The Mercedes Problem

For me there is one simple truth in life, cars are the greatest and best invention of all time. I love everything about them, the sight, smell, sound, and feel. Most people never really think or know what it takes for their car to move but when you look at it closely its a masterful symphony of metal moving at incredible speeds and precision. Now as far as the different car companies are concerned, you have 4 main regions where they come from: the US, Japan, Korea, and Europe (here in the sates that mostly means German and Swedish), and as far as I am concerned, the best ones come from Germany with one exception, Mercedes. Ok ill admit that Mercedes does make some of the best looking cars consistently every year but that is really all that they have going for themselves. Just like all other high performance companies, Mercedes is deeply imbeded into racing especially Formula 1. For anyone who doesn't know what F1 is, it's the most advanced form of cars and racing on earth and mercedes is one of the builders and to put into perspective how crazy F1 it cost 10,000,000 euros (around $15 million) to make a F1 car to go 0:00.1 second per lap faster so naturally since a car powered by a Mercedes engine that won last years world championship would translate to Mercedes having AMAZING street cars....... not the case. But for some reason, when it comes to designing and building they just don't seem to use any common sense. Their latest equation for building a good car is (to much weight + way to much power - suspension + way over priced) x cool body = freaking awesome car, but that equation doesn't really work. This is proven in the SLR McLaren and the entire black series, they are all really powerful, really fat, and in comparison to cars of their level, still over priced and slow as hell, and to put the nail in the coffin, they don't even offer a manual transmission on ANY of their cars. So to conclude, Mercedes looks cool and thats about it and if you want a fast car, get a Bimmer or a Porsche.