German

In times as tumultuous as these, we’d be shocked, to say the very least, if the majority of statisticians didn’t report a noticable uptick in bank heist attempts over the past couple years. And while we obviously don’t endorse criminal activity of any variety, we can’t help wondering if there is such a thing as the perfect getaway car for such a task. Thankfully, it turns out we aren’t the only ones suffering from this perverse curiousity. In fact, the German hoons at GRIP were very, very interested in answering this question.

How do we know this? Well, for starters it appears they commendeered a disused military base complete with town-like sections of buildings and streets to test a vehicle’s agility, plus some long, wide runways for high speed running. Secondly, they’ve assembled a superstar collection of getaway vehicles (tuned models from Audi, Dodge and Porsche), plus one very special police car with which to play the game of cops & robbers about which young gearheads can only dream. So grab some poppin’ corn and make the jump for the video and an explanation of what’s going on, since all the dialogue is auf Deutsch. (Our friends who took Spanish instead in high school are totally jealous right now...maybe.)

In the past the idea of having a track comparison between a BMW M3 and a Ford Mustang GT was about as logical and fair as asking "The Rock" to compete against Jet Li on the Ninja Warrior course. The Rock may be strong, but his agility is lacking. Since its birth the BMW M3 has been known for its handling. It came standard with neautral balance and execellent turn in, with oversteer optional. The Mustang built its name on acceleration. If the muscle car Hall of Fame existed, Ford's pony car would get early admission. But with its live axle, big V8 motor and American upbringing teaching it success lies at the end of a drag strip, it was never seen as a competitor to the Bavarian acrobat. Recently the 2012 Mustang Boss 302 was suggested as a worthy competitor for the M3, but that's a special model that's meant for the track. Surely the plain Jane Mustang GT wouldn't stand a chance.

The good people at Motor Trend beg to differ. They think the 2011 Ford Mustang GT is a very good car. So good, it may have the skills and tools necessary to venture into the ring with a competitor that no one would expect: the 2011 BMW M3. This is a fight that has never happened. Some called MT crazy for even suggesting the Mustang even good enough to park next to an M3. Is the new Mustang that good, or was Motor Trend just trying to sell some paper? Make the jump to watch the video, and see who is left standing.

Introduced in 2004, the Mercedes CLS made a profound statement by telling the world you can have four doors and eat your coupe too. Nowadays the four-door coupe can be found in numerous dealerships, but Mercedes was the first one to plant the flag. Living in Los Angeles there's no shortage of the latest and greatest cars to be seen. In fact, in this city it seems there was a law passed stating if you own a Mercedes, it can only be the latest model. So, rich folks rejoice... Introducing the 2012 Mercedes-Benz CLS. Watch out Mr. Rapide and Mr. Quattroporte, the Godfather has returned. 

The front of the last CLS was one of the simplest yet more stylish designs out of the Stuttgart in a long time. It was very clean and neat, and oozed power without looking like a robot or a gap-mouthed cat fish. It looked capable of eating both road and travelers alike. But when you call a car a four-door coupe, the most important view is from 90 degrees: the profile. Coupes are known for their long hoods and short, sloping decks, which is hard to replicate without requiring rear-seat passengers to be under 5 feet tall. By using pillar-less windows and slopes that extends from the C-pillar through the trunk, the essence of a coupe is retained. While the old CLS had a great profile, the sheet metal was fairly flat. 2012 is apparently the year of the crease, with several of them running along the CLS' flanks.

Many, many inches of headline are dedicated to the battle for the title of fastest street-legal production car. For the better part of a decade, the McLaren F1 had a chokehold on the record. Then the Bugatti Veyron came along and bumped the number higher, only to be usurped by the red, white and blew-by-you SSC Ultimate Aero. Now the top spot is held by Bugatti once more, thanks to the Veyron Super Sport, though Shelby Supercars and Koenigsegg both claim they’ll have new challengers ready shortly.

Unfortunately, the near-constant one-upsmanship in the quest for the overall fastest street car mark has pushed other similar races to the sidelines, namely the battle for the fastest sedan in the world. After all, who doesn’t love the thought of blasting down the Autobahn with three or four of your closest friends with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” filling the cabin? Probably people who aren’t cool enough to be reading this site and would probably find NPR.org more their speed. Anyway, the latest four-door that is staking a claim to the mantle of fastest of the breed is German tuner G-Power’s current reimagining of the outgoing E60 generation BMW M5, the Hurricane RR.

A few weeks ago the greatest show on television, Top Gear, let us down. Richard Hammond was testing the new 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS, and not in some podunk, patriotic, Southern-cliche town in America, but on the TG test track. Rarely do we see a car from our country driven by the automotive authority that is TG, let alone one that costs 30 grand. It was all fun and games until Richard called up a car to compare it to, a "German muscle car", which turned out to be the 2010 Mercedes E63 AMG. One of our budget-priced powerhouses was about to go up against an athletic specimen built in a laboratory using the best materials money can buy. And it lost. (Watch it here.)

We don't think this was a fair fight, so we want to even things out. If you're fighting a German-built super-sedan, you should use a German-built super Camaro, specifically the Geiger Cars Camaro SS Kompressor. Today we bring you a rematch of Chevrolet Camaro SS vs Mercedes E63 AMG, and this time the Camaro should get to use the same "supplements" as the Mercedes.

If you had to pick one American car introduced in the last 36 months that is truly impressive and within spitting distance of the world’s best, you could do much worse than the second generation Cadillac CTS-V. It’s definitely raised the sport sedan bar, and GM is hoping the new coupe version will do the same in the premium high-performance two-door segment. But how will we know how this flashy fastback stacks up against two of its biggest rivals from Germany, the BMW M3 and Audi RS5?

That’s where well-established enthusiast publications Motor Trend and Car and Driver come into play. Contrary to popular belief, they are quite aware of the existence of the Internet and the additional capabilities it offers over ultrathin wafers of pureed trees. How do we know this? By the two nicely-put-together HD videos after the jump, of course.

Say “station wagon” to the average American and chances are the first picture that pops into his or her noggin is a big, Disco Age American land schooner wearing green paint and mouldings and veneers made from only the finest plastic trees. With so many of today’s car buyers having spent their formative years in these motorized mastadons, is it any surprise contemporary wagons seem to be such a hard sell over here today? (The shortage of manufacturers willing to take the risk of selling them in this hemisphere makes it a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, but bear with us.)

In Europe, however, the honeymoon with the station wagon (or “estate cars” or “kombis,” depending on where you are over there) hasn’t ended. In fact, wagons are so popular in the Old Country that many manufacturers offer high performance versions thereof. But in the mid-‘90s, the species Stationwagonus Wickedfastimus as we know it today didn’t really exist. It took a collaboration between two then-distant (now less so) corporate cousins from the Fatherland to create this category. And the Adam/Eve of the segment they came up with – the Audi RS2 Avant – was a real humdinger.

To say we’re longtime fans of Mercedes-Benz’s fullsize hardtop coupes is a gross understatement. While we’re most partial to the achingly pretty W126 2-door (probably because we own one of its similarly-handsome sedan siblings), we can certainly appreciate all generations of Stuttgart’s big coupes, be it the baroque swagger of the W112, the just-this-side-of-overengineered W140, or the two generations that have been built during this century. Now the storied marque is giving the current generation CL-class (codenamed C216) a mid-cycle refresh, and that includes tweaking the high-po AMG lineup as well.

The big news on this front (other than the tweaked front and rear styling) is the fact that the CL63 AMG ditches its normally-aspirated 6.2L V8 in favor of AMG’s all new 5.5L twin-turbo V8. Yes, we’re puzzled by the decision to not revive the CL55 AMG moniker too. What we’re not puzzled by is why the atmo mill was sent packing: Looming clampdowns on fuel economy and emissions by governments in many of the markets where Mercedes-Benz does business.