A Chrysler that's quicker than an Enzo? Believe it. Even better, the guys at Auburn Hills want to build it. Bad.
Okay, let's get straight to the point: Any road car with 850 horsepower is going to get your attention, right? And while we're talking numbers, how does 0-to-60 mph in 2.85 seconds grab you? Or a standing quarter-mile time of 10.6 seconds at 136 mph? Yep, that's a Ferrari Enzo you just went past... And would you really care if this King-Kong supercar just happened to have a Chrysler badge on the nose? Thought not.
Chrysler stunned the world when it unveiled its outrageous ME Four-Twelve concept car at the Detroit Auto Show last January. No one could quite believe a company best known for sensible-shoes people-movers and trucks the size of Texas would seriously consider producing a mid-engine V-12-powered supercar designed to blow an Enzo off the autostrada. Rival auto execs were quick to write off the ME Four-Twelve as an extravagant corporate ego trip, a glittery show pony that would never turn a wheel in anger. But Chrysler bosses Dieter Zetsche and Wolfgang Bernhard insisted it was the real deal: "If the reception is positive, we are definitely going to build this baby," Bernhard said.
Fast forward to a foggy August morning at Laguna Seca. A matte-black shape rockets down the pit straight, all angles and edges and black-tinted glass, like a ground-based stealth fighter. This handbuilt ME Four-Twelve prototype, constructed in barely four months by a small team under the direction of Chrysler's SRT special-vehicles chief Dan Knott, is the multi-million-dollar fulfillment of a promise made at Detroit. "This is not a fake," says Dieter Zetsche. "It is a serious car."
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