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A CL63 AMG hurtles towards a certain Transylvanian castle, but just how vamped up is this Mercedes?

Saliva whipping about its jowls, a scrawny black dog is chasing down the car. Bolting from doorways and ditches, others join him, teeth bared, matted fur bristling. Overwhelmed by pack instinct, they are herding me from their home.

Crawling through Arefu, villagers scurry for the sanctuary of dark rooms, doors slam shut and curtains are drawn. A small child is snatched up by its father and bundled into the back of a cart. As I pull alongside, our eyes meet for a moment and then he turns, blank and ashen.

Bowing the casement of a third floor window, a group of teenage schoolgirls jostle for the ideal position, whistling and giggling over the sound of the engine. Looking up, I catch the glance of a slight, dark-haired creature, china-white skin against dark-red lips.

Her wink is the Devil's work, a Faustian pact, penetrating deep into the car's murky cabin. A bell clangs beyond and suddenly she's vanished, replaced by a burly matron who crashes the windowpanes together with short, thick forearms and yanks a blind down between us.

The evening before, high on the hill behind Arefu, the winter sun shines weakly, its last rays shooting between the sparse branches of birches and the crumbling battlements of Cetatea Poienari. After three days and 1,500 miles, I have arrived.

This is the Arges region of Transylvania, a place utterly unmolested by the whirlwind of the 21st century. Or the 20th come to that. Here, old women till the soil into their nineties and the wealthier households have horse and cart. Smoke still rises from every chimney and pork, potatoes and cabbage remain the dietary staple.

Poienari Citadel was built in 1459, when Vlad Tepes marched a captured community of Turks up the Arges Valley and worked every single one of them to death on its construction. With its bloody legacy behind him, Vlad waged war from here on the invading Turks for a decade, earning his legendary monicker 'The Impaler'.

Although fond of boiling his enemies, or burying them alive, his real signature was to insert a wooden stake into his victim's anus, driving it out just below the shoulder in such a way as to avoid damaging any major organs.

This guaranteed 48 hours of supreme agony before death, a period frequently presided over by Vlad himself, who indulged in elaborate feasts beneath the stakes.

His father, Vlad II, was awarded the chivalric Order of the Dragon in the year of his son's birth. From then on known as Vlad Dracul, meaning dragon, he gave his heir the affectionate nickname 'Son of the dragon', or Draculea.

Making the final ascent to his castle, it becomes clear I am a little late. In 1462, the Turks laid a final siege to Poienari. Dracula's wife flung herself from the battlements rather than be captured, while Vlad managed to escape with the help of his local servants, to whom he bequeathed all the mountains and pastures that now make up Arefu. The castle felt the full force of the siege, and has lain in ruins ever since.



Nevertheless, there is a certain homecoming to my arrival, as the engine falls silent among the crumbling masonry. A bat flutters against the windscreen (I kid you not), attracted by the bright interior light, and I step out into the bitter wind that rushes down the snow-swept Arges Valley. The car sinks far more easily than I into this Gothic silhouette, but for a sickly yellow moon reflecting in its darkened glass.

Wandering from room to room, I cross rickety bridges and pad cautiously up winding stairwells. Dusty alcoves seem to whisper in the wind as leaves caught against their walls dance in little spirals.

From the castellated outer walls the ground plummets for a near vertical kilometre to the road below, now lost in absolute darkness. In the eastern corner of the castle, where no moonlight can penetrate, is a pentagonal tower.

The highest point of Poienari, its thick walls still stand proud of the tree line, etching a formidable profile to the hilltop from any side. Gripping a rusting iron railing against the force of the wind, I cross another bridge and duck beneath a low, arched stone doorway. Inside, the darkness is so complete as to be almost tangible.

Gulping it in with deep and rapid breaths, I begin feeling along damp walls, turning left then right until I reach a narrow stone staircase. Guided by the fall of each foot, I make my way gradually down it, the cold increasing on every step.

And at the bottom, my blind progress is checked quite suddenly by the chill of a metal door. Palms spread against it, I can feel the outline of two riveted horizontal hinges. To the left-hand side, where a lock might be, is what feels like a bolt, corroded to the point of flaking in my fingertips.

I return my hands to the centre of the door, and with fortitude, as much mental as physical, I lean against it.

The dogs eventually give up the chase, howling in a wake of dust and exhaust fumes. A glance in the mirror shows the village now deserted, friendly faces we had met the previous afternoon lost behind shutters and deadlocks.

I'd woken that morning as if I'd never slept, bright morning sun boring into my skull. A strange sense of urgency hurried me to the car and the sanctuary of its dark, cossetting recesses, behind thick, tinted glass. Many miles between here and home then, and with Arefu disappearing into the distance, I dig deeply into the throttle.



CL63 AMG. £103,450 basic. £110,930 with the toys on this one. 6.2-litre V8 generating 518bhp and 464lb ft of torque. 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds in a five metre long car that weighs well over two tonnes. Romania's peaceful countryside is shattered by AMG's twin sports exhaust system as the car rips through its seven speeds. Inside, however, it remains serene. Wind noise is non-existent below 110mph, where the engine is still only nudging past 3,000rpm.

The miles tick off, switching back and forth over winding mountain roads and down through sleepy valleys, speckled with haystacks and columns of wood smoke from outlying farms.

The sun arcs overhead, hanging for an eternity at the top of its trajectory. It beats across the windscreen and lances the cocoon of the cockpit. My head aches bitterly and exhaustion is setting in, seeping into every leaden limb as I point the vast black bonnet north for the Hungarian border and home

An hour short of Arad, the road is blocked. Police cars and typically decrepit Eastern Bloc ambulances weave their way through lines of heavy goods lorries to a macabre scene playing itself out beyond sight a mile up the road. They return as the sun begins to set behind me, their red lights pulsing in the descending gloom and an alien wail of unfamiliar sirens drifting off towards Sibiu with their terrible cargo.

After a total of two hours stationary, the lorry in front begins to roll forwards and we all slowly snake up the mountain, past a single officer of the local Politia, a yellow Trabant facing the wrong way and a figure lying motionless in the verge.

His blue chequered shirt is pulled up over his face, concealing his final expression from the living and revealing an expanse of bloated, hairless flesh. In the ditch beside him is an angry twist of indeterminate wreckage, a vague automotive epitaph.

I wind the CL in a crawling convoy over a final alpine crest, the Transylvanian sun disappearing for the last time behind the summit. Zig-zagging down, the road begins to open up for overtakes, the CL punching past five or six cars at a time. At the border a uniformed guard stares long and hard at my passport in the twilight. He runs a torch the length of the CL's brutal, black profile before pointing it straight into my bloodshot eyes.

With a sudden step back he murmurs something and waves me quickly through. People have been reacting differently all day. Seeing something strange and dangerous, something other worldly. Is it me, is it the car?



At this point, to be honest, we are one and the same. A shared purpose, a mutual dependence. A pact with our own devil.

Nightfall is complete on entering Hungary and the tiredness abates. I'm gripped instead with a sudden urgency, finding dual carriageway for the first time in hours, then motorway for the first time in days. My focus now is simply for miles, and the car finally touches its limiter as it spears the empty autostrada towards Budapest.

I'm a new man now, night shrouding car and driver, the rapid drop in temperature assisting our collective progress. The occasional artic appears as two red eyes on the horizon before rapidly vanishing behind us with an audible thump of displaced air. This is our natural environment, the moment when we understand each other, work together, are utterly untouchable.

Sleep could not be less important, any hesitation in our progress an abhorrent impossibility. Unhindered by the clutter of day, CL63 and driver find common ground.

A car like this cannot live alongside others, destined instead to cross continents under the cover of night. I am bringing something haunting but beautiful home with me. Something most people will not understand. Something most people will seek to avoid. This prince of darkness.

Merc1

Wow, thanks for posting!

M

Just_me

ITs always a pleasure to make you happy

cato1974

It's nice to see that wonderfully descriptive writing is still not lost upon some.
Great write up by our friends at Top Gear

Zonda

God damn that car is hot!

atuv

No writing could do justice to that piece of engineering,there's no better way to make a big fast luxury coupe!