ganz, ganz seltener Exot mit Mercedes V12 Motor: MEGA Track............................................

Don\'t you just hate SUVs?



:no: :no: :no:


I mean, for the most part they\'re completely pointless, and I know your neighbor isn\'t going to take his brand new Escalade EXT offroading, nor put fifteen hundred pounds of timber in the bed to haul up to his mountain cabin Not only that, but they also cost more than some of the greatest performance cars made today, have insatiable appetites for carbohydrates and, as a rule, handle worse than a Yugo.

In fact, there is only one serious argument for SUVs.


Cojones,Cochones (wrong), Balls, Eier........

They\'re like nuclear weapons.



If one side has them, so must everyone else - for protection. But is there really no vehicle out there that is big, menacing, decent in the mud, and yet well-handling? Not any more, but there was.

What\'s the coolest truck you\'ve ever heard of?


The Hummer?





The Lamborghini LM002, affectionately named "Lambo Rambo"?





Or maybe the Russian T-98 Combat that yours truly brought to the Americans attention back in the day?





Well, the Mega Track beats them all.









Aixam-Mega is France\'s third biggest car manufacturer (after Renault and PSA Peugeot-Citroen), and I use the term "car" loosely. Its main product would put the MCC Smart to shame. These little buggers are so small and underpowered that they can be driven by kids under the legal driving age, and don\'t actually require a license! And they sell, in bundles, despite costing no less than "proper" cars and bearing a badge that says "Mega". In fact, the profit from them is so high that Aixam-Mega feels confident putting megadollars into the development of these low-volume halo supercars that put them on the map ¿ and on your lips.

The Mega Track was introduced in 1992, and the last of five cars built left the plant in \'95. The 2+2 coupe body is relatively unremarkable for supercars of the mid-nineties. It\'s everything else that\'s special. For one, it sits higher than any other car - the road clearance in "slammed mode" is a very decent eight inches, more than that of your regular econobox. In offroad mode it lifts up, and can clear obstacles up to 13 inches high. The power of the Mercedes-sourced 6.0 V12 (same engine as in the original GEO, the Brabus E V12) is directed to every wheel via a viscous coupling - all 394 horses of it. That\'s enough for the specially designed Michelin rubber to spin so fast that the car covers 155 miles in an hour at terminal velocity, courtesy of an electronic limiter. What other SUV can reach 155mph? What about reach 155mph and look this cool doing it?



Granted, you won\'t want to take the Track to a trial event. But where there is even a hint of even surface, it will go, and love it. It didn\'t make it to the Paris-Dakar rally, but it did win the Andros Trophy ice racing series in \'94.



The name suits it well; its track is over six feet wide, and the beam measures a full 90 inches. You\'ll need to walk almost seventeen feet if you\'re at the front license plate and you want to reach the rear one, yet the height is under five feet, making it seriously lower than any other SUV of comparable power. In fact, out of all the SUVs made today only the BMW X5 4.6iS come anywhere near its 0-62mph time of 5.4 seconds.



And it costs much less; you couldn\'t have a new Mega Track for less than half a million dollars. There are two of them in Moscow and one in Austria.

:waving:

Eric K.