I didn’t make it through the first time. It does
get funnier the second time if you have the stomach.

Things do not bode well for the auto makers.
I had hopes that BMW and Mercedes would not take
the last nickel out of quality. After seeing
the new Corolla interior, I have nothing but despair
for the entire industry.

The Chinese will not buy Japanese, and now I see
the Europeans have no love for them either. I
hope the “Japs” eat them alive. Toyota, do something
about the handling and interiors of your cars and
redeem yourself.

Edit: And this after the glowing MB review just posted… hmm!

What a waste of a car company. Just another reason to laugh at someone driving “it”. Number one? Please…

Too bad they wasted a nice opportunity with the lyrics.

Does anybody know the background on this, like who the band was, or if it was just a studio production? Is it really a ripoff of a U2 song as one poster says (I’m not a U2 fan, so I don’t know)? Is it a real song with real lyrics that one might be able to hear?

I’ve seen far more tasteless internal production (involving beating competitors over the head with an empty liquor bottle) from a major Canadian/American multinational corporation I used to work for long time ago. It was so disgusting, I had to walk out in the middle of it.

Leni Riefenstahl never died, M-B just kept her frozen until they needed her to do coporate videos.

I don’t think you have actually seen anything by Leni Riefenstahl. Her portrayal of the 1936 Olympic Games, “Olympia”, is still light years beyond the creative and aesthetic abilities of the hacks at NBC/ABC. And if you meant “The Triumph of the Will”, a British magazine The Economist stated in their September 2003 issue that it was that movie that “sealed her reputation as the greatest female filmmaker of the 20th century.”

There is a difference between mediocrity and greatness, even in propaganda.

This couldn’t possibly had been made by Mercedes.

It has to had been a spec initiative. Why? Well two reasons: (1) The previous generation S-Class in T.C. 2:58 as no business in this video that does not show any historical side of the brand (and a “previous generation” car is still to new to be historical anyway), and; (2) the end logo is a very old one (as of the end of 07, Mercedes-Benz had been using a 2D silhouette of the land, sky and see three pointed star). To the above I can add that despite any other criticism you can have for M-B, this company has never ever been known for bad taste and cheesiness, and there is plenty of both in this otherwise hilarious video.

Perhaps this is a hoax, like the VW suicide bomber commercial?

Anyhow, besides the inherint racism, I see 2 problems with the video which, frankly, are rather telling about M-B:

1. The spell the index as “C.S.I” — leaving off the final period. This is why Lexus continues to beat M-B in every quality survey — they don’t make stupid errors like this.

2. The video mentions BMW and Audi (and even Volvo) by name, but lumps other competitors with that racist label. Hasn’t M-B figured out yet that Toyota, Nissan and Honda are fierce competitors — not just with M-B — but also with eachother?

Not knowing your toughest competitors is a basic strategic blunder.

Luckily, I have real work to do, so I get out of attending most of that sort of claptrap.

Yes, I noticed that the female singer was completely inaudible. In Mercedes’ world, women are seen and not heard.

“Einstein” examined the new car in the film and kept blundering onto features that he was supposed to think were brilliant, like rain-sensing wipers (a big deal at the time). You can’t believe how broad and bad the comedy was. The German journalists thought it was hilarious, the Americans sat there stunned.

I’m not much of a Denise McCluggage admirer, but I have to say that as the lights came back up, Denise grabbed a mike and amid the several hundred journalists and M-B execs, which included the very top people in the company, ripped them a new orifice by saying that she thought it shameful that the culture that had produced Naziism (and its cars…) should so thoughtlessly mock a German Jew who had to seek refuge in the U.S. The Mercedes people were very quiet.

Later in the junket, there was a big dinner in Ulm, Einstein’s birthplace, at an alfresco restaurant on the Danube. Who should show up as the evening’s entertainment but the actual Einstein impersonator from the film, who kept doing incredibly stupid things as part of his act, climbing on tables, kicking plates to the ground and the like, all the while yelling, “I’M AN AMEEEERICAN! I’M AN AMEEERICAN!”

We never knew whether they rewrote the act as an answer to Denise’s rant or whether it was just German humor.

How many times do they show some corny shot of a wanker wiping the side of the car.

It is funny, but now I’ve got that song stuck in my head… Excuse me while I search YouTube for It’s a Small World.

And I agree: David Hasselhoff would have been a much better fit for this.