We’ve said more than enough about all the problems with the F-35 Lightning II, the jet that’s supposed to be the next backbone of many of the world’s air forces. Seemingly endless testing, endless fiddling, with weapons that don’t quite work properly yet. Well here’s what can go wrong without some of that.
Read MoreIf the Cold War turned hot, it wasn’t entirely going to be fought with tanks and nuclear weapons. If it got to Alaska, it would be fought by lumberjacks, bush pilots, and yes, secret agents. That was the point of Operation Washtub, the secret CIA plan to defend America’s frozen north against communist invasion.
Read MoreIt turns out that tanks—largely considered among the most badass machines on earth—can tumble and look just as silly as Reliant Robins. Just watch this World War II-era T-34 topple off a trailer at a military parade in Russia.
Read MoreMoscow has lost a new missile, one unlike any other. The missing missile is not only nuclear-armed but also nuclear-powered. Now, ten months after the crash the Russian government is going after the missile’s remains, scooping them up before someone else does.
Read MoreAmerica is (maybe) getting a Space Force. On August 9th during a speech at the Pentagon, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced the formation of the newest branch of the armed services, the Space Operations Force, and a new U.S. Space Command. Time to look on the bright side. Here’s what the Space Force might have at the outset, and what might it need in the future.
Read MoreYou know the scene at the end of The Incredibles—and the start of The Incredibles 2—that has the troglodyte supervillian the Underminer bursting out from underground in a colossal drilling machine? Well, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was actually developing just such a digging machine, a brutal, nuclear-powered beast called the Battle Mole. At least, it seems like they did.
Read MoreAn SR-71 Blackbird could fly at 85,000 feet (over 16 miles!) and push Mach 3.3 (about 2,500 mph!). One of these majestic aircraft may have cost $300,000,000 a year to operate, but 50 years since its heyday we’re still marveling at it.
Read MoreThe Space Force, an idea from President Donald Trump widely considered dumb and unnecessary by the rest of the American defense establishment, is set to be the sixth branch of the United States military. But before it can be a real thing (and let’s be honest, this train can still be stopped), it needs a logo. And instead of making a government commission or a getting a team of experts to figure it out, President Trump has decided to let the most tremendous thinkers in the world figure it out--hi
Read MoreSure, being a fighter pilot might actually be miserable, but there’s no denying that it can be an absolute rush. I mean, you think you’ve done a hard turn before? Then see what it looks like when an F-16 Viper does a hard turn in a stabilized video.
Read More“This is one bad bitch,” the valet said as he pulled the Marina Bay Blue 2018 BMW M5 out of the bowels of the parking garage on Manhattan’s West Side for me.
Read MoreAs the resident car buying expert and professional car shopper, I get a ton of emails asking for advice. Sometimes folks get into a tough spot or don’t know what to do, so I’ve decided to pick a few questions and try to help out.
Read MoreAmericans continue to spend increasing amounts on a car, according to the latest report from the credit bureau Experian, which found the average monthly payment for a used vehicle has reached $378. Better than the average of about $523 for new cars, but still a decent amount.
Read MoreFrank is a self-described millennial who has been borrowing his parents’ cars to get around. It’s time for him to get his own ride, but it needs to be affordable, reliable, and different. What car should he buy?
Read MoreIt is 2018 and you can walk into a Toyota dealership and put down about 40 grand to get a two-tone black over white Toyota Camry with 300 horsepower, an eight-speed automatic and a red leather interior. What is happening!
Read MoreDone with college? Your hand-me-down 2003 Honda Civic not cutting it anymore? Ready to add some car payments to your crushing student loan debt, like a real adult? If so, Mini’s here with a pretty good offer that won’t break the bank too badly. It’s a fun ride with some nice equipment for under $20,000.
Read MoreBecause I simply have not had enough seat time in various Porsches this summer, I’ve got the 2018 911 Carrera T. It’s the lighter-weight, not as hardcore, very slightly easier on the bank account version of the 991.2, and I’ve tasked myself with seeing how this package really comes together.
Read MoreOn paper, the 2018 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport AWD is a 400 horsepower premium sedan positioned to take on the higher trim competition from BMW, Mercedes and Audi. But in practice, it’s a 400 hp car with a jarringly dated interior and upsettingly numb steering, leaving it just short of being legitimately fun.
Read MoreThe average age of a car on the street in America has increased over the last decade, according to a new U.S. Department of Transportation study, suggesting that people are either buying more used cars or holding off on replacing the cars they already own. Maybe it’s because new cars are worse than old cars and folks just aren’t interested, but probably not.
Read MoreAmong the plethora of super-sophisticated Japanese sports cars that spawned from the 1990s—the Nissan 300ZX, Acura NSX, Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi 3000GT and so on—the third-generation Mazda RX-7 (chassis code FD) was by far the most focused machine available. Fast, expensive, unreliable, and not all that practical, this curvaceous coupe managed to spank its rivals on the track and on the street not using pistons, cylinders, or camshafts. It did it using spinning triangles and turbos.
Read MoreI have a news flash for some of you: Dealers love the people that insist that used cars are always a better buy than new. That might be the case most of the time, but not always, and, in fact, some buyers looking for something that’s only a few years old with low miles are paying too much.
Read MoreThomas just moved from France to the Detroit suburbs. He needs to get a cheap car quick but it can’t just be any car, it needs to be an American car, a freedom car! Ideally, he is looking for a V8 but also needs somewhat decent gas mileage. What car should he buy?
Read MoreAnything can have a monthly payment if you wish hard enough, including cars that cost millions at auctions. Bugatti Chiron on the block that you don’t want to pay for upon winning it? Keep raising that paddle. You can pay monthly if approved, just like the TVs and couches you get fliers for in the mail.
Read MoreThe square-framed round-light’d face of a 1966 Ford Bronco is as classic and commanding of respect as Nick Offerman’s facial hair. The whole design is a tribute to freedom. This one, decorated with dents and revived with a healthy V8 engine, accomplishes something few customized cars ever do: it just freaking feels right.
Read MoreFirst off, I feel like I should make clear that this does not appear to be a joke, or a scam or anything like that. I’ve been in contact with the person who posted the ad, and they maintain this is all genuine: some lucky person can drive, for free, a rare and lovely Citroën XM in exchange for a bit of driving the owner around, mostly on weekend nights.
Read MoreMy friendly coworkers spent much of this summer holding me back from physically and verbally attacking our now-late intern, Mack Hogan. Not because of his overbearing friendliness or constant spewing of bad takes. But rather, because he has no idea about car buying.
Read MoreThe internet has empowered car buyers but some dealers are finding new tricks to keep the cards in their favor. One that has been popping up recently is inflating the advertised price of the car in order to make their discount look better than it really is.
Read MoreA Chevy Venture is, let’s face it, a deeply, deeply boring car. But, speaking of facing things, consider this: maybe it’s a fantastic car, if only the front end were replaced with a gigantic, snarling face? Didn’t think of that, did you? Well, someone did, and then got their Snarlventure repo’d, which means this masterpiece can be yours. Hot damn.
Read MorePatrick loves cars but has never really needed one. He has gotten by just fine with using his bike. Now he has a new job and a longer commute through the DC traffic hellscape. If he wants to survive he is going to need four wheels and doors. What car should he buy?
Read MoreColor! It’s my dream that, before I die, someone will heft the plastic bag that contains the still operating parts of my body, and hold a remaining eye to a window, where I’ll look out to see traffic flowing by, in a Skittles-like array of many, varied colors. We’re still far from that goal, but at least Volkswagen is trying, by offering 40 colors for the Golf R here in America.
Read MoreMy lovely 1974 Volkswagen Beetle is in fine health and getting ever better, a fine and good piece of A-to-B transportation that maybe drives like a piece of farm equipment with good suspension. What I should not do is buy a third-generation Toyota Supra for a couple grand, right?
Read MoreDo you remember the Porsche 911 R? The first one on sale in the U.S. was listed for nearly $700,000 in late 2016. It didn’t take long for secondhand 911 Rs to start demanding over $1 million. But now, just a couple of years later, the 911 R is estimated to go for the dirt-cheap cost of just $375,000 at auction.
Read MoreThe internet doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to naming vehicles, but that’s not stopping Geely, who is looking for an English name for its new SUV, known in Chinese as Bin Yue. Knowing how this usually goes, I’m sure SUVy McSUVface will look fantastic on a badge on the tailgate.
Read More“You know what,” I often say to myself, “I’m really a Mercedes Man at heart.” This is an aspirational declaration, as I’m not actually sufficiently wealthy to afford the Benz that I want: manual, rear-wheel drive, with some power. Oh wait, I can afford that Benz. It’s just an SLK.
Read MoreThe 2019 Mazda Miata isn’t completely revamped, but then again, it didn’t need that. Now, though, it is more powerful, more efficient, and basically just a tiny bump better. The car was already great, now it’s even more of a goddamn blast.
Read MoreDean is trying to help a 79-year-old mother out. She’s a cool lady who was rocking a 1994 Nissan 300ZX until disaster struck. Dean wants to find her a cool car that still has style and speed, but is maybe a little easier to manage. What car should she buy?
Read MoreTo us humans, the Ford Focus RS doesn’t really need a flowery description to sell it. Most already know it’s one of the most powerful and enjoyable hot hatchbacks on the market. Apparently our future electronic overlords disagree, and now a bot for Autotrader has penned an overview of the RS for an Idaho dealership which is, honestly, kind of lyrical.
Read MoreJeff has a current generation BMW M3, and as a new homeowner, it’s not super practical for him. He wants something that is more capable in bad weather. He likes luxury cars, what he doesn’t like is getting hosed in depreciation costs. What car should he buy?
Read MoreThese are exciting times for fans of the MX-5 Miata, the 2019 refresh will bring a nice power boost to an already excellent car. However, if having those extra ponies isn’t all that important and you want to keep some serious cash in your pocket, now is the time to get a 2018 with a huge discount.
Read MoreNow that Tesla has finally reached its Model 3 production goals, it’s comfortable bragging a little bit about the car and its owners. In today’s investor call, the company released a list of the cars people are trading in for the Tesla Model 3.
Read MoreCar buying can be a complex process that requires some expertise to get the best deal, but these myths don't deeply impact the experience for car buyers.
Read MoreOn Thursday, scooter startup Bird hosted a demonstration of its electric scooters in preparation for legislation that aim to make the company’s scooter-sharing service legal on the streets of New York City. While the scooters themselves are a joy to ride, I can’t help but worry New York will find a way to ruin the idea, like it ruins everything.
Read MoreAs I have extensively documented before, riding in cars is extremely difficult for me. Not only do they place the masses directly in my line of sight, but I also have the driver to contend with. Usually, I just hire ones that don’t speak any English to ensure maximum privacy, but then there’s still the issue of them physically being in the car with me. Gross. Thankfully, Rolls-Royce has come to the rescue.
Read MoreYou used to lay awake with hopes of owning a McLaren F1. Then you worked hard and made enough money and you bought one. Congratulations. But now McLaren wants to keep you awake wondering if your McLaren F1 is legitimate.
Read MoreDespite leaving the Jaguar C-X75 mid-engine concept at the bottom of a river in a subpar James Bond movie, Jaguar still reportedly has plans to put a mid-engine supercar into production. It could replace the current F-Type and reportedly be called the J-Type.
Read More“We goin’ ridin’ on the freeway of love in my pink Cadillac,” the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, sang in her hit 1985 song “Freeway of Love.” So it’s only fitting that over 100 Cadillacs are lining up right now, just outside of her funeral in Detroit on Friday, NPR reports.
Read MoreWe’ve been in the age of options packages for decades now, but it’s starting to feel like things have gone too far.
Read MoreEarlier this month, Fiat Chrysler filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission to stop the sale of the Mahindra Roxor—a tiny off-road-only 4x4 that looks very much like a Jeep CJ-7—over intellectual property concerns. But now Mahindra is fighting back, filing a lawsuit in a federal court seeking damages, and alleging that FCA actually agreed to allow Mahindra to sell vehicles like the Roxor.
Read MoreWe are fast approaching a time where every automaker is producing its entire lineup on one basic modular platform, almost like making only one car in different skins. So, if we imagine a world where companies were forced to just build one car, what should each of them make?
Read MoreJapanese carmakers never brought their great kei cars of the 1980s to America, and for years we’ve always assumed that they’d have just been too small and too frail for our highways. But now they’re legal to import and people are coming to discover that interstates and keis do mix.
Read MoreRumors have been swirling regarding the specs of the 2020 Ford Mustang GT500, which should have over 700 horsepower. More than even that, recent reports have shown that it is likely to be equipped with a dual-clutch automatic transmission. Now we’ve learned that this DCT transmission might be the only option with no manual offered at all.
Read MoreHyundai’s finally getting into the performance game with its N division, poaching German engineers to make its good cars even faster. Sadly though, our market still doesn’t get all the cool hatches like the i30 N that’s available in Europe. Now a recent filing shows that our version of the i30, which we get as the Elantra GT, will be getting a slightly hotter N-Line trim.
Read MoreIn recent years, regulators and law enforcement have vigorously pursued claims that subprime auto lenders have ensnared car buyers with high-interest loans that trap them in a cycle of debt. The fact this happens isn’t a new phenomenon; auto lending is a fairly unregulated practice, with the financiers themselves essentially left to police internal bad actions. And that almost certainly won’t change under the terms of a new reported settlement between subprime auto lending king Santander and a U
Read MoreYou’re not really a startup British carmaker unless you have a test track set up on an old World War II airfield, and now Dyson, the vacuum cleaner people can count themselves in.
Read MoreGeneral Motors has finally allowed Cadillac to build its own engines again, rather than use already existing ones from the other brands. The result was the twin-turbocharged, 4.2-liter “hot-vee” V8, which will be found in the 2019 Cadillac CT6 V-Sport. Here’s how it will be different than the other V8s.
Read MoreHello everyone. Today’s rant is born from some truly appalling behavior I witnessed this past weekend during Monterey Car Week. I expected more from the so-called “high class” but I guess even money can’t always buy manners. This one is simple: Don’t touch other people’s cars.
Read MoreThe 2018 Audi A4 Ultra Edition comes with a fancy flat-bottomed steering wheel. We should be asking ourselves: does that matter?
Read MoreDearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the death of the stick shift in Audi’s lineup. Felled by ever-better automatics and dual-clutch transmissions and, most of all, apathetic buyers, the manual gearbox bows out on the 2018 Audi A4. For this somber occasion, Audi’s giving us a special edition A4 with a stick shift, and if you’re gonna get any new A4, make it this one.
Read MoreFollowing a wild month of allegations after Azealia Banks claims she was stranded at one of Elon Musk’s California properties, including speculation on his sex life, claims he tweeted while on acid, an accusation that his attorneys took her phone to delete evidence and conflicting statements on whether she actually met Musk in person, it appears Banks’ Instagram and Twitter accounts have either been removed or suspended.
Read MoreThe revival of the BMW 8 Series coupe is a large and stunning creature, slotting in as BMW’s top grand tourer when it debuted in June. But even after that debut, here’s a camouflage-wrapped 8 Series rolling around in the Mojave Desert—one with a soft top, which the original 8 Series from the ’90s never had.
Read MoreAt this very moment, I’m on the half of the Earth I usually don’t get to visit: the lower half. Specifically, I’m in Temuco, Chile, where I’m taking part in a drive with three Mini Countryman Hybrids which are attempting to drive the entire Pan-American Highway, from Texas all the way to the Earth’s appendix—Tierra del Fuego. But what I want to talk to you about tonight are different Minis—specifically, old ones, and even more specifically, a very particular type of classic Mini that was only ma
Read MoreLast year was good for Aston Martin in that it actually posted its first profit in eight years and had record sales. There were rumblings then of the British automaker thinking about pursuing an IPO. Now, those rumblings seem to have solidified into a plan.
Read MoreDammit, I liked the Nissan Juke. It was fun, it was weird and it was different, three things desperately missing from Nissan’s current snooze-fest of a lineup. (I’m sure the new Altima will make a decent rental car next time you’re in Minneapolis for work, but no one’s lusting after it.) And while the Juke is currently dead, replaced by the far more boring Kicks, it has a second act planned. A crazy one, apparently.
Read MoreGeneral Motors’ major American competition, in the form of Ford and Fiat Chrysler, have seen the writing on the wall and bet big on Crossover Hell being the future. While those other guys are exiting the sedan game and introducing a new crossover for every day of the week, GM hasn’t given up on the car buyer, and in fact sees sedans and small cars as a good way to hook them for life.
Read MoreLess than a week after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that no, he in fact would NOT be taking Tesla private because the funding was not quite as “secured” as he said it was, you’d hope that he’d turn a new leaf, and settle down a bit. But no. No. Not at all. He’s on Twitter asking if anyone has happened to look into his “pedophile” accusations.
Read MoreThe 2019 BMW Z4 had the unfortunate luck of images leaking at least three times, which means most people had already formed their opinion of its new design direction before the car was even revealed. But now it’s here, so does it look good or did BMW overdo it?
Read MoreTen years ago, an Indiana man named Jim Campbell found himself looking for a LeBaron convertible for his winter home in Florida, when he came upon an example of the highly controversial Chrysler TC by Maserati. He bought it, loved it, and then decided he needed another one for his home in Indiana. Then he purchased another TC. Then another. Then nine more. Now his impressive collection of 13 is for sale.
Read MoreThe 2018 Volkswagen Golf Alltrack is VW’s attempted Subaru killer, and I’m driving it around scenic Milwaukee for the next week. What do you want to know?
Read MoreThere’s no shortage of glitzy motorsports events in Japan. A lot of it happens at the bigger and more well-known tracks such as Suzuka Circuit and Fuji Speedway, the latter especially due to its accessibility. However, because of its size Fuji, can be quite expensive to rent out which means only the real fancy stuff goes on there.
Read MoreTesla may not be going private after all, but the drama from that ordeal is far from over. Are you excited for more? Strap yourselves in, kids, it’s gonna be a long night.
Read MoreIf you love cars, I’m just about positive you started life loving toy cars. I’ve yet to meet any gearhead that doesn’t have some toy cars rolling around on their desks or shelves or floors, just waiting to be stepped on, painfully. I unashamedly love toy cars, so I was thrilled to be invited to see Candylab Toys’ design studio, where I could talk toy cars, see toy cars, play with toy cars, and, yes, even design a toy car.
Read MoreIn the 1960s, China finally built a luxury car of its own, the Hongqi. But the car was meant for Chairman Mao and other official duties in local governments, and as such, few are ever seen outside of China, or up close at all. But two rolled into the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance this year, the first Chinese cars in America’s most prestigious show. And they are fascinating.
Read MoreAfter a year of negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. and Mexico have struck a preliminary deal, according to multiple reports, including, surprisingly, a minimum wage requirement put at $16. But it’s not quite that simple. Oh, and Canada not only has yet to sign on, it hasn’t shown up in weeks.
Read MoreIt’s Pebble Beach weekend, where all the rare, fancy and hyper-expensive cars are out in force. So for this edition of Weekend Wallpaper, I vote we go with a fast and accessible performance car of the people.
Read MoreHello, I just got back from 10 days of vacation in France, and I missed you all very much.* One of the highlights of the trip, sort of, was that we rented a car to drive between Paris and Nice. I wanted something I really could never get back home, and while it wasn’t a new Citroën or Skoda, it was a Fiat Panda, and that was European enough for me.
Read MoreSadly, the new Ford GT seems to be more known for resale drama than its performance in motorsports and on the street. Here’s one way to win hearts and minds: add the famous Gulf livery. I don’t think it’s looked better than this to date.
Read MorePope Francis was in Ireland this weekend, and apparently nobody in Ireland thought they should pick him up at the airport in something nice. Instead, and in keeping with his famed everyman ethos, here he is rolling around in a plain old Skoda Rapid wagon. I don’t even think it had leather seats.
Read MoreWhile I’m not a huge Ferrari guy on principle, even I refuse to apologize for how much I liked the 458 Italia and now its turbocharged successor, the 488. And the new 488 Pista is the one you want because it boasts Ferrari’s most powerful V8 engine ever, rated at 711 horsepower. Now this weekend at Pebble Beach, we got treated to the 488 Pista’s convertible Spider variant. I can think of worse ways to work on your tan.
Read MoreMonterey Car Week isn’t just a soiree where members of America’s moneyed investor class come together and scowl at each other on a golf course, though that is most of it. Sometimes it comes with actual car news. Surprising news, even. And the biggest surprise we’ve seen so far is that the SSC Tuatara—the American hypercar promised way back in 2011—has resurfaced with an apparent 1,750 horsepower. Hey, great!
Read MoreOn Thursday, Land Rover announced a set of optional packages on its cars to help owners’ “four-legged friends” ride “in the lap of luxury.” You know which friends Land Rover meant? Dogs. Automakers are always talking about dogs, unless it’s an April Fools’ joke. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Dogs? Dogs.
Read MoreLars Wolfe wanted his new race car to be able to do a little bit of everything: rally, road racing and whatever else potentially tickled his fancy. But he also wanted to stand out, so naturally, he bought one of the weirdest cars in recent history: a 2013 Nissan Juke. Here’s how a cute grocery getter became a manual-swapped off-road beast.
Read MoreFirst of all, I just want to implore everyone to remain calm. I know we didn’t get this out yesterday, when you were expecting it, but things sometimes happen and we need you to remain calm in such situations and not resort to cannibalism, no matter what those memos may have said. The point is we’ve been reading over the problems and questions you’ve sent and have answers for you, so everything’s gonna be okay. Got it? Good. We’re here for you.
Read MoreA new facial recognition system installed at Washington Dulles International Airport by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency caught its first impostor after determining he did not match his passport photo.
Read MoreThe 2019 Bugatti Divo is lighter, sharper and tuned more for performance driving down a back road and less for the the oozing luxury and straight-line speed of the Bugatti Chiron. If you’re filthy rich, you could think of it as the enthusiast’s Bugatti.
Read MoreThe youths have done it again. They’ve taken things we consider holy and close to our heart—exotic cars, music, pizza, as examples—and lit a metaphorical match to all of it right in front of our eyes. This time, it was for a music video, and honestly, it might just be too impressive to hate.
Read MorePorsche came to Pebble Beach with what’s essentially a brand new, 2018 Porsche 993 Turbo S, which it claims it had sitting around body-in-white and decided to fix up and auction off for charity.
Read MoreJaguar announced today that it will begin selling zero-emission electric Jaguar E-Types, converted from restored cars to anyone who wants one. The best part about it is that the conversion will be completely reversible, should you ever grow tired of battery charging and want just a normal restored E-Type.
Read MoreThe brand new 2019 Jaguar I-Pace is a very promising electric car, and it just allegedly set a new lap record around Laguna Seca raceway, beating previous recorded lap times of the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model 3.
Read MoreI know that Infiniti’s Prototype 10 probably has an extremely slim chance of becoming real, but damn do I want it to manifest into a production version. It looks utterly remarkable. Single-seater! Perfect for misanthropes like me.
Read MoreThe brand-new 2019 BMW Z4 Roadster has officially showed its face at this year’s Monterey Car Week. It looks quite excellent.
Read MoreBeen a long day, pal, already? Sure it has. I know it has. Look, I know you’re busting your ass out there, so to let you know how much I appreciate all you do—no, wait, how much I appreciate you—I’m going to show you an obscure air-cooled Volkswagen vehicle I suspect you’ve never heard of. So hang on. It’s called the Polauto Pagus.
Read MoreThe new Laborghini Aventador Superveloce Jota (SVJ) isn’t supposed to be revealed until next week at Monterey Car Week, but a UK Lamborghini dealer thought, screw it, waiting’s for suckers, and posted the first official pictures of the new Aventador SVJ on Instagram. It has a little smooth-guy moustache!
Read MoreThe current generation of Aston Martin’s lineup has truly incredible performance chops, and since the automaker is engineering its first electric car called the Aston Martin RapidE, it wants to make sure its batteries are capable of keeping up on a hot lap of the nefarious Nürburgring, which current EVs would struggle to do.
Read MoreYes, this is actually how Germans make room for emergency vehicles when there’s a pileup on the highway: Drivers split down the middle to both sides to create an open lane in the middle of the road to let emergency vehicles through.
Read MoreThe drama between rapper Azealia Banks, artist Grimes and Tesla CEO Elon Musk continued today with even more claims and accusations posted to Banks’ Instagram story, now alleging that Musk lied about not knowing her and lied about his lawyers not having her phone. Also, that she can see children in “the invisible world.”
Read MoreNot so hot take: The R35 Nissan GT-R, old as it is, tired, plain, beaten down, disrespected, priced up, priced out, aged out, well, it’s still good. This may or may not be what I tell myself when I look into the mirror each morning, but this is about a supercar slayer not my personal hangups.
Read MoreAston Martin has announced production of 25 new continuation DB5s, modeled after the iconic car from the 1964 James Bond movie, Goldfinger. The cars will even be equipped with some of the spy’s gadgets, but there’s a catch—sadly, none of them will be road legal.
Read MoreTesla has been feverishly trying to ramp up production in recent months of the Model 3 sedan at what’s, for now, its only assembly plant. CEO Elon Musk says plans for additional manufacturing facilities are forthcoming, and a lawsuit filed last week by the automaker underscores how crucial that is for Tesla’s ambitions to enter the mass-market: in 2015, the assembly plant in Fremont, California, lost power for two days because of an alleged mishap by a crane operator.
Read MoreWhile the current look of the Chevrolet Camaro has taken a turn for the worse, the fifth-generation car went a long way in reestablishing a classic. Someone at this year’s Woodward Dream Cruise found a way to make it look even better—they made it a wagon.
Read MoreI’m a believer that people should be able to do whatever they’d like to their cars. Modify them, redesign them, paint them, stripe them, slam them, raise them, whatever you want. It’s your car. That doesn’t mean I’m going to like everything one may do to their car, and that’s why today I want to call out one fairly common automotive acessory: door edge trim. It’s terrible, and while I’ll defend your right to stick them on your car, I think you never, ever should.
Read MoreTraffic is to driving as apple pie is to America. You can’t have one without the other. We’ve all had our fair share of bad jams, so now I’m asking you to relive your worst.
Read MoreThe Hyundai Kona EV, the car that forgot to have a face, just got rated by the EPA with an estimated range of 20 miles more than a Chevy Bolt, 107 miles more than a Nissan Leaf, and 52 miles less than the long range Tesla Model 3.
Read MorePeople in California are familiar with the latest form of illegal street racing, sideshows and takeovers, where huge groups of people gather around stunting cars and close down roads and intersections. It’s a serious problem for local communities, and unfortunately, it’s spreading. A new story in The Oregonian shows just how much street racing is affecting the Portland community.
Read MoreA vintage car dealer claims his customized 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing was stolen from a hotel near the Nürburgring, and he’s offering nearly $300,000 to anyone who returns it. And, according to a translation of a German news report his dealership’s Facebook page shared, that includes the thief.
Read MoreThe Woodward Dream Cruise on Saturday brought thousands of immaculate Mustangs, Corvettes, Camaros and Bel Airs out of their climate-controlled garages and onto Michigan’s M-1. But as cool as those were, they weren’t the true heroes of Woodward; that title belongs to all the meticulosity maintained “meh” cars like this Ford Escort.
Read MoreThe 1980s were the Jurassic Park of Japanese car design. Engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. A case in point: the all-mechanical four-wheel steering system in the Honda Prelude Si 4WS. Too expensive, insufficiently practical, but totally wonderful.
Read MoreMaybe you spent this weekend like us at the Woodward Dream Cruise, watching eight gagillion Chevy Bel Airs doing five miles an hour. Maybe you baked a delightful peach pie. Maybe you did donuts in a 1990s Ford Mustang on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge and got arrested.
Read MoreI don’t really understand how anyone could lose a whole car, but apparently it happens even to rare and valuable prototypes, like the 1967 Ford Shelby GT500 EXP prototype, which has been missing for half a century. Many thought it to be destroyed after it completed testing, but now it’s been discovered and its restorers need your help to fill in the blanks of where it’s been all this time.
Read MorePresident Donald Trump’s administration believes we no longer need to conserve oil, a policy position that “threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars,” reports the Associated Press.
Read MoreBuying tires can, at first, be an intimidating endeavor. Especially if you’ve never done it before. There are a myriad of options to choose from and then you have to decide which of them fits your driving style and local conditions. Fear not! The Jalopnik community is here to help.
Read MoreUntil now, the phenomenon of bears getting stuck in Subarus seemed like some kind of ages-old master plan being fulfilled. Why is the wild animal stuck in the car always a bear? Why is the car always a Subaru? What are the bears planning? But now, a shocking change in the prophecy: A bear got stuck in a Honda Civic.
Read MoreAs I’m sure you’ve already figured out, I like silly action flicks. Bonus points if they involve cars. If we can throw an ‘80s spin on it, then that’s basically perfection (go see Atomic Blonde, by the way). And this new movie, Cruise, seems like it combines all three.
Read MoreGraham Blyth suffered the ultimate heartbreak: He lost his entire garage after his 1989 Alfa Romeo Milano Verde caught fire while trying to diagnose an ignition issue. Instead of shunning Alfas forever, Blyth bought another Milano Verde less than two months after the fire, and completely rebuilt it to (hopefully!) avoid repeating the last one’s fate.
Read MoreSince the people who usually buy minivans are the ones with kids, it’s good to pay extra attention to which ones are the safest. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently conducted its passenger-side small overlap front crash test on the Honda Odyssey, Chrysler Pacifica and Toyota Sienna. The latter posed some concerning results.
Read MoreI’m going to file this under the “you call it a viral video, cops call it evidence” folder. I understand this is going to come as a shocker for many of you out there, but the guy who posted a video of himself doing 198 mph on a North Carolina highway got himself arrested. The charges are not looking good for him.
Read MoreThere’s a great old bookstore in the town over from me, but it’s open really erratic hours. I think the hours of operation are determined by the numerical day of the year divided by the square root of broccoli, or something. All I know is that every time I pass it, it’s closed, except for the other day, when I saw they were actually open. I did a handbrake turn into a rack of bicycles, and bolted inside.
Read MoreJeremy Clarkson is tweeting not-so-helpful advice about how to achieve the same level of success as him, so let’s put it all into perspective.
Read MoreHot damn. It’s happening. It’s really happening. We let you know that we’re here to help with your life, your cars, your soul, your problems—all of them, car-related and otherwise, and you came through, sending us a whole rusty busload of quality, thoughtful, and, yes, sometimes painful questions. We can’t answer them all at once (doctor said so), so we’ve picked two to start with. They’re good ones.
Read MoreA former Tesla employee has filed a formal whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging the automaker failed to disclose to shareholders that authorities had uncovered an alleged drug trafficking effort involving an employee at its Gigafactory plant in Nevada dealing “substantial” amounts of cocaine and possibly meth. [Update: The employee’s attorney got it wrong in his initial statement. It was just one employee, not a group.]
Read MoreWhile I am very excited about the upcoming, animated Fast and Furious show, my faith in Netflix’s ability to competently produce a good car show was severely shaken after Fastest Car. Netflix just announced that it’s renewed Fastest Car for a second season and will also add two more shows. I don’t know whether to be eager or afraid.
Read MoreThe 2019 BMW Z4 convertible found its way onto the internet today. Its reception here was, let’s say, mixed.
Read MoreCorporations seeking out lucrative tax subsidies for development projects isn’t a particularly new phenomenon, something captured by the recent maniacal effort from cities across the U.S. to throw public money at Amazon to subsidize its new headquarters. Detroit is about to experience a smaller-scale version of that scenario: Ford has $16.8 billion of cash, but the automaker said on Tuesday that it needs $250 million in tax subsidies to rehab a dilapidated train station near the city’s downtown.
Read MoreOfficial press photos have been leaked for the upcoming 2019 BMW Z4, all before its official release later this month at the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance. It looks pretty good without all that camouflage!
Read MoreRenting a car can be glamorous or a total cluster, depending on whether you want it more for the experience or as a means to get somewhere for the lowest price. This new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 rental at Hertz leans toward the former, but don’t expect to get far—it has a cap at 75 miles per day before fees rack up.
Read MoreAre you sick of being broke all the time? Eating sandwiches with scraps of cardboard with the word “HAM” scrawled on them? I know I am. But I’m not here to complain; I’m here to solve problems and chew gum, and my debit card got declined when I tried to buy gum. So, here, my gift to you, 10 sure-fire get-rich automotive-related disruptive business ideas. You’re welcome.
Read MoreThe Aston Martin Cygnet is basically a Scion iQ with a new face and a fancy interior, and it existed in large part to help the British sports car brand meet emissions requirements. So surely it doesn’t have any collectable value, you may think. But then you’d be wrong.
Read MoreLifeboats are great and all. If your regular ship is sinking, a lifeboat is what you NEED. But could they be better? Could they be more? Could they have suspension in the seats and be impossible to capsize? The Shannon is a boat built by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution that is a Batman’s utility belt of lifeboats, capable, basically, of anything.
Read MoreThe Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly ramping up its investigation into Tesla and CEO Elon Musk’s bid to take the company private, including his statements that he had “funding secured” to make it happen.
Read MoreCar insurance should be simple. If you are a safe driver you should pay less than someone who is more accident prone. But we all know that isn’t how it works. A multitude of other factors also determine your rates, including your credit score. A recent study shows that depending on where you live and who your insurance company is your credit can have a big impact.
Read MoreThe ‘70s were a neat time for cars. Everything was shaped like a door-stopper. Like the Maserati Khamsin. The BMW M1. The Lamborghini Countach. And the Ferrari 512S Modulo concept, which, excitingly, had its first drive ever on public roads today.
Read MoreThe 2019 Honda Civic lineup has undergone a very moderate update, with tweaked styling around the bumpers, new wheel options, updated headlights and, graciously, a new Sport trim with an honest, real physical volume knob replacing the old, annoying volume slider.
Read More“Hm,” you say to yourself one day over the morning paper. “How many Bugatti Veyrons will it take to make me happy?” Trick question! Happiness is an illusion and no amount of Veyrons will ever fill that void. But we can certainly start with four as an experiment.
Read MoreTires! They’re one of the most important aspects of your car, so buying the right set for the right situation is extremely important. What are your best tips for buying tires?
Read MoreA cool plane momentarily injected some excitement into the lives of some otherwise-bored car drivers when it made an emergency landing onto the highway in front of them this weekend in the Bay Area.
Read MoreHave you ever seen something like a corporate fun run, and there’s some speeches or something before it gets all started, and some executive pulls the fun run company t-shirt over their button-down shirt and tie? You know how awkward and stiff and uncomfortable that looks? That’s what the tenth-generation Ford Thunderbird was. Some mid-level executive with a fun run shirt pulled awkwardly over his shirt and tie.
Read MoreLexus hasn’t jumped into the electric vehicle frenzy like other automakers, and a new interview with the automaker’s CEO helps explain why. It’s simple really: EVs simply won’t meet the needs for everyone.
Read MoreThe Citroën 2CV is an iconic car, and famous for many things: extreme simplicity, an almost unholy ability to not roll over, and an almost lethal concentration of Frenchness. One thing it’s not really known for is being a race car. A number of people have tried to change this, but the first one to give a real, serious attempt was a man named Jean Dagonet.
Read MoreA group of more than a dozen people described as “youths” are setting groups of parked cars on fire in what appear to be coordinated acts of arson, according to multiple sources on Twitter.
Read MoreLast week, we asked you what features should be standard on all cars. It turns out you all probably want a Saab.
Read MoreLast year’s introduction of the all-new BMW 5 Series left the outgoing M5 in the dust with the M550i xDrive model, powered by a 4.4-liter V8 with 455 horsepower. Bad news for last-gen M5 owners is that the 2020 M550i is going to get even more power, which means it will be even quicker.
Read MoreAt the 2003 Detroit Auto Show, Dodge showed the world a concept version of the then-upcoming second-generation Dodge Durango. It was called the Dodge Durango Hemi R/T, and my god, was it hideous. So naturally, the brand went ahead and released a very similar design for production.
Read MoreAzealia Banks, pop star, who has reportedly been hanging out “alone” at the house of Elon Musk, CEO and Chairman of Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, has started spitting straight fire at Musk on her Instagram account. Incendiary remarks aside—and there’s plenty of those—Banks claimed that Musk was on Twitter while using acid. Which is a hell of a thing to claim, in light of recent events on Twitter.
Read MoreAs much as Forza Motorsport 7 loves lap times, the game isn’t all about nailing the perfect lap. Neither, obviously, is its jump-happy counterpart, Forza Horizon 4. The Formula Drift Car Pack is soon coming to both games and you’ll be able to get sideways to your heart’s content.
Read MoreOf all the wacko shit to come out of the ‘90s, Vector had to be one of the whackiest. Vector made wedge-shaped, truly weirdo cars in fantastically tiny numbers and a new hypercar is apparently coming. Vector just needs you to buy these two prototypes for $3.5 million to help fund the new car’s construction. Don’t you want to be the one to say that you helped bankroll Vector?
Read MoreAs I got closer to the infamous RWB HQ in the quaint town of Kashiwa just north of Tokyo, the smell of barbecue filled the muggy air. It was night before the grueling Idlers 12 Hours race held every year at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit, and I had joined the RWB guys as they prepped to head up to the track.
Read MoreToday’s cars are wonderful machines that can detect when you, the driver, are getting drowsy or provide on-board WiFi so your passengers can get some work done while they’re being driven. They’re wonders of modern technology, but despite this, cars are still lacking in a few crucial features.
Read MoreDetails on the next generation Ford Explorer started trickling out earlier this year. We heard of its move to rear-drive longitudinal layout (yes, really) and the confirmation from Ford that there would be an ST model. Just last week, Ford revealed a powertrain diagram of the base 2.3-liter Explorer in an investor presentation, and now we’re finding more details based on a leaked order guide.
Read MoreThey say if it has wheels, people will find a way to race it. I had no idea that this also applied to pig wranglin’, but at the Tillamook County Fair in Oregon, the Pig-N-Ford races are a hit of the weekend.
Read MoreMarc Rooding, Dutch owner of a F30 BMW 320i, awoke just before 4 a.m. a week ago to the local police knocking on his door, who explained to him they had been alerted by a car security call center that somebody had smashed the passenger-side window on his car. And it only got weirder from there.
Read MoreOn Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013, Fast and Furious star Paul Walker died in a fiery Porsche Carrera GT crash with his friend, Roger Rodas, who was driving. It was sudden and heartbreaking, a death that was especially felt in the car community. Five years later, I Am Paul Walker premieres this weekend, a documentary that seeks to immortalize the actor’s life and his accomplishments. The film does this, but also curiously ignores the major controversy surrounding his relationships with underage girls.
Read MoreThe U.S. Department of Justice wasn’t thrilled that a Georgia sheriff bought a 707-horsepower Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat with federal funds, demanding he reimburse the nearly $70,000 he spent. The DOJ got its money back, but local outlets report that the sheriff’s department just used county tax dollars on it instead.
Read MoreMention the rotary engine, and you’re bound to get an entire peanut gallery promising apex seals going boom. Ryan Gilbert wasn’t scared away when his girlfriend’s family 1979 Mazda RX-7 was up for grabs. In fact, he’s well on his way to returning it to the drag nights and autocrosses it used to do.
Read MoreElectric scooter companies have a fraught relationship with just about every community they’ve launched in, and some critics of how they’re used have taken to vandalizing the dockless rides—a phenomenon captured in a wonderfully-reported story today by the Los Angeles Times.
Read MoreA few months back the Blue Oval brand let us know a small off-roader was on the way in addition to the new Ford Bronco, all to better contend with Jeep. The teaser image Ford released didn’t tell us much, but recent remarks from an investor presentation appear to point towards something that is more like the Jeep Renegade and less like the Wrangler.
Read MoreThe car industry has few secrets, at least when it comes to car designs. Any dramatic new vehicle you see debut was usually previewed by a concept car a few years before. So if we know a mid-engine Corvette is due, there’s gotta be some concept car from a couple years back that previews it. And this might be the one.
Read MoreEven as electric car startup Faraday Future has been inching closer to making a production car, its ongoing legal skirmish with a former executive is continuing to get worse. On Thursday, the former executive’s new startup sued Faraday, claiming its employment agreements violate California state law by preventing employees from seeking work elsewhere. But the complaint also paints a harsh picture of day-to-day life at Faraday.
Read MoreHave you ever smoked your tire so hard it just exploded? Were you too excited by it to wonder what the hell actually happened? Well no worries, here’s what’s up.
Read MoreAnother day, another mid-engine Corvette sighting. Except this isn’t some blocky mule running around a gas station with a tarp on its face, this appears to be the new Corvette C8.R race car.
Read MoreYou remember Brabus, right? It’s the high-performance Mercedes tuner that recently created this, uh, custom Smart limousine. But that’s the great thing about Brabus: It’s also created hotted-up Smarts in the past and the Brabus 125R is the newest, hottest version yet.
Read MoreFrom some people trying to steal utility poles by latching them to the hood of an SUV to others getting DUIs while riding horses, Florida crime is something most of us will never understand—except for the cows, it seems. The cows have this down so well that they actually helped police catch someone in a car chase.
Read MoreHey, pals! You know how everything is terrible, and you never seem to know what to do, and your life and your car and your car’s life and your life’s car are all a mess, and everything seems stupid and hopeless and wrong? Of course you do. Most people are just going to get the hell away from you, in case whatever you have rubs off.
Read MoreMazda has been promising the U.S. a diesel engine for nearly a decade now, but year after year has passed and still no diesel. Now, with the EPA releasing ratings for a 2.2-liter Skyactiv-D diesel CX-5, the prospect of a diesel Mazda is finally feeling real. Here’s how the car did in EPA testing.
Read MoreThere’s still no official word from GM regarding the “mid-engine Corvette” but images and audio of the camouflaged race car running around today yield some, uh, interesting aural hints as to what powers the thing.
Read MoreThis is what happens when you let the tech industry drive innovation in automobiles.
Read MoreThis generation has been losing out a lot on manual transmissions. Fewer and fewer cars come with them. Fewer and fewer drivers know how to use them. But there’s another joy that’s fading away: the satisfaction of seeing a car parked across the street, walking over, looking in the window and discovering that the car is not an automatic (lame) but a manual (hell yes).
Read MoreFord said this week that it has made 10 million Mustangs, across 54 years and six generations of one of America’s most iconic muscle cars. Ford gave no word on whether this was the result of a head-to-head battle to produce more Mustangs than onlookers can produce jokes about them peeling out of Cars and Coffee.
Read MoreIn case you needed reminding, building cars is hard. And I don’t mean just the supply chain management and viable sales network aspect of it; the physical task of assembling a car at a plant is tough work. To ease the toll of heavy lifting and other arduous tasks (like beating up on xenomorphs), Ford is equipping its employees with new upper body exoskeleton technology.
Read MoreThis looks like a Lamborghini Miura Jota SVR, but it’s not a Lamborghini Miura Jota SVR. It’s not a replica, or a kit car. It wasn’t made with revolutionary and dangerous shrink ray technology. It’s simply the work of a man who grew up dreaming of owning a Miura Jota SVR, but it was always just out of his reach. So he decided to build his own instead.
Read MoreIf your car’s gas filler is its hungry mouth, then its gas cap has to be its, um, mouth-cover? Pacifier? No, that’s terrible. This analogy is terrible. The point is, interesting gas caps are rare, so the ones that are interesting deserve attention. And, I think we can all agree, there’s two real standouts in the field: the Ford Mustang and the AMC Gremlin. But the question is, which one is better?
Read MoreLynk & Co, the Geely brand that shares platforms and powertrains from Volvo for its Chinese market vehicles with dreams of eventually setting up shop in Europe and America, has revealed the production version of its funky sedan called the Lynk & Co 03. It looks like an alien impersonating a Chrysler 300.
Read MoreFerrari came to the 2016 Paris Motor Show with four special cars, each styled in a way reminiscent of famous drivers of its cars. There was the Stirling Moss F12 Berlinetta, the Michael Schumacher 488 GTB, the David Piper 488 Spider and the Steve McQueen California T. But according to a recent lawsuit by McQueen’s son, Ferrari used the late actor’s name to advertise and sell the car without the family’s knowledge or consent.
Read MoreA British tourist rented a Lamborghini Huracan in Dubai on July 30, and was shortly thereafter caught by speeding cameras 33 times driving between 78 mph and 143 mph, UAE news site The National reports. The total cost of the resulting tickets and fees: $46,424.
Read MoreI think it can actually cause you some brain damage if you spend too long trying to picture a Hyundai Veracruz. The primate brain simply isn’t capable of performing such an act, but it almost can, so the brain’s vision and car-identification centers can overwork themselves to such a degree that they can cause a stroke or a full-on cranial explosion. I’ve seen it happen on the internet. So, for the love of pickles, do not try to picture a Hyundai Veracruz without using the photographic assets inc
Read MoreYou don’t need the performance package on your 17-foot luxury barge. You just don’t. That’s the God’s honest truth that struck me after my time with the Lexus LS 500 F Sport.
Read MoreNashville police arrested two teenagers last Wednesday, after a press release from the department said they attempted to carjack two women that day. The statement said the teens ultimately failed both times, with the second being because the car had a manual transmission. They had to run away on foot.
Read MoreModifying your car is the most surefire way to make it yours. It sets the car apart from all the other lame-o cars on the road and you get to express yourself a little bit. We all have our favorite mods.
Read MoreA highway explosion near Bologna, Italy, has caused a bridge to partially collapse and has left at least 20 injured, according to the Associated Press. Video purported to be captured from the site shows at least half the bridge destroyed.
Read MoreThe McLaren F1, also known as The Gold Standard By Which All Other Cars Are Measured, famously has 627 horsepower raging out of its naturally-aspirated BMW V12. For the turbo BMW V8 in the new 2019 BMW M5 Competition, it has slightly fewer horsepower. In fact, just two fewer horsepower. It has 625 horsepower.
Read MoreThe Buick Envision is a meh car, but somehow Buick dealers sold 42,000 of these things in the U.S. market last year, making up 20 percent of its total U.S. sales. But it’s built in China and imported here, so thanks to the proposed Trump administration tariffs on imported cars, it could vanish from Buick’s American lineup—and maybe put Buick in a not-great position here.
Read MoreMatthew Cox’s 1993 Nissan 240SX convertible looked fine enough in the eBay photos. It was his chance to own a rare version of a car he loved, and it was fine on the outside! Then he got a good look under the car’s shiny pearl white paint, and discovered that he may have bought one of the biggest rip-offs of all time.
Read MoreHere is the first comment I saw that made me laugh. I hope it doesn’t upset you all too much.
Read MoreI’m out of any plates to eat on thanks to a mixup where I accidentally let a couple of drunk raccoons into my dishwasher, so this morning I decided to heat up one of my prescription microwave mescaline burritos on an old iPad I had laying around. Something happened with the microwaves and the mescaline in there, and now my iPad is getting wifi signals from the future. That’s where I found this ad, from Craigslist in the year 2027.
Read MoreAs far as the list of natural phenomena is concerned, the Monarch Butterfly migration, sailing stones of California, and aurora borealis all seem pretty tame in comparison to Colorado’s phenomenon of freaking bears continually trapping themselves in unlocked Subarus, which happened again this week.
Read MoreSelf-driving cars might be just around the corner (or in reality many decades away), so what are you supposed to do in the event of a crash when everyone’s just sitting in the car and chatting conference room-style? Ford is trying to stay ahead of the game and has come up with a variety of patents for that, like an astronaut suit and a giant airbag burrito.
Read MoreThe Mercedes-AMG Project One, an angry fish-looking thing, will be the German automaker’s street-legal Formula One car. With a price of nearly $3 million, it seems like Mercedes is also going the way of Ford and Aston Martin by reportedly forbidding buyers from flipping their cars as soon as they get them.
Read MoreIf the Lexus LC, a car seemingly driven straight out of that weird Jupiter Ascending movie everybody already forgot about, isn’t already enough to catch your attention for some reason, there’s now a bright yellow limited edition that should do the trick.
Read MoreThe new Mahindra Roxor seemed like the perfect off-road toy: side-by-side (SxS) four-wheeler modeled after the iconic Willys Jeep of World War II. Who wouldn’t want to play in the dirt in that? Evidently, one group doesn’t want that for you: Fiat Chrysler, which now claims in a complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission that the Roxor infringes upon the intellectual property of its iconic brand, Jeep. And it doesn’t want the Roxor sold or even advertised in America.
Read MoreIn an unusually tame call with investors Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk dialed back a long-running ambition of his to send a Tesla car across the U.S. on a fully-autonomous demo run. Now, after suggesting a test was imminent, Tesla “might” be able to pull it off by the end of 2018, he said.
Read MoreNinety-two year old James Barbour III is tough in an unusual kind of way. The stereotypical tough guy grimaces and fights and struggles. Instead, Jim has the remarkable ability to stay even, to keep things light. To make it seem like when the going gets rough, well, it’s not rough at all. According to him and wife, Patricia Barbour, he’s never even sworn. He says “Oh my,” when he’s most fired up.
Read MoreMy search for the best driving roads in Japan hasn’t gone quite as well as I had hoped. So far the biggest problem I’ve faced was traffic getting to the roads themselves. When I went to the Hakone Turnpike in the MX-5 Miata RF it was raining, but that’s not really a deal breaker as it was quite fun in the wet. Going to Lake Miyagase, Mount Akina and Akagi involved plenty of sitting in the car before getting to the actual touges.
Read MoreToyota apparently spent about $2 million on the GR Supra Racing Concept it brought to the Geneva Motor Show in March, which doesn’t sound outrageous since it marked the long-awaited revival of, well, the Supra. But it actually is baffling, considering how little the concept car has done in five months.
Read MoreI’ll admit, I feel sort of strange about this. I laid into Elon Musk pretty hard last week for that whole kids-in-caves-submarine-pedo-thing, but today Musk announced, over Twitter, that Tesla had an agreement with Atari to put some classic Atari games into the Tesla’s infotainment system as Easter Eggs (a concept that got its start on an Atari, even). This is so up my alley I feel weird about it, like I’m being trolled.
Read MoreThe one big downside of cars—other than that they crash, they sometimes rust and that the good ones are slowly getting phased out by people who want gears to shift themselves and by crossover demand—is that sometimes, small animals crawl into them and can’t get out without help. This kitten got that help.
Read MoreI’ll take a Nissan Skyline, some Kinder Surprise eggs and, uh, whatever you’ve got in that white packet over there. How much?
Read MoreGenerally, one of the least surprising car designs has been, pretty consistently since 1963, the Porsche 911. It’s very much an evolutionary as opposed to a revolutionary design, but, somehow, it’s still exciting to see how it develops. And now we can see the 2020 version of the iconic shape, and it’s still very much a 911. But a very big 911.
Read MoreTesla on Wednesday said it expects to make as many as 55,000 Model 3 sedans in the third quarter of 2018, a clip of about 4,000 per week. The automaker also reported that it earned $4 billion in revenue in the second quarter, while posting a net loss of $743 million, in line with recent quarters.
Read MoreBack in March, we reported on a Paul Walker documentary in the works. It’s being directed by Adrian Buitenhuis and called I Am Paul Walker. Comprised of a series of interviews that colorfully paint the actor’s life, we now have a small snippet of what to expect.
Read MoreI don’t know if you know this, but Prince Harry got married recently. It wasn’t a big deal. But you know what is? His 2017 Audi RS6 Avant that’s for sale now, and it’s as bitchin’ as they come.
Read MoreThe Buick Regal, you may have forgotten, is on sale in the United States as a handsome five-door hatchback or wagon. Now there’s a luxury Avenir trim that fixes something I think even Buick knew was wrong with the car: the seats.
Read MoreThe 2019 Mazda Miata that got a big power bump to 181 horsepower will be at dealerships soon, meaning its 155-HP predecessors will get the “Please, take this car” markdown treatment on lots. But, incredibly, the new and far more powerful Miata’s MSRP is only a few hundred dollars more than the 2018 car.
Read MoreToyota is one of the few automakers actively pushing hydrogen fuel cell technology into the mainstream. Already, it’s said that it wants to bring the costs of FCVs down by 2025, thus making them more accessible to more people. Meanwhile, its new hydrogen fuel cell truck prototype now has an increased range of 300 miles.
Read MoreThe New York Times Magazine has been teasing out its upcoming issue in recent days, as it’s dedicated to a single story that focuses on how we had an opportunity to address climate change in the 1980s, but failed to do anything. Coinciding with the current administration’s proposal to roll back fuel economy targets, expected to be unveiled this week, the timing couldn’t be any better.
Read MoreThe other day I saw a Volvo XC60 driving through traffic while I walked to the subway. It’s a handsome car, or crossover I could say, but even I was surprised. “Why is the hood so big?”
Read MoreSecurity footage captured a Tesla Model S getting an incredible amount of air after speeding over railroad tracks in Barrie, Ontario yesterday. The car lost control on landing, and crashed into the parking lot of an elementary school. The driver was reportedly charged with dangerous driving.
Read MorePerhaps realizing few will pay attention to or talk about it after the expected coming of its successor, the ancient mythological beast known as the mid-engine Corvette, this current-generation Corvette Z06 evidently wanted to get some attention by fighting a wall at the Nürburgring in Germany. It lost.
Read MoreMost people don’t know this, but there exists a country on this earth filled only with slammed cars with stretched tires and rolled fenders. This faraway land is called called “Stance Nation,” and its citizens have been infiltrating car shows around the world for years, with one Stance Nation-ite recently getting stuck on a speed bump in Georgia.
Read MoreIf you’re worried about your car being stolen or towed, and all you’ve got is a length of chain and a couple of padlocks, there are lots of creative ways to keep your vehicle from disappearing.
Read MoreAs of 3:10 p.m. pst Tuesday, police in the Los Angeles suburbs were still looking for a radically reckless shoplifting suspect who straight up crashed their way through multiple cop cars in a Ford Mustang before escaping into the bushes on foot.
Read MoreLike a high-stakes version of a person with food in their teeth but nobody’s said anything yet, an 18-wheeler driver told police recently that he didn’t notice a car skidding along on the front of his truck as he pushed it down a San Antonio highway. The driver of the car had minor injuries, according to reports.
Read MoreFord Mustangs do a lot of things. They do decent 0-to-60 times. They do really fast 0-to-60 times. They drive in big circles. They screech down drag strips like supersonic prehistoric birds. They frighten onlookers at Cars and Coffee. They honor famous movies. And, sometimes, they even try to go to the movies.
Read MoreA Fiat Chrysler dealership lost lots of cars to a major flood in northeast New Jersey on Saturday. A now-viral video shows a number of vehicles getting carried away like toys in a creek by a violent torrent before crashing into a bridge and into each other. The resulting mountain of soaked and bashed-up trucks and SUVs is a reminder of just how powerful flash floods can be.
Read MoreRichard Rawlings, the television show host, energy drink impresario, and restaurateur, has tried his hand at drag racing and failed in gloriously impressive fashion. While racing against NHRA Top Fuel ace Leah Pritchett, Mr. Rawlings skidded into the left side k-rail of the makeshift track on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. The crash wasn’t injury inducing, but it seriously screwed up the left side of the car, and moved the concrete wall a bit.
Read MoreA Chevrolet S10 pickup drove into a sinkhole in Worcester, Massachusetts on Tuesday, and the back of its cab appears to have just floated right off the frame. It’s bizarre.
Read MoreTake this in. There’s a truck. There’s a train. The truck is turning near where the train will be. The train approaches the truck, which is turning in such a way that it might be occupying the same space that the train will also be occupying.
Read MoreIf you’re out of tissues, ice cream and/or romantic comedies to cheer you up, it’s best that you don’t watch this video of the Philippines government destroying ~$5.6 million worth of exotic supercars as an idiotic way to prevent smuggling.
Read MoreIn obvious attempts to fill the world’s huge void for car-centric video games, Amazon said Tuesday it’s making the former Top Gear trio’s show, The Grand Tour, into one. Amazon made it sound like Mario Kart with characters who do their own trash talking, with “cheeky power-ups like High Tea, which spills tire-shredding cups and saucers.”
Read MoreIt’s been a while since I last looked at Jeremy Clarkson’s Twitter. If you’ve never looked at all, it’s not really any different from other Twitters. Except every year, around the middle of August, you get a, uh, motivational tweet.
Read MoreIn late 1983, Poland was just stepping out from under the crushing weight of martial law from an extremely oppressive government, which suppressed pro-Democracy activism, ruined the economy and directly led to the deaths of dozens. After martial law was lifted, old Top Gear visited the country to explore its remarkably depressing car culture.
Read MoreIn the past, we’ve called The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, insanely opulent and “the fanciest.” It’s where supercar owners and their rich friends to come do what they already do at home, which is look at cars and drink champagne. That doesn’t change the fact that there are still many, many people milling around the event, getting in your way. Just like with avoiding all types of traffic, there are off-hours that you should definitely take advantage of if you ever go.
Read MoreThe Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance isn’t really an institution known for taking a lot of risks or doing unexpected things, but this year they will be doing at least one new thing by showcasing, for the first time, cars built in mainland China. The cars are a pair of Hong Qi limousines, and they are pretty remarkable.
Read MoreWith its bulbous fenders and vertical grille, the 1936 Ford Model 48 looked like a gangster’s car without a doubt. Something that was used to smuggle liquor during Prohibition. Engaged in police chases and shootouts. Driving it was a blast—and a little bit terrifying as well.
Read MoreRemember how great the lively little Ford Fiesta ST was? Then remember how Ford decided to stop selling small cars in America? That sucked. And it’s going to suck more when you realize the new, 200 horsepower Fiesta ST—which you Americans cannot buy—takes what the old car did and builds on it in the best possible way.
Read MoreDoes Bullitt still matter? Fifty years since it came out, is the detective thriller—oozing with Steve McQueen’s quiet, simmering brand of cool and famous for its groundbreaking centerpiece car chase scene—relevant to the young buyers the Ford Mustang once had a monopoly on? After a hot lap of San Francisco in the 2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter, because this car is an instant classic in its own right.
Read MoreAfter looking at the cheapest cars sold at the 2018 Pebble Beach auctions, let’s now take a look at the most expensive. Full disclosure, there’s not anything realistic or attainable on this list—unless you are some kind of petroleum oligarch, in which case, god bless—but we can all dream.
Read MoreThis year’s Pebble Beach car auctions have just wrapped up, which also saw the most expensive car ever sold at auction. That’s all fine and good, but it’s not what interests me. I’m curious about what I could have gone home with. I’m curious about the cheapest cars sold at auction.
Read MoreAfter multiple ownerships and half a year of legal battles over who or what company should rightfully own it, the 2017 Ford GT first bought by pro wrestler John Cena went to auction over the weekend in Monterey, California. It sold for $1.435 million, or nearly $1 million more than Cena originally paid for it.
Read MoreIt makes me kind of sad that the new Acura NSX doesn’t seem to be super well-received by the Honda faithful, in large part because it’s so different by the beloved original. The new one is a high-tech spaceship, maybe the best handling car I have ever driven. But if the first NSX’s purity is more your speed, and you have about as much money to spend, here’s a clean 1991 one going for $185,000.
Read MoreIt’s been described as “the world’s most important, desirable, and legendary motor car.” Of course, that was by the people selling it, but the hyperbole must have worked somehow, because this 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO became the most expensive car ever sold at auction this weekend at an RM Sotheby’s sale during Monterey Car Week. The price tag: a staggering $48.4 million.
Read MoreJust two months after Ford settled lawsuits with pro wrestler John Cena and a dealership that resold his 2017 Ford GT over breaking the company’s rule that original buyers couldn’t resell for two years, the car for sale once again. It’ll be auctioned off in Monterey, California this weekend, through the same dealer Ford sued over it.
Read MoreHeads up, eighties film fans: the car from one of the most iconic movies of the decade is going up for auction, and you could be the next lucky owner. That’s right. The not-really-a-Ferrari GT California from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off can be your love and your passion, too.
Read MoreHave you ever dreamed of having not one, but two, big, overpriced American drag cars for the street, so powerful that somebody had to sign off on their potential danger upon buying them? Maybe one for yourself and one for your significant other, or one for yourself and another one for yourself?
Read MoreIf you’re trying to buy a rear-engined, aerodynamic, aluminum-bodied car for new Camry money, you don’t really have many options. That’s why this ad should be such a godsend to the significant portion of our readership finding themselves in this situation: it’s a rear-engined, aerodynamic, aluminum, and absolutely unique car, all for $25,000. It’s also a Beetle chassis with an airplane stuck on top of it.
Read MoreA vintage air-cooled Porsche 911 is one of the best old cars to drive, one of the easiest old cars to own, which is why everyone has already bought one and they are over. This is why I lit up today upon seeing this 1966 one-off Bertone roadster, a 911 that’s not, a 911 that’s good.
Read MoreI’ve always had mixed feelings about the Ferrari F50. I feel like it didn’t get the love it deserved because it was overshadowed by the F40 and the Enzo. But also it had a goofy face that I couldn’t quite take seriously. I didn’t have any bedroom posters of it (I was an Enzo fan), but if you did, then here’s your chance to buy the one that wound up on all the bedroom posters.
Read MoreThe 2019 GMC Sierra is basically the luxury-branded version of the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado, offering number of fun tech goodies that the Chevy doesn’t. But as fun as those are, it’s really the styling of the off-road model, the AT4, that makes the Sierra stand out.
Read MoreThe 2019 Honda Pilot is as comfortable as a generous dose of anesthesia and doesn’t mind if you’re allergic to packing light. This SUV is so family friendly it even helps you yell at your kids. But actually–there’s an intercom you can use to bark from the front seat to the back, like, a pilot.
Read MoreThe 2018 Honda Ridgeline feels like a really well-executed El Camino’fication of a Honda Accord. At first I thought that was kind of lame, but after a long weekend of working and playing out of Honda’s little truck I’m convinced that this is actually a cool and uniquely useful vehicle.
Read More“Not much to this thing,” I thought as I plopped into the 2018 Hyundai Ioniq’s firm driver’s seat and gripped its rock-hard plastic steering wheel. Then I found the price tag: just over $23,000. Then I found the fuel range: just over... holy crap, 600 miles? As far as new cars go, this is quite a penny pincher.
Read MoreThe BMW i8 is currently BMW’s most exciting model. It looks strikingly close to its concept, which is remarkable because most cool cars don’t do that. Usually, daring designs get scrapped before making it anywhere near production. Here are five things you should know about it.
Read MoreLaguna Seca, Road America, Lime Rock, Mid-Ohio—if you have the cash and the nerve, it’s not hard to find a good driving school at a solid race track. Over the past year, Austin, Texas’s Circuit of The Americas has stepped up its game for students of speed, and it’s added a whole new stack of toys to play with.
Read MoreHave you ever driven down a straight road and noticed that the car in front of you appeared to be driving sideways, with all four tires visible from directly behind? If so, you’ve been witnessing “Dog Tracking.” Here’s why it happens.
Read MoreYou may think this is all just an excuse for me to play video games when I’m supposed to be “at work” You’d be right. But this is also an excuse for you to learn about glorious race tracks and cars all across the world, in hopefully entertaining fashion. This is Track Pack.
Read MoreOver the past few years, we’ve seen a string of new vintage cars built from unused old stock. There was a bunch of Jaguars, some Aston Martins, and now this quite gold Porsche 993 Turbo “Classic Series,” which Porsche is keen to point out is unregisterable for use on the street. I asked the company why, exactly.
Read MoreIt’s Monterey Car Week, where some of the most expensive and exclusive cars ever made are displayed and auctioned off. It’s the perfect event to see automotive legends—and it’s practically begging for a heist. Here’s how you theoretically could pull it off.
Read MoreThis is one of the most common shared experiences in all of automobilia: You’re outside a car, trying to get in. The person inside the car is attempting to open the door lock at the same time you’re pulling the handle to open the door. A comedy of errors ensues, with each of your actions canceling out the other’s, leaving you both pulling handles or locking buttons over and over, in a seemingly never-ending mechanical stalemate. Eventually, someone yells for someone to let go, already, and the n
Read MoreQuickly fading are the days when we were free to dream of cranking a lever connected to cables that would squeeze the brakes and break traction, as more and more modern cars replace cabled emergency and parking brake systems with simply a button. But there’s a lot of good reasons for it, so here’s how electronic parking brakes work.
Read MoreIf you’ve ever looked at floor-mounted automatic transmission shift levers, with either disdain or genuine gratitude, you’ve probably noticed that they tend to fall into two main categories: the ones that have a simple, linear path through the PRNDL family, and those that use a convoluted, maze-like route through the gears. Why are there two very different schools of thought on the design of these? Is there a mechanical difference? Is one better than the other? What’s going on?
Read MoreI recently strolled through a junkyard with my friend Taylor when he asked: “What are these flaps on the rear corners of all these cars?” Realizing that he may not be the only one wondering, I decided to write this post about these devices, which act as vital pressure relief valves.
Read MoreParts arriving broken or weeks late. Horrible customer service. An office where employees were spied on with cameras. These are just a few complaints from former employees and from hundreds of car enthusiasts who have done business with major Euro auto parts supplier ECS Tuning. With the company having recently bought another giant in the industry, Pelican Parts, an entire car community now worries that it’ll be forced to contend with a dysfunctional retailer just to keep vehicles on the road.
Read MoreLast Friday, at the pretentiously-named-with-a-comma-even “The Quail, a Motorsports Gathering” event in Monterey, California, Hennessey Performance Engineering unveiled the engine that will power its new flagship supercar, the Venom F5. HPE claims the engine is a “newly developed unit,” and that the engine is entirely “bespoke” and the result of at least a year and a half of development. I’m not so sure how I feel about that.
Read MoreU.S. regulators want to find out which Goodyear officials were involved in assessing a possible defect in an RV tire that’s linked to at least 10 deaths and dozens of injuries. Newly-released documents obtained by Jalopnik provide an answer for Goodyear CEO Rich Kramer: he personally approved settlements of cases involving the dangerous tire failures as early as 2008, in filings that laid out the vast amount of complaints Goodyear had received over the tire.
Read MorePresident Donald Trump and Harley-Davidson have been feuding ever since Harley said it was going to move some production overseas because of Trump’s trade war. But it’s been mostly one-sided, as Harley has repeatedly declined to comment on the situation even after Trump backed a Harley boycott. Until today, that is.
Read MoreHarley-Davidson has a logo, of course, the famous bar and shield, but they have also been making up new logos to put on its bikes for decades. Wildly different logos! Very 1970s logos! Truly odd logos! Here are pictures of nearly all of them—there are way, way more than you think.
Read MoreNearly four miles of track at Silverstone Circuit in the UK got a full repave this year for the first time since 1996, after complaints of increased bumpiness. The new stuff was smooth at first, but rapid degradation made for a bumpy Formula One race and a canceled MotoGP event.
Read MoreImagine you are Serious Motorcycle Man, out for a highway jaunt on your Serious Motorcycle with its Serious Aftermarket Exhaust and Serious Stealth Decal. Ain’t nothing can spoil your day. Well, maybe except for some wet concrete.
Read MoreHarley-Davidson has just announced significant technological updates for its Touring machines and Cruisers; the cushiest bikes in its barn. The new “Boom! Box” GTS Infotainment System looks slick, but I’m actually a lot more impressed by the infrastructure Harley’s putting behind it.
Read MoreThe Moto2 race at the MotoGP Austrian Grand Prix was a wet one, which makes for dicey conditions. It could have been even dicier for rider Tetsuta Nagashima, whose bike saw its rear end completely snap around on him. That could’ve been a big shunt for Nagashima, but apparently he knows how to surf instead.
Read MoreBack in April, Ford announced that it was phasing out all small cars except the Ford Mustang and the Ford Focus Active in North America. Except now it looks like the Mustang may be on its own, as The Blue Oval brand will not bring the Focus Active stateside due to new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
Read MoreStories on the inner-workings of Elon Musk’s mind have been flowing like wine in recent days, thanks to the Tesla CEO’s botched attempt at taking the company private. The latest comes by way of the Wall Street Journal, which sets the scene with a cheery anecdote about the one time Musk (purportedly) head-butted a car to refute that the company’s assembly line needed to be stopped for safety.
Read MoreWe are undeniably using up what little remains of Earth’s petroleum, and because of that, it’s getting expensive. To reduce fuel costs, shipping companies are turning back to sailboats. Yes, seriously. Sailboats. But they don’t look like any sails you’ve seen before.
Read MoreFriends, is there anything more satisfying than the onboard video of someone completing a really satisfying lap around the Nürburgring? Personally, I don’t think so. So sit back, relax, and watch a Koenigsegg test driver run a 7:37 lap of the Nordschleife in his Miata NC
Read MoreI know you’re out there, Lego fans. I know plenty of y’all also spent long hours of your childhood piecing together the luxury cars of your dreams long before you even knew how to read an RPM gauge, pretending your little Lego self was actually driving a super-sleek Ferrari. Well, boys and girls, Bugatti has decided to make those childhood dreams come true. They’ve teamed up with Lego to create a 1:1-scale Bugatti Chiron that actually drives.
Read MoreWe spend the majority of our time with our cars sitting inside them. And one of the things that we look at the most is the dashboard, which provides all kinds of useful information. The problem with modern dashboards, as informative as they are, is that they all kind of look the same. To find uniquely designed dashboards, one must look back in time.
Read MoreLast weekend during the Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca, Mazda racer Tristan Nunez climbed aboard a manic high-rev monster from the company’s past to do battle with the other drivers, but also with the car. He’d managed to wrestle the mid-engine rotary racer to the pole position, but on the first lap of the short race the car started to exhibit serious oversteer and Nunez lost out on the lead in short order. Thanks to the video from Racer.com below, we can see the battle from inside
Read MoreRadwood happened again this weekend at Road Atlanta, this time as an associated event during the GridLife automotive, music, and lifestyle festival. Thousands of people showed up to check out the action on track and in the paddock, and we were there to get Rad in the ATL. It was an awesome time, and here are some totally rad snaps from champ photographer Paul Pattillo.
Read MoreThe new BMW Z4, sister to the Supra, is a handsome car in person, with a funky grille, funky seats, and a 3.0-liter B58B30 turbo straight six. What’s less impressive in person is how it sounds. This is a 340-horsepower sports car. It should sound snappy and wild, right?
Read MoreBy 2020, automakers will be required to ensure their hybrid and all-electric vehicles emit some noise when cruising under 19 miles per hour, but Ford is hoping to get an exemption to the rule for the police cruises it makes, according to The Verge.
Read MoreTesla violated U.S. labor laws when CEO Elon Musk tweeted in May that his employees would lose their stock options if they organized a union, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
Read MoreMuch praise has been heaped upon Henry Ford and his implementation of the assembly line as it relates to assembling complete automobiles, even though credit for the invention really belongs to Ransom E. Olds, and he doesn’t get enough for it. Similarly, laudatory language is rarely thrust in Taiichi Ohno’s direction, even though he was instrumental in revolutionizing Toyota’s manufacturing systems, and manufacturing systems all over the world. For a brief understanding of Toyota’s plan, and how
Read MoreToday was my boss’s first day back from vacation in Europe, where he claimed to have found the amount of Smart Roadsters running around quite remarkable. That naturally led me to bring up the oft-forgotten car chase in the 2010 action-comedy, Knight And Day, in which multiple Roadsters chase down Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz on a motorcycle.
Read MoreIn his latest video, an Ohio bee removal specialist who goes by The Bee Man liberates a derelict Chevrolet El Camino from the huge nest of a swarm of giant European hornets, which have creepily taken the form of a driver in the car that has rendered me forever unable to trust anyone in an El Camino.
Read MoreUber has rapidly expanded its slate of transit offerings in recent months, with the addition of electric bike and scooter businesses. Now the startup’s CEO would like to see an emphasis on getting consumers to use bikes and scooters for shorter trips instead of cars, according to the Financial Times.
Read MoreAround two years ago, it seemed like the website and quasi-social platform DriveTribe could be the next big thing for gearheads everywhere. Launched with the financial and promotional support of Grand Tour hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, it promised a fresh new home for user-created stories as well as editorial content. But two years in, it’s apparently mostly been burning through cash like a Zenvo ST1.
Read MoreThere was no shortage of awesome and incredible things at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, but, as always, anything that has been touched by Singer Vehicle Design is in a class of its own. Singer and racing firm Williams brought a special treat in the form of the Dynamic and Lightweighting Study, another reworked Porsche 911 that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since I saw it Sunday morning.
Read MoreMy experience with driving new Maseratis has only been in short bursts. I drove the Quattroporte, Ghibli and Levante for about an hour each back in February and I had a Levante today for about four hours. And because I got to spend slightly more time with it, I discovered that its interior uses dials in the best way possible.
Read MoreEver wonder what the founders of car companies drove as their dailies? I have this incredible image in my mind of Ferruccio Lamborghini puttering to work every day on a tractor, but obviously that didn’t happen. In reality, he commuted in a beautiful powder-blue 1968 Lamborghini Islero.
Read MoreTruly, one can never be as cool as whoever shows up to the vintage races at the Monterey Motorsports Reunion to run Laguna Seca in a 1970s F1 car with a custom Dodge Street Van.
Read MoreSouth Africa is the only place spinning could have started. Home to 850,000 people and a history bathed in the blood of the 1976 youth uprisings, Soweto is a town accustomed to danger, to violence, to the kind of ‘fuck you’ attitude that can only come through finding liberation from decades of oppression. And sometimes, that liberation comes through even more danger.
Read MoreThe Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is a haven for filthy rich car collectors and beautiful, beautiful machines. Looking at the list of auctions taking place is like taking a comfortable seat in the lap of luxury.
Read MoreFor those of us in the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine racing without the technology it’s endowed with today. All we have to do is kick our feet up on the couch on a Sunday morning, and we’re showered with information: lap times of every car, the gap from the leader down to a millisecond, pit deltas, and tire strategies. We’re pretty damn spoiled.
Read MoreIt’s gotta be a real downer to absolutely destroy the beautiful car you’re looking to sell. It’s gotta be even stranger to check out the Mecum Auctions site and find a 1987 Porsche 959 Komfort with a shitload of front-end damage without a single mention as to, uh, why the hell the passenger side front wheel is missing.
Read MoreWhen Denise McCluggage was six years old, she spotted a beautiful Baby Austin 7 parked on the street of her hometown in El Dorado, Kansas. Infatuated by the small car’s beauty, she asked Santa Claus to bring her one for Christmas. Here was a woman destined for the wheel.
Read MoreThere’s something pretty damn intoxicating about a vintage-looking car loaded with high-powered modern technology. Mercedes-Benz saw that appeal, so they took inspiration from their record-setting 1937 W 125, loaded it up with an electric powertrain, and pulled off the covers to drop some jaws at Pebble Beach.
Read MoreOn Sunday, August 19, IndyCar driver Robert Wickens was airlifted from Pocono Raceway after a bad wreck that left him with orthopedic injuries, pulmonary contusions, and the need for multiple surgeries. I sat in the stands watching this happen. This is the second time in four years that I’ve seen a driver flown out of Pocono in a medical helicopter. The first was in 2015, after Justin Wilson’s fatal accident.
Read MoreCars are usually good, but sometimes, they are very, very Bad. I had a feeling y’all would have some strong feelings about what cars the world would have been better without. And you most certainly did not disappoint.
Read MoreThe pre-Depression car culture in America was something truly incredible to behold. Car companies were popping up left and right, and innovative minds were easily able to make their own dreams and ideas a reality by building consumer cars of their own. Worldwide empires sprung up seemingly overnight only to come crashing down in a heap of rubble mere decades later.
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreMore than two weeks after Elon Musk took everyone by surprise with a haphazard pitch to take Tesla private, without any substantive proposal in place at the time, the automaker’s CEO is now scrapping the plan.
Read MoreI was so mad when I first drove the Acura NSX. Here was this thing that was teased for years and years and years, and when it debuted it was already supposed to be surpassed by newer, better cars. And instead, it wasn’t. It was goddamn amazing. And now Acura says it’s made it even better.
Read MoreMcLaren is looking to expand its market by introducing a customer racing division for both professional and amateur drivers alike. That means we’re seeing the introduction of the McLaren 720S GT3, which is about to get some track testing in the US and Europe.
Read MoreTesla’s production ramp-up of the Model 3 has started with more expensive models, while the much-anticipated $35,000 base trim has yet to roll out of the company’s California factory. But when it does, investment bank UBS claims Tesla will lose nearly $6,000 for each car sold.
Read MoreNormally, when you think of Kalashnikov, you likely think about guns, especially the famous AK-47 assault rifle that perhaps you once bought as a gift for your grandma. The company now has its gunsights aimed at Tesla, which they’re targeting with their new electric car prototype, the CV-1. Hilariously and delightfully, the car appears to have the body of a 1970s Moskovitch.
Read MoreHave your eye on a set of nice summer tires but don’t know the pros and cons of each? There’s “ultra high performance,” “extreme performance” and “max performance” for a start, all of which seem to mean the same thing. Well, there are a few ways you can figure out which are the best for you. Reading reviews is one way and watching reviews is another.
Read MoreI’ve always heard that the Volkswagen Golf GTI is a hero of hatchbacks, the best you could buy, the benchmark, and just an all-around good car. And yet I’ve never driven one, until now! What do you want to know about the 2018 Volkswagen Golf GTI?
Read MoreRemember when all of your problems could be solved by throwing down a banana peel, causing your opponent to comically spin out behind you, leading you to victory and temporarily broken friendships? Well that was just Mario Kart, and now you’re an adult, but could it still work in real life?
Read MoreThe Tesla Model 3 is likely one of the most important cars of the decade. When the planned $35,000 version finally hits the market, it will truly be a luxury electric vehicle for (most of) the masses. But until that happens, we’ll have to contend with the more expensive Long Range version. Here are five things about the Model 3 that you might not have known.
Read MoreYouTuber Lambo Lapdog, who describes himself on his Facebook page as a “self-made entrepreneur,” took delivery of a Lamborghini Huracán in November last year. It was about as dramatic as you would want.
Read MoreWe know that a mighty 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is in the pipeline, but details on just how ravenous it will be remain unconfirmed. Today, an allegedly leaked spec sheet was posted to a Mustang forum and gave us some viable numbers: 5.2-liter supercharged V8, 720 HP, 650 lb-ft of torque.
Read MoreScience isn’t the sexy, glamorous career Hollywood makes it out to be. Researchers aren’t sexily glancing into microscopes for a few second only to immediately save the day. In real life, the true hero scientists are the ones who crawl through sewers and see answers to our energy needs in lumps of grease and shit.
Read MoreMore Americans are in favor of strengthening U.S. fuel economy standards, a new study says, as President Donald Trump moves to ease the requirements for automakers.
Read MoreBMW maintained a stronghold as the most profitable automaker in the world, grounded by lean German engineering that in turn led to seriously high profit margins. But it no longer holds that title as of Tuesday, according to German media outlets, getting bested in the most recent quarter by Suzuki.
Read MoreAs you may know, I’m a pretty delighted owner of a Nissan Pao. That means I pay special attention to the latest Pao-related developments, such as this noted Japanese YouTube loon who rigged up a crude system to drive his Pao from a couch mounted on the roof. I’m not so sure I’m going to seek to replicate this on my Pao, but I’m happy someone gave it a go.
Read MoreI remember the first car I drove with more than 700 horsepower. It was Tony Angelo’s Formula Drift car and it was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It changed my whole idea of how cars can work. I drove it off the track in a matter of minutes.
Read MoreI have a feeling that this will be one of the more controversial Meh Car Mondays I’ve done, but I think it’s one that has to happen. Unusually for Meh Car Monday, I’m going to be focusing on a car with not just a significant following, but one that is arguably an actual automotive icon. It’s adored by innumerable old men in terrible shirts, but, if we’re really being objective, it’s a meh car. It’s the 1955-1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.
Read MoreIt turns out, it’s not just the Lamborghinis that Bitcoin enthusiasts seem to be obsessed with that are pumping CO2 into our atmosphere. Accruing the wealth itself is extremely wasteful, releasing 20 megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere a year—as much as the whole Republic of Ireland.
Read MoreUpdated: Sunday, August 19, 2018, 8:15 p.m. ET: Both Toyota teams have been excluded from Sunday’s Six Hours of Silverstone after each failed post-race scrutineering. Both failed for the same reason, the under-body skid block had been ground down too much during the course of the race.
Read MoreInspired by a recent post over on The Concourse, which was itself inspired by a very good tweet concerning personal injury stories, I got to thinking about the dumbest things I’ve done to damage my car. A car is a little bit like a small-scale mech suit that we slip on to provide humans with the power of high speed ground travel. My 2009 Mazda3 is a little bit like a Gundam, if you think about it, but way more boring. In that way, my car is something of a second skin, and I’ve damaged it in some
Read MoreThis first-year Ford Bronco has lived a good long life full of dents, scratches, and maintenance. It served its time, it earned its scars, and it remained intact many years after many of its kin went extinct. And now, thanks to Icon 4x4, the early Bronco is going to live a second life as one of Jonathan Ward’s weird and wild “Derelict” models.
Read More“The salt is good this year.” Seems like the kind of small talk you’d hear as expository in a sci-fi film, which is exacerbated by the fact that I’m standing on what looks like the face of an alien planet. Bonneville is its own small world, a microcosm of hot rods, motorcycles and burning nitromethane. For one week every year, it’s a place where speed heroes are born. Especially when the salt is good.
Read MoreThe Whelen Engineering Action Express Racing Chevrolet Corvette Coyote Daytona Prototype was racing, and winning, in IMSA’s top tier Prototype class just two years ago. In fact, it took drivers Dane Cameron and Eric Curran to the series driver’s championship in 2016.
Read MoreSome cars have been sold with a large metal shifting stick in the center console and a third foot lever intended to decouple engine power from the drivetrain. Very few people in the U.S. automotive buying market ever figured out what these strange pieces were intended for, and as a result never bought them.
Read MoreThe idea was revolutionary, simple in concept but more difficult in execution: build a road spanning across the entire American nations. From Canada to the very tip of South America, a stretch asphalt would be ribboned across two continents to unite them in one cohesive whole. And, just like any good road, people would race it.
Read MoreRallies are not places for stopped cars. Rallies are for speed. Rallies are not the place you’d expect a farmer to protest the fact that cars are going too fast around him, but that’s exactly what went down at Rallye Deutschland earlier on Saturday.
Read MorePeople have been crashing cars for as long as cars have been around. There are plenty of different ‘firsts’ when it comes to car accidents that it can get a little confusing if you try to figure out who the first reckless driver was. We here at Jalopnik recognize the importance of getting the facts straight. That’s why we’ve decided to throw together a brief rundown of some of the most common ‘first’ car accidents that took place around the world.
Read MoreOh, IndyCar. Our sweet disaster series. The disaster series for which Santino Ferrucci, who was suspended from and then cut by his Formula 2 team for intentionally wrecking his teammate post-race and texting behind the wheel, is going to be racing this season.
Read MoreI have a confession to make. This week, someone asked me what my favorite car was. And I lied.
Read MoreIf I’ve learned one thing in the automotive world, it’s that we all absolutely positively hate a lot of stuff. There are brand rivalry arguments that go on for days and can tear friendships apart. There are just certain types of cars that make us cringe every time we see them. And there are just those god-awful models that change the scope of the auto industry for the worst.
Read MoreIf you’ve seen Dragon Ball Z, you know about scouters. They’re basically an eyepiece you can pop on that’ll give you information without you having to look anywhere. Well, those might just become a thing in the future of racing.
Read MoreJealous rivals called her a “moving chicane”. Circuits went out of their way to keep women away. But Anne-Cécile Itier was not one to be discouraged by a few men who thought they knew what was best for her.
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreUp until this point, we’ve only driven the Tesla Model 3 in short bursts. And we’ve liked it very much. Now, it’s time to see what it’s like to live with for a longer-term test. We have a Model 3 Long Range for the weekend. What do you want to know about it?
Read MoreWe’ve been hearing rumors about a mid-engine Corvette for a couple of years, and while GM is keeping it very under wraps, it turns out you can learn a hell of a lot from stuff floating out on the open internet. Including that everyone’s talking about two different cars entirely.
Read MoreWhat I wanted to know was simple: how to drive a manual without breaking it, since repairs are expensive and every piece of advice I got was b.s. So I called up a rally champion and found out what will actually blow up your car in the space of an afternoon, and what will keep it running just about forever.
Read MoreThe New York Times sat down with Tesla CEO Elon Musk yesterday for an interview, revealing, well, a lot. Among the things we learn: Musk acknowledges taking Ambien, he sent his 420 tweet during a drive to the airport, he won’t quit as CEO, some Tesla board members want him to stop tweeting, and he nearly missed his brother’s wedding for work. Musk seems entirely too stressed.
Read MoreI am a passenger against my will. I have, essentially, been kidnapped. I’m being forced to go to the Woodward Dream Cruise, something which I am entirely convinced is only for the Olds, and which David Tracy and Erin Marquis insist is “awesome.” But we’re driving there from NYC in a Lexus LS500h, and so far, it’s fantastic.
Read MoreIf you’ve ever wondered what the fun to pain-in-the-ass ratio would be for driving from Florida to Alaska in turbocharged tuner cars, check this video out.
Read MoreElon Musk’s tunnel-digging Boring Company has another project on its plate, despite having only run small-scale demonstrations to date. This time, it’s a planned tunnel and transit system to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, but it’ll ultimately have limited capabilities, if it ever comes to fruition.
Read MoreIn the glory days of Detroit, the wild 1950s and ‘60s, we made music and we made cars. Those two things seem disconnect, but without the auto industry you wouldn’t have the melding of sounds that caused the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, to light up a grey industrial town in the midwest and, eventually, the world.
Read MoreYou may recall the shocking news from Sunday: the Lane Museum’s incredibly rare amphibious vehicle, the Hobbycar, sank to bottom of a Tennessee lake. Nobody was hurt, but the Hobbycar seemed lost. But not anymore! The Lane staff mobilized their forces and, yesterday, pulled the Hobbycar back from Lake-Neptune’s cruel grip.
Read MoreJohnny Bohmer is no stranger to making the cars go quick. One of his latest exploits was making a Lamborghini Aventador SV go quick, or 205 mph, which he says is the fastest-ever recorded for the Superveloce.
Read MoreWe’ve answered the question of whether or not trains are cars? (yes) and are Zambonis cars? (emphatically yes), but now we tackle are sail-powered art pieces, in fact, cars? Yes, we declare the Strandbeests cars, and they are awesome.
Read MoreSubaru has issued a recall for the 2019 Subaru Ascent because some of the vehicles may be missing crucial spot welds on the B-pillar, per Consumer Reports. This isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can correct with a quick pop over to the dealer, so to fix the issue, the automaker is just giving every affected owner a new vehicle.
Read MoreHarry Metcalfe, the exceptionally knowledgable and charming host of Harry’s Garage, has a background in farming, so it’s only natural that he transitions us from lovely reviews of supercars to rather large and intimidating farm equipment, like a combine harvester.
Read MoreThe world of people filming their radio-controlled cars is seemingly bottomless, a function of what I assume to be lower-costs and lower-stakes compared to off-roading in real life. The videos rip.
Read MoreWhat is the state of the American parking lot? Go out to one near you and you’ll probably find cars just like these, and at least one of them will have terrifyingly bald tires.
Read More“Wait a second,” you scream at your computer. “You mean to tell me that U.S.-spec McLaren Sennas don’t get the same exhaust as the euro-spec ones?” This is true, but for once it’s not a bad thing. Our American Sennas are even rowdier than what’s pootling around Europe right now.
Read MoreA highway bridge in Italy collapsed on Tuesday and sent vehicles about 300 feet into “a heap of rubble below,” according to the Associated Press. Officials reportedly said at least 22 people have died.
Read MoreThis week in “Gnarliest Ways to Show the World How Rich You Are,” someone actually commissioned a surfboard with a 24-karat gold trim to carry around on their Rolls-Royce. Rolls will feature it at an event showing off its “exquisite motor vehicles for the influential and wealthy,” because of course it will.
Read MoreIf you drive a truck with a gigantic, extendible crane on top, that’s pretty much the whole raison d’être of the vehicle, and, if you’re driving the truck, your job. So, you’d think knowing if that gigantic crane was up or down would be a pretty major part of your job as a crane truck driver. You’d think. This driver in Wilmington, North Carolina seems to disagree.
Read MoreA couple of months ago Volkswagen announced that it would be bringing a new Jetta sedan to Bonneville Speed Week to contest the 2-liter Blown Gas Coupe category record. That record currently stands at 208.472 MPH, and Volkswagen seemed reasonably confident that they could come home with that record in their name. Bonneville doesn’t have many manufacturer-supported efforts on the list of record holders, dominated largely by privateers and small independent hop up shops. Perhaps there is a reason
Read MoreThis incredibly well engineered 25 horsepower aircooled Franklin Series 9b Touring was built in 1919, was sold to Jim Eby’s grandfather, and has been in his family ever since. Now, because he’s an intrepid motorist, Jim is driving the Franklin across the United States from one Concours d’Lemons in Michigan to the next Concours d’Lemons in Monterey, California. That’s a very long way to drive a largely obsolete automobile with an open top and just one brake shared among its four wheels. Well, on
Read MoreTeam McLeish Bros. has been running for land speed records since 1999, and have used a variety of different cars, engines, and bodies to accomplish many of their goals. The team has broken dozens of AMA, FIM, SCTA and BNI records, and their aim to own another one has brought them to Bonneville again in 2018 with their newly-rebodied and seriously modified Datsun B110-ish “J” unblown Fuel Competition Coupe. In previous years this has run in various classes with a Triumph GT6 body.
Read MoreOh, the humanity! I have bad news, everybody: the Lane Museum’s wonderfully ridiculous amphibious car, the French-built Hobbycar, is at the bottom of Percy Priest Lake. That’s bad!
Read MoreThere comes a time in every young car person’s life that they have to learn a few important life skills in order to be fulfilled, happy, and healthy. In this case I’m talking about the ability to clutch dump, rip a hydraulic handbrake, and properly steer through a donut. Or rather a series of donuts that lasts nearly a minute. Oh, and by the way, that time is when you’re nine years old.
Read MoreCars have been around for more than a century now. We take it for granted that we have names like ‘automobile’ and ‘car’ to describe these four-wheeled beasts we love so much; they’re the only names we’ve ever known. But, friends, it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.
Read MoreEarlier in June, Jalopnik was able to scoop up some patent photos from Autoweek that were rumored to show the 2019 BMW Z4 way before anyone officially decided to say anything. We’ve been living in shades of gray since then, wondering exactly what the real Z4 is going to look like in the flesh.
Read MoreIt’s been a busy week for one Elon Musk. On Tuesday, he tweeted that he was thinking about taking Tesla private at $420 a share. Then, the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved, digging deeper behind the tweet to investigate the viability and truth behind his claims that funding for such a move was “secured.” And now, Musk is facing a lawsuit handed to him by some very unhappy investors.
Read MoreThe great thing about the automotive world is that our work is never quite done. There’s so much cool shit in this world that there’s another car to fix, another track to drive, another race to attend. Everyone is uniquely different, but we can all get together at the end of the day and talk longingly about the futures we’re going to conquer.
Read MoreRoberta Cowell isn’t generally a name you hear when we talk about incredible women behind the wheel. Her laundry list of achievements is a long one, but her disappearance from the public eye was orchestrated by the woman herself. A name that we should be celebrating is one that’s become tarnished by the confusion of social norms and outdated etiquette.
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreThis Friday night, August 10, an empty Horizon Airlines plane crashed after it was stolen by a ground employee from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 8pm local time. After being chased by two F-15 military jets, the 76-seat plane crashed in a wooded area 40 miles away, according to CNN.
Read MoreFor whatever reason, the 2018 Aston Martin DB4 GT crossed my path again today. That name is a funny one, as the DB4 GT was one of Aston’s great cars of the 1960s, but the company decided to remake 25 of them this year. It’s part of an interesting new trend, and I’d like to see it keep going.
Read MoreNo, the new, 2019 BMW i8 isn’t terribly different from the first one. It now has a longer electric range and a little extra power, but it’s still the same idea: A hybrid powertrain that you can drive in an all-electric mode. Also, who cares, because this thing looks freaking incredible. What do you want to know about it?
Read MoreThe minivan has always been one of the most true to form, honest and functional vehicles, and modern vans like the 2019 Honda Odyssey are so packed with gadgets and features it’s a shame more people don’t do themselves a favor and buy one.
Read MoreThis is a strange story. Fundamentally, it’s the story of two Dallas-area enthusiast car shops: one, a dealer in used performance cars, and the other, a tuner shop. What happened between the two companies started out as a normal enough exchange, but got weird, fast, with one side claiming it was an attempted scam, and the other claiming it was just a joke. I’ll let you decide what seems right.
Read MoreWell, let me rephrase that. The wildfires themselves are getting crazy close to houses. So the brave people fighting the fires, both on the ground and in the air, have to get close to entire neighborhoods as well. And that means huge firefighting air tankers flying wildly low over suburban homes.
Read MoreIf you didn’t realize there was a small Spanish state-owned company building beautiful V8 convertibles in the early 1950s, well... there was. Now you know. And this video is the perfect introduction to Pegaso, and plain old eye candy for everybody.
Read MoreThis is what a car interior should look like: no screen to distract me, manual transmission, car phone for all my phone calls.
Read MoreYou can buy a brand new diesel Range Rover in the U.S. right now, which is fun because the diesel makes it feel like a work truck and the rest of it, well, the rest of it feels like Bruce Wayne’s city penthouse.
Read MoreAre there people out there who still think street racing is, somehow, not a terrible idea? Apparently, there’s at least a couple Canadians who do, if this alarming street racing crash involving a BMW 335i from this past Sunday in Toronto is any clue. This is a mess, incredibly stupid, and totally preventable.
Read MoreThe always-charming twitter feed, Faces In Things, today had this wonderful image of two cargo planes yukking it up. Whatever the hell they’re talking about, they think it’s hilarious. So what’s so funny, planes? Care to let us non-aircraft in on the joke?
Read MoreMy position on this question is already clear: If everyone all had the same car, the same make and model, for all people in all positions, that car should be the Lamborghini Diablo GT. But my opinion is not the only one.
Read MoreWhat you’re looking at is what’s known as a diverging diamond interchange, an emerging concept in highway design that aims to eliminate the left turn and thereby increase safety, even if, from the top down, it looks like complete chaos.
Read MoreLet me get this out of the way right now: the Chicken Tax is bad and dumb for preventing us from getting good little trucks like the Volkswagen Amarok. It should die. I’m spending the week in an Amarok, camping out at the Nürburgring and flooring it on the Autobahn like a maniac. What would you like to know about a good little truck that we don’t get?
Read MoreI’m surprised I’ve never heard this story before; it’s hardly been a secret, but somehow I’ve missed it. If a painful Volkswagen Beetle geek like me missed it, then I can only assume many of you better-adjusted people have as well, so I think the story is worth retelling. It’s the story of an old Beetle that ended up being worth about a half billion dollars because of Domino’s Pizza.
Read MoreYesterday, Elon Musk tweeted—with apparently no warning to anyone—that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share. Minutes ago, Dow Jones reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into that tweet, and also whether Musk’s statement was truthful.
Read MoreRace cars can get all sorts of crazy goodies that street cars don’t get, especially when it comes to gearboxes, because wasting precious seconds shifting from gear to gear in a basic-ass transmission just won’t do in a race. Enter: dog boxes.
Read MoreAh, man, it was only a month ago that we’d diverted our attention for a moment from the toxic wasteland of social media to follow Peak Pegasus, a cargo vessel carrying a boatload of soybeans, as it raced to a port in China in a—now futile—effort to beat a new soybean tariff. I’d already forgotten about its journey, but The Guardian checked in this week and, turns out, Peak Pegasus is now a victim to our fledgling trade war with China.
Read MoreIn a recent episode of the History Channel’s American Pickers, the two hosts who drive around buying up antiques discovered Aerosmith’s original tour van in western Massachusetts. It’s a 1964 International Harvester Metro Van, and even after all these years sitting and rotting, it’s still awesome.
Read MoreBack in 1969, a full-page ad for a car in a major magazine like Road & Track wasn’t cheap, especially for a company like British Leyland, which didn’t exactly have the resources for their American operations like, say, Ford or GM. That’s why you’d think you’d make a full-page ad with some actual pictures of the car you were trying to sell and not just focus almost exclusively on copy about the glove box, knobs, and vents. But that’s not how British Leyland rolled.
Read MoreHave you ever wondered what would happen if you chained a 70 pound kettlebell onto the wheel of a Russian wagon? Of course not. Nobody has. But the brilliant auto experimenters at Garage 54 ENG decided to find out anyway. And the result is painful to watch—well, if you’re into VAZ 2102s, as you should be.
Read MoreIs there anything lower than a grandma-scammer? No. There isn’t. That’s why I think it’d be nice if we can help identify the truck that belongs to a pair of jackasses who appear to be attempting to scam people around Hazlet, New Jersey, including the grandmother of Jarrett, who emailed us about an experience his grandmother had with the drivers of this truck.
Read MoreEarlier today Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he was considering taking the publicly traded (and often volatile) company private. In an email to employees released minutes ago and then published online, he outlined why.
Read MoreIn the process of testing the 2019 Toyota Camry Hybrid, the car actually managed to hurt me, a little bit. I’m not talking about the existential soul-bruising kick that every painfully rational and practical and boring car like the Camry gives you, this is an actual, physical bit of pain, imparted by the car to me when I operated one of its controls.
Read MoreThe iconic Toyota Supra is coming back soon, even if its extended rollout is getting increasingly tedious. Let’s pause for a moment to look at Supras past, starting with the 1978 Celica Supra featuring a top speed of 115 mph.
Read MoreTesla’s been a public company since its IPO over eight years ago, but on Tuesday, CEO Elon Musk said that he was “considering” making the company private again at a whopping $420 per share. Is he serious? Who can say.
Read MoreLots of love for electric vehicles on Jalopnik lately. First a quick drive of the Tesla Model 3 Performance (a full week-long test of the regular one is coming soon) and now we find ourselves in the Chevrolet Bolt until the end of the week. What do you want to know about it?
Read MoreToday’s cars come with a wealth of technology that people just 20 years ago could only dream of. They don’t fly yet, but they do damn near everything else! You can get semi-autonomous safety tech, on-board WiFi and engines with variable compression. All very cool, but do you sometimes wish that other features would get the same kind of manufacturer attention?
Read MoreOkay, to you, a sniveling, boring person, see a Canadian maniac on an aquatic RAMPAGE, splashing unsuspecting pedestrians. Me, a hero? I see a Canadian doing their polite Canadian duty, and cooling off their fellow travelers on a hot summer’s day. Anyway, the van guy was fired.
Read MoreYou, a member of the down-trodden proletariat, toil away at your jobs in order to afford basic necessities like alimony payments and middle-shelf liquor. When you need a break, you call up your friends and organize a karting event, hoping the wind that washes over your face will also momentarily wash away your problems. Well, if you just went ahead and purchased a mansion with a karting track attached to it, like I did, then you wouldn’t be so unhappy.
Read MoreThe AE86 Toyota Corolla isn’t fast. It’s not beautiful. It’s not exotic. It’s not anything that anyone would immediately single out as why a car is good. And yet the world loves it.
Read MoreIf you don’t love the Autozam AZ-1, I’m guessing you’ve either never heard of it or you’re a soulless monster who hates fun. But don’t worry, there’s still time for redemption. Tuck into this deep dive on all things Autozam, as explained to Jay Leno by mechanical engineer and Autozam owner Ashley DeLuca.
Read MoreMetro Detroiters already have to deal with crumbling roads, high insurance and drivers who don’t know how to handle four way stops. (Seriously, get it together Michiganders.) But disgusting mystery ooze? That’s a new one.
Read MoreOne of the fastest and most remarkable watercraft ever built, the Bluebird K7, returned to the water for the first time this past weekend after an absence of 51 years, 34 of which were spent at the bottom of a British lake. The Bluebird K7 is best known as the vessel that Donald Campbell used to set water speed records in the 1950s and 1960s, before he was killed in a crash in an attempt to set a 300 mph record in 1967.
Read MoreFor the third Prototype class battle in a row the race has been won by a non-factory LMP2 entry with a properly pro-am driver combo at the wheel. For the second time in a row, that winner has been the CORE Autosport pairing of Colin Braun and Jon Bennett. This comes just days after IMSA announced that they would demote the LMP2-style racers to a lower tier class below their own DPi-style prototypes.
Read MoreLuxury automobiles have featured radar-based adaptive cruise control with emergency braking for several years, and the technology has found its way down market, trickling down to workaday cars, trucks, and SUVs in recent model years. Harley Davidson hopes to bring similarly advanced crash avoidance tech to their two-wheeled conveyances, if this patent filing is any indication.
Read MoreJust a few weeks after impressing in his NASCAR debut at Eldora, California-born Toyota Racing Development driver Logan Seavey was forced to take to the wall in order to avoid crashing in a midget sprint race Saturday night at the Newmanstown, Pennsylvania Lanco’s Clyde Martin Memorial Speedway. Perhaps it was a bit of Tony Hawk, or perhaps it was a bit of Herbie the love bug, but either way it worked and he continued on in the race.
Read MoreFans of ‘80s and ‘90s cars on the Eastern Seaboard have been begging for a Radwood in their neck of the woods seemingly since the first show in San Francisco last year. Until now, the show has been held entirely within the borders of the state of California. That’s about to change as the raddest car show is coming to Atlanta, Georgia. If you are within driving distance, you should definitely go.
Read MoreThey don’t make adventure bikes like they used to. This 1970 Suzuki TC-90 is an excellent example of low-budget no-frills light off-road capable adventure motorcycle. It’s small and rides on skinny knobbly tires. It had 11 horsepower when it was new, and as Ryan says in the video “Horses just don’t live that long.” It’s a two-stroke bike that can be a lot of fun, when it’s not breaking down. So can this $400 bike make it the 400 klicks of off-road trails to visit some volcanic pools in the desol
Read MoreThis gorgeous and tiny green machine is a Glass Sport Motors Dart Roadster. GSM was founded in Cape Town, South Africa in 1958 by Bob van Niekerk and Willie Meissner after Meissner discovered glassfiber reinforced plastic manufacturing during a visit to England. So-called fiberglass was still a fledgling technology at the time, and certainly had not reached South Africa by the late 1950s. This was bleeding edge sports car racing tech in its day, and looks quite fetching some 60 years later.
Read MorePlease, McLaren Senna owners, take your cars on road trips. Please, don’t keep them under wraps in a climate controlled basement somewhere. Take your incredibly engineered, incredibly expensive, and incredibly ugly cars out for long haul road trips, because cars were built to be driven. You probably don’t have anything holding you back from taking a long weekend and heading out for a long drive. I can’t think of a single reason you shouldn’t.
Read MoreAs Formula One dips its toes into summer break, it’s time to take a breather from championship battles and silly season rumors and think about the things that really matter. Like how freakin’ cool the air flow paint looks during F1 tests.
Read MoreYeah. White nationalists are holding another Unite the Right rally. Yep, this one is taking place in our nation’s capital. And yes, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is giving its participants three metro cars and a police escort to the rally, taking place on August 12. (Update: D.C.’s Metro will no longer be providing separate cars.)
Read MoreWhen you think “race car driver”, you’re probably thinking “composed professional who is very skilled and on top of their game”. You’re probably not picturing someone who shrugs their shoulders and says, “I have no idea why this worked, but, uh, it did”—which is exactly the kind of picture Mark Donohue paints of himself in his autobiography.
Read MorePicture a car advertisement. Commercial, billboard, magazine ad—chances are, you’re bombarded with plenty of ‘em all day. Now imagine who’s driving the car. Maybe they’re speeding down the street in a crossover, sending skirts and newspapers flying. Maybe a super cool celebrity is cruising down a long desert road, the epitome of cool, or they’re speeding across an air strip detailing all the reasons you should buy their trendy sports car car. Hell, maybe they’re even going off-roading through r
Read MoreThe bucket list is a well-traveled genre, appealing and customizable across the board for preteen girls and grown-ass adults alike. Don’t act like you haven’t longingly sighed, “shit, I’d really like to do that before I die” because we have all done it. All of us.
Read MoreThe Powers That Be of the IMSA series announced on Friday afternoon that they’re going to be making some big changes to the way they’re going to be formatting the series for 2019. They used some fancy words and a big press release to announce it, but the skinny of it is: faster cars, more classes, and some changes to driver ratings considerations.
Read MoreWhen you come from a family with a name like Moss and you decide to get behind the wheel of a car, you better be good. If your dad drove at Indianapolis, your mom competed in rallies, and your brother is considered the best Formula One driver to never win a World Championship, though, it’s not like you really have any other choice. It’s a damn good thing Pat Moss had plenty of talent.
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreIf you’re like me and are just now realizing you have a bit of a knowledge gap concerning the final iterations of the iconic Australian muscle cars, bless them in heaven, and want to know which one kicked more ass, well it was close.
Read MoreThe magazine industry is constantly in turmoil as print readership declines and tech conglomerates gobble up any potential revenue sources that could be had online. Now that unfortunate reality has fallen upon a heavyweight in the car magazine world: Jalopnik has learned that approximately 13 editorial staffers at Car and Driver were laid off this week as part of a restructuring effort at the magazine.
Read MoreThe BMW E46 M3, with its 333 horsepower, timeless styling, and wailing straight-six, remains the eternal “Best M3,” the people’s champ. But how much would you really pay for one new today?
Read MoreA few months back, Reagor-Dykes Auto Group was held up as a model example among Ford dealers, having earned an award from the automaker for customer sales and satisfaction. Now, Ford claims the auto dealer chain defaulted on $41 million in financing agreements by falsifying records to obtain extra loans.
Read MoreIt was only a few years ago that I started actually spectating, volunteering at, then competing in actual rallies rather than just watching clips on YouTube. It has been a joyous experience (including the times I crashed and was on fire) but I fear that joy is to be replaced by jealousy, jealousy of how good they have it in Europe.
Read MoreSilvia. Silviaaaa. It was the name Nissan gave to its line of sport coupes that were built on its S platform. They were beautiful cars and, in their latter generations, became the go-to drifter’s choice. Here’s a quick walk through of them all.
Read MoreI’ve always been deeply interested in Italy. The history, the cars, the food, the people, their unique way of life, I just loved all of it. For years I’ve wanted to go experience it, and recently I spent 12 days exploring most of Northern Italy driving between Milan, Modena, and the northern lakes. I drove the whole time too, and while I got to see some beautiful things, it wasn’t without its headaches.
Read MoreThe “Million Mile Lexus” that’s been floating around the internet for a few years now is actually getting close to its namesake. It’s still running, but this closer inspection of the undercarriage reveals its true jankiness.
Read MoreI was walking into the office today when my boss Patrick George swung down from the ceiling, capturing me with a weighted net. “I WILL NOT PICK!” I howled. “YOU HAVE PUT THIS OFF LONG ENOUGH,” he howled back. “WHICH M3... IS THE BEST M3?”
Read MoreMission: Impossible Fallout, the sixth movie of the spy franchise which hit theaters last weekend, has been blowing people away with its incredible action. One of the best sequences in the movie is a motorcycle and car chase through the streets of Paris. Here’s how it was pulled off.
Read MoreWhen it comes to things people want in their cars, a fire is pretty far down the list, and that’s true for pretty much anywhere in the world, including South Korea. This is bad news for South Korean owners of BMW diesels, which have been catching fire at an alarming rate: 11 caught fire in July alone, and since the beginning of the year, 28 BMW diesels have had major engine fires. What’s going on?
Read MoreThere have been rumblings about this for a while now, but on Thursday morning the Environmental Protection Agency made it official with a proposal to freeze fuel economy standards at 2020 levels until 2026. Kind of amazingly, this is in part because the EPA argues that lighter, more fuel-efficient cars are more dangerous.
Read MoreIf you saw the hilariously offensive ragtop woody wagon Porsche Cayenne when it popped up on the internet a few years ago, you’ve probably repressed the memory. Everyone else, please meet the new star of your nightmares! This fucking thing is real and somebody’s actually letting it run free among other cars.
Read MoreHi there. Were you aware that Pebble Beach is coming up later this month, the fanciest week for American car collectors and owners all year, brimming with boutique shows and auctions? Yes. Among these events is the Mecum Auctions and, for your wellbeing, I have put together a list of cars that you will be wise to purchase.
Read MoreBMW, being German, keeps a historical archive. Luckily for me, it’s searchable, so you can go look up your favorite Z3 brochure or whatever. I decided to see what would come up if I just typed in “drift.” As it turned out, solid gold hits.
Read MoreI was gone most of last week because I was unable to work for medical reasons, as I was suffering from a prolonged, full-body freakout of joy caused by being surrounded by so many air-cooled Volkswagens that my limbic system over limbic’d or whatever it does. All those VWs were part of the Airhead Treffen, a 1700-mile drive down the West Coast from Canada to Mexico. It was amazing, and if you’ll sit still, I’d like to share some of what I saw with you.
Read MoreEarlier this week, a big rig riding a barge to Bald Head off the coast of North Carolina got a little over-eager for the exit and slipped off the front. Apparently nobody was injured, so we can giggle at this silly photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Read MoreEver since the cars of the Bubble Era aged into legality under America’s draconian 25 Year Import Rule, we have become open to the great mini sports cars of Japan. But which one is best? Some Canadians decided to figure it out.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe diesel Jetta hits a lot of high notes. It’s a stick, it’s arguably the best looking Jetta model ever, and it’s reasonably neat and clean. The question is, will its price be music to your ears?
Read MoreBeing rarer than a Jeep or even a Land Rover makes today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Nissan Patrol one wicked cool old off-roader. It’s price and its Internet history might just cool your interest however.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Raider is a Dodge in name only. Underneath that name it’s a Mitsubishi Pajero. Let’s see if this well preserved truck’s price makes it worth bringing it out of hiding.
Read MoreThe odometer on today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe 190 reads 318K but the seller says its broken and the mileage is closer to 380K. Could that make this an unstoppable Benz and could that make its price an unbeatable deal?
Read MoreWith a modern but fairly milquetoast V6 engine, the crazy retro Plymouth Prowler had hot rod looks, but lacked hot rod performance. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe bi-turbo edition seeks to rectify that. Maybe its price will prove redemptive as well.
Read MoreIf you like the Chevy Volt but really need fewer doors and more swank, then the car for you could be something like today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Cadillac ELR. That is, if its price doesn’t prove to be too shocking.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Viper claims its factory color is one of a kind. Let’s see if its price might make it kind of a deal.
Read MoreIf you’re like me, you’re tired of waiting for the new Bronco to show up. Maybe today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Bronco II will fill the empty void in our Bronco-loving hearts. That is, if its price doesn’t involve emptying our wallets.
Read MoreIs it possible to overdose on a color? Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe T-Bird is more orange than a certain politician, but will this custom Turbo Coupe ask too much of your green?
Read MoreWith its twin turbo V6, six-speed stick and AWD, today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Audi offers specs that could impress on a new car. And it’s 18 years old! Let’s see if its price is equally impressive.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Chevy has been dubbed the DinoSSauR for reasons that are pretty obvious. Let’s see if the price on this custom restomod proves to be a deal, or an extinction level event.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Saab says he’s selling it because what he really needs is a pickup truck. We’ll have to decide if this old Swede’s price makes it something you might want to pick up.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe IS300 is manual-equipped and Canadian bred. It also offers super low miles and a great first impression, so let’s see if its price might just make it rate the exchange.
Read MoreWith its untraditional yellow paint and Lorinser bodywork, today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe W129 is sure to stand out. We’ll just have to see if it’s outstanding enough to justify its asking price.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe 240SX says he tried keeping it in the family but his relatives are either not cool enough for it, or are too broke. Let’s see if the price means it’s not them but him.
Read MoreThe front wheels on today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Mazda have a lot of work to do, namely channelling upwards of 263 horsepower to the ground. The rest of the car may be just along for the ride, but let’s see if you’ll go along with the price.
Read MoreBagged suspensions are an acquired taste, one that seems to have been favored by the seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Passat. Let’s see if this modded wagon’s price is so sweet that you can almost taste it.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Maxima is a car once described by maker as a 4-door sports car, or ‘4DSC.’ Let’s see if the price tag on this rare manual-equipped edition’s has you LOL’ing.
Read MoreDon Panoz made his money in pharmaceuticals, but the family name was made amongst auto enthusiasts by building cars like today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Esperante. Let’s see if this Mustang-based special comes with a price that you think is a deal, or paying through the nose.
Read MoreWhile the seller of today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe S4 estate says it needs some work, he also claims that the big ticket item—replacement of the timing chain guides—has already been done. Let’s see if this hot wagon’s price will make it one and done.
Read MoreTraveling in style while going very fast frequently involves something along the lines of Gulfstream G5. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe 750iL is a big Bimmer that’s imbued with both a supercharger and a stick, but will the price have you going with its style?
Read MoreWhile there may not be such a thing as a cheap exotic, today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Esprit is still pretty cheap and hella exotic. Let’s see if its price means it’s also a good deal.
Read MoreThe Camry may be one of the most utilitarian cars around, but as today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe pickup proves, it could always work a little harder. Let’s see if this custom car-truck’s price works for you.
Read MoreBMW has a new Z4 roadster out soon, and there’s one thing it definitely does not have: possibly the coolest doors ever put into production, which were on the BMW Z1. Those doors dropped down and disappeared into the car’s body. More impressively (for an old BMW particularly) they also went back up. Here’s how they worked.
Read MoreLike the average person I am, I often imagine my dream garage to be covered in car memorabilia and pieces of race cars that have been cut off and resold to me at higher prices then I’d like to pay. You know, accessible stuff. But this whole thing about hanging entire cars on walls... well, it’s growing on me, a little.
Read MoreThe Nissan R390 GT1 is a total legend, particularly the single homologation special road car. An entire generation knows the car from Playstation, but few have ever seen it in person. I did. And I found something.
Read MoreLast month, the Chicago Tribune had a story about how manual transmissions are on the way out—a dying breed, offered in fewer and fewer cars, with only 2 percent of cars sold in 2018 having a third pedal, the story said. It’s something, on this website, we’re all familiar with. It’s something we all groan, sigh and roll our eyes about, because most people favor ease and we can’t change that.
Read MoreThere are lots of cars that have great speed. There are lots of cars that produce great noise. Let me remind you of a car that has both great speed and volume in hand: the GT1 racing Saleen S7R.
Read MoreThere are lots of things that I forget, like the firing order of the classic Lamborghini V12, or why I still have an orange polyester shirt with little frogs on it. Also forgotten: the Hartge BMW X3.
Read MoreIn 1987, BMW announced to the world that it was officially not screwing around anymore when it put a 5.0-liter V12 into production, setting a 300-horsepower standard for luxury and refinement. It was only a few years later that BMW would produce probably the ultimate V12, the 618-horsepower heart of the McLaren F1. But there was one engine sat in the middle that never quite made it into production, too big to live.
Read MoreRoyalty is overrated, I tell you. First we have a royal family whose only job seems to be getting married and now we have another that can’t even hold onto its fucking plane. The world is going to the dogs and it’s starting with the nobility.
Read MoreRapper Post Malone, hot off of winning Song of the Year at last night’s MTV Movie Awards, found himself onboard a plane headed for London earlier today with a damaged landing gear. After safely landing a few hours later, he had a chance to respond to everyone publicly wishing for his plane to crash.
Read MoreThe Federal Aviation Administration is looking into a near-collision involving a drone and a helicopter near Hollywood, Florida, according to multiple reports. And it came damn near close to contact.
Read MoreWhen you look at the last few batches of headline-grabbing McLarens, Lamborghinis and Porsches, they’ve had one thing to offer: lap times. Nürburgring records. Extreme track performance. I say unto you now: who actually gives a shit? One of the best and fastest cars I’ve ever driven is the 580 horsepower 2018 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet, and it will never see a track day, ever. And when you’re behind the wheel, you won’t care.
Read MoreTexas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage is more territorial than a cat claiming a cardboard box, and hoo boy, people are really stepping on this cat’s tail this week. But do you know what else cats have? They have claws. Gossage’s have come right on out, and it is not pretty.
Read MoreA federal jury found former NASCAR driver Rick Crawford guilty of enticement of a minor Thursday, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. Crawford faces from 10 years to life in prison after agreeing to pay an undercover cop for sex with a fictitious 12-year-old girl.
Read MoreJust a few days ago, Formula One and its governing body, the FIA, announced they were extending the zones for using the sport’s drag-reduction system at several more tracks this season. Already an apparent mishap with the system sent driver Marcus Ericsson into a freak crash at Italian Grand Prix practice.
Read MoreSunday is the Formula One Italian Grand Prix, Ferrari’s home race, so the team had a fan event in Milan this week. But Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, who’s gaining on title leader Lewis Hamilton in the standings faster than most of us can gain weight on vacation, walled it during a low-speed run in front of the crowd.
Read MoreToday is a normal day for me, and by that I mean I was looking up pictures and video of Kazuya Bai’s D1GP pro drift car, which is amazing. But then I stumbled upon Bai’s entry on the D1GP website and it showed not only Bai’s current photo for 2018, but also his photos over the past four years. This is genius.
Read MoreLook, life isn’t fair, alright? Some people, like Formula One driver Lance Stroll, are born better off than others. How is that their fault? They didn’t choose to be born exorbitantly rich, and white guys on top of that. They worked hard for their own success, even if their father just so happens to be a billionaire who takes over an ailing F1 team that they’re probably gonna end up racing for.
Read MoreIn an effort to show the world how Tough™ and Capable™ electric vehicles are despite production ones overheating on track after a couple of hot laps, reports are that electric open-wheel series Formula E wants to make a new electric SUV series—one that goes by “Extreme E” and races in mountains and the Arctic.
Read MoreAfter years of speculation, indignities, close calls, almost-was moments and constant hope that he could accomplish what every racing fan in the world knew he was capable of, we accepted reality: Fernando Alonso is leaving Formula One. He’s going to do something else; Indycar, maybe, or more of the World Endurance Championship, or perhaps spending more time with his cat.
Read MoreTrack days are supposed to be fun. Less fun is what happened to this BMW E36. The driver didn’t remove a can of WD-40 from the trunk, it hit the exposed battery, exploded, and then set the car on fire.
Read MoreIf you are wondering what the trumpets of angels sound like, listen to F1 champion Mika Hakkinen rip through the gears in the 1995 Ueno Clinic McLaren F1 GTR.
Read MoreIn recent years, Austin’s Circuit of The Americas has publicly said it wants to host series like IndyCar and NASCAR. Each time, Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth has publicly waved its index finger to remind everyone that its contracts block racing from the rest of the state. Time may finally be up on that.
Read MoreEverybody hated the flip flop ‘Halo’ when they first saw it because, well, look at it. Even Niki Lauda dissed it and he has a corner named for his brush with death. But most everybody has shut up about the looks now that they’ve seen this onboard 360 camera video of Fernando Alonso crashing over Charles Leclerc’s car without taking his top off.
Read MoreWhen you take part in the Nürburgring’s Touristenfahrten—the open public driving days—you need to assume there’s a good chance some bad shit will happen to your car. The ‘Ring isn’t for losers, jokers, fools or the unlucky. But lucky is the only way I can describe this drive. Have you seen a better save lately? I have not.
Read MoreThe Formula One cockpit halo has been controversial from day one, often seen as a necessary evil at best or an ugly symbol of how “soft” the inherently dangerous sport has become. It’s true that it doesn’t look great. But today at the Belgian Grand Prix, it very well may have proved its worth.
Read MoreWe’ve gotten to the point that a classic Datsun 510, especially the high-trim SSS, is a collector’s car to be polished and preserved. But back in 1969, Datsun ran them in the grueling Baja 1000, and here’s how beat to hell they got.
Read MoreAfter requests from Formula One and the FIA rather than a self-realization that its abundance of F1 tire names are ultra confusing and super difficult to figure out, Pirelli said it will “simplify” its system soon. But the plan is more like a facade of simplification, which just adds another layer of confusion.
Read MoreThis week, reports came out about former Colts announcer Bob Lamey telling a story in which someone used the n-word nearly 35 years ago. That someone was said to be IndyCar driver Conor Daly’s dad, who denied it was him saying it, and Conor Daly’s sponsor backed out on his NASCAR ride this weekend because of it.
Read MoreWith rumors that it might not be able to race at the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend with its recent drama and new ownership, the Force India Formula One team is now Racing Point Force India. Everyone will probably still just call it Force India, because it’s easier and sounds better. And it’s the same team.
Read MoreAgain reminding us that not everyone has consequences for their actions, the Haas Formula One team said it’s keeping Santino Ferrucci—the Santino Ferrucci penalized for holding a phone while driving a race car and wrecking a teammate on the same weekend—in its F1 development program.
Read MoreAfter an original award of $1, a North Carolina jury ruled that former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle must pay his ex-wife $250,000 in punitive damages in a case involving his recording of bedroom and bathroom areas in their former home. That brings the total to $250,001, or a lot less than what the plaintiffs asked for.
Read MoreA young boy in Iowa is facing his final battle with an aggressive form of leukemia, and all he wants are some racing stickers to decorate his casket.
Read MoreSay you joined the so-called Bongard Club—named such for the tow company that hauls your busted car away if you eat it on the Nürburgring in spectacular fashion—and you’re rushed to the hospital in nearby Adenau, Germany. Good news! There’s a track map on the ceiling (complete with corner names) just in case you need it.
Read MoreStories about Juan Manuel Fangio, the greatest Formula One driver ever, are pretty well-trod at this point—there’s the famous 1957 German Grand Prix win, the fact that he was in his forties in his prime, the fact that he won 24 of the 51 grands prix he competed in. Less talked about is just how terrifying those races were.
Read MoreDaniel Ricciardo finally announced he’ll pack up and leave the Red Bull Formula One team after seven years with it and its junior team, Toro Rosso, meaning Red Bull has a big vacancy to fill for the 2019 season. That’ll be done by 22-year-old Pierre Gasly, a driver currently on the Toro Rosso F1 team.
Read MoreFollowing a major crash during the IndyCar race at Pocono raceway yesterday afternoon, racer Robert Wickens will have surgery later tonight for a spinal injury, according to Wickens’ team.
Read MoreSurely even you tire of racing vintage Formula One cars occasionally, yearning for something more futuristic, more efficient—potentially, even, something so quiet you can still make yachting plans for next weekend over the sounds of the actual car. You’re in luck, because Formula E is selling its old race cars.
Read MoreToyota Yaris driver Ott Tänak dominated this weekend’s Rallye Deutschland after a hard fight for the overall lead with former teammate Sébastien Ogier, now at Ford. I was there, and, if I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to help shove a car back on the road.
Read MoreA new Porsche race car is hardly news when it goes to the track. They have to do absurd things like break 35-year-old Nürburgring records to get our attention. Now, when a Porsche is built for off the track—that’s special. The rally Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport was the true highlight of Rallye Deutschland, and it wasn’t technically even racing.
Read MoreYou expect that it will be slower. But you wouldn’t expect how much slower it actually is to try to get a car to launch in a giant platter of dish soap.
Read MoreUpdated: Sunday, August 19, 2018, 3:26 p.m. ET:
Read MoreThe deadline to sign up for the planned all-electric 2020 FIA World Rallycross Championship season was Wednesday, and, one day after, the series announced that it’s pushing the move back “to allow optimal time for all manufacturers investigating the possibility of competing to develop their plans.”
Read MoreWhen a NASCAR pit crew swarms a car, it may look like they’ve been servicing cars all their lives. But many of them are actually athletes trained to do a mechanic’s job, and as Jalopnik found after reaching out to NASCAR’s top race teams, most never expected to find themselves there in the first place.
Read MoreBelieve it or not, I have never been to a stage rally. I’m all but surrounded by various drivers and codrivers, but I haven’t seen them rally. Naturally, my first trip to a rally should be a full World Rally Championship round. That’s why I’m finally here at Rallye Deutschland. I want to see loud cars shoot flames and fly.
Read MoreThere’s a new Ford Mustang Cobra Jet, now with 5.2 liters of engine in addition to its 3.0-liters of Whipple supercharger, powerful enough to send this thing down the quarter mile in the mid eights, as Ford declared this morning. It’s expensive, but it’s also exclusive.
Read MoreKasey Kahne, the popular 18-time NASCAR Cup Series winner who’s been with the sport since 2004, just announced his retirement, saying racing has taken its toll on his life.
Read MoreIt had been a good few months. You hadn’t been on Facebook Marketplace at all. You hadn’t looked up any old brochures. Then this BMW rally car showed up, flying sideways and skipping across the ground like a stone and, dammit, you want an E30 again.
Read MoreMore than a year after former NASCAR driver Greg Biffle’s ex-wife and former mother-in-law filed a lawsuit against him alleging that he ran secret cameras in their bedrooms and master bathroom, a North Carolina jury found him guilty of invasion of privacy on Monday. The jury ordered that Biffle pay them $1.
Read MoreTwo-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso had a big announcement hyped up for Tuesday, leaving us to wonder whether it was about IndyCar or him starting an Instagram account for his cat that doesn’t get enough internet time. At last, the announcement was that Alonso won’t race in F1 next year.
Read MoreThe 840-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is terrifying, no matter the circumstances. It was made to be a drag-strip nightmare, and it is—as far as cars straight from the factory are concerned. The Toyota Prius is also terrifying, when stuck behind it in traffic while in a hurry.
Read MoreThe white, steel-bodied Ford Mustang that finished fifth in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway over the summer was never supposed to do well. It was never supposed to race, even.
Read MoreIn 1960, racer Mickey Thompson brought the Challenger I to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set a one-time speed of 406.60 mph, making him the first American racer to break the 400 mph barrier. This weekend at the same place, his son Danny Thompson—in Challenger II, another car his father built—set an astounding new record of 450.9 mph in the timed mile record he came to achieve.
Read MorePerhaps in attempts to rival Formula E as “world’s quietest racing series” so everyone will shut up about that noise stuff, Formula One motorsport boss Ross Brawn said recently F1 could go all-electric within 10 years. But Formula E would like F1 to step off, because it apparently can’t try that until 2039.
Read MoreThis Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport is something we haven’t seen in a long time: a factory-built Porsche rally car.
Read MoreWhen you think of Bugatti today, you think of the Veyron and the Chiron. They are incredible feats of engineering, of course, but you could hardly see them as race cars (thought I wouldn’t say no if Bugatti were to ever make them into race cars). But just 25 years ago, Bugatti was racing in the legendary EB110, and a fascinating new documentary shows exactly how it did it.
Read MoreThe Ford Fusion is on its way out in the North American market, meaning it doesn’t make sense for Ford to keep running a Fusion-wrapped rear-wheel-drive V8 on the track every weekend in NASCAR’s top series. Ford’s bringing in the Mustang, which there are actually 10 million of, to take its place next year.
Read MoreThings got more serious than usual at the NASCAR-sanctioned Bowman Gray Stadium in North Carolina over the weekend, where videos show a local police officer pulling a gun on a driver who hit another car under caution. Both drivers were suspended, and police said afterward they were investigating the incident.
Read MoreBack in 2016, fashion industry billionaire Lawrence Stroll spent a reported $80 million to get his son, Lance Stroll, a seat at Williams. Now the elder Stroll has gone and bought up an entire Formula One team, the struggling Force India.
Read MoreDaniel Ricciardo is the current king of the Red Bull junior alumni. He’s not a series champion since coming onto the program like Sébastien Buemi or Jean-Eric Vergne, and he isn’t a controversial rising star like Max Verstappen or a talented hopeful like Pierre Gasly. But he has survived, as of the British Grand Prix this year, seven years behind the wheel of a Formula One car funded by the caffeine empire—until last week with the announcement he’ll defect to Renault.
Read MoreVolkswagen’s big-budget, record-breaking I.D. R may have dominated the headlines from Pikes Peak this year, but it was far from the most interesting story at the mountain. Every year, there are dozens of smaller teams whose road to Pikes Peak includes everything from last-minute thrash-wrenching to driving the car all the way to the race—all in hopes of getting one clean run.
Read MoreAfter his arrest for driving under the influence and possession of the opioid painkiller oxycodone, NASCAR CEO Brian France announced Monday that he’ll be taking an “indefinite leave of absence.” NASCAR announced that its executive vice president Jim France, Brian France’s uncle, will take the spot.
Read MoreAt its top levels, NASCAR is a constant contest of trying to find the best and most creative ways to cheat. This time around, NASCAR had to crack down on teams deliberately designing paint schemes meant to trick its inspection system, which determines whether cars are following the rulebook.
Read MoreNASCAR CEO Brian France was arrested for driving under the influence and possession of Oxycodone, an opioid painkiller, according to TMZ Sports. TMZ, in its style, reported that France “bombed” a field sobriety test on Long Island.
Read MoreThree-time Formula One champion Niki Lauda, who turned 69 earlier this year, was hospitalized in Austria for a “severe cough” recently and wound up getting a lung transplant. He’s recovering, according to a statement from the hospital, which also said he’s “improved continuously” since the surgery.
Read MoreThe other week I happened to be at the Nürburgring (probably the only time I’ll ever get to “happen to be” at the greatest race track on earth) and the Eifel Rallye Festival was going on nearby, so over I went to see it. The whole event was wild, which I should have anticipated from the parking lot alone.
Read MoreIMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship standout Katherine Legge is about to go up against a field of 40 NASCAR stock cars, and plenty of other women are out there setting records in their respective disciplines. Here are some of the great things women in motorsports are up to lately.
Read MoreAfter reports earlier in the week that a case of the flu and a “severe cough” had put him in the hospital, Formula One announced that three-time champion and current non-executive chairperson of the Mercedes F1 team Niki Lauda is now recovering from a lung transplant.
Read MoreDaniel Ricciardo, the Australian shoe-champagne-guzzling star of Red Bull’s Formula One team and objectively one of Earth’s best humans, surprised the racing world this morning with an announcement that he won’t be on the team past the end of this year. And if multiple reports are to be believed, he’s headed to Renault next. (Update: Renault confirms it’s happening.)
Read MoreRoad trips aren’t always fun. They can be long, they make your butt numb, someone always has to pee, everybody gets sick of each other an hour in and at least one person is bound to get sick after a quick stop for food goes wrong. But a V8 Formula One car driving across America? That’s a good road trip right there.
Read MoreAh, the King Of The Hammers. Easily my favorite off-road racing experience to watch. Or at least, the most immersive. Where else can you see high-speed desert action and rock crawling at the same event, from your tailgate? Well, this year KOH week is going to be wilder than ever.
Read MoreTo meet fuel economy and emissions standards, more automobiles than ever are becoming electrified, and that includes pickup trucks. But should diehard truck drivers be worried about a technology that many associate with small economy cars? Based on my short drive of the 2019 Ram 1500 hybrid, the answer is no.
Read MoreEveryone knows that there’s no problem that a good roll of duct tape can’t fix. Chances are, though, you probably weren’t imagining its practical application outside our own atmosphere.
Read MoreIn a speech given earlier today, the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance, Yleem Poblete, mentioned that a Russian satellite made a series of maneuvers that are “inconsistent” with its expected behavior, and is behaving in a manner that suggests it could be some manner of space weapon.
Read MoreAt the moment, there’s only one approved, legal way to get to the orbiting International Space Station as an American astronaut: in a Soyuz spacecraft. Maybe you could pay the Chinese for a seat on a Shenzou, but that’s a long shot. At the moment, it’s Soyuz or nothing, and that agreement ends in November 2019. NASA, though, has a plan: two new crew spacecraft from private companies, and they’ve just announced the first astronauts to fly in them, and the first planned mission dates.
Read MoreThere’s a 1964 Chevrolet Corvette with “custom bodywork” listed on the Mecum Auctions website right now, scheduled to go to auction in a couple of days. But this listing isn’t really for a 1964 Corvette. It’s for a spaceship, ready to depart this world at any moment for an interstellar journey.
Read MoreIf the autonomous revolution ever arrives, it’s almost certain that self-driving cars will drive with an over-abundance of caution, which makes sense, but will surely irritate regular drivers on the road in the interim. Case in point: a new story from tech new outlet The Information dug into the ongoing Arizona pilot program launched by Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit, and found the company’s autonomous Chrysler Pacificas are kind of terrible at basic driving techniques and navigating road
Read MoreIf there is anything you flesh-bags known as “humans” love most, it is large, cold, unfeeling robots with unblinking, cow-like eyes and gaping maws that look like they’re trying to scream and scream and scream, but no sounds comes out. Deeply understanding this affection, Jaguar Land-Rover has built an autonomous pod-thing that brings all of that imagery to life.
Read MoreA couple months back I declared that, despite having yet to try one out, I hated e-scooters and, more specifically, the idea they could supplant other modes of transportation in some cities. Well, I tried out a scooter from one of the many scooter startups, Bird, while in Detroit last week, and now I’m here to dial back my initial critique—slightly—at the risk of taking a heaping load of egg to my face: Scooters are fine, but, man, they need to be parked somewhere.
Read MoreHow do you prove your car is good? Drive it up a hill, obviously. It was the toughest proof for a car in the early days of the automobile, but now in the 21st century, the hillclimb is making a comeback in the face of new technology.
Read MoreWhile the whole Dieselgate mess was certainly villainous, it never really had the glamour to be, you know, supervillainous. But controlling the weather, now that’s the sort of thing a supervillain can really get behind. That’s exactly what Volkswagen was doing in the area around their Puebla, Mexico factory, and some farmers are less than happy about it.
Read MoreLife is full of annoyances, like when the valet’s face lights up upon seeing the key to your McLaren, or when the mansion groundskeeper has the audacity to remind you that holidays exist. And for the love of everything that is good in the world, let’s not even talk about when the help accidentally spills alcohol on your designer clothes while trying to pour you a glass in the back of the car.
Read MoreVolvo’s Polestar performance division came up with a new software update to give its all-wheel-drive cars a rear bias, by increasing torque distribution to the rear wheels. Another, perhaps less complicated, way to increase rear bias would have been to make rear-wheel-drive trim options, but this is fine too.
Read MoreAnother Tesla investor has filed a lawsuit against Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, claiming he fraudulently engineered a scheme to artificially inflate the company’s stock price when he tweeted out a proposal last week to take it private.
Read MoreWe’ve written about Tesla’s production and quality control issues, especially with the new Model 3, before, but this would be sort of startling even if we hadn’t: a person bought a Tesla Model 3, and, within the first 30 minutes of driving the car back home, the rear bumper cover falls off. That’s, um, not ideal. Update: A Tesla spokesperson said the company is looking into the matter here, and that this “is not how we build our cars.”
Read MoreModern car technology is like medicine. It gives you a benefit you may or may not need, in exchange for a long list of side effects and “ask so-and-so about this before doing this.” Case in point: these recommendations from USA Today, which say to store car keys in a microwave or fridge to thwart hackers.
Read MoreAs the internet’s most-read auto website among the elite billionaires of the world, I can’t believe I’ve yet to solicit tips from one of our most beloved group of readers on this: Do you know who is backing Elon Musk’s bid to take Tesla private? No one seems to have any idea. Do you?
Read MoreThe advent of self-driving technology has been followed by rampant concerns that it’ll put tens of thousands of truck drivers out of work. But a new study says it’s a far more complicated question, and won’t displace drivers to such a significant degree.
Read MoreNew York’s city council on Wednesday imposed a year-long cap on new drivers for Uber and similar ride-hailing app services, as the city conducts a study on the effect of the industry. The council also passed a measure to consider a minimum wage for drivers, the first of its kind in the U.S.
Read MoreWe’ve aired our grievances about the fallibility of semi-autonomous driving features time and again, and a new study out this week confirms the fact: Cars with driver-assist systems that include things like lane-keep and auto-steering and braking may not see stopped vehicles. Worse, reports the Associated Press, they could even steer you into a crash.
Read MoreElon Musk set the finance world ablaze on Tuesday by declaring that, pending a shareholder vote, he favors taking Tesla private and already has the funding secured to do so. An email about the possible move offered no insight on who would back the leveraged buyout, but let’s take him at his word and speculate: Who could buy Tesla?
Read MoreLast month, Dallas officials imposed new fees on companies operating bike-sharing programs in the city, including an $800 application cost for a permit. Several companies left town in response, including Beijing-based Ofo, who disposed of hundreds of their bikes at a nearby recycling center, creating—as you can see—quite a sight.
Read MoreIt’s no secret that the Tesla Model S shares a lot of components with other cars, especially when it comes to modules that control various features inside of the cabin. Using parts from cars like the Ford Fusion and the Mercedes E-Class made sense for Tesla’s first mainstream sedan outing as a small but growing manufacturer. Yet one of the questions with the Model 3 was whether Tesla would follow the same pattern or use more in-house components.
Read MoreElon Musk tends to rattle off a bunch of ideas on Twitter that may or may not ever come to fruition, but a Camper Mode that allows continued use of air flow and power outlets for over 48 hours is a mighty fine idea. Camping owns.
Read MoreWhat can one person determine about the ultra-important Tesla Model 3 Performance with just an hour and a half behind the wheel? Probably not much, but this week we had the collective brain-weight of four Jalopnik writers who took turns inside the quickest and most powerful version of Tesla’s compact car. And we walked away not only impressed, but wanting more.
Read MoreCar tariffs, a Nissan recall, rapid battery charging and more await you. This is The Morning Shift for Friday, Aug. 31, 2018.
Read MoreFord’s credit rating tumbles, Hyundai’s not selling enough cars in China, and Elon Musk may be facing a lawsuit soon—this and more on The Morning Shift for Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018.
Read MorePeople really want Elon Musk to just stop tweeting, Toyota plans to flood China with plug-in hybrids, Canada wants a piece of the new trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, and more on The Morning Shift for Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018.
Read MoreEveryone wants self-driving car tech but nobody’s sure how to get it, Trump’s “deals” are raising stocks here but Europe seems to know better, and more on The Morning Shift for Monday, Aug. 28, 2018.
Read MoreVolkswagen was apparently the automaker that wanted in on Tesla, questions arise about Elon Musk, we all died years ago and actually live in hell now, and more on The Morning Shift for Monday, Aug. 27, 2018.
Read MorePeople actually think flying cars will work this time, cars on the ground are having brake issues and talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement will probably never end. This is The Morning Shift.
Read MoreThe Youths aren’t killing cars, they just don’t like the way cars are sold. But it’s okay, because this hell planet won’t last long anyway. This is The Morning Shift.
Read MoreFact-checking the President, some Musk thoughts, more Volkswagen troubles and more. This is The Morning Shift for Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018.
Read MoreThe Tesla story will never die, NAFTA, and FCA enters a new phase. This is The Morning Shift.
Read MoreElon Musk is tweeting, Hyundai is bringing the fun, and McLaren has electrification plans. This is The Morning Shift.
Read MoreIf you want to read about Tesla trying to go private, Tesla also suing a Canadian province, and Ford going all-in on SUVs, today’s your day. This is The Morning Shift for Friday, Aug. 17, 2018.
Read MoreIn case you hadn’t heard, this “cheating diesels” thing that started three years ago is still going on. Enjoy your morning commute to work, breathing in a lot more nasty vehicle emissions than you ever thought you would. This is The Morning Shift for Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018.
Read MoreIf you’re looking for the cattiest reporting on fuel economy regulation, you’ve come to the right place. This is the Morning Shift for August 15, 2018.
Read MoreNot a whole lot about Tesla’s take-private plans make sense. Help. This is The Morning Shift for Tuesday, August 14, 2018.
Read MoreWhat we know about Elon Musk’s alleged take-Tesla-private plans a week later, how Lincoln wants to go more premium, Harley-Davidson’s troubles and more on The Morning Shift for Monday, August 13, 2018.
Read MoreThe truck wars continue, the trade wars also continue, Elon Musk continues, and, well, Maserati. This is The Morning Shift for Friday, Aug. 10, 2018.
Read MoreWe got some Tesla stuff for you this morning, Mazda, Suzuki and Yamaha in the doghouse, some money possibly being thrown at Lotus and more in The Morning Shift for Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018.
Read MoreTesla Tesla Tesla oh and OTHER THINGS too.
Read MoreGeneral Motors’ electric vehicle tax credit may soon run out, Fiat Chrysler’s new boss meets America’s boss, doubt over whether revised fuel economy standards will help workers—all this and more await you for The Morning Shift of Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2018.
Read MoreSubaru’s problem with Trump’s proposed tariff, the quagmire presented by the government’s new emissions plan, NAFTA, and more in The Morning Shift for Monday, Aug. 6, 2018.
Read MoreThe fuel economy fight is happening, Toyota is (still) making a lot of money, Buick is in the news, and more. Welcome to The Morning Shift. It’s Friday!
Read MoreElon Musk apologizes, Mercedes struggles to deliver cars, VW is lacking powertrain engineers and more await you in The Morning Shift for Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018.
Read MoreCompact pickup trucks, lawsuits over tiny fish, unexpected dangers on the road and more await you in The Morning Shift for Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018.
Read MoreThe new Jeep Wrangler JL’s very first special edition is upon us, and it’s called the Jeep Wrangler Moab Edition. But though its name may imply the ultimate in rock crawl-ability, the equipment list is geared more towards comfort than bashing through Pritchett Canyon.
Read MoreEngineers and designers always geek out hard seeing their dreams take flight. In this case, the Volkswagen Tanoak and Atlas Cross Sport that the automaker allowed us to fool around with weren’t exactly flying—the two show cars we limited to 20-30 mph—but the excitement was palpable nonetheless.
Read MoreArguably the biggest feature that distinguishes the 2019 GMC Sierra from the Chevrolet Silverado other than the styling is the fancy “MultiPro” tailgate, which I had a chance to spend an entire day with last week. My conclusion: Even if it’s more of a novelty feature than it is an essential bit of tech, the MultiPro tailgate is still plenty of fun.
Read MoreWithout a doubt, the best part of Forza Horizon games is crashing around off-road in a bigass truck. You earn points, it’s fun and it’s easily the fastest way around the map. And now that we’ve just learned that the 2019 Ford Ranger Raptor is going to be in Forza Horizon 4, I have only one question: Is there any point to having other cars in the game anymore?
Read MoreI suppose this, uh, is the new car face that we’ll all have to learn to recognize in our review mirrors. It looks very goofy and not menacing. But get familiar with it, because you’re looking at the new 2020 Ford Explorer.
Read MoreA company called ARE, which makes all kinds of truck accessories, has announced that it’s invented the first bed cover that both rolls back and pops up. If you’ve ever used a pickup, you can’t tell me this isn’t awesome.
Read MoreOne intrepid driver took a five-ton U.S. Army military truck on a Tuff Truck course—the kind usually reserved for blowing the suspension out of old Dodge Durangos—and promptly launched himself into the awaiting arms of the angels.
Read MoreThose massive triple-truck road trains that dominate our highways baffle me. “What type of person would subject themselves to that kind of terror?” I’ve asked myself. While stuck in snarled traffic Monday, I approached one trucker in the middle of an interstate to find out.
Read MoreWitness above: A 2019 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. A truck for doing truckish things, like driving on the beach and paying visits to the nearest sporting goods outlet. Do you notice anything peculiar about the truck’s face? Anything peculiar about THE NUMBER OF HOOD SCOOPS IT HAS?
Read MoreIf you need a truck to do some serious off-roading, the Ford Raptor is the weapon of choice for most folks. But if you wanted something a different, Toyota will offer a Tundra TRD Pro for the 2019 model year, but it’s not cheap with a starting price of $51,275.
Read MoreI spent all day Saturday at the Toledo Jeep Fest, a huge gathering of Willys, Kaiser, AMC and Chrysler-era Jeeps in the heart of a city that’s been building these off-road beasts for over 75 years. The machines I saw there were incredible, but it was one full-size Jeep exhibit that stole the show.
Read MoreRemember last week when Ford accidentally made its configurator live for their eagerly-awaited non-colossal truck, the 2019 Ranger? Then Ford said that the prices ($24,300 for the base, $24,000 if you don’t want a truck bed) were all wrong. Well, it’s back up, and those prices are still there.
Read MoreWe got teased some Ford Ranger details last week when a configurator site mistakenly went live, but were disappointed to learn that it was not accurate. Fortunately, the order guide for the 2019 Ranger went out to dealers today, and we were able to find a copy on a Ford forum to get all the details and specs that are currently available.
Read MoreI’m an avid off-roader, and yet somehow I didn’t know about this brilliant method of winching out a stuck vehicle with nothing more than rope and some logs. Here’s how it works.
Read MoreHow did GM make so many different grill options for the new Chevy Silverado and they’re all uniquely terrifying?
Read MoreThe real big news about the 2019 Land Rover Range Rover and Range Rover Sport is the introduction of the P400e plug-in hybrid trim, which can apparently drive 31 miles on its battery alone. Both SUVs get a few other little updates for the new model year but a water wading depth sensor sounds like the most fun.
Read MoreThe 2019 Ford Ranger has been a fantasy of American mid-sized truck fans since the model went away years ago. If you’ve been eagerly awaiting its return, you’d have been excited to see that Ford’s official build-and-price was briefly live today. Ford has since told us that it was not supposed to launch until next week, so you’ll have to take our findings with some salt.
Read MoreI’m sure some people reading this are old enough to remember when window louvers were prime automotive fashion accessories. The somewhat ominous-looking sun-deflecting slats were all the rage on sports cars with long raked rear windows in the 1970s and 80s. But uh, I’ve never seen them gathered as densely as they are on this old Scout.
Read MoreA Cummins-based diesel engine in a second-generation Dodge Ram race truck blew up in a major way in Utah on Saturday, sending pistons flying all over the drag strip, and leaving a camshaft poking up from the engine bay. Just look at this incredible carnage.
Read MoreOn April 15, 1964, 22-year-old Gail Wise parted with $3,447.50 and became the first person in history to own a Ford Mustang. For 15 years, she and her husband Tom used the convertible to drive their young family around until one day, the car just died. For 27 years after that, the vehicle sat, and thoughts of selling the pony lingered. And it was all because of a simple carburetor linkage.
Read MoreThe final FD generation Mazda RX-7 was an ambitious car for its day, with high tech like sequential turbos on its twin rotary engine. As such, it was packed to the gills with sensors and hoses and lines, lines that you will discover when you finally tear into your once top-of-the-line sports car that you got for seven grand.
Read MoreFor three years now, I’ve been buying junkyard-quality Jeeps, fixing them, and embarking on long trips to the off-road mecca that is Moab, Utah. Last year, my project was a rusty $800 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. The year before, it was a dilapidated Willys CJ-2A farm Jeep. And the first year I took a highly perforated $600 Jeep Cherokee. Now it’s time to introduce this year’s project: a $500 right-hand drive 1976 Jeep DJ-5D postal carrier.
Read MoreAside from the warm, dark-colored gunk and the sometimes extensive cleanup afterward, changing your own oil is supposed to be a simple task that saves a bit of money. But with a Lamborghini Huracan, you can throw all of that knowledge—and some cash for routine service—out the window.
Read MoreThis past week, I replaced rotted-out brake lines under my landlord’s $1 Oldsmobile, and let me just say: It was total hell. I wrenched in my wet, dark driveway as my neighbor anxiously waited for his only mode of transportation to be fixed, and all the while, my hands bled from the sharp rust and my eyes watered from little rust particles falling into them. I think I need to leave Michigan.
Read MoreMy knuckles are cut up. My back is sore. My fingernails are scrubbed. It’s been a while since I’ve wrenched on my car, and now I don’t want to stop.
Read MoreNo tears. Nope. And not a single sob. I just sold my $800 Jeep Grand Wagoneer—Project Redwood—and I’m totally fine. I definitely don’t feel empty inside, nor am I reminiscing about the Jeep’s incredible ride quality, its amazing reliability during my 3,500 mile trip to Utah, or just its endless amounts of soul. Again, everything is A-okay over here.
Read MoreI’ve wanted yellow fog lights on my truck forever. I finally attempted to realize my dream, screwed up a lot, screwed up some more, and eventually triumphed. Come along and ride on this fantastic voyage with me.
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