German Car Zone

Do Germans call petrol "gasoline" as well? What about the rest of us who just call it petrol?

Anyhow, about time they did it. The makers of more mundane cars and engines sometimes get complaints if they make their engines to run on premium fuel. However, Mercedes has little excuse. It's all about making it suitable for the intended market, and I'll be keen to see this engine make it throughout the range.

Hopefully it'll be entirely better than the port injection version - for example, VW's 2.0 FSI engine has received comment that it's more gruff and less refined than their non FSI engines.

They call it "Benzin". Guess where that name comes from.

Karl Benz?

Ha - is that the case?

- Isn't that interesting.

CBI doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Maybe they could have gone with "F" for fuel..

Actually, it's not. I thought it was but I did some checking and apparently it comes from Arabic. Well, showed what I know.

I don't think MB's priority for this engine was power, but actually fule consumption. Look at those figures for a 3.5l V6. Oustanding really!!

I have another prediction. Mercedes will announce direct-injection for the new V8s in 2007 for the 2008 model year cars worldwide.

Why do I say this?

There is no GL500/550 for the U.S. market, just a GL450 and there is no S450 at all. The S450 was metioned everywhere when the S500/550 was first driven, all saying that it would be in April with the S600. Now there is no mention of the S450. Secondly this new GL450 is behind in hp compared to the Land Rover Range Rover SC and Cadillac Escalade, two of its most important competitors.

What is Mercedes going to do?

They will lauch the U.S. market GL550 with the direct-injection version of the 5.5L V8 with about 410hp for the 2008 model year, sometime in summer of 2007. This puts it in line with 403hp Caddy and 400hp LR. Along with a S450 with about 366hp and a S550 with 410hp. This way the S450 is closer to the Lexus LS460 (projected 380hp) and the S550 has more hp than the LS460.

This way they don't lauch a GL550 now in the U.S. and then have to do it again for 2008 when the new direct-injection 5.5L V8 appears, only the GL450 will be superseeded. They'll get a bigger splash in the U.S. for waiting a year until the new direct-injection GL550 is ready. Ditto for the S450. In both instances this might leave a bad taste in the mouthes of this year's S550 and GL450 buyers, but technology marches on.

Wait and see this is what is going to happen.

The only thing I haven't figured out is which of the new V8s the R and M will get and when? There is no way MB is going to continue to build the M/R with the old 5L V8 past this summer. The CLS,E,CLK "500" models we all but know are going to get this new V8 as the SL just did. Question is will there be a R450 and R550 or just one them? Ditto for the ML, ML450 or ML550 or both?

M

There's a lot of words we use. By default, we call gasoline BENZIN. Other words relating indirectly to gasoline (or more directly to combustuble fuel) are TREIBSTOFF, BRENNSTOFF and VERBRENNUNGSTOFF.

in lebanon, the lebanese wor is benzine (lebanese is an offshoot of arabic melded with aramean, turkish, french, and syriac)