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Whether you’re cruising around town or blasting through some canyon roads, there are always cars that you see that you lust after and which you know in your heart of hearts are spectacular machines. There are also cars that are incredible and are almost totally driven by talentless guillotine fodder.
Residents of San Jacinto County, Texas – approximately 60 miles northeast of Houston – have been ordered to shelter in place after a chemical plant exploded Wednesday morning, according to a report published by Reuters. One person is reported to have been injured in a forklift injury, but is in stable condition and a single highway was closed.
Revisiting the scene of a bad crash or even just the type of vehicle you crashed in can be pretty nerve-wracking. I mean, I crashed the hell out of a Ural sidecar back in 2018 and I still get chills when I see one, so I feel like I have a bit of an understanding of what Richard Hammond is experiencing when he climbs into the Rimac Nevera in this Drivetribe video.
Everyone who has worked on their own car has likely heard approximately one million times that you should never get underneath a vehicle that is only supported by a hydraulic jack and that it’s only safe once that vehicle is resting securely on jack stands. What if your jack stands suck, though?
As auto enthusiasts, many of us labor under the assumption that not only can we drive pretty much anything, but that we’d be pretty good at driving it, no matter what it was. For example, I used to work at a BMW dealership parts department and an important part of this job (and generally the high point of my day) was driving the forklift. I really wheeled that thing, often down a public street between buildings, and took pride in my being #ForkliftCertified.
Obviously, I’m biased because I own a 996, but damn, it feels good to see people doing an about-face on this once very unloved and much-maligned generation of Porsche 911. Of course, the 996 is unlikely ever to be revered like its predecessor, the 993 generation, aka the last of the air-cooled 911s, but is that adoration totally warranted? Let’s find out from a dude who owns both.
If you’ve been into cars at any point in the last five to 10 years, it’s likely that you’ve been exposed to “overlanding.” This is the off-road phenomenon that prizes longevity, reliability and comfort for long distance over the ability to do crazy rock crawling, etc. Seen a 1990s Land Cruiser with a fridge and a roof tent and desperately desire both it and the lifestyle it promises? You’ve been overlanded-ed-ed-ed.
Sonoma Raceway is one hell of a track. It’s got gnarly corners, iffy pavement in places, tons of elevation change and pretty much no place where you can get something wrong without paying for it. In other words, it’s serious business and that’s why I was mystified (and honestly a little terrified) to spend my time there driving Lucid’s 1,234-hp, 5,336-pound Air Sapphire.
America has a problem. Well, actually it has a lot of problems, but the (small) one I’m talking about here is that it just doesn’t seem to “get” plug-in hybrids. Sure, they sell here, but how often do people actually plug them in? Even though there are real benefits to doing so. We also tend to think of PHEVs as being efficient, rather than as a performance vehicle but Porsche is trying to change that with the newest versions of its Cayenne E-Hybrid.
Movie car chases. We love them. I mean, most of them, especially the ones in Ronin or Drive. Sometimes they’re bad (anything in the Fast and Furious franchise after like the sixth movie) and too ridiculous. Either way, they’re real expensive to shoot and require camera people, stunt drivers, Ukrainian Arm cars and their drivers, permits, special effects and on and on and on. What if there was a way for someone to recreate something similar to what we saw in Drive for a comparatively microscopic
I asked you recently what your biggest traffic annoyances were, whether they were illegal stuff other drivers did or just stuff that drives you crazy, and wow, did you all ever deliver. The display of motoring pedantry on display managed to warm even my bitter, shriveled heart.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m out terrorizing the streets of Los Angeles, I actively try to avoid hitting people. In fact, I have a perfect record where that is concerned. Unfortunately, this unnamed LAPD officer can’t say the same thing after they appear to run over a fellow officer on video.
People talk about golden eras a lot when referencing cars. Honda had a golden era in the ’90s and early 2000s. BMW had one in the ’80s and another one in the early aughts as well. Mercedes had one too and it was best represented by the super awesome and super intense-looking 190e 2.5 Evolution II. Those cars are unobtanium now, so our favorite Euro car parts house, FCP Euro, built its own take on one and we wrote about it back in February.
By now, you should probably know that the Nurburgring is massive and difficult and dangerous. They also know that it’s effectively a public toll road and on touristenfahrten days, they’ll let anyone with a driver’s license test their mettle against the track.
French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre is famous for the line, “L’enfer, c’est les autres,” in his play “No Exit” which translates to “hell is other people.” This is an astute take on the human condition as well as being undoubtedly true and I bet that ol’ JP never even spent time sitting in LA traffic!
It’s one thing for you to be forklift certified, but it’s quite another thing for your forklift to be certified badass. Most of the forklifts I’ve used at jobs have been unreliable, smelly monstrosities that have been repaired by the world’s boldest and least competent mechanics. This restomod Hyster is definitely not like that.
Some projects are pretty straightforward and even common. Throwing an LS motor into your car or turning your old Harley into a chopper make sense. I don’t care about those. What I want to see are the dumbest, most ill-advised money pits you have ever seen or heard of.
Rennsport Reunion is an almost overwhelming experience for any Porsche fanatic. Hell, this wasn’t even my first one and I was nearly brought to tears by the quality and diversity of ass-engine’d sports cars in Monterey’s Laguna Seca raceway. These are some of the best cars from just the parking lots.
Some numbers in the car world bear special significance. Whether it’s 426 for the Hemi or 4.0 for the 911 GT3 RS, when you start talking about them as an enthusiast, there’s usually a sense of hushed reverence. For Mercedes-Benz, this number is 6.3. This is a reference to the 300SEL 6.3 that Mercedes built in the 1960s, which was an all-conquering sedan that shattered speed records in unimpeachable style.
For decades, the Mercedes-Benz SL class has represented the very best of what the world’s oldest car brand could do. It was meant to be peak style, peak luxury and, in some cases, peak performance. Whether it was the famed 300SL Gullwing, the 230SL Pagoda or even the R129 SL600, you knew the person driving it had money as well as style. Then 2011 hit, and the streak was broken. Fortunes were reversed again when Mercedes launched the 2022 SL but with the debut of the 2023 Mercedes-AMG SL43, are t
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”
Porsche loves debuting new, rare, expensive track toys at its fan-fest, Rennsport Reunion. In 2018, we got the 935 recreation, which caused the car world to collectively lose its mind, and on Thursday night, at Rennsport Reunion 7, it debuted it’s next technological terror
Honda’s CRX is one of those few universally loved cars that never really got a second chance. Sure, big H came out with the CR-Z, which kind of scratched the itch aesthetically but didn’t keep to the CRX’s lightweight ethos. The CRX is also one of those cars that was so cheap for so long (not anymore, though) that you hardly ever see a super nice one anymore, except on YouTube. Like now.
The quality of car headlights runs a pretty wide gamut. They’re so variable, even on new cars, that the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) had to add a headlight category to its testing and make a good score a requirement for its Top Safety Pick Plus award. On older cars, things get way worse.
If you’ve ever had to send your vehicle’s engine or parts of that engine to a machine shop, it can feel like a black hole into which you throw money and time. Then, hopefully, if you picked a good shop, you get back a clean and straight set of cylinder heads or a nicely decked engine block.
There is no car on sale that’s like Porsche’s long-lived and much-lauded 911. Partly that’s because it’s the only car you can buy new today in the US with a rear-mounted internal combustion engine but also, very few cars have had the continuous, incremental improvement that the 911 has over the decades.
Nissan’s Z isn’t exactly a revolutionary car, even for a brand not known for refreshing its product more than once every couple of decades, but when it debuted, it definitely got people all fired up. Part of that, I suspect, is that many folks have a soft spot for Z cars and others just like anything that’s rear-wheel drive and available with a manual transmission.
