Porsche’s first production sedan was a Mercedes-Benz.
History is written by the victors; so are most autobahn stories. Yet, my abiding memory of Mercedes’s epoch-defining sport sedan came as an onlooker rather than a driver. A couple of years back, I was driving on an unlimited stretch of the A5 autobahn south of Frankfurt late on a summer evening. I’d rented a base Volkswagen Polo, which was incapable of any high-speed adventure itself. But I had a great view as fast movers streaked past. This story originally appeared in Volume 22 of Road Track.
Instead, the design team took advantage of the high-pressure area at the front of the car and created ducting behind the headlights, with more than enough air flowing through the gaps around the lights to feed the engine. Peaks of 322 hp and 354 lb-ft might look slight by modern standards, but they were enough to make the 500E one of the fastest sedans in the world, even though the four-speed automatic gearbox meant the engine would be running close to max revs at top speed.
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