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SRT Viper dukes it out with Mercedes SLS Black Series in new Head 2 Head

In Episode 36 of Motor Trend's Head 2 Head, now that the Corvette ZR1 is no more, Jonny Lieberman has to look overseas to the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series for a challenger with similar philosophy to the SRT Viper: long hood hiding a high-horsepower engine set way back, rear-wheel drive, tiny trunks. That puts the Viper's 8.4-liter V10 with 640 horsepower and 600 pound-feet of torque against the SLS AMG's 6.2-liter V8 with 622 hp and 468 lb-ft.
However, the congruences in philosophy and magnitude of numbers doesn't translate to the driving experiences of the two, which are literally and figuratively on different continents. Lieberman gets a handle on the two of them on Northern California roads, Randy Probst then finds out how, and how quickly, they can lap Laguna Seca.
They both get kudos for being improvements on their original sources, but only one of them can take the win. You can find out by watching the video below.

2016 Japanese Grand Prix | Hamilton faces the beginning of the end

We're told the Japanese mamushi viper haunts the undergrowth around Suzuka. If the pit viper attended the weekend's Japanese Grand Prix, it avoided human visitors but it put a nasty bite on Lewis Hamilton's championship hopes. The Briton, lined up second on the grid next to Mercedes-AMG Petronas teammate Nico Rosberg, flubbed his start. By the end of Turn 1 Hamilton was in eighth. Hamilton didn't suffer alone. The beginning of the race was a melee; many of the leaders got caught out either by the damp track or by having to swerve around slow starters. Only Mercedes' Nico Rosberg and Red Bull's Max Verstappen took off clean. The German rolled up another lights-to-flag victory despite the pass-happy race happening behind him. Rosberg was as unbothered by the Dutchman in second place as he was by the official Formula 1 camera feed. Verstappen didn't have much work to do until the final ten laps of the race. Thanks to the Mercedes team's strategy – or Ferrari waiting too long to pit – Hamilton got up to third on Lap 36 of 53. Unable to make a DRS-enabled pass on Verstappen down the front straight toward the end of the race, the Mercedes driver took a creative line through Spoon corner. Closing in down the back straight, Hamilton jinked inside to try a pass through the final chicane. Verstappen moved over in the braking zone while Hamilton was still behind him, closing the door on the move. Hamilton protested over his team radio, but seemed resigned to a third place finish after the incident – he didn't try any more passes in the final laps. The Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen crossed the line fourth and fifth, respectively, in recovery drives after penalties. The scuderia tried an aggressive final stint after Hamilton successfully undercut Vettel in the pits. Ferrari put Vettel on the soft-compound Pirellis so he could hunt the Mercedes, but after a few laps of close pursuit the tires gave up and Vettel fell back. Daniel Ricciardo couldn't get comfortable in his Red Bull the entire weekend. The Aussie finished where he started, in sixth place. Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg followed the Red Bull home in two-up formation for Force India, Williams doing the same in the final two points-paying positions with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas. Rosberg's 23rd career victory – his ninth of the season and first ever in Japan – puts him 33 points ahead of Hamilton in the Driver's Championship with four races left.

Car subscription services: A slow, expensive start — but the potential is huge

Americans are used to paying for subscriptions — to magazines and cable television, for instance — but experience shows they'll cancel when the price of admission gets too high, or there are more tempting alternatives. Cord cutters ditched nearly 1.5 million pay-TV subscriptions in 2017, according to a survey by Leichtman Research Group. Cable TV started out cheap with basic offerings, and then got expensive. The auto industry's subscription offerings are new, but they're starting out costly, and not price-competitive with traditional leasing. The upside is that they take the hassle out of car ownership for busy people by letting the service take care of maintenance, insurance, licensing and taxes. And they give consumers choice, often allowing relatively painless switches between different cars in the automakers' lineup. Subscription services also point the way toward an ownership-free auto experience, and offer an easy transition to a potential world where ride- and car-sharing will be dominant. Subscriptions are here to stay, but consumers may take a while to "get" them. Lincoln's subscription service for lightly used 2015 to 2017 models, offered through the Ford-owned Canvas beginning this year, got off to a slow start. Many early subscribers canceled. Last month, Cadillac announced it would " temporarily pause" its $1,800-per-month Book subscription service for "adjustments" as of December 1. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Snags with the back-end technology used to support the service made some customer-service functions tedious and time-consuming, adding costs for the company." The challenge for automakers is to come up with a strategy that offers consumers a compelling, affordable option to regular ownership, and one that can also make a profit. I think they'll find that sweet spot, but they're not there yet. Jack Nerad, former executive editorial director at Kelley Blue Book and author of " The Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying or Leasing a Car," points out that "A lot of people expected that subscriptions would be very valuable for people who wanted inexpensive transportation, but the reality is quite the opposite. Subscriptions are offering more choices for the wealthy.