maybach exelero

The facts

• Vehicle: Maybach Exelero
• When: May 2005
• Where: Nardo/Italy
• What: Test car for high-speed tyres
• Drivetrain: 12-cylinder four-stroke petrol engine, 5.9 litre displacement, two turbochargers, 515 kW (700 hp), rear-wheel drive

The Maybach Exelero is a very special concept car in that it was created in cooperation with tyre producer Fulda. For the testing of high-performance tyres, the company needed a car that was capable of exceeding the 350 km/h mark. A Maybach model had been built to serve as a test car for Fulda as early as the late 1930s – and this connection was revived a couple of years ago. The final result was more than convincing: on May 1, 2005, racing driver Klaus Ludwig drove the Maybach Exelero fitted with Fulda tyres in Nardo/Italy and attained a speed of 351.45 km/h – setting a new world speed record for limousines on series-production tyres.

The Maybach Exelero combines the elegance and first-class quality of a high-end limousine with the silky-smooth power of a sports coupé. It is a car which attains a top speed of over 350 km/h – with an unladen weight of 2.66 tons and the dimensions of a small van. For this car, a tyre was designed that not only coped with the above-mentioned weight, dimensions, and speed, but also gave the car safety, stability, and comfort.

The project team started working on the Maybach Exelero in 2003. It consisted of Mercedes-Benz engineers, who assumed responsibility for the engineering, of designers headed by Prof. Harald Leschke as well as two professors and four students from the Transportation Design department of Pforzheim Technical College. Nine months later, the draft of one of the students was selected for realization from a line-up of promising design proposals. This student had succeeded in creating the most elegant symbiosis of the related form languages of past and present car generations. After the model-building stage, the car was set up by the renowned producer of vehicle studies, Stola, based in Turin/Italy. It was then that it was given its final name: Maybach Exelero. The denomination is an invented word formed from the Latin-Italian terms ex-cello/eccelso = sublime/illustrious/outstanding, and accelero = accelerated. The interior is dominated by materials such as natural leather, neoprene, coated perforated aluminium sheeting and high-sheen carbon-fibre surfaces in black and red. The car was completed in the spring of 2005 – a period of just 25 months had passed between idea and finish.

The Exelero was based on the Maybach 57. However, the twelve-cylinder engine used in the Maybach sedan was not powerful enough for the envisaged top speed, despite its two turbochargers. Therefore, displacement was enlarged from 5.6 to 5.9 litres, and turbocharging was optimised. As a result, a power output of just under 515 kW (700 hp) and torque of around 1,000 newton metres were measured on the test rig – enough power for the car to reach the targeted 350 km/h mark.

Fulda looks back on a long tradition of special cars for testing tyres and for introducing them to the public. The streamlined Maybach SW 38, designed in 1938 and supplied in 1939, was a response to technical developments in those days, i.e. to the cars’ ever higher road speeds in the 1930s. Chassis and engine technologies, aerodynamically designed bodywork and the first motorways made high-speed driving possible. At the time, Fulda commissioned bodybuilder Dörr & Schreck in Frankfurt/Main with the manufacture of the test car – specifying a clear-cut condition: the car had to be capable of performing high-speed tests at over 200 km/h over longer periods of time. Dörr & Schreck accepted the challenge and chose Messrs. Maybach Motorenbau as cooperation partner for the project. With the support of Baron Reinhard Koenig-Fachsenfeld, an aerodynamicist renowned in professional circles, a streamlined three-seater based on the chassis of the Maybach SW 38 was created. The Fulda coupé with self-supporting bodywork and two-tone finish featured a long, downward-sloping rear end. Seen from above, the silhouette was a rectangle with rounded corners. Like the underfloor, the rear wheel arches were completely covered, and even the door handles were partly recessed.

To give the car a top speed of over 200 km/h, as demanded by Fulda, the engineers installed a powerful six-cylinder engine with 140 hp (103 kW). The top speed was equally made possible by an unusually low drag coefficient of cd = 0.25 (as opposed to 0.6 customary for contemporary series-production cars). Another pre-condition was that the chassis was not to weigh more than 1.6 tons. However, the car was used to a very limited extent due to the outbreak of the Second World War. It disappeared in the turmoil of war and has since been missing.

Ferrari 812 Superfast

Overview

With a claimed top speed of 211 mph, the name 812 Superfast is not mere hyperbole. This curvaceous coupe is packing a 789-hp 6.5-liter V-12 under its hood, driving the rear wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. An active diffuser and aerodynamically shaped body panels help the 812 Superfast slice through the air with minimal drag and on to its heroic maximum velocity. What’s the price for all this awesomeness? More than $300,000, with values likely rising from there.

Photo Gallery

On one recent Saturday, I jumped out of an airplane. But that wasn’t the most exciting thing that happened that week. Because six days later, I drove the Ferrari 812 Superfast. In Italy, on Ferrari’s private race/test track in Fiorano. It was, in skydiver parlance, epic. The speeds were higher, the g loads greater, and the soundtrack light-years better than just a whole lot of high-speed wind buffeting past my ears.

HIGHS

An 8900-rpm V-12 in a chassis that somehow competes with it for top billing.

LOWS

Somewhere in the world, a man stubbed his toe this morning.

The 8 in this car’s name denotes the 800 horsepower the engine generates on the metric scale. As measured on this side of the Atlantic, though, it’s a mere 789, an extra 59 over the F12berlinetta that this model replaces. The 12 is on the badge because there are a dozen cylinders beneath the hood, and Superfast is both a name from Ferrari’s history and a promise delivered.

Compared with the F12’s engine, the 812’s is 75 percent new. Displacing 6.5 liters versus the F12’s 6.3, the V-12 makes its 789 horsepower at 8500 rpm on its way to an 8900-rpm maximum. Peak torque, 530 lb-ft, crests at 7000. Below 5000 rpm, the 812 is a pussycat, but as the revs rise, power seems to build exponentially. There is about 600 horsepower at 6000 rpm, 700 at 7000, and as the tach winds up, the compounding sensation of acceleration is stupefying. The engine revs so far past the initiation of insanity that each redline upshift is almost a relief. Expect the zero-to-60-mph sprint to be over in just 2.8 seconds and the quarter-mile to pass in 10.8 ticks or so. And then there’s the sound. It’s your very own Formula 1 fantasy, heaven’s own chain saw.

Agile? Must Be Italian

The handling, too, is something out of a fantasy. Ferrari’s first ever electrically assisted power-steering system directs the 812, and it’s a solid effort. As we trundled through the streets of Maranello just outside the factory gates, it felt maybe a touch overboosted. But once the town gave way to hills and fields, we realized that the steering matches the feeling of the entire car. Agility we expected, but the whole car feels unbelievably light, like the world’s most furious Mazda Miata. Here is a roughly 3900-pound car with a giant 6.5-liter engine in its nose, but it is unbelievably dextrous, like a V-12 wingsuit. The steering is immediate and effort builds faithfully, but there’s very little feedback from the road surface. Given how great the steering is in other respects, though, we’d give it just a couple of years before Ferrari perfects it, making access to the best steering on the planet another reason to resent the 1 percent.

The 812 carries over the spaceframe from the F12, which means nearly the whole car is constructed of aluminum. Carbon fiber is employed almost purely as a stylistic flourish, in most cases an optional one. The F12tdf donates its rear-wheel-steering system.

As he took us on an orientation lap—a single one!—of Ferrari’s test track at Fiorano, development driver Raffaele de Simone made sure we knew how to turn off stability control and said, “It’s okay if you spin the car off the track.” Um, no, it isn’t, Raffaele. And yet, the rest of his advice proved well founded.

You expect an 800-hp, $300,000 megacar to be intimidating, but so controllable and predictable is the 812 that we were immediately comfortable. By the end of our second lap, stability control was turned off, the 812 was sideways, and we were giggling like a teenager doing our first burnout again. It feels as if the driver can transfer individual pounds of load to each wheel to balance the car through turns, and the smooth power delivery means that you can meter precisely as many ponies as you need to maintain any intended line or slip angle. The F12 was among the quickest cars we’ve ever tested at Lightning Lap, and we suspect the 812 is going to take a bite off its predecessor’s 2:50.8 time around Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course.

And Sensible, Too!

The spacious interior and comfortable driving position do much for the car’s approachability, as does the excellent visibility to the front and sides. The high tail means the view rearward is more like that of a mid-engined car. But even 99th-percentile drivers can get comfortable in the driver’s seat. While the ride is a little choppy, the suspension rounds the harsh edges off any bumps. This would make a perfectly acceptable daily driver.

In subdued colors, the 812 could almost come close to blending in with traffic. Whether other commuters envy you will be a matter of taste. But there’s a load of function in the Superfast’s extreme styling, and every last intake and vent punched into the bodywork is functional. With about a dozen different passageways through the bodywork, air doesn’t just flow around the 812, it passes through it much like it slips through a skydiver’s fingers. And like a skydiver falling from an airplane, the Superfast driver will never be bored. He’ll also have something much better to listen to.

Ferrari 812 Superfast Generations Explained

Major redesigns occur every five years or so; not much changes in between. Dividing them into generations provides more meaningful distinctions in the shopping process.

Rolls Royce Sweptail

If money were no object, what kind of car would you buy? Many people would probably choose a top-of-the-line sports car, or even a supercar or hypercar. Others might opt for a more practical luxury vehicle and tick all the options, like the Tesla Model S P100D. But regardless of your real-life financial situation, we all basically approach this dream scenario the same way: somewhere in the world there’s a car that we want more than all the others.

For the richest people in the world, though, this game has an entirely different set of rules. Yes, if you have enough money — I’m talking island-buying, jet-flying, so-rich-that-one-minute-spent-deciding-between-cars-would-actually-cost-you-money rich — you can apparently pay Rolls-Royce to design a car for you.

SERIOUSLY, READ THE PRESS RELEASE

That’s the story the company is telling, anyway, about the new “Sweptail” coupe that was unveiled this past week at the yearly Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este event in Italy. According to a (fantastically baroque) 2,500-plus-word press release issued by the company, a very rich man who considers himself a “connoisseur and collector of distinctive, one-off items including super-yachts and private aircraft” came to Rolls-Royce in 2013 with a request: would the automaker be so kind as to create a bespoke car for him?


Four years and a reported $13 million later, and the answer to that question is in the official press pictures below, which show off what is ostensibly the most expensive new car ever purchased.

The Sweptail is named after the tapered “swept tail” rear ends that helped make the company’s Phantoms famous in the early 20th century. In fact, many of its design elements were plucked from some of those iconic coupes. The Sweptail borrows from the round door look of the 1925 Phantom I, the silhouette of the 1934 Phantom II Streamline Saloon, and the swept tail designs of cars like the 1934 Gurney Nutting Phantom II Two Door Light Saloon.

Of course, this car’s got plenty of 21st century touches, too. The panoramic glass roof makes the one on the Tesla Model X look like a sunroof — there’s practically nothing blocking this mystery buyer’s skyward view while he drives (or gets chauffeured) around town. (Or, as Rolls-Royce put it, “What a place to be as one watches the world slip by through the vast windows and roof, detached from the outside world in a cocoon of luxury whilst feeling one is part of that passing landscape.”)

The interior is lined with “generous quantities” of polished Macassar Ebony and open-pore Paldao wood, because modest amounts of those materials are obviously out of the question. The analog clock in the dash uses machined titanium. The center console hides a champagne chiller and two crystal flutes. Instead of a hidden umbrella, like in the Dawn, the car’s side walls conceal a pair of carbon fiber attaché cases that have been specifically designed to fit the buyer’s laptop, and they match a set of custom luggage found in the trunk. There’s even a shelf for his hat.

So the next time that dream car crosses your mind, remember that you could actually dream even bigger if you had enough money to bend the rules. Who knows? Maybe someday you will. If the last two years on this Earth have taught us anything, it’s that everything is possible. Especially a custom-built Rolls-Royce with a built-in champagne cooler.

World expensive vehicle.

Model Price 

1. Rolls-Royce Sweptail   $13 million
2. Mercedes-Benz Maybach Exelero $8 million
3. Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita $4.8 million
4. Lamborghini Veneno $4.5 million
5. M Motors Lykan Hypersport $3.4 million
6. Limited Edition Bugatti Veyron by Mansory Vivere $3.4 million
7. Ferrari Pininfarina Sergio $3 million
8. Bugatti Chiron $2.9 million
9. Laferrari FXX K $2.7 million
10. Aston Martin Valkyrie $2.6 million
11. Pagani Huayra BC $2.6 million
12. Mercedes-AMG Project One $2.5 million
13. Ferrari F60 America $2.6 million
14. Aston Martin Vulcan $2.3 million
15. Lamborghini Sesto Elemento $2.2 million
16. Koenigsegg One:1 $2 million
17. Koenigsegg Regera $2 million
18. McLaren P1 GTR $2 million
19. McLaren BP23 $2 million (estimated)
20. Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4 $1.9 million
21. Hennessey Venom F5 $1.6 million
22. Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta $1.4 million
23. Aston Martin One-77 $1.4 million
24. Zenvo TS1 GT $1.2 million
25. Rolls-Royce Phantom Serenity $1.1 million
26. Lagonda Taraf $1 million Fittipaldi EF7 $1 million (estimated)

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