Mercedes Benz SLA Concept
This isn’t one of the newer concept cars, which is good – because it means that it luckily didn’t make it out there onto the roads. But it still gives you some insight into what the heck people are thinking when they try to come up with a design.
Kudos to whomever pulled the plug on this before it made its way into production. Just making a concept car was a waste of time and resources though. If you look at the car and just take away the Mercedes emblem from front-center, you would never ever guess that this could be a Benz. It looks like some failed attempt by some cheap Korean brand to make a sports car (or at least something that looks like it). What’s the deal with that grid on top of the hood? Is it so that people can peek in? That looks like those crates that line the ceilings of rooms with fluorescent light bulbs/tubes.
Oh golly – and I hope that the suitcase there is included for free. Of course I’d like to let everyone know that I don’t have enough trunk-space to hold my groceries. C’mon now – there’s clearly a good reason for it. I cross the border a lot and I’d like to speed it up by making clear that I couldn’t be hiding anything. A body wouldn’t fit in there if I can’t even get a suitcase in, and clearly no smugglers would hire me since that load would be too puny for them. So let me go.
The New Mercedes US: Ugly Stump
Ladies and gents – so once again we get a chance to make fun of a car by calling it a “toy”. But this time it’s not a usual subject of ridicule – it’s a Mercedes. And yet, calling it a toy is not even a joke – no need to use your imagination, just use your eyes. Check out the “redesigned” stump-variation of the GLK:
What does that remind you of? C’mon. Don’t be shy. Don’t hold it back. You know it. The memories from your childhood. The toy that the cool kid always had. The reason you have to shell out a whole week’s paycheck to make your child a happy camper. That’s right – it’s a life-sized, adult-version, precise-copy of the Fisher-Price Power Wheels car! In fact, it looks to be a very close knock-off of the luxurious Cadillac Escalade:
The Mercedes G-Class – A Modern German Tank
Oh, the Germans. We just covered another Mercedes two days ago that compromised the German car-marker’s image of “prestige” and “quality”. Now we have another aesthetic failure by Mercedes with the overly-boxy and just way-too-edgy G-class. This seems to be another case of German nostalgia for their military past, like the VW Thing.
The worst thing about the G-class is the geometry. Everything is square-ish and boxy. All the parts are separate. There is no fluidity – no smoothness – no flow. Everything is jagged. The bumper and fenders look like they’re not even fully attached. The hood looks like it’s barely latched onto the car. The headlamps have their own little thing going. Looks like you can just pull out their square housing. And the roof/top? Clearly not even part of the car. You can just pop it off.
Worst of all is that this ugly SUV goes for around 100 grand, which is a crazy amount to pay for something as hideous as this. In fact, you can get a car that looks almost identical for a fraction of the price from India – made by the good people at Tata Motors. Seems to be confirmation that rich people don’t know what to do with their money. It’s even worse when they decide to use their extra cash to litter the roads with some street-legal panzer tank. People, please stop buying this car and let’s just get it out of production! And certainly don’t even think about getting the overly-awkward convertible version which makes this look like the Suzuki X-90:
The Mercedes A Class: No Class
What’s worse than a car manufacturer who consistently and repeatedly puts out ugly cars, like Renault for instance, is a maker who usually dominates the aesthetic space by creating beauties but suddenly creates a ridiculously pathetic ride. That’s what we’ve got in front of us with the Mercedes A Class.
Sweet ride, eh? NO! Exactly. What a puny and just awkward car. Looks like you can carry it in your pocket. And what about that flat front? It doesn’t even have the definitions, curves, and lines of an actual car. Clearly this is a failed attempt at some type of “super-compact” car. Sure, there is a demand out there for small cars and they are useful in crowded metropolitan areas. But listen up Mercedes, you have a brand and reputation to uphold. If you can’t produce quality to match the rest of your models, then don’t produce anything at all! Don’t just do it because everyone else is. And with the result that’s in front of us it looks like you just so happened to suddenly decide to create a sub-compact and put the thing together from design to production in 24 hours. No second opinion, no reconsideration, no re-evaluation of the design.
What’s with that up-curve on the back door? What’s with that little pathetic window on the side in the back? This thing is just way misshaped and doesn’t have the right proportions. Any eye that’s not blind could see that right away. A mouse or some other type of rodent comes to mind when looking at this. It’s no surprise a lot of people said that the A Class hurt Mercedes prestige and overall image. Not only is this a design failure but because it’s cheaper it gets into the hands of people who should be driving a Kia and not a Mercedes.
From the back it looks like a van. The big surprise though is that it could actually fit in the trunk of an actual van. And check out the width of those wheels. The advantage is that tire replacements should be cheap if you’ve only got like 3 inches of rubber across. Bad part is that I’d be pretty certain the road-gripping is not that great and the ride can’t be all that smooth either. But what’s completely awesome despite all of this? Clearly it’s the cool visor that finishes off the roof in the back above the window. They were well ahead of the times. The most advanced technology in sun protection and shade creation for your riding comfort. Enjoy.
