Ray Ho – 04/21/2019

Last week, Rusnak Mercedes Benz in Arcadia hosted the MBUX Experience where they invited about 300 guests to experience the new MBUX feature as well as introduced the new A Class and the updated GLE. For those of you not already know, MBUX, or the Mercedes Benz User Experience, is the new infotainment system featured in some of the new Mercedes models. It is a super wide screen cockpit with touchscreen operation. Besides the obvious navigation and infotainment goodies, the biggest buzz about it is the augmented reality technology and intelligent voice control. Don’t take my word for it, just ask “Hey Mercedes, …..?”. Do you think Alexa may get jealous?

At least a couple of hundred guests took advantage of the event browsing luxurious performance cars in the gorgeous showroom while enjoying complimentary foods and drinks from the Kogi and Boba Milk Tea food trucks. Power 106 DJs provided a more festive mood. Participant of the event after attending a few prescribed stations would receive a $500 discount toward a purchase of a new car. Of course this is another ad campaign. Why else would they encourage you to test drive the new A220 and GLE? Well I never turn down the chance to get behind the wheel so I took the short test drive in the A220 which starts at around $32K. My tester came with nice red leather accent and other options that pushed it north of $40K.  The A220 is a very competitive small luxury sedan with ample performance. Though I wish they had tightened up the steering a little. Or perhaps they reserved that for the upcoming AMG A35. Fingers crossed.

Car events are always fun.  If going to one per day is not enough, you could also have taken your own car to the autocross event at the nearby Santa Anita Race Track parking lot.  Aren’t we lucky to be in sunny L.A.?