Mercedes-Benz Releases UK Pricing on New SLK 55 AMG

The most powerful production SLK of all time, the new 2012 SLK 55 AMG, has arrived in Britain and is available for to order with an on-the-road price of £54,950 (equal to US$84,630 / €66,200).

Lying under the hood of the AMG-branded SLK is a naturally aspirated, direct-injection V8 engine with a displacement of 5.5-liters that produces 421-horses at 6,800rpm and 540Nm (398.2 lb-ft) of peak torque at 4,500rpm.

A seven-speed AMG SPEEDSHIFT 7G-TRONIC PLUS automatic transmission drives the rear wheels with Mercedes laying claims to a 0-62mph (100km/h) sprint time of 4.6 seconds and a restricted top speed of 155mph (250km/h).

The roadster model's combined fuel economy is 33.6mpg UK, with CO2 emissions of 195g/km.

Among other standard features, the SLK 55 AMG comes equipped with Nappa leather upholstery, 18-inch five-spoke alloy wheels, an Intelligent Light System, COMAND Online with Media Interface and a DAB digital radio.

On the options list there's a special AMG Performance Package with revised suspension and brakes with a rear differential lock (£4,105) and the AMG Driver’s Package that removes the speed limited and includes attendance at an AMG ‘Power and Passion’ driver event (£2,755).

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C&D Nabs Official 2014 Volvo XC90 Design Proposals

By the admission of Volvo, the XC90 is a "newcomer" in the luxury SUV market, and which began in 2002 - five years after Mercedes-Benz M-Class and three years later than the BMW X5.

However, Volvo says the XC90 has become the "most valuable export product of Sweden", record sales of 85 000 points in 2005 and will bring about 6.2 billion dollars by year's flagship. The United States has been the market leader in the XC90 38 800 units sold in 2004 and 36 200 in 2005.

But nine years is a very long time in the automotive industry, and even though Volvo SUV was updated at least three times in 2007, 2009 and 2011, the competition advanced. Meanwhile, the Swedish company has changed hands when it was sold by Ford to Geely, which is currently developing XC90 replacement.

While the second generation XC90 are linked to another "backwards" as it is in the early stages of development and is not intended to hit the market until 2014.

Car & Driver, visited Volvo's Design Studio in California just before the Los Angeles Auto Show, which the Swede has little to show other than the concept prototype.

There, the magazine has a vision of four drawings that describe the various design proposals for the new XC90. One of them is a blow to, and incorporates the new "face" in advance for that concept.

The other three images are three quarters behind sketches and although they are similar, they vary considerably in many details of the shape of the tail lamps of the size and angle of the pillar C.

The people at Volvo would not comment on which of the four is the closest to the green light, but they revealed that the new XC90 is the first model of the company to use the new architecture scalable platform - possibly with the system of kinetic energy recovery currently being tested by the manufacturer.

The leaders of the Swedish company has also told the magazine that the 2014 driver line-up XC90 is composed of four cylinders (probably turbo), according to the trend driven by the regulations more stringent emission reduction.

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Hyundai Genesis won’t get all-wheel drive until next gen

According to the sleuths at Car and Driver, the current Hyundai Genesis won’t come with all-wheel drive. Instead, buyers will have to wait until at least 2014 before the traction-adding tech shows up on the company’s luxury four-door. That may also mean that the Genesis Coupe and the lengthy Equus will miss out on all-wheel drive for another few years until the Korean automaker can come up with a refreshed platform. Hyundai CEO John Krafcik has long made it clear that the Genesis twins and the Equus would receive an all-wheel drive option in the future, but we were hoping that we’d see a variant of the refreshed-for-2012 model that churns from all four wheels.

As Car and Driver points out, the Genesis Sedan has seen fairly strong sales since its introduction, and the addition of all-wheel drive will likely help the model inch ever closer toward that magic 30,000 unit-per-year mark. Unfortunately, with at least three years before an all-new model touches down, buyers will have to content themselves with the rash of more powerful engines, a reworked suspension and refined visuals that Hyundai recently unveiled.

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