BMW M5 Ring Taxi Axed, Sabine Schmitz part ways with BMW

The German Nurburgring circuit is a mecca for motorsports and taking a taxi ride in a BMW M5 Ring Taxi is considered as a pilgrimage by all petrolheads. The BMW Ring Taxis are driven by BMW's own professional racing drivers, and for a small fee, they offer to take up to 3 passengers for a ride of their life in the toughest circuit in the world.

Sabine Schmitz is the BMW Ring Taxi's star driver. There are many drivers in the Ring Taxi team, but for various reason, Sabine is the most well known of all. Probably because she is a woman in a male dominated motorsports world, and one bloody fast woman she is! But to overly focus on her gender would be wrong and downgrade her achievements to a token level. Female or not, Sabine Schmitz is one of the most experienced drivers around the Nurburgring and by her own estimates, she has lapped the Green Hell circuit somewhere around 20,000 times. She also competes and twice won the 24 Hours of Nurburgring endurance race. Her entertaining personality made her a darling to TV networks, who occasionally hires her to do commentaries on races, as well as appearing on motoring shows including BBC's Top Gear.

But all this will come to an end. Sabine Schmitz has since left the BMW Ring Taxi driving team, and BMW has terminated the services of the M5 Ring Taxi, and instead replaced the M5 with a lower end BMW M3 sedan. Neither Sabine nor BMW M commented on the switch, which lead to a lot of speculation. All is not well at the management of Nurburgring circuit. The management company running the Nurburgring is in huge debts and Sabine Schmitz have previously launched a petition on Facebook to save the circuit. We also know that for every lap offered to customers in a Ring Taxi, BMW loses about 300 Euros. BMW charges only 185 Euros per car for a lap, but it is rumoured to cost BMW over 480 Euros per lap. BMW changes the tyres every 10 laps, the brake-pads every 20 laps and the suspension every 50 laps while the M5 cars are replaced annually. BMW however does not manage the taxi service directly, but instead contracts it to OK Speed Marketing, who owns the rights to the "Ring Taxi" name. Obviously OK Speed Marketing has to make a profit to remain in business and for 2011, the company have ceased to offer taxi rides in the M5. It is not clear however who now runs the E90 M3 taxi rides.

Presumably the "downgraded" M3 ring taxi is only a temporary stop-gap measure until the new M5 is launched. But with no official statement from BMW, we cannot be sure.

Sabine Schmitz is no longer with BMW and has started her own company Speedbee. She offers taxi rides in a Porsche 997 GT3 RS. The cost for the ride is a more realistic 449 Euros.

Aston Martin also offers a Ring Taxi service, in a V8 Vantage N24. Price per lap is 295 Euros. Watch the in-car cam below. It quickly became obvious that the Aston is a significantly faster car. The M5 Ring Taxi that started in front of the Aston quickly yielded aside at the opening lap. Later in the lap the Aston catched up with another Ring Taxi M5 and promptly overtook it.

With Sabine no longer supported by any manufacturer, we won't be seeing a lot of promo videos featuring her anymore. The following video, part of the BMW Unscripted series is probably the last video of her in a BMW.


This is one of the numerous guest appearances made by Sabine Schmitz in BBC's Top Gear.


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