No Mercedes, you're doing it wrong

"sm70- why not Duesenberg?" (sm70-whynotduesenberg) 02/28/2015 at 12:24 • Filed to: None

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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, Mercedes managed to fool me twice in the span of about two hours, so I guess it’s shame on me. Mid-afternoon yesterday I was leaving school, and in the parking lot across the street I spotted something. It was a great big bus of a thing, but it was black, not yellow, and not students were lining up to board it. It had a Mercedes-Benz badge on it, still nothing groundbreaking. Then I noticed the back bumper. It wasn’t the back bumper any normal SUV would have. It was mostly vents and gills, like some sort of Storm Trooper helmet turned bumper. It had massive AMG wheels, sat low, and had massively flared haunches. I knew what I had spotted. The world’s fastest bus, the Mercedes GL63 AMG, a 550hp monster for only the craziest of the crazy. I immediately crossed the street to take a look. When I got close, I noticed that rather than saying “AMG” on the right rear like all AMGs do, it said, “4Matic”. The badge on the other side revealed that I had in fact been duped. GL550.

Apart from the badge, which on the AMG is also present on the front fender, the only other features to set the GL550 apart from the GL63 are the dual exhaust instead of quad. I quickly realized this, and made a mental note of how to distinguish the phony. And yet, two hours later, this time from the front and in white, I got tricked by a second GL550, which I felt with its massive grill and chrome splitter must surely be the mythical GL63. This isn’t counting the several times in the past when I’ve seen a GL550 and thought at first it was an AMG.

Here is the scope of the problem. At top is a GL550. You will not it looks very AMG-ish. Here is an actual GL63 AMG. It also looks very AMG-ish, with the badge and the exhaust being the only two distinguishing features. For reference, this is what a normal GL450 should look like:

It’s the same story around the front. The GL550 looks nothing like the pedestrian GL450, and exactly like the $120,000 AMG.

Some of you may say, “Ah, but this is good. The best kind of sleeper is one that you can’t tell from a normal model.” And I agree, but Mercedes has been doing it the other way around. They’ve taken a performance model, done it up, and then taken the same exterior goodies and thrown them on a normal model. I’ll grant you, the twin-turbo 430hp V8 in the 550 is very nice. But at least make the AMG appearance pack just that, and optional appearance pack, so we know that the owner of the car is fooling you on purpose (or just thinks it looks nice). Nearly all the German carmakers have done this for many years. Audi has the “S-Line” appearance package, and BMW has the “M-Sport”. But there are two crucial differences. One, these packages usually don’t really fool anyone. They range as to how good they actually look, but on whole they make the midlevel models look sporty without being trickery. Second, they are options. I’ve already seen that the GL550 is far more convincing than the others, but I should also note that from playing around on Merc’s website, it seems that this is the only way you can have a GL550. Other Mercedes models, and I’m sure other cars out there are guilty of the same thing, but the GL is the most recent and most blatantly obvious one that sticks out in my mind. So Mercedes, and anyone else who wants to make a normal car looks as tarted up as a rare, high-performance car, stop it, because this trivial, harmless, and generally no-big-deal “issue” has annoyed me to the point of writing a few angry paragraphs about it. Even though technically I’m the fool here.

Please. Think of the children.

nFamousCJ - Keeper of Stringbean, Gengars and a Deezul > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:32

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ultimate benzo sleeper van

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:36

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They were thinking of the kids when they built this crazy thing:

TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:40

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Reminds me of this GL63 AMG I saw a week ago. Only one I've ever seen and it was enormous compared to the small, evidently rich man climbing out of it.

Also reminds me of a schoolmate who used to get ferried around in one - millionaire's daughter. You might've heard of him, Bruce Rockowitz. They've gotten rid of the GL now. She now gets moved about in a Bentley Continental GT.

Textured Soy Protein > TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut 02/28/2015 at 12:42

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How are we supposed to know which one that is if we can't see the exhaust??? :p

TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut > Textured Soy Protein 02/28/2015 at 12:44

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BY THE POWER OF PERCEPTION, you can see that teensy 6.2L badge.

Alex B > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:44

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Lol, yeah my neighbor has a GL550, the amount of vents is too much.

Textured Soy Protein > TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut 02/28/2015 at 12:49

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I thought that's what it might've been, but for some reason Kinja turned the pic upside down when I expanded it, which threw me off.

Funktheduck > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:50

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Saw 2 GL63s this past week in the same day. Then I saw the 4matic and I did the same thing. My mind was primed for the AMG from the previous 2.

Funktheduck > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 02/28/2015 at 12:50

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Quoi?

Textured Soy Protein > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 12:51

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Oh wait, I just figured out another difference! Both have AMG split 5-spoke wheels, but the wheels on the 63 have ridges on the spokes.

TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut > Textured Soy Protein 02/28/2015 at 12:51

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Oh that's normal. If Kinja were to do anything right, we'd be having a crisis.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut 02/28/2015 at 12:54

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Which is odd b/c it's a 5.5.

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Textured Soy Protein 02/28/2015 at 12:56

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Indeed. I wonder if they sell both wheels on either of them.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > Funktheduck 02/28/2015 at 13:02

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He said think of the children, so I pointed out that they already had by building this, available with this package:

Funktheduck > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 02/28/2015 at 13:05

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I know. Didn't realize what car it was. I like it.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > Funktheduck 02/28/2015 at 13:27

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I do too. 355hp out of a 2.0 isn't too shabby.

duurtlang > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 13:31

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AMG minivans. What has the world come to? It is so heavy you'd need a commercial license to drive a very heavy loaded one (3500+kg) here.

Anyway, although I'm in Germany all the time I can't really remember seeing these whales. I've probably seen a few, but they didn't register. I bet most are diesels here.

Funktheduck > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 02/28/2015 at 13:32

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Considering I get 155 out of mine, nope, not shabby at all.

On the other hand mine will likely not suffer some sort of failure because of some sensor that costs $300 to replace.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > Funktheduck 02/28/2015 at 13:41

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This is true, and the fact that in 10 years they will be worth the same.

Alex Zapata > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 13:53

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Well, an explanation could be that they are doing a thing called AMG-Sport cars, I don't know if the GL550 is one of them, but if you see the back of the new C450 AMG it reads the same (though I don't think it looks the same as the 63 AMG) and it is a performance model, just one in the middle of a full-fledged AMG, for those of us who want a faster car but not all the fancy, ostentatious bits.

(Edit: Went on a quick search for images for dramatic enhancement, and realized that it does the exact same thing as the 63, ostentatious bits and all, and it looks sexy as fuck)

Think Audi: S-Line Packs

Mercedes: AMG Packs

I think BMW is planning to do something like this, started by the M135i and the M235i:

BMW: M Sport Packs

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sm70- why not Duesenberg? > duurtlang 02/28/2015 at 14:08

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They're not really minivans. The R63 was an AMG minivans.

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sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Alex Zapata 02/28/2015 at 14:10

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I totally get that, and I did mention all of that stuff in the rant.

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Arben72 > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 14:23

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I found one extremely easy to spot, haven't been fooled yet. I think it's the wide body, but maybe it's because I'd be a hypocrite otherwise as my merc is an amg package car.

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AMGtech - now with more recalls! > TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut 02/28/2015 at 21:10

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"V8 BI-TURBO" badge actually.

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AMGtech - now with more recalls! > sm70- why not Duesenberg? 02/28/2015 at 21:11

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They do not. The busier looking wheels are AMG only.

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TwinCharged - Is Now UK Opponaut > AMGtech - now with more recalls! 02/28/2015 at 22:15

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BRAINFART

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