AMG E63 Sedan Smashes Cannonball Record With 27-hour Run!
Six years after another AMG landed in L.A. in under 29 hours, Arne Toman & Doug Tabbutt set a new Cannonball record with tons of help.
Once upon a time, there was an adventurer named Erwin “Cannonball” Baker. Baker, a motorcycle rider and race car driver, set 143 records between the 1910s and 1930s, including an 11-day ride from New York to Los Angeles by motorcycle in 1914, and a 53.5-hour run behind the wheel of a Graham-Paige 57 Blue Streak 8 in 1933.
The 53.5-hour run stood for four decades, until racing legends Brock Yates and Dan Gurney slammed down a new time of 35:54 in 1971 in a Ferrari, in the first-ever Cannonball Run. Since then, the trans-continental records has been broken time and time again, such as the 31:04 run in 2006, set by Alex Roy and Dave Maher. According to VINWiki, a new time was established this year, all done in a 2015 Mercedes-AMG E63: 27:25.
“I didn’t want to break the record by minutes. I didn’t want anyone else trying, and I didn’t want to do it again,” said Arne Toman, one half of the duo behind the latest record run, along with Doug Tabbutt.
The duo’s E63 is the second Mercedes-AMG to set a sub-30-hour run (and the second car overall to do it), the first a silver 2004 Mercedes CL55 AMG driven by Ed Bolian in 2013. And like all of the runs before, it took tons of planning, lots of gear, and a 55-gallon fuel cell filled with luck.
“Probably the most trick thing I had was a thermal scope on a roof-mounted gimbal that could be operated via remote control by the back seat passenger,” Toman said. “We picked up a cop warning on Waze and we were able to see the heat signature of the car sitting on the side of the road.”
Of course, none of that would have mattered if it weren’t for the help of friends and customers all along the way from New York to L.A. Toman, formerly with AMS Performance, and Tabbutt, the founder and owner of Switchcars, made plenty of phone calls to organize the 18-member lookout crew, including a member of Roy’s team on the 2015 autonomous trans-con run, Carl Reese.
“To me, cannonballing is the ultimate expression of freedom,” Toman told YouTube channel VINwiki. “As a kid, I saw the movie, I read the articles. It was something that was just forever in my mind.”
Will the 27:25 record ever be broken? If it ever is, we expect to see a Mercedes-AMG pull off the feat once more.
Photos: Road & Track
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