Automotive Academy

The famous Nurburgring is having building work on a massive scale and it’s all part of a €215 million investment that’ll see Europe’s most famous race track build on its popular track day reputation to become what marketing boss Stephan Cimbal describes as a motor sport theme park that’s open 365 days a year. Work started just one year ago, but it’s on track, so to speak, to meet the self-imposed 11 June 2009 deadline.

The plans are to include the world’s fastest rollercoaster. There’ll also be a new arena with up to 6000 seats for ‘everything from boxing matches and beach volleyball to new car presentations’; 100 budget condominiums; and another hotel – currently only the Hotel Dorint is track-side – with 148 rooms, a casino and a heli pad for motor sport moguls; plus a proper welcome centre to lend a sense of occasion to the slightly anti-climatic greeting today’s visitor’s receive. 

Manufacturers have embraced the German circuit in recent years, so the ’Ring Boulevard makes perfect sense – a 300m-long ‘motor sport mall’ with Ferrari, Aston, Nissan, Yokohama and Bilstein showrooms. Other attractions will include the Eiffel Village Green Hell that’ll house a steak house, bar and disco. There will also be a Ring Werk theme park that’ll really get tongues wagging, it will be a 15,000 square meter theme park with a science and history exhibition and a crazy rollercoaster that will start inside and then run alongside the track doing 0-135mph in 2.5 seconds – twice as fast as an F1 car and 3.4g, which is the highest permissible by the German authorities.

Cimbal hopes the outlay will add an extra 500,000 visitors to today’s two million and extend the season from the current April to October – I certainly wouldn’t bet against it!