2001-07-20..23 - DE - Germany Meeting

Friday 20th July 2001 :

5.00, Wake up !! Time to drive to Pforzheim...

We raced an Audi A8, at about 230km/h but that was only the beginning...

9.30, Meeting in Pforzheim West..

We met Stefan Crneli , Robert Schaefer and Andreas Miehe
First surprise of the day, Andreas told me that Mikael Borgstrom comes from Sweden and that we will meet him on the afternoon
That was a good news as driving along to Munich was oftenly only at 120-130km/h, which wasn't exactly our kind of speed (that changed with Mikael hopefully)






13.30,BMW Factory : Dingolfing

Racing the new 745i on the autobahn at 240km/h, hmmm, fun begins ....
Meeting Mikael Borgstrom, and visited BMW Factory
All was in German which didn't helped us but only by seeing the whole thing, that was ok
We discovered that Porsches cars are also made in BMW Factory maybe some of you knew that already
We saw the new 7 series / E65 production factory, I still prefer the design of the E38, but that's my own advice...
Visited the completed production factory of 5 series / E39 , discovered that the ///M5 are assembled on the same production line




17.00, Driving towards a restaurant...

I went in Mikael Borgstrom Csi to show him where our 8 series were parked, he did a nice spinning in the parking, smashing his frontspoiler (which was the fourth time)
Then we drove to Dingolfing City to find something to eat (as we were starving to death...)
After eating in a nice restaurant, we went back to the parking lot where we managed to line up the cars two blacks - one white - two calypsored
We even stopped an Estoril blue 850Ci on the way, which belongs to Florian Pfaffenberger, now a member of ClubE31.net
Then we drove back to Munchen to find an hotel with garage
(which was a problem as Robert & Mikael 8 series didn't manage to park because of the entry, they would have smashed their spoilers because of their low suspensions)

Saturday 21th July 2001

8.30, Driving to BMW Museum

We drove to BMW Main Building and visited the BMW Museum
Which was for me a little "old" because the last cars presented there were the 750 E32, and a 4 door prototype before the launch of the E31
And they kept old computers,etc...
We bought several posters, postcards there ( of course of 8 series ),
Mikael wanted to buy a book on the 850, unfortunately it was the last one and they didn't want to sale it to him, same thing for me with a red 850 toy






13.00, Washing the cars

As we wanted to go to a big meeting of bmw 8 series, we had to wash the cars
Because we had just done a race on the unlimited autobahn : Mikael, driving at 270km/h followed by four 8 series at 250 km/h
This was really the low flying 8 series train
Unfortunately Mikael wasn't able to stay because of this work, he drove to sweden at 15.00
We finally arrived at the meeting at about 17.30, showing nice modified bmws, including two 8 series, unfortunately one of them was leaving the meeting when we arrived
We found a really nice hotel in the evening, eat there and had a good sleep before the day that was one of the funniest (sorry Mikael)

Sunday 22th July 2001

10.00, Driving along a german lake

Really sunny day, was really great, we drove along german country side, around a nice lake, all windows opened, sound at maximum
We eat there then we went on the way back home
Driving at 120-130km/h, which was really boring....I saw a dark green coupe on the side, told my brother that a gorgeous coupe will pass us soon...
And that happened, first we recognised the front of a Mercedes coupe, thought it was the CL500 or CL600
But that wasn't !
The coupe passed us, we realised it was the new Mercedes SL coupe prototype, Steptronic in Sport Mode, acceleration maximum
We were at the end of the 8 series train, so the other owners saw the prototype driving fast and WE, chasing it, they decided to follow us
The chase began : One Mercedes prototype followed by four 8 series, all at about 250 km/h
We first forced it to slow down, we took the pictures first, then we were stuck in traffic so we let the other owners passed us to take some shoots
We finnaly blocked the SL between three 8 series, laughing out loud and taking some shoots as we had all our cameras ready...
We stopped , laughing of our "kill" of the new SL...then it was the moment of saying goodbye
But the meeting wasn't for us, we drove alone to Huttisheim, to find Hamann Motorsport as we wanted to see a csi fully prepared and wanted to buy a new front spoiler
We arrived on Sunday Evening there, was really hard to find, in the middle of nowhere
But it was here : a nice red 850 Csi fully tuned Hamann Motorsport , 6.1liter, 430hp, Front & Rear spoilers, exhasut system, side skirts, special rear wing, 3 spokes steering wheel,etc...
We saw Mr Hamann, driving with his Bentley coupe, he told us it was opened on Monday, so all we had to do was to find an hotel and wait till next morning
We found a nice hotel in Laupheim : www.laupheimer-hof.de, if we want to do another meeting in Germany, this could be a good choice

Monday 23th July 2001

9.00, Visiting Hamann-Motorsport

Featuring great looking cars, all the best mofified Hamann ferraris and bmws, with the personal cars of Richard Hamann.
Unfortinately the frontspoiler is now only available with the skirt, which we didn't want, so we gave up the idea of the Hamann Frontspoiler
We finally leaved Hamann at about 11.00, and drove back to Dijon....Home Sweet home