1985 Mercedes-benz 190e on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Online Find of the Day: Lexus-engined Mercedes pickup is a vintage hybrid

You have to love someone who gets incredibly committed to a very weird idea. What you see for sale here is a right-hand drive 1971 Mercedes-Benz 220D in South Africa, but this old Mercedes is now converted into a pickup, complete with bed cover, and there's big secret under the hood, too.
The pickup conversion appears well done based on seller Sedgefield Classic Cars' photos. Even the tonneau cover fits well. You could almost believe that this Mercedes lived its life as a Chevrolet El Camino-like pickup from the very beginning.
However, the rear-quarters conversion might not be the weirdest thing about this Mercedes. The original diesel is gone from the engine bay in favor of a Lexus V8. It seems really odd to pop the hood and find a Japanese mill in this German car, but the photos make it look like a fairly well performed swap. So, bravo to the crazy thinking. According to the seller speaking to Autoblog by email, "as far as we can establish, this was done a few years ago, with all Lexus components."

Watch this perfectly nice Mercedes get crushed by a front-end loader

In a world where the YouTube hoax continues to thrive, it's hard to know what to think of this little vid, but here are the facts as we know them: a coupe that looks like a first-generation Mercedes-Benz CLK gets crushed by a giant front-end loader. There you have it.
Our questions arise in the aftermath - we know industrial resource machinery is heavy, but the Benz gets squashed so flat we wonder if someone's trying to play a joke on us. We hear that the white coupe may have been the heavy-equipment operator's foreman's car, but who knows? The on-camera interview seems awfully conveniently placed, yes? See for yourself in the video below and then leave us your thoughts in Comments.

Mercedes A45 AMG in downhill battle with slipstream skateboarder

We're told it takes "performance, control and expression" to pilot a longboard skateboard down a mountain road, and that those happen to be the same values embodied in the Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG. That's how the two came to be combined in a black-and-white short film called Silver Slipstream.
There's no talking, no engine note and no color, just some music, a 'boarder and a car on a long cruise down the Franschhoek Pass in the Western Cape of South Africa." Despite that, it's actually a pretty entertaining video of the latest Mercedes-Benz hot hatch married with extreme sports. You can watch how it all goes down in the video below.