+ Click to Enlarge BRABUS ROCKET: It started life as a relatively benign Mercedes-Benz CLS but the German tuning house has turned it into a R3.82-million, 360km/h Ferrari-eater.

November 1, 2006
By Richard Lofthouse

Meet the latest creation from Mercedes-Benz' tuning house Brabus: the world's fastest saloon, the Rocket, for a mere R3.82-million.

Sven Gramm, Brabus's PR boss, took me out on the A31 autobahn near Bottrop, the Ruhr valley town where the tuning company was founded in 1977 and where the road has no speed limit.

No sooner had we reached what I thought was terminal velocity at about 160km/h than he kicked down the automatic transmission, summoned third gear and smiled as the car squirmed and the yellow traction control light came on to show the rear wheels were losing grip under the fierce acceleration.

All this on a fine, dry September day.

Gramm then accelerated up to an indicated 290km/h before braking hard to avoid tramping on a Fiat Panda way in the distance which, in effect, was "reversing" towards us at about 180km/h.

The experience lacked drama, though, and didn't feel hair-on-fire dangerous. The Brabus Rocket, based on a two-tonne Mercedes CLS, felt totally unruffled.

"The point is not that the driver will always drive at these speeds but that he will know the car has this capacity," Gramm said. "And that they are faster than anything this side of a Bugatti Veyron but with none of the fuss, four doors and a proper boot."

The Rocket, then, is a practical rocket, something to bear in mind when blowing €407 000 (about R3.83-million), the price with all bells and whistles.

What does this crazy price pay for? Principally, a serious rebuild of the already mighty Mercedes V12 engine. Brabus bores it out from six to 6.3 litres, bolts on two giant turbochargers and makes some serious additions to most of the drive train and suspension as well as to the wheels and brakes.

The result is a stupendous, parallel universe of statistics: 550kW; 1320Nm of torque (electronically limited to 1100Nm); 0-200km/h in 10.5sec and the glittering headlinert: top speed 360km/h. So the Rocket really is the fastest four-door sedan in the world.

Brabus also transforms the interior of the CLS with swathes of expensive, soft leather, alcantara headliner and a list of optional extras that all cost serious money.

But, to be brutally honest, nothing about the Rocket experience was particularly special. It accelerates from 100mph (160km/h) like a Porsche Boxster from a standing-start but the sound and fury is so well damped that you wouldn't know it.

A8 was flat-out too...

It was very little different from the sort of supercharged muscle cars that America has specialised in for years, though faster and unfathomably more expensive.

On our return blast I overtook an Audi S8, only to realise that it was accelerating flat-out too. Now, let's imagine the Audi had been some other brawny contender... perhaps a BMW M5, a Bentley Flying Spur, a Maserati Quattroporte?

The Rocket would have destroyed them all.

Yet the disappointing reality is that this is another silver Merc with a melancholy, black interior. Gramm rightly noted, however, that the Brabus was more comfortable and less highly strung than the (slower) Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.

How the Rocket goes through curves is harder to say, since we didn't tackle any, but considering you could buy three Ferrari F430's for the same money, perhaps it's an academic question. - The Independent, London