Huge throngs of people at a Mercedes-Benz motor show stand are nothing unusual per se. But when these colourful throngs of people congregate right at the main entrance to the exhibition hall there has to be a very special reason. Just as in the case of the 65th IAA Commercial Vehicles now. A huge, dramatically designed poison green Mercedes-Benz Actros towers at the entrance to the Daimler World of Commercial Vehicles.
Basis of the “Highway Hero” show truck is a three-axle Actros 2551 6×2
When the owner of the multi-award-winning show truck revs up the engine, the fat exhaust stacks belt out a mighty sound. When the 510-hp engine is quiet, thumping shock waves from the vehicle sound system reverberate with – what else – American country music.
However, this is anything but a US truck. The basis is entirely German, a three-axle Actros 2551 6×2. The owner and the mounted body (22 m3 silo) are Finnish. The owner’s name is Mika Auvinen. He is the one who has given the most powerful 12.8 l Actros a completely new outfit, inside and out.
The paintwork of the truck and the trailer alone took more than 1200 hours to complete. A little imagination on the part of the observer is required in picturing the four-axle silo trailer (37 m3) because the entire tractor-trailer combination would of course be barred from entering Germany due to exceeding the maximum permissible length by a significant margin.
But the tractor unit by itself is impressive enough, to a point where the German-Finnish co-production was recently able to win the “Nordic Trophy 2014” as the best show truck. It is after all the first Mercedes-Benz truck to win in the 35-year history of this design competition held in Sweden. And it is easy to see why it is the reason for the huge throngs of people in front of the Mercedes-Benz exhibition hall.
