New World Record: 231 Mph

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

What is the fastest sedan under the sun? Up until a few days ago, it was a Mercedes E-Class, tuned by Brabus. That car can kiss the world record good-bye.

The German tuner G-Power in Autenzell, north of Munich, equipped a BMW M5 with a 588 kW/800 hp ten cylinder engine with a twin turbo, called it “Hurricane RR” and brought it to 372 km/h (231 mph), says Automobilwoche [sub]. The Brabus was 2 km/h slower.

The Brabus boys in Bottrop aren’t sitting on their hands. “We haven’t reached top speed yet“ said Dalibor Erakovic of Brabus. “There will be a new car.” When, how fast, and how much remains anybody’s guess.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Carguy Carguy on Aug 23, 2010

    Another automotive record that has all the relevance of competitive hot dog eating.

    • Old Guy Old Guy on Aug 23, 2010

      Figuring that they're all hand built, you have to wonder how many they need to sell, and at what price, in order to make back the [s]tinkering[/s] engineering costs. Automobile manufacturing is kind of like aircraft building in that respect: the Mach 3 fighters get all the glory and command astonishingly high prices, but it's a much harder engineering job to build an airplane that can stay in the air 16 hours a day, take off and land 12 times, and use less fuel than the previous models. (Plus Boeing and Airbus have crack engineering teams constantly striving to outdo each other in terms of making the most uncomfortable seat)

  • William442 William442 on Aug 23, 2010

    Sometime in the late 80s, Tim Richmond ran between 239, and 240 in a Harry Hyde Monte Carlo. He beat Al Holbert's 962 , long and short tail ,in the process. Maybe geeber knows the details.

  • Buckshot Buckshot on Aug 23, 2010

    The topspeed is not that important. The most interesting number for me would be something like 70-140 km/h.

  • Davekaybsc Davekaybsc on Aug 23, 2010

    A 0-60 time of less than 3 seconds is incredibly difficult to do. You'll notice that most supercars can't manage it. They're either too heavy, don't have the traction, don't have the power, or can't do it without destroying their clutches. Where a car with insane power is most useful is passing on a two-lane. If you're stuck behind a row of slow moving cars or a full size truck and you see a gap you can use, you want to be able to hit 80mph+ as quickly as possible. 50-70 is a useful number to know, but 40-80 would be more useful. Most annoying traffic is going slower than 50, and I don't stop at 70 when I'm passing on a two-lane.

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