Mercedes Benz Automobile

Several years ago, while on assignment for a magazine, I participated in an experiment with Mercedes-Benz that involved my being wired up like a lab monkey and driving across the Austrian Alps in an E500, some 10 hours of hellbent berggeblitzen (not officially a German word). These biometric readings were later plotted against the car's telemetry in an effort to measure the effects of fatigue on my driving.

Imagine a used-car dealership with six-figure sticker prices, an inventory older than you are and access to parts that have been out of production since the early 20th century. That pretty well sums up the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, a 26,000-square-foot, multimillion-dollar shrine to all things Benz. It's a place where you can get an oil change for a 1955 300 SL sports car (the one with the famous gull-wing doors) or parts for a 1964 220 SE coupe.

If ever you needed a reason to shoot out the light in your garage, may I present the 2010 Mercedes-Benz GLK 350, a vivacious and elegant little ute disguised as a vandalized Subaru Forester. What's the deal here? The exterior is a veritable food fight of odd angles and curious proportions, fender swells and dissonant accent lines, and all of it buttoned by a hilariously oversized, nay, desperate grille.

EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX was a very big year. John Stith Pemberton invented Coca-Cola. Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty. King Ludwig II of Bavaria died, much to the delight of Bavarians. Also having a good year were mutton chops and diphtheria. And on Jan. 29, 1886, pioneering automotive engineer Karl Friedrich Benz was awarded patent No. 37435, for a Fahrzeug mit Gasmotorenbetrieb, an auto car with a gasoline-powered engine. L.A. would never be the same.

THERE are many things we do not know. We don't know if there will ever be peace in the Middle East. No one can say if physicists will find the elusive Higgs boson. We can't be entirely sure what the deal is with John Travolta. But we can say a priori that commemorative pace cars are the dorkiest vehicles ever made. Go ahead, check on EBay: There's a guy selling his black and silver 1978 Corvette with "Official Pace Car" and "62nd Annual Indianapolis 500 Mile Race" on the doors.

SOMEWHERE in Germany, rich guys are \o7ge\f7\o7schwinging\f7 around in their 400-hp, mega-dollar Mercedes-Benz SLK 55 AMG Black Series, the excessively excessive version of the company's yar little roadster. And yet, for reasons that remain mysterious (well, I suppose I could ask), Mercedes elected not to bring the first creation of AMG's "Performance Studio" to these blessed shores. Fine. See if I care. Jerks.

LET'S assume there's a bright side to the universe, a place where mercy and justice prevail, where the good are rewarded and the bad punished with equal alacrity. On this sunny shore, public school teachers make six figures, all stray kittens find good homes, and yard gnomes never get their little ceramic heads caved in. Do not look for the Mercedes-Benz CL63 AMG there.

On average, the angriest e-mails I get are from former Mercedes-Benz owners on the occasion of my saying something nice about the company's products. I imagine an irate reader pounding away at his keyboard in the wee hours of the morning, with a shiny Lexus in the driveway and a Stuttgart-made knife still quivering in his back. Allow me to gloss: "I can't believe you raved about the [insert gaudy hunk of German schteel here].