Originally Posted by
tfar
Glad you agree with my thesis. The fact that the roads are better also has the nice effect that one can drive faster while still being relatively safe. I once tried to reach the speed limiter on my car somewhere in the desert between Texas and Arizona on a perfectly straight street. At 144mph (231 km/h) I chickened out; the car was too hard to control. The worst thing though was braking. Because the surface was rough when I stepped on the brakes the wheel was really hard to control. This was in a 2006 Pontiac GTO, a Holden Monaro with the Corvette LS2 6ltr 400hp motor, for the gearheads among you. It would be so nice to have this car in Germany, but then again, we don't have those deserted long roads.
The choice of car could have something to do with the wobbly feeling... that's the sort of car that gets a little... ahem... makeover in Bremerhaven (the port that handles most car imports into Germany) before the vehicle is released into an environment where it is actually legal to drive the car at speed. Large parts of A 3, A 63 to Kaiserslautern, A 62, A 60 to Belgium and A 48 aren't much better than your average interstate, and not all of them have speed limits (only the truly dire bits do). But your average BMW, or German-built Ford for that matter, do just fine. And they would on the I-10.