1973 Mercedes Benz 450sl on 2040-cars

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World Car Of The Year down to its final four

Judges for the World Car of the Year Award have narrowed down the finalists to just four vehicles. Out of a total of 42 entries, only the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, Porsche Boxster/Cayman, Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT-86 and Volkswagen Golf remain standing. For Volkswagen, this marks the second consecutive year the company has had an entry among the finalists, and the fourth time since 2009. In order to qualify, a vehicle must be on sale on two continents during the span of time between January 1, 2013 and May 30, 2013. A panel of 66 journalists from 23 countries then vote on the finalists.
Three vehicles have made the cut for the last round of voting on the 2013 World Performance Car as well, with the Cayman/Boxster and FR-S/BRZ/GT-86 running against the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. Meanwhile, the Renault Zoe, Tesla Model S and Volvo V60 Plug-In Hybrid are duking it out for the World Green Car Award. Finally, the World Car Design of the Year Award is up for grabs between the Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaguar F-Type, and the Mazda6. Check out the full press release below. Overall winners will be presented at the 2013 New York Auto Show.

Mercedes-Benz C-Class named 2015 World Car of the Year

It's been a good morning for Mercedes-Benz, with three of the company's wares taking home awards today at the New York Auto Show. The 2015 World Car of the Year awards have just been announced, and the charming new C-Class sedan has taken top honors, beating both the new Volkswagen Passat and Ford Mustang. But Car of the Year isn't the only award Mercedes received this morning. Here are the other World Car announcements, where M-B was honored two more times. World Performance Car of the Year: Mercedes-AMG GT World Luxury Car of the Year: Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe World Green Car of the Year: BMW i8 World Car Design of the Year: Citroen C4 Cactus Congratulations, all around, to this fantastic group of cars.

Drive visits a Mercedes Pagoda collector in Bangkok

The term "icon" gets thrown around a lot, but if there was ever an automobile that deserved the honorific, certainly the Mercedes SL is one of them. Now in its sixth generation, the SL has been the prototypical German roadster since the 1950s. A sports car with that long a history will inevitably attract a great many collectors, but with values of first-generation 300 SLs and 190 SLs skyrocketing, those enthusiasts without bottomless pockets are turning in growing numbers to the second generation. Known as the Pagoda due to the design of its removable hardtop, the W113-generation SL arrived in 1963 and stayed in production until 1971. By that point Mercedes had built nearly 50,000 of them, selling over 19,000 of those in the United States alone. Through three engine variants – dubbed 230, 250 and 250 SL – and numerous body-styles, all featured an inline-six, transmitting to the road through manual or automatic transmissions with four or five gears. More of a cruiser, then, that an outright sports car, but one that warrants its place in the history of the automobile. In this latest episode, Drive travels to Bangkok to profile a local enthusiast and collector. That's a rather difficult undertaking in Thailand, where it's illegal to import old cars, but Sittisan Quan Sundaravej rises to the challenge, locating classics together with like-minded local enthusiasts. The heart of his collection, though, isn't one he acquired, but rather inherited from his late father. That's the kind of provenance you can't buy.