Wheels: Placing Reality on Hold, at Least Temporarily, in a Ferrari FF

From Game to Reality: The Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision GT Concept

“This is the future of Mercedes-Benz design,” Gorden Wagener, vice president for design at Daimler, said as he introduced the car at the Los Angeles Auto Show, where press previews began on Wednesday, simultaneous with its unveiling at the Tokyo motor show. “This car, or elements of it, will make its way into production.”

He added that the AMG Vision GT embodied the company’s design philosophy.

“The design of this concept car reflects to extreme effect the perfect symbiosis between emotional, sensuous contours and intelligently presented high tech,” he said.

Mr. Wagener said the car’s futuristic shape was actually inspired by an old, storied Mercedes racecar: the 1952 300 SL, which won the Carrera Panamericana an endurance race in Mexico — that year.

“The grille is straight from that car, although this one lights up with variable-pattern LEDs,” he said.

Aside from the Vision’s come-hither styling, an enthusiast will probably be drawn in by its planned powerplant, An AMG-tuned twin-turbo V8 engine producing 585 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. (The show car was actually powered only by an electric motor to move it around the convention center.)

With an aluminum body and components of carbon fiber, the Vision GT weighs in at just over 3,000 pounds, according to Mercedes. Mr. Wagener said that the power-to-weight ratio would be about 5.2 pounds per horsepower.

“An unrivaled figure in the super sports car segment, and one that guarantees exceptionally dynamic performance,” Mr. Wagener said of the car, which was developed jointly by teams at Mercedes’s advanced design studios in Sindelfingen, Germany; Carlsbad, Calif.; and Como, Italy.

The Vision GT is on display at the Los Angeles auto show next to a Gran Turismo 6 video game that showgoers can play to experience a computer-generated sensation of the concept car’s projected performance.

From Game to Reality: The Mercedes-Benz AMG Vision GT Concept

“This is the future of Mercedes-Benz design,” Gorden Wagener, vice president for design at Daimler, said as he introduced the car at the Los Angeles Auto Show, where press previews began on Wednesday, simultaneous with its unveiling at the Tokyo motor show. “This car, or elements of it, will make its way into production.”

He added that the AMG Vision GT embodied the company’s design philosophy.

“The design of this concept car reflects to extreme effect the perfect symbiosis between emotional, sensuous contours and intelligently presented high tech,” he said.

Mr. Wagener said the car’s futuristic shape was actually inspired by an old, storied Mercedes racecar: the 1952 300 SL, which won the Carrera Panamericana an endurance race in Mexico — that year.

“The grille is straight from that car, although this one lights up with variable-pattern LEDs,” he said.

Aside from the Vision’s come-hither styling, an enthusiast will probably be drawn in by its planned powerplant, An AMG-tuned twin-turbo V8 engine producing 585 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. (The show car was actually powered only by an electric motor to move it around the convention center.)

With an aluminum body and components of carbon fiber, the Vision GT weighs in at just over 3,000 pounds, according to Mercedes. Mr. Wagener said that the power-to-weight ratio would be about 5.2 pounds per horsepower.

“An unrivaled figure in the super sports car segment, and one that guarantees exceptionally dynamic performance,” Mr. Wagener said of the car, which was developed jointly by teams at Mercedes’s advanced design studios in Sindelfingen, Germany; Carlsbad, Calif.; and Como, Italy.

The Vision GT is on display at the Los Angeles auto show next to a Gran Turismo 6 video game that showgoers can play to experience a computer-generated sensation of the concept car’s projected performance.

Speedometer Top Speed Often Exceeds Reality

In reality, the bulbous subcompact's 106-horsepower engine and automatic transmission can't push it any faster than 109.

So why do the Yaris — and most other cars sold in the U.S. — have speedometers that show top speeds they can't possibly reach?

The answer has deep roots in an American culture that loves the rush of driving fast. The automakers' marketing departments are happy to give people the illusion that their family car can travel at speeds rivaling a NASCAR racer. And companies often use one speedometer type in various models across the world, saving them money.

But critics say the ever-higher numbers are misleading. Some warn they create a safety concern, daring drivers to push past freeway speed limits that are 65 to 75 mph in most states.

"You reach a point where it becomes ridiculous," says Larry Dominique, a former Nissan product chief who now is executive vice president of the TrueCar.com auto pricing website. "Eighty percent plus of the cars on the road are not designed for and will not go over 110 mph."

Last year, speedometer top speeds for new versions of the mainstream Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Malibu were increased from 120 or 140 mph to 160, which approaches speeds on some NASCAR tracks. The speedometer on the Honda Accord already topped out at 160. All are midsize family haulers, the most popular segment of the U.S. auto market, and like most new cars, have top speeds that seldom exceed 120 mph.

The Yaris got its 140 mph speedometer in a redesign for the 2012 model year, giving it the same top reading as the original 1953 Chevrolet Corvette sports car. Even the new Nissan Sentra compact has a 160 mph speedometer.

There are several explanations for the speedometers.

When people are comparison shopping, cars with higher speedometer readings appear to be sportier, and buyers favor them even though they have no intention of driving over 100. "People really want to see higher numbers," said Fawaz Baltaji, a business development manager for Yazaki North America, a large supplier of speedometers for auto companies. "It is indicative of a more powerful engine. There's a marketing pitch to it."

Although cars with high-horsepower engines can come close to the top speedometer speeds, most are limited by engine control computers. That's because the tires can overheat and fail at higher speeds. Tires now common on mainstream cars often can't go above 130 mph or they could fail. Many tires, especially on older models, have speed limits as low as 112. But that's still faster than most people will ever drive.

Automakers, in a push to cut costs, now sell the same cars worldwide and use the same speedometers in different cars all over the world. In China and Europe, governments require that the top number on speedometers be higher than a car's top speed. Cars sold in Europe, for instance, have faster top speeds than those sold elsewhere because they can be driven over 150 mph on sections of Germany's Autobahn. So to sell the same car or speedometer globally, the numbers have to be higher, said Kurt Tesnow, who's in charge of speedometer and instrument clusters for General Motors.

Also, some mainstream cars have some souped-up cousins that go faster and need higher speedometer numbers. A Chevy Malibu with a 2-liter turbocharged engine, for instance, can go 155 mph, far higher than the mainstream version. The little Toyota Yaris gets its speedometer from another Toyota model that's sold in other countries. "It's not that each speedometer is designed for that specific vehicle," said Greg Thome, a company spokesman.

Lastly, research has found that most people like the needle to hit highway speeds at the top of the speedometer's circle, said Yazaki's Baltaji. So the common freeway cruising speed of 70 to 80 mph is right in the middle on a 160 mph speedometer, he said.