Re: Not me either

[Geoff Jenkins <jenkinsg@pilot.msu.edu>]

At 12:48 PM 10/21/98 -0400, QSHIPQ@aol.com wrote:
> Who's gonna get in trouble first, the confident quattro owner, or
>the respectful BMW driver.  

Hilarious wit. Oh, no, you're serious. Scott, I'll grant some of your
points, but if you're suggesting that the average A4 driver is
overconfident relative to the "respectful" M3 driver, you must know a
_very_ unusual bunch of M3 owners. 

Maybe Chicago gets good, interested, intelligent M3 owners. I would
certainly expect that most of the people who bring _anything_ to the track
are at least somewhat clued in, but to suggest that there aren't boatloads
of boy-racer M3 drivers out there is just comical.

> How bout putting on a good set of snows? 
> Most quattro buyers don't. 

Nope. And nor do most BMW buyers I see around here. (Michigan). The ones
that _do_, and the ones that go to Steamboat, and the ones that practice
maneouvering may well be able to get everything out of their car (which is
a lot). But they hardly count as a majority of M3 owners or BMW owners in
general. 

For the more average driver, perhaps more enthusiastic than most, perhaps
with a track day or two under his belt, but still very much able to make
mistakes, the _same_ mistake on snow will generally be more easily
recovered in a Q than an M. If you're going beyond that, to say that the Q
driver gets overconfident and makes a _bigger_ mistake than the M, then
you're no longer dealing  with equivalent drivers and driving habits. At
that point it's hardly the Q's fault that its owner doesn't understand what
he's doing.

"You can make something Fool-proof, but you can't make it Bloody Fool-proof"

Geoff