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Online Find of the Day: Lexus-engined Mercedes pickup is a vintage hybrid

You have to love someone who gets incredibly committed to a very weird idea. What you see for sale here is a right-hand drive 1971 Mercedes-Benz 220D in South Africa, but this old Mercedes is now converted into a pickup, complete with bed cover, and there's big secret under the hood, too.
The pickup conversion appears well done based on seller Sedgefield Classic Cars' photos. Even the tonneau cover fits well. You could almost believe that this Mercedes lived its life as a Chevrolet El Camino-like pickup from the very beginning.
However, the rear-quarters conversion might not be the weirdest thing about this Mercedes. The original diesel is gone from the engine bay in favor of a Lexus V8. It seems really odd to pop the hood and find a Japanese mill in this German car, but the photos make it look like a fairly well performed swap. So, bravo to the crazy thinking. According to the seller speaking to Autoblog by email, "as far as we can establish, this was done a few years ago, with all Lexus components."

Lexus reaches 10 million sales since its inception 30 years ago

Almost immediately after Matt Farah's famed second-generation LS400 became the million-mile Lexus, the Japanese luxury brand is celebrating another major milestone: Lexus has now sold 10 million vehicles globally. The Toyota luxury division, whose first car debuted 30 years ago at the 1989 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, famously pursued "perfection" when it came to build quality and ownership experience. The smooth, V8-engined LS400 was quickly followed by smaller additions to the lineup, and in the time Lexus has been around, it has sold a wide range of vehicles, from the Camry-related ES line and Land Cruiser-related SUVs to the LFA supercar. While the LS was sold in Japan as the Toyota Celsior, the ES as the Toyota Windom and the IS as the Toyota Altezza, not all Lexus models have had a Toyota-badged equivalent, and as Japan-market Lexus sales officially began in 2005, the corresponding Toyota model lines were ended and succeeded by their Lexus counterparts. With the RX400h SUV, Lexus introduced its first hybrid model in 2005. Since then, Lexus says it's sold 1.45 million hybrid vehicles, and it currently has 11 hybrid models on offer around the world. With 698,330 global vehicle sales in 2018 constituted a 4.5 percent increase from 2017, hybrid sales jumped nearly 20 percent for Lexus in that time. 2018 marked the company's best-ever global sales. Related Video:

Lexus exec says he still fields complaints about the spindle grille

When Lexus debuted its spindle grille on the GS sedan and trademarked the design back in 2012, it was a sure sign the look was here to stay. It started making its way through the lineup, and now five model years later, it's on all Lexus vehicles. The one thing everyone can all agree on is, it's bold. And Lexus has doubled down on the design with the LF-1 Limitless Concept on display at the Detroit Auto Show. Some people surely think nothing of the grille. Others have equated it to a cartoon character, a beard trimmer, or a baleen whale scooping up krill. In one harsh, perhaps apocryphal criticism, a design professor is said to have likened the spindle to the mouth of the titular hunter-alien in the "Predator" movies. In a much more admiring spacefaring comparison, our Antti Kautonen said the grille of the LF-1 Limited Concept mimics a "Star Wars" ship's shift into hyperspace. That's a fitting analogy for the stunning and futuristic LF-1, which might be the single most dramatically styled vehicle at the North American International Auto Show. A couple of years ago, Toyota chief designer — and head of Lexus — Tokuo Fukuichi defended the spindle in a Reuters interview, saying "sexy" was a goal of the design, and dismissing complaints by saying, "Even polarizing designs, you get used to them after a while." That defense was "a while" — three years — after the new look caused an uproar at a 2012 Toyota stockholders' meeting, where some shareholders complained. Now it has been a while longer, and a Lexus executive says the spindle grille has continued to divide Lexus customers. Jeff Bracken, Lexus group vice president and general manager, told Carbuzz on the sidelines of the Detroit show last week that longtime repeat customers still can't get their heads around whatever it is the car seems to be getting its mouth around. "I'll be very transparent. It's our signature grille. Some of our models have a more expressive signature grille than others. The folks that look at it as somewhat polarizing would be, for the most part, the folks that have been with us since the beginning. In fact I'll take phone calls from some of these owners and will literally spend 45 minutes to an hour on the phone with me just expressing how disappointed they are," Bracken said. Bracken has actually been saying almost the exact same things about the grille for years — both to upset customers and to automotive journalists — for example, to Forbes in 2014.