Sudhir Matai experiences both ends of the Mercedes performance scale in just 24 hours.
I love my job, but don’t tell my boss, it may adversely affect my bargaining powers when salary negotiations begin. Since I was knee high to a…well, knee, I have been a petrolhead. This fact is attested to by a dog named Turbo and the lounge carpet that was constantly hidden by my model cars.
Okay, enough of the boring when I was young schpiel… A few weeks ago I attended the launch of the new Smart ForTwo in San Francisco (which you will read all about in the February issue). As many of you will know Smart is a brand of the Mercedes passenger car group. The ovoid two-seater is the smallest and least powerful model on offer from the Three-Pointed Star. Nevertheless, I had a fun few days cruising through Silicone Valley, and surrounds in the new model. With a three-cylinder engine it is no firecracker but American cities have draconian speeding laws, and large traffic volumes ensure moderate pace. On the whole, the trip was a pleasant if slightly sedate experience.
I left San Fran on Thursday afternoon and after a few very long flights back to SA, I stepped out of international arrivals at OR Tambo Airport on Saturday morning, and there, patiently awaiting me was a pristine CL65 AMG. As jazz maestro Jamie Callum’s dulcet tones so eloquently highlight, “What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours…” The last car I had driven boasted just 62 kW and 121 N.m, and here I was about to experience 450 kW and 1 000 N.m. That’s right one THOUSAND Newton metres of torque, a kiloNewton, if you will.
You see, that’s why I love my job. One day you’re cruising along the Golden Gate Bridge at 40 mph, and before you know it you’re sliding into the seat of a R1,8 million grand tourer.
As you would have realised, the CL65 was part of the cast of our performance shootout. I was tasked with driving this luxury performance missile from Jo’burg to Upington, and then back again. As the event at Upington Airport only kicked off on Monday afternoon, I spent the better part of the weekend swanning around Gauteng in the Uber-Benz. With requisite hot brunette installed in the left seat, we were ogled – well my passenger and the car were – wherever we went. The CL65 certainly garners is fair share of attention, if not for being recognised as the Big Daddy of performance Mercs – witness an AMG bodykit and 20(!!)-inch alloys, then for its sheer presence.
Of course there is the little matter of the 450 kW and gargantuan torque yield that requires gentle massaging of the throttle should you not want to leave any standstill situation in a flurry of Continental smoke or enter every on-ramp peering out of the side window – or so I’m told.
The trip to Upington was a brutal indication of this car’s raison d’être, to crush continents with utter disdain. It is biblically fast, so fast in fact, with so much power in reserve at any point that overtaking and oncoming traffic may as well be a figment of your imagination, as they both are of zero concern. I can’t tell you exactly how fast I went, but will divulge that the car needed over a tank and half of unleaded to cover the 800-odd kms between the two towns.
Compared with the Smart I had driven just days before the CL65 had twice the number of turbochargers, four times the number of cylinders, over seven times the power and eight times the torque!!! The delicious irony of the situation is that they were two ends of essentially the same passenger car line-up.
You can see how the Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG lines up against the rest of the supercar competition in CARtoday.com’s Sarel and the Supercars feature.