More Supercar Madness > Chrysler's ME4-12
Patrick
forever going to choke the life out all future vehicles. Boy, were we
ever wrong, huh?
How 'bout 850 HP & 850 ft-lbs of torque?
0-60 in 2.9
0-100 in 6.2
1/4 in 10.6 @ 136 MPH
And then there's the 1.5 lateral Gs, and 2 Gs under braking.
Makes you wonder what they'll be able to serve up in another 20 years.
---
We've driven it. It's not only a real car, it's the real deal.
Chrysler showed its 850 hp quad-turbo V12 ME Four-Twelve concept car
at the Detroit auto show in January and promised we could drive it
within the year. The promise has been fulfilled. But it wasn't exactly
the show car that did the job.
"When we said that car was a prototype, that was probably a little of
bragging on our part," admitted Chrysler Group CEO Dieter Zetche over
dinner Wednesday night. "We found out how much harder it was to build
a real prototype of a car with this much performance. There are a lot
of 24/7 engineering hours on the program. This car, though, is a
running prototype."
Indeed it is. Looking stealthy in naked flat black carbon fiber
bodywork, it's really a test mule that has been running for about a
month, long enough to prove that the target performance figures were
real. In Chrysler's own tests, conducted on a 12,000-ft. long runway
at an abandoned military airbase (Wurtsmith AFB) at Oscoda, Michigan,
the car ran 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds, to 100 mph in 6.2 seconds (faster
than most cars get to 60 mph) and ran a 10.6 second quarter-mile at
136 mph. And it doesn't perform that well only because it's a mule.
There's really nothing cobbly about this car...the interior isn't
finished with leather and other goodies, the switchgear is makeshift
rather than productionized, and you can sometimes hear a minor "clunk"
in the carbon-fiber/aluminum composite chassis when you stress the car
in a corner, but it's a solid piece of work--but still a little
heavier than Chrysler's target.
"These figures are conservative," said Dan Knott, head of the SRT
performance operations at DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group about the
numbers posted at Oscoda. "As with our other performance products, we
want to make sure the numbers we claim are numbers that customers can
really achieve."
We're not so sure about that in the sense that the numbers really
require a good driver with high g-tolerances, but we can say the car
is "user friendly" and that most drivers could get an awesome
experience even well inside the car's limits.
Given that there is only one mule, that there are 8 other drivers in
line this morning (not counting Zetsche or Jochen Mass, who took the
turns after the press guys were done), and that we value our own skin,
we won't be trying to achieve such dramatic levels of performance here
at Laguna. When we arrived, before 8 a.m., the place was well
socked-in with fog, but by the time we'd done a walk-around the car
and a few laps of orientation in a van driven by a Skip Barber
instructor, it had lifted enough to at least see the corners--even the
infamous Corkscrew at the top of the hill.
When my turn arrived, I donned the helmet and climbed in beside Herb
Helbig, perhaps best known to enthusiasts as the keeper of the Viper
flame, and one of several more-than-competent hot shoe development
engineers on the project. Herb asked if he would get hazardous duty
pay for riding with me--I told him to take it up with SRT operations
chief Dan Knott or his boss, Eric Ridenour.
Getting in the car is a bigger chore than it would be for a
productionized version. The racing seat is fixed in place, and there's
a four-point harness to do up.
Adjust the steering column, eyeball the digital instrument panel that
travels up and down with the column, get a feel for the placement of
the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel (it's a racing wheel,
removable for entry/exit--in production, you'd be able to push the
seat back more and tilt the column up for those purposes), place your
foot on the brake (it's a two-pedal car) and thumb the red start
button.
The 6.0-liter V12 comes to life with a lusty roar. This AMG-built
mill, designed specifically for the project, couples to a seven-speed
dual clutch transmission with electronically controlled wet clutch, by
Ricardo. It will work flawlessly for nearly 3 hours of track time this
morning.
For now, at least, initial gear selection is accomplished with a metal
dial on the dash that looks like something off a Radio Shack rheostat.
There's an N for Neutral and a D for Drive and an R for reverse.
There's one notch in between N and D that could be, well, full manual?
Race-performance? It's unlabeled on the mule, and they didn't want us
playing with it yet.
So we picked "D" and eased into the throttle--you don't just go
jumping all over 850 lbs.-ft. of torque in pitlane with people all
around. Easing into the experience is advisable, but not too
slowly--we'll only get three laps on our first go, and another two
later.
The sound as the engine climbs toward its 6200 rpm redline is
terrific. Unlike the shrieking sound of, say, an Enzo (we saw three in
our first 24 hours on the penninsula), which has the same displacement
and cylinder count, this engine has the low-pitched growl of a
monster. Routing the exhaust through four turbos has something to do
with it, as must the tuning of the system feeding the four pipes that
exit at the tail.
On our first laps, we find the chassis solid, the suspension not
race-car stiff on this smooth pavement but allowing a tiny little
amount of roll and pitch, somewhat similar to other high-performance
midengine cars we've driven lately, such as the Ford GT. With an extra
300 hp or so in hand, though, the ME Four-Twelve raises the game on
performance.
Steering is responsive, sharp and quick, with a 16:1 ratio, only 2.5
turns lock to lock, despite an excellent (for its class) turning
circle of 36 ft. Quick turn-in means you have to be careful not to
apex the turns at Laguna too early--it really wants to dive in when
you get the line right into the corners.
Once we've got the engine singing, we try the paddle shifter and it
responds as quickly as the Enzo's. Since we're not going for any lap
records here, though, I figured I'd let it shift for itself most of
the time, and it handles the task well. Acceleration is awesome and
yet the car doesn't do anything scary--no dancing about, no
threatening to jump sideways. It might be that they've got the power
dialed back a little to preserve the transmission, but still, you
could lose 200 hp and still have more than 600 on tap. Credit the
electronic assists and the beefy Michelin Pilot Sport 2s,
265-35-ZR-19s in front, 335/30ZR20s aft for keeping it stuck to the
ground.
Downshifts come quickly and cleanly, without a showy double-clutching
throttle blip, since the system works without it. They've got it set
to downshift for you at 1400 rpm or so, but I pull a few downshifts
myself (left paddle) to make sure we get the full charge out of the
slower turns. Still, I suspect we're using what would be "street mode"
in most such system--a track mode that was quicker to downshift might
have shifted down one more gear than I did going into the Corkscrew,
for instance.
Or maybe not. The car is deceptively fast, being relatively quiet
inside and with such slick aero management around the cockpit, at
least, that wind noise is negligible. The tires aren't loud, either,
so you look down at the speedo expecting to see a two-digit number
starting with 8 and find you're already over 100 mph.
Good thing this puppy can erase velocity. The brakes, six-piston
monoblock calipers grabbing 15-inch Brembo CCM (carbon composite
matrix) rotors are also on the Enzo level, though the particular
tuning on this mule allows a bit too much pedal travel for our tastes.
Getting on them hard--Laguna's Turns One and Six are good places to do
this early, since being late has dire consequences--lends credibility
to Chrysler's claim that it will brake at negative 2.0 gs. You need
one of the faster turns--and perhaps a bit more bravery than we can
muster behind the wheel of someone else's one-off supercar--to imagine
pulling lateral acceleration at the claimed 1.5 g level. I did go fast
enough to sense the downforce building and car gaining stick as you
went faster, though not until my second stint at the wheel. Chrysler
claims 925 lbs of downforce at 186 mph (300 km/h).
As I wrote of the Enzo, this is a car with a lot more in it than I'd
get out of it in one morning, but I was also like a kid when the
roller-coaster comes to a stop, shouting "again!" The corkscrew will
do that for you, if nothing else.
Jochen Mass seemed happy with the car's performance, which must be at
the level of some IMSA GTP racers of legend. He said the car is
"promising" and that he was particularly impressed that it's
distinctive in its own right, a Chrysler and not a copy of something
else.
So, is this an experience that might be made available to more than a
handful of journalists lucky enough to strap into the mule? It might,
says Zetsche, still. One point of having the car at the Monterey
weekend is to gauge the potential market for a car of such exotic
performance wearing the Chrysler brand. "If we build in units of 10,
say 10 to 50 or so, it would be a very high price," he says. "If we
build 500 to 1000, which is about the maximum we'd consider, it would
be a lower price, of course."
And what has he to say to those who say Chrysler shouldn't be messing
around in this territory, that it's too far a departure from its
family-mobile strengths?
"Even though Chrysler has not much heritage in racing--it has some,
but not as much as some who would be competitors for a car like
this--it has more history than many brands have in engineering and
innovation. That is what we want to be going back to and I am
convinced if we make (the ME Four-Twelve) work, it will be good for
the brand."
---
Here's where you can check out this monster.
http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=213&threadID=10130&tstart=0
Patrick
'93 Cobra
'83 LTD
66 6F HCS
> http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=213&threadID=10130&tstart=0
I get this...
Failure of server APACHE bridge:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Cannot connect to the server: timed out after 10 seconds
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Build date/time: Jan 8 2003 18:05:41
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Change Number: 230855
Scott W.
'66 Mustang HCS 289
'68 Ranchero 500 302
'69 Mustang Sportsroof 351W
'97 Cougar 30th Anniv SE 4.6L
ThunderSnake #57
Joe
Joe
Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies
Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC
"66 6F HCS" <92bottledan...@comcast.net> wrote in
news:GZGdna81WpN...@comcast.com:
> "Patrick" <NoOpt...@aol.com> wrote
>> http://forums.autoweek.com/thread.jspa?forumID=213&threadID=10130&ts
>> tart=0
>
>
> I get this...
> Failure of server APACHE bridge:
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- ----
> Cannot connect to the server: timed out after 10 seconds
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- ----
>
> Build date/time: Jan 8 2003 18:05:41
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------- ----
SVTKate
"Patrick" <NoOpt...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:a523f33e.04081...@posting.google.com...
Joe
coming out with the most exciting stuff.
Joe
Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies
Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC
"SVTKate" <SVT...@excite.competitive> wrote in
news:0qWTc.26996$Jp6....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net:
SVTKate
BUT
..... never mind.
Kate
"Joe" <avoidi...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:2obkghF...@uni-berlin.de...
MadDAWG
"SVTKate" <SVT...@excite.competitive> wrote in message
news:0qWTc.26996$Jp6....@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> WHY do you keep posting CHRYSLER Stuff???
>
MadDAWG
mem...@recorddeal.com
screwin witcha!
-Mike
--
A happy kid behind the wheel of a 98 Mustang GT
Cold air intake
FRPP 3.73 gears
Steeda Tri-Ax Shifter
Full Boar turbo mufflers
Hi-speed fan switch
255/60R-15 rear tires
"SVTKate" <SVT...@excite.competitive> wrote in message
news:%u1Uc.23560$nx2...@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
SVTKate
you lil 'chit.
I'm gonna get you!
<mem...@recorddeal.com> wrote in message
news:mkbUc.1395$oo5...@newssvr24.news.prodigy.com...
Michael Johnson, PE
and drive trains to build on. Not to mention the benefits of the hemi
engines in the SUV and truck lines. The more I see the 300C on the road
the more I like it.
Christopher Shea
"Joe" <avoidi...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:2oal1qF...@uni-berlin.de...