2005 Mercedes Sl500 Sport Pkg 104k Msrp Low Miles!! on 2040-cars

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The UK votes for Brexit and it will impact automakers

It's the first morning after the United Kingdom voted for what's become known as Brexit – that is, to leave the European Union and its tariff-free internal market. Now begins a two-year process in which the UK will have to negotiate with the rest of the EU trading bloc, which is its largest export market, about many things. One of them may be tariffs, and that could severely impact any automaker that builds cars in the UK. This doesn't just mean companies that you think of as British, like Mini and Jaguar. Both of those automakers are owned by foreign companies, incidentally. Mini and Rolls-Royce are owned by BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover by Tata Motors of India, and Bentley by the VW Group. Many other automakers produce cars in the UK for sale within that country and also export to the EU. Tariffs could damage the profits of each of these companies, and perhaps cause them to shift manufacturing out of the UK, significantly damaging the country's resurgent manufacturing industry. Autonews Europe dug up some interesting numbers on that last point. Nissan, the country's second-largest auto producer, builds 475k or so cars in the UK but the vast majority are sent abroad. Toyota built 190k cars last year in Britain, of which 75 percent went to the EU and just 10 percent were sold in the country. Investors are skittish at the news. The value of the pound sterling has plummeted by 8 percent as of this writing, at one point yesterday reaching levels not seen since 1985. Shares at Tata Motors, which counts Jaguar and Land Rover as bright jewels in its portfolio, were off by nearly 12 percent according to Autonews Europe. So what happens next? No one's terribly sure, although the feeling seems to be that the jilted EU will impost tariffs of up to 10 percent on UK exports. It's likely that the UK will reciprocate, and thus it'll be more expensive to buy a European-made car in the UK. Both situations will likely negatively affect the country, as both production of new cars and sales to UK consumers will both fall. Evercore Automotive Research figures the combined damage will be roughly $9b in lost profits to automakers, and an as-of-yet unquantified impact on auto production jobs. Perhaps the EU's leaders in Brussels will be in a better mood in two years, and the process won't devolve into a trade war. In the immediate wake of the Brexit vote, though, the mood is grim, the EU leadership is angry, and investors are spooked.

Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 teases gullwing doors in video

Because these are the times we live in, automakers tease their biggest and best debuts mercilessly before finally dropping the curtain. That's why we're writing about the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 Concept again. Here's a new video, posted on Mercedes' Instagram page, showing even more of the hulking two-door coupe. For one, it looks like Mercedes is revisiting gullwing doors. There's a brief snippet of the doors in the open position with a red light – possibly a brake light – bisecting the roof. The video also gives us a couple of good looks at the taillights, which are super-model skinny, just like the lamps up front. Look close at the rear three-quarter cut, and you'll spot a strong chrome strip that accentuates and breaks up those beefy rear haunches. It's hard to tell where they fit in with the chrome strips on the front fenders and hood, so we'll probably need to wait until the big debut to see how it all works out. As we've said twice already, the Vision Mercedes-Maybach 6 debuts on August 18. Stay tuned. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Mercedes FWD platform to last until 2018, convertible and two-seater future uncertain

Mercedes-Benz seems to be expecting a lot of success from its front-wheel-drive CLA-Class. Automotive News is reporting that the sub-C-Class sedan could grow when its second generation arrives in 2018.
The current FWD platform for MB underpins the CLA, the B-Class, the GLA-Class, and the A-Class. The B-Class will arrive in North America as an EV for spring of 2014, while the production GLA crossover will arrive three to four months after that. The five-door A-Class won't be crossing The Pond. Sad faces all around.
According to AN, another model will be based on the front-drive architecture, but it won't be coming to the US market. Set to arrive next year, rumors are that it'll be a wagon version of the CLA, sort of like the ill-named five-door CLS Shooting Brake that is also a Europe-only item.