Driver's Notebook: Brabus SV-12
October 1, 2003
Forget horsepower. If you’ve got two-plus tons of expensive metal, leather, and electronics to move down the road at better than three miles per minute, you need torque. That is the philosophy of Uli Gauffres, the head of R&D at Brabus, one of the world’s ultimate high-performance Mercedes-Benz tuners. “People buy a car for two numbers,” he says. “The horsepower and the top speed. What people don’t realize is that about 98 percent of the time they drive on torque.” Gauffres explains that torque—not horsepower—is what pins your back to the seat when you tap the throttle.
We can only smile and nod in agreement with his philosophy after burning up the fast lane on the A31 autobahn outside Düsseldorf in a Mercedes-Benz SL600 powered by a bi-turbo V-12 that Gauffres engineered to crank out 1,026 Newton meters of torque. (That’s 757 ft lbs for the metric-phobic.) Press the pedal to the floor and every one of those 1,026 Newton meters wakes up at 1,750 rpm to mimic a big hand from the sky shoving the SL forward, as long as you keep your foot down. Or, until one of those damned trailer-toting Dutch drivers wanders into your lane.
Reaching a cruising speed of 155 mph happens so smoothly and effortlessly that you feel safe and secure nudging the speedometer needle ever closer to its extreme of 360 kph (223 mph). The only downside to having all this torque thrusting us forward is, we are closing in on cars ahead at almost three miles a minute. Thus, discretion overcomes torque to max out our headlong rush at about 167 mph.
This brings up another of Gauffres’ power principles: The ability to stop quickly is a very essential requirement of going fast. Behind the 20-inch Brabus-designed light alloy wheels (9 inches wide in front and 10.5 inches at the rear) are enormous ventilated and perforated brake rotors with 12-piston calipers up front and 6-piston calipers in back. Gauffres calls them the cheapest life insurance policy you can buy. Again, no argument here, especially after an errant Renault Twingo darts across our nose just as we hit 165 mph during one of our throttle-crushing stretch runs.
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