Touching 200mph on the road
David Becker / Unsplash
Today there are seemingly no end of supercars that can top the double ton, but back in the 1990s there were only a handful of machines that could reach 200mph. And getting to that magic mark wasn’t easy remembers Nik Berg.
There is just one country on earth where you can legally drive as fast as you dare: Germany. Its infamous autobahns are still completely unrestricted in many places and even the taxi drivers hurtle along above 100mph without thinking about it.
But doubling that speed requires the right car, the right timing and the right stretch of road. Thinking back I only had one of the three.
The car was a Brabus E V12. Based on the W210 Mercedes-Benz E-Class it was fitted with a tuned 7.3-litre V12 engine, rated at over 570bhp and confirmed by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s fastest four-door. Its top speed was capped at 205mph so that was to be my target.
On a grey winter winter morning I arrived at the Brabus factory in Bottrop, just north of Essen. I was greeted by the sight of the stealth black E V12 and a stern German engineer who was to accompany me and a photographer on the nearby unrestricted A2 autobahn.
With great power comes great responsibility goes the Spider-saying and I was about to be really quite irresponsible. The outside temperature gauge was wavering around zero and the roads were either frosty or damp. Just tickling the throttle saw the traction control warning lamp flicker and the torque restricted.
Undeterred thanks to youth and an enthusiasm shared by neither the man from Brabus nor the snapper in the back seat I joined the autobahn slip road and pushed hard on the accelerator. Again the dashboard lit up, but the Brabus surged forward and in mere seconds the speedometer swept past 200. Easy. Except of course that was kilometres per hour and so I had about 120 more to go to reach my goal.
I most certainly had the car for the job but other factors were conspiring against me. First there was the weather, a freezing cold road, damp and icy in parts which was soon joined by a smattering of rain. Next was the autobahn itself. Just two lanes wide and not without traffic.
What followed over the next 30 minutes or so was a series of violent thrusts towards the horizon whenever a big enough gap appeared. Squinting to see as far ahead as possible, I’d mash the right pedal only for a truck to appear and force me to lift, or for one of those 100mph taxis to drift a little into my lane and provoke a heart-stopping stand on the brakes.
150mph soon became a breeze, but trying to grab those extra elusive digits required another level of focus. I can still feel the trickle of cold sweat running down from my armpit during the most intense period of driving concentration in my life (including driving a Ford GT40 at Le Mans and a Lamborghini Diablo at Nardó).
After reaching 300 km/h or 180mph a couple of times another warning light appeared: low fuel.
I can honestly say I was relieved.