#S500

Uber wants to eliminate drivers from its operation, but the ride-hailing service reportedly just purchased an armada’s worth of Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans that don’t yet have fully autonomous capability.

On Friday, Reuters reported that sources at both companies told the German publication Manager Magazin that an order had been made by Uber for “at least” 100,000 S-Class vehicles.

The shelf price for that volume of Benz’s would be in the neighbourhood of $10 billion.

Yes, it is possible to buy an ugly, theft-victim 1998 Mercedes-Benz S500 and sell enough parts off it to get the purchase price under 500 bucks. No, it is not possible to win a weekend-long endurance race at a twisty, technical track with a monstrous, bloated, ungodly complex luxury sedan… yet the Team Opulence—We Has It S500 has done just that. For the second time.

All this endless speculation as to whether Honda will someday build a real RWD pickup: they already did, in 1963. And in that inimitable Honda way, it stood the world on it ears: DOHC, four carbs, 30hp from 360cc at 8,600 rpm, 60 mph top speed. As an antidote to the mild-mannered Hondas sent our way in the seventies and early eighties, like the gen1 Prelude, the T360/T500 trucks were anything but boring. But the story of how this eminently practical little truck ended up with the engine from Honda’s crazy little S360 sports car is a wild tale only Honda could spin.