They are best described as wobbly wheels.
The last time you saw a car with wobbly wheels, you were probably in a tent, its doors fell out and fourteen figures with extremely colorful make-up and huge shoes came out of the trunk. However, the Mercedes F 400 Carving Concept did not use that effect for comedic purposes. According to the deadly serious press release from 2001, ‘completely new dynamic handling systems’ were tested here.
Unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show, the F 400’s secret weapon was turning the wheels up to 20 degrees when cornering, like a motorcycle or maybe a skier does. That ‘carving’ had nothing to do with ‘cutting’, but more with ’tilting’, which uses the same word in English.
The engine of the Mercedes F 400 Carving
The Mercedes F 400 Carving had a 3.2-liter V6 under the hood, which sent 215 horsepower to the rear wheels. Nothing new, although those numbers continue to sound nice when it comes to a two-seater roadster. Of course in this case he had dry sump lubrication – there had to be enough oil to get to the engine for serious cornering.
But it wasn’t until the power hit the road that the magic kicked in – the tires on the F 400 were specially made to give the insides extra grip in case they were tipped over. The exact amount of tilt was monitored by cameras that decided how far the wheels would protrude into the corner. In fact, the car was designed so that if the driver had to make an emergency stop, all four wheels would immediately turn inwards to ensure maximum grip. Which of course wouldn’t scare you at all, or anything like that.
Other special matters
The car also had the almost mandatory gullwing doors for concept cars, innovative drive by wire steering and braking technology, and strange optical fiber headlights. Because the body was very thin where the headlights were, just above the wheels, Mercedes developed a system in which the actual lamps were located under the hood and sent their light forward via fiber optic cables. Smart stuff.
Concept cars are meant to give subtle hints to future real cars, right? Well, if we really look through our eyelids, we can already see the hint to the SLK from 2004 around the nose, but otherwise you should not imagine too much of the Carver Concept. A complicated suspension, no roof and two seats? It is almost a miracle that this device could be built at all. The sole purpose of the F 400 was to show that Mercedes was capable of building something so technologically complex – simply because it could. No wonder potential buyers fled when they saw those silly helmets Mercedes had made the poor fashion models wear.
