Home / Posts tagged 'Mercedes-Benz'

• Gran Turismo 6 is Playstation 3-Bound This Holiday Season [w/ Videos]

  In Video Games / By Tom Anderson / 15 May 2013

  

  After a gestation so lengthy that Axl Rose was quoted as saying “What the hell is taking Kazunori and crew so long?”, Gran Turismo 5 finally arrived in November of 2010. And while it was without question a tremendous game with gorgeous graphics and a mammoth car list, it felt, in many respects, rushed. Hard to believe when you consider it came out almost six years after Gran Turismo 4, but things like a new-but-half-baked damage model, continued use of angry appliance exhaust sounds, woeful under-utilizations of the WRC, NASCAR and Top Gear licenses and, perhaps most aggravating of all, many times more “Standard Cars” (i.e. models ported from GT4 and the Gran Turismo title for the PSP) than “Premium Cars” (i.e. brand new car models built from many thousands more polygons and featuring fully-modeled interiors) left many longtime fans of the franchise feeling underwhelmed, if not out-and-out cheated.

  So you can imagine our skepticism when we heard rumors that the father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, and his team at Polyphony Digital would not only be revealing Gran Turismo 6 sooner rather than later, but also bring it to market by the end of the 2013 calendar year. Well, following a massive press event (which also served to celebrate the series’ 15^th anniversary) at England’s Silverstone Circuit earlier today, we can report there’s more than a little truth to those rumors. More than a little truth, and some gorgeous, gorgeous visuals.

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• Piecha Design Mercedes-Benz CLA250 GT-R Emboldens Stuttgart’s New Starter Sedan

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 14 May 2013

  

  The all-new CLA-Class represents a sizable philosophical shift for Mercedes-Benz. It’s an extension of the company’s “four-door coupe” portfolio, and it’s the first front-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz offered in the United States. But it also represents an open and concerted effort by the world’s oldest car company to court the highly-desirable youth market.

  And if there’s one thing younger car buyers like to do, it’s modify their rides to make them look different from everyone else’s. But because the CLA is so new, there aren’t very many options for making one’s baby Benz stand out from the crowd just yet. Thankfully, one of those options – from the German firm Piecha Design – looks damn good.

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• Set Phasers to “Fun”: Spocks Old and New Ham It up in Audi Advert [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 7 May 2013

  

  For a television series that only ran for three seasons and garnered rather lukewarm ratings, Star Trek has proven quite profitable for creator Gene Roddenberry and his heirs. This is due in no small part to the fact that the franchise enjoys one of the sci-fi community’s largest and most vocal fanboy and fangirl armies. But we reckon it also stems from a long line of iconic characters and the gifted actors who portray them.

  One of those characters is, of course, Spock. The mostly logical and emotionally-distant half-Vulcan, half-human chap has only been played by two men throughout his existence: Leonard Nimoy and, beginning with the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie, Zachary Quinto. Audi of America has brought both actors together in this quite hilarious spot that showcases the Audi S7 and its principal competitor, the Mercedes-Benz CLS. Normally we consumer goods company/upcoming movie cross promotions (Star Trek Into Darkness hits theaters May 17^th.) as cynical, forced-looking-and-sounding cash grabs. But this? This. Is. Gold. Bravo Audi and Misters Nimoy and Quinto.

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• KTW Tuning and Brabus Build a Wicked Mercedes-Benz E-Class Wagon

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 2 May 2013

  

  When Mercedes-Benz released its first factory-built station wagon (the W123-based “T-Modell,” the “T” standing for touring and transport) in 1978, it probably didn’t know just how big a hit it would be. But as the last 35 years and untold thousands of sales of various compact and mid-size station wagons have proven, many people around the world – our grandmother among them – are quite comfortable with the idea of an estate car wearing the Mercedes-Benz star.

  The current-generation E-Class Wagon (codenamed W212) is the archetypal example of the brand’s wagon lineage. But for all its design and practicality virtues, it’s not much of a performance car (at least in non-AMG form). However, KTW Tuning (with quite a bit of help from Brabus) have managed to change that.

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• Wald International Mercedes-Benz Viano Black Bison is Soccermom Chic

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 1 May 2013

  

  While most Americans know Mercedes-Benz as a maker of premium automobiles, in global terms, it’s a truly full-line automaker. Yes, we get a taste of the company’s non-luxury car and SUV side in the form of the Sprinter van range, but the Sprinter is just a tiny slice of the pie. Mercedes-Benz also builds medium- and heavy-duty trucks, buses, smaller vans and of course the mighty Unimog. You can also get most of the company’s passenger cars with smaller gas and diesel engines than the ones offered here, as well as features like cloth upholstery and steel wheels with hubcaps.

  But back to those vans not named Sprinter. The Sprinter’s smaller, more car-like brother is the Vito, a rear- or all-wheel-drive cargo van which forms the basis for a passenger van aimed at non-commercial customers (read: families) called the Viano. And it is for the Viano that Japanese tuning house Wald International has developed one of its snazzy Black Bison body kits.

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• The Top 25 Homologation Specials of All Time

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  Purpose-built racing cars – be they single seat open wheelers, sports prototypes, dragsters or any other automobile whose sole reason for being is to compete – have always inspired awe and been capable of extraordinary performance. But when it comes to truly connecting with the fans in the stands, these thoroughbreds are no match for production-based (even if it’s just the shape of the body) machinery. The idea of watching a particular car win a race and then walking out to the parking lot and driving home in or driving to the local dealer to check out an identical (save for some safety and performance equipment and a whole heap-o-decals) car holds widespread (if not universal) appeal.

  Of course, to stand a better chance at winning on Sunday so they can sell on Monday, manufacturers load their showroom-bred competition models with go-fast bits. However, many sanctioning bodies used to require (though, sadly, very few still do) that those same upgrades to be fitted to a certain number of the street-legal models Joe Bloe can buy, meaning the factories have to sell what are known as homologation specials in order to race that model. The annals of automotive history are brimming with such four-wheeled entry forms, yet we’ve managed to pare that manifest down to the 25 fastest, coolest and most outrageous ones ever to wear a license plate.

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• Electric Sliding: Chris Harris Hoons the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Electric Drive [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 11 April 2013

  

  A few weeks ago we brought you a video from the Drive channel in which Chris Harris wrung out the new Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series during its press launch event at France’s Circuit Paul Ricard. What you might not have known is that Mercedes and AMG used the very same event to debut the SLS AMG Electric Drive, the gas-free Gullwing we first came to know as the SLS E-Cell. So naturally, even though he loves loud, petrol-chugging conventional cars, he took the opportunity to sample this most powerful AMG production car ever.

  Needless to say, after watching the video, you get the feeling that Chris came away rather impressed with the SLS AMG Electric Drive. Of course, with 750hp at his right foot’s disposal, how could he not? But it seems like he was even more in awe of the car’s torque vectoring capabilities, and to be honest, so are we. Amazing what powering each wheel independently can do, huh?

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• Hamann Spyridon Mercedes-Benz G65 AMG is Decadence Defined

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 3 April 2013

  

  The Mercedes-Benz G-Class is, without question, one of the baddest new vehicles you can buy. And the outrageous V12-powered G65 AMG (which isn’t available in the U.S.) is the high school super senior of the SUV kingdom. You know, the guy always puts his feet on the furniture, sneaks in smoke breaks in the bathroom, addresses each faculty member with “Yo, Teach!,” does just enough to maintain a D- average, and has fathered at least one child. Yeah, that guy. Like the G65, he won’t go very far in life (or on a tank of gas, as the case may be), but man, does he know how to have a good time.

  But what if you want a big, blocky big block Benz that is even more of a party animal? Well, Hamann has created a tuning package for the ultimate G-Wagen called Spyridon. And if you like ostentatious, boy, have you come to the right place.

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• Deutsche Tourenwagen Musik: DTM Orchestra Gives America a Taste of Things to Come [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 28 March 2013

  

  In the last month-and-a-half or so, we’ve brought you a couple videos chronicling the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) through the years. The first was a tribute to the series’ Group A golden era of the late-1980s and early-1990s. The second video looked at the Class 1 era of the mid-‘90s, where the cars were arguably more technology-packed than any racecars seen before or since. Now, we bring you a video about today’s DTM – which is contested by silhouette cars patterned after the BMW M3, Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe and Audi RS5 – with an extra musical accompaniment.

  But this present-day DTM vid has some extra significance, for it was earlier this week that ITR (the sanctioning body for DTM), Grand-Am and IMSA (which, along with the American Le Mans Series, will join forces next year to form United SportsCar Racing) signed an agreement that will see the formation of a North American DTM series. The parties involved say the new championship will be open to DTM cars, GT500 class SuperGT cars (since it has also adapted DTM rules), and any new cars that will be built by American manufacturers (*cough*next gen Camaro, next gen Mustang and the rumored SRT ‘Cuda*cough*). Expect the series to kick off in 2015 or 2016, with both standalone events and during United SportsCar and Izod IndyCar Series weekends. Needless to say, we are counting the days, kids.

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• The Top 10 Debuts of the 2013 New York Auto Show

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 28 March 2013

  

  For a town where most of the residents share cars, and those cars have their own dedicated tunnels with their own power supplies for their electric propulsion systems, New York’s annual international auto show sure has become one of the hottest expos on the calendar. For the 2013 New York Auto Show now underway, there’s a stellar cast of world debuts from both home and abroad on display. But which of those debuts are the ones that will be hard to fuggetabout? Our 10 picks to attain that status can be found – Where else? – after the jump.

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