When you push a car past 160km/h, the world starts to fizz and can get a little bit frightening. When you go past 240km/h it actually becomes blurred. Almost like you’re trapped in the Delorean in ‘back to the future’. At this sort of speed the tyres and the suspension are reacting to events that happened split seconds ago, and they have not finished reacting before they’re being asked to do deal with the next set of obstacles. The result is an either electrifying or terrifying sensation, depending on weather you’re Michael Shumacher’s apprentice or a seasoned veteran. The latter may not be best when you’re covering 150ft a second.
But once you go past 220km/h it isn’t just the suspension and the tyres you have to worry about.At 100km/h it’s relaxed. At 150km/h it’s a breeze. But at 240km/h you really have to know what you are doing.
You might want to ponder that for a moment. Covering half the lengh of a football pitch, in a second, in a car. And then you might want to think about the braking system. Yes, it’s just that good.
I didn’t care. On a recent drive to Franshoek I desperately wanted to reach the top speed but there wasn’t a long enough stretch where I could make the needle hit more than 200km/h. Where, astonishingly, it felt planted. Totally and utterly rock steady.
Not quiet, though. The engine is a riot and becomes even more furious when you bury your foot into the carpet. At 2500 RPM the car awakens and the roar from the tyres curls the corners of my mouth upward. This machine is brilliant. Utterly, stunningly, mind blowingly, jaw droppingly brilliant.
I would have to say though that in recent years some of the handling fizz has gone. A modern 3-series, for instance, is nowhere near as electrifying as a 3-series from, say, 1984. But that said it’s also less dangerous. You get a small hint of understeer to let you know that maybe you’re going a bit too quickly, and then a little yellow light on the dash to say that underneath it all the traction control system is working its magic on the rear end. In an old Beemer you were still grinning from ear to ear, completely oblivious to any danger, when you hit the tree.
And there’s more to worry about, because although it says 3.5s on the back it doesn’t have a 3.5 litre engine. What you get instead is a 3 litre straight six, which is force-fed its diet of air by two small turbochargers.
On paper this sounds fine. Because they’re small, they don’t take an age to reach operating speed, which means there’s no turbo lag.
But because each one is feeding only three cylinders, you still have loads of power and loads of torque.
This engine is little short of a masterpiece. There’s so much low-down grunt that even the BMW traction control system — a good one normally — is regularly woken from its electronic slumber by the wave of torque.
From behind the wheel of the new BMW Z4, Cape Town is the size of a small coconut. I cannot tell you how fast I crossed it the other day. Because you simply wouldn’t believe me. I also cannot tell you how good this car is. I just don’t have the vocabulary. I just end up stammering and dribbling and talking wide-eyed nonsense. And everyone thinks I’m on drugs.
This car cannot be judged in the same way that we judge other cars. It meets drive-by noise and emission regulations and it can be driven by someone whose only qualification is basic clutch control and depth perception. So technically it is a car. And yet it just isn’t.
