to the
220hp Golf GTI
, let alone the more powerful R. Expect an
S3-matching
300hp for the Mk7 R, at least. And, one can speculate, hotter Kias to keep pace. Those weren't the only hot hatches out there, mind - Mountune was busily testing its upgraded
Focus ST
, a full review of which we're hoping to bring you soon.