Thursday, 16 February 2012

Driving super cars

Lately in the news there have been several accidents associated with supercars such as Ferraris and Lamborghinis. I often wonder if the people who buy these cars really know how to drive the cars properly. Having a lot of money and buying a supercar is one thing but knowing how to drive it properly is another thing.
Ferrari and Porsche organizes driving courses for new owners to educate them on how to drive their cars properly and teach them how to handle the cars. Naturally with a lot of power it is no long as simple as applying the brakes to stop the car. These high powered cars have different handling characteristics compared to normal cars and they often make the driver feel that they are very good behind the wheel but in reality the design of the car couple with technology helps keep the car on the road. However nothing in the car can stop you from crashing it if you don't know what you are doing. Hence the importance of driver training programs.
When I was in China last year I heard a scary statistic of 7 out of 10 Ferraris sold in China are crashed by the owners within the first 2 years. Ferrari China has been actively organizing driving programs but many of the new owners do not bother to attend.
In Malaysia, more than 70% of the supercars on the road are sold via grey importers and are not brand new. These grey importers naturally do not organize driving programs for the new owners and some of these new owners virtually jump from driving a 200hp Mercedes to a 550hp Gallardo! Some might argue that 90% of supercar owners never even extract 70% of the potential of the car. This may be true but barreling down the highway at 280km/h and suddenly having to brake hard because of slow trucks over taking each other is very dangerous.
This goes back to the saying "with great power comes great responsibility!".


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