2007 Mercedes-Benz E320 Bluetec Paris to Beijing Challenge

To drive the Bluetec is to experience the same privileged ease and comfort that one does in any E-class, except you can travel 600 miles between fill-ups. According to the trip computer, our hard-driven car had been averaging about 26 mpg on a steady diet of Aral low-sulfur diesel trucked in specially from Germany. The local diesel fuel in Russia, Kazakhstan, and China has up to 300 times more sulfur than European regulations allow. With the aid of exhaust-gas recirculation, two catalysts, and a particulate filter, the Bluetec is the cleanest Mercedes diesel ever. It will be even more so once Mercedes-Benz and the U.S. EPA agree on a system where-by the cars can be equipped with a catalyst that, when primed by an injection of aqueous urea, will convert oxides of nitrogen into nitrogen and water vapor. The sticking point? The EPA fears that owners will fail to replenish the urea fluid every 10,000 miles, rendering the emissions controls ineffective. Such microcosmic environmental considerations are literally and figuratively half a world away from the so-called coal highway out of Wuhai, where we passed trucks hauling enough coal to power Beijing for a week. People walked alongside the road collecting little chunks of coal that had blown off the trucks. The next 200 miles that unfurled for us in the foothills of the Gobi Desert looked not unlike parts of the American Southwest. We hammered the E320 hard here, jostling for position with trucks carrying coal, livestock, corn, and hay; braking fiercely; and keeping a sharp eye out for long-horned sheep on the roadside. Some of the pavement was rough, but the Benz's suspension absorbed the worst of it without complaint. Denise, a former racing and rally driver, was two months shy of becoming an octogenarian, but she was quite literally one of the fastest and most competent drivers in our entire caravan and the object of great interest for many European journalists. I am an incorrigible speeder, but with Denise at my side, I often feared that perhaps I was going a little too slowly for her tastes. When I was at the wheel, she'd canvass the right lane and the right shoulder, calling out "you can take him," or simply "go" if she spied a passing opportunity that I hadn't yet perceived. We followed local custom and used the shoulder, conveniently free of debris thanks to the sweepers, to slalom around coal carriers at 110 mph. Everyone seemed to be going slower than Denise and I, including most of the other members of the Mercedes caravan. We had no time to spare for mere sight-seeing . . . For fast as we urged our horses on, the sun seemed to outdistance us without effort. From Wuhai to Baotou to Hohhot, the Mercedes was an express train through modern industrial China. Lots more pollution, lots of factories, and lots of signs of progress, like brand-new freeways, gas stations everywhere (one with a sign reading "Positive Big Petroleum"--the Chinese may not understand the oxymoron just yet), and high tension wires crisscrossing the landscape. Dozens of powerplant cooling towers. And an occasional car of the gentry, like the brand-new Nissan Fuga (known in America as the Infiniti M35) we tailed as its driver expertly wove through crowded traffic. At one tollbooth, three attendants came to the window, all raising their cell phone cameras at our car. Denise tossed them Route 66 T-shirts.