Great video but this does seem somewhat of an over-reaction
We’re justifiably proud of our video of the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black (and only one set of very expensive tyres was injured in the making of this movie).
So we were delighted that it attracted nearly 100,000 views in the first two days after it was uploaded to the Mercedes-Benz USA site.
Nevertheless we were surprised at some of the reactions of our American cousins. Clearly they’ve never heard of British stiff upper lip…
Read MoreYears ago, one of the great pleasures of a lazy Sunday was spending hours devouring the Sunday Times from cover to cover. Sadly, those days are long past as now the ST devotes most of its space to third-rate ‘slebs and vulgar, superficial features such as last weekend’s Rich List.
1994 Vauxhall Omega – good in its day despite bland styling
But there is still intelligent and thought-provoking weekend reading to be found, in the Weekend FT, a publication that still manages to amuse, interest and surprise in roughly equal measures.
Best of all last weekend was a feature on the history of “Lunch with the FT”, a series that’s been running since 1994 and which hopes that during the course of a leisurely and pleasant lunch, the subjects of the interviews are likely to relax a little and perhaps give a little bit more away than they would in a formal face-to-face overseen by hawk-eyed PR people.
Interestingly, it all came about thanks to Vauxhall.
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Stormy scenes during our Actros shoot
Sadly this trailer is not yet street legal
We’ve been filming the new Mercedes-Benz Actros truck under stormy skies in Suffolk, on the docks at Lowestoft and at the former RAF Bentwaters airfield. It’s an epic machine, one which has just won the Truck of the Year award – the fourth time an Actros has taken these top truck honours.
We learned a lot filming a 38-tonne truck for the first time. For example, the crew had to find a way of fitting a massive camera boom and hot head to our tracking vehicle because of the sheer size and height of the Actros. And we also found that in typically British inclement and changeable April weather, a massive truck is a pig to keep clean.
The only disappointment was that we couldn’t film it with the concept trailer that Mercedes have developed. Apparently it’s illegal because it’s too long under current UK Construction and Use regulations. But any commercial vehicle that looks that good can’t surely be banned for long?
Read MoreEaster was cancelled for INP Media this year as we were filming the all-new Eterniti SUV that is to be launched at the Beijing Motor Show later this month. It is due to be air-freighted out of Heathrow to China today so the only possible filming days were the Bank Holiday weekend.
Eterniti in the Hush House
This arrived at INP Media this morning. Just waiting for the early morning fog to burn off, then we’ve got three days of high-speed, long-drifting filming ahead of us. Life can be truly tough sometimes.
It’s the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series. Under that matt black bonnet there’s a 510bhp 6.2-litre V8 matched to the Mercedes 7G-Tronic paddleshift semi-auto gearbox. With 510bhp on tap and 457 lb.ft of torque, it’s apparently good for a 4.2 seconds 0-62mph time.
Its deeply burbling V8 sounds magnificent and it looks the business too thanks to massively widened wheelarches, motorsport-style coil-over suspension with adjustable dampers, 40mm wider track at the front than a ‘regular’ C63’s, and 79mm wider at the rear.
There are also carbon-ceramic front brake discs, an AMG limited slip differential, a radiator with 50 per cent more surface area and a massive rear spoiler. On the downside, there are no rear seats and we’ve also been warned that there are no spare tyres available anywhere in the country.
So not too many tyre-smoking episodes then…
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We only had the new Mercedes-Benz B-Class for two days which meant there was no time to find locations in Las Vegas. So we went to Southend-on-Sea instead. All went well until the crew was arrested after a diligent member of the public (aka a miserable busybody) phoned the police to say the cameraman was hanging out of the window of our shoot car to get the shot he wanted. He was, in fact, fully strapped in but our fine upstanding, law-abiding member of the public grassed him up for allegedly not wearing a seatbelt.
Click on the picture for our latest B-Class Promo
The recently-launched Volkswagen Up! Is a very likeable little car. A good part of that is because while it’s little in overall dimensions – just 3540mm long – it has a bright and airy cabin with the feel of a far bigger machine. It also rides and handles like a bigger car which is a tribute to VW’s chassis engineers.
VW Up! Great car, absurd punctuation.
For a driver who was nearly banned from F1, Jody Scheckter certainly went places in the late 1970’s, clocking up 113 starts with McLaren, Tyrrell and Ferrari, winning 10 Grands Prix and being crowned World Champion in 1979.
Jody Scheckter and Ferrari team mate Gilles Villeneuve in 1979
But it was a different story in what should have been his first full season in F1 in 1973. He briefly led the French GP before tangling with Emerson Fittipaldi who described him as a madman who doesn’t belong in F1. It got worse at the British Grand Prix when Jody was held responsible for one of the biggest Grand Prix accidents of all time, one which wrote of eight cars though thankfully with no major injuries to any of the drivers. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association demanded a life ban and this was only averted when McLaren agreed to rest him for the following four races.
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Bigger, smarter, more refined: The new Fiat Panda
I’ve just been driving the new Fiat Panda. Though its styling is broadly similar, it’s a little bit bigger than the model it replaces and far, far more refined. The larger cabin allows wider seats and this, along with impressive improvements to the ride and handling, makes it a far more civilised proposition than before.
Read MoreWe’re currently working with a motor industry client on a new film explaining a slick new sales process that should make the whole business of buying a new car in a dealer showroom both quicker and simpler.
Picaso's epic anti-war poster – Guernica
By their very nature, showrooms are large, open spaces – not unlike some art galleries I suppose – so maybe it’s not a co-incidence that the very day I’m working on a script for the voiceover of our production that I should read about a bizarre aspect of the history of what is perhaps Picasso’s most famous painting – Guernica.
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