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Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.

Mercedes-AMG previews new C63 Coupe ahead of August 19 reveal

Mercedes has been spending the month of July preparing us all of the debut of the new AMG-fettled C-Class coupe. It dropped an enigmatic teaser video on us at the beginning of the month, followed by a handful of teaser images, and another video after that. Now it's released another batch of images to give us a taste of what to expect. These prototype pictured is still heavily camouflaged, so there's little more to tell from them than we already saw from the spy shots we brought you back in April. We can see the front end a bit better, bearing what looks like the same lower air dam as the C63 sedan, but everything save for the front part of the greenhouse is covered up in the swirly stuff. While the photos posted on the Mercedes-Benz Facebook page refer to this as the C63 Coupe, the AMG post references the Mercedes-AMG C-Class Coupe. Either way, we're expecting it to pack the same 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 as the sedan (as well as the AMG GT), likely to be made available once again in 469- and 503-horsepower states of tune. Affalterbach has also posted a countdown timer on its website, with 23 days left to go until the new muscle coupe makes its debut. So mark your calendars for August 19, and watch this space for more as the German automaker is sure to keep trickling out more photos, videos, and information between now and then. Related Video:

Mercedes-AMG working on a successor to the SLR?

It's been mere days since Mercedes-AMG chairman Tobias Moers told journalists at the LA Auto Show that his brand would not develop a super coupe to challenge the likes of the Porsche 918 Spyder and Ferrari LaFerrari - at least, not right now. Nevertheless, German magazine Auto Bild has the story that AMG is "considering" a successor to the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, which, technically, wouldn't need to be a competitor at the great-white-shark end of the supercar spectrum. According to Auto Bild's sources, Considerations have apparently gone far enough for engineers to be debating whether to develop such a car on the brand's Modular Sports Architecture (MSA) that will support the next-generation SL-Class, which would necessitate a front-engined car, or to do a mid-engined monster. An MSA-based coupe would use a supercharged V6 to power the rear wheels with an electric motor working the fronts, and somewhere around 650 horsepower would get the help of active aerodynamics to make the most of its potential. Production numbers of roughly 3,000 units per year are tied to a price of at least $260,000 or more. Discussions around a mid-engined supercar, on the other hand, go all the way with composite body wrapped around a supercharged V8, a total of of supposedly 1,050 horsepower with the aid of two 125-kW motors on the front axle, all-wheel drive and lots of ground-effects aero to tame it, and a price of "over one million euros" for a limited run of no more than 750 units. Either car would begin with a coupe model, followed by a roadster, a Black Series, and a GT3 version. The SLR could be considered in between these two, but closer to the MSA-based car. A collaboration between Mercedes and McLaren, it made 617 horsepower from a front-mounted, supercharged 5.4-liter V8 and cost $450,000 at a time when the Porsche Carrera GT cost $444,000 and the Ferrari Enzo cost $643,000. It's biggest problem was that it wasn't very good as a supercar, and Auto Bild posits that AMG might want to correct that blemish on the corporate record. Moers said at the auto show that AMG doesn't have the engineering capacity right now to do this kind of car. He also said he thought the marketplace wouldn't accept AMG as a hypercar brand, but talks with customers in prime markets "give me a different view to that." Related Video: