2004 Merceds Benz Amg G55 on 2040-cars

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Pre-Race notes from the 2015 Nurburgring 24-Hours

Autoblog has come to the German countryside to watch the Nurburgring 24-Hour race, and just one day in, we have to say it's outstanding. Le Mans has been the highlight of our summer racing schedule for the past few years, the 'Ring 24-Hour event being the appetizer we always skipped. Earlier this year, however, while visiting Miami to check out the Cigarette Racing 50 Marauder GT S, we met Scott Preacher. He oversees digital marketing for both Cigarette and AMG during the week, then comes to Germany to compete in the VLN race series on the weekends, driving an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 for Team Mathol. If Le Mans is the Oscars of endurance racing, the Nurburgring 24-Hour race is the Screen Actors Guild award – the one voted on by the actors, for the actors. In this case it's the race by the teams and fans, for the teams and fans, even though the increasing manufacturer presence has altered the team equation. We were told that it wasn't so long ago that true privateers could win the overall, but that's not really the case anymore. Front-running teams have heavy factory involvement – Audi Sport Team Phoenix, for instance, which finished in first and third last year, has its own 'Ring race center and is running the 2016 R8; Aston Martin is represented by Aston Martin Racing and Aston Martin Test Center, and Bentley has a Bentley Motors team and uses HPT to run another team. The fan component hasn't changed, though, and you can't talk about the race for more than 60 seconds before someone brings up the battalions of spectators. Every driver we spoke to cited them as the most incredible part of this race after the track itself. It feels to us like a giant German Sebring, with thousands of people camped out in the ginormous, forested infield, many of whom have been here since Monday erecting their ornate camping compounds. There will be parties everywhere Saturday night, and so much bratwurst on the grill that the drivers can smell it when as they're blasting full speed through Wehrseifen. Even when we drove a Mercedes S63 AMG Coupe on a lap before the race, the fans waved like it was a competition. Scott Preacher's Australian co-driver Robert Thompson said, "You come around a corner and it's like you're driving full speed through the middle of a carnival." The race field itself could also be called a carnival, with an officially invited field of more than 170 cars. Even on a track that's 24.4-km long, that's like racing on the 405 at midday.

Mercedes says it's tops in luxury sales for 2012, not BMW

It turns out that Mercedes-Benz North America has legitimate claim to being the top selling luxury nameplate in the US in 2012.
While sources such as Autodata had put BMW in the top spot, registration data from R.L. Polk shows that Mercedes customers registering new vehicles topped the Bavarian automaker in the most recent calendar year. Polk says Benz posted 274,123 registrations, compared with BMW's 268,498.
In terms of sales posted, BMW had bested Benz 281,460 to 274,134. But sales are recorded somewhat inconsistently from automaker to automaker. Some book the sales as soon as they are shipped from factory to dealer. There is perennial gamesmanship between the two German rivals, and the sales numbers suggest that BMW pushed out some extra sheetmetal to dealers in the last four weeks of the year.

Mercedes-Benz G500 4x4 squares up for production

After showcasing the G500 4x42 in concept form at the Geneva Motor Show this past March, Mercedes has confirmed that it's putting the monster truck into production. The Mercedes G500 4x42 is a more extreme take on the legendary Gelandewagen. It ditches the extra set of wheels from the earlier G63 AMG 6x6, but keeps its wider track and jacked-up suspension, complete with portal axles, 22-inch wheels, 325/55-section tires, and a good foot and a half of ground clearance. It also loses the AMG-spec engine in favor of a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 with 422 horsepower, based on the unit in the C63 and AMG GT. The smaller engine (and smaller axle-count) makes its list price a little easier to swallow than the half-million Benz commanded for the 6x6, but it'll still be a rather large pill. Pricing in Germany is listed at ˆ226,100 – equivalent to over $250k at current exchange rates. That makes it the second most expensive version of the G-Class currently available, behind the G65 that retails for ˆ271,915 (~$309k) in Germany and $217,900 in the US. MBUSA tells Autoblog that there are currently no plans for bringing the G500 4x42 to North America. But if it were to ford the Atlantic, it would likely carry a price tag in the neighborhood of $200k for the privilege of riding higher than just about any other commercially available passenger vehicle on the road. Alle Neuheiten der legendaren G-Klasse ab sofort bestellbar: Der Mercedes-Benz G 500 4x42 geht in Serie Stuttgart, Jun 19, 2015 Stuttgart - Outstanding response to the "Extreme-G": the G 500 4x42 show car proved hugely popular with many customers and is set to enter series production. In the superlative-studded history of the G-Class, the G 500 4x42 is the new highlight in the model range. The technical package consists of the all-wheel drive powertrain including portal axles and the new 4-litre V8 engine with twin turbocharging and an output of 310 kW (422 hp). All the other G-Class models have further improved interiors and powertrains, and meet the highest emissions standard Euro 6. The G 350 d, G 500, AMG G 63, AMG G 65 and G 500 4x42 can be ordered with immediate effect. A new addition to the extreme G-Class model family: the AMG G 63 6x6 is gaining a sibling in the form of the G 500 4x42.