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Petrolicious relives history with Stirling Moss and his Mercedes SLR

We take it as a given that lap records will keep getting beaten. That's just the way things work: the development of racing cars proceeds at breakneck speeds, dwindling lap times down over the ages. Not at the Mille Miglia, though. The legendary Sir Stirling Moss won the famous Italian race together with journalist Denis Jenkinson in 1955, recording an almost unfathomable average speed of nearly 98 miles per hour in the Mercedes 300 SLR bearing the number 722 – the inspiration behind the extreme SLR McLaren Stirling Moss edition speedster that debuted seven years ago. Nobody (not even Moss himself) managed to beat that time in the subsequent two years before the race was shut down for good. It was only revived decades later as an historic rally that's more about consistency and, by its nature, doesn't put that record in contention. This year's event is coming up soon, so the cinematographical artisans at Petrolicious caught up with Moss and that legendary SLR – perfectly preserved as it has been by Mercedes – for a drive down memory lane.

First Mercedes B-Class Electric Drive rolls off line, coming to US soon

Mercedes-Benz is about to give Americans another choice of battery-powered vehicle. Offering more all-electric range than the Nissan Leaf or BMW i3, and with a smaller price tag than the Tesla Model S, the B-Class Electric Drive is officially set to arrive in the US this summer. Indeed, the first examples have begun rolling off the production line in Rastatt, Germany. Featuring drivetrain parts from Tesla Motors, the luxury compact hits all the performance parameters mentioned during its debut at last year's New York Auto Show. For a refresher, that's a single-charge range of 200 kilometers (124 miles) along with a 0-to-100 kilometer-per-hour (62 mile-per-hour) sprint in a respectable 7.9 seconds. These achievements comes courtesy of a 28-kWh lithium battery located in the floor of the passenger compartment and a 132-kW (177-horsepower) motor powering the front wheels. Torque specs for the unit seemed to have increased somewhat and are now given as 340 Newton meters (250.77 pound-feet). It boasts an 11-kW charger and can add as much as 62 miles of range to a deleted battery in an hour and a half. Sadly, it is not Supercharger compatible. The B-Class Electric Drive, which is built on the same production line as the gasoline-powered version, is going to go on sale in Europe around the end of the year and will also come in a right-hand drive version for other markets in 2015. Although pricing has not yet been announced, Mercedes execs expect it to be quite competitive with the BMW i3. Scroll below for the press release (Google translated from German). Model offensive: Mercedes-Benz launches first major series for electric cars - the start of production at Mercedes-Benz in Rastatt: B-Class Electric Drive begins For the first time large-scale production of Mercedes-Benz models with internal combustion engine and electric drive on the same line Stefan Abraham: "With the B-Class Electric Drive we are expanding our production portfolio at the Rastatt plant is a highly innovative drive variant." In the Mercedes-Benz plant in Rastatt today through the first B-Class Electric Drive off the line. This makes Mercedes-Benz models are produced with internal combustion engine and electric drive on the same line at the site for the first time. The B-Class Electric Drive is based on the Mercedes-Benz front-wheel drive architecture of the new Mercedes-Benz compact car generation and uses the modular component kit.

Mercedes G500 4x4 rumbles into view

Mercedes keeps raising the bar with the G-Class: just when you think the legendary Gelandewagen couldn't get any more hardcore, it mashes the throttle and does exactly that, plowing through a bank of snow, sand, hell or high water in the process. What you see here is the latest. It's called the G500 4x42. Aside from the various engine specs, the G-Class has been offered in a number of body-styles. Right around the same time that the two-door convertible was discontinued, Benz rolled out the indomitable G63 AMG 6x6 – a half-million-dollar, six-wheeled monster truck powered by Affalterbach's 5.5-liter twin-turbo V8. Evidently enough people liked the idea but didn't see the point in that extra set of wheels, so Mercedes has toned it down – just a little – but kept the high-riding suspension. The result is the truck we've seen testing a couple of times now in a bright shade of Hulk green, and which is now just about ready for its debut. On the scale of extreme G-Wagens, it slots in between the standard model and the 6x6, keeping the jacked-up suspension and giant wheels, but losing the extra axle. The G500 moniker also indicates that it'll at least be available with the 382-horsepower, naturally aspirated, non-AMG version of the 5.5-liter V8 that we'd know as the G550. Just how much of a premium Benz will charge for the beefed-up version, we don't know, as further details are set to be released next week ahead of a likely debut in Geneva. But hopefully it'll be closer to the $115k it gets for the standard version than the $500+k the 6x6 goes for.