#mercedes-cla-250

#mercedes-cla-250

In 2025, German car companies earned nearly 44% less than in 2024, with earnings before interest and taxes dropping to just 24.9 billion, the lowest since 2020.

CEO Thomas Schafer stated, "I said, listen, there's two things that are absolutely non-negotiable for me: door handles and buttons. I don't understand why anybody would have [touch-sensitive] sliders."

Aston Martin has produced a unique breed of grown-up supercars that demanded its own lane amongst the competition. Rolls-Royce focuses on luxury, Lamborghini on aggression, and Bugatti on speed, but Aston Martin blends style and civilized ferocity.

Modern cars, including EVs, have tons of safety features baked in, but sometimes the driver still has to take over when the going gets tough. That's why most new cars out there still have a button somewhere that disengages the traction control system, which can come in handy when tackling slippery roads or deep snow because it allows the wheels to spin without the electronics cutting power.

The vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems: mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address. Fernando [Alonso] is of the feeling that he can't do more than 25 laps consecutively before he risks permanent nerve damage to his hands.

The original 300 SL Uhlenhaut Coupe, the racing variant that never made it to public roads, remains one of the most valuable cars ever auctioned, fetching $143 million at a 2022 Sotheby's sale. So when concept designer Gabriel Naretto decided to name his reimagined Mercedes-AMG shooting brake after the man himself, the pressure to deliver something worthy of that legacy was immense.

This is silly, but a particular lifestyle seemingly comes with it for anyone who drives a Mercedes. You might feel like you are taking on the responsibility of trying to show you are living a "rich" lifestyle, even if that isn't why you bought the car. Ultimately, this kind of pressure isn't for everyone and isn't guaranteed to happen, but many Mercedes owners complain about it after purchase.

Riding shotgun next to Lucas Bolster in a prototype Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class, I tried to keep up as he explained his company's artificial intelligence strategy. I was there to see how MB.Drive Assist ProMercedes' new urban-focused automated driving systemwould handle San Francisco traffic, not just highways. Bolster, Mercedes' manager of automated and assisted driving, said the system runs two AI models in parallel. "That certainly helps with validation, and it helps us achieve our safety goals," he said.

They argue that all the equipment it loses in the quest for improved affordability is enough to make it not worth considering. But is that really true? Most of the criticism boils down to one idea: Tesla cut comfort and convenience features and that all adds up to make it feel cheap. So I treated the Standard like a normal car for almost two weeks, waiting for the moment it started to feel compromised and like a bad choice. It never came.

But its abilities were limited by regulation, and it was very expensive to build. The system would only work on certain pieces of highways in Nevada and California, at speeds of up to 40 mph, in good weather and during daytime, and only if the road had readable markings and lines. What's more, customers had to spec their cars with the right hardware and then pay a $2,500 yearly subscription to use the feature.

Cadillac's response was to design specifically for that liminal space. The testing livery features what they call "the Cadillac precision geometric pattern" in gloss and matte sequences, turning functional camouflage into brand vocabulary. They're using the constraint of secrecy to communicate design philosophy, establishing that their approach blends automotive prototype discipline with motorsport theater. The giant Cadillac crest draped across the engine cover isn't trying to hide anything. It's declaring that the space between stealth and spectacle is itself worth designing for.