Amazingly though, the most powerful Mercedes-Benz was not the Black Series SLS, but its Electric Drive version which had adopted a white livery instead of the bright yellow of Geneva. Its four electric engines develop a total 700 horsepower, and 1000 Nm of torque. These high performance specifications are necessary to deal with the extra 548 kilograms weight of the new generation batteries. Mercedes-Benz have added their load of technology with their brand new torque vectoring system in addition to a four-wheel drive transmission. If you’re interested to discover what 700 silent electric horspepower feels like, you can now order yours from 416’500 €. We started our walk back to Aston Martin for the press conference and found ourselves face to face with Brabus new delirium, a 6 wheels 700 (!) horsepower V12 version of the G and an 8 wheels tank by Mansory.
I had never been to a big press conference before, but Aston Martin’s was a bit of a disappointment. Knowing the Gaydon brand wasn’t presenting anything new at the IAA, I wasn’t expecting much, but 15 minutes to see Dr. Ulrich Bez standing still, reading a few notes on his iPhone was rather disappointing. So I prefered gathering around looking at the different cars, and was really happy to see CC100, the barchetta Aston Martin has built for its centenary in hommage of the DBR1 Stirling Moss drove in the early sixties. Although it costs over one million euros, the mechanical specifications are exactly the same as the Vanquish : 570 horsepower 6 liter V12 mounted with the same unworthy 6 speed sequential gearbox. As of today, only 3 CC100 will be handcrafted by Aston Martin, entirely in carbon fiber.
We went then to the BMW group hall to have a quick look. Rolls-Royce had put on display a beautiful Wraith in a bicolor purple black livery which seemed to catch the eye of every single visitor. Along it, there was two Ghost in rather unusual colors too : a sky blue configuration with its aluminium bonnet and a dark chocolate brown extended wheelbase version. Although Rolls-Royce wasn’t presenting any new car in Frankfurt it was an absolute pleasure to note the wealthy health of the Crewe based brand. Their flagship, the Phantom is still a huge hit amongst their traditionnal customers, and the Ghost range seems to delight younger customers in search of comfort, luxury, and rafinement.
Stepping inside BMW’s hall itself we found ourselves looking at the different i models. The Munich’s brand was very keen to show that their new electric car series were customer-ready, although only the i3 is available for sale. And judging by the number of i3s that were travelling through the IAA as press shuttle, BMW seemed to be very careful that journalists could note how far technologically in the electric automotive BMW had arrived. Sadly though the i8 is still in its final phase of development, and it would be lying to say that we are not highly expecting this electric hybrid sports coupé, for which BMW promised it would have performances equivalent to one of its biggest sports flagship : the M3. Speaking of which, as its production has now been stopped, I was expecting the new version at Frankfurt but the bavarians had prepared us another surprise that we discovered afterwards.
We found ourselves outside again watching the Land Rover Evoque Urban Experience where Evoques were gambling around showing that they could not only be urban fashion accessories for Victoria Beckham and proving that they were real Range Rovers. So to see if the new challenger was up to the myth, we went in for the experience. Check out our video of this experience :