Over here in America, there's no doubt that we'd find this commercial funny because of the Grim Reaper's foiled attempt in taking the life of the Mercedes->ke187 driver after the latter was able to stop his E-Class->ke373 seconds before it would have crashed into an on-going road construction. Funny stuff, right?

Apparently, the folks in Germany - and those familiar with the situation within the auto industry - find this commercial funny for a different reason. Turns out that Mercedes may have put the man playing the role of the Grim Reaper in the commercial because of his uncanny resemblance to one Ferdinand Piech. If you don't know who he is, he's the chairman of the supervisory board over at Volkswagen AG. So there really is more to this commercial than meet's the reaper's scythe.

If you don't know the back-story behind Piech and Mercedes, it all stemmed from a comment the former made about how Volkswagen is gearing up in an effort to go toe-to-toe with Mercedes some time in the future. This, if we can assume, could be Mercedes throwing the first volley at Volkswagen->ke94, showing that they're not afraid of the big German auto conglomerate, even if they show up on the passenger seat of their E-Class with a scythe in hand.

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