Smoked an E430 Mercedes today

[Phax]

I know, it's a luxury car and I have an SR swapped S13, but still... it was my first experience against someone who really wanted to drive fast and show off what he thought was a cool car. We were in downtown Los Angeles, both parked at a stoplight. About 150 feet away was another stoplight. He got on the gas when the first light turned green and I kinda did too. At that point I knew we were gonna have a race to the bottom of the hill. We both pulled up to the 2nd light.

At the 2nd light, we were each in a left hand turn lane. Down the hill, about a quarter mile away, was a sweeping right hander that leads onto the road going to the freeway. There were also two or three lanes of traffic going straight. We both wanted to be in the lane going to the freeway, of course. He had the left turn lane, I had the right. So basically I had to go to his outside, to get where I wanted to be.

The light turned green and he got on it, and dove WAY inside, pretty much into what would have been oncoming traffic if there was any. I took a bit more conservative line, and eased into the power going through the turn, so that I could keep the back end in line. I straightened out the wheel between the 1-2 shift and basically flew like a bat out of hell past him.

Homeboy had to get on the brakes early to haul down his heavy *** sedan, while I upshifted to 3rd to drop some torque, got on the brakes pretty heavy, and drove it through the turn. We pulled up at the next light and I yelled over at him, "Is that an E320?" I had to ask him a couple of times, and he finally just said, "No!" I let him go first because I wanted to see the badge and sure enough, it said E430. No wonder he was bent that I thought it was a E320. =)

The race was cool and all, but the best part of it for me was sitting at the "final" light, when this fully riced out Civic, complete with stickers and wing, pulled up between me and the Benz. The guy looked over at me with the most dumb founded look on his face... sort of between awe, and disgust... like he'd never seen an S13 on the edge of adhession before.

[D1SR240]

I don't really know what kinda of Mercedes that is, are they fast, what kind of engine do they have?

[Phax]

I don't really know what kinda of Mercedes that is, are they fast, what kind of engine do they have?

It has a V8. I did some searches on the web, and they run between 14.5 and 15.0 in the quarter mile.

[D1SR240]

oh thats pretty good congratualtions

[prigo]

Nice, good job

Where in LA are you?

edit: just saw the Long Beach, hehehe, Im in the South Bay (Hawthorne, Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo) area.

[stillmatic]

Here's the consumer's guide info on the E430. Pretty impressive if you smoked the 5.4 liter V8 (349HP). Though, it was probably the 221hp V6 carrying 3624+ lbs.

[sideshow]

y do you want to know what car that is, i think its pretty ****ty looking with the r32 tails and then an amblem from a porsche 944 turbo

[stillmatic]

Well, it looks nice to me . I could be wrong but the emblem looks the same as this, and the seller claims it came off a sileighty.

[Bbill528]

Can you not read? It's an E430 = 4.3L V8, not an E55 w/ 349 hp, but the 4.3 is more like 275. And the 6cyl is an E320, see the numbers on the back of benzes actually mean something!

[stillmatic]

No, I didn't read anything on the consumer's guide link. It was 1:00 AM when I posted it so I went straight to engine specs. Thanks for correcting me.

[Bbill528]

Sorry man, having a rough day, it might have come off a little harsh.