Oh…you go to City Driver’s Ed? Sorry. I go to Mercedes-Benz Driver’s Ed.

Instead of just buying Mercedes-Benz luxury, now you can buy an education in driving luxury. Mercedes-Benz is opening its first U.S. teen driving school this month in Los Angeles, called the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy. There is a fully integrated California (and country club?) focused driving curriculum to take students from the instruction permit license stage all the way through to their provisional license. The Driving Academy’s mission is to go beyond basic car controlling skills and rote learning of traffic rules. I hope they brainwash teenagers into not using their mobile devices, because that’s beyond car controlling and traffic rules, right?

This is also, perhaps, another in the long line of corporate strategies to make susceptible (and rich, as it were) teenagers their most lucrative customers. Similar to those loyal Camel and Marlboro smokers from their respective early high-school smoking days.

I took driver’s education classes in the basement of a very small rustic commercial development under the tutelage of a recovering alcoholic. We watched antiquated VHS tapes with ten-minute sketches on driver safety and traffic rules through a rolled-in television pulled from the closet.

The rules are still the same. The cars are still the same, and our parents still drive. Mom and Dad remain the best to pass on that knowledge to their kids (as long as they come with a clean, meth-free driving and criminal record).

[photo by flickr user websteria]