Hello,

To those of you with the strong W221's, i.e. the 500's, 63's, 65's, 600's etc..

When you're thinking about passing on a 2 lane road, and there are 5-6 cars you have to pass at the same time, do you ever have to get prepared in advance, i.e. switch to M and downshift to get in the power band in advance, and then launch, or do you just put the foot and and it goes?

I have an M272E35 S350 and the *rare* times I have to pass someone I always prepare in advance, M, get in gear, and then go.

I have a vintage BMW V12 where I don't have to do anything, I just point and click and it just happens before you even realized it.

Just wondering if this is a 7G thing, or if it's a M272 case.. If I need to do a maneuver like this by the time the car realize it's "time to move fast" it takes a second to break out of comfort 'slow roll' mode into 'takeoff' mode.

Thanks

 

I used to have a 2011 E350 and with that I used the "hold down shift paddle down" so the gear went to the optimum gear for acceleration to pass someone quickly on a 2-lane hwy.

With my 2010 E550 I tried it a couple times and it is scary what happens with it. There is so much power that it really scared me.so I stopped doing it. Now I just step on the pedal and there is plenty of power this way too.

With my 2012 S550 with the twin turbo engine I have not even tried as it has so much power, especially torque, that with just stepping on it, it kicks the slip control on and the power cannot even be used because of it. Would need some sort of special grip race tires to be able to use all power the car has to offer.

 

To put it simple, the more power you have the less preparation you need and the more you can squirt it on a dime. The transmission matters in terms of how fast it can drop multiple gears. Over the years I essentially went from 100 hp cars to 200, then 300 then 400 then 500 and up. Above 500 it gets to a point where you can't really deploy the power anymore on public roads. With 100-200 hp, you are not gonna pass 5-6 cars on a 2 lane road unless you have no oncoming traffic for a couple of miles I would say. With 300 hp I had to work hard. Back then those cars I owned had manual transmissions, so I had to downshift into the proper gear first before attempting to pass. 400 hp was better, but still took some work. Those cars had dual clutch transmissions, and I still needed to kind of prepare by dropping a few gears in advance. In my case those were naturally aspirated, so before those kinds of cars get our of their way you have to get the revs up. Mine were also high revving with an 8500 rpm redline, and they needed to be revved to get going. Now with my '19 C63S with over 500 hp and biturbo chargers it just goes. The 9-speed MCT transmissions drops 5 gears in a blink of an eye and off it goes. In a less powerful regular car an eternity passes before the transmission even reacts. I still drive 90% or more in manual mode and drop gears manually in situations like that. At least if it's a winding road that I'm already driving spirited, but if I'm just cruising behind a few slow pokes and a legal passing zone present itself I can just stomp it and go. The only issue is really that by about the third car I'm likely doing over 100 mph already, so not recommended with LEOs nearby.

 

It's mostly the gearbox imho. It takes a looong time before the gearbox realises i want to move, maybe a second and a half or so.
More frustrating is that if you do pre-select a lower gear with the paddles (wirtout switching to M, just pulling the left paddle once or twice), it will not stay in that gear when you quickly press the accelerator, it will still hesitate and change to an even higher gear. Aaaaarrgghh! Stupid thing!

 

all German cars are only designed to terrorise other drivers on Autobahns - the idea is they set up them up with an engine performance curve that best suits when you adopt a driving style that’s a cross between a psychopath, a road rage nutter, and a car thief on acid....

thus the engine and gears only work together properly at 4k rpm (on a petrol engine) - so if the space is 10 car lengths and you are trying to do 6 cars - Yes you need to wind it up first - I often drop 3 gears if I need to press on

 

It's not that this is done on purpose. That's how combustion engines work. Contrary to popular believes, power, not torque, is what gives acceleration and speed, and power = torque * rpm / 5252. That's where the torque comes in. So there are two ways to make power in an engine. Rev it, or increase the torque to make more power at lower revs. There are two main ways to increase torque. Cylinder displacement or forced induction. The former means higher fuel consumption during normal driving, so the latter is preferred these days as it allows for a smaller cylinder displacement to get better fuel economy during normal driving and then force more air and fuel into the cylinders when power demands increase. Turbocharging is the preferred method for this as it uses waste energy from the exhaust gases, but turbochargers have lag as they have to spin up first. As opposed to an electric motor, combustion engines, no matter their design, don't make instant torque. Ultimately everything in life is physics. Understand the physics and make it work for you.

 

I'd add that as of the Bi-Turbo generation, turbo lag has largely been eliminated in Benz motors. By moving the impellers a lot closer to the source (in this case actually integrating them into the exhaust manifold), the wait for power is very small now - if you can detect it at all. My M157 drives like an 8 liter NA motor and if you hopped in and I didn't tell you it was turbo charged, you would never know.

 

I posted before ages back

real ones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Limited

BMW freaky looking tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars

Audi's spelt with a B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentley


In 1997 BMW started taking an interest in RR and they started supplying their joke utterly gutless V8s engines, almost killing the Brand overnight - having ruined the company, in 1998 they let VAG (VW) make a massive financial blunder (at the time believed to be a stroke of genius) and VW bought the headache of the dying business with only the gutless BMW engines in the model range. In the midst of the carnage BMW popped up and mentioned the small print - where they did the dirty and got the RR brand without a headache. Leaving VW with just the Bentley brand, a tired factory, and a model range of even uglier 45 year Shadow's now running 4Ltr moped engines

Owners of the previously torquey RR and Bentley 6.75ltr L410 V8s couldn't cope with the 4 ltr BMW engine'd models of the late 1990's. Owners couldn't understand why nothing happened when you put your foot on the throttle of these lawn mower cars from the Germans. The sales collapse quickly saw VW ditch the german engines and put a real one back in (which stayed till 2020) fixing the power situation using the original V8 (an engine in development from 1952 until emissions killed it off the last real engine'd Bentley’s in 2020).

The idea one wanted to wait half an hour for a gearbox to downshift at least twice, and then wait for the revs to pick up (and make uncouth noises) before anything happened, was an anathema to British drivers. They were used to pushing the throttle peddle down 1/2 an inch and being in the next county within a few seconds, without any additional noise...

After 20 years learning, VW Bentley's and BMW RR's now have waftability built in to the power train - rather then the Germanic racket of revs and nothing happening - I presume lots of Boost and far fewer gear changes - whereas real German Brands once they've changed down 4 gears seem fractionally quicker - coz still setup for road rage on the Autobahns - after all, you've got to pull out in front of someone going much faster the second that first flash of the left indicator glimmers - how else can you get the brakes as hot and bothered as the appalling drivers

.

 

As the saying goes, there's no replacement for displacement. That still holds true today. As mentioned above, things like Hot-V turbo setups are awfully close to bigger displacement NA engines, but especially the smaller buzzy 2 liter turbocharged 4-bangers are quite horrible engines, IMHO. Unfortunately due to emissions regulations, large displacement engines are going away.

There are a lot of factors that go into an engine and it matters what kind of car it's intended to go into. An RR is a boat that is about comfort and quiet driving, so the large displacement engines that don't want to rev freely are the perfect fit for a car like that. Ultimately these cars are a great application for an electric powertrain. It doesn't get any quieter than that in an RR. It's so quiet in fact that RR had to make the Spectre artificially louder, because the passengers felt unwell in the car. RR proved that cars can actually be too quiet. Our brain needs a certain level of noise to match with the sensation of speed and movement that our bodies experience.

Performance cars on the other hand use motorsport inspired engines that rev more freely. A large displacement engine while making lots of power down low is rather lazy to respond. That's fine for an RR, but not necessarily for a smaller, lighter and nimbler car with a quick throttle response. Can't have heavy parts rotate in the engine if you want a quick throttle response. So lighter flywheels, shorter strokes, forged light internals etc are used instead. Effortless power is not the same thing as responsive power.

So in that vein, yes I see where you are coming from. The Germans invented the sports sedan, so they are about lighter, nimbler and responsive cars. Britain invented the boat on wheels that wafts through the landscape with the throttle response of a tractor and the body roll of an ocean liner in the stormy sea.

 

I was still editing my bit of fun... your points make sense till we got to the bold bits

the are now heavy and cumbersome with silly suspension trying unsuccessfully to battle physics - then they went electric and added another 500kg

 

Yes, you are unfortunately right about that. One of my biggest complaints about cars these days and electric cars in particular. However even the super heavy hybrid M5 rips an RR to shreds around a corner, but it's not nearly as nimble as the previous generation and much of the added power goes towards moving all that extra weight. Ultimately the metric that really matters is power to weight ratio.

 

No issues whatsoever with the little 4.6 M278. Whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. Love this motor. It's more than plenty. Then you add exhaust and a tune.... Devil horns!

 

Well,

it is by physics and it is the torque (force) that makes the car move. Power is a “man made” unit that tells how fast you can take that torque out from the engine and transmission, but the key is that it is the torque that makes the car move, not the power.

Small torque engines rev up with high gear ratios to move the car as the torque just isn’t there like in a big engine that moves easily without revving up.

A good example of torque vs power is a farming tractor. A 100 hp tractor engine is quite powerful and can pull very heavy tools behind it as the torque from the gear train is made to move heavy loads. You can put the highest powered car with 1000 hp in front if a plow that is dug in the ground a foot deep and it would not move anywhere just because that car will not provide enough torque (force) to the wheels to move the heavy load.

Force (torque) is a natural unit, power is a man made unit telling how fast someone can drive the high powered car but if power transmission is made poorly the car can have a poor acceleration, for example, but go fast at end if time allows for it.

This is why power from the engine is not the only factor in how fast the car is accelerating as the transmission needs to be done correctly to be able to get that torque (force) on the road surface to move the car.

 

Yes, that's all correct, but doesn't change what I said. Two cars same weight, the one with more power is always faster and accelerates faster assuming you don't screw up the power transmission. A tractor is strong in pulling stuff, but it isn't fast. Increasing torque via transmissions sacrifices speed. You are just multiplying torque with gearing, but you make the vehicle slower.

Instead of me trying to explain it further, I'm just gonna leave Jason's video here. He did a great job explaining it.

 

OP... S-65. Transmission always in sport mode. Fun police always on. Apply wide open throttle. She drops as many ratios as befitting. 40-120 happens very quickly indeed.

 

As I said force moves the car, not power. Power tells how fast the car can move with the force it generates on the road surface.

We are talking about the same thing but when you say “power moves the car” you are wrong. It is force that moves things, as said earlier, power tells how fast the force can do it. And with the cars that force is torque on the wheels against road surface.

 

We are not talking about the same thing. Force alone doesn't move a car. It takes work a.k.a energy and power is the rate at which the work is performed. The thing with force is that for every force there's an equal and opposite force, Newtons's third law, and you have to overcome that over time and that is work. The more work you can perform in a given time the faster you'll move.

 

S600 biturbo V12 even with a slushy 5 speed auto is up to any passing task. Just press that pedal to the floor.

And I always tell the guys parking the cars to please keep it under 200 mph.

 

I always enjoyed how in the 221 S65 I could apply not so much throttle that it would drop a ratio but would quickly build boost with a particular moan from under hood as it easily out accelerated any and all bro dozers and most noisy Mopars. The fast ones required a downshift to embarrass.

 

Your last sentence says exactly what I try to tell you. But it is not power that does the work, it is the force that does it.

This is basic physics and I leave it here.

 

Your last sentence says exactly what I try to tell you. But it is not power that does the work, it is the force that does it.

This is basic physics and I leave it here.

 

I always toggle over to "S", slightly blip the throttle to have it downshift to the appropriate gear and rpm, signal, and then pass. The AMG's are beastly for highway passing.

 

That brings up another thought. What I specifically like about the modern AMGs is the Drive Unit on the steering wheel that allows changing drive modes w/o taking my hands off the steering wheel. In particular the drive mode rotary selector can be pressed as a shortcut to directly activate the Individual mode, similar to the M1 and M2 buttons on modern BMW M models. So as I set out to pass, I flick the car into Individual mode if I'm not already in a sporty setup, and then go. I've also configured my Individual mode to put the transmission in M, so that I'm also instantly in manual shifting mode. Given that AMGs never automatically upshift in full manual mode, I'm in control of the gears.