Latest news with #MercedesGLC
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Yahoo
One killed, 5 hurt in four vehicle Grimes Co. crash
Grimes County, Tx (FOX 44) – A 35-year-old Montgomery man was killed Sunday afternoon when his motorcycle was involved in a crash with three other vehicles in Grimes County. Department of Public Safety Sgt Justin Ruiz said it happened about 5:23 p.m. on State Highway 105 and Grimes County Road 417. Sgt Ruiz said the preliminary investigation indicates a 2022 Subaru Legacy was going west on Highway 105 with troopers saying it failed to stay in its lane and went into the eastbound lane colliding with a 2022 Lincoln SUV that was going east. The Lincoln came to rest facing west in the eastbound lane when a 2016 BMW motorcycle going east struck it head on, catching fire. A 2018 Mercedes GLC the sideswiped the Lincoln. DPS troopers reported the operator of the motorcycle, identified as 35-year-old Rene Martin of Montgomery was pronounced dead at the scene by Grimes County Justice of the Peace Lester Underwood. The driver of the Subaru was transported to Memorial Herman-Texas Medical Center with serious injuries. The driver of the Lincoln was transported to Memorial Herman-Texas Medical Center with suspected minor injuries. The passenger of the Lincoln was taken to CHI St Joseph Regional Hospital in Bryan with suspected minor injuries. The driver and passenger of the Mercedes were both transported to CHI St Joseph Regional in Bryan with suspected minor injuries. The investigation into the crash was listed as ongoing on Monday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Audi profits are crashing, but its bestseller is back in best form
The pressure on Audi's best-selling car couldn't be higher. Just as the Q5 prepares to roll into European showrooms in its third-generation later in March, Audi's profits have driven off a cliff face. Company executives are pinning their hopes on the flagship Q5 bumping up sales after the company reported a massive 33% drop in profits due to weak demand and price wars in China. Expectations are also high after critics accused the German luxury brand of being less progressive than arch-rivals Mercedes and BMW. Priced from €52,300 at home in Europe, the refreshed family SUV from Ingolstadt squares up against the BMW X3, Mercedes GLC and Volvo XC60. The Volkswagen Group subsidiary has decided to play it safe and has exercised restraint in its design. The car's length remains at 4.72 metres, with a wheelbase of 2.82 metres and its appearance has only been slightly modified. The egg-crate, single-frame grille dominates and when it comes to the shape, Audi could be accused of resting on its laurels, except that customers expect this assertive format. The handsome Q5 still stands apart from some of its jelly bean rivals with a slightly crisper look and a new array of letters and numbers on the tailgate. There are also fancy light signatures to play with, but overall it shares much in common with the car it replaces. Those who want more get-up-and-go will need to wait a few weeks before the Q5 comes on stream again as a Sportback with a sloping rear. This variant offers a tad less space and costs an extra €2,500. For many years Audi has been synonymous with new technology and under the metal the Q5 is completely new. It is the first SUV to be based on the VW Group's so-called Premium Platform Combustion (PPC). Along with the latest suites of driver assistance systems, it gets the newest combustion engines, including a lusty 2.0 TDI diesel which is unfashionable but should appeal to traditionalists. The unit churns out plenty of torque and is well-matched to the seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. Both diesel and petrol engines are mild hybrids thanks to a pair of electric motor. One is fitted on the engine and the other on automatic gearbox and there is a 1.7kWh battery on board. Audi said it adds 24 hp and allows for limited electric-only running. Increased energy recovery during braking reduces consumption in the standard cycle to a respectable 5.9 litres per 100 kilometres. This equates to a range of 1,100 kilometres, which may provoke envy from owners of the larger and more expensive Q6 e-tron electric. Its most efficient version has a range of only 625 km. Even if regular breaks to recharge an electric car have become acceptable, few will long to get out of the Q5. The seats are comfortable and the distant hum of the diesel is more soothing than annoying. The chassis is relaxed and the steering provides just the right amount of feedback. This means that those with staying power will find it easy to empty the tank in one go. Audi also offers a two-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, which turns out 150 kW/204 hp, and the SQ5 as the provisional top model. It is powered by a V6 turbocharged petrol engine with 270 kW/367 hp and a top speed of 250 km/h. Audi said a plug-in hybrid version is in the pipeline as a Q6 alternative and it will also offer a degree of electric-only traction. Inside the new Q5, everything is new and yet familiar. As with all new models, Audi has opted for a curved, free-standing display with two screens for the driver and an optional third screen for the front passenger. Many of the switches are grouped together in control islands, for example in the door. If you can't find your way around straight away, just ask the integrated chatbot with artificial intelligence for help. In a car like this, the practical virtues are more important anyway, such as the sliding rear bench seat for customising legroom and, of course, the boot. At 520 to 1,473 litres, it is a little smaller than before, but can be used better. We obviously need new cars for new times, but with the Q5, Audi has come up with a car for its loyal following in this segment. It's an Audi that may also stop many hesitant customers from going wholly electric. After all, it is €10,000 cheaper than its battery-powered cousin. The concept with diesel and petrol drive is not sustainable and rather old-fashioned but it's a tried-and-tested recipe for the four rings - and that alone should keep it at the top of the sales chart.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Yahoo
Florida Troopers PIT And Flip Fleeing Mercedes
Read the full story on The Auto Wire Florida Highway Patrol troopers are notoriously brutal towards fleeing criminals, like the guys in this Mercedes GLC who were already fleeing from police. Once they join in the pursuit, you see in the dashcam footage they make quick work of chasing the German SUV down and pitting it out, flipping the thing on its troopers join in the chase, the suspects in the Mercedes apparently slipped away from Broward County Sheriff's Office Burglary Apprehension Team. In other words, these are bad guys who like to steal, so they had reason to run from cops. FHP uses some unmarked units instead of the usual black and tan patrol cars everyone recognizes to hopefully get the drop on the suspects as they keep changing direction after ditching deputies. You see troopers weave through dense traffic trying to get in position so they can spring their trap perfectly. After some frustrating moments, they spot their quarry and are able to get right up on the GLC before the suspect driver realizes what's going on. He slams on the accelerator, but it's too late. That's when the lead trooper PITs the Mercedes out, spinning it a full 180 degrees and up onto a sidewalk. The driver bails out and runs, but the front passenger doesn't skip a beat, sliding over and taking control of the SUV. Troopers have to chase the three suspects down again, doing yet another PIT maneuver. This time it's at a higher speed. The trooper who executes it gets the Mercedes off the road, and the top-heavy vehicle overturns, coming to a rest on its side with the roof against a tree trunk. The takedown is quick, brutal, and effective. This is why we wouldn't mess with FHP. Image via Scooper/YouTube Join our Newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube page, and follow us on Facebook.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Range Rover Velar
The Range Rover Velar may not be the industry-typical image of a mid-sized, mid-level SUV, but it is precisely that for JLR's luxury SUV arm - which tells you as much about Range Rover as a modern sub-brand as it does about the car itself. Now in middle age as a first-generation model, the car is a high-style alternative to the likes of the Mercedes GLC, BMW X3 and Audi Q5 - and its latest update, though a fairly mild one, turns up the dial on its designer SUV credentials just a little. Having been introduced to UK showrooms in 2017, the Velar was the model with which Land Rover really focused on style. JLR design supremo Gerry McGovern seized the opportunity of a blank canvas to create a car not simply to plug the hole in the model range between Evoque and Range Rover Sport, but to explore the potential of the Range Rover brand to appeal to customers looking for a really standout design - and who would value that design every bit as much as Range Rover's more traditional values of space, capability and luxury. It has sold well, and integrated within the Range Rover model range equally well, as its sibling models around it have themselves picked up a little of its reflected design star quality. Now, JLR has taken the opportunity to refresh its exterior a little, to improve its powertrain options slightly, and to reappraise its interior and infotainment technology rather more extensively. Under the skin, the Range Rover Velar remains unequivocally 'car based'. Its predominately aluminium platform is the same architecture used by the Jaguar XE and Jaguar XF, while the Jaguar F-Pace is an even closer blood relative. Naturally, four-wheel drive and Land Rover's Terrain Response system are both standard, even at the base of the line-up – but so, too, are four-cylinder engines, coil suspension, and a fairly low ride height (for a Range Rover, at least). At the other extreme of the derivative range, however, six-cylinder turbocharged engines promise plenty of Range Rover typical power, refinement and capability; adaptively damped, ride-height-adjustable air suspension adds plenty of dynamic versatility; and a petrol-electric PHEV version offers tax efficiency for fleet users. The Range Rover Velar line-up at a glance The UK-market Velar model range has been cut down a little, to two petrol and two diesel models, plus a four-cylinder petrol-electric PHEV. The P250 uses Land Rover's turbocharged four-cylinder Ingenium petrol, while the D200 use a similarly split 2.0-litre diesel motor. The D300 and P400 have latest-generation turbocharged straight-six Ingenium engines, while the P400e mixes an electric motor with a four-pot petrol engine. Trim levels kick off with the Velar S, progressing upwards through Dynamic SE, Dynamic HSE and Autobiography; and the car's richest items of equipment and more lavish cabin materials are reserved for the last two. Car makers tend to talk a lot about identities and design languages: but even if JLR had done neither, you'd have known that the Velar was a Range Rover like none before it when it first emerged in 2017. It had that unmistakable, super-sleek, show-car-with-numberplates look - and now, JLR has done little to interfere with a winning recipe. So in 2023, you could call the car's exterior design update pretty reductive, ironically enough. There are new headlights and tail-lights, a new radiator grille, reshaped bumpers, and some fresh exterior paint options - but the overall impact is subtle. This is the kind of update you might notice on a car you're following, or being followed by, after dark - but it'll take a keen eye otherwise. On the technical side, most of the Velar's engine range is all but unchanged. A fairly broad choice of mild-hybridised four- and six-cylinder combustion engines - both petrol and diesel - remain part of the car's armoury. The four-cylinder petrol-electric P400e plug-in hybrid, meanwhile, gets a larger drive battery, and a boost in tax-liability-defining electric range. Technically, the Velar is an entirely logical extension of the Range Rover line-up: more rugged than an Evoque, but less so than the Range Rover Sport or full-fat Range Rover. The mostly aluminium monocoque it sits on is the same as the Jaguar F-Pace's. There's a longitudinal engine in the front, driving through a ZF eight-speed gearbox to all four wheels. Predominantly, the driveline is the same as in Jaguars, so the Velar is a rear-drive car first and foremost, with a clutch at the gearbox that can push power to the front wheels as and when necessary. Which, in a car like a Range Rover, is a lot more than it ought to be necessary in 'lesser' off-roaders. There's no low-ratio gearbox, but there is plenty of ground clearance (up to 251mm), and Range-Rover-typical approach and departure angles and wade depth too, on cars with Land Rover's height-adjustable air suspension (which our Dynamic SE test car had fitted as an option). All of those numbers are worse than a full-sized Range Rover's but also superior to any other car in this sector. What you won't find on a big Range Rover, mind, but you will here, is a four-cylinder, mild-hybrid diesel engine from the JLR Ingenium line-up. It makes a pretty modest 201bhp, which isn't bad for a 2.0-litre diesel, but it motivates a car that's almost two tonnes at its lightest. It's the Velar's interior that's had the most attention as part of its mid-life update. Having originally come along before JLR started to roll out its latest Pivi Pro touchscreen infotainment system on cars like the Defender, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, the Velar now becomes the first JLR product with a new-generation Pivi Pro console that takes in even more functionality than previously. Within its various menu screens, the system integrates the car's climate control console, audio system controls and its terrain response controls – and that, in turn, has allowed another major paring down and tidying up of the Velar's transmission tunnel design. However, the end result, while sleek, looks sparse to the point of bareness. The old car's physical volume knob and ventilation temperature controls have been junked and the secondary touchscreen panel, of which they used to be part, disposed of entirely, replaced by a storage area and wireless phone charger. The upshot, rather predictably, is some unwelcome complication of the Velar's human-machine interface - although a sensible home screen design for the infotainment system, with useful permanent shortcuts along its lateral extremes, mitigates the fallout. You can hop between climate control, navigation, audio system and other menus easily, with one prod of your finger; and 80% of the inputs you'll need, claims Land Rover, are the work of only two prods. They are finger prods that require your full attention, however – not a quick flick of your gaze. They plainly distract you from the road more than reaching for a temperature knob that is always where you left it, and turning it, would. They're also prods on a curved touchscreen display that - however well placed, responsive, and attractively rendered - gets grubby and smudgy much quicker than some, because (without a separate physical cursor controller) you've got little option but to poke away at it - and often. It may be considered folly, after all, for luxury cars to shed too many physical secondary cabin controls, because every one is an opportunity to make your car feel heftier, more expensive and better engineered than the next. The updated Velar's gear selector is one of very few such opportunities retained - and, haptically speaking, it's a little bit light and insubstantial. Elsewhere around the cabin, in our lower-mid-level-trim D200 Dynamic SE test car at least, material cabin quality was a bit up and down. Wherever the pudgy padded fascia materials drove up the perceived standard, you could find harder, cheaper fixtures and finishes not far away. In a broader sense, the Velar's front seats grant a relaxed, semi-recumbent driving position that feels tall if less commanding than in a big Range Rover, or a Range Rover Sport. Visibility is typically good to most, if not all, angles - with bulky B-pillars intruding a little. There's plentiful oddments storage, too, and although rear leg room is not much more than adequate in this class (in truth, adults can sit comfortably behind adults, and how much air do you need in front of your knees?), the payback is that the boot is notably bigger than in some mid-sized SUVs. Diesel engines of all sizes are dying a drawn-out death throughout most of the car market, while they hang on in certain corners of it - the Velar's being among them. And the Velar's entry-level, 201bhp four-cylinder diesel is no embarrasment to it. The D200 may only have modest performance, but responsiveness and drivability are both good, and so the car feels assured in day-to-day driving, and picks up useful pace in fairly low-effort fashion on a light throttle load. Previous versions of JLR's Ingenium 2.0-litre diesel had some slow-shifting characteristcs, and tended towards a rather treacly, protracted step-off when getting going, but those quirks are now long behind the latest mild-hybridised versions, which are slick, feel torquey and generally respond very well to roll-on performance demands. All-round mechanical isolation is good but not brilliant. Work the D200 hard - as sometimes you'd need to with any two-tonne, 201bhp car - and it does get a little noisy and breathless, but not problematically so. Drive more moderately, though, and a rather un-Range-Rover-like real-world 50mpg is deliverable. Outright performance on paper is stronger than in the D200, meanwhile, in both of Land Rover's petrol Velars, in the six-cylinder D300 diesel, and in the P400e (which dips as low as 5.1sec to 62mph, according to manufacturer claims), so there are plenty of options for those who want something pacier. Out on the road, the Velar gives a more consistent impression than in other departments. As before, six-cylinder models, PHEVs, and Dynamic HSE trim cars all get adaptively damped, ride-height-adjustable air suspension as standard – and you can have it on a lower-tier four-cylinder car as part of JLR's £2225 'Dynamic Handling Pack' (as our test car did). Thus equipped, the Velar driving experience has plenty of plushness and impressive versatility. Choose Comfort mode and the car floats along gently and with a cocooning waft. Go for Dynamic mode instead and there's more weight about the controls, leaner and crisper responses to inputs and an understated sort of driver appeal in evidence that's easy to like. At all times, however, the Velar feels luxurious and supple. It doesn't have quite the mechanical or ride isolation of the latest-generation Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, but it's still cosseting - and it can clearly be an SUV you'll enjoy driving, as well as simply travelling in. It's easy enough for a keener driver to buy into this car's raison d'être after all, because in dumping the heavy off-roading hardware that most owners don't need in any case, Land Rover made way for a Range Rover that's better to drive on the road. And, while it clearly isn't a lightweight, the Velar does follow through. It's buoyant, cushioned and fairly quiet over the ground, but somehow in touch with the road and under constant and discreet control of its body movements at all times. Even on standard-fit M+S-type hybrid off-road tyres, it also has precise, incisive, medium-weighted steering and a strong and well-balanced grip level. In respect of both ride and handling, the Velar is very good, in short. In Comfort mode, it copes well with bigger intrusions at town speeds and feels genuinely luxurious. At A-road pace and on more uneven B-roads, it combines comfort and body control best when left in Auto driving mode, introducing the occasional shimmy of head toss and shudder of complaint from the body structure over really broken Tarmac in Dynamic mode. There's certainly an improvement in handling response and body control when you do select the suspension's Dynamic setting, though, because it allows the Velar to rein in its mass cleverly and to feel pleasingly crisp and rewarding when you hurry it along. And at no point does the suspension suffer from the noisy, hollow ride that you can find in air-sprung cars. It's not quite on the level of the bigger Range Rover and Range Rover Sport models for ride isolation, but still sets a competitive mark versus its rivals. The relatively languid directional responses and gathering body roll that have become hallmarks of the Range Rover driving experience over decades are present in the Velar's, too, when you drive it hard. Had JLR created a car without either, it probably wouldn't have felt like a Range Rover at all. But the Velar keeps a closer check on its body movement than its bigger siblings do and preserves a surprisingly well-balanced chassis for longer as you lean on it through corners. Both feats make it feel more like a driver's car and less like a tall, heavy, go-anywhere SUV. In Dynamic mode, there's certainly more than enough precision and poise here to prepare the Velar well for fast road use. Get to the limit of grip and you'll find the torque-vectoring system keeps it on line very faithfully as you power out of corners and its M+S tyres hang on to dry Tarmac surprisingly well. That the Velar is comparatively expensive ought to surprise no one. It opens for business as a four-cylinder P250 petrol well above £50,000, and you'll be paying north of £70k for a fairly well-equipped P400e PHEV - in a market segment where BMW X3s and Audi Q5s can still be snapped up for prices that start with a four. Strong residual values ought to make monthly finance deals on the car at least a little more palatable than those showroom sticker prices might suggest, though. This car remains clearly a product positioned at a premium even among 'premium SUVs', and for the style-led desirability on which it trades, as well as the on-board luxury, JLR will argue that it's value, and perhaps not entirely unreasonably. The Range Rover Velar is undoubtedly a car with more of the luxury star quality of its larger Range Rover siblings in some respects than it has in others. The impact and effectiveness of JLR's latest changes to it are a little debatable. In a context in which interior functionality is moving ever more wholesale onto touchscreens industry-wide, the Velar's changes in this respect are fairly well handled and don't create significant usability problems. But they do make for some secondary controls that are more distracting than they used to be. In terms of outright material quality, and in lower-level trim as tested, the car leaves a little to be desired for the richness you'd expect of a full-sized Range Rover. But dynamically first and foremost, and also in how it looks, it remains an SUV that stands out from its rivals in readily apparent ways. Its critics may claim it is an entirely superficial car, symbolic of everything that a Land Rover traditionalist might dislike about the new JLR. But, in more ways than one, they'd be wrong to do so. The Velar plainly has the luxurious air, the air-sprung comfort and the highly accomplished ride and handling to be considered superior to the premium-branded medium-sized SUVs whose proportions it roughly matches. In all three respects, it goes some way to justifying its very high price. And if you like the way the Velar looks, 'some way' may well be far enough. ]]>
