An Excellent Exelero: Driven by Autoweek

[BMWDave]

An Excellent Exelero: Maybach's excessive two-seater certainly won't be built. We drive it anyway.
MARK VAUGHN
Published Date: 8/1/05
Batman. That?s what you think when you see the Maybach Exelero in all its dark-bodied, four-wheeled fury.

?Ja, that?s what everyone says,? said the Mercedes technician prepping the car for our drive. ?Batman.?

And not the happy, funny, campy Batman of the 1966 TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward (not to mention Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, Julie Newmar and Frank Gorshin). There is nothing happy, funny or campy about this car.

No, the Batman you think of when you see and drive this Maybach coupe is the darker, almost sinister Batman of the movies that came 30 years later. The Batman who carried the heavy burden of crime for all of Gotham City and, consequently, wasn?t a particularly chipper rodent. Maybe even the new Batman isn?t sinister enough; when they make Beelzebub: The Movie, this will be the stunt car.

There are those who saw only photos of the Exelero and declared to us? both privately and via web postings?that they ?don?t like the look.? Well, to those people we say, ?Try saying that to this car?s face, man!? Or to its grille or whatever part of a car you address. You don?t talk smack directly to Lord Vader, do you? No way. Neither do you say such things when in the presence of such seductive sinisterness. At least we didn?t when we first saw the Exelero in full. (Not that we spend a lot of time talking to cars.) But this one stands apart.


You got the details several weeks ago in our May 23 issue when Maybach reveal?ed photos and specs of its Exelero. The car is officially a promotional vehicle financed by German tiremaker Fulda to publicize the new Carat Exelero tire. Fulda had Maybach build a similar one-off 67 years ago to hit the then unheard-of speed of 200 km/h, or 124 mph. It did that with a Maybach SW 38 underneath, a special aerody?namic body and, of course, quality Fulda tires.

Naturally, the tires on the car we drove are also Fuldas, Carat Exeleros measuring 315/25ZR-23 front and rear. Exelero the tire can carry a 7000-pound car at speeds greater than 200 mph, parameters around which Exelero the car is coincidentally designed.

This time the car is based on a May-bach 57S sedan, rebodied in Italy by Stola from a design penned by a barely old-enough-to-vote German design student named Frederik Burchardt of Pforzheim University?no doubt marking the design departure of his young life.

In addition to looking svelte, Burchardt?s exterior must take into consideration the importance of aerodynamics at that speed.

?If you would like to drive 350 km/h [217 mph], you have to look very early at the aerodynamics,? said Jurgen Weissinger, an executive on hand at our drive day who is responsible for Maybach development.


With almost three square yards (2.55 square meters) of frontal area, the 19-foot-long, seven-foot-wide, four-and-a-half-foot-tall Exelero has a coefficient of drag of just 0.28. That?s with those outside rearview mirrors on it. Take the mirrors off and the figure drops to 0.26. More impressive is the coefficient of lift, just 0.1 at the rear axle and 0.09 at the front.

?That?s absolutely nothing,? said Weissinger.

At speed a three-part spoiler?a big one in the middle and smaller ones on each end?pops up on the trailing edge of the rear deck to help out, not unlike Batman?s cape... or maybe Batgirl?s miniskirt.

Beneath that efficient skin Maybach has swapped in bigger turbos, doubled the efficiency of the intake cooling system with four intercoolers, and cleaned up the airflow to take the 6.0-liter AMG V12 of the 57S from 612 hp to a claimed (and whopping) 700 hp.

?We have the space in this car for a lot of coolers,? said Weissinger. ?So at 20 degrees ambient [68 Fahrenheit], we are making 700 hp.?

That?s on 110-octane European gas, which works out to 100-octane U.S. Though the redline is 6000 rpm, the engine hits peak horsepower at 5000. Since top speed is the whole point of this exercise, the rear axle ratio is lower?ed numerically from 1:2.93 to 1:2.41 to take the Exelero to its goal of 217 mph.


Now don?t worry, they didn?t trust us driving at that speed. The actual record was set by Klaus Ludwig at the big, circular Nardo test track in Italy, 351.45 km/h, or 218 mph. We would be going considerably slower.

For our drive we were set loose on a flat section of concrete runway on an unused flugplatz outside Stuttgart. We couldn?t have hit anything there except hay, and maybe some nearby wheat, and even then we?d really have to be trying.

The very long doors open straight out like a normal car, no gullwing or Lambo-style function here. The cockpit is lined in black carbon fiber and leather with bright red carbon fiber inserts on the dash and doors and bright red piping on the seats. The four-point belts are also bright red and click in a center buckle like a race car. Two big pedals in the driver?s footwell?brake and gas?have rubber grippy pads inserted. The shifter is no more complex than a straightforward automatic.

There are no cupholders.

The engine starts with the twist of a key and the side exhausts brap happily to life. We were allowed considerable leeway in the several hundred feet of concrete we had available to go back and forth.


?Just mash the gas?? we ask co-pilot Weissinger.

?Ja, mash.?

So we did. The engine waaaahhed with glee and the car lunged forward like something two or three thousand pounds lighter. Did the tires spin? Don?t think so. Maybach can dial in launch controls even with 700 hp.

There aren?t many cars with 700 hp. Nor are there many that weigh 6500 pounds, the listed weight of the Exelero, less than the 7000-pound tire capacity. It is a powerful, weighty combination. The mass gives the car a gyroscopic stability, while the monster V12 gives it thrust. It is a little like piloting a Saturn V. Or maybe a Saturn IV.

The disc brakes bring it down to a stop without drama and without lockup, the ABS, too, having been tuned for this application. Even stomping on the brakes results in quick, efficient stops.

We tried a few slalom-type turns in the space allowed and the whole car barely rolled. For a vehicle of these dimensions, it is almost sprightly. Okay, not sprightly, maybe a combination of stately and sprightly?sprately?

All of which is to say that it behaves like a finished car, not the one-off concept it is. There are no squeaks in the carbon fiber body, no vibrating panel flaps anywhere. It even meets German TUV inspection requirements, similar to our DOT/EPA tests. It is ready for showrooms around the world as far as we can tell.

Which leads to the question, why just this one? Are they going to build any more? They never built another Fulda Maybach SW 38, but then, they had a good excuse.

Maybach executives are not definite, saying sometimes maybe and sometimes no, depending on how the question is phrased. Maybe they will not build one with this exact body, Weissinger said, but maybe a business case can be made for a coupe.

Indeed, way back in October 2000 we printed the following in the news section, ?Mercedes plans to offer convertible and coupe versions of its ultra-luxury executive Maybach line... Insiders at the Mercedes development center in Stuttgart say Maybach... will become a full range of cars.?

It certainly makes sense in light of the new Bentley Continental GT and the coming Rolls-Royce 100XE. If the rich really are different from you and me, this would help them celebrate that difference, at 200-plus mph.

[ifcar]

I'd be interested to have seen a comparison between the sedan and coupe's handling prowess, but handling was not mentioned once. <_<