Would suit:
Angry businessmen, skinny women.
Price:
£80 755 (about R1-million).
Maximum speed:
Limited to 250km/h, 0.100km/h 4.7sec.
Combined fuel economy:
14.9 litres/100km.
I've not always been very kind about BMW owners. While their cars are usually hard to fault - apart from the 1-Series, of course - they seem to be driven by angry businessmen and skinny women. In a rash moment in one piece, I may actually have branded all BMW drivers as "bad people".
That was a stupid thing to say, for all sorts of reasons, not least because I used to own a BMW.
My model had little in common with the new BMW M6 I tried this week, however. It was an old crock that had escaped from a scrapyard under cover of darkness and spent some time foraging in the woods before being trapped by the second-hand car dealer who sold it to me.
It went very, very slowly. Because it had an iffy carburettor and dodgy brakes, it did this even when I would have preferred it to have stopped, so I often had to plan ahead to ensure there would be a bollard or wall to bring me to a halt, at which point I would jump out, lift the bonnet and fiddle with the carburettor until the engine died.
Visits to marinas were a no-no.
If the throttle were to stick open on an M6 - assuming it had something as rudimentary as a throttle - it would probably keep going until the petrol ran out. This is a mighty thunder-hammer of a car, not only unimaginably fast but very big and heavy as well.
There would be M6-shaped holes in buildings and walls in a straight line from here to, well, not very far actually. On several occasions, the dashboard told me I was burning petroleum at a rate of 40 litres/100km, which made even me feel a little guilty. But, I mused, as I pumped my family's weekly food budget into the tank, perhaps its horrendous thirst and piddling 70-litre tank were some kind of safety feature: in the event of the driver falling asleep with the cruise control on, damage minimised.
Actually, heart failure would be a more likely scenario involving a runaway M6. The technological trickle-down from Formula 1 to road cars is usually overstated - mostly by advertising copywriters - but the five-litre V10 that powers the M6 owes more than usual to BMW's synergy (as they most likely call it) with Williams, not least its electrifying shriek and super-quick, seven-speed paddle-shift gearshift.
Press the magic "M" button and those shift times are tightened even further, the throttle response is quicker, the dampers become firmer and the traction control lets you scare yourself a little more than is strictly necessary. The M6 is Ferrari-quick in a straight line.
Despite its considerable bulk, and thanks, in part, to those steamroller rear tyres, it corners almost as quickly too - faster, certainly, than an M5, which carries an extra two doors and is 50kg heavier than its rakish two-door sibling.
It's intoxicating
But is the M6 worth £18 000 (about R225 000) more than the M5, bearing in mind it is less practical and will probably depreciate more? I suspect only a small minority of bad-tempered, chippy millionaires will be inclined to think so (although, compared to the Bentley Continental GT, it's a bargain), but nevertheless I found it intoxicating.
"You're fired!" I hollered at my two-year-old as he spilt Ribena on the carpet, a day after the M6 arrived. Then I commanded my wife to "pull her finger out" when unpacking the dishwasher.
Funny how you bruise so much more easily as you get older... - The Independent, London