If you're going to fall, pick the right car...

Parking attendant survives three-story fall in SUV


BY Simone Weichselbaum, Henrick Karoliszyn and Bill Hutchinson

DAILY NEWS WRITERS



Tuesday, April 21st 2009, 1:23 AM



Savulich/NewsA lucky parking attendant survived a harrowing three-story plunge out an East Village car garage window Monday, but his customer's new luxury ride was totaled. Related NewsA lucky parking attendant survived a harrowing three-story plunge out an East Village car garage window Monday, but his customer's new luxury ride was totaled.



The valet, whose name was not immediately released, walked away from the bizarre 3:30 p.m. accident at the Hertz garage on E. 13th St. at Fifth Ave., witnesses said.



He was taken to St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan as a precaution, but officials said it appeared he suffered only bumps and scratches.



"I just hope the guy is okay. That is all I care about," said Eli Yedid, 36, who leases the now-wrecked 2009 Mercedes-Benz GL450 SUV. "One phone call, I can get a new car."



Yedid said the attendant accidently put the car in reverse, crashed through a 15-foot-by-12-foot plate-glass window at the rear of the six-story garage and went for an unexpected 25-foot drop.



The silver, $70,000 SUV, which Yedid began leasing last month, landed atop a second-story courtyard of an adjacent New York University administration building, which had to be evacuated.



"It was like a rumbling," said NYU staffer Dan Malone, who was working in his fifth-floor office next door to the garage when the accident occurred. "I didn't just hear it, I felt it."



Another NYU worker, Ron Farrell, said he, too, was drawn to his window by a "big crash" and saw the driver walking away.



"He got out of the car and walked like 20 feet," said Farrel.



Jim Kerr of the NYU Department of Emergency Management said the SUV landed in a vacant and seldom-used courtyard. He said a crane was being brought in to remove the vehicle.



Yedid, who lives in Greenwich Village and owns the Cutie Pie Baby clothing company, said his wife, Adele, was downstairs with their three children waiting for the attendant to fetch the SUV when the accident happened.



"She is pretty shaken up," Yedid said.




This is some amazing crash testing, the type one might not anticipate, maybe, but that which leaves us grateful the engineers design the cars to be so strong in the first place, to handle whatever life throws at us in the second place.

Small Diesels. Finally! Thank you Mercedes-Benz! GLK and C-Class

After fielding queries from folks who'd rented them in Europe, "How come we don't get the small Diesels here in the US?", I finally have an answer. They're coming! In 2012 and 2013 to be exact. This is a very good thing. Mercedes-Benz invented the Diesel engine over 80 years ago, and it is still the best way to make a fuel-efficient, torquey and exceedingly robust engine for motorcars and trucks. One of the reasons diesels have been hard to get here in the US is that they are so popular in Europe, the engines are all sold out.
Well, we finally have our own allotment coming, and I say "Hooray!"

From wardsauto,

"Mercedes-Benz USA confirms the diesel version of the GLK compact cross/utility vehicle for the U.S. market in 2012. The company also noted that the next-gen C-Class will feature diesel availability right from the start when it arrives in 2013.


In a conversation with wardsauto, Ernst Lieb, Benz’s U.S. chief said that the diesel variant will be followed by a diesel version of the next-generation C-Class sedan just one year later. The company plans to power both the vehicles by a 2.2-liter four-cylinder engine bearing the automaker’s Bluetec title for clean diesel powertrains.

Apart from the GLK compact cross/utility vehicle, the company’s line up with diesel engine for the coming years include diesel options include the ML and GL-Class SUVs, the R-Class crossover and the 2011 model year E-Class sedan.

According to wardsauto, through October, Mercedes U.S.-market sales were tracking 13.7% ahead of the same point in 2009."

via wardsauto

The Biome; an organic car that grows itself. Only from the visionaries at Mercedes

Dream new Mercedes-Benz Biome - the car at one with nature


Visionary brilliance or flight of fantasy? Reap what you sow, say Mercedes-Benz engineers about their new Biome concept car, making its debut at the LA Auto Show.

The Mercedes-Benz Biome is made from an ultralight material called 'BioFibre'

by David Williams 11:39AM GMT 19 Nov 2010

We’ve seen some weird and wonderful concept cars at Telegraph Motoring, but this one takes the cannabis flapjack.

Owing more, some might say, to the realms of psychedelia than the accepted norms of car design, the Mercedes-Benz Biome is billed as an "ultralight vehicle at one with nature".

The brains behind the car - entered in the Los Angeles Design Challenge, where aspiring designers partner with carmakers to envision the future of mobility - say it will be created and function in "complete symbiosis with nature". And they’re not just talking about squirting some converted chip fat into the fuel tank.

The Biome, they say, will be grown in a "completely organic environment" from seeds sown in a nursery; a Mercedes-Benz nursery. Out on the road the car will emit not a cocktail of noxious gases, but pure oxygen. And at the end of its life-span it won’t be dragged off to the local dump to be dismantled in a pool of oil - it will be composted. Or used as building material.

“We wanted to illustrate the vision of the perfect vehicle of the future,” said Hubert Lee, head of the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design Studios in Carlsbad. “The Biome is a natural technology hybrid and forms part of our earth’s ecosystem. It grows and thrives like the leaves on a tree.”

It will, he says, be made from "BioFibre" and weigh just 875lbs (397kg). BioFibre, you see, will be grown from proprietary DNA in the MB nursery, where it will collect energy from the sun and store it in a liquid chemical bond called BioNectar4534.

The trip deepens: the interior of the Biome will grow from DNA contained in the Mercedes star on the front of the vehicle, while the exterior grows from the star on the rear. To accommodate specific customer requirements, the MB star will be genetically engineered, allowing the vehicle to grow accordingly.

Trees will help in the process too. They will be equipped with "special receptors" that collect solar energy, turning it into BioNectar, say the team from MB.

To me, the most amazing thing about this car is that at some point in the future, some of the concepts contained in it will be on every Mercedes going down the road. And the future is not far off.

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