125th Anniversary of the Automobile: Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler put the world on wheels

The world marks the 125th anniversary of the invention of the automobile on Jan. 29. Karl Benz filed a patent for a three-wheeled vehicle driven by a gasoline engine in Mannheim, Germany, on that day in 1886, the same year Gottlieb Daimler completed his motorized carriage in Cannstatt, Germany.

Spied: Mercedes-Benz SLC AMG? UPDATED

LATEST UPDATE Mercedes-Benz’s AMG performance car off-shoot has kicked off public road tests of its eagerly awaited new sportscar, which is planned to go on sale in North America in early 2015. Smaller and more affordable than the existing SLS AMG, which the new two door liftback will indirectly replace in the German car maker’s line-up, the new car is planned to compete directly with the Porsche 911, both on price and performance. The coupe model, caught here exiting AMG’s engineering headquarters on the outskirts of Stuttgart in Germany yesterday in the first round of durability testing, will proceed a convertible version of the front-engined, rear-wheel drive sportscar due out in 2016, with an expected price tag of around $100,000 in the US.

2013 Maserati Quattroporte night testing (video)

Maserati has released a video of the 2013 Quattroporte out night testing ahead of a Detroit Auto Show public debut. The new Quattroporte is bigger and more powerful than the current model and leaves Maserati room to introduce a smaller version – the new Maserati Ghibli – to take on the sports saloons from BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar. To be honest, the video tells us little we don’t already know about the new Quattroporte (except perhaps that it has frameless glass in the side windows), but it does indicate how keen Maserati are to keep the new Quattroporte’s PR momentum on the move ahead of its debut.