For many of us, especially here in the U.S., the necessity of owning an armored vehicle isn’t that overwhelming. Sure, there’s the occasional confrontational prick that feels the urge to wrong us, but let’s be honest: in these instances, the trusty Glock we’ve got tucked neatly under the seat is more than enough to handle the bulk of these situations. But what happens when you’ve reached the upper echelon… the highest ranks of power, whether it be your political status, corporate ranking, so on and so forth? For this group: the ambitious, the powerful, and oftentimes, the hated, threats are prevalent in day-to-day life, even in the United States. Enter INKAS Armored. Catering to those who need more protection than the G20 can provide, INKAS has introduced a vehicle which manages to blend NIJ Level IV armoring with the pinnacle of German luxury engineering – the Mercedes S600. Boasting fun-flat performance tires, proprietary armored panels and ballistic glass compounds, the INKAS S600 is capable of withstanding up to close-range armor-piercing rounds all while maintaining what appears to be the standard S600’s exterior styling.

While not the largest ‘Review Roundup’ we’ve ever published, this latest installment of our now infamous collection of Mercedes reviews features looks at four Mercedes models: the CLS550, the CLS350 CGI, the 2008 C-Class and the E63 AMG Wagon. Even better, for those of you who may not in the reading mood, two of the reviews are videos, allowing you to partake in Mercedes review goodness with nary a strained eye.

This weekend marked the fourth race of the season for the Team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team, and as always, we’ve got the recap. If you missed the race but have it TIVO’d, read no further; otherwise, hit the jump for the full details of what transpired. For the third time this season, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton earned the second and fourth starting positions, respectively. When the race started, Alonso attacked Ferrari’s Felipe Massa in an attempt to take the lead, but slid of the track on the second corner and rejoined the race in fourth place. Meanwhile, Hamilton managed to pass Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and finished the first lap in second.

In awards news, Dr.-Ing. Jurgen Trost, the developer of Mercedes-Benz Active Brake Assist for commercial vehicles, has been presented with the 2007 European Commercial Vehicle Safety award. The award was presented by the technical appraisal organization DEKRA, the German Traffic Safety Council (DVR) and the European Association for Accident Research and Analysis (EVU) at the second DEKRA Active Safety Symposium in Klettwitz, and was awarded for Trost’s outstanding contribution to the development of Active Brake Assist.

If the Mercedes CL600’s standard 510 horses aren’t enough to appease your deep-seeded power cravings, BRABUS has announced details of their newest mind-numbingly-fast entry in the land of Mercedes tuning – the SV12 S. Based on the CL600, the SV12 S is being billed as the world’s fastest and most powerful coupe, and while I personally can’t vouch for the statements, the SV12 S’s 730 horsepower; 1,320 Nm of torque (at 2,100 rpm); 0-62 mph time of 4.0 seconds and electronically-limited top speed of 211 mph are without question in a supremely-elite league of performance figures.

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen; if you’re a mother, I hope you had marvelous Mother’s Day, and for everyone else, I hope you did something special for your mom. To kick things off this morning, we have news that we’ve known was coming for some time now, it was just a question of when and who. Today, the when and who have been unveiled, with DaimlerChrysler announcing they’re releasing 80.1% equity interest of the Chrysler Group to an affiliate of Cerberus for the tidy sum of $7.4 billion. This, of course, is subject to approval by the Supervisory Board and a number of closing conditions, but in all probability, DaimlerChrysler AG will soon be known as simply Daimler AG.

It seems like just yesterday we brought you rumors that the Mercedes R-Class would be the recipient of numerous changes in an attempt to bolster sluggish sales, and today, those rumors have come to fruition. A number of updates for the model have been announced, ranging from the addition of a two-wheel drive option to a re-working of the number of occupants the R is able to tote. Sound too good to be true? Read on for the full list of updates.

In Pune, India yesterday, DaimlerChrysler celebrated the groundbreaking of its new Mercedes-Benz plant at Chakan. On hand for the event was the Honourable Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, together with Dr. Joachim Schmidt, Chairman of the Board of DaimlerChrysler India; Prof. Eberhard Haller, Member of the Board of DaimlerChrysler India and responsible for CKD plants of the Mercedes Car Group; and Wilfried Aulbur, Managing Director and CEO of DaimlerChrysler India; all of which laid the foundation stone of the new facility.

Mercedes reviews have been a tad sparse around these parts lately, a fact that can be primarily attributed to my increasingly hectic schedule. For this I apologize, and to make amends, I offer this amply-endowed ‘Review Roundup,’ a collection of articles filled to the brim with Mercedes review goodness. The Mercedes CLK63 AMG Black Series, CL600, CL550, ML320 CDI, E63 AMG, SLR McLaren and Actros – these are the chosen ones. To read reviews of any, keep scrolling, browse concise summaries of each or just hit the links to jump straight to complete, unadulterated articles.

As we told you back in March, this year marks the 40th anniversary of a little tuning company known as AMG. To celebrate the occasion, Mercedes has taken a moment to publish a lovely retrospective taking a look back at 40 years of AMG’s tuning mastery, highlighting various milestones achieved by the company as well as outlining the two newest additions to the AMG stable: the CL65 AMG and the CLK63 AMG Black Series…

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen; I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. To kick things off this morning, DaimlerChrysler has taken a moment to publish details of how worldwide sales of the Mercedes Car Group’s Mercedes-Benz, Maybach and smart brands fared for the month of April. Unfortunately, sales at the Mercedes Car Group continued to stay in the negative, with the division delivering 97,800 units last month – a decrease of 3 percent when compared to April 2006. Individually, sales of the Mercedes-Benz brand noted less of a decline, dropping 0.7 percent to 90,600 new units, while smart dropped off 24.6 percent, noting sales of 7,200 units. On a positive note, year-to-date sales of the Mercedes-Benz brand are at the all-time high of 365,000 units, a 2.2 percent increase when compared to 2006’s four-month YTD total; as a whole however, the Mercedes Car Group’s YTD sales remain in the red, trailing 2006’s figures by 2.8 percent.

Talk about a surprise announcement… I sat down this morning with my usual cup of espresso thinking it’d be another slow day in the land of Mercedes news, when lo and behold, Mercedes has laid all the speculation to rest and unveiled to the world the new SLR McLaren Roadster. Needless to say, it’s a an exquisitely beautiful vehicle (at least when its top is down), sharing the same styling as its coupe counterpart but featuring a fully-retractable top. One question pondered by many before today was whether the SLR Roadster would maintain it’s unique butterfly doors, and thankfully, it has. Other than that, not much has changed from the traditional SLR…