Mercedes EQS – Driven To Write

Where Are We Now?

BMW’s reinvented flagship: Approach with care.

It’s a noisy world out there. Making oneself heard amid all the sturm und drang has become increasingly problematic, especially when the message from the disruptors, the futurists is that you represent the old guard, offer yesterday’s solution. Back in your box, grandad.

What are commonly derided as legacy carmakers — or in other words, those who have been in business for longer than a half-century^[1] are facing several crises at once — and while not yet existential, the crisis of relevance they are facing now is exercising the occupants of legacy boardrooms from Sochaux to Sindelfingen, from Michigan to Milbertshofen as much as anything more pressing. After all, how do you counter those voices that claim the future, when not only your product portfolio, but your entire business model is rooted in the past?

These are thorny issues, and for now, they are problems which no legacy carmaker has successfully addressed. But that does not mean that they are sitting on their hands. Hence today, we journey to Hamburg to Continue reading “Where Are We Now?”

Newsgrab

A highly selective, subjective (and lengthy) IAA-themed grab for the week ending 12/09/2021.

The first indoor European motorshow since the onset of SARS CoV-2 is not something to be taken lightly, but neither is it of direct consequence to those of us who routinely fail to attend them. It’s not that I was ever particularly averse – in fact I rather enjoy perusing the putative, spectating over the speculative and free-associating over the fantastical, but the events themselves always seemed to have fallen at an inconvenient time. For the past 18 months or so this has been largely academic, but once again my coverage of a major motor event must by necessity be of a remote nature.

Impartial, in-person coverage is of course what anyone with a modicum of discernment would ideally Continue reading “Newsgrab”

Lasting Beauty That Moves

Have the stars aligned at Mercedes?

“Sensuously elegant and dramatically charged”, say Mercedes. They would, wouldn’t they? (c) Automotive News

“Lasting beauty that moves”: It’s a little bit clunky, would you not agree? But given Mercedes’ previous track record in the much-abused arena of tag-lineage, I have read worse. This week, at the Frankfurt motor show, the World’s oldest carmaker debuted a styling prototype for what is likely to be the most advanced electric vehicle to be made by an established manufacturer, and given that this is DTW, you might expect me to give it and its creators a bit of a drubbing.

But while I may not have come here to praise the EQS, nor have I placed this in front of you today so as to Continue reading “Lasting Beauty That Moves”