Camco Rv Air Conditioner Cover A/w 45391 on 2040-parts.com

New Mercedes A45 AMG has 105 years of 4WD on its side

With the new Mercedes A45 AMG on the horizon – complete with 4WD – Mercedes chart the history of all wheel drive on their vehicles. We tend to think of 4WD road cars as a modern innovation, and certainly very few 4WD road cars hit the road in a mainstream way much before the 1980s (the Jensen FF was hardly mainstream before someone points out that was in the 1960s). But the history of 4WD goes back, certainly in the case of Mercedes, a surprising 105 years when Daimler built the Dernburg-Wagen, a 4WD vehicle that not only got all-wheel drive but all wheel steering too.

Audi rolls out A3 lineup at the Los Angeles auto show

There's something about German automakers and model proliferation—it seems that if there is a niche to be filled, no matter how vanishingly small, a vehicle will be devised to fill it. If no niche is extant, they'll simply invent one, which is how we wound up with the unprompted X6. Audi's new A3 lineup, which debuted at the Los Angeles auto show and will begin its 18 month-long North American rollout spring 2014, seems incredibly rational by comparison.

How Mercedes sees into the future

Mercedes' crystal ball is named Alexander Mankowsky. At 56, he's dressed for CES in khaki trousers and a leather vest, with thin glasses perched on a round face; his frizzy white hair resembles what Einstein's would if he were caught in a wind tunnel. He might be a long-distant uncle, or he might be Doc Brown, fresh from the DeLorean.