These elegant saloons—the Audi A8L Security, BMW Security 7, and Mercedes S600 Guard—all come direct from the manufacturers’ assembly lines, where their thousands of extra pounds of high-strength steel, aramid fabrics, and polycarbonate linings are baked right into the build process. This allows the cars to provide overlapping protection in places like hinges, seams, and mounting points that after-market retrofitters can’t reach. More important, it also allows the vehicles (and their V.V.V.I.P. owners) to maintain a discreet appearance, one that’s virtually indistinguishable from the “standard” $100,000 models on which they’re based.
But don’t be fooled by their junior-executive drag; each of these vehicles is rated to withstand Death Star–like firepower. The non-glass regions can resist class-nine ammunition, which includes armaments like .50-caliber machine guns. The 2.5-inch-thick windows can deflect all-day AK spray. The floorboards can take two simultaneously detonated hand grenades; the roof can take a third. And if a baddie wants to try blowing out your candles with up to 15 kilograms of TNT, these cars will frost on unscathed—on specially lined wheels that allow escape velocities even with melted tires.
If poison gas is your insurgent’s weapon of choice, the sedans can be outfitted with closed systems that pump onboard oxygen into the cabin through sealed vents. If you’re up against Molotovs or flame throwers, check the fireproofing-option box, and you’ll receive a steam shower’s worth of hidden nozzles that spray an extinguishing agent into the wheel arches, gas tank, and engine and onto the ground beneath the car. And if you’re lucky enough to be confronted only with unarmed chanters, be sure to purchase the externally mounted public-address speakers, so you can audibly order the rabble to disperse—before giving your driver the signal to run them down.
Since no vehicle can be made completely impervious, these cars’ most important feature is their ability to ferry occupants away from a threat. Some manufacturers, like BMW, provide in-depth hands-on training for your chauffeur, including coursework in practices like evasive maneuvers, antagonist immobilization, sniper-fire avoidance, and “destructive driving”: riding guardrails, breaking through barriers. But just in case, be sure to order the optional pyrotechnical separating screws that, when triggered, blast the doors off their hinges, allowing fleet flight on foot.
Note: We’ll have to wait until things further deteriorate domestically, as none of these cars is available in America. Yet.
More pix here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/stick-s ... di#slide=7
