on the table - december 10, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 09:01AM Editor-in-Chief's Note: The 2015 North American Car and Truck/Utility of the Year award finalists were announced yesterday. The cars? The Ford Mustang, Hyundai Genesis and VW GTI. The trucks (or kinda, sorta, truck-ish)? The Chevrolet Colorado, Ford F-150 and Lincoln MKC. Is this award a big deal? To the manufacturers who win, it doesn't suck. And for the journalists involved it helps justify their existence once a year. But beyond that, in a world overrun with a smorgasbord of car awards each year, it doesn't mean all that much. Oh, and do we care? No. - PMD
Editor-in-Chief's Note: Forty-nine-year-old Harald Krueger will be the youngest CEO of a major automaker when he succeeds Norbert Reithofer after the BMW Group's annual shareholder meeting next May. BMW billed the switch as its response to far-reaching changes in the auto industry. Automakers need a younger generation with "creative energy," said Stefan Quandt, deputy supervisory board chairman and a member of the billionaire family that controls about 47 percent of BMW's voting stock, according to report by Bloomberg. Good luck, Harald, you'll need all of the "creative energy" you can muster. - PMD
(Images courtesy of Mercedes-Benz/newspressUSA)
Cue the song: "Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you... No you can't, yes I can, no you can't, yes I can..." Therein lies the constant ebb and flow of the age-old battle between BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The latest scrum? Mercedes-Benz has decided that the BMW X6 just cannot be allowed to exist by itself one minute longer, so it is introducing the GLE Coupe. In the U.S. market, the top-line Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 AMG 4MATIC Coupe features a biturbo V6 engine with 362 horsepower and 384 lb-ft of torque. In addition to standard equipment like the DYNAMIC SELECT dynamic handling control system, the Sports Direct-Steer system and the driver assistance systems typical of the brand, the GLE 450 AMG 4MATIC Coupe comes standard with the 9G-TRONIC nine-speed automatic transmission and 4MATIC permanent all-wheel drive. Mercedes says that the new GLE Coupe "displays a highly individual interpretation of the physiognomy and light-footed approach typical of this family of vehicles." Wow, really?
(Image courtesy of Ford/newspressUSA)
Ford has begun shipping the new Mustang convertible to dealers. Nice.