Show-Car

By show-car standards, getting into the malevolent-looking monster is a piece of cake. The long door opens wide, and the cushy leather seat moves back far enough to accommodate the longest limbs. Despite the Fulda-red stripes and the shiny carbon-fiber door panels, the instrument panel is essentially pure Maybach. piano-black center stack, for instance, incorporates Comand along with the familiar HVAC controls, and the power adjustable steering wheel is a four-spoke device with a hub cushion so big it could house enough air bags for the entire Addams family.

Leschke sticks his head through the side window and helps me tighten the fire-red, five-point racing harness. "When designing the cockpit," he says between puffs of a Marlboro, "we combined elements from the Maybach 57 sedan with racy new touches like the transmission gate, bespoke neoprene and carbon-fiber trim, aluminum accents, and draft-free air-conditioning." What air-conditioning? To make sure that all 691 horses are on board, the A/C system has been deactivated.

But that's a small price to pay for an overdose of power and torque that ensures I'm still on a high when I head home from Stuttgart that evening. The tip of my tongue is numbed by the acid aftertaste of the 110-octane racing fuel. My nostrils are still clogged with pun-gent traces of Eau de Exelero. My field of vision has been badly blurred by the force of twelve cylinders gone wild. My palms are shaky from too much (or too little) opposite lock. And my ears are a bit numb from Maybach death-metal music