Once again, the amazing Scroggs has come through with some excellent vintage racing footage, and he's also found this highly interesting article about AMG's early racing efforts for us. That's good news, because I'm off judging the Lamest Day 24 Hours Of LeMons in Ohio at the moment and may not have internet access to provide live coverage; this way you still get to see an improbable race car going for the win in a punishing endurance race:

The crux of Aiyar’s argument centers around the immorality of denying perfectly good cars to people in less fortunate areas of the world, while allowing criminals to enrich themselves by reselling cars meant for the crusher:

Germany’s police union, the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter, estimates that about 50,000 cars destined for the scrap yard under Berlin’s trade-in scheme have been illegally resold to Africa and Eastern Europe. The government had paid around €125 million [$180 million] for these vehicles to be destroyed so that people would buy new, more fuel-efficient cars. German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe predicts a doubling of illicit exports by the end of the year. It’s probably only a matter of time before American clunkers will likewise find their illegal way to the streets of Mexico and beyond. And humanity would be better off if they did.

Imagine if the Salvation Army were ordered to destroy all the used clothing and furniture it receives instead of distributing it to the poor. No doubt this would be considered an outrage. But it is no less economically foolish and morally repugnant to deny poor people in the developing world access to these old cars.

Read the rest at the Cato Institute’s home.

Photo Credit: THEO HEIMANN/AFP/Getty Images

From thelocal.de:

"Dozens of people were injured in a pileup involving 259 cars on the A2 motorway in the state of Lower Saxony late on Sunday, police reported. Ten of the injured are in critical condition."

(Hat tip to CanadaCraig and Formerlythegreatestdriver!)

The cash — 23,000 euros in 500, 200, and 100 bills — fluttered across the motorway in the midst of speeding traffic after an envelope containing the money blew out of a passenger seat pocket of the convertible.

The man, 23, contacted police immediately, who then blocked the motorway in both directions for nearly half an hour. Eight police officers assisted the man in retrieving his notes and were able to recover 20,000 euros — and at no time asked the 23-year-old what the hell he was doing with $31,000 in cash in a convertible he was test driving.

"The remaining 3,000 euros have not been found," a police spokeswoman said, but warned treasure hunters of searching for any bills and keeping them, saying that was illegal. Yeah, OK, good luck enforcing that! (Hat tip to muhnkee_2!) [via Stuff.co.nz]

Here's how it happened:

Hi Murilee,
unfortunately I only had my iPhone with me...
I'm usually pretty spoiled when it comes to expensive vehicles parked outside, as the part of Frankfurt I live in combines expensive flats with not enough garages. 911s are the Golfs here, and every other evening you can watch a RR Phantom-driver circling for half an hour, desperately looking for a parking space for his ocean liner.

This however, caught me completely off-guard. I left my building to take the trash out and was greeted by the sound of 12 cylinders. Mr. Hedgefund and his trophy girl got out and left this monster standing down on the street. Between early 20th centruy houses and the usual E-classes and 5-series BMWs it looked like an imperial X wing crashed parking in front of a medieval castle. Amazing.

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Johannes Eisele

(Hat tip to Dave!) [via Boston.com]

Like all great stories in motor racing, Mercedes’s dominating debut is a story of timing, innovation and resurgence, with a healthy sprinkling of treachery on top. It began on a November day in 1953.

It was at the conclusion of the fourth season of Formula One, a mere eight years after the war situation in Europe had developed not necessarily to Germany’s advantage. Dominated by Alberto Ascari in his tiny Ferrari 500, the young sport was about to go through its third major rule change in four years: the 1954 season would drop the Formula Two regulations in place for 1952 and 1953 and dictate a maximum displacement of 750 cc for supercharged engines and 2,500 cc for naturally aspirated ones.

Mercedes-Benz, on the heels of their successful victory with the 300SL Gullwing in the Carrera Panamericana, decided to enter Formula One. The old team which ruled the European Grand Prix Championship with the supercharged Silver Arrows was back. Team manager Alfred Neubauer—the man who invented pit signaling—returned with his hat, trenchcoat and stopwatches, while London-born technical director Rudolf Uhlenhaut was tasked with creating a new car from scratch, codenamed W196 R.

And what a car it turned out to be! The engine a straight-eight, fuel-injected, naturally aspirated 2.5-liter marvel, with power taken off at the middle of the crankshaft, running on a cocktail of benzol, methylene, gasoline, acetone and nitro. It was driven by desmodromic valves—only seen today on Ducati motorcycles—which enabled higher revs than allowed by 1950s springs. The whole assembly was canted 37º to the right to make for a lower hoodline and a smaller frontal area. The car was wrapped in sheets of Elektron, an ultralight and very flammable alloy of magnesium.

By the time Uhlenhaut’s team was done, the 1954 season was already underway, with Juan Manuel Fangio racking up wins in the brand-new Maserati 250F. But the lure of the new Mercedes proved too hard to resist for the Argentine, and after winning two of the season’s first three Grands Prix, Fangio swapped his Maserati for a seat in the W196. After a 15-year absence, the stage was set for Mercedes-Benz’s debut on July 4 at the French Grand Prix, held at the ultra-fast circuit of Reims-Gueux.

Tweaking and testing continued even after Fangio and teammate Karl Kling—who had taken a vulture through the windshield of his 300SL Gullwing two years before in Mexico at 130 MPH—secured the first two positions in qualifying. Fuel consumption was higher than expected, and in a wonderful move, technical director Uhlenhaut hopped in his own Gullwing and raced it all the way to team headquarters in Stuttgart to have expanded fuel tanks manufactured overnight for the W196’s. No vultures were encountered on the Autobahn and at 2:45 the next afternoon, off went Fangio and Kling to begin the 300-mile race.

It was a massacre. The streamlined cars outpaced the rest of the field by 4 seconds a lap. As Fangio took the checkered flag half a car length ahead of Kling, they were the only two cars on the leading lap. Two Maseratis, two Ferraris and a lone Gordini driven by Jean Behra limped in long after them, the rest of the field decimated in the grueling race.

Incidentally, it was on this very day that Germany’s national squad beat what was perhaps the greatest football team ever in the finals of the 1954 World Cup: the Hungarian Aranycsapat, stopped in its tracks after an unbroken string of 33 wins.

The W196 would go on to win 8 of the next 11 races it was entered in. The streamlined body was replaced with an open-wheel version for the more technical circuits, and a young Stirling Moss joined Fangio for the 1955 season.

Mercedes-Benz also entered the car in sports car racing as the 300SLR, with an engine bored out to 3 liters, producing 300 HP. This was the car that carried Stirling Moss to his famous victory in the Mille Miglia—and which, a few weeks later, got catapulted into the crowd at Le Mans, where it became all too clear just how flammable that Elektron chassis was. Over eighty people perished in the flames, including racing driver Pierre Levegh.

The accident spelled the end of the W196 and its brethren. Neubauer withdrew the 300SLR’s from the lead several hours after the accident. At the end of the season, with Fangio claiming the Formula One World Championship in the W196 and the team taking the World Sportscar Championship in the 300SLR, Mercedes-Benz withdrew completely from motor racing.

Fangio would become World Champion two more times. His victories came in cars he had defeated in his Mercedes: the Lancia-Ferrari D50, and for his final championship in 1957, the very Maserati 250F he had abandoned three years previously for the W196.

The 300SLR lived on as Rudolf Uhlenhaut’s daily driver. It was made into a street-legal coupé which Uhlenhaut commuted to work with.

A hyper-Gullwing, capable of reaching speeds of 180 MPH in a sad, gray, post-war Europe, blasting down empty highways at warp speed, forever chasing a racetrack it would never set wheels on again.

On the other hand, it must have made for a memorable childhood for Uhlenhaut’s son Roger:

Photo Credit: Daimler AG, Autocar

Libertarianism is a concept very, very alien to the average European mind. We live in overbearing, motherly states with massive taxes and social cushions but the Carpocalypse is bringing out the inner Ron Paul in Dr. Z.

The Financial Times quotes the Daimler head: “Every industry needs structural development and this is not something that should be influenced in the long term by governments.” BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer comes with the kontrapunkt: “I have an understanding when it is about banks because they are central elements of an economy. But for the rest, where do you start and…stop?”

It is entertaining to consider a version of the truth where these two car magnates are not afraid of the integrity of their own pockets, as is probably the case here. But where Doctors Z and R harbor fantasies of a pre-Bismarck Germany of independent fiefdoms, a Snow Crash wonderland of franchised cities instead of tiny kingdoms.

Where the rulers of Mstadt and AMGville watch with a stony face as the poor everymen of Rüsselsheim scatter to the winds.

Photo Credit: public.resource.org, slobug

Most of that money would have to come from the German state. That means Chancellor Angela Merkel is not pleased. According to a report by the paper Rheinische Post, she stated Opel was not “system-critical,” as opposed to some financial institutions, which are.

Apart from the company’s cry for help, GM COO Fritz Henderson has announced the company is looking to spin Opel off into an independent division, ending majority US ownership after 70 years.

Opel employs almost half of General Motors Europe’s 55,600 workers. When you consider the entire industry around the operation, its failure would threaten close to half a million jobs.

And if you were wondering, yes, imagining a German politican saying the words “system critical” in accented English is exactly as wickedly funny in Europe as it is in English-speaking countries.

Yet your Crazy Euro Car Boy says this with a pang of pain in his heart. He has ridden more miles—ahem, kilometers!—in an Opel Astra sedan than in any other car.

Photo Credit: kubatodi/Flickr

Look at the loving manner in which the Porsche line workers brandish those grinders! And that Benz on the Autobahn- it's totally left in the 924's dust! Fast-forward 28 years and the 924 is still doing pretty well in that other 24 Hours race.

The Opel Ampera, as teased in the photo above, is an electric car carrying the same Voltec (formerly E-Flex) technology found on the Chevy Volt. This means the new vehicle will be capable of traveling approximately 60 km (40 miles) on purely electric power stored in its batteries before switching over to electricity provided by a small internal combustion engine.

Opel hasn't announced whether or not the five-door, four-seat electric vehicle will share the same Delta II platform as the Chevy Volt, though it is probably safe to assume it will given the teaser image looks almost exactly like the 2011 Volt and our KORSdesign speculative illustration we showed you last September. More details as they become available.

Opel To Reveal Ampera Electric Car At Geneva Motor Show

Rüsselsheim. Opel has announced Ampera as the name of its revolutionary extended-range electric car. The five-door, four-seat Opel Ampera will be revealed at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show (March 5-15).

“With the Ampera, Opel will be the first European automobile manufacturer to provide customers several hundred kilometers of non-stop electric driving,” said Alain Visser, GM Europe Chief Marketing Officer.

GM’s ground-breaking electric propulsion technology, called Voltec, operates differently from other advanced propulsion systems. For short trips up to 60 km, the Ampera will run only on lithium-ion battery power charged via a standard 230v outlet. For longer distances, the car will continue to drive on electricity that is generated by a small internal combustion engine.

The Ampera will be well-suited to the daily driving schedule of most European customers. For example, approximately 80 percent of German drivers travel less than 50 km daily.

Additional information on the Opel Ampera will be released March 3 at the Geneva Motor Show.

[Source: GM]

A police officer in the village of Limbach-Oberfrohna in eastern Germany was on patrol when he witnessed a man and his magic speeding Skoda lose control in a turn, drive up an embankment and fly across the street into the roof of a small church. Emergency crews were on the scene within minutes but it took firefighters equipped with a ladder truck to get the seriously injured driver out of the little Skoda. It took a crew equipped with a crane to get the vehicle out of the roof.

If it turns out the man was drunk, he'll likely face a prison sentence and years of overcompensating when the collection plate comes around at church. (Hat tip to Franzouse!)

[BBC News]

Nordschleife.us has just released a new t-shirt featuring the phrase, "20832 Meters That Separate The Men From The Boys!"

If you're an avid Jalopnik reader, you're probably too familiar with Sabine Schmitz, BMW's factory Ring-taxi driver. Schmitz is best known stateside for flinging a Diesel Jag and a Ford Transit van 'round the 'ring on Top Gear and for being very much not a dude. Given she could probably spank most of "The Men" in her full-weight M5 with only one hand.

But barring that aside, "The Green Hell" definitely acts as a sieve, filtering out the poseurs from the pros. Namely, the infamous circuit forces the poseurs to eat Armco with the quickness. So although we salute the sentiment, perhaps the boys at Nordschleife.us could hit the drawing board again. But, if you're so inclined, you can purchase this shirt here.

[Car And Classic, thanks to Justice Loverman for the tip]

Autostadt reopens premium pavilion on the 31st of October 2008

Experience the extraordinary: architecture, art and design in the Premium Clubhouse

Friday the 31st of October 2008, saw the opening of the Autostadt in Wolfsburg's redesigned pavilion: with its spectacular display of architecture, art and design, the "Premium Clubhouse" represents the Volkswagen Group's multi-brand luxury and premium division. The British architect, Stephen Williams, accentuated the pavilion's unusual elliptic interior by adding a curved walkway and a lounge that virtually floats into the space. The exhibition area is characterised by the mirror-finish Bugatti Veyron, an artwork by artist Olaf Nicolai, and the artistic installations of Anselm Reyle and Peter Zimmermann.

Working site-specifically, Nicolai creates mental spaces in which he explores aesthetic perceptions. He challenges the observer to pay close attention as he transforms objects showing them in a different light. In his new work "Après vous", Nicolai displays a mirror-finish Bugatti in a mirrored room. The Bugatti Veyron is arguably the most technically intricate vehicle of all time, with its superb craftsmanship represents the pinnacle of excellence and exclusivity in the automotive world. The harmonious planes and structured lines of this elegant automobile are a reflective area in which the observer sees himself reflected back ad infinitum from the mirrors, thus becoming part of the exhibit: a phenomenon of endless play-back in which both the boundaries of the space and the boundary between object and observer are blurred.

The Autostadt in Wolfsburg is the Volkswagen Group's communications platform which invites its visitors to explore the world of mobility. Last year alone the theme park attracted almost two million guests. The visit by the 17 millionth guest marked a milestone in the success story that is the Autostadt, one of the most outstanding leisure destinations in Germany.

Nestling in a 25 hectare landscape and dotted with shimmering lakes, the Autostadt's unique architecture, design and surroundings provides a perfect backdrop for its many riveting attractions: in the ZeitHaus (museum) an exhibition of the classics of automobile history illustrates why they set benchmarks in their day; artworks and films engage with the Volkswagen Group's core values; interactive research stations invite participation. Cultural events – from themed communication to "Movimentos, the Autostadt Festival Weeks" – open new horizons. As an accredited extra-curricular place of learning, the Autostadt plays a significant part in the educational institutions of Lower Saxony.

[VW, Bugatti via Carpages]