16 Nov 06
We depart on day two while it's still dark, as we have 437 miles to cover. Our road book warns of many roadworks, but the information is out of date: the road is dead smooth, dead straight and very new. As the sun rises I see how nearly every fence and gate in nearly every little village, however run-down (pride in property was beaten out of the psyche under the Soviets), is painted in the blue of the Kazakh flag, which represents the giant sky above the steppes.
There's the occasional cow wandering across the road near a village, and sometimes a mangled car by the roadside left there as a warning. The problem lies with the deceptive dips in the road, sometimes big enough to conceal an entire car seen only when committed to an overtaking manoeuvre.
Here, as predicted, the old-shape Mercedes E-class is centre of the automotive universe. If you had ever wondered where they had all gone, here's the answer. Same goes for Audis, the other main aspirational brand. Audi 80s, 90s, 100s and early A6s are here in hundreds, like the Mercs mainly smart and obviously cherished. BMWs too, but not so many.
The road stretches to the horizon in true Vanishing Point style, and driver Dan is distracted by the Devil. How fast will the E320 CDI go? There's no sign of any police, they lack radar guns, those ahead of us haven't radioed any warnings on the CB, so down goes the right foot. We're running on winter-tread Michelins, rated at a maximum 130mph.
That's exactly where the acceleration ends, because the Distronic cruise control's built-in speed limiter has been set at that point. It's easy to change it, but given the unseasonably warm weather and the tyres' soft compound we feel it's prudent not to push our luck and back off.
