What's outside today 43 - Mercedes R280 CDI

Actually, this has just gone back, but I forgot to take the usual shots of it outside my house. I have to admit, my previously negative feelings towards this rather oddball car have mellowed a bit, but I still have difficulty seeing who would actually buy one.

A lot of good kit under the rather unusual styling - in particular the V6 diesel engine and the Mercedes seven-speed automatic transmission.

What's outside today 41 - Mercedes C Class estate

Actually, this one went back today.


It's the new estate version of the latest C Class - the C220CDI Sport estate automatic, to be precise. Normally I'm not a fan of bodykits, but this AMG effort works pretty well - although I'm not convinced that switching the Mercedes star from the traditional location on the top of the bonnet to the middle of the grille is a great idea.


In the past, the idea of fast bodywork like this on a humble 220 diesel Mercedes would have been a bit of a joke, but this one really is fast enought to live up to the looks.


Overall this is a good effort, but I wish Mercedes could get back to producing the classy sorts of interiors it offered in the past. This is an area in which the company has lagged behind in the last few years - it's getting better again but the problem is that the competition isn't standing still.

Aston Martin linking up with Mercedes?

Yesterday's Financial Times Deutschland reports that Aston Martin is exploring a possible cooperation with Mercedes, with engines being the most likely area for any joint efforts. I must say my initial reaction was that this is a bizarre and unlikely pairing but I suppose it does make some sort of sense. Aston is still relying, I believe, on dedicated cells or facilities within Ford plants for its engines (at Cologne of all places, for at least some of them, I think); I suppose this would allow it to break free from that arrangement.

Perhaps Aston engine production could even be repatriated to the UK if Mercedes' specialised racing engine operations here could be used, although I've no idea whether they are remotely suitable for the purpose.

Once again, proof that it's worth monitoring the German press for motor industry news that can sometimes escape the attention of UK publications.

What's outside today 33 - Mercedes E-Class taxi

Outside the main railway station in Hamburg that is. The only car I've been in over the last 24 hours was a W210 E-class estate taxi that took me from here to my hotel last night.


The W210 (the version of the E-Class built between 1995 and 2002) has always been considered a bit of a poor relation in quality terms compared with its predecessors, the W123 and the W124, but I noticed that the one I was in last night was still running well with over 400,000 km on the clock. The only area in which these cars seem to show any significant deterioration is their damping, which tends to give the impression of being a bit worn and floaty. The diesel engines always sound super-fit, and the interiors stand up well, even on the W210, it seems.

Even so, as the photo shows, other cars are making inroads into German taxi ranks these days - look at that Touran, for example. That would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Mind you, in Schwerin in eastern Germany I did see a Dacia Logan being used as a taxi earlier this year. At least things haven't slipped that far in prosperous Hamburg - yet.

Car of the Year

The European Car of the Year rankings are great fun but the organisers' insistence on using a large, diverse international jury has produced some very strange results indeed over the years.

Nobody could complain about the NSU Ro80 (1968), Peugeot 504 (1969) or the Citroen GS (1971), but what about the Talbot Horizon (1979) or the Renault 9 (1982)? Mercedes has only won once in the CotY's history while BMW has never won at all - barmy.

I haven't yet driven this year's winner, the Fiat 500. Anyone who likes cars will want it to succeed in order for Fiat to have a secure future but I still have a few doubts. The 500 probably has even the BMW Mini beaten for cute retro looks, but it will struggle to match the Mini on the road. Unlike that car, which is based on an expensive bespoke platform, the 500 shares with other small Fiats. Then there's the ownership experience; will the 500's quality levels and Fiat dealers' performance be able seriously to compete with the proposition offered by the Mini - just about the best resale on the market and staggeringly cheap multi-year servicing packages? We shall see.

Of the other cars short-listed this year, I particularly liked the new C-Class (brilliant steering - the thing everyone keeps mentioning) and the Kia cee'd - a great car with keen pricing and a fantastic warranty. But the new car that really got under my skin this year didn't even make it onto that short list. I'm talking about the Land Rover Freelander 2. Normally I think of soft-roaders as being a particularly pointless class of car, and the first-generation Freelander scarcely registered with me at all. But the all-new model is a supremely polished product. Subtly improved styling, a great diesel engine, a beautiful interior and a commanding driving position surprisingly reminiscent of that offered by the larger Land Rover models. Great stuff.

Jaguar XF - again

Last week, at the MPH section of the Classic Car Show, I had the chance to sit in the new XF. If there are any doubts at all about the exterior styling, there can be no concerns about the XF's cabin, which is stunning. Like the interiors of older Jags it contains a fair amount of wood, but it's not remotely pipe and slippers.

The big reservation I still have about the XF is not whether it will turn out to be fantastic (I suspect it will be) but whether its market positioning is correct. Mercedes spins the fabulous CLS off the high-volume E-Class; Jaguar has produced a car that's a CLS competitor but without that E-class volume - and therefore cost - advantage to back it up.

Look at the engine options, which only compete with the upper end of the E-class range, or the CLS. What's really needed is a convincing XF version fitted with the 2.2 litre diesel from the Freelander 2 to go up against the 520d and E220 CDI.

Volvo Cars Safety Seminar

A night at Heathrow before nipping over to Sweden tomorrow for Volvo Cars' Safety Seminar. Back in the seventies and eighties, if there was a single manufacturer whose name was synonymous with safety, it was Volvo. That link seems to have faded a bit since then; Mercedes, if anything a more important safety pioneer than Volvo, has probably been less shy than it was about its role in important advances, while, more recently, manufacturers such as Renault have established their own safety credentials through their success with the modern NCAP crash tests.

Perhaps Volvo wasn't too sad to lose some of its prominence in the area of passive safety as this was probably also associated in buyers' minds with less positive attributes such as tank-like styling and stodgy handling.

Now that Volvo may be on the block - I know no more than has appeared in the papers on this subject - perhaps it wants to put some of its expertise in this area in the window in order to increase its attractiveness to potential buyers.

Blast from the past 10 - Mercedes 280SE Cabriolet (1968-71)

Afternoon tea at Petersham Nurseries cafe in Richmond today - a haven of tranquility in busy London.


This - a favourite model of mine - was in the car park. Nice to see that this car seemed like it was in daily use rather than being pampered and locked away - the Mercedes star was missing from the top of the radiator grille and the front bumper had a ding too. Unfortunately this one has also picked up those chrome trims on the wheelarches that some people fit to older Mercs. Not so keen on these myself.


Still great to see, though.

What's outside today 28 - Mercedes A150

Testing with readers in and around London this weekend.


What's interesting about this car is that, give or take a couple of options, it is the cheapest new Mercedes you can buy - prices start below £14K. What I'm trying to work out with our reader-testers' help is whether this is cheap for a Mercedes or expensive for a smallish hatchback.


Haven't reached a conclusion on that question yet, but in general this is a likeable car; small petrol engines are very much out of vogue at the moment, but the one in this car is surprisingly smooth and lively Plenty of interior space, too, and a tasteful all-black interior. Doesn't feel quite as solid as Mercs of old, though.

More detail on Karmann's difficulties

The online edition of Financial Times Deutschland carries more information on the problems at Karmann. Apparently, Karmann's boss, Peter Harbig, has given an interview to one of Germany's leading car mags, Auto, Motor und Sport, in which he disclosed that in the worst case, an additional 600 and 700 jobs over and above the 1800 or so that have already been reported could be at risk.

Specifically, the Rheine works will need to close in autumn 2008 when production of the A4 Cabriolet ends. At Osnabrück, the company desperately needs a follow-on contract for the Mercedes CLK convertible by July next year.

What's outside today 24 - Binz E220CDI Limousine

29th September 2007, outside the headquarters of Binz UK. Yes, that's right, Binz, not Benz.


Now don't go thinking that this fine car (GBP80K plus) has anything to do with those ghastly cut-and-shut American stretch limos. Binz is a German coach builder and Mercedes fully approve these vehicles which are built this way from the start, often with heavier duty parts than the original. Unlike most conversions, this car comes with a full Certificate of Conformity, a full DaimlerChrysler guarantee and even the more unusual parts can be ordered through the main Mercedes system. All vehicle systems such as ABS are preserved and the limo is crash-tested.

Our test car was fitted with the same E220CDI engine found in the standard E Class that we featured on the Verdict a few weeks ago; it was more than capable of hauling around the longer, heavier Binz model. The increased length is scarcely noticeable, even on tight roundabouts.

I've been keen to get this car onto the Verdict since trying it at the SMMT test day a few months ago, and it didn't disappoint.

Great spots 9 - Porsche Panamera prototype/development car

Undergoing testing on the Stelvio pass - Porsche's forthcoming four-door saloon/coupe. The silhouette of the car appeared to be the real thing, but there were various bits of superficial disguise that were apparently designed to divert attention from the true window and shut lines, although these could, for the most part, still be made out. No photo, I'm afraid - just couldn't get my camera out in time. The Panamera was coming the other way and was gone in a flash, if you'll forgive the pun. Anyway, have a Google and you'll find that there are plenty of surreptitious pix of this thing out there already. I'm not sure it looked quite as nice as the Mercedes CLS or the photos I've seen of the Aston Martin Rapide - my impression was of something that was slightly dumpy at the rear, although that could have been a trick induced by the light disguise.

My guess would be that Porsche wasn't exploring or tuning the car's outright handling capabilities on the Stelvio because you can't really get up enough speed for that sort of thing on large sections of the pass. So it was probably stuff like brakes, transmission and cooling system that were being put to the test here - and how.

I also saw a Vectra on the pass that seemed to have one or two small pieces of superficial disguise at the front or rear and a deep, rumbly engine note - not sure what that was but again, it could have been a manufacturer's car undergoing testing of some minor mods, or something more exciting hiding under a plainish skin.

What's outside today 21 - German Hertz hire car Alfa 159 SW

Outside the Holiday Inn Padova that is. En route to a pal's wedding further south at the weekend. The booking was for a Mercedes C Class 'or similar' and 'or similar' turned out to be the Alfa Romeo 159 SW - no complaints about that all.


In fact, if they'd given me a Merc I'd have been stuck as the German end of Hertz doesn't allow its hire cars from German prestige brands to be taken to Italy or eastern Europe (presumably because there's too high a risk that they will be nicked), a fact that I didn't discover until I started reading the boring hire documentation on a coffee stop in Italy because I didn't have a newspaper or an Internet connection to hand. Alfas are OK though.


I hadn't driven the 159 before but I was impressed by its performance on a long demanding day of driving across the Alps yesterday - but more of that later.

What's outside today 18 - Mercedes-Benz E220CDI

Just back from a long Verdict trip to Scotland during which this mile-munching Merc scarcely broke sweat.


It's scarcely possible to believe that this is the slowest and cheapest of the three E Class diesels - in most UK conditions, the E220CDI has more than enough go.


Anyway, two reasons for testing the E220CDI - first, it had a lot of detail improvements aimed at boosting quality last year, and second, it's going to provide a useful baseline comparison for another Verdict which I'm expecting to be one of our more interesting tests - that's not finalised yet, so more detail later.

Jaguar XF - great car but too few choices?

This is the new XF, the successor to the old S-Type. If the photos and initial reports are anything to go by, this is going to be a great car. Jaguar seems to have finally shaken off its obsession with retro and produced something stunning - dare I say it even looks a bit like a four-door Aston?



But I still have one or two concerns. In the initial line-up, there's no room for the brilliant 3.6 litre V8 diesel that is used to such magnificent effect in the big Land Rovers. In fact, this hasn't made it into any Jaguar model so far. The XF makes do with the admittedly very agreeable 2.7 litre V6 diesel but could do with the extra firepower in order to compete more effectively with the Germans. Come on, Jag, get cracking. This is urgent stuff.

It's lower down the range, though, that I see the biggest problem. Mercedes and BMW sell far more units of the E Class and 5 Series than Jag does of the S-Type. IMHO, that's not because the Jag is inferior but has much more to do with the fact that Jaguar only competes with the top end of the 5 Series and E Class ranges. The lower-end BMW 523i and 520d, and Mercedes E220CDI are convincing products to which the S-Type range had no response, a mistake - for that is what I think it is - repeated with the initial XF line-up. There was a 2.5 litre petrol version of the S-Type for a bit, but this always seemed to be the poor relation of the range.

Really, there are no bad Jags. Rather, I think the problem has always been that the company tends to produce good cars that slightly miss the mark in market terms (too small, say, or too big or too retro) - unlike Land Rover, its sister company, which hits the bull's eye every time. But I'd love Jaguar to prove me wrong with the XF - and I can't wait to get the chance to drive it.

What's outside today 15 - Saab 93 BioPower

This is the BioPower version of the Saab 93. That means it can run either on normal unleaded or E85, a mix of 85% bioethanol and 15% unleaded. Externally, it's more or less indistinguishable from the standard model - apart, that is, from the enormous BioPower stickers attached to the sides of this test example.


Yesterday, I took it out on one of my favourite test routes - setting out from Cambridgshire to Norwich on the A11 before heading north to Cromer on the North Norfolk coast and than back home via Cley, Fakenham and Swaffham.

All jolly agreeable, and a route that allowed me to take in a stop-off at a Morrison E85 pump for a quick top-up - the one at the Norwich store, which lies within the shadow of the Carrow Road football ground, in fact.


Got back home in a good mood late in the evening, my head full of moderately warm thoughts towards the comfy, inoffensive if rather bare Saab. Made a cup of tea and casually picked up my copy of the delivery note for the 93 in order to take a closer look at it. What followed was the worst case of what Americans call 'sticker shock' I've had in connection with a Verdict test car since Ford sent us an admittedly very impressive Focus diesel estate about two years ago that had been specced up to the eyeballs for an on the road price of about 25 grand. The Saab - which I should, in fairness, mention is the priciest Vector Sport variant fitted with a few options like metallic paint - comes out at a scarcely believable GBP28,000.


I've always had a soft spot for Saabs and I'm a strong supporter of what the company is doing in promoting E85 with its BioPower models. But that price seems to be hopelessly ambitious to me. Remember that a Skoda Octavia is probably at least as well built as a Saab and, despite being Golf-based, is probably as roomy (in particular where luggage, as opposed to passenger space is concerned) as a 93. But Octavia prices start at about 11 grand; the deeply impressive and very rapid vRS estate version costs about GBP18,500.

Some other yardsticks - Mercedes C Class prices start at GBP23 thousand, BMW 3 Series prices at less than GBP21 thousand. And the Vauxhall Vectra estate starts at less than GBP16K - that's relevant because, as General Motors products, the 93 and the Vectra have quite a lot in common under the skin.

Road tips 7 - Bundesautobahn A555 between Cologne and Bonn

Today is the 75th anniversary of the opening of the A555, the road that is now generally regarded as the first German Autobahn. It's not the only contender for the title; the older AVUS motor racing and testing circuit in Berlin, now integrated into the Autobahn network, is one - and if my memory serves me correctly, another section between Frankfurt and Darmstadt also has a claim.

In fact, the A555 didn't formally become an Autobahn until 1955 and only got a second carriageway as part of a huge construction project in the mid-sixties. Until then, it had a single carriageway layout providing two lanes in each direction. What marked out the A555 in comparison with earlier roads when it opened in 1932 was that its use was restricted to motor vehicles and its junctions were grade separated.

On this basis, I reckon the claim of the A555 to be the first Autobahn is a fair one. It's worth noting, though, that this isn't just a dry technical matter but a slightly sensitive political question for Germans as well. Classifying the A555 - opened the year before Hitler came to power - as the first Autobahn allows the motorways to be regarded as an invention of democratic Germany, rather than as a product of the Nazi regime. Personally, I think that's probably irrelevant - the big construction push that gave the Autobahn network the basic outline it has today certainly did take place under the Nazis, so I don't think it makes much difference whether the birth of the Autobahns can be traced all the way back to 1932 or only to some politically inconvenient later date. I can't really see that this valuable infrastructure project deserves to be tainted by its links to the 1933-1945 period either way; it would probably have been built anyway - if at a slower pace.

So what's the A555 like today? I lived in Bonn for a number of years in the nineties, so I had the A555 on my doorstep and know it well. Large sections have no speed limit and the long, straight southern stretch nearest to Bonn is of the best pieces of unrestricted road anywhere on the German network. It's also one of the closest decent unrestricted sections of Autobahn to the UK, but please, please don't take that as a recommendation to take your car there for a high-speed blast unless you have a lot - and I mean a lot - of experience at driving at speeds that are much higher than those that are common on British roads. Traffic on unrestricted German Autobahns does move faster than traffic in other countries, but opportunities to go much beyond 100mph safely and responsibly are comparatively rare these days because of the weight of traffic and the condition of some of these roads. Those opportunities are hard to judge if most of your driving has been done in countries with speed limits, however good a driver you might think you are - and the consequences of cocking it up don't bear thinking about.

That apart, you may be asking why the Germans should have all the best roads (sorry if that sounds a bit like the question about the devil and the best tunes - didn't mean it to come out that way). The answer is that I'm not sure that they do. There are about 12,000km of German Autobahn (more than three times the British total of about 3,700km) but the standard of much of the network is surprisingly low. Often there are no hard shoulders and most sections have four (i.e. two in each direction) lanes, rather than six. New Autobahns are still being built according to this comparatively low standard. The age of some Autobahns also means that route alignments, slip-roads and junctions are often poor. Britain has avoided many of these problems - not through skill or foresight but simply because we started building our motorways much later.

One of the most interesting facts published in the German press today in its coverage of the A555's 75th birthday was to be found in the Financial Times Deutschland; only 3,000km of the German network has six lanes, the standard that is almost universal in the UK, so on this measure, the two countries are probably more or less equal. Remember too that much of the UK A road network would be classified as motorway in almost all continental countries - stretches of the A14, A34, A55, A19, A38, A13, A12 and A2, to name some of the most obvious examples, would qualify - and things don't look so bad here.

That said, I'd have to admit that we still don't have anything to match the gloriously long, flat, straight unrestricted southern stretch of the A555 near Bonn. I'd love to have been able to take the CL500 there this week.

What's outside today 13 - Mercedes CL500

The magnificent ninety grand Mercedes CL500.


What can I say? Looks wonderful, goes like stink and built like an old-school Merc. The black alcantara roof-lining is an especially pleasing touch.


The only little snag so far is that one of the motors in the front passenger seat apparently gave up the ghost for about 24 hours, leaving the seat in an unusable position, although that seems to have corrected itself now. Perhaps I was just pressing the wrong buttons, although I don't think so - if there's no recurrence, I'll give the car the benefit of the doubt.

What's outside today 10 - Mercedes C Class; ancient and modern

The new W204 C Class (a 200K) alongside the old W202.


The old W202 belongs to me; it has left-hand drive because I bought it while I was working in Germany. It's done over 130,000 miles since I collected it from the factory in Stuttgart in January 1998. It's been thrashed and neglected but the only non-routine replacement has been a water pump that failed at over 100,000 miles.


The W204 is this week's Verdict test car. For me at least, the intervening W203 model was a deep disappointment - it felt a lot flimsier than the super-solid W202 and it didn't look very Merc-like either. The W204, though, is fantastic. It's zippy and agile but in terms of its styling it looks like a proper Mercedes again, without feeling in any way old-fashioned. It still doesn't feel as solid as the old W202, although it's chunkier than the W203. On the other hand, the latest C has a lot more standard equipment, and remarkably, the prices, model for model, haven't gone up much over the last ten years.

What's outside today 9 - Mercedes GL420 CDI

Only driven this a mile or two so far.


Two strong first impressions - the 420 CDI engine is very impressive and the GL is B I G.