We wouldn’t blame you for being unfamiliar with the Lotec Mercedes-Benz C1000. There aren’t many to go around. In fact, this is the pinnacle of rarity—just one of these vehicles has ever been produced. And, like many incredibly rare supercars, the motivation for its conception was one well-heeled individual’s desire to have the world’s fastest street car.
In the early 1990s, an oil tycoon from the United Arab Emirates approached Mercedes-Benz about building the car. Working in conjunction with German performance tuning house Lotec, Mercedes-Benz set about designing and creating the C1000. After five years in development, the one-off beast was delivered to its owner.
The car gets its name from two sources. The “c” stands for carbon fiber, which was used extensively throughout the vehicle’s construction, and the 1000 comes from the amount of horsepower its power plant delivers. A twin turbocharged, 5.6-liter V8, similar to the engine used in the Sauber C8 and C9 race cars of the day, was sourced from Mercedes. The motor is tuned to run on a mixture of pump gas and aviation fuel—in order to reach that four-digit horsepower figure. All that grunt is routed through a Hewland 5-speed manual transmission, which in turn sends the twist to the rear wheels.
Despite being a right-hand drive car, the shifter is still positioned to the right of the driver rather than remaining in the center of the cabin, which is usually where designers position it regardless of which side the steering wheel is on.
Weighing only 2,380 pounds, the Lotec C1000 was reportedly capable of 0-60 mph in just 3.2 seconds. That’s particularly noteworthy since it was produced in a time before launch control. It’s said to be able to reach a top speed of 262 miles per hour, both of which are still formidable performance figures by any definition, the latter putting the C1000 within spitting distance of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, the current world record holder.
As you might expect, bankrolling the creation of such a vehicle isn’t exactly cheap, and the C1000’s development tallied $3,500,000 when all was said and done. Since its creation the C1000 has changed hands several times—including a time on eBay in 2014— before falling off the radar for several years until it was recently posted for sale by a Lamborghini dealership in Greensboro, North Carolina. With just under 2,600 miles on the odometer, its $1,250,000 price tag seems like kind of a bargain, doesn’t it? Good luck finding replacement parts though.
