Hakskeen Pan - They say that German super sedans are designed for high-speed, straight-line, bullet-train-like performance because they come from the land of limitless autobahns. I say hogwash. They’re designed for landspeed competitions in the dusty Kalahari Desert.
Kalahari Desert Speedweek, now in its third year, is an annual eight-day speed festival held in a far northwestern corner of South Africa where tumbleweeds can roam for days nonstop and the dried-up lake beds are tailor-made for top-speed exploration. It’s a proper run-what-you-brung motorsport event where anybody is welcome to enter, and anything with an engine is eligible.
But contrary to its title, Speedweek’s not only about speed; over the years it’s also become a meeting place for all sorts of eccentric machinery and people. Think of it as a fuel-fed Oppikoppi-type gathering where leathery old dirt-bikers can share a dop and turn a chop with well-groomed and well-heeled supercar drivers.
Expect anything from 1940s-vintage Nash sedans limping along in period-correct warbird liveries to finely tuned Italian exotics humming at breakneck speeds, billowing dust clouds in tow.
It’s also become an annual outing for South Africa’s blossoming rat-rod brigade, where the rusty, unfinished weathered look ranks higher than polished paint and buffed chrome on coolness meters. Expect highly-modified flat-head Ford V8s in crusty old tow trucks, and Nascar-spec Chevy small blocks powering curmudgeoned jalopies riding at belly-scraping altitudes.
We’ve attended Speedweek since its inception in 2012 and, as a team, have taken a variety of modern machinery across the five-kilometre strip set up on the Northern Cape’s Hakskeen Pan. In doing so we’ve amassed some expertise in the intricacies of driving at more than 250km/h on a loose clay surface, and we now know what to look for in a car to suit the unusual task.
For Speedweek 2014, which finished this past Sunday, we enlisted the help of Mercedes-Benz and secured a shiny new E63 S AMG for the occasion. This ‘bahnstormer’, no… ‘panstormer’, has all the right ingredients: heaps of power (430kW and 800Nm), a long wheelbase (to assist in guiding the missile when it gets squirrely over the clay) and an optional 300km/h speed-limiter upgrade - which was, of course, fitted to our car.
This R34 250 extra also comes with a carbon-fibre boot-lip spoiler.
Overseas this model is available with an all-wheel-drive 4Matic drivetrain making it one of the quickest AMGs available at a claimed 3.6 seconds for the 0-100km/h sprint, but here, where the car is specced in rear-wheel-drive only, a traction deficit lowers that number to 4.1 seconds.
Like most current AMGs the E63 S gets a Race Start launch-control system to help lay stacks of thrust down off the line, but even with this electronic aid engaged we still battled to find the traction needed to match Mercedes’ figures.
On the concrete surface of the Gerotek test facility near Pretoria we came off with a still very respectable best sprint of 4.6 seconds, with the quarter-mile coming in 12.6.
Traction was more of an issue at Hakskeen Pan, where even at 200km/h plus the twin-turbo 5.5 V8 made enough torque to spin the back wheels. Posting a good result at Speedweek isn’t as easy as mashing the throttle for the length of the strip, holding the steering dead ahead, and letting the car gallop to whatever speed it’s capable of. Oh no. When the rear wheels rotate faster than the fronts at high speed, it’s a recipe for a snaky, slippery, counter-steery trip.
But, even with all the sliding around we went through the traps at an official top speed of 266km/h – which was good enough to scoop us second place in the overall car category behind a 551kW/690Nm Lamborghini Aventador that was a mere 4km/h quicker. We’re not saying the E63 couldn’t go faster on a tar surface (it definitely could), we’re just saying that 266 was the fastest (of three passes) it was capable of at Hakskeen Pan – a place for which, like the German autobahn, this fast Mercedes was designed. - Star Motoring
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