View Photos CHARLIE MAGEE

Imagine how much better your life would be if 150 mph were legal. Commuting times would be slashed—especially if you also fantasize that there’s no traffic—and road trips to Disney World would be so short that you’d have to listen to the Frozen soundtrack only three or four times each way. You’d spend thousands more on fuel but save hours every week and days every year. Time, the man said, is the only irreplaceable commodity.

Then there’s the visceral joy of speed itself, that sensation of running rather than walking, of being very productive, of getting it the hell done. You’d get to experience the true potential of a modern car, rather than the scant percentage of its talent allowed by a 70-mph limit. And don’t forget the thrill of fear, that adrenaline spike as you pass somebody west of Chattanooga at double their speed.

We’re here in Deutschland to find out how life at 150 mph is lived. Germany remains the world’s only sizeable, developed country not to impose speed limits on most of its highway network, a.k.a. the autobahn. Consequently, Germany’s big roads have assumed almost ­legendary status for gearheads everywhere. But is it really the flat-out-driving Valhalla you probably dream it to be? Or, as with German humor and pornography, is it far less satisfying than promised? Does the reality match the fantasy?

View Photos This is what 192 mph looks like. CHARLIE MAGEE

We’re going to answer that question by doing a lap of Germany via autobahn. Starting in Frankfurt, we’ll head to Munich, then on to Berlin, and then back to the big F. Because time is precious, we’ve given ourselves three days to do it and a Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG 4MATIC to do it in—crucially, one with the upgraded 300-km/h (186-mph) speed limiter. You want us to be comfortable, don’t you?

About one-third of the 8000-mile autobahn network now carries either a permanent or temporary speed restriction, but we don’t have to go far to find our first bit of unrestricted highway. Two minutes after leaving the Frankfurt airport, we’re on the A5 headed south. The S63 hasn’t even warmed its fluids before we pass our first Ende aller Streckenverbote (or “end all restrictions”) sign, which, after due consideration and discussion by what must have been umpteen different German technical committees, is a white circle with five diagonal stripes that looks like a symbol for burnouts.

There’s plenty of traffic, but it’s moving quickly and with the relentless lane discipline we’ll soon grow used to. Unlike in America, where drivers disperse all over the road according to the laws of molecular diffusion, German cars stay to the right whenever they aren’t passing. Germany thus seems to move more volume swiftly on a four-lane road than America can with ten lanes.

CHARLIE MAGEE

The S-class settles into a 100-mph cruise over impeccably smooth blacktop, yet we’re still being overtaken by a stream of faster cars. No 911 GT3s with pink wheels—a not-uncommon sight in Germany—but a Volvo V70 complete with both a roof box and two small children in the back, loping down the outside lane at an easy buck-twenty. We travel only 10 miles to our first stop, the Parkplatz Rosemeyer, a small rest area next to the autobahn. These days, used condoms in trees bespeak its popularity as a hookup area. But a stone monument and a modest wooden marker denote the place where Grand Prix driver Bernd Rosemeyer died in 1938, an early victim to Germany’s national obsession with speed. And yes, although we’re not supposed to talk about the war, this is where the Nazis enter the story.

Autobahn historians exist, and they are predictably keen to point out that the earliest German high-speed highways predated Hitler’s rise. Which they did. But it was the Nazi regime that put them on the map, both literally and figuratively. This stretch of A5 between Frankfurt and Darmstadt was the first piece of what was meant to be a vast Reichsautobahnen network across the Third Reich. It opened in 1935 and later was used by Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz for land-speed-record attempts, leading to Rosemeyer’s fatal crash.

Rosemeyer, like all successful German racers of the period, was a member of the Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps—basically the Nazi motor club. He was also an honorary member of the SS. Although those who knew him insisted he wasn’t in any way political, he can have been in no doubt, when ordered to Frankfurt in January 1938, that he was driving for the glory of the Fatherland as much as that of Auto Union.

View Photos CHARLIE MAGEE

Mercedes-Benz was there, too, the two teams sharing the considerable cost of closing the autobahn. Its star driver, Rudolf Caracciola, went first, piloting a supercharged 726-hp W125 Streamliner. He was timed through the flying kilometer at 269 mph—faster than a Veyron but on narrow, bias-ply tires. Rosemeyer was sent out 90 minutes later in his Ferdinand Porsche–designed, von Eberhorst–developed V-16 Auto Union. As he went for it, Rosemeyer skidded across the pavement at well more than 200 mph, probably due to a crosswind, crashed into a bridge abutment, and was killed.

With nothing else to do at Parkplatz Rosemeyer except examine the prophylactic tinsel, we start the journey to Munich, 260 miles distant. The evening rush creeps over rolling green hills of farmland surrounding villages of square church steeples and cream-stucco houses under red chalet roofs, a large number sporting solar panels. The hours give us a chance to experience the other side of the autobahn, the one Germans seem far more apt to talk about: congestion. Like Ohio in the U.S., Germany is pretty much on the way from everywhere to everywhere, and the traffic levels reflect that. The A5 feels like an L.A. freeway in a forest, slowing and going with a gloopy rhythm. Variable-speed-limit signs on overhead gantries flash numbers that fall as congestion builds: 130 km/h, 120 km/h, 100 km/h. Of course, Germans take these limits seriously, as do the Polizei who enforce them. We’ve been warned that camera-dispatched speeding tickets, which start at $110 and rapidly rise to more than $1000, can follow you to the ends of the earth. Or, in our case, the Mercedes press office, if we get one in its borrowed car.

Going slowly, we take a moment to explore this fully laden toy box. The Benz’s “hot-stone massage” function, delivered by the front seats, is a particular favorite for easing the stress of traffic. And highway clots are clearly the sort of challenge the Distronic Plus active cruise control was built to handle, as it robotically keeps a sensible gap from the car in front.

View Photos One of Germany's greatest speed heroes, Bernd Rosemeyer, died here on the A5 autobahn. CHARLIE MAGEE

But for all the progress we’re making, we might as well have a four-cylinder diesel under the hood in place of the 63’s mighty 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged V-8. By the time we eventually reach Munich, the Merc’s trip computer reports that we’ve averaged a derisory 83 km/h (52 mph) since leaving Frankfurt.

Day two starts at dawn. We’ve come to Bavaria chasing a tip from a German friend that the A95 running south toward the Austrian border is one of the best parts of the network for serious speed. But that means hitting it before everybody else does.

Unlike the A5, it’s neither straight nor level nor wide, just two serpentine lanes each way with corners and contours. It follows a series of scenic valleys that culminate in the sort of postcard Alpine vista that sells lederhosen to tourists. The S63 puffs along happily at 125 mph, a speed that feels subversively normal as we cover 183 feet per second. At about two miles a minute, the cabin is still hushed enough for quiet conversation, and stratospheric gearing means the engine is doing just under 3000 rpm.

View Photos CHARLIE MAGEE

We round a long, slight turn to find what we’ve been waiting for: a straight, two miles long, occupied by nothing but a solitary truck about halfway down. The throttle pedal drops, the gearbox shifts down to sixth, and then, reading our urgency, into fifth. The S63’s engine note hardens and the hood noses up a couple of degrees.

Two hundred and fifty clicks—the 155 mph to which most fast German cars are limited—comes and effortlessly goes. The wind rustle starts to increase, but the S-class is still tracking like a locomotive as the speedometer’s digitally rendered needle sweeps around its virtual dial. At 175 mph, the rate of acceleration slackens as aerodynamic drag throws out its anchor. We flash past the yellow-and-something truck as if it were a signpost. In relative terms it pretty much is, as our speed differential is at least 120 mph.

Three hundred k’s, or 186 mph, is an event. The air feels as if it’s been compressed into a liquid, and it starts seeping around the door tops with a whistle. The steering, which has been deadly accurate until now, goes slightly light. There’s a ­shallow curve rushing toward us, the sort you wouldn’t even notice at 80 mph but that looks like a hairpin at more than twice that. Photographer Magee calls out numbers from the speedo: “306, 307, 308 . . .”

View Photos CHARLIE MAGEE

At 309, we hit the wall. We’ve found either a limiter or just the limit. Even lifting off the throttle feels like a solid brake application in the battering slipstream. That was an indicated 192 mph, in a 4900-pound luxury sedan, without a single law even bent.

We turn around and head back to Munich at an 80-mph crawl, Czech carpet salesmen in Škodas and silver-haired Frauen in compact Opels flying past us. We need a break; the concentration level required to travel at stupid velocity on a public highway is exhausting. A Le Mans vet might be able to do it for hours, but for average schmucks, it’s a dose, a hit. As with intravenous speed, too much of the stuff on a highway can be fatal.

We divert through Munich just to glimpse BMW’s cylinder-shaped headquarters, and then it’s time for another five hours on the A9 to Berlin. Traffic is moving faster than yesterday, but numerous construction zones slow progress. At times, you can drive very fast in Germany, but you rarely travel quickly. We stop at a roadside Rasthof for lunch and get to choose between five different types of sausage. The restroom offers even more Germanic complexity: You pay to get in, but are given a ticket for the same amount that you can then spend in the shop. It’s a parallel currency of Pissen Token.

View Photos Left: The S63 thumbs its nose at BMW HQ in Munich. Top right: Passing out of former commietown on the A115 highway. CHARLIE MAGEE

North of Münchberg, we go behind the former iron curtain into what used to be East Germany, now marked by nothing more than a commemorative sign. This was one of the “autobahn corridors” that ran to the divided city of Berlin, and that Westerners traveling through the DDR had to follow or else get arrested. These days, it is the same lush green painting as the rest of Germany, although when we leave to follow signs for an “autobahn church” (which turns out to be a chapel kept open for passing worshippers), the S63’s navigation system routes us back to the autobahn with the memorable instruction to “turn left into Karl-Marx-Strasse.” The old commie wouldn’t recognize the place.

The checkpoint at the other end of the autobahn, entering the former Allied Sector in Berlin, has been preserved. Indeed, it’s still used to inspect trucks, but that’s not what brings us here. Our objective is just beyond, the Automobil-Verkehrs und Übungs-Strasse. Mercifully abbreviated to AVUS and part of the A115 autobahn that leads into the city, it was built as a driver-training and race circuit. Opened in 1921, it is a six-mile divided highway joined by corners at each end. By 1937, the Nordkurve (north turn) had been rebuilt with 43-degree banking and no barriers. One of the last big races held there was in 1937, a nonchampionship Grand Prix won by Hermann Lang, but at which Rosemeyer set the fastest lap (171 mph).

View Photos CHARLIE MAGEE

Following Rosemeyer’s death near Frankfurt, AVUS was deemed too dangerous for Grand Prix cars, although it was used for slower series, including motorcycle racing. The layout was progressively truncated, and using it required diverting highway traffic. In 1995, British driver Kieth Odor was killed in a touring-sedan race here, and, shortly afterward, the circuit was finally closed. A single wooden grandstand remains, covered with graffiti and offering a spectacular view of what’s now just a generic piece of German freeway.

We beeline back to Frankfurt the next day, the quickest journey yet. Still, the trip computer’s reported averages pretty much bust open the autobahn’s myth. Traveling as quickly as we can in one of the fastest cars on the road, cruising between 125 and 150 mph when conditions allow, we’ve covered 1418 miles in just under 24 hours of driving. That’s an average of just 59 mph.

Increasing traffic, endless construction zones, more and more restricted sections, condoms in trees—as with a lot of legendary things, the autobahn’s reality has warts. But at least on German highways you have a chance of topping 80 without being hassled by Der Mensch. And at 192 mph, you’re going way too fast to see any warts at all.

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