According to the German tabloid Express, Düsseldorf antique car dealer Michael Fröhlich has found Hitler’s car, a blue Mercedes 770K. Fröhlich started searching after a request by a Russian oligarch. He tracked the car to Austria, to where it had been sold for 2000 Reichsmark after the war. From there, the car went to the car museum of the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. It was sent back to Germany into the collection of a loaded owner of a brewery in Munich. It finally ended up with a collector in Bielefeld. The collector had 5 more of the Nazi cars, one of them formerly Joachim von Ribbentrop’s daily driver. (Read More…)
China’s car sales can’t go on forever growing at a 50 percent to sometimes 100 percent clip, auto execs agree at the Guangzhou auto show. All are convinced that the growth will continue next year at a more – what’s the buzzword?- sustainable rate.
The Guangzhou auto show opened today. In case you’ve never heard of Guangzhou, it is a city of around 10m (nobody knows for sure,) and the main manufacturing hub of the Pearl River delta. Formerly known as Canton. About 30 percent of China’s GDP is produced in the South. The opening of the show prompted some major announcements. Here are some of them: (Read More…)
China is the perfect place to think about the future shape of mobility. It’s my job here to push my staff to push the envelope and think about the global automotive future from Beijing
Mercedes designer Olivier Boulay, explains his inspiration migration from Japan’s chauffeur-car culture to the streets of Beijing. The Wall Street Journal puts the cliches about China’s role in the world of automotive design, pointing out that (among other things) for every Geely GE, there’s a Buick Invicta. Not only are Chinese designers affecting Western brands, other Western brands like Mercedes are transferring design staff to China to seek out inspiration in the world’s new largest car market. And developing styling to Chinese tastes is about more than gaining market share there. China’s seemingly contradictory love affairs with conspicuous consumption and electric vehicles (mostly bicycles) represent a heady fusion of luxury and futuretech, a combination that already defines the marketing of many Western luxury car brands. As these trends develop, and as the Chinese market grows, auto design will increasingly be shaped by and in the Middle Kingdom.
Yesterday Daimler announced that McLaren would be buying out Daimler’s interest in their joint venture Formula 1 team. Many, including board member Erich Klemm, thought this made all kinds of sense. “In the (car) factories, every cent is being turned over three times. The employees are feeling the financial crisis with shorter working hours and loss of income,” he continued. “In these economically difficult times, the company should invest in better marketing of its real cars.” My, what a novel idea!
To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, the Maybach experiment was a conspiracy between Daimler and the rich to make the rest of us feel smart. The ultimate zombie brand, exhumed during the go-go nineties as a way for Daimler to charge even more for a stretched S Class, has now fallen on troubled times. And now, according to the ever-trusty limobroker.co.uk, none other than Mariah Carey has put the Maybach seemingly irrevocably in its place:
Initially a top class Mercedes complete with a chauffeur was sent to take Mariah to the studios, but this wasn’t deemed exclusive enough for a star of Mariah’s stature and was then replaced by a £250,000 Mercedes Maybach. However the Maybach limo was also rejected and then, third-time-lucky, a Rolls Royce Phantom was dispatched.
The “Two-Mode” hybrid system jointly developed by GM, Chrysler, Daimler and BMW is turning out to be quite the albatross. Chrysler’s Two-mode Durango and Aspen were discontinued before Bob Nardelli had the chance to drive one to last year’s bailout hearings. GM’s hybrid Escalade has been dead in the water, and BMW and Mercedes have said that only their X5 and ML SUVs will receive the expensive, overly-complicated drivetrain. Now Mercedes is signaling even further ambivalence toward the technological dead-end by announcing [via Autoblog] that the ML450 Hybrid will be a lease-only option. The 21/24 MPG ML Hybrid will be available at $659 per month for 36 or $549 per month for 60 months. Since this is the only vehicle M-B will sell with the two-mode technology, the limited number of batteries needed was a major factor in driving the cost up. “We are offering this vehicle as lease only due to a limited supply of batteries available. We felt a lease only program offered the best option for customers,” say Mercedes spokesfolks. The real message: the billion-dollar Two-Mode development program has been a colossal waste.
The R107, with soft top raised, visits the Trapp Family Lodge
Imagine it is thirty years in the future, 2039, and you are driving in a hard top convertible made in 2009. It has had three owners, and sports a healthy six-figures on the odometer. Would you expect it to leak, rattle, and/or squeak?
Probably.
Would you expect it to look dated and out of place as we approach 2030 when cars (finally) fly and run by garbage-powered fusion generators?
Likely.
In 2029 there will be 1970s-era Mercedes-Benz cars still on the road though. By then they might rattle, leak, and/or squeak. They may even look a little dated. But not today. I drove this 1979 450sl to a dentist appointment this morning. Two weeks before I drove it from coast to coast, through rain, snow, and sun. It doesn’t rattle. It doesn’t leak. It doesn’t squeak. It is as solid today as the day it rolled out of Stuttgart thirty years ago. This thing is built like a tank.
I was expecting to dislike the new E-Class Coupe from Mercedes. AMG versions aside, the outgoing CLK was about as interesting to drive as a Toyota Solara, and Mercedes has already announced that there would be no AMG versions of the new car. From the early photos of E-Class Coupe, I had already determined that the large glass sunroof with its meager mesh sun protection would curry little favor with me, and the little rear quarter window spoiled the look of this frameless coupe. To make matters worse, the 2010 E-Class Coupe’s engines are carryovers from the CLK. Mercedes claims our fuel quality isn’t suitable for the new direct injected engines offered in Europe. (Translation: the US is a dumping ground for some old engine inventory.) The E-Class nomenclature is another sleight of hand, as the chassis is still derived from the C-Class. Harrumph.
The ad for the new Mercedes GLK is targeted straight at owners of MB’s ML and GL SUVs. After all, the new GLK gives you the “same innovation in a smaller design.” Same agility. Same suspension. Same luxury. Same depreciation (my add). So, why bother paying more for one of Mercedes’ more much macho trucks? Sure, this baby brother routine hurts the automaker. The Nissan’s Rogue’s Murano-i-cide is but one example where a new, smaller vehicle robbed Peter to pay Paul less. But that’s the way it is. In Bailout Nation’s new era of hunker down austerity, downsizing is almost as fashionable as having a job. Big ticket buyer meets smaller ticket price on the dark side of town. The carmakers must figure that what they lose in profit they’ll recover in volume. Ask GM how well that works. In that sense the Mercedes GLK is a born win – loser. Or is it?
As reported here, Daimler AG plans to increase its sourcing of automotive components from China nearly eight-fold within four years. The luxury car maker will buy $3.25b worth of car components per year in China. Now, BMW is itching to get in on the act. Not that BMW is new to buying parts in China, they have done that for years, mostly unbeknown to their well-heeled customers. BMW and Daimler are in talks to create a huge buying co-op. They want to create critical mass, and drop the bomb on their Chinese suppliers, the German Handelsblatt reports. By concentrating their buying power, Beemer and Benz intend to save €350m per year, in discounts alone. To assuage their American clientele, they say that they will also extend the stingy hand of their allied purchasing departments to parts suppliers in the U.S.A. However, with the dollar high and U.S. parts manufactures dead, or on the brink of extinction, the BMW/Mercedes buying axis is squarely targeted at China. The “deeper discounts” news from Deutschland already has Chinese parts makers atwitter and alarmed. Here is why ….
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