Grrrarrah! The twin-turbo V8 growls its anger across the high peaks of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria. Never mind petrol, this feels as though the 4-litre has been fed a couple of bottles of Milliner’s Buck-U-Uppo, PG Wodehouse’s famous nostrum. The horizon is headed into close vision like an over-cranked movie and now we’re really moving, reminding me I need a haircut as my barnet whips me in the face.
It seems kind of ironic that 140 years after the invention of Karl Benz’s Patent-Motorwagen in 1885, the same company has given us an engine like this, which barely requires its eight-speed ZF automatic, giving all the impression of being an unstoppable force – or as near to the characteristics of an electric motor as makes little difference.
But it is different, hand-built by the crafts folk of Affalterbach, 257 miles away from here. This hot-turbo unit is assembled in the ‘one-man-one-engine’ principle, which is strange as last time I went to the famous AMG plant, there were at least a handful of women engine builders. At this rate of knots, we could go and check: it’ll take less than three hours if we ignore the speed limits…
