Monroe Oespectrum Premium Strut 71456 on 2040-parts.com

First Sight: Mercedes-AMG GT

“If I was to buy any sports car that wasn't a Mercedes, it'd be a Porsche 911,” says Mercedes' head of design, Gorden Wagener. “But when you see the two cars together, we think ours has the edge.” He's talking about the new Mercedes-AMG GT, a front-mid engined, two-seater sports car that's unashamedly aimed at higher-end 911s, and we've come to see it at Mercedes' Sindelfingen studio.  The GT replaces the larger SLS, and is seen by Wagener as the best example yet of his 'sensual purity' design philosophy: “The SLS is very much [he gestures] line, line with a surface in between. With the GT we started with the surface and worked to refine and reduce the number of lines.” Elements of the SLS's platform have been carried over, so the GT measures the same 1,939mm wide.

One Lap of the Web: Dying wishes, Euro cars and worst traffic jam in history

We spend a lot of time on the Internet -- pretty much whenever we’re not driving, writing about or working on cars. Since there’s more out there than we’d ever be able to cover, here’s our daily digest of car stuff on the Web you may not otherwise have heard about. If you’d like to start the day off with a good cry, read about 17-year-old Zach Sobiech over at Autoblog.

Saab back online as NEVS rebuilds the Saab Brand

The Saab website has now come back online with NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden) outlining its plans to rebuild the Saab Brand. Back in September the long-running Saab Saga was finally concluded, with the sale of what’s left of Saab after Victor Muller’s  little adventure saw Saab left as nothing more than another defunct icon brand from the annuls of motoring history, with NEVS taking control of Saab. The plan is to build a range of electric cars in Trollhattan and China, initially based on the Saab 9-3 platform but eventually developing the Phoenix platform in to the basis for Saab’s future.