I Spy a Square

Autoguide are showing us some spy pics of the 2019 Merc GLE on test in the US:

I don't like Spy Pics - I may have mentioned this several times before.

 

But these ones do have a couple of interesting things about them.

 

Like the fact it is a right-hand drive car.

 

Why on Earth would a German manufacturer testing in The US use a RHD car?

And no, they are not reversed photographs.

 

The other thing is the pixilation of the driver.  You wouldn't be able to see the driver's face so why hide the clothes and, presumably, skin colour?

 

Unless the test-driver was naughty and took a bung to allow the photography to take place so didn't want any way of being identified.

 

Nah. I'm sure Mercedes know who is driving their disguised RHD car past Dennys in these photos.

 

But just in case they don't, there is a vital clue in this photo:

The driver is wearing blue jeans.

Mercedes or Rolls?

Both actually.

As someone who has previously noted how much I hate the Merc GLE Coupe, I can only congratulate the idiot who rolled this one.  It's an AMG too - but that doesn't stop it looking stupid.

 

I also hate the fact that Car+Driver have made their Website inaccessible to those of us in the UK (and probably other places too) which means a lot of my previous links won't work any more and I'd lost a valuable source of motoring news.

 

Until I combined their Spanish output with Google Translate:

 

Et Voila!

 

Sorry, that's French. Talking of France...

 

The Spanish-language version of Car+Driver is where I found this story about a guy in France who rented this GLE for a Wedding, and got over-excited going around a roundabout.  Here's the YouTube version:

Le cercle de la sorrow.

Why Would a Priest Need a Four-Door Car?

This unusual story from Autoguide caught my eye today.

It is about a blue 1976 Ford Escort coming up for auction.

My Dad had one of those.

Only it wasn't blue.

And it was only a Popular as opposed to this GL:

It only had two doors and had the more common round headlamps.

 

But the square lamps and extra doors on this particular Escort shouldn't justify an estimate of $300,000.

 

And the seller allegedly paid $690,000 for it in 2005.

 

But go back a couple of owners from him and you get to Pope John-Paul II.

 

So this car may be unique - or at the very least, extremely rare, in that it is a car that has been owned and driven by an actual saint.  I'm certainly not aware of Mother Teresa pootling about Calcutta in a Hindustan Ambassador.

 

But, despite all of the interesting information in the article, I am still left wondering, Why would a priest need a four-door car?

Executive Fails to Execute Manouevre

It's the second Detroit IndyCar race this weekend.  Someone has decided that GM’s Head of Product Development, Mark Reuss, can drive the Pace Car as the racers prepare for the start.

 

So, in an interesting development for this particular GM product -

 

he crashes it...

Oh Dear.

 

He nearly took out the following IndyCar too.  The story is here from Autoguide and here's the video:

Autoguide are looking at it from the "all publicity is good publicity" angle -

"According to Apex Marketing Group, the exposure that Chevy got during the second Indy race of the weekend, the one in which the ZR1 crashed, was worth more than 70 times more than the exposure it got at the weekend’s first race, on Saturday, during which the ZR1 didn’t even crash a little bit."

This may well be true but Mark Reuss looks quite a bit of a prat right now.

Pace Cars (AKA Safety Cars) in most motorsports are usually driven by people with some sort of racing (or test-driving) experience.

They are often deployed to slow down the race after a crash.

This is technically what happened here.

Apart from the experienced driver bit.

And the safety bit.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Yesterday, The BBC told us that Matt LeBlanc will be leaving Top Gear.

That's a shame.  I liked him in that role.  Even when he said "Top Gear" with the emphasis wrong.

 

We've still got him for the next series though - so there's no need to worry just yet.

 

Although the BBC have already started speculating about his replacement.

 

Bit soon I think.

 

Strictly speaking, they don't actually need to replace him - but three presenters does seem to work very well for this type of show.

 

They could give a bigger input to Eddie Jordan and/or the lovely Sabine Schmitz.

 

The speculation currently includes Jodie Kidd - yes, I'll give that a thumbs up.

 

There's also Guy Martin - I could see that being OK.

 

There's also Dermot O'Leary and Rebecca Jackson.

 

No thank you.

 

Maybe they should look elsewhere within the cast of Friends:

Now I really like Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston but I'm not sure of their motoring pedigree.  While I quite like Lisa Kudrow, her character Phoebe annoyed me beyond belief so it's a no from me.

 

No, we need to look elsewhere within the world of US sitcoms.

 

Frasier? How I Met Your Mother? Big Bang Theory?

 

Ah, got it!

 

A right-wing Clarkson-esque elderly idiot: