2018 Mercedes EQ Silver Arrow

Mercedes has unveiled the Vision EQ Silver Arrows Concept, and it is a stunner. The concept is a feast for the senses, a product of Mercedes’ masterful use of its own heritage and reinventing it with a futuristic electric-jolted twist. As it is, the EQ Silver Arrow is a showcase concept — and what a concept, it is — that we’ll never see in production form. The good news is that the concept isn’t just a muscle-flexing design exercise, too. Parts of the concept will appear in Mercedes’ new electric brand offshoot, EQ. As to what those parts are? We’ll just have to wait and find out.

2018 Mercedes EQ Silver Arrow

Specifications

Make: Array
Model: 2018 Mercedes EQ Silver Arrow
Horsepower: 738
[do not use] Vehicle Model: Array

Pros

Cons

Exterior

It takes something extraordinary to make me curse under my breath when I see a concept car for the first time. The Mercedes Vision EQ Silver Arrows Concept did more than just that; it launched me into a profanity-laced soliloquy that made me question why we hadn’t seen something like this from the German automaker sooner.

The Vision EQ Silver Arrows Concept is an absolute work of art, and that’s probably putting it lightly. Its aerodynamic shape takes inspiration from the 1937 W125, a record-setting race car that was capable of hitting almost 270 mph more than 80 years ago. The whole body of the EQ Silver Arrows is as smooth as a baby’s bottom, the product of top-caliber aerodynamic carbon fiber engineering.

The front section gets slick wraparound lights, a carbon fiber nose, and a lip spoiler that’s made from the same lightweight material. There's no traditional front grille; instead, the concept has a digital screen because why not, right? Metallic covers hide part of the massive 26-inch wheels that themselves are standout items with a staggering 168 spokes on each wheel.

The side profile of the EQ Silver Arrows Concept gives us our best look at the stunning shape of the car. The body isn’t so much a car’s body in the traditional sense as it is a smooth, aerodynamically engineered streamliner, broken off only by the three horizontal air slits and the car’s opening, which juts up vertically to reveal the poshier-than-expected interior.

The rear section is the most concept-looking area of the vehicle. It features an active spoiler that can extend when necessary. There’s also a tinted glass fin that’s connected to the spoiler.

The whole concept is covered exclusively in an Alubeam Silver paint finish. To put a bow on historical symmetry, Alubeam Silver is the same color that Mercedes used on its classic Silver Arrows race cars, including the 1937 W125.

Interior

Once you open the cover, you can hop inside an interior that’s as stylish and luxurious as a Mercedes E-Class. Fine leather covers a good portion of the cockpit while solid walnut comprises the floor. The single seat, which is located right smack in the center of the vehicle, looks comfortable enough to sleep in. A four-point harness helps keep you comfortably tucked in the seat.

There’s a small roll bar in front, which is there for obvious safety purposes. Just above the roll bar is a steering wheel with a mounted touchscreen that has a variety of functions, including the option to choose three different drive modes — Comfort, Sport, and Sport+ modes. An on-board jukebox — yes, it has a jukebox — can play your choice of sound output. Don’t get too excited, though, because the choices are limited to a number of piped in engine sounds, specifically the turbo V-6 blow-by from the current Mercedes F1 W09 EQ Power+ or the more hair-raising crackle of Mercedes-AMGs 4.0-liter bi-turbo V-8 engine.

As an added treat, Mercedes added a race simulation game into the cockpit. None of us will probably get to use it, but the game is there in the event you want to do a little virtual racing with a virtual track overlayed onto the front aero screen. You can even compete against a virtual car and listen to a race coach to help you improve your racing skills.

Apparently, there’s no amount of technology that’s deemed too much for the EQ Silver Arrows Concept. About the only thing it’s missing is a button that reads to you the day’s newspaper while you’re driving like a berserker on a race track.

Drivetrain

The Mercedes EQ Silver Arrows Concept is light on propulsion details, which is about the only thing disappointing about this concept. We do know that Mercedes imagines it as having an 80 kWh battery pack and an electric motor that can produce a whopping 738 horsepower. That’s about the only piece of technical information the German automaker made available, but it does give us a peek into what Merc is cooking up in the electric powertrain front.

An 80 kWh battery pack with enough juice to power a 738-horsepower electric motor? Is it possible that Mercedes is developing this battery pack for the potential purpose of using it on any one of its future EQ models? Now, that’s something that we can all look forward to.

Conclusion

There’s something about the Mercedes EQ Silver Arrows Concept that’s mysterious and exciting at the same time. The physical manifestation of the concept is arguably its biggest highlight, but I’m not naive to believe that Merc’s future applications will be focused on the concept's design. The real important element of the concept is its mechanical and technical capabilities, two things that Merc conveniently didn’t dive into as much as it did with the concept’s exterior and interior. Rest assured, though, whatever technology Mercedes is developing for future production use has more to do with electric battery packs than 168-spoke wheels.

On that note, I’m excited to see what the future has in store for both Mercedes and its EQ brand.