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Weekly Recap: Mercedes, Volkswagen spend big as import automakers invest in North America

Import automakers are on a building frenzy in North America as resurgent car sales have prompted companies to expand their manufacturing footprints to meet rising demand. That was evidenced this week when Mercedes-Benz announced plans to build a $500-million factory to produce the Sprinter commercial van, and Volkswagen confirmed a whopping $1-billion investment to expand its massive plant in Mexico. Meanwhile Jaguar Land Rover reportedly wants to build a factory in North America, but not for at least three years, and Hyundai is said to be expanding in the southern United States. The common thread in all of this expansion? Trucks, time and money. Mercedes wants to capitalize on the burgeoning work van segment in the United States and will break ground in 2016 on a 200-acre site in Charleston, SC, to build the next-generation Sprinter. The site will have a paint shop, body shop and an assembly line, and 1,300 people will be employed when production ramps up. Why do this, when Mercedes has immense van operations in Germany? It's cheaper to build in the US for the US market. Building locally allows Mercedes to avoid import taxes, forego a complex shipping process that involves partially disassembling German-built Sprinters and naturally, reduces the time it takes to deliver finished trucks to their buyers. "This plant is key to our future growth in the very dynamic North American van market," Volker Mornhinweg, head of Mercedes-Benz Vans, said in a statement. He was speaking about Mercedes and vans, but another German automotive giant, Volkswagen, had similar motives for its mammoth expansion plans in Puebla, Mexico. The added space and production capacity will allow VW to build a three-row version of the Tiguan, and provide another crossover for its US lineup that's light on SUVs. The current Tiguan has two rows. The factory will be able to churn out 500 units daily of the larger variant, and they will be sold in North and South America. It will arrive in the US in mid-2017, a spokesman told Autoblog. VW also plans to build another crossover, a midsize seven-passenger vehicle, at its growing Chattanooga, TN, site. "Localization has become key to safeguarding our competitive position on the global market, and manufacturing the Tiguan in Mexico will bring production closer to the US market," Michael Horn, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America, said in a statement.

Chris Harris falls in love with Mercedes-AMG GT at Laguna Seca

It's not every day that an automaker goes down a market segment and still comes off as even more ambitious, but that's exactly what Mercedes has done with the new AMG GT. While the SLS was bigger and more expensive, with the new GT, Mercedes has set its sights on one of the most iconic sports cars of all time. That, of course, would be the Porsche 911, and the big question is whether Benz has achieved its target. For the answer, we turn to none other than the Monkey himself – the inimitable Chris Harris, who recently went solo with his own YouTube channel. And for his latest segment, he took the latest German sports car around no less suitable a track than Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

2015 Monaco F1 Grand Prix race recap [spoilers]

Lewis Hamilton came to Monaco with a new three-year deal with Mercedes-AMG Petronas and a vow to not let anything, including any "mistakes" by teammate Nico Rosberg, stand in the way of his best qualifying effort. Mercedes reportedly made it rain with a 100-million-pound deal, and Hamilton made it rain right back with his first pole position at Monaco. Rosberg did make a mistake but this time it was behind Hamilton, which meant he stuffed-up the qualifying attempts of rival drivers like Sebastian Vettel. So Rosberg starts second, 0.342 behind Hamilton but 0.449 ahead of Vettel in the Ferrari. Daniel Ricciardo thinks he should have been third, but a communication error with his engineers left him in the wrong engine setting for his final hot lap, so by the very first corner he'd lost the time he would have needed to get higher than fourth on the grid. The second Infiniti Red Bull Racing of Daniil Kvyat slots in behind him, ahead of the second Ferrari of Kimi "Not A Very Happy Day" Raikkonen, who just can't get it going lately. Sergio Perez did for the Sahara Force India what the car can't do on its own, which is grab a top-ten qualifying spot. Toro Rosso rookie Carlos Sainz had qualified eighth but missed a call to the weigh bridge, so he's been slapped into the pit lane. Pastor Maldonado in the Lotus inherits his eighth place, ahead of rookie Max Verstappen in the second Toro Rosso, and Jenson Button in the McLaren. Button only got up there because of two penalties: for Sainz, and Romain Grosjean who had qualified 11th but took a penalty for a gearbox change. Want to know how hard it is to do better on race day than in qualifying at Monaco? Even the never-say-die Fernando Alonso said, "Monte Carlo is a train of cars on Sunday, the race finishes on Saturday afternoon." Well obviously, he didn't take Max Verstappen's seek-and-destroy tactics into account. The young Dutchman had made passing look like a real option in Monaco, getting past Maldonado at St. Devote on Lap 7 after a bit of argy-bargy on Lap 6, then taking advantage of blue flags to slink past teammate Carlos Sainz and Williams driver Valtteri Bottas while hiding in Sebastian Vettel's slipstream. He tried the same move on Romain Grosjean on Lap 65, but Grosjean locked him out. Verstappen lined up the Lotus driver over the following laps, then looked like he slipped to the inside at St.