Ever wondered what the Batmobile would be like irl? The closest we came to Bruce Wayne’s heavily ‘gadgeted’ ride was the Maybach Exelero. And this one didn’t need grapple hooks and missiles to take its place on our top 5 one of a kind list.
The concept that pushed the envelope
Back in 2003, Goodyear tires German division, Fulda, asked the peeps at Mercedes HQ for a crucible through which it would put its latest tires to see if they’d survive the extremities of a very fast, very heavy car. Sounds like one of those government experiments that created Captain America.
Not to mix our DCs with Marvels, but the last time Goodyear made such a request, it was 1938 and Maybach offered them the 200 km/h SW38.
All Mercedes had to do, really, was slap the tires onto an S55 AMG loaded with rocks, but I guess when you say going the extra mile, Maybach really did do that and then some.
They pulled off all the stops, and in 2005 revealed the exuberant 2.6-tonne one-timer Exelero in Berlin. Kids, that’s called attention to detail. Never half ass your homework, you never know when Birdman needs a lava-erupting volcano to display in his house.
A very, very long coupe
Now the Exelero might look ample enough to fit the entire cast of the Lion King and the great Khali, but this luxurious steed was merely a two-seat, two-door coupe.
Naturally, for a monster of such beastly proportions, you’d need an equally beastly set of cylinders, which is exactly what the Exelero had beneath the hood. A 5.9L Maybach V12 coupled with two titanic turbocharges, delivering 691 ponies on droids and 737lb ft of torque. Combine that with mammoth 23-inch wheels and even at 2.6T, you could hit those speeds of 350km/h.
Happily ever after?
And now the story of how it, apparently, fell into Birdman’s hands. On 1 May 2005, N24 and Le Mans winner, Klaus Ludwig, took up the challenge of steering the gargantuan 2.6-tonner around a circuit in the South of Italy. Driver credentials aside, the Exelero did what it set out to do, and it should have been game over. Enter Birdman.
In 2011, the rapper announced on Twitter that he was going to purchase the Exelero for $8 million. Not just that, he wanted to, wait for it, paint it red. Like what the absolute eff, right?
Thankfully, there was no real evidence that Birdman actually bought and desecrated it.
After that, the Exelero fell off the grid, kept away from other rappers who wanted to commit sacrilege (can you imagine if Kanye West made this one glow in the dark?), until it resurfaced again, just last year in a Supercar Blondie video. And guess what, it’s still all black!
Enjoyed this One of a Kind episode? Watch this space for next week’s reveal!
