A little over a decade ago, owning a stock sedan or station wagon with over 400 hp was pretty much impossible, as even the teutonic muscle cars from AMG, Motorsport Technik or quattro GmbH were still considering 350-400 hp as “powerful enough.”
Nowadays, you can get over 400 hp on a German mid-size premium sedan or station wagon without even going to the aforementioned three crafters, so it's all good from this point of view.
The Mercedes-Benz CLS 500 Shooting Brake (X218) is one of those models, offering no less than 408 hp and 600 Nm (443 lb ft) of torque from a twin-turbocharged V8 with 4.7-liters of displacement.
The close to two tons of luxury station wagon can be catapulted from naught to 100 km/h in just five seconds and then onwards to an electronically-limited top speed of 250 km/h (155 mph) in perfect comfort and serenity.
The following video shows us one such model with two persons on board go somewhere in Germany, on a de-restricted portion of the famous Autobahns, up to 258 km/h (160 mph) in wet conditions.
The way in which it achieves this feat is almost boring and completely uneventful, which is pretty much how any modern-day grand tourer should do it.
Alex handled his first real steering wheel at the age of five (on a field) and started practicing "Scandinavian Flicks" at 14 (on non-public gravel roads). Following his time at the University of Journalism, he landed his first real job at the local franchise of Top Gear magazine a few years before Mircea (Panait). Not long after, Alex entered the New Media realm with the autoevolution.com project. Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News