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2022 Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance Mega Gallery | The show in pictures

COMO, Italy — Held annually, the Villa d'Este Concours d'Elegance is, in many ways, Europe's version of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. It takes place in a beautiful location, and it brings together an impressive selection of rare and valuable cars. It's a real treat for the eyes, the ears, and, if you're into champagne, the palate. The 2022 edition of the show was no exception: About 50 cars were shipped to Lake Como from over a dozen countries, and it wasn't just the usual suspects. Sure, there were a lot of pre-war cars (including a couple of one-off models), but some of the icons that younger enthusiasts grew up with (like the Lamborghini Countach) were present as well. This year's event was split into eight categories: The Art Deco Era of Motor Car Design, The Supercharged Mercedes-Benz, How Grand Entrances Were Once Made, Eight Decades of Ferrari Represented in Eight Icons, "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday," BMW's M Cars and Their Ancestors, Pioneers That Chased the Magic 300 KPH, And a design award for concept and prototypes. The jury gave the coveted "best of show" award to a 1937 Bugatti 57 S owned by Andrew Picker of Monaco, while the aforementioned classes were won by, respectively: The Bugatti 57 S, shown below, A 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet, A 1956 Chrysler Boano Coupe Speciale, A 1966 Ferrari 356 P Berlinetta Speciale Tre Posti, A 1961 Porsche 356 B Carrera Abarth GTL, A 1972 BMW 3.0 CSL, A 1989 Porsche 959 Sport, And the Bugatti Bolide concept unveiled in 2020. Winning at Villa d'Este is a big deal: The cars are judged by a panel of highly experienced judges. No one gave me a scoring sheet, presumably out of fear that I'd award points to the late-model Fiat 600 lurking in the parking lot, but several cars that didn't win an award caught my eye. One is a 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports, a grand-prix racer that was once owned by King Leopold III of Belgium and that has never been restored — its patina is inimitable. Another is a 1961 BMW 700 RS. One of two built (the other is in the BMW collection), it's a tiny, ultra-light roadster related to the 700 and powered by a 697-cubic-centimeter air-cooled flat-twin tuned to develop 70 horsepower. It won several hill-climb events during the 1960s, and it's one of the rarest cars ever to wear a BMW roundel. Aston Martin's freshly-restored 1979 Bulldog concept was cool to see as well; check out the cassette player integrated into the headliner!

2015 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG Coupe

For Mercedes-Benz to truly demonstrate the capabilities and sensations of the S65 AMG Coupe, it needs to commission the building of a highway halfway to the moon. That's right, a ribbon of Autobahn roughly 120,000 miles long, with 50,000 miles of twisties and sweepers. Let's even add some loop-de-loops though the ionosphere, since, you know, we're going all the way with this. We've been following the headlines about progress on a new lunar lander and the SpaceX Mars Colonial Transporter, but we recently discovered that we've already got both of them in the S65 AMG Coupe. This isn't a car, it's a rocket ship. And it's not perfect, but it is spectacular. Starting with the way it looks. When Mercedes unveiled the concept at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show, I wasn't impressed. In fact, I told the Mercedes PR person, "It's fine, but the rear end doesn't do anything for me." And today? I'll have the crow, please, with lots of ketchup. When the test car you see here arrived, my loins tumbled and my knees developed a slight tremble. By the following week I was posing thought experiments like, "What's hotter: me in this car, or nothing else ever?" It's big – just eight inches shorter than the S-Class sedan and only an inch narrower. It's an inch longer than the Porsche Panamera and four inches wider, but just 0.3-inches taller than that slinking sport sedan. Its size and segment seem to have freed the designers' pens, and we think it's the best and most unapologetic expression of the brand's current language. We'd normally vote "nay" to a face full of chrome, but the coupe has the width to spread the polished elements around, and the top-to-bottom three-dimensionality indeed earns the adjective "jewel-like." A button on the center console lifts the entire car to protect those jewels when needed. The profile doesn't give up on the rising, sculpted wedge we've known for years – the one we used to love on the SL-Class. And again, the 16.6-foot expanse of sheet metal gives those opposing swage lines an unhurried opportunity to carve the body. The sidelong swell is enhanced by the carbon-fiber rocker panel laid into the concavity along the bottom, as well as those hips over the rear wheels. Speaking of which, the polished, 20-inch forged rollers are spot on. The bluff backside is sculpted just enough to keep it interesting, from the decklid spoiler to the horizontals across the bumper and carbon diffuser. Mostly, though, it seems to say to anyone behind, "Please.

Mercedes invests $1.3 billion to expand Alabama factory

Mercedes-Benz announced a $1.3-billion investment Friday in its Tuscaloosa, AL, factory to increase SUV production capacity. The move comes on the heels of Autoblog's exclusive report that the GLC Coupe Concept will enter production as the German luxury marque continues to push for increased SUV sales. The investment will add 300 jobs to the approximately 3,500-strong workforce. The facility will be responsible for what Mercedes calls "the next SUV generations," which makes it sound like the plant will continue to assemble the GLE-Class and GL-Class SUVs, as well as the C-Class sedan. The next-gen SUVs built in Alabama will include hybrid variants, Mercedes said. Upgrades to the sprawling 5-million-square-foot facility include a new 1.3-million-square-foot body shop that will implement modular construction techniques. As for the current body shop, it will be expanded by nearly 140,000 square feet and will receive a larger "marriage" station, for pairing bodies and powertrains. Finally, the entire facility will receive a major IT upgrade. "In the next years we invest $1.3 billion in the expansion of our SUV production and turn the Mercedes-Benz plant Tuscaloosa into a high-tech location," Mercedes' Markus Schafer said in the attached release. "In this way we can produce the next SUV generations even more flexibly, efficiently and in proven top quality." If you're interested in the nitty gritty particulars of the announcement, you can read all about them in the official press release. Mercedes-Benz Tuscaloosa Plant: Mercedes-Benz invests $1.3 Billion in the expansion of its SUV production Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA / Stuttgart, Germany, Sep 18, 2015 MBUSI (Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, Inc.) to produce future SUV generations including hybrid versions SUV production to be expanded – 300 new jobs New Body Shop, major enhancements to SUV Assembly Shop and upgraded logistics and IT systems Implementation of state-of-the-art technologies and end-to-end digitization of production processes in line with the smart factory approach Markus Schafer, Member of the Divisional Board Mercedes-Benz Cars, Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management: "In the next years we invest $1.3 billion in the expansion of our SUV production and turn the Mercedes-Benz plant Tuscaloosa into a high-tech location.