SanMarinoTypeS

http://www.autoweek.com/cat_content...._code=02120930

jts1207

nice

Red-CL

Holy shit.

0-60 in 2.9 seconds.

BoostedM3

CHRYSLER ME412 CONCEPT
BASE PRICE: $450,000 (est.)
POWERTRAIN: 5.9-liter all-aluminum quad-turbocharged V12, 850-bhp, 850-lb-ft (2500-4500); rwd, seven-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 2860 pounds
WEIGHT-TO-POWER: 3.4 lbs/bhp
0-60 MPH: 2.9 seconds (mfr.)

Chaptorial

Lookin good.

Reminds me of the red Lexus in Minority Report.

At least from the side.

chungkopi

hope it happens

gavriil

(21:41:14 Jan. 04, 2004)
Now It Can Be Told: The inside story behind the stunning Chrysler supercar


By KEVIN A. WILSON


ONLY A HANDFUL OF people knew. Most of the folks working up Chrysler’s crop of new show cars for 2004 weren’t let in on it. Most of the press didn’t catch wind of it until it drove onto the stage at the end of the company’s Jan. 4 press conference revealing those “ordinary” concept cars. Surprise was the point. After hijacking attention at the 2003 Detroit show with the Viper-powered Dodge Tomahawk motorbike, the top guns at Chrysler wanted to do something even bigger this year in a bid to upstage the arrivals of the expected stars from across town, the 2005 Ford Mustang and Chevy Corvette.

“Tomahawk was somewhat tongue in cheek, a design statement more than an engineering statement. We wanted to do something really credible, and we wanted something nobody would expect from Chrysler,” says Chrysler COO Wolfgang Bernhard, explaining the origins of the project that became the Chrysler ME412. It’s a mid-engine, quad-turbo V12-powered supercar boasting 850 hp, 850 lb-ft and with ambitions no lower than to out-Enzo Ferrari. That’s no mere surprise, it’s an ambush.

CHRYSLER ME412 CONCEPT
ON SALE: Prototype; potential 2006 model
BASE PRICE: $450,000 (est.)
POWERTRAIN: 5.9-liter, 850-hp, 850-lb-ft V12; rwd, seven-speed manual
CURB WEIGHT: 2860 pounds
0-60 MPH: 2.9 seconds (mfr.)



What could be more unexpected than a mid-engine supercar from Chrysler? How about this statement from none other than division president and CEO Dieter Zetsche: “It’s not just a concept. It’s a prototype.”

Calm down, he’s not promising to build it for sale. Not yet, anyway. He is saying that it’s fully engineered—on computers, though the car itself wasn’t finished being built at Metalcrafters until Dec. 29—and the company intends to run it this spring to prove it can meet the ambitious performance targets. If a business case exists, Chrysler says it could start building such a machine in about a year.

A business case? Well, yes, they didn’t take time to build one before they built the car. No one really knows if the customers who can front up the money for a Ferrari Enzo or Porsche Carrera GT would splash similarly extravagant funds on a car that wears the same badge on its nose as the Town & Country minivan in the next garage bay. The ME412 is being built to supercar standards of material and craftsmanship, however, so it would have to command a similar price. Are there enough customers to warrant the effort?



Well, let’s show ’em what they’d get. When the project began, it was a notion shared by Bernhard, Zetsche and design chief Trevor Creed, who came up with it in a meeting after last year’s Detroit show. This year’s crop of concept cars had already been assigned back in December 2002. The project started out a month late, then. So the development of the thing in only 11 months, coordinating parts suppliers from seven nations and linking them all via computer, was as big a challenge as engineering the car itself. Bernhard—who had ridden the Tomahawk onto the show stage and drove the ME412 this year—had a head start, though. Before joining Chrysler, he was managing director of Mercedes-AMG, where he had acted as the engine supplier for the then-new Pagani Zonda and had personal insight into the development of a supercar, and a few contacts to help get things started. He wasn’t the first to wonder what would happen if a major automaker turned its engineering and acquisition resources to the development of a supercar (the Cadillac Cien was a similar exercise), but he was in a position to make things happen. And the key here was to really and truly engineer the car to achieve performance targets that exceed the world’s best in production.
It was Chrysler’s own Lou Rhodes who got the call to act as chief engineer on the project. After laying out the basic parameters to get the target performance specifications—aerodynamics, weight distribution, power, torque, etc.—Chrysler contacted AMG directly and asked that it develop an appropriate engine. This couldn’t be minor. To have a clear performance margin over the competition, it had to propel the car to 60 mph in less than 3.0 seconds, to 100 mph in less than 6.5, hit the quarter-mile in 11.0 seconds or better, and carry it to a 240-mph (400-km/h) top speed.

“We told AMG we needed 800 hp and it should weigh 500 pounds,” says Bernhard. This engine did not exist until the Chrysler project demanded it—it’s not a version of a Mercedes engine, though AMG is obviously influenced by the association in the way it approaches its work. It’s an AMG-engineered powerplant that, like the parts from other suppliers, was developed to the manufacturer’s specifications. “What they came up with was 850 hp, but it weighs 525 pounds. We said we could work with that,” said Rhodes.
The all-alloy engine is a 365-cid/5980-cc dry-sump V12 with four turbochargers and dual-core intercoolers, a 6800-rpm redline and makes 142 hp/liter. “We started with the engine and built the car around it,” said Bernhard, “where some others start with the car and adapt an engine into it.”

The car they designed around it is a carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb monocoque with an alloy rear subframe to support the drivetrain and to help toward making the car reparable if crashed from behind (the Enzo and Zonda have alloy subframes, the Carrera GT doesn’t). The front end has a carefully designed composite structure to meet crash standards. That seven-speed transaxle is a double-clutch Ricardo unit with paddle-shift selectors, the brakes are carbon-ceramic matrix with six-piston aluminum calipers, the front wheels are 19x10 inches, the rear 20x12.5, and they wear Michelin tires developed specifically for this project in 265/35ZR-19 and 335/30ZR-20 dimensions. Power-assisted rack-and-pinion steering, with a 16:1 overall ratio, 2.4 turns lock-to-lock and a 36-foot turning circle, keeps the driver in charge of direction, but not without an assist from electronics. ABS and traction control are integrated with the powertrain management system in an advance stability management program offering up a driver-selectable range of at least three racetrack modes, one highway and one street mode, so the driver can more or less specify the amount of slip he wants to allow. All-independent pushrod suspension at both ends with a long travel (155 mm in back, where the class average is between 70 mm and 90 mm) uses electronically adjustable shocks in a unique active suspension system that draws on a reservoir of fluid stored in the back.



If that sounds a lot like your standard supercar specification of the early 21st century, well, Creed notes that this past year has been something like the year of the supercar, with magazines road testing such exotics as the Zonda, Koenigsegg CC, Enzo, Carrera GT and so on. “Every time we read one of these things, I’d find some
criticism and call Bernhard up and say, ‘Our car isn’t going to do that, is it?’” laughs Creed. “[Magazine testers] really wrote our spec book.”

As long as Creed has the floor, let’s look at the design. Tom Tremont, vp for advanced product design strategy, oversaw the project. With concept cars already in the works for this year’s show, and that desire to keep the lid down on the project, choosing a designer had to be done judiciously. The studios were charged with an “exercise” that was presented as a loosening-up program, just to flex the designers a bit by asking them to sketch a supercar concept for Chrysler.

“At first mention, this challenge was met with a blank stare,” admits Creed. “We don’t have anything in our history to draw on for this. It was a real challenge.”

From a slew of sketches, one stood out. Brian Nielander had penned a forward-leaning design that looked like it was in motion even on paper. It was fresh, and “something about it said Chrysler.” It didn’t have anywhere near enough cooling and ventilation openings in it, but the engineers saw where these could be worked into the bodywork without damaging the theme.

“Rather than do cooling as an afterthought,” says Bernhard, “we built it in from day one. Two-thirds of the energy in gasoline that you pump into the engine has to get out of the car through the cooling system.” Incorporating what Bernhard calls the “highest-capacity cooling module in the supercar business—this was not negotiable with our suppliers at AMG” was just the beginning of engineering influences on the shape. Another was the rigid discipline to achieve the 1300-kg (2860-pound) weight target, putting the ME412 at 3.4 pounds per hp (the Enzo is at 4.2, published figures on the Bugatti Veyron work out to 4.1, the McLaren F1 was at 3.9).

Then there’s aero. The computers say the ME412 has a 0.358 Cd minimum, with negative lift at both ends. There’s 34.5 pounds of downforce at 65 mph, 737 pounds at 186 mph. A spoiler at the tail moves backward 100 mm and raises up 10 mm as speed climbs to 200 mph, then flattens out again to reduce drag and help the car hit its 240-mph top-speed target.

The designer also was required to incorporate 39 inches of headroom, with the objective of being the only supercar that will allow really tall people to fit easily into the cockpit. The wheelbase is 110 inches, nearly six inches longer than an Enzo’s and two inches longer than the Zonda’s. The ME412 is 44.9 inches tall, 178 inches long and 78.7 inches wide.


Nielander’s exterior features forward-leaning lines that include the rooftop satellite navigation and radio antenna with integrated CHMSL. The indented lines on the forward cargo-compartment lid resemble those on the Crossfire. While alternatives were examined, standard door hinges were found to provide the best access to the cabin and also helped keep the weight down—scissors and gullwings may be flashy, but they’re often heavy and the functional advantages are minor. There are 96 red LEDs in the taillight assemblies, which perform brake, parking and turn-signal functions.

The interior design was by Mark Walters, who did the Tomahawk, and focused tightly on the notion of craftsmanship and use of materials that reflect the car’s nature as engineering exercise. The proprietary seat design is executed in a buttery leather, with the interior trimmed out in ultrasuede, metal and carbon fiber. There is no carpet, the floors being lined in a rubber-foam sandwich material.

The exposed portions of the carbon fiber tub use a molded-in color borrowed from a high-tech surfboard design. The security electronics for the keyless ignition are housed in a carbon fiber key fob shaped to resemble the car itself, while the red “start” button on the dashboard is lit and turns green when the engine fires.

The Nakamichi stereo will be heard if the driver so chooses—Chrysler acquired a dual-pane rear window from the supplier who provides the Saleen S7’s backlight, to insulate the cabin from the engine noise and heat.

Ah, but will there be owners? And if not, what’s the point of such a detailed engineering prototype?

“Whether we build it, and where and how we build it, depends on customer reaction and testing of the prototype,” asserts Zetsche. If enough customers want such a thing to warrant production, what might it cost? “All we know right now is that the Ford GT is at $150,000 or so, the Enzo is at $659,000, and that our car would cost somewhere in between there, depending on volume and final specification.”

Bernhard, though, says the ME412 has value for the corporation even if it is never built.

“This is an engineering feat. The most difficult test you can put engineers to is a supercar or race car done in less than a year,” he says. “Designers will look to this vehicle as a guiding star for other Chryslers.”

Zetsche says it establishes, with the Pacifica, Crossfire and 300C, the image he wants for Chrysler of “elegance, not lifeless elegance, but very spirited elegance.”

The discipline of holding to the weight target, working rapidly with suppliers to meet performance parameters and so forth, he said, makes the ME412 team members a core “center of excellence.” They will bring that experience to bear on other projects. And for 10 days, of course, the ME412 will ambush attention in Detroit.

That’s all very nice. But we’re itching to slip behind the wheel, push that red button, watch it turn green and see how it goes. Spring, we’re promised. Bring it on.

Source: Autoweek

gavriil

The good thing about this car is that, in my opinion, now there are even more chances we will see the Blue Devil go to production.

gavriil

No surprise this is going to be on the fastest cars ever made, if not THE fastest. Looks like they are very serious about building it as long as they find enough buyers.

I love the fact that they had the balls to not mind about keeping the brand name as Chrysler. Good for them. They deserve to succeed.

gavriil

I dont understand why a 5980 cc engine is claimed as a 5.9 liter engine. This is clearly a 6.0 liter engine. What am I missing?

cusdaddy

Beautiful and absolutely amazing performance figures. I'd love to see this car see reality

EdgarFanCLS

Woah

I love that car.

I hope they stick close to the concept if it goes to production. Chrysler has been pretty good about that in the recent past.

astro

that thing is sick as hell. wow.

I wish I still had access to the DC Friends and Family Discount...

gavriil

More scoop here

matteichenfels

Woooohoooo! Go Chrysler!

http://autoshow.edmunds.yahoo.com/ne....leftnav.12.*#

gavriil

einsatz

It would appear that next to last image is of another car. Unless Chryslers are now half Saturn, half Chrysler.

That would make a funny car. In a fender-bender the front portion would pop right back into shape, while the rear would inexplicably explode.

gavriil

Nine lives for Chrysler's ME Four-Twelve supercar; mules being tested - - By KEVIN A. WILSON - - Source: Autoweek

The Chrysler ME Four-Twelve supercar lives. For now, anyway. Eric Ridenour, executive vice president for product development for the Chrysler Group says mules are now being tested while the company examines the potential business case for a midengine quad-turbo V12 exotic wearing the winged badge. Press drives and road tests, he said, should come “within the calendar year.”

That’s a little later than we anticipated when the car was shown at Detroit in January (AW, Jan. 12), but Ridenour says “we’re right on schedule with the plan I developed with Wolfgang (Bernhard, former chief operating officer) before he left. There may have been some misunderstanding,” about what was meant when Bernhard said the car would be driveable in four months. “It is being driven now, but it’s not ready for press tests.”

Bernhard, former CEO of AMG, was COO of the Chrysler Group during development of the ME Four-Twelve. He has since been promoted, and then un-promoted, to head of the Mercedes-Benz Group, where he was due to replace Juergen Hubbert May 1. Instead, after Bernhard bucked chairman Juergen Schrempp’s authority, he saw the reins pulled from his hands. Although still a member of the DaimlerChrysler board, he has no job assignment and is expected to leave the company. Some speculated that the ME Four-Twelve’s strong association with the 43-year-old car guy—who once rode a motorbike powered by a Viper V10 onto the show stand at Detroit—might spell its demise. Ridenour says that’s not so.

“We’re going forward on the original plan, and it will stand or fall on its own merits.”



Ridenour says he has seen no sign of interference or objection to the project from the Mercedes-Benz side of the company, although the ME Four-Twelve—if it hits it design targets—would be faster than even the McLaren-built SLR. “That’s not one of our worries. We’re just looking at the things that go into a business case—how many could you sell for how much? There are people who buy cars like this to drive, some who buy them just because of the specification, the performance numbers, and others who buy them based only on the prestige of the badge on the nose, and we have to work out where we fall among those potential customers.”

Odds seem to be against its eventual production, but Chrysler could still earn some favorable recognition if it can demonstrate that the car meets its extraordinary performance goals, including a 0-60 mph time of under 3.0 seconds and a top speed of 240 mph and a quarter-mile time of 11.0 seconds flat, or better.

“With the kind of performance we’re aiming for, you really have to be careful,” Ridenour said. “We need to prove it out with mules and make sure it’s all solid before we offer the press a chance to drive it. Heck, I’m eager to drive it myself, but it’s not ready for that yet.”

charliemike

I hope they don't call it the ME 412 ... Sounds too much like a Messerschmitt jet fighter

nandowong

nice car

gavriil

Chrysler ME Four-Twelve: AutoWeek Drives It! - - Source: Autoweek Forums


AutoWeek Exec. Editor Kevin A. Wilson (username Behra)

I drove the Chrysler ME412 supercar prototype at Laguna Seca Thursday morning. My first impression. Watch for a more extensive story in a print issue of the magazine later:

We've driven it. It's not only a real car, it's the real deal. Chrysler showed its 850 hp quad-turbo V12 ME Four-Twelve concept car at the Detroit auto show in January and promised we could drive it within the year. The promise has been fulfilled. But it wasn't exactly the show car that did the job.

"When we said that car was a prototype, that was probably a little of bragging on our part," admitted Chrysler Group CEO Dieter Zetche over dinner Wednesday night. "We found out how much harder it was to build a real prototype of a car with this much performance. There are a lot of 24/7 engineering hours on the program. This car, though, is a running prototype."

Indeed it is. Looking stealthy in naked flat black carbon fiber bodywork, it's really a test mule that has been running for about a month, long enough to prove that the target performance figures were real. In Chrysler's own tests, conducted on a 12,000-ft. long runway at an abandoned military airbase (Wurtsmith AFB) at Oscoda, Michigan, the car ran 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds, to 100 mph in 6.2 seconds (faster than most cars get to 60 mph) and ran a 10.6 second quarter-mile at 136 mph. And it doesn't perform that well only because it's a mule. There's really nothing cobbly about this car...the interior isn't finished with leather and other goodies, the switchgear is makeshift rather than productionized, and you can sometimes hear a minor "clunk" in the carbon-fiber/aluminum composite chassis when you stress the car in a corner, but it's a solid piece of work--but still a little heavier than Chrysler's target.

"These figures are conservative," said Dan Knott, head of the SRT performance operations at DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group about the numbers posted at Oscoda. "As with our other performance products, we want to make sure the numbers we claim are numbers that customers can really achieve."

We're not so sure about that in the sense that the numbers really require a good driver with high g-tolerances, but we can say the car is "user friendly" and that most drivers could get an awesome experience even well inside the car's limits.
Given that there is only one mule, that there are 8 other drivers in line this morning (not counting Zetsche or Jochen Mass, who took the turns after the press guys were done), and that we value our own skin, we won't be trying to achieve such dramatic levels of performance here at Laguna. When we arrived, before 8 a.m., the place was well socked-in with fog, but by the time we'd done a walk-around the car and a few laps of orientation in a van driven by a Skip Barber instructor, it had lifted enough to at least see the corners--even the infamous Corkscrew at the top of the hill.

When my turn arrived, I donned the helmet and climbed in beside Herb Helbig, perhaps best known to enthusiasts as the keeper of the Viper flame, and one of several more-than-competent hot shoe development engineers on the project. Herb asked if he would get hazardous duty pay for riding with me--I told him to take it up with SRT operations chief Dan Knott or his boss, Eric Ridenour.

Getting in the car is a bigger chore than it would be for a productionized version. The racing seat is fixed in place, and there's a four-point harness to do up.
Adjust the steering column, eyeball the digital instrument panel that travels up and down with the column, get a feel for the placement of the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel (it's a racing wheel, removable for entry/exit--in production, you'd be able to push the seat back more and tilt the column up for those purposes), place your foot on the brake (it's a two-pedal car) and thumb the red start button.
The 6.0-liter V12 comes to life with a lusty roar. This AMG-built mill, designed specifically for the project, couples to a seven-speed dual clutch transmission with electronically controlled wet clutch, by Ricardo. It will work flawlessly for nearly 3 hours of track time this morning.

For now, at least, initial gear selection is accomplished with a metal dial on the dash that looks like something off a Radio Shack rheostat. There's an N for Neutral and a D for Drive and an R for reverse. There's one notch in between N and D that could be, well, full manual? Race-performance? It's unlabeled on the mule, and they didn't want us playing with it yet.

So we picked "D" and eased into the throttle--you don't just go jumping all over 850 lbs.-ft. of torque in pitlane with people all around. Easing into the experience is advisable, but not too slowly--we'll only get three laps on our first go, and another two later.
The sound as the engine climbs toward its 6200 rpm redline is terrific. Unlike the shrieking sound of, say, an Enzo (we saw three in our first 24 hours on the penninsula), which has the same displacement and cylinder count, this engine has the low-pitched growl of a monster. Routing the exhaust through four turbos has something to do with it, as must the tuning of the system feeding the four pipes that exit at the tail.

On our first laps, we find the chassis solid, the suspension not race-car stiff on this smooth pavement but allowing a tiny little amount of roll and pitch, somewhat similar to other high-performance midengine cars we've driven lately, such as the Ford GT. With an extra 300 hp or so in hand, though, the ME Four-Twelve raises the game on performance.
Steering is responsive, sharp and quick, with a 16:1 ratio, only 2.5 turns lock to lock, despite an excellent (for its class) turning circle of 36 ft. Quick turn-in means you have to be careful not to apex the turns at Laguna too early--it really wants to dive in when you get the line right into the corners.

Once we've got the engine singing, we try the paddle shifter and it responds as quickly as the Enzo's. Since we're not going for any lap records here, though, I figured I'd let it shift for itself most of the time, and it handles the task well. Acceleration is awesome and yet the car doesn't do anything scary--no dancing about, no threatening to jump sideways. It might be that they've got the power dialed back a little to preserve the transmission, but still, you could lose 200 hp and still have more than 600 on tap. Credit the electronic assists and the beefy Michelin Pilot Sport 2s, 265-35-ZR-19s in front, 335/30ZR20s aft for keeping it stuck to the ground.

Downshifts come quickly and cleanly, without a showy double-clutching throttle blip, since the system works without it. They've got it set to downshift for you at 1400 rpm or so, but I pull a few downshifts myself (left paddle) to make sure we get the full charge out of the slower turns. Still, I suspect we're using what would be "street mode" in most such system--a track mode that was quicker to downshift might have shifted down one more gear than I did going into the Corkscrew, for instance.

Or maybe not. The car is deceptively fast, being relatively quiet inside and with such slick aero management around the cockpit, at least, that wind noise is negligible. The tires aren't loud, either, so you look down at the speedo expecting to see a two-digit number starting with 8 and find you're already over 100 mph.

Good thing this puppy can erase velocity. The brakes, six-piston monoblock calipers grabbing 15-inch Brembo CCM (carbon composite matrix) rotors are also on the Enzo level, though the particular tuning on this mule allows a bit too much pedal travel for our tastes. Getting on them hard--Laguna's Turns One and Six are good places to do this early, since being late has dire consequences--lends credibility to Chrysler's claim that it will brake at negative 2.0 gs. You need one of the faster turns--and perhaps a bit more bravery than we can muster behind the wheel of someone else's one-off supercar--to imagine pulling lateral acceleration at the claimed 1.5 g level. I did go fast enough to sense the downforce building and car gaining stick as you went faster, though not until my second stint at the wheel. Chrysler claims 925 lbs of downforce at 186 mph (300 km/h).
As I wrote of the Enzo, this is a car with a lot more in it than I'd get out of it in one morning, but I was also like a kid when the roller-coaster comes to a stop, shouting "again!" The corkscrew will do that for you, if nothing else.

Jochen Mass seemed happy with the car's performance, which must be at the level of some IMSA GTP racers of legend. He said the car is "promising" and that he was particularly impressed that it's distinctive in its own right, a Chrysler and not a copy of something else.

So, is this an experience that might be made available to more than a handful of journalists lucky enough to strap into the mule? It might, says Zetsche, still. One point of having the car at the Monterey weekend is to gauge the potential market for a car of such exotic performance wearing the Chrysler brand. "If we build in units of 10, say 10 to 50 or so, it would be a very high price," he says. "If we build 500 to 1000, which is about the maximum we'd consider, it would be a lower price, of course."

And what has he to say to those who say Chrysler shouldn't be messing around in this territory, that it's too far a departure from its family-mobile strengths?

"Even though Chrysler has not much heritage in racing--it has some, but not as much as some who would be competitors for a car like this--it has more history than many brands have in engineering and innovation. That is what we want to be going back to and I am convinced if we make (the ME Four-Twelve) work, it will be good for the brand."


Message was edited by: Behra

gavriil

It's Chrysler's day today on the news and stickies

astro

i hope they build it, what an awesome automobile.

mantis23

that is veeeery pimp.

the front fascia reminds me of the acura nsx concept

EdgarFanCLS

Sweet.

1SICKLEX

They need to fix the rest of the lineup. They've already put too much time and energy into this...

titan

Awesome. With the Viper here, and the Blue Devil coming, this is great news. Build it.

srika

got fast?

gavriil

Honestly, not to take anything away from this super exotic, the 11.6 has room for improvement. I am not sure if it's the tires, or the power overall, but low 11s is possible here.

srika

yeah, I think it could run 10.6

or even faster.

gavriil

In this article from AMS Dieter Zetsche is quoted as confirming the cancelation of the ME4-12.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

English, please?

Red-CL

gavriil

What do you guys mean, English? Dieter is the CEO of DCX. He says the ME412 wont go to production according to the article from Auto Moto und Sport quoted. Why is that not clear?

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

The article you linked is in German. We would like to read the whole article.

gavriil

Sorry. THat's all I have for now. The source is German, DCX is German. Anyone speak German?

ClutchPerformer

Is this really a surprise?

gavriil

Not to me. Especially after I learned of the Chrysler-Corvette car we'll see in dealers' showrooms in a couple of years.