A while back, while sitting in a hotel room trying to kill time, I channel-surfed and came across what looked like an interesting show. Its title, Extreme Angling, had me hooked (pardon the pun), for the simple reason that I had no idea what extreme angling was.
For an hour I watched three guys sprinting from one beach to another, across tricky sand dunes and trickier rocks in an attempt to find the best fishing spots where they could catch the biggest fish.
As quick as possible they would bait their lines, cast it out into the ocean and hope for a bite. Then they would haul in whatever fish was biting, identify it, toss it back into the sea and go through the whole process again and again, almost as if they were racing against time for some unknown reason.
Towards the end of the show, one of the guys hooked what he thought was a huge fish. He fought with it for about two hours, hopping from rock to rock — and getting injured in the process — and eventually, and quite breathlessly, hauled in a fairly big manta. Again, he pulled the hook out of its bloodied mouth, flopped it over to admire it and then gently put it back into the ocean. So much for fishing being a sedate, almost meditative pastime.
This niche sport came to mind when I was on the launch of a very niche vehicle recently.
The BMW Z4 M Coupé is the kind of car that makes you realise that there are those among us (guys and girls), who have an extremist streak that makes them push the limits of recreation beyond reason.
The Z4 M is a slick-looking two-seater sports car that feels about as comfortable as bouncing around on a pogo stick. While driving it on the local launch recently, I had to force myself to remember that this car wasn’t built for comfort. Any M vehicle in BMW’s range is focused on performance and the Z4 M Coupé is no different.
It utilises BMW’s award-winning 3,2-litre straight-six engine to push out a hefty 252kW of power and 365Nm of torque, which all translates into an adrenalin rush of note.
What you lose in drive comfort owing to the tough-as-nails suspension, you gain in phenomenal road-holding and blistering acceleration.
The pay-off line for the Z4 M Coupé is: “The corner is the target” and indeed it is. Try as I might, there was no unsettling this vehicle on our launch route, which took us twice through FranschÂhoek Pass in Cape Town.
However, if we were on a racetrack, I might have felt a little more eager about throwing it around because the twisties on the pass can get a bit scary, even in the most capable of cars.
The transmission is pretty sticky and it takes a fair amount of muscle to change gears smoothly. And, unlike other BMWs, the Z4 M has normal tyres instead of runflats, but it still has just the puncture repair kit, no spare tyre.
The Z4 M six-speed manual costs R545Â 500, the 3,0si manual costs R443Â 500 and the 3,0si automatic costs R457Â 500. We only drove the M so I can’t tell you what the other cars feel like, but they’re bound to be similar in most aspects and probably just a tad slower than the M.
For what it is, an uncompromising and at times brutal sports car, the Z4 M Coupé succeeds admirably, and the fun factor of driving something as fast and as capable as this is a huge drawcard. But like any extreme sport, it’s not something everyone is into and, even if you are an adrenalin junkie, you wouldn’t want to drive this car all the time because you’re bound to be frustrated by speed limits — and you might want to preserve your kidneys for when you tire of the view from the edge.