Gumpert Apollo New Lap Record at the 'Grüne Hölle'

Ah, arguing on the internet. Such a fulfilling pastime.

And, arguing about eligibility of Nordschleife lap times too! I can't believe that nobody's yet come in and claimed that a Z06 or GTR could go faster. After all, we've already had the "it's not a production car", "it's not road legal" and "what tyres was it on" cards played.

Let's look at the evidence:
- The Radical was faster.
- The Radical was driven to the track, then driven home again.
- The Apollo was taken to the track in the back of a truck.
- Gumpert felt the need to take two of them.

But at the end of the day, this is a squabble between two cars that few will even see, fewer drive, and how fast those cars go around a ribbon of tarmac in Germany. I'm given to wonder how many people contributing to this thread have even been to the country, let alone the track. (This is a rhetorical musing, don't feel the need to up your post count responding to it)

Probably best that everyone considers the relevance of the subject at hand to their own real life.
 
Who knows? It could be on street-legal R-Compounds... :lol:

PJ-FFL
The SR8 is in a whole different class. It may not qualify as street legal because it may not be "street legal" everywhere in the world. The Apollo qualifies as street legal in all countries, but the SR8 might not because it has, no roof, no airbags and no windshield. About production, how many SR8's do you see on the road? How many do you see at all? You might be lucky to spot one at a track day, but that's about it.
Click to expand...

Airbags are not a road-legality issue. Neither is a roof. Oddly, having a front passenger airbag that doesn't automatically deactivate if a small person is sitting in front, is an issue in the US... one which affects supercar makers like Ferrari.

No US-market vehicle with red turn signals is legal in Europe. No road-legal diesel in Europe is legal in the US without an "AdBlue" system.

Hell. A lot of US-market cars aren't legal in California, at all. But try telling the Nissan faithful that their Sentra SE-R isn't a road-legal production car. Because it isn't in California. :lol: The R34 GT-R isn't road-legal in the US, either... well... it wasn't road-legal till MotoRex did the work of Federalizing it.

I've read of one owner who had a lot of trouble making his McLaren road-legal for the US. Cost him more than most of us will make in our lifetimes.

I've never seen a Ford Transit or Renault Twingo on the road, but I'm assured by my fairy friends that they actually exist. :dopey: Like Giles says... these are both cars hardly any of us will ever drive, let alone see, so drawing artificial lines between them in blind adherence to the marketing myopia of the major manufacturers is kind of pointless.

Great time, nonetheless. Too bad the Apollo Gumpert is more of a thinly-disguised racecar than an actual, daily-driveable roadcar. Of course, as Famine has pointed out, as long as it's road-legal, some poor sod somewhere will find a way to use it every day. :lol:
 
Just found this quote, this must be where the confusion lies.

''Yesterday we reported on the Gumpert Apollo Speed’s record time of 7.11.5 seconds round the infamous Nurburgring in Germany. Today, we hear that the Radical SR8LM has smashed this time with a 6.48 minute lap. At the hands of Michael Vergers, the SR8LM was driven from the factory to the ‘ring and back to the factory again on the same set of Dunlop track tires.

Yesterday’s ‘record’ wasn’t so much of a record for all production cars as a record for hardtop production cars. The SR8LM is more of an open top LeMans racer than a traditional road car, yet it is able to be road registered and therefore qualifies as a production car. It’s this technical detail that Gumpert were getting at yesterday when they failed to mention that the SR8 had already set a faster time of 6.55 minutes.

In our minds, the fact that the Radical was driven from the factory to the track and back again without changing tires makes it credible as the fastest production car to ever lap the ‘ring.

The SR8LM is available at an affordable price of £89,000. It features a 2.8 litre, 455bhp Powertec RPB V8. The time was witnessed and verified by German Magazine Sport Auto and UK Magazine EVO.''
 

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