Mercedes-Benz C36

The first autobahn overpass carried a banner: Reisen Nicht Rasen (which I interpreted as "reason not racing") it said in meter-tall letters. They must have known I was coming!

For a quarter century, I'd fantasized about blasting down Germany's fabled autobahns. No speed limits, no plodding along at a lowest-common-denominator pace, no radar-gun-toting revenue agents-just me, the spectacular Alpine scenery, and endless miles of straight-to-the-horizon, smooth-as-glass, wider-than-the-Mississippi autobahn. The dream became reality just east of the Luxembourg border on Autobahn 1 in a U.S.-spec Mercedes C36: a 268-horsepower factory-issue hot-rod crafted by noted tuner AMG. (Indulge my tale: Most of the 400 '95 C36s coming to the U.S. are already spoken for, so driving-much less owning-one is probably a fantasy for you, too.)

Little was as I'd imagined. Curve- and hill-packed A1 is closer to well-worn Interstate 70 winding through the Rockies than a freshly poured, undeviating stretch of I-40 through west Tennessee. Narrower than interstate specs to start with, the autobahn tightened right up above 130 mph, and beyond that, it felt as if the single row of guardrail was about to rub my elbow. And what was all that traffic doing in my dream? Imagine driving 65 mph on a U.S. freeway and facing trucks backing up toward you at 35 mph; that wouldn't be as difficult as dealing with the slowest autobahn traffic at the C36's top speed.

Before the end of the first mile on the autobahn, I noticed quite a lot of wind rush coming from the area of the C36's mirrors. The fact was logged in my razor-sharp professional road tester's brain: "The C36 exhibits unexpected wind noise at, uh, 125 mph."

Such hard-charging speeds-or, at least, the capacity for such-are the C36's purpose and heritage. The C36 is part image enhancement for the staid C-Class, part celebration of the German Touring Car Championship-winning relationship between Mercedes and AMG (the latter a separate company). Unlike previous AMG-modified Mercedeses, the C36 was developed jointly by both companies. It will be sold (starting at about $50,000) through Mercedes dealers and carry the same four-year/50,000-mile warranty as other M-B products.

To meet these aggressive expectations, AMG and Mercedes raided the parts bin for many of the C36's upgrades. Front brakes come from the V-12-powered SL600, rears from the V-8-powered E420. The intake manifold, complete with larger-diameter passages, is from the E320. To handle the additional power, the C36 gets the E420's four-speed automatic, fitted with a direct 1.00:1 fourth gear. Although it carries the same axle ratio as the C280 from which it's born, the C36's differential was designed for future E-Class cars and features wider faces on the ring-and-pinion gears. C36s also get a faster-ratio steering gear, stiffer front and rear anti-roll bars, and 17-inch wheels (an inch wider in front than the C280's 6.5s, 2 inches wider in back) fitted with Bridgestone Expedia S-01s (225/45ZR17 front, 245/40ZR17 rear). The shocks are stiffer than the C280's, but spring rates are unchanged. The C36 sits a half inch lower by using springs from the short side of production tolerances.