1988 Mercedes-benz 560 Sl Roadster, Collectible on 2040-cars

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Mercedes surprised Hamilton with this steering wheel message

Lewis Hamilton had much to celebrate at the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this past weekend. Not only did he win the race in commanding form (the 33rd in his career to make him the fifth most successful in Formula One history), but he also scored enough points (double on the season finale this year) to outpace his teammate and chief rival to win the world championship. Having already been crowned champion in 2008, that makes him one of only sixteen drivers to have won multiple world titles. It's a point his team at Mercedes didn't want him to miss, so on the cool-down lap at the end of the race, his pit crew radioed him the message "default 44" – an instruction that triggered this image to appear on the display in the middle of his steering wheel. Apparently Lewis, with plenty else on his mind (like getting his car back to the parc ferme in one piece and with enough fuel), didn't notice what was flashing in front of him. Superimposed, as you can see, over an image of Hamilton as a young lad still in karts is Lewis' name alongside those of the other two-time world champs: Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi, Alberto Ascari, Fernando Alonso and Mika Hakkinen. (Never mind those who've scored more than two titles.) Intriguingly, Hakkinen is the only other one among them to have won either of his titles under Mercedes power like Lewis did, though Fangio won two of his five titles motivated by Benz engines.

Leopard walks in, shuts down a Mercedes-Benz plant

In recent months the auto industry has seen plant closures due to a host of reasons — parts shortages, recalls, natural disasters, and even a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Now it can add to that list the threat of an invading leopard. A Mercedes-Benz factory in Pune, India, was forced to halt production for a few hours when a wayward jungle cat wandered into the facility, When the 3-year-old male leopard was spotted inside the manufacturing unit of the factory, it caused a panic among workers, according to a release by rescue organization Wildlife SOS discovered by The Drive. The site was shut down for about six hours as a Wildlife SOS rapid response team from the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre and the State Forest Department safely removed the curious cat. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The team's veterinary officers Dr. Nikhil Bangar and Dr. Shubham Patil carried out the rescue operation, tranquilizing the feline and loading it into a wildlife carrier. The rescue took about four hours, and Wildlife SOS reports that neither the creature nor any workers sustained injuries. The leopard was released back into the wild.  No one is quite sure how it got onto the factory grounds, but Wildlife SOS says that the forests in the surrounding region have one of the highest densities of leopards in the world. It's also suffering from rapid deforestation. That encroachment by humans has led to a decrease in the leopard's natural prey as well, so wildlife experts think it may have been looking for food.  The Mercedes plant builds the Maybach S 560, S-Class, E-Class Long Wheelbase, C-Class, CLA, GLA, GLE and GLS for the Indian market.  We have a different theory. We believe that the cat was seeking to set the record straight with Mercedes. When the S 65 AMG debuted, Mercedes claimed it featured the world's first Road Surface Scan technology to detect pavement undulations and adjust suspension damping accordingly. The only problem with that claim: Nissan had the technology some 30 years earlier in several mid-80s models, including the Maxima and Japan's version of the Infiniti M30, which was called — you guessed it — the Leopard. 

Mercedes may be working on a new electric car dubbed 'Ecoluxe'

Automobile has a lengthy piece this month on how the four German mass-market luxury manufacturers each plan to go after Tesla with their own electric vehicles. It was written by Georg Kacher, the magazine's European bureau chief, and the English version came a month after he wrote the German-language original for Autobild. Tesla isn't exactly a threat to the Germans, but, according to the report, the Model S is planting the right kinds of seeds in niches that are important to the luxury players. The thinking is that - in addition to needed electric vehicles anyway for stricter US regulations - it's better to start designing the machinery now. The article posited Porsche's attack would rest on the coming Panamera platform, but a big hurdle would be battery placement. Unable to find one large space for a lithium-ion pack, engineers would instead put batteries everywhere they could, for a supposed tally of some "108 battery pouches" throughout the body. A few days after the Automobile piece, however, Porsche publicly said it had no intention of challenging the Model S, because the enthusiastic driving the brand is known for doesn't jive with useful range. In Kacher's retelling, Mercedes' plans are even more ambitious, supposedly taking aim at the Model S and the coming Model X. It would do this with an investment in excess of $2 billion in a program called "Ecoluxe" – Mercedes has no brand division akin to BMW's i and Audi's e-tron. The new brand would create a four-strong family of bespoke electric vehicles: a smaller platform with a wheelbase around 106 inches and a larger one with a wheelbase around 118 inches. In addition, the range would have "provisions for rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and rear-wheel steering." The numbers are impressive: seating for seven in the larger vehicles, both longer than 16 feet, front and rear storage areas, ratings of up to 610 horsepower and production capacity of 80,000 units per year. When would we see such creatures? Perhaps as soon as 2019. We do know that if Tesla can knock the Model X over the outfield fence, automakers are going to have to do something. We don't know what the chances are that Ecoluxe is Mercedes' first move - but such a plan could help explain the weird Mercedes concept spied in October.