Although it appears like—and weighs as a lot as—a full-grown ocean solar fish, smells like melted crayons, encompasses a cabin plagued by sticky delaminating buttons, and was sometimes stuffed, in interval, with bratty pre-tweens squirting one another with tubes of Go-Gurt and arguing over which Disney Channel DVD to play on their seatback screens, the Mercedes R63 has all the time held a uncanny attract to me.
Whereas I’m a childless city gay, I’ve made no secret of my affection for minivans, and have revealed broadly on the topic, plumbing the depths of their weird design histories, corralling relenting worshipers of their flexibility, and overprizing their inventiveness and gadgetry. So when Mercedes-Benz supplied me the chance to drive their sidelong entry into the marginal class of hot-rod “sports activities tourer”—the 507hp, 6.3-liter naturally-aspirated V8-powered, all-wheel-drive, four-door, six-passenger 2007 R63—from LA to Pebble Seashore to kick off the annual automotive bacchanal often known as Monterey Automotive Week, I didn’t dither.
Like lobster ice cream, or indoor desert ski slopes, the R63 is an audacious and wondrously horrible thought. It’s practically inconceivable to think about the product planning assembly wherein the R63 was hatched, however its primary blueprint adopted the fundamental Affalterbach playbook: transplant the honkingest V8 attainable into the engine bay, inoculate the chassis in opposition to acute rejection, and stand again with a pilsner guffawing on the doubtful outcomes.
As with fisting, simply because one thing greater can slot in there, doesn’t essentially imply it can deliver pleasure. Fortuitously, members for each that act, and this automobile, are likely to self-select. To that finish, the R63 was a special-order car, out there solely to those that had been courageous sufficient to ask their supplier to construct them one. It price practically $90,000 in 2007 ($135,000 in immediately’s cash), weighed 5,300 kilos when empty, and accelerated from 0-60 mph in 4.6 seconds on its strategy to a high pace of 155 mph. Solely 200 had been produced, globally, for one mannequin yr, and simply over 100 made it to the States, making it rarer than the CLK Black Collection, or McLaren P1.
The drive from Los Angeles to Monterey may be among the many world’s most dreadful, or loveliest, route-dependent. I cut up the distinction, avoiding the anodyne 5 that runs up California’s agro agricultural backbone, and taking the coast and mountain route, however then skipping the inevitable incoming visitors bathroom on Freeway 1 round Massive Sur. This gave me the chance to check the R63 within the twisties, in addition to its abilities as a freeway cruiser.
We’ll begin with the excellent news. This factor is fucking quick. With sure-footed 4MATIC all-wheel-drive, it can smoke a recent V-10 M5 to 60 mph. And it pulls and pulls. On the freeway, retaining your foot in it permits that scrumptious naturally aspirated V8 to indicate its legs like a health club queen in 3” working shorts. Because of the preponderance of CHiPs, looking for out exotics to ticket en-route to the MCW festivities, I didn’t try to achieve V-max. However triple-digit blasts are easy, and the 7-speed transmission, and comfortable sport seats, permits all-day high gear cruising at California freeway speeds, which hover round 85 or 90 mph on the much less occupied stretches. We had been within the automobile for 7 hours and felt recent on arrival. Not new S-Class recent, however not in want of a chiropractor.
Furthermore, with out the ultra-raised seating place of an SUV—it’s a half-foot decrease than the 2007 ML63 crossover with which it shares its underpinnings—it’s simple to overlook that you just’re in a long-roofed wagony-van form of factor, till you see everybody watching you mouthing, “What the fuck is that?” Massive brakes beneath 20” five-spoke wheels present greater than sufficient stopping energy. However this factor is lengthy and heavy. So it’s not precisely nimble. It’s comparatively flat round mild curves, however you possibly can readily really feel physics, and the shortage of a long time of intervening Benz crossover chassis tuning, coming into play. A canyon carver, it’s not.
It’s troublesome for my aged self to acknowledge that the mid-aughts occurred twenty years in the past. However the R63 jogs my memory of this in quite a few methods. There’s no Bluetooth. The one strategy to plug in a cellphone is through a brief corded 30-pin dock connecter within the glovebox. There are the aforementioned DVD screens mounted to the entrance seatbacks. And the nav system, whereas purposeful, is CD-based, one thing we realized, after the very fact, when it didn’t route us round a large visitors jam approaching the Monterey Peninsula. Duh.
“That is the form of automobile that, if you see one up on the market, it’s a must to purchase it,” a Mercedes Basic Middle rep advised us. I’d disagree, personally. There are many different autos, perhaps even different minivans, I would relatively personal, first. However I’d positively agree with one other assertion the identical rep made after we had been pumping this beast stuffed with $100 value of premium, an antidote to its 14 mpg freeway efficiency. “This automobile got here from a second within the firm that can by no means be repeated.” Bless the weirdos who considered it.
