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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.

Consumer Reports' first motorcycle reliability report finds Japanese brands ahead

Consumer Reports has released its first ever study of motorcycle reliability, and students of its ratings on cars might notice a suspicious similarity - Japanese brands require fewer repairs than the leading American or German brands.
The study analyzed the reliability of 4,680 bikes owned by CR subscribers and found that Yamaha had the best ratings, with just one in ten bikes built between 2009 and 2012 requiring a repair over a four-year period. The makers of the R1 and R6 sport bikes were closely followed by Kawasaki and Honda, while one out of every four of the rumbling bikes from Harley-Davidson experienced an issue. BMW had the worst rating of the brands represented, with one in three bikes having problems.
According to CR, neither Suzuki nor Triumph owners provided enough information for a reliable rating. Based on the responses received, though, Suzuki would have finished with the other Japanese brands and Triumph, being English, would have been one of the less reliable makes.

This Or That: 1980 Oldsmobile 442 vs. 1989 BMW 635CSi [w/poll]

The last time I roped a coworker into an automotive debate, I lost. Resoundingly, I might add. Still, 2,385 voters chose to cast their lots for the Fiat 500 Abarth, as opposed to 5,273 choosing the Ford Fiesta ST, and so I can rest easy in the knowledge that at least 30 percent of you, dear readers, see things my way. I still like to think we have more fun, too.
My loss in the first round of our This or That series, in which two Autoblog editors pick sides on any given topic and then attempt to explain why the other is completely wrong, didn't stop me from picking another good-natured fight, this time with Senior Editor Seyth Miersma. Last time, our chosen sides were eerily similar in design, albeit quite different in actual execution. This time, our vehicular peculiarities couldn't seemingly fall any further from one another: A 1980 Oldsmobile 442 wouldn't seem to match up in comparison to a 1989 BMW 635CSi.
How did we come up with such disparate contenders? Simple, really. Seyth and I mutually agreed to choose a car that's currently for sale online. It had to be built and sold in the 1980s, and it had to be a coupe. The price cap was set at $10,000. The fruits of our searching labors will henceforth be disputed, with Seyth on the side of the Germans, and myself arguing in favor of the Rocket Olds. Am I setting myself up for another lopsided loss?