Sabine Schmitz is one of those people you dream of meeting at least once in your lifetime. She’s been called a number of things, from ‘The Fastest Taxi Driver in the World’ to ‘Queen of the Nurburgring’ but overall, she’s just absolutely great at driving. She started her racing days with BMW on the Nurburgring, as a Ring Taxi driver and over the years she probably scared thousands of people senseless while pushing an M5 to the absolute limit.
To us, gearheads, it may seem like the best joy ride in the world but for random people who aren’t as dedicated as us, getting a ride with Sabine must be quite a traumatizing experience. Not everyone’s used to approaching a turn at triple-digit speeds without flinching. That’s what Sabine does though and she’s just brilliant at it, as you can see in the footage below. This is some rather old clip though, shot when the E39 M5 was still being used for Taxi rides on the Ring.
Right behind Sabine there’s a 996-generation Porsche 911 GT3 trying to overtake her. From a performance point of view, the Porsche has the M5 beat. The 996 GT3 had 375 HP at its disposal which is just 25 HP shy of what the BMW M5 had under the hood. However, the Porsche is also a lot lighter, nearly half a ton between the two cars, without including the extra passengers Sabine had to take care of.
Furthermore, you can clearly see she was out to show the customers a good time, drifting the car occasionally, just to get them to smile or clench their buttocks, depending on the individual. Even so, the footage shows great driving from Sabine and just why I’m currently looking for a BMW E39 M5 myself, a brilliant car no matter how you look at it.
“Sabine Schmitz is one of those people you dream of meeting at least once in your lifetime” – I’d rather listen to Kay Burley whinge for 30 mins than to subject me self to her cackle
However will she cope?
All due respect to Sabine, but the Porsche was faster. The Porsche driver asked to pass a few times, but Sabine didn’t let up. If the Porsche was leading instead, we would probably see it pulling well ahead save for traffic.
Yes, there are parts of the track, where the Porsche should be faster. But the GT3 is a near race-ready trackday car, not a sedan who normally transports 4 people on highways.
Would be interesting, how it would turn out, if there was no traffic and no show for Sabine‘s customers.
And it would be good to know, what was changed for this purpose. I am not sure, the standard M5 would have same performance…
I’ll never be able to dig it up, but I think I remember reading years ago that these Ring Taxis were stock. As a daily driver of a (mostly) stock E39 M5, the body movements look stock to me, and these things pull like a freight train even 20 years later (especially at high speeds). The only thing I would question would be the brakes; even with aftermarket brake ducts, I can get my stock rotors and pads pretty toasty with just me in the car over shorter and less-spirited drives.
People have been making these kinds of points for decades, across every generation of M5, but these points are THE point of the M5 as a platform (and the one which still serves as the reference for similar cars); per this article and this thread (and nearly every other article and thread on the internet when this subject comes up), the M5, as a five-seat medium/large sedan, is a completely different car meant to serve completely different purposes (and it serves them very well). The fact that these types of comparisons have been routinely made for nearly 35 years (the E28 showed up in 1985!) is testament to just how remarkable the M5 is.
Man alive. I realy enjoyed this video. I love in south aftica and get the german spec cars here. I have a Le Mans blue e39 M5. That lady can drive. Both cars are good.this was just fun.
Would have loved to see her in a lighter M3 in action