2018 Mercedes-benz Amg Gle 43 4matic Coupe on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Tesla says Model 3 is best-selling midsize premium sedan in America

Auto sales figures are sort of fuzzy numbers, no matter how you slice them and no matter which manufacturer you're talking about. Unless you're specifically tracking vehicle registrations, automakers generally self-report the figures. So, you have to trust that they aren't doing anything too tricky. Plus, not every sale is equal, as some are logged as dealership loaners or demo models, some go to fleets (like to a rental car agency), and still others are, of course, bought by traditional customers looking for a new daily driver. With that preamble out of the way, when we saw a tweet from Tesla claiming that the all-electric Model 3 is the best-selling midsize premium sedan in America, our interest was piqued. According to Tesla, market share of the Model 3 has just surpassed the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which had up until now led the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, and Lexus IS as the best-selling sedan in its class. Note that the graph from Tesla below is, we think, specific to four-door models. So, is it true? Judging by the numbers we can find, including some from Bloomberg, which has a running chart to track Model 3 registrations, the answer is... probably. We don't know exactly how many Model 3 sedans Tesla is currently cranking out, but Bloomberg estimates production at about 2,560 units per week, and total sales for 2018 at 34,414. We know the number is increasing regularly, though, and Elon Musk has said most recently production sits around 500 units per day, which, on a seven-day cycle, would be 3,500 per week. We looked up Mercedes' sales figures for the month of May, 2018, and found that the German brand sold 5,419 C-Class models last month, for a total of 23,917 for the year (incidentally, that's down more than 30 percent from the year prior). While the bulk of those sales would surely be made up of sedans, it would also include a small percentage of coupes. Either way, it's likely that Tesla is currently producing and selling more Model 3s than Mercedes is C-Classes. Now, it's also worth considering if the C-Class is the only vehicle from Mercedes that directly competes with the Model 3. We'd guess customers may also cross-shop the CLA sedan with the Tesla, and if that's the case, you might decide it's worth adding in Mercedes' 2,527 CLA-Class sales last month and 9,622 so far for the year. The same argument could be made for certain versions of the BMW 2 and 4 Series.

Race Recap: 2013 Japanese Grand Prix flips several scripts [spoilers]

Japan's Suzuka circuit is a great track that all the drivers love, but it doesn't usually provide the most thrilling, head-to-head racing. Where it does excel, however, is with surprises and "What just happened there?!" moments, and this year it was no different.
It started with Mark Webber in his Infiniti Red Bull Racing out-qualifying his teammate Sebastian Vettel for the first time this year. They were followed closely by Lewis Hamilton in the first Mercedes-AMG Petronas, the still-solid Romain Grosjean again outdoing teammate Kimi Räikkönen, Felipe Massa racing for another seat in Formula One and putting his Ferrari in fifth, then Nico Rosberg in the second Mercedes, Nico Hülkenberg in the first Sauber, Fernando Alonso in the second Ferrari, and Räikkönen continuing to do himself no favors by qualifying tenth.
For the second year in a row, the lights going out was the cue to start the first corner action...

Mercedes-Petronas AMG W04 launched to little fanfare, lots of pressure [w/video]

No indoor cocktail hour for the launch of the W04, the newest chassis built by the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One team. Instead, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton spent a morning in photo and video sessions at the track in Jerez, Spain then paused a moment to introduce the car. The team will want the W04 to demonstrate the World Championship credentials of the team personnel and one of the team drivers, instead of the mostly humble performances we've seen over the past three years.
The W04 has been fitted with a new five-element front wing, pushrod front and pull-rod rear suspension, a second-generation Coanda exhaust and an "aggressively packaged" rear end. A small vanity panel, à la Infiniti Red Bull's RB9, covers the stepped nose.
Team principal Ross Brawn has called it "a clear step forward in design and detail sophistication," but as much as we truly respect Brawn's abilities and achievements, we heard him say similar things about the updated W03 last year before almost every race weekend from about mid-season. We really hope he's right this time, and so does the team's newest driver, Lewis Hamilton. We'll do our best to ignore the parallels of the Mercedes F1 team having signed a sponsorship deal with Blackberry, another company trying to find its way back to the top and still struggling, and just point you to the video below of the W04 in action.