TTAC 24 Hours Update: The Benz We Didn't Race And The One We Did

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Gorgeous, huh? She appeared in the night like a white-robed dream, resplendent in her restrained livery and requiring just four or five hours of work to be ready to race.

Problem was, the race had already started.



In the upcoming week, you’ll get to hear from each one of the participants in our ill-fated LeMons race, but here are the salient points: The SLC wasn’t ready to race, so we borrowed another Mercedes-Benz that was also not ready to race and a Jetta that probably should not have been racing. We got the Benz ready and it ran for 1.5 laps before it died. Then we got it ready again and it rained.

How many laps did we complete? Not very many. How did we finish? Not well at all. But our rookies have been appropriately blooded, so to speak, and there was more than the usual hilarity and stupidity involved. Watch this space.

Another thing that didn’t happen: our TTAC shirts didn’t arrive. When they do arrive, we will be awarding a total of ten shirts to randomly selected commenters in the original TTAC racing post.

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Felix Felix on Oct 01, 2013

    See....107 Classy

  • Autojim Autojim on Oct 02, 2013

    It came. Eventually. It saw. The track. Briefly. It conquered. That piece of grass in the back paddock next to Spec Racer Sports where it spent most of the event. At least there's a picture of Jack pretending to be sorting something underhood on the Rattan Jetta in Murilee's C/D writeup. :) It was great meeting everyone I hadn't met previously, and I'm really glad you didn't wreck my supervisor-for-the-weekend's Ruckus, DK. ;)

  • Theflyersfan I used to love the 7-series. One of those aspirational luxury cars. And then I parked right next to one of the new ones just over the weekend. And that love went away. Honestly, if this is what the Chinese market thinks is luxury, let them have it. Because, and I'll be reserved here, this is one butt-ugly, mutha f'n, unholy trainwreck of a design. There has to be an excellent car under all of the grotesque and overdone bodywork. What were they thinking? Luxury is a feeling. It's the soft leather seats. It's the solid door thunk. It's groundbreaking engineering (that hopefully holds up.) It's a presence that oozes "I have arrived," not screaming "LOOK AT ME EVERYONE!!!" The latter is the yahoo who just won $1,000,000 off of a scratch-off and blows it on extra chrome and a dozen light bars on a new F150. It isn't six feet of screens, a dozen suspension settings that don't feel right, and no steering feel. It also isn't a design that is going to be so dated looking in five years that no one is going to want to touch it. Didn't BMW learn anything from the Bangle-butt backlash of 2002?
  • Theflyersfan Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, and Kia still don't seem to have a problem moving sedans off of the lot. I also see more than a few new 3-series, C-classes and A4s as well showing the Germans can sell the expensive ones. Sales might be down compared to 10-15 years ago, but hundreds of thousands of sales in the US alone isn't anything to sneeze at. What we've had is the thinning of the herd. The crap sedans have exited stage left. And GM has let the Malibu sit and rot on the vine for so long that this was bound to happen. And it bears repeating - auto trends go in cycles. Many times the cars purchased by the next generation aren't the ones their parents and grandparents bought. Who's to say that in 10 years, CUVs are going to be seen at that generation's minivans and no one wants to touch them? The Japanese and Koreans will welcome those buyers back to their full lineups while GM, Ford, and whatever remains of what was Chrysler/Dodge will be back in front of Congress pleading poverty.
  • Corey Lewis It's not competitive against others in the class, as my review discussed. https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/cars/chevrolet/rental-review-the-2023-chevrolet-malibu-last-domestic-midsize-standing-44502760
  • Turbo Is Black Magic My wife had one of these back in 06, did a ton of work to it… supercharger, full exhaust, full suspension.. it was a blast to drive even though it was still hilariously slow. Great for drive in nights, open the hatch fold the seats flat and just relax.Also this thing is a great example of how far we have come in crash safety even since just 2005… go look at these old crash tests now and I cringe at what a modern electric tank would do to this thing.
  • MaintenanceCosts Whenever the topic of the xB comes up…Me: "The style is fun. The combination of the box shape and the aggressive detailing is very JDM."Wife: "Those are ghetto."Me: "They're smaller than a Corolla outside and have the space of a RAV4 inside."Wife: "Those are ghetto."Me: "They're kind of fun to drive with a stick."Wife: "Those are ghetto."It's one of a few cars (including its fellow box, the Ford Flex) on which we will just never see eye to eye.
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