The run-up to the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race is always a nail-biting enterprise for race teams. Naturally, techs are most concerned with assuring cars' ability to sustain the day-night race, which is the ultimate test for GT cars and sportscar prototypes that will wind through the Circuit of the Sarthe -- on a combination of racetrack and public roads -- in Le Mans, Sarthe, France. This year there's an added kink keeping teams up nights. It appears the gods of aerodynamics have been sending LeMans prototype-class racecars into the ether with a cosmic finger flick.

We tested two new night-vision systems that are available in the top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz S550 and BMW 7-Series luxury sedans. They operate on virtually opposite principles-Mercedes illuminates the environment with projected infrared light; BMW detects thermal energy emitted from objects-and each works well under different circumstances. Click here to see what we found.

When Mercedes-Benz began to contemplate its next generation of high-efficiency small cars, it sought aquatic inspiration. But instead of considering obvious undersea hot rods like sharks, the Mercedes team turned to a fish that resembled a car: the tropical boxfish. A native of the Indo-Pacific region, the Ostracion cubicus is surprisingly slick. Wind-tunnel testing of a clay model revealed a drag coefficient (Cd) of just 0.06, startlingly close to the ideal 0.04 of a water droplet.

PS Technology Quotient: 34 (out of 50)




Powertrain: 8

Road Manners: 6

Safety: 6

Electronics: 7

Design: 7

This is no ordinary SUV. Over the past 25 years, Mercedes' renowned G-Wagon has protected foreign dignitaries and coddled off-road explorers. And now, a modified version, the Mercedes-Benz G500, is coming to a Mercedes dealer near you.