I try not to critique people in their decisions, so long as those decisions do not harm me, any other living being, or society as a whole, like most halfway decent people should do. But it’s time someone stepped in and tried to figure out what is going on at Mercedes, because whatever it is, it isn’t right.
We all know Mercedes has a long-documented history of calling vehicles that are not coupes “coupes,” even trying to justify it by calling them “four-door coupes,” like they’re fancy or something. But coupes do not have four doors. It’s an atrocity to the public, and Mercedes, as well as other automakers, should be tried for global treason for ever thinking to misuse the word. But, somehow, things have gotten worse. As pointed out by friend of Jalopnik Kevin McCauley on Twitter, Mercedes is now calling its vans “sedans.”
No, really, it is referring to the V-Class—which has a literal “V,” like “vans,” in the name, and is a literal van—as “the spacious sedan with the star.”
Oh, sorry, was that it for you? The final straw? Did you die?
Same. See you in Hell.
The V-Class is even listed under the under the “Vans” section on the Daimler media website, because it’s a van. To rule everything out and give Mercedes the benefit of the doubt, I put “sedan” in Google Translate to see if it has another meaning unknown to my small brain. Google Translate said it does not.
Advertisement
But instead of letting this anger boil in me for the rest of eternity, I thought it might be best to look at this from another angle. What is Mercedes getting at here? Is it trying to tell us something? Is this some kind of sign? Has Mercedes been kidnapped, and is using code words to tell us something is wrong? Does Mercedes need help? Or is this, instead, just a vile marketing scheme?
It’s probably the latter, but all I’m saying is that if I were blindfolded and tied up in the back of a stranger’s vehicle and they wanted me to call my husband to tell him everything was alright, I would definitely say something like, “You know, the Mercedes AMG GT R is the best damn van on the market. Were you aware that you can fit a full eight adults in there, all with ample leg room? What a feat in van design. Don’t worry about me, honey, I’m in about as much trouble as that eighth person hopping into the GT R—none at all.”
Advertisement
That said, here are a few theories about what could be going on at Mercedes:
- The entire Mercedes organization has been kidnapped and is being held hostage in a giant underground lair on a remote, volcano-ridden island with a massive portrait the perpetrator’s face carved into the side of one of them, while the company is slowly turned into an operation to take over the world. The world has yet to realize this island is occupied by a super villain, despite obvious cues. We deserve to be taken over. The villain’s minions have allowed Mercedes limited access to its press materials and social-media accounts to keep the front of “all is well at Mercedes” going, thus the “sedan” and “coupe” cues trying to clue us all in that all is not well at Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton is a robot, enlisted to further keep the front going in Formula One. The real Hamilton is stuck in the underground lair with everyone else, including Valtteri Bottas, with no idea what’s going on above ground. Hamilton hopes his robot hasn’t been upstaged by anyone, while Bottas is actually fine with the break from racing in F1. He needed it.
- Mercedes has a group of rogue computer whizzes who constantly change the automaker’s websites and press materials to say “coupe” and “sedan” where least appropriate, and the team of counter-whizzes can’t keep up with them in order to get the correct information out there. Every time they change it back to “not a coupe” or “actually a van,” the rogue employees get them right back. It’s like a hacker movie, except involving tedious, generally boring elements of a car company.
- Mercedes has realized that naming vehicles things like the the “AMG C 63 S,” the “CLS 450 4MATIC,” or the “S 560 4MATIC” makes about as much sense to any normal, non-affiliated person as does reading HTML codes as if they were a novel, and is now going for shock value over arbitrary number and letter combinations.
- Everything is terrible and the world is burning down around us. This is Hell. We’re already here.
Leave a Reply
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
