Speed demons spoilt for choice in Singapore

SINGAPORE — These are good times for people who love speed, now that this quartet of ultra powerful new machines for thrill-seekers is here. The four are members of the elite 300km/h club, which was once exclusively for the most exotic and expensive wheels.

Yet, while there may be a Ferrari and a high-end Mercedes on this list, there are also machines that put an obscene amount of power and performance at your disposal for a less-than-obscene amount of money — at least by Singapore standards.

BMW ALPINA B4 BITURBO COUPE

Alpina might just be the best carmaker you’ve never heard of. It’s a 50 year old company that takes BMW and tries to make them better. It often succeeds, too.

To create the B4 Biturbo Coupe, Alpina takes a BMW 435i as its starting point. Then it reworks the engine for more power, beefs up the brakes, tweaks the suspension and adds aerodynamic body parts to improve its high speed stability.

Just as well, too, because the Alpina B4’s top speed is a scintillating 303km/h.

READ MORE > What driving the Alpina B4 is like. PLUS: Sign up for a go yourself!

You get there in comfort, too. Alpina’s engineers have added all that powerformance without affecting the car’s refinement.

it’s worth noting that BMW and Alpina work together, and not as rivals. Indeed, BMW builds the B4 in its own factory, installing the bits specified by Alpina (even down to the car’s software).

At some point, the car is handed over to Alpina’s facility in Buchloe, about an hour’s drive from BMW HQ in Munich, where final bits like the bodykitting and interior trim are installed. Think of BMW as the B4 Biturbo’s father, and Alpina as its mother.

The surprising thing is the price. For $398,800 with COE, the Alpina B4 offers great value for money — cars that can exceed 300km/h tend to cost twice as much. And unlike snooty supercar sellers, Alpina actually welcomes test drives of the B4.

FERRARI 488 GTB

The 488 GTB is Ferrari’s latest, and very likely its greatest. The super coupe goes on sale here today at $995,000 without COE, and replaces the 458 Italia as the prancing horse brand’s car for keen drivers who love to play on the race track.

That means it has an incredibly tough act to follow; the 458 was sublime, with razor sharp handling, beautifully sorted manners on the track, and a howling engine that made the small hairs on your body tingle.

READ MORE > We drove Ferrari’s turbo thriller at its home base in Italy

Only 15 percent of the 458’s parts have been carried over into the new Ferrari, and the 488 GTB is the result of major improvement in three main areas.

For starters, the aerodynamics are the best on any Ferrari, ever. At 250km/h the 488 GTB is sucked to the road with 325kg of force, making it peerlessly stable. It actually has 50 percent more stabilising downforce than the 458 Italia, yet its body shape creates less wind resistance.

The 3.9-litre V8 engine produces a mighty 670 horsepower with the help of two turbochargers, and that’s enough to send the 488 GTB to “over 330km/h”, as Ferrari coyly puts it. It’s also enough to launch the Ferrari to 200km/h in a scarcely-believable 8.3 seconds.

More to the point, the engine responds nearly as quickly as the 458’s non-turbo V8, and far faster than any turbo rival, says Ferrari.

But it’s the electronics that make the 488 GTB truly remarkable. The handling aids — traction control and a system called Side Slip Control — make the Ferrari feel unfeasibly easy to control, and every part of the car seems to work in harmony whether you’re on a dry track or rain-soaked mountain road.

Overall, the 488 GTB feels like a car designed by geniuses to make you feel like a driving god.

So much so that Ferrari says it’s for “lone wolf” customers who spend around 70 percent of their time alone with the car, honing their skills or just enjoying what the 488 GTB has to offer. So much for Ferraris being just for show-offs.

MERCEDES-AMG GT S

Another member of the 300km/h club, the Mercedes-AMG GT S costs $699,888 with COE. For that you get a stylish coupe largely made of aluminium, though one without the show-stopping gullwing doors of the SLS AMG.

You also get a hell-raising turbo engine under the long bonnet that is, in accordance with AMG tradition, hand-assembled by a single craftsman at Affalterbach in Germany.

For Singapore, the more expensive S variant with 510bhp (compared to the basic GT model 462bhp) is the first to go on sale, with the standard model to be offered ‘in the coming months’ according to a spokesman. The reason for this is that the initial production run of the GT is made up entirely of S models, as the AMG factory expects early adopters to spring for the more powerful machine.

READ MORE > Full details and pricing of the Mercedes-AMG GT S

Paying more doesn’t only buy more power, though. Standard on the S model is three-mode, electronically-controlled dampers (Comfort, Sport, Sport Plus) and a sports exhaust with selectable flaps (for loudness on demand). That’s a must-have features, because Mercedes-AMG cars have always been about heavy metal exhaust music.

APRILIA RSV4

Some bikes put the fear of riding in you, and others make you wish you’d defied your mother and gone to get a bike licence. The new RSV4 is both. Launched in Singapore last weekend (together with a slightly less bonkers bike, the Tuono V4 1100), the Aprilia is currently the most powerful machine in the 1000cc class of motorcycle, with its compact engine dishing out a mighty 201hp.

It replaces an older model that looked similar, but is the result of a significant internal makeover. Most of the engine’s guts are new, while the chassis has been heavily modified cope with the boost in power. The handlebars are taller and flatter, and a new fairing is claimed to give better wind protection.

The electronic rider aid systems (traction control and anti-wheelie) have been reworked, too, and there’s even a companion smartphone app for the Aprilia that allows you to tweak them with different settings for different corners of your favourite racing circuit.

You won’t find the Aprilia’s top speed quoted anywhere, but it’s highly likely that the RSV4 would comfortably exceed 300km/h. The tantalising thing is, the Aprilia’s launch means that a supercar’s performance has never been cheaper here: the RSV4’s price starts at $29,373. That includes riding insurance but not a COE. Speed demons, what are you waiting for?

READ MORE > Scenes from the Aprilia RSV4′s Singapore launch

MORE SPEED READING
The new Mercedes-AMG A 45 4Matic is pretty swift, too
10 things you need to know about the Ferrari 488 GTB
Hanging out with the fastest team in the World Rally Championship
How the BMW M3 became the most successful touring car racer, ever
BMW S 1000 XR - another machine for thrill-seekers for less than the price of a COE

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