What a crazy couple of days and it certainly feels like I’ve driven around the world and back again. I spent the last two days shooting some interviews at the introduction of the Mercedes-Benz E320 BLUETEC in Las Vegas. As car intros go, this was a rather remarkable event – and not just because of the venue, which was certainly very nice, but rather because of what the event was presenting to the public.

The MBZ Bluetec engine is the world’s cleanest diesel powerplant. I would suspect that for most Americans this would not register as a major automotive achievement, but when you see the car in person and more importantly drive it around town, you realize that prior perceptions need to be checked at the door. It’s quiet, it’s clean, the black soot is a thing of the past and surprisingly the the E320 feels just as zippy as a V8 on a backroad. But the real linchpin is that the car gets an amazing 37 MPG - with some test drives showing that a single tank of gas can last anywhere from 500 to 1,000 miles depending on how aggressively you drive. That’s a heck of an achievement in today’s $3.50 LA fuel price world and given how much I’ve been driving around lately, it certainly caught my eye… Now they just need to drop it in a pick-up truck so I can haul bikes with it!