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13-year-old boy swipes dad's Mercedes, drives across Europe

After an argument with his adoptive parents that resulted in them taking away his mobile phone, an angry 13-year-old boy ran away from his home in Italy and headed straight to Poland to meet his biological sister. But instead of taking the train or hitching a ride, like most on the run, the young man (an accomplished go-kart racer and car enthusiast) grabbed the keys to his father's Mercedes-Benz and jumped behind the wheel for an impromptu road trip.
With less than 200 euros (about $270) in his wallet and a passport in his pocket, the youngster managed to put more than 500 miles between himself and his distraught parents, crossing two international borders in the process, before German police nabbed him just shy of the Polish border. According to reports, the vehicle was tracked - it wasn't his driving that alerted authorities to his location.
Reunited with his mother and father, who traveled to Germany to retrieve both their son and the vehicle, the young man apologized and acknowledged his error. As a result of his actions, social workers will increase checks on the family and we can be sure his parents are now hiding the keys.

Daily Driver: 2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, featuring impressions from the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600, reviewed by Adam Morath and Greg Migliore. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. VIDEO TRANSCRIPTAdam: [00:00:03] Hi, I'm Adam Morath for Autoblog and I busted out the bowtie for today's Daily Driver because we are in a 2016 Mercedes-Maybach S600. Now, this is like the S-Class on caviar. They've taken one of the most refined vehicles in the world, dropped a V12 under the hood and added tons of content, but it's also one of the rare examples where the best place for review the car is not from the drivers' seat. I'm going to kick it back to my associate, [00:30:00] Greg Migliore to tell you a little bit more about this car.Greg: All right, well thanks, Adam. It's really great to be rolling around in Birmingham with my footmen... I mean co-worker, Adam. I'm in the back of the S600 here. This Maybach is spectacular in so many ways back here. I'm really up to my elbows, up to my waist in heated leather. Everything here is heated. It's a really, really, bespoke setting. Now, it's almost 3:00. I think, you know, happy hour is near. I could go for a drink. [00:01:00] The Maybach has you covered. Pop this right down, you're going to pull this out right here where my liquor is chilling and there is a nice faster right here in the center console where you can put your goblet down and these prongs stick out and wrap around the stem of the base, so you know, if Adam hits a bump here, hey, I'm cool, it's no problem. Now, while I'm back here, there's so many things I can do. There's a tablet in front of me. [00:01:30] There's a remote control, light very aerodynamic if there is such a thing for a remote. I'm going to tune up the radio here, put on some, I think I'll tune up the symphony hall, because that is what is appropriate in this vehicle. I can also queue up a massage if I would like. All jokes aside though. The Maybach is big business for Mercedes. They brought this name back recently because there's a different sort of value than just a standard S class and that actually allows them to capitalize [00:02:00] on a pretty lucrative market. It starts at about $190 and I can tell you for sure this is not an entry level car, so I'm sure we're looking at over $200, in that range, but you get a lot.

Weekly Recap: Mercedes continues the pseudo-coupe craze with AMG-tuned CUV

But as BMW's X6 has demonstrated, sport sells in in the crossover segment, and Mercedes is giving the people what they want. BMW proved there is a market for crossover utility vehicles designed to look like coupes – as much as a vehicle with four doors and noticeable ground clearance can look like a coupe, anyway. Now comes the reply from Mercedes-Benz: the GLE Coupe. The rakish crossover is a harbinger of things to come from Mercedes, as it begins the company's transition to a new nomenclature and marks the debut of the AMG Sport line. It also continues the recent coupe craze. Designers from many automakers, like Nissan and Volkswagen, have increasingly turned to swoopy, dramatic styling to make utility vehicles and sedans seem more desirable. By revealing the GLE 450 AMG Sport model first, Mercedes is clearly hoping to cast the GLE Coupe as a sportier, lifestyle-oriented alternative in its lineup of beefy crossovers and SUVs. Mercedes used the word "sport," or a variation of it, 53 times in its press release, so uh yeah, it's sporty. It's not an empty promise: Benz means business with the AMG Sport line. This GLE Coupe gets a 3.0-liter biturbo V6 rated at 362 horsepower and 384 pound-feet of torque paired with Mercedes' new nine-speed automatic transmission, and it runs with 4Matic all-wheel drive. Specs on the other GLE Coupe models were not disclosed. But as BMW's X6 has demonstrated, sport sells in in the crossover segment, and Mercedes is giving the people what they want. After all, more than 260,000 people have bought X6s since 2008, and Mercedes wants a piece of that. From certain angles, the GLE Coupe even looks vaguely like an X6. "This is really a vehicle that is all about status," said Dave Sullivan, product analysis manager for research firm AutoPacific. "You can buy a SUV that doesn't have the inherent qualities of a SUV, such as cargo hauling. People will likely be drawn to the looks. Coupes are all the rage." BMW, however, isn't running from the fight, and the updated 2015 X6 is arriving in showrooms this month. It also added a smaller sibling, the X4, to its coupe-crossover stable in July. The GLE Coupe arrives next year, though Mercedes hasn't specified exactly when it will hit showrooms from the factory in Alabama, or specified details on the rest of the non-AMG Sport models. In 2008, it was surprising the X6 was a hit. In 2015, it will be even more surprising if the GLE Coupe isn't.