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I TRIED TO HIT 181 MPH ON THE AUTOBAHN — HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! · Performance Car Ownership with Gary

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: German courts consistently rule that drivers exceeding 130 kilometers per hour share fault even when not technically the cause of that accident.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now this car, a base 2026 Porsche 911 Cabriolet rental, Porsche claims is good for 181 miles an hour.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now on day one of our seven-day Alps tour, while driving from Munich to Stuttgart, we had a window of German Autobahn with no legal speed limit.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to find out how closely a rental actually gets to that number.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the short version.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't get all the way there.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is actually the more interesting story.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now along the way, we broke off from our own tour group, ended up chasing another member of it in their rental Porsche Spider RS, and I came with a pretty clear answer on whether a track instructor's instinct actually transferred to this kind of speed, you know, on a public road.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Quick context here if you're new to this.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Autobahn is not one continuous, unrestricted highway.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of it has a posted or advisory limit.
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  SPEAKER_00: The truly unrestricted stretches are specific sections marked by a specific sign, broken up constantly by towns, construction, and interchanges.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's advisory speed where there's no hard limit is 130 kilometers per hour, about 81 miles per hour.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now you won't get a ticket for going faster there, but if you're in a crash above that speed, it can definitely affect liability.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: German courts consistently rule that drivers exceeding 130 kilometers per hour share fault, even when not technically the cause of that accident.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a real practical distinction that most YouTube videos on the Autobahn totally skip.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there are several speed restricted stretches on our actual run that we had to watch for.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: The limit comes and goes, sometimes with very little warning.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So part of doing this safely is constantly looking far enough ahead to know whether it's actually clear to be at that speed.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now our specific route that day, the A8, between Munich and Stuttgart, the unrestricted stretches are mainly around the UM, Augsburg, uh Munich section.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they're patchy, not continuous.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Limits kick in near towns and construction zones.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then they open up again.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: As it turned out, our own peak run happened almost exactly around Um, right in the middle of that stretch.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now this wasn't planned as a solo run.
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  SPEAKER_00: We were still on our organized Alps tour in rally format, driving our own pace between checkpoints.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the group that day was driving slower than I actually wanted to.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The weather and visibility were excellent, genuinely some of the best conditions of the whole trip, so my wife and I decided to break off and push ahead on our own.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was the most powerful car on the tour.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: We passed them and led for a short while while they passed us and took off.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we followed between traffic and the on and off speed limits, we topped out at 261 kilometers an hour, you know, which is about 162 miles per hour.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: My Red 911 Cabrielo base model has a listed top speed of 181 miles per hour or 291 kilometers per hour, and I genuinely believe my rental had more in it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just ran out of clear road before I ran out of car.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Due to the traffic, we again caught up to that spider RS, but as we continued on, they didn't run out of the road quite as quickly as we did, and soon after they just disappeared.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That spider RS went on to beat my top speed, but more about that later.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's what nobody tells you about actually doing this.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: The hard part isn't the speed, it's the closing rate.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: A car doing 130 kilometers per hour in the right lane or middle lanes can look almost stationary when you approach it at 250 plus.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're checking your mirrantly and you commit to a pass early.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or not at all.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: One rule that genuinely helps: trucks are not allowed in the left lane on the autobahn.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That alone removes one of the biggest closing speed hazards you'd worry about on a North American interstate.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lane discipline here isn't a suggestion.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually survival.
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  SPEAKER_00: You do not linger in the left lane.
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  SPEAKER_00: You move over the instant you're passed, and if someone's coming up fast behind you, you get out of the way.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: You only pass on the left side and only after checking that blind spot.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, honestly, my wife and I were fairly relaxed, even past 250 kilometers per hour.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You okay, 260 kilometers an hour?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is simple.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: German drivers are very disciplined.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone follows the same rules, which makes a genuinely dangerous speed feel far more predictable than it has any right to.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll credit my own background directly.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: As a track day participant for decades, and now an instructor, reading the road far ahead, checking mirrors constantly, and committing to a decision rather than hesitating is exactly what I teach on the circuit.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was outside of an actual track day, one of the purest tests of that discipline I've done, and boy was it ever exciting.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So did my base trim rental 9-11 Cabriolet eventually get anywhere near its uh rated 181 miles per hour?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not quite.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: We topped out at about 261 kilometers per hour, uh what I say, 162 miles per hour, about 19 miles per hour short of that rating.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an honest answer, not a disappointing one.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Between traffic, unfamiliar roads, those on and off speed limits, and simply running out of clear, unrestricted road before we ran out of car, that's what a real world run looks like.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Spider RS with 120 more horsepower found the extra room to get to 305 kilometers per hour.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right, whatever the final number ended up being, here's the honest takeaway.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't about bravado.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a legal controlled environment that reports exactly the kind of discipline I teach on track.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Awareness, mirrors, commitment, respect for closing speed.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the real story of the Autobahn.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not just a number, on a speedometer.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: That and the fact that a base convertible Porsche 911 rental car in the right conditions with the right discipline can do something most cars on this continent never get a chance to do.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe if you want the rest of this trip, and I'll see you in the next one.