What AMGs Dev Chief thinks about SLS, SLR, LFA, and CTS V
We’re up in the Carmel Valley, along the northern coast of California just south of San Francisco, for a very sweet post-Halloween treat. This Monday morning is the first official press drive of the...
View Article2010 Mercedes E63 AMG Wagon: The Best of All Worlds?
There’s something under-the-radar, ultra-cool about a high performance wagon. My buddy Steve has just moved from Surrey to central London and traded his Porsche Cayenne Turbo for an Audi RS4 Avant....
View ArticleCall me a Cab! Around the Hamptons and Connecticut in an E550 Cabriolet
The Grand-Am Rolex series race weekend at Lime Rock and the Greenwhich Concours d’elegance recently brought me to the Tri-States area for a week. So what better way to cruise the historic Lime Rock...
View ArticleThe Germanic Bastardization of Our Mother Tongue Marches On
“I’m not going to call it a shooting-brake,” The Editor-in-Chief of one of our competitors told me at last year’s Geneva Motor Show. We were discussing the Touring Supperleggara Flying Star, a...
View ArticleAmerican Cars Don’t Cost Enough
At the conclusion of Dodge-a-Palooza, the boys from Chrysler took us to the Candy Store in Burlingame, near SFO. If you don’t know – and I didn’t – the Candy Store is a formerly abandoned car...
View Article2011 Detroit: Choose Your Own Edition
By now you’ve seen a ton of our 2011 Detroit auto show coverage. Our team attended all of the sneak peaks, press conferences, reveals and receptions and exhaustively profiled all of the concepts and...
View ArticleFish Tacos, Big V-8s, and Restraining Orders: New C63 AMG is All About Me
There is a certain level of decorum expected of automotive journalists at press events. Manufacturers love seeing passion and emotion when related to their new products, but they get a little...
View ArticleNew York Show Demo: Mercedes’ mbrace Telematics
OnStar may be the “Xerox” or Kleenex” of vehicle telematics systems, but Hughes Telematics is working hard to eclipse the General Motors platform with gotta-have-‘em killer apps. Since the mbrace...
View ArticleThe Happiest Happy Hour: Chauffeured around Manhattan in Exotic Supercars
When the yellow 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago crawled to the curb in front of my tired feet on 11th and West 37th, directly outside of the Javits Convention Center in New York City, I was no longer an...
View ArticleCould You Run an Automaker? Zetsche, Benz Brace for Change
If running a major automaker is a stressful business, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche certainly doesn’t show it. He’s nearing the end of a string of interviews in a temporary office complex tucked away on...
View ArticleVerifying a Claim: Is the Mercedes-Benz S350 Really That Good?
When he drove the new-to-our-shores Mercedes-Benz S350 4Matic BlueTec (diesel), former bossman Angus MacKenzie seemed pretty bowled over. How far bowled over? He said this, “The 2012 Mercedes-Benz S350...
View ArticleRIP Maybach: Pouring Out a Jeroboam for a Dead Homie
By now you’ve probably seen the reports: Maybach is no more. And since car companies are actually in the game to make money (as opposed to what I like to think — keeping jerks like me thrilled and...
View ArticleMoney Changes Everything: If Only the Car Business Were Just About Building Cars
The Monday-morning quarterbacking that inevitably follows our Car of the Year announcement always makes for interesting reading. That people will disagree with our choice is no surprise, though I do...
View Article2012 Geneva: Mercedes CLC, A-Class, to Lead New FWD Small-Car Strategy in U.S.
GENEVA – Mercedes-Benz’s small-car strategy in the U.S. has become clear with the global introduction of the new A-Class four-door hatchback and through interviews with company executives. The...
View ArticleHistory Is Written By Whom Exactly?
“Might that make an interesting blog entry? Get the fanboys chatting? Wouldn’t need to be much more than what you had below, cleaned up and toned down a half-shade.” So said our technical director,...
View ArticleMy Wife’s New Favorite Car is the 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL550
I bring home a lot of cars and my wife gets to ride in most of them, although from her perspective, she’s forced to ride in them. I gave her a 0-100 mph blast in our new long term 2013 Nissan GT-R. Her...
View ArticleWhen Less Isn’t More: Why a Cheap Mercedes May Not Be a Great Idea
We’re cheapskates. We want the world, but we don’t want to pay top dollar for it. We want cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap gas — cheap anything as long as we get a lot of it for our money. Never mind...
View ArticleBack in Black: AMG Gives Me OMG
Prior to this year, the last Mercedes-Benz AMG Black Series I drove was the ridiculous $299,000, 661-hp 2010 SL65 coupe (yes, this fixed-roof SL jettisoned its roadster title) that, oh, yeah, also...
View ArticleEvery Day I Am Driving: The Three That Got Away
I can’t actually print what he says to me, but I can assure you that when my good buddy Luis expresses his good-humored jealousy over whatever hypercar I’m currently driving, it’s two hues past...
View ArticleUnique Class: Why the Mercedes-Benz G-Class Epitomizes “Badass”
Living on the West Coast, I’m used to seeing luxury sport-utes. They’re ubiquitous. People who have a walk-in closet filled with fitted Italian suits, like testing their radar detector with friends...
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