Speaking of the autobahn . . .
The sections that have no limit are not very long, usually only a few miles
I feel that is appropriate
Things must have changed in the past 11 years. I was driving on the Autobahn in 2003 and there was no speed limit for automobiles for several hours. It used to be that there were no speed limits in the rural areas, and there are large areas in central Germany that are farm country.
I believe you’re asking if you would experience any mechanical problems with pushing your car that hard. The answer is no. For uphill driving it would be recommended to use first, second or third gear. If you’re running a automatic transmission shift it to L. Or 2.
I have experience about what you’re asking, as my dad had an ek3 civic and we pushed that car to the max. The ek3 was stock.
@jtsanders: That’s still true. Speed limits have been introduced in some larger urban areas over the past decade or so, but for the most part the rural Autobahns remain without speed limits. I’ve personally been in cars above 230 kph (143 mph) on the Autobahn, and felt perfectly safe.
In fact, Germany has a far lower highway death rate than the U.S. (5.7 vs. 13.9 per 100,000), mainly because people know how to drive, follow the rules (like keep right, pass left), and cars must be kept in good shape. Proving that speed does not kill – crappy driving kills.
“and cars must be kept in good shape.”
Man, do you want to open a can of worms
Because there’s many guys on this website that firmly believe that US safety inspections are unnecessary
I’m not one of those guys, by the way
@db3690: I think the issue with U.S. safety inspections is that, for the most part, they are ineffectual. I happen to agree with that premise. I currently live in a state (Florida) with no inspections, and vehicles are in no better or worse shape than where I last lived (Mississippi) which has them, but where the inspection station would just take the $5 fee and slap on the sticker. And I have had similar experiences, from the sublime to the ridiculous, in other inspection states.
In Germany, your car actually has to be in good condition – it can’t even have a spot of rust on it. I have had German friends gasp when they saw the condition of many U.S. cars, and I found that they were quite right when riding with them in their own country that you can always spot the American driver on the Autobahn: That’s the person driving in the left lane at maybe 100 kph, with traffic bearing down on him at 180 or 200 kph, and not moving over. Failing to yield the left lane is a felony in Germany, as well it should be, and that gets people to pay attention.
@Skywalker099
Did I mention I am German . . . so I know all about the TUV. My keyboard won’t let me spell it correctly
I know exactly how strict they are. I believe fully 1/4 of all US vehicle would fail the TUV, and they would fail with “schwerwiegende Maengel”
In other words, a falling flat on your face, bust your nose, knock out your front row of teeth failure, with major problems. Not even close to passing.
In fact, a large percentage of vehicles would be pulled over for roadside inspections, and the owners would be in violation of a great many regulations
@db4690: Despite my five rather pathetic years studying German, I can’t pronounce that very well, but the point is made. If you’re going to have inspections, they should mean something. Otherwise, why waste the time and effort? Neither the condition of many U.S. vehicles nor the usual “standard” of U.S. driving would pass muster in Germany, which is why our highway death toll lies between that of Greece and Peru – not exactly a great place to score.
Inspections in this country are about revenue for the state general funds. Period.
I’ve seen countless clearly unsafe vehicles driving down the road, and I’ve seen/had perfectly good, safe, solid vehicles fail for ridiculous reasons.
In NH, rear bumpers are not required on pickups, but IF you have one, and IF it’s wood, it MUST be hardwood, must be backed by a specific sized steel plate, must be bolted on with specific size bolts, and a bunch of other detail. I had a pickup with a 2x8 carriage bolted to a 2x2 steel angle iron and bolted with steel brackets to the frame. It got failed because the 2x8 wasn’t hardwood. I had them cut the bumper mounting bolts, throw the bumper in the bed (which made the truck compliant), and give me a sticker. I went home and bolted the bumper back on. I’ve also had an “inspection” on an old truck that consisted of only checking the lights and wiper blades. The brakes could have been totally shot and they never would have noticed. And I’ve had other inspections where they even checked to see that the trunk light was working. And I’ve seen vehicles with current stickers so clearly unsafe that I would not have ridden in them.
There are 33 states with no periodic safety inspections at all. No matter how you cull them, their accident statistics are indistinguishable from those with inspections. Unless of course you compare totally unlike data, for example if you compared Boston data with a rural area somewhere in the Midwest. The primary reasons there are so many accidents are because there are too many cars with loose nuts behind the steering wheels, and because we refuse to get serious about taking drunks off the road. That second one is a whole 'nother thread, so I’ll restrain myself.
I don’t know how it works in Germany, but here in the US safety inspections are a farce.
@the same mountainbike: Your point and story remind me of two incidents with which I am familiar.
The first happened to me some years ago. I was living in New Jersey and had a '62 Land Rover 109. The brakes had two settings: On (which caused smoke to billow from the burning brakes as I drove up the highway), and none. Nothing in-between, and the best efforts of my Land Rover mechanic could not solve the problem. So, despite numerous attempts, there was no way I was going to pass New Jersey state inspection.
In due course, I moved to New York State, but still couldn’t pass New York inspection, so I registered the thing in Vermont (as many New York scoff-laws at the time did), figuring I hardly ever went to Vermont. I also got a cool vanity license plate from Vermont – XPLOR – that got me lots of looks and smiles on the highway (along with the smoke pouring from the brakes).
My mechanic finally figured out the brake thing – I think it took a new master cylinder – but then a leak developed in the left front wheel cylinder. I figured I had already spent enough on brake problems, and that I could clamp off the brake hose with a vice grip and the thing would stop fine without the front left front brake. And then it happened that I made a trip to Vermont, and before I left thought to get a new inspection sticker. Vermont has local mechanics do the inspection, and I debated whether to take off the vice grip from the brake line for the inspection, and finally decided that the problem would be less obvious without the vice grip on the line, so took it off.
Well, the guy at the station noticed that the brakes were pretty darned spongy (as in, the pedal went to the floor), so I explained to him about the vice grip solution and how that took away the sponginess. He kinda scratched his head some, but when I assured him I was taking the vehicle back to New York the next day, never to darken Vermont’s roadways again with it, he passed it, but not before scraping off my animal stickers – which did not affect my vision in any way – from the back windows. “I have to take those off,” he explained earnestly.
The other incident concerned a Greek-Canadian mechanic that I met when I lived in Greece and who rebuilt the engine on my '82 VW Vanagon. He had a brand-new truck with a trailer hitch on the back. Some old guy in a ramshackle vehicle ran into the back of him at a light, and when the police came, the old guy told them his brakes failed. The police deemed that to be an acceptable reason for running into the back of the mechanic’s new truck, causing extensive damage to it, but they gave the mechanic a citation, and assigned fault to him for the accident, for failing to have a permit for his trailer hitch. No problem with the hitch per se, but he hadn’t given the government its due, so it was all his fault. To add insult to injury, the Greek insurance company wanted to pay the guy’s claim in installments since they said they didn’t have enough funds to pay him all at once.
Seems your New Hampshire inspectors might have something in common with the Greek police.
Anyway, as I said in an earlier posting, I am not a proponent of vehicle inspections in this country since they are largely ineffectual, a waste of time and money, and they just give government one more way of hassling us.
“In NH, rear bumpers are not required on pickups, but IF you have one, and IF it’s wood, it MUST be hardwood”
Years ago in California, I saw an old VW bus with a log for a front bumper. Does that qualify as hardwood?
LOL
“here in the US safety inspections are a farce.”
Years ago, when I was living in PA, I had a vehicle fail safety inspection for a rusty tailpipe. But they didn’t care about the shot suspension. The thing was like a yo-yo going down the road!
Speaking of assigning fault to the wrong guy . . .
20 years ago, I was street racing in Germany. Me with German plates versus another guy with US military plates. When the local German police pulled us over, they decided that the guy with US plates had “lured” me into the street race. They let me go and I got no citation, no warning, no points, nothing. But they really stuck it to that other guy. They assigned him full blame, and made him pay both tickets!
Db, was is a log from a deciduous tree?
Skywalker reminded me of another inspection story. In one of my cars, on my commute to work the sun would come in above my rearview mirror and blind me at certain times of year. I solved the problem by putting a strip of packing tape just below the upper windshield gasket. An inspector refused to give me a sticker unless I let him remove the tape. Claimed it covered too much of the windshield.
The state of OK vehicle safety inspection program was a ludicrous joke at best. The inspection was supposed to take about an hour. The inspector got paid 2.00 for his time.
Anyone other than a politician or bureaucrat could plainly see just how thorough that inspection was going to be… 
State safety inspections in MD are only required when a car changes hands. I think this is a good thing because it is harder to get away with selling a substandard car. If something goes wrong shortly after you buy it, you have someone to blame for it. Certainly, you should have the car inspected before buying it, but many people that buy cars at dealers don’t do it. They believe that a dealer should provide a safe car, and the dealer is in a list ion to know an unsafe car from a safe one. Dealers have an obligation to sell safe cars. As the resident expert, they should be held responsible for selling an unsafe car. This is a convenient way to put the onus directly on them and not the buyer. There will always be unsafe cars sold, even from a dealers lot. It should happen less often with the inspections.