1999 Mercedes Benz Sl500 Sport on 2040-cars

Auto blog

YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]

After Sunday's big game, YouTube will be the place to watch every commercial that you missed when you left your seat for an emergency guac refill or, as we say in Cleveland, took the Browns to the Super Bowl. That makes YouTube the nation's water cooler on Monday, and it's got some preliminary stats to share in the lead up to kickoff.
As you know, Super Bowl advertisers, particularly automakers, like to endlessly tease their big budget commercials in the weeks before the game, many times revealing them outright days in advance. Because of this, YouTube can tell us which commercials have been viewed the most so far, and their top five list is all automakers.
Kaley Cuoco appears to have been a good investment for Toyota, as her ad for the RAV4 has garnered the most YouTube views - six million and counting - among Super Bowl commercials so far. Second place goes to Mercedes-Benz, though not its actual Super Bowl commercial, but rather the teaser for it. You know, the one with Kate Upton and the car washing, which is up to 5.6 million views. Third place is Audi's Prom commercial (3.3M views), fourth goes to Volkswagen's slightly controversial Get In, Get Happy ad (3.3M views), and the fifth and final spot is bookended by the teaser video for Kaley Cuoco's commercial (3.2M views). You can watch all five in order below.

Erebus Motorsport Mercedes E-Class V8 Supercar completes the field [w/videos]

Ford, Holden and Nissan introduced their V8 Supercar challengers a while back. Erebus Motorport, whose racing program got the green light not even 120 days ago, has finally shown off the Mercedes-Benz E-Class racer that will complete this year's field of entries. The first AMG race car ever to be built outside of Germany, it's an Australian-built tube-frame chassis specced to the series' Car of Tomorrow rules, fitted with body panels that channel the E63 AMG.
Supported by AMG Customer Motorsport, the 5.0-liter engine is provided by HWA in Germany, the racing arm of AMG. Regulations dictate that it have roughly 650 horsepower, a redline between 7,000 and 7,500 rpm and a torque curve that matches the parity baseline set for all cars.
Lee Holdsworth, Tim Slade and Maro Engel will drive the three team cars, each with different sponsors. Their first showing will be at the Clipsal 500 on March 3 in Adelaide, here in the US we'll get to see them in May at the Circuit of the Americas. Check out the videos below of the Erebus car starting up at its launch, and footage of all of this year's cars doing pre-season testing on track together.

2017 Aston Marin Lagonda could live on Mercedes M-Class platform

A few weeks ago, we brought you news from the launch of the Aston Martin Vanquish Volante that the British brand, which is formally known as Aston Martin Lagonda, was still planning on going ahead with a Lagonda-badged crossover. Now comes word that that vehicle could very well be based on a Mercedes-Benz M-Class.
When the first Lagonda Concept debuted at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, it sat on a Mercedes-Benz GL-Class platform, some four years before Aston Martin and Mercedes-AMG deal was inked. And with that partnership, which will see Aston Martin gain access to AMG electrics and "bespoke, V8 powertrains," the opportunities for platform sharing are many.
Dr. Ulrich Bez, the boss of Aston Martin, told the UK's AutoCar, "I look at what Porsche is doing with the 911 as its core business and then it is able to do models like the Cayenne based on the Volkswagen Touareg. It is good business." We've said many times that we'll tolerate exotic CUVs and SUVs if it means keeping the beloved core models alive, which has been the case with Porsche. We see no reason Aston Martin wouldn't be able to do the same.