The Garage 54 team loves to answer dumb car questions with absolutely outlandish mad scientist automotive experiments. But they haven’t really touched motorcycles. That changed as the team finally came up with a wacky thing to do with a motorcycle. They turned a Ural into a five-wheeled ATV.
Read MoreEvery sport, and I mean every single one, would be improved with the addition of a Kamaz truck. Wakeboarding is typically done behind a boat, though on occasion a jet ski or cable tow are used in certain circumstances. This time, however, pro boarder Nikita Martyanov goes full DJ Blyatman and has a Russian party in Kamaz.
Read MoreThe Russian navy’s Pacific Ocean fleet got a little bigger today with the commissioning ceremony of a new corvette warship, during which the craft ran its first man-overboard drill when a cameraman took a wrong step and slid right off the deck into the water.
Read MoreIt seems there’s no escaping the coronavirus, even when you’re going nowhere. A Royal Caribbean cruise returned to port in Singapore just days after setting sail on a “cruise to nowhere” due to an elderly passenger coming down with COVID-19.
Read MoreIf you read our story “The Way The U.S. Coast Guard Replaces Its Largest Ship’s Motor Is Mind-Blowing” last week, you’re recall how the U.S. Coast Guard had to cut a giant hole in the hull of its largest ice-breaking research vessel, the USCGC Healey, in order to replace a motor that had been damaged in a fire. Since then, the team has installed the new propulsion motor. Here’s a full video showing what it takes to do a motor swap of this scale.
Read MoreBack in September of 2019, a 600+ foot cargo ship called the MV Golden Ray, which was apparently loaded in an unstable fashion with over 4,000 cars, capsized in St. Simons Sound just off the port of Brunswick, Georgia. Since then, responders have been working to remove the ship in sections to send the hulk to the scrapper. November was particularly exciting, as workers used a chain to cut off the first enormous chunk of ship, revealing mangled cars within. Here’s a look at the fascinating way th
Read MoreEven though 2020 is coming to a close it seems like social distancing will be the norm in 2021. I can think of no better way to enjoy the outdoors, away from other people than some top-down motoring. Fiat just announced that the 124 Spider will be discontinued for America, and that means deals!
Read MoreAs Jalopnik’s resident car-buying expert and a professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve picked a few of your questions and will try to help out. This week we are discussing why dealers push GAP insurance and what to do if the used car you bought didn’t come with a feature it had been advertised as having.
Read MoreAs Jalopnik’s resident car-buying expert and a professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve picked a few of your questions and will try to help out. This week we are discussing regional deals and how to potentially manage a community “shared” vehicle.
Read MoreAre you looking for your next ride? You know—something practical with a little bit of flair? You may not think a 1979 Chevrolet van would be right up your alley—but what if I told you that you could buy one of six officially-licensed A-Team vans? I’ll wait while you change your mind.
Read MoreBMW and Jeep are trying to be “hip,” “cool,” and “with it,” with both brands asking owners the same question over social media — one that ultimately resulted in commenters brutally criticizing the companies’ reliability histories. The whole thing would be sad if it weren’t so hilarious.
Read MoreChris lives in New Hampshire and is naturally into winter sports. His son has gotten involved in ski racing, but due to COVID-19, the ski lodges will be closed this year. He wants to buy a cheap ride that can double as a mini-lodge for gear and rest. What car should he buy?
Read MoreI’m not one to be overly impressed by something as normal as a Chevrolet Traverse, let alone one that is pushing $80,000. But BraunAbility’s all-new wheelchair conversion of GM’s family crossover gives disabled drivers a super spacious and feature-packed mobility option. Though it doesn’t come cheap.
Read MoreIt’s that time of year again, when car companies dig deep into their well of holiday advertising campaigns and recycle the very tired and unoriginal concept of surprising a loved one by financing a major purchase as a holiday gift. Saturday Night Live recently showed how this might go wrong.
Read MoreAs Jalopnik’s resident car-buying expert and a professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve picked a few of your questions and will try to help out. This week we are predicting deprecation on Genesis G70s and how dealer convenience plays into your car purchase.
Read MoreThe Ford Fusion officially joined its sedan brethren among the dearly departed of the family-car species in August 2020. While the car is no longer in production, thousands remain on dealer lots, awaiting new homes. If you want one of the last new Ford sedans in America, now is a good time to act. Dealers are so desperate to be rid of them that you can get a discount of $10,000.
Read MoreShopping for a used car can be a bit more complicated than buying a new car. There are more variables to take into account when determining which vehicles present a better value compared with others. Knowing the equipment and options on a car can be a key factor in your decision making, so I wish every automaker had an easy decoder like this independent site for Porsche models.
Read MoreToday I’m getting a chance to check out the new range of e-bikes from Harley-Davidson, which are not called Harley-Davidsons for some reason. They’re Serial 1s, named after Harley’s first motorbike, and they’re more interesting than I expected.
Read MoreRyan is from Ohio and has a long commute. His 2006 Honda Accord is approaching 300,000 miles and reaching the end of its life. He wants something that can handle the miles but also make the drive a bit more enjoyable. What car should he buy?
Read MoreAll-new for 2021, the M3 and M4 are back after a two-year hiatus. The pair debuted with one of the most polarizing designs BMW ever has brought to market, but their performance should be easy to agree on. Here’s the pricing and options breakdown.
Read MoreWhat is a sports car? Forget about lap times, forget about 0 to 60s, forget about quarter miles and top speeds. At its essential core, a sports car is a focused machine built for the sole purpose of connecting driver and road.
Read MoreAs Jalopnik’s resident car buying expert and a professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve picked a few of your questions and will try to help out. This week we are discussing deciphering options on pre-owned models, and how to prevent wheel theft.
Read MoreOur pal Bob Sorokanich — oh yeah, he’s also the deputy editor of Road & Track — bought his dream car this summer: a 1994 Jeep Cherokee, two-door, five-speed manual, 4.0-liter straight-six. You know, the exact generation of Jeep you want. The only hitch was that this one was as about as dirty as cars get.
Read MoreAnthony lives in Pennsylvania and just graduated college with a liberal arts degree. He wants something fun and cheap that “doesn’t make sense” — you know, the Jalopnik way. He figures now is a good time to get a wacky purchase out of his system before he needs to be “responsible.” What car should he buy?
Read MoreMost consumers do research online before deciding which car to buy. Generally, this entails visiting automakers’ websites and configuring the models they are interested in. Unfortunately, some brands have designed their websites in a way that makes it confusing to determine exactly what the total cost is.
Read MoreI generally like ample ground clearance on my vehicles. Even my little Smart Fortwo sits three inches taller than stock so I can take it deep off-road. I used to make fun of the “stance” crowd because their cars couldn’t overcome everyday road obstacles. But, I recently bought a lowered Volkswagen Jetta TDI wagon. Just in time for winter!
Read MoreU-Haul has an interesting history. After getting its start renting trailers at service stations, the company went on a rent-everything blitz in the 1980s. While you can no longer rent movies from U-Haul, its self-storage business remains strong. Should you choose to...self-store with the company, you may find yourself locking your junk in a cool old building.
Read MoreBoy oh boy, 2020, am I right? It has been a year. Phew! Surely, things will improve with this meaningless switching over of that favorite human construct, time...right?
Read MoreBizzarrini is on its way back, and apparently not just for the hell of it, though that would be a perfectly good enough reason on its own. Bizzarrini is on its way back in part because there are enough rich people in this world possibly interested in buying a new Bizzarrini.
Read MoreThis year, Jeep finally wedged a massive powerful Hemi V8 engine in the new four-door 2021 Jeep Wrangler 392, terrorizing the off-road platform with 470 horsepower and making the Wrangler genuinely fast for the first time ever. Pricing has yet to be officially announced, but a dealer order form was recently updated to show a price tag of over $77,000.
Read MoreOld “industrial” films are almost always bizarre to watch decades after they were made, and this deeply strange Chevrolet film from 1936 is no exception. I’m going to spoil the plot for you a bit, but I don’t care, because it’s so much fun to write out in actual words, especially when it involves a dude getting worked over at the opera.
Read MoreAssuming you aren’t, like a lot of people, going to have to plow your $600 pittance into rent, food, credit card payments, etc. in hopes of staving off a life-shattering eviction, starvation or medical emergency — so, assuming you’re lucky enough to be in a somewhat stable position when accepting what is really, let’s face it, a slap in the face from the federal government — I suppose you might consider looking at Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace for a $600 car.
Read MoreFor many of us, the Volkswagen GTI is the hot hatchback benchmark. If GTI fans have a complaint, it’s often that all the power is reaching the tires through front- or all-wheel-drive.
Read MoreOne of the fortunate things about racing, compared to other sports, is that it’s relatively easy to simulate in a virtual setting. The experience of playing NBA 2K, for example, doesn’t correspond to any of the physical skills required to actually play basketball in real life. Those of us who love to drive are fortunate, then, that our preferred activity translates naturally to the digital realm.
Read MoreA good argument can be made for how important — or not — car audio is. It isn’t, because audio in your car is white noise. And it is important, because a car is a relatively small, intimate environment in which you sit for stretches at a time, a place where you can benefit from the stimulation music brings.
Read MoreThe idea of an open-source car — as in a car whose plans are freely available to anyone who wants them — seems like a fairly modern idea. The Local Motors Rally Fighter is a well-known example of a modern open-source car, and Tesla famously announced that all of its patents would be open-sourced in 2014, though surprisingly this hasn’t seemed to make a big impact on the overall industry.
Read MoreA commercial airliner successfully completed a flight from Miami to New York City today, taking off at 10:30 a.m. EST and landing at LaGuardia at 1:10 p.m. It was the first 737 MAX passenger flight in the U.S. in almost two years.
Read MoreIt’s time again for another episode of Ten & Two with your favorite radio wise guy. Uh, that would be me, naturally. This time I’m bringing you the collected wisdom of my years driving in the snow and ice to help you get through this already rough winter safely and securely. Go ahead, click on the play button. You know you want to. Just do it.
Read MoreYou are so gorgeous, little Copen, it’s making me mad. It’s difficult for me to accept that this global pandemic is keeping us apart. We were meant to meet face to face during the 2021 Tokyo Auto Salon, but sadly the event has been cancelled and our meet cute will have to wait until some glorious future. For now, I have to remain admiring from afar, but one day this Copen will be able to take me home to meet its parents. We’ll be together forever. Someday.
Read MoreThe Mahindra Roxor is coming back! Mahindra has now satisfied regulators by redesigning the Roxor, an off-road side-by-side whose styling was a little — no, a lot — too familiar for the legal department of Fiat Chrysler.
Read MoreI’ll admit, sometimes I’ll start to write about something with a very narrow, personal focus and wonder, what the hell am I doing? Does anyone actually give a shit? And then I try and turn the tables and think, well, would I give a shit about something like what sort of real-world gas mileage a 30-year-old carbureted 1-liter JDM car makes? And you know what? I kinda would. So, here we go: This is what sort of gas mileage my 1990 five-speed Nissan Pao gets.
Read MoreIn the pantheon of driving games, few franchises have been as important as Gran Turismo. On December 28, 2004, the Real Driving Simulator peaked with the release of Gran Turismo 4 in Japan. It’d launch throughout the rest of the world in early 2005.
Read MoreIt’s been a while since I’ve presented you with a good trunk to be inspired by, which is a real failing on my part, because this year I feel like we need our Inspirational Trunks more than ever. Those clever enclosed volumes don’t just hold emptiness, they hold potential, limitless, boundless potential. Well, maybe actually limited, bounded potential, but still potential! So let’s talk about the lovely Renault Dauphine and the clever thing I just learned about its trunk.
Read MoreThe 2021 Chevy Spark will start at $13,400, just like the 2020 Spark does, making it the cheapest new car you can buy. The Spark is also still alive, unlike it’s sibling, the Sonic. Please do not remind Chevy that it still sells the Spark here.
Read MoreI don’t think there’s ever been a Russian (or before that, Soviet) built car officially sold in America, unless you count some rich dudes who may have bought a Marussia B2 supercar at some point. That may change by 2022, when Bremach, which was once an Italian truck maker, will be attempting to sell Russian UAZ Patriots in America as the Bremach Taos SUV and Brio pickup trucks.
Read MoreLook, I know it’s about to be the big celebration where everything shuts down because the calendar flips the page to January, but before you run out to likely not be with your extended family, I just wanted to grab you and talk about this weird Datsun brochure. So, here, have a seat — you take the beanbag. Don’t worry about why it’s so damp, it’s always like that.
Read MoreToyota may still lack a flagship battery-electric vehicle, but the company has been actively flirting with the idea of hyper compact, urban EVs for some time now. Most of these have taken the form of concepts shown off in Toyota’s home market that rarely move beyond the auto show floor, but one pitch is finally reaching the production stage. Well, sort of.
Read MoreI’ve had the 911 above since maybe 2007. When I bought it it was a tired old sports car and I drove the wheels off it, keeping it running on a shoestring budget. Around 2010, it became a “project car” sitting in storage for a while before undergoing what I’ve described as a “refurb,” “clean up,” “just some bushings and brackets,” and any number of silly euphemisms over the past several years. The truth is, it’s ballooned into something short of a restoration —I’m not touching anything cosmetic —
Read MoreIn 2002, the Murciélago was the first all-new Lamborghini in a decade, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII got the Evo’s first automatic transmission, and the automotive TV program Fifth Gear aired its first season, which is now free to watch online.
Read MoreThere are a lot of real good roads in this world. There are a lot of truly awful roads, but there are also a hell of a lot of fun ones. And I want to know what’s on the top of your bucket list.
Read MoreBack in 2018, Alanis King and I co-hosted a Jalopnik meet-up event during the Formula One Grand Prix weekend. We turned up a few minutes late to our own event instead of a half an hour early, as we’d planned. Why, you ask? Well—we were trying to parallel park. (Okay, well, we were also a little late leaving the track, but the whole parking situation certainly did not help.)
Read MoreNormally, I wouldn’t want to bring up something of this gravity during the holidays, but I have to take a firm stand on an issue that’s been bothering me for a long while. I’ve sat by long enough and did nothing while wrongs were committed, on greater and greater scales. But no more. Today I make my stand. Here goes:
Read MoreOn December 26, 1956, a man named Preston Tucker died at the age of 53. His name may not be immediately familiar to some of us, but he was one of the many people who made a substantial change in the automotive industry, whether folks at the time wanted to give him credit or not. And his goals were absolutely incredible.
Read MoreOne of my favorite parts of elementary school was returning to class after Christmas break and telling everyone what you got for the holidays. I’m sure there was a lot of unsavory comparing and contrasting going on, but I was always too stoked about the newest addition to my snow globe collection—which only came on Christmas—to care much that some other kid got a Playstation.
Read MoreJeep’s first dive into electrified vehicles is almost here. FCA announced pricing for two 4xe versions of the ’21 Wrangler. Arriving at dealers early next year, the 4xe hybrid powertrain will be offered on Sahara and Rubicon trims initially. Following the annoying trend that automakers have been pursuing with hot new models, both will be so-called Launch Editions. The Sahara 4xe enters at $47,995, and the Rubicon 4xe will start at $51,695. Both prices are before tax credits, of course.
Read MoreWe could see the writing on the wall for more than a year, but Fiat has finally confirmed our depressing suspicions: the Fiat 124 Spider is officially dead. It already left the European market at the end of 2019, and 2020 will be its final model year in North America. Poor Fiata — it had only been on sale since 2017.
Read MoreIs the McLaren Senna too tame for you? Do you wish it was more powerful, more expensive, more exclusive and even harder to miss in a crowded lot of other look-at-me hypercars? I don’t know what reasonable person would wish for such a thing, but that’s not important; what is important is that McLaren has delivered on your request, and the Sabre is the result.
Read MoreProduction of the Volkswagen e-Golf, estimated to be the tenth best-selling electric vehicle of all time, ended today in Dresden, Germany after a successful run of churning out 145,561 EVs. Its death is not a bad thing — it’s a sign we’re quickly advancing on to much better technology.
Read MoreWhile many stay home during the pandemic, the trucking world rolls on. On Sunday night, France announced the closure of its borders with Britain to prevent the spread of a more contagious strain of COVID-19. Thousands of truckers became stranded at the U.K. English Channel port of Dover. Now as the travel ban has been lifted, the massive queue of trucks can begin to start shrinking.
Read MoreThere are fewer people on the roads now due to the pandemic, but more and more of them driving are doing so badly. You must have noticed this by now, and you were not wrong.
Read MoreThere’s something appealing about a really honest car, a car that does what it needs to do and couldn’t give a pair of matching turds what anyone thinks about it. In Japan, Toyota has a workhorse car like this, a kinda dull but terribly useful little wagon called the ProBox. What if there was a car like a ProBox, but with just a hint of fun, retro flair? Well, motherhelpers, you’re in luck, because a company called Renoca is building exactly that, and it’s called the Euro Box.
Read MoreIn a different universe, Apple would’ve shelved its own carmaking plans long ago and simply bought a car company that superficially conforms to Apple’s idea of itself and also seems to have in large part figured out how to mass-produce cars, which is extremely hard: You know, Tesla. That, of course, is not what happened.
Read MoreFord on Monday recalled the Explorer and its Lincoln Aviator cousin, the latest setbacks in a troubled launch for a vehicles critical to the company’s bottom line. Both vehicles have been on sale only a single model year, yet this will be the Explorer’s tenth recall for the current model and the Aviator’s sixth, Roadshow reports.
Read MoreThere are some memorable fictional car designs in video games and films, but rarely are they given the opportunity to exist off-screen. Occasionally, however, someone is brave enough to bring one to life. The Yamasa Raggio is perhaps my favorite example of this.
Read MoreThere comes a point in every car’s life when the manufacturer decides it needs to spruce things up. The result is the routine “mid-cycle refresh” — a nip-and-tuck that puts a new face on an old design the car wasn’t proportionally built to have in the first place. Few redesigns in this vein turn out well.
Read MoreToyota finally built a 2021 Supra with a removable roof, this one based on the Heritage Edition of the same car. The composite roof is designed to be stored in the trunk when not in use.
Read MoreSelena Quintanilla, the Grammy-winning singer who ruled the airwaves before her murder in 1995, is the focus of Netlix’s recent Selena: The Series. The show has some notable cars, including a makeshift tour bus, and uses the rite of passage that is learning to drive stick-shift as a plot point, but it doesn’t live up to the standard of Selena’s own incredible ’90s videos. It needs more cars.
Read MoreWhether Apple — the company that makes iPhones, laptops, and a watch, I guess, and probably some other shit — will make a car as well has been hashed and rehashed repeatedly for years. According to a new report, Apple is back on its bullshit and wants to have a car in production by 2024.
Read MoreFor years I felt alone. I once believed that I was the only person severely afflicted with an unreasonable and intense interest in automotive turn indicators, and as such felt like an outcast in mainstream society, all of who seemed blind to the achingly sublime beauty of flashing lamps that convey’d one’s intent to alter their direction. But now I realize that’s not the case; there’s a whole global community of indicator fetishists, like the one who reached out to me to point out a minor but ve
Read MoreSmart has had a rough existence as an automaker. The company spent its first years making weird and trendy cars but burning cash. It then entered the U.S. with the wrong kind of car and pulled out after years of slow sales. Now with the help of Geely, Smart has just the right idea to potentially prosper: building an SUV.
Read MoreA coroner’s inquest into the death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah reached a remarkable conclusion last week. The ruling by the Southwark Coroner’s Court, issued December 16, officially concluded that air pollution was a cause of death for the girl, 9, who had lived near South Circular Road in London.
Read MoreA New York man is recovering from hypothermia and frostbite after being trapped inside his car for 10 hours, buried under snow left by a passing plow, the Associated Press reported Friday.
Read MoreAston Martin has come a long way from playing second-fiddle to BMW in the running for which company provides James Bond with his iconic gadget car. With a full suite of new, loud, gas-powered sports cars on sale, will the 2021 Aston Martin DBX — the brand’s first crossover — rake in enough cash to make up for all of Aston’s expensive, Brexit-worried fun cars?
Read MoreIf you’ve been interested in cars for a long time, you inevitably reach a point where happening across your garden variety Ferrari 488 or 911 Turbo on the road no longer demands your full attention. Once you’ve been to enough auto shows, races and meetups, some of those supercar sightings begin to lose their luster a bit. For me personally, the discoveries that yield the most joy are the quirky and unexpected.
Read MoreIf you’re celebrating the annual return of magical gifts under a well-decorated tree this year, then it’s crucial you stay posted with the latest news. Specifically the fact that you’re not going to want to be looking for sleigh tracks on the roof this year. Oh, no—this year, Santa’s driving a Ford Bronco.
Read MoreRemember back in 2018 when the plague of electric scooters descended upon our lands, wreaking havoc, ruining days, and cluttering up sidewalks? The very natural response was to subject these seemingly endless scooters to violence and terror in the hopes that they would leave our families and our children in peace. To fight back, Ford’s scooter company, Spin, is going to start snitching on you when you take our your bad day on a scooter.
Read MoreAt 1:50 p.m. on December 20, 1951, the world’s first breeder reactor harvested power. The Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) outside of Arco, Idaho had used nuclear power to generate enough electricity to power four 200-watt lightbulbs.
Read MoreMy travel bug has been kicking my ass this year. 2020 is the first time I’ve stayed in one place for more than four months since I was 12 years old which is absurd but also the natural endgame of having parents that live on opposite sides of the United States. But instead of dreaming about all the wonderful trips I’d love to take (though I will admit a beach vacation would be nice right about now), I’ve been thinking about all the terrible things that have happened while I travel to remind me th
Read MoreWhen we talk about automotive scholarships, we’re generally talking about a scholarship for engineering, design, or trade elements. But the Pebble Beach Concours—yes, the folks behind the really high-end car show—has created a scholarship for the people interested in automotive communications: journalism, PR, social media, and more.
Read MoreHaving not been alive during the 1980s, I’ve had to rely on hearsay from others as to what that whole situation was like. It appears to have been wild, an era where anyone could try to do anything because it’s the ‘80s. And nothing seems to epitomize that more than a single man hurdling over 101 cars in an hour at the close of the decade.
Read MoreThe husband and I got into a very heated discussion about the nuance of what makes a motorsport series interesting that somehow devolved into the two of us comparing different disciplines to potatoes—which is beside the point—and I have not stopped thinking about it.
Read MoreI’m old enough to remember when taking a short position on Tesla could be justified until, increasingly, it couldn’t, as Tesla’s stock soared and soared and soared. Tesla will be formally added to the S&P 500 on Monday. Expect its stock to soar some more.
Read MoreDo you remember those Flash games the cool kids used to play in computer lab with the car paint and wheel selector? The car models were always badly rendered, and the wheels looked worse than used tuna can lids.
Read MoreYou know, sometimes I don’t get a chance to shoot episodes of The Torchinsky Files until pretty late at night, after a full day of work and vainly trying to get the kid to focus on the schooling that’s blaring out of the tinny speakers on his school-issued Chromebook and all the other various actions that form the framework of a day in the year of our whatever 2020. That’s why this episode is just me, enjoying an adult beverage and looking through some old car brochures!
Read MoreI honestly can’t tell if watching this video is soothing or if it fills me with tension, as I’m pretty sure I’m feeling both. Watching someone rig a tiny power Ackermann steering setup with tweezers and slice layers off plastic parts so thin you worry he may set off a fission reaction is simultaneously awe-inspiring and nervy. Overall, it’s pretty incredible, though, so I say you just watch it.
Read MoreGrowing up, I viewed car shows with the same suspicion as Trekkie conventions. Sure, I liked Star Trek. Sure, I watched The Next Generation every afternoon before dinner. But I didn’t want to go shuffle around a convention center on a perfectly lovely day just to talk about Star Trek some more.
Read MoreThere’s a certain vague kind of concept I love in so many things that’s roughly this idea: Make humble things do more than you’d expect. It’s why I love Minis winning Monte Carlo and Class 11 Baja racing Beetles and Apple IIs running Myst. It’s also why I’m so taken by these kooks who are salvaging crappy old riding mowers and turning them into little off-roading monsters. It’s scrappy and goofy and great.
Read MoreLast weekend my spouse and I climbed into a Tesla Model Y Dual Motor and set our sights on finding one of the most secluded spots in northern Nevada. This year has been, shall we say, stressful? As a result, we wanted to take a day to do nothing in particular and find a nice way to relax. Being a desert dweller, I’m obsessed with the idea of natural hot springs. Let’s go find one of those!
Read MoreThe Veloster N is one of the cheapest paths to a performance car that’s utterly delightful to daily drive or track. It’s excited us as to what Hyundai will churn out next, in terms of affordable-yet-desirable N-branded cars. And a new rumor out of South Korea suggests the company’s hard at work on a new 2.3-liter turbocharged inline four-cylinder that reportedly revs up to 7,000 rpm and should find its way into something fun.
Read MoreYou’ve all really disappointed Rolls-Royce. Back in July, the company revealed the Wraith Kryptos, a Wraith with a cryptographic theme throughout the vehicle. The luxury automaker threw down the gauntlet: The first person to decode the cipher and reveal its hidden message would receive “a unique gift from Rolls-Royce in recognition of their extraordinary talent.”
Read MoreCanoo’s electric van is a triumph, and today Canoo revealed its second vehicle, what it is calling a multipurpose delivery vehicle. It looks kind of like the Tesla Cybertruck, if the Tesla Cybertruck were actually practical.
Read MoreI’ve been stuck in the snow probably a dozen times in my life. I’d say more than half of those times were the result of me doing something very stupid. But the most embarrassing? That’s easy. My sister is a couple of years younger than I am, which means there were a couple of years where I had my license and she didn’t. So, obviously, I ended up driving her to and from school. On one particularly snowy Northern Michigan day I volunteered to shuttle her and one of her friends, a girl I was pretty
Read MoreMitsubishi sells just three cars in the U.S.: the Mirage, the Eclipse Cross and the Outlander. With the Outlander accounting for 55 percent of Mitsubishi’s U.S. sales, it’s without a doubt the most important vehicle in the lineup. So fortunately a new one is set to make its debut next spring.
Read MoreFord is sorry you’re going to have to wait a few more months for your Bronco. To make that wait a little more bearable, the automaker is giving prospective owners the equivalent of $300 in FordPass Rewards points sometime between now and when deliveries are made.
Read MoreThe world of automotive DIY-ing is a fruitful one, full of knowledgeable experts and easy-to-follow guides. You won’t be getting that here.
Read MoreThe second-generation Toyota Mirai is a car to consider if you can get it where you live and have a slightly twisted interest in the future of driving — it’s not cheap, exactly, and Chevy Bolts right now are pretty cheap. Still, the 2021 Mirai just got a whole lot cheaper compared with last year’s model.
Read MoreThe Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been harping on automakers to improve headlights for years. Even AAA is fed up with the slow progress in headlights. But this year IIHS found a way to get more automakers to fix their bad headlights, and it’s actually working.
Read MoreOne of my favorite things about the noisy old air-cooled boxer four-banger that powered millions and millions of Volkswagen Beetles, Buses, Ghias, Things, Type IIIs and more is just how incredibly adaptable these little engines were. It ended up in aircraft and boats and zambonis and running sawmills and ski lifts and pumps and all sorts of things. It was in plenty of vehicles, too, all kinds, mounted at the front or rear, but only one production vehicle I’ve found dared to do things differently
Read MoreSpanish carmaker SEAT began production of its MÓ eScooter 125 on Tuesday. The electric scooter has a lot of tech onboard but, mostly, I just want to take its little battery for a walk and maybe try to feed it a puppucino.
Read MoreYou remember the SC18 right? Of course, you do. That was a one-off that was, as Raph put it back then, just a lot of car. I invite you now to look at the SC20, Lambo’s newest one-off, itself dripping with car.
Read MoreA U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee’s investigation into the crash testing practices of six booster seat manufacturers revealed that the companies have been misleading consumers about the efficacy of their products for years off the back of meaningless safety claims.
Read MoreWhat you’re looking at is a one-of-a-kind minicar for children that was designed by the same people who designed the also-wonderful 45 concept from last year. It is the best thing I’ve ever seen.
Read MoreWe asked you about your favorite land yachts yesterday, but now we’re going in the other direction: What was the best lil’ guy sold on America’s shores?
Read MoreThe updated 2022 Subaru BRZ debuted a month ago with a slick new design, some interior improvements, and a tasty power bump up to 228 horsepower. Since the car still sits on relatively thin tires and is rear-wheel drive, even Subaru’s press office couldn’t help but get the car sideways in many of the official photos.
Read MoreSee that crazy-looking car in that photo up there? The one that looks kind of like an English Tudor-style home, with the exposed, dark timbers? The one being lounged upon by those crazy leisure-suited teens who look like maybe they’re in their mid-’30s? That car is based on a car I’m sure you’ve heard of, and, I’m going to guess, not one you’d expect. I’m going to tell you all about it, but I’m going to make you click to find out, because what is this, a charity?
Read MoreJust four months since Project Cars 3 released, we’ve already received confirmation of a sequel.
Read MoreIt’s a depressing thing when one of the world’s oldest automakers, a 20th-century bastion of manufacturing, proselytizes something as mundane as over-the-air (OTA) software updates. But that’s exactly where Ford finds itself, as revealed in an Automotive News interview with one of the company’s top engineers in the lead-up to the release of the Mustang Mach-E and 2021 F-150.
Read MoreGeneral Motors announced the opening of a new facility at its Warren, Michigan, plant on Monday. The facility will be GM’s in-house 3D printing center, and the carmaker hopes it will help move car production along. We have other hopes of our own.
Read MoreThis is kind of a silly question. The great American land yacht is a dream. It’s a worthwhile dream to have, but it’s not something that has a tangible realization. Take the 1988 Cadillac Voyage for example.
Read MoreThe UAW is finally beginning to emerge from a corruption scandal that has dogged it for years, with 15 people convicted in a federal investigation, including former presidents Dennis Williams and Gary Jones. The question looming over all of it was whether there would be a federal takeover of the union itself. That’s not in the cards for now, but it was announced today that a few other things are.
Read MoreZoox has made good on its promise to unveil an autonomous vehicle on December 14, 2020. We’ve seen glimpses before, but this means the robotaxis are officially not vaporware. Earlier this year, Amazon bought the Foster City, California, company, which prompted speculation about it adding people-moving to its portfolio.
Read MoreFew would pass up an opportunity to drive the likes of Spa-Francorchamps or the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and thankfully racing games provide us with the ability to live out those fantasies behind the wheel of any car we desire. They also let us explore fictional tracks that don’t or, in some cases, possibly never could exist in real life.
Read MoreEndurance racing will look much different in coming years, as modern prototypes will be replaced by two new classes: Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) and Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh). Both bring with them a slew of new names to the grid. Peugeot will be a returning competitor, and today it revealed key details about the engine that will propel its upcoming hypercar. (There will be a road version in addition to the racecar.)
Read MoreIf you are a young person, or an enthusiast of any age just starting to get into cars, you are facing an adventure that can be both exciting and overwhelming. Of course, there is no better car community than the one we have here at Jalopnik, but even we don’t have all the answers. So, where should someone start?
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I asked you fine folks if anyone has ever actually given a shit about merchandise from automotive manufacturers. Today, I am amending my statement to say that I do care, very deeply, but only about one product: ugly Christmas sweaters.
Read MoreAllow me to set the stage: We now live in some sort of dystopian-but-very-real universe where every of-age human on planet Earth is allowed one single car. It can be any vehicle you want, but it’s the only machine you get to own for the rest of your life. What are you choosing?
Read MoreRideshare company Uber hasn’t made a lot of friends in the media lately, but its most recent faux pas has kicked off due to COVID-19. See, Uber wants its drivers to be classified essential workers, which would thus give them early access to the incoming vaccine.
Read MoreSnow. Ice. Sand. Rain. Gravel. Tiny mountain passes. Clogged, multi-lane highways. The roads of the world are lined with precarious driving conditions that can make life hell for anyone on four (or two) wheels, and I want to know: what are the absolute worst?
Read MoreNissan got out to a very early lead in the EV game by delivering the Leaf all the way back in 2011. It was really the first mass-market electric car with a somewhat within reach price tag. The small 24 kWh battery array and lack of battery temperature management which allowed that $34,570 base price way back then turned out to be difficult to live with long term. But, the company learned and adapted and later upgrades allowed the current 62 kWh Leaf Plus to achieve 226 miles of range for about t
Read MoreHey, here’s something fascinating just for all you crazy kids who have chosen to exist in the present: the past was also once a present, but for people who are now dead! G-g-ghost present! And back in that time they had ideas and opinions about cars, and those opinions and ideas and projects can be fascinating. I know this because I’ve been poking around in some 1890's issues of The Horseless Age, and I’ve found some especially tasty nuggets to share with you, my best pals ever. So hang the fuck
Read MoreSim racing is a fun hobby, but obviously a cost- and space-prohibitive one. If you have the ability to keep your setup in an office or perhaps its own room, more power to you. But if you live in a small apartment (ahem), shoehorning a wheel and pedals into your home along with some sort of apparatus to hold them up, while you’ve also got regular-person furniture like a coffee table and a sofa to deal with, quickly becomes a frustrating game of living room Tetris. The result is always a compromis
Read MoreAfter eleven movies, the Star Wars universe is well and truly established by this point. The Mandalorian Disney+ show has been, I hate to say it, more fun than any of the movies. It has also been pretty damn successful at getting people to sign up for yet another streaming service. So successful, in fact, that Disney announced on Thursday that it would be joined by nine additional D+ shows set in Star Wars universe.
Read MoreA New York City dredging crew fished out a whole-ass car from the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn yesterday, and it wasn’t even the first.
Read MoreIs Cyberpunk 2077 any good? I don’t know, I haven’t played it! What I do know is that the cars are pretty neat, and if you’re more interested in that aspect of the experience than anything else, here’s some good news: You can now drive the game’s hero car, the 2058 Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech, in Forza Horizon 4 starting today.
Read MoreI don’t know if you guys have heard, but our dear David Tracy like, really digs old Jeeps. He owns a fleet of the things that is constantly in flux. Yes, David is a bona fide rusty Jeep man, but there are plenty of brands out there that are tried and true, so what are they for you?
Read MoreProbably close to 10 years ago at this point, I discovered a few videos on YouTube uploaded by a user named hiropooooong that quickly became my version of automotive gaming comfort food. They’ve stayed with me to this day, in spite of their subpar visual quality. Every now and then I’ll revisit them for a quick hit of the warm and fuzzies. Today, I’m going to share them with you.
Read MoreSpy photos and rumors have consistently suggested the upcoming 2022 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing sport sedans were being tested with a manual transmission. Today, Cadillac confirmed both models will be sold with a six-speed manual transmission as the standard — and there’s a poll to back up that bold decision.
Read MoreI have to admit, for most years, when it comes to Starbucks annual Holiday Cups, I’ve mostly found myself rage-vomiting due to the wrath and offense I felt because of how the massive coffee-slinger ignored my winter holiday of choice, Happy Honda Days (praise Soichiro). But now I just feel like joy-vomiting, because, finally, Starbucks has decided to make cups to celebrate the most important winter holidays in America, Happy Honda Days, Toyotathon, Lexus December to Remember, and Chevy’s Red Tag
Read MoreThe updated 2021 Mazda Miata inexplicably dropped its red leather option for a white interior look, added a new blue paint job and bumped up the base price. I’m beginning to wonder if Mazda is pushing the car too far into luxury, but I’m too distracted by how mad I am that I reportedly can’t pair the white interior with a white exterior.
Read MoreIn the many years before convincing three-dimensional graphics were possible, video game developers had to get creative to realize their vision. When it came to racing games, that creativity typically resulted in a top-down perspective or, a bit later on, layered 2D sprites scaling smoothly enough to create an illusion of depth.
Read MoreAre you still looking for something special for that special wrencher in your life? Maybe looking for a present for yourself? No matter your needs/intentions, we’re here to help you get through the holidays with a list of helpful tools, gear, and other accessories that can help your favorite wrencher hit the ground running.
Read MoreSouthern California’s real estate market is trash. Everything is overpriced and not enough affordable housing is being built. Of course, plenty of housing is being built for the well off, like this outrageous new luxury property where if you spend enough on a condo, you’ll get a McLaren thrown in for free.
Read MoreSoon, you’ll be able to buy a Ducati e-bike in the United States. Yesterday (Dec. 9), the company announced plans to bring three models over from Europe: E-Scrambler, MIG-S and TK-01RR. The E-Scrambler is intended for street use, while the MIG-S and TK-01RR are mountain bikes.
Read MoreI deleted Uber at the same time everybody else did. If I remember correctly, I deleted Lyft, too. I’ll admit I eventually reinstalled Lyft and have used it grudgingly and occasionally while traveling for work, especially in towns where taxis aren’t everywhere all the time. Sure, the company’s bad, the business model is bad, it’s contributing to the destruction of my rights as a worker and the degradation of the environment. But on the other hand, it is convenient.
Read MoreIf you own a Honda produced within the last several years and wish you could enjoy the wireless CarPlay or Android Auto experience newer models have, you may be in luck. The company is reaching out to customers to gauge interest in optional upgrades that would add wireless phone projection capabilities to existing cars on the road.
Read MoreAbout a month ago the news hit the wire that Korean giant Hyundai was pursuing the purchase of the company at the forefront of evil murder robot dog research, Boston Dynamics. Wednesday, according to Korean Economic Daily’s sources, an agreement was reached to complete the transaction near the initial $1 billion number, allegedly the settled number once the dust cleared was $921 million.
Read MoreThis year’s Soap Box Derby was canceled due to COVID lockdowns, dashing the hopes and dreams of many little gearheads. The kids have been sulking around the backyard, demure and with hardly even the will to sport a cowlick hairdo. Every single day they glance at “The Blur” as it gathers dust and just sits there. It’s enough to make them as jaded as this lot:
Read MoreMG is coming back with strong sales of their ZS Electric vehicle. But, really, MG never left. It’s one of those marques that’s gone through a few restructures, trading one parent company after another.
Read MoreI’m not sure if you’ve heard already, but according to Israel’s former space security chief, Earth has been in contact with a “Galactic Federation,” and while the United States government is aware, the aliens in the Galactic Federation have requested that it not be revealed they exist and are in contact with us, because “humanity is not ready yet.” Well, space-cat is kind of out of the bag now, which is why I think it’s time for humanity to join this Federation and promptly corner the ground-ca
Read MoreEveryone knows that winter is the best season for driving. You’ve got your slipping, your sliding, your low-speed drifts — the whole deal. But, when it goes wrong and you find yourself buried under say, ten feet of snow, you may find yourself wishing you’d taken a little extra care in preparing.
Read MoreIf you buy a pre-owned Tesla Model S directly from Tesla, you’d expect it to be in pretty good shape. While the car may have some light cosmetic imperfections, you’d certainly want it to be free of major crash damage. A Chinese court ordered Tesla to pay a Model S buyer 1.14 million yuan, about $175,000, after it was determined that major components of the car were cut and welded after a crash.
Read MorePersonally, I’ve never been interested in cars that were “blacked out,” nor have I ever wanted to blackout anything I’ve driven. The culture is pretty much lost on me. But, as I’ve just discovered, there’s an ongoing search for the blackest of black paint, and I think the folks over at the DipYourCar YouTube channel have found it.
Read MoreWhether it be a man, a car or a fast-food combo portion, adding “super” to any name implies that it is something extravagant. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles has a new supercar exhibition, and to say the least, it’s pretty super.
Read MoreFor a decade Ken Block has been delighting car fanatics everywhere with his Gymkhana antics. With 2020 continuing to be the weirdest year on record, KB has passed the torch to his ex-teammate and favorite risk taker Travis Pastrana. And, for the first time since Gymkhana 2, Subaru is back as the vehicular protagonist of this ridiculous ride through Pastrana’s hometown of Annapolis, Maryland.
Read MoreIt’s been a couple of weeks since our first episode went live and it’s time to deliver episode two directly into your head. Click the play button and a digital facsimile of my ridiculously smooth voice will arrive in the airwaves of your immediate vicinity and your brain will be able to reinterpret those digital signals into verbal communication. It’s just that easy!
Read MoreWhile my newest video game system is from the early 16-bit era, I’m still reasonably aware that the industry is still moving ahead, cranking out new, exciting titles that are, somehow, even more immersive and deep than Krull on the Atari 2600. One of these is Cyberpunk 2077, a new game that’s getting all sorts of attention, some of it kind of alarming. But when it comes to modern video games, I can’t tell wine from grape Fanta. What I can talk about, though, are the amazing vehicle designs the g
Read MoreIt’s a common problem: You enjoy sim racing, but the steering wheel you use to compete virtually simply isn’t as sharp or well-built as the one inside your 2022 BMW M4 GT3 race car. We’ve all been there and, thankfully, Fanatec is finally doing something to address this growing problem.
Read MoreIf you’ve been eyeing up a new Camaro SS, ZL1 or 1LE but happen to live in California or Washington, you’ll have to purchase yours before 2020 ends, or risk having to wait a year.
Read MoreI’ll admit that I’m not entirely sure what the broader meaning of this is, but I do feel like there is some sort of bigger underlying message here. I’m thinking about the idea of comical self-effacement, and the role it once held in car advertising, and how it’s absolutely gone now. The truth is I miss it, and I feel like the lack of it does not speak well for the overall mentality of how we as people sell, buy and own cars.
Read MoreThe Volkswagen ID.3 is enjoying relative success among electric vehicles in Norway. Despite its sales dipping, this month marks the third in a row that the new VW sits in the top spot of EV sales in the country. The Norwegian market is known to be fond of EVs and has been one of the leading markets for electric cars.
Read MoreIn September a slew of barely driven BMW i3 models that once belonged to the Los Angeles Police Department turned up for sale at New Century BMW, a dealership just east of the city. New Century sold the battery-only i3 cars at steep discounts, knocking off between $25,000 to $30,000 compared with the price of a new i3, though most of them had driven well under 20,000 miles.
Read MoreThere are a few cars that have earned an unassailable position in the dream car pantheon. Everyone just intuitively understands these vehicles to be desirable; 250 GTO, Cobra, Biscuter, etc. Everybody knows the list. But maybe there’s one car on that list that you just can’t get your head around or see the appeal of.
Read MoreI didn’t grow up on Knight Rider. I was never obsessed with KITT. I never wanted a replica, but I did understand the fascination others had with the car that flew, and talked, and drove itself. How did it drive itself? Well, anyone familiar with the Mechanical Turk will like this.
Read MoreAn undersea tunnel and roundabout between towns in the Faroe Islands, set to open later this month, will reduce a 64-minute trip to just 16 minutes — and will look utterly beautiful while doing it.
Read MoreScience fiction has always been one of the dominant influences on car dashboard design, from the early space-age influences of American 1950s cars all the way to the massive LCD screens of today. When carmakers began experimenting with all-digital instruments in the 1980s we saw a bold push into very futuristic looking high-tech designs. But even before then there were attempts to get older analog dashboards looking all cutting-edge and high-tech, and I think the best of these has to be the one
Read MoreYou can probably thank the Ford E-Transit for this.
Read MoreOfficial pricing has been released for the eighth-generation Golf R. Volkswagen’s website pages for the model are now live across Europe, and these provide some insight regarding how much American drivers will pay for the privilege of piloting one of these rockets.
Read MoreIf you’ve done any serious car fixes, chances are you’ve picked up a repair guide like a Haynes Repair Manual. You can find Haynes manuals for a multitude of cars, even manuals for fictional vehicles like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. But in an increasingly digital age, Haynes is closing up its print shop.
Read MoreWe know that driving with the windows down is bad for you in terms of driving in an extremely polluted place, but a new study from Brown University indicates that driving with the windows up can greatly increase your chances of getting COVID-19 if you’re sharing a car with someone who is infected.
Read MoreHonda is moving its European models away from being powered entirely by internal combustion far more quickly than it had previously announced. The carmaker will shift to electrified powertrains — hybrids, in this case — across its model range in as little as two years. The following is from Honda’s 2020 European Environmental Report:
Read MoreIf reading this site has taught me one thing, it’s that some cars are pretty good. But also, that there are cars that are impossibly bad. That are expressions of cynicism or misanthropy, that are dangerous without being cool. That are ugly, and not in an endearing way.
Read MoreThe mad scientists over at the Garage 54 YouTube channel are at it again. They love answering the automotive questions you didn’t know you wanted to ask. The garage’s latest video seeks an answer to that age old question: Can those adhesives we call super glue seize an engine?
Read MoreThe fine people of Jalopnik have spoken, and we have listened. You’ve given us your very best tips for driving in winter weather, and we’ve responded by compiling a list of the very best ideas you’ve given us. Throw on those snow tires and get driving!
Read MoreAs much as we might like to be, we aren’t always on top of things. Shit happens, and life gets in the way. Suddenly that oil change you kind of could have used a month ago is now a desperate necessity. How late do you leave your car maintenance?
Read MoreWe’ve been losing things over the Bermuda Triangle for over 100 years, but one of the strangest occurrences took place 75 years ago today, on December 5, 1945. Five torpedo bombers up and disappeared during a three-hour training mission out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen were lost—alongside an additional 13 members of the search crew.
Read MoreThe first time I saw a race car in real life, it was in October of 2014. I was standing in downtown Austin, Texas, watching a Red Bull Racing Formula One car do donuts in front of the capitol building of the city I’d moved to just months before. I had no idea how to cope with it. Growing up out in the boons, F1 always seemed like some fancy-schmancy sport, the kind of thing I’d never see with my own two eyes. And there it was, happening right in front of me. It was magic.
Read MoreA week-and-a-half ago, when GM announced that it was bailing on Trump I emailed every automaker still on Trump’s side to see if they had any comment. That included Nissan, which responded then it doesn’t “typically comment on actions of competitors.” Today, Nissan said it was bailing on Trump too.
Read MoreDriving onto a live racetrack accidentally should be very hard to do. Actually, it should be impossible! But for the second time in little more than a month, a motorist has ended up stranded on the Interlagos circuit in Brazil, even though there was no intention to do so while cars were running laps.
Read MoreExcited to drive the new Ford Bronco next spring, were you? Well, you won’t, as Ford announced today that both two- and four-door versions of the highly anticipated and high-riding SUV have been delayed until summer 2021.
Read MoreAt a time where both sedans and manual-transmission models are fading from the market, it’s nice to see automakers continue to make compact and fun four-door offerings. Hyundai just released pricing for the Elantra N Line and it seems that it has the Honda Civic Si sedan squarely in its sights.
Read MoreAptera, the company that designed a radical, wildly efficient three-wheeler and then died (but only after making into a Star Trek movie) was reborn a few years back and is now ready to officially announce their all-new, reborn car, which it seems like it is just calling the Aptera solar electric vehicle (sEV). It’s a remarkable-looking thing, wildly advanced, and Aptera claims it can have a fully charged range of “up to 1,000 miles” and can use its solar cells to allow for “charging for most dai
Read MoreGlobal NCAP is a British charity with the goal of ridding the world of road fatalities. Toward this end, it does lots of crash tests, often with cars that are ill-equipped for such tests. Enter the Great Wall Steed.
Read MoreIt’s no secret that the global pandemic has not been kind to car sales anywhere, though Russia appears to be faring better than most. The country just recorded its third straight month of sales growth, Reuters reports, following a sharp decline of 50 percent to 70 percent early in the pandemic. However, there’s reason to believe the growth trend won’t last much longer.
Read MoreUber is appealing to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control this morning in an effort to have its drivers qualify for early vaccinations. The ride-hailing company is asking the CDC to designate its drivers as non-health essential workers, as reported by Reuters:
Read MoreLego has been absolutely killing it lately, seemingly adding a new and outstanding vehicle to its repertoire of rides every other week. Just a week ago, we were introduced to the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE, joining the toymaker’s roster of GT cars of various makes and sizes. This week’s reveal, though, is a different beast entirely: a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. And it’s not even that expensive! (For a Lego kit, anyway.)
Read MoreAutomotive failures are weird. The process of designing, building and selling cars is enormously complex, and it’s incredibly uncommon that any outcome is the product of a single decision. BUT! There are some examples of absolutely catastrophic decisions, screw-ups so bad that they ended careers.
Read MoreCar-dealer training films are an odd branch of cinema. Like all film genres where the goal is something other than just making a good movie (religious films or advertising, for example) the results can seem weird and campy when seen out of context. In this 1977 Chrysler Cordoba vs. Ford Thunderbird (and Pontiac Grand Prix) training film, Chrysler takes some genuinely odd potshots at its competitor from Ford.
Read MoreAccording to a report from the Detroit News, the Michigan House of Representatives will send HB 6233, the bill that originally would have let Tesla — but not Rivian — sell cars directly to consumers without the need for dealerships, to the State Senate without a special cut-out for Tesla.
Read MoreI can’t help it — I get excited about new logos. Yes, I know they’re ultimately disguises that corporations use to instill the warm glow of familiarity and comfort within us, so they can later exploit that goodwill to extract money from us. But I’m a graphic design nerd, so I’m willing to go along with the ruse. (As if we have a choice, anyway.)
Read MoreMini’s lineup currently includes the Mini SE electric hatchback, which isn’t exactly a performance weapon, and the 2021 Mini JCW GP, a hardcore track-oriented 300 horsepower, uh, performance weapon. But now the BMW-owned automaker is merging those two concepts with its first performance EV, the upcoming Mini John Cooper Works prototype teased in these officially released photos.
Read MoreIf you’ve been wondering why there’s a strange yet palpable excitement in the air — and why there seems to be a shortage of raccoons and woodchucks around — don’t panic! It’s good news!
Read MoreEveryone, please enjoy these two healthy specimens of taillight design, courtesy of the German Ford Taunus wagons. These were V4 cars, too! Here’s something fun—see if you can guess which design—sandwich or candy corn—is the higher-spec model?
Read MoreThe WRC has detailed the itinerary for the ACI Rally Monza and its 16 stages, set to begin December 3. This is the final round — it will decide the 2020 championship — and while we already knew it was sure to be a strange one, seeing some of the routes that organizers have planned put things into proper perspective.
Read MoreAmerican Airlines flew a Boeing 737 Max from Dallas to Tulsa today, one of its first 737 Max flights in almost two years. A gaggle of media people were on board to record the occasion, part of an effort by American to ensure its customers that really, these planes are safe now. I’m guessing that for many people, more convincing will be needed.
Read MoreNaming cars is a tricky business, one that I seem to have way too many opinions about, often bad ones. And while it seems like there are hardly any rules governing the odd mishmash of alphanumerics, animal names, location names and made-up words that form most car badges, there are a few unspoken rules. Like how, for supercars the name has to be some hard-to-pronounce word, ideally an obscure word from a non-English language. I may have some suggestions for those.
Read MoreThe storm that pummeled the tristate area on Monday brought wind gusts up to 50 mph across New York City and tornado watches in parts of New Jersey. Out of an abundance of caution, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority decided to close both the upper and lower levels of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn, for several hours during the late morning and early afternoon.
Read MoreAfter a day of our wondering who would fill Lewis Hamilton’s vacant seat in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 car this coming weekend in Bahrain, the racing team delivered an answer Wednesday morning: It’ll be none other than George Russell.
Read MoreConsumer Reports last month pulled its recommendation of the Porsche Taycan, Kia Niro EV and Audi E-Tron because of reliability issues with the trio of EVs. Though there were few headlines about the move, it’s significant news for a couple of reasons: Automakers don’t want to lose the organization’s stamp of approval, and it’s an indication that EVs, containing fewer moving parts than gasoline-powered cars and supposedly simpler, are not necessarily trouble-free.
Read MoreTesla’s recent skyrocketing market valuation, which now makes it worth over $500 billion, has many wondering if the electric automaker will try to leverage that ridiculous market power with a takeover or merger with another carmaker. CEO Elon Musk claims he’s open to it. That leaves just one question left to be asked — which automaker should it be?
Read MoreWhen I went to visit Lucid’s Silicon Valley facility in September, I was told that the Casa Grande, Ariz. facility was nearly up and running. I was cautiously optimistic that such a large facility could be built and ready to turn out a brand new from-scratch electric car in under a year, but being that the company broke ground in December of 2019 and even with coronavirus-related delays in construction still managed to get the damn thing to this point in late November of 2020 is a testament to t
Read MoreThe Honda Civic Type R has been a dominating force on the roads for a few years now, its incredible limited-slip differential planting 306 horsepower into usable traction through just the front wheels. It has a new competitor in the all-wheel-drive Toyota Yaris GR, so it’s natural to ask which hot hatchback would win a track showdown.
Read MoreMost modern racing games consist of facsimiles real cars used under licensing agreements from the automakers. The reason is easy to grasp: If you’re playing a racing game in the first place, you probably have at least a passing interest in automobiles, and a car you actually recognize or like could deepen your attachment to the experience.
Read MoreVolkswagen’s racing days are behind it. The German automaker on Tuesday announced it would cease all motorsports operations in the coming months, though it’s important to spell out that this affects only the Volkswagen brand. Audi, which just revealed plans to enter the Dakar Rally, return to Le Mans and bow out of Formula E, is unaffected, as are the other marques under the Volkswagen Group umbrella.
Read MoreTesla is worth over $500 billion and Elon Musk is currently the second richest person on Earth. The company seems on a meteoric rise with no end in sight. But perhaps a merger could be in the automaker’s future.
Read MoreFord announced Tuesday its estimated electric performance figures for a new trim, the upcoming Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition, with a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds — identical to the claimed performance of the Tesla Model Y Performance, its biggest competitor.
Read MoreWe hate to be bearers of bad news, but there’s no easy way to put this: Mitsuoka’s Buddy, the perfectly-named Toyota RAV4-meets-K5 Blazer crossover you never knew you needed, is now sold out until 2023 — merely four days since the company began taking reservations.
Read MoreWrenching on your own vehicle is fun and can save you loads of money. You also get a little more familiar with the car you love. However, fixing things yourself also means running into repairs that may take some special skills, hacks or just monumental patience to get through.
Read MoreIf you’ll allow me a bit of cultural grandstanding, I’d like to say that the greatest failing of human culture is that amphibious vehicles are not more common. Based on my studies, nearly all of humanity’s problems—how we treat one another, allocation of resources, political—would be solved if we could just drive into more lakes, rivers, estuaries, and so on. I have the math here somewhere, but I’m pretty sure it all checked out.
Read MoreA few weeks after analyzing the fictional cars of Grand Theft Auto V, automotive designer Frank Stephenson has turned his critical eye to the vehicles of Cyberpunk 2077. And while the man who penned the McLaren P1 doesn’t find most of examples conventionally beautiful — it’s hard to imagine anyone would argue they are — he nevertheless comes away intrigued.
Read MoreOne of the biggest design changes from the outgoing 991 to the current 992 generation of the Porsche 911 was the introduction of a full-width rear light bar on every trim of the model for the first time. (Previous 911s have had full-width reflectors.) The new rear end pushes the legacy sports car into the modern era while maintaining its old proportions, but apparently it goes a little too far for some vehicle regulators.
Read MoreNissan is in the midst of a rebirth now, given that it’s revitalized most of its lineup in recent months and the new Z Proto is signaling exciting things for the brand’s bread-and-butter performance car. The outlier in this transformative era is, strangely, the R35 Nissan GT-R, which has been on the market 13 years and looks to remain here for at least a few more.
Read MoreSometimes, you look at a car, and you just wonder, “Why?” or “Who authorized this?” or “People thought this was a good idea for several years?” or maybe even “Who actually wanted this?” That is exactly how I feel about the Mini Cooper Coupe.
Read MoreI’ve got a bone to pick with automakers. There are simply not enough hood ornaments nowadays, and the companies known for their flashy décor are simply giving it all up, not particularly keen on that kind of symbol. And why not?
Read MoreI should preface all of this with the usual reminders about how ours is an uncertain world, full of chaos and entropy, and I have exactly no idea if this thing will ever become real. I’m pretty certain everything about this car only exists in the form of renderings and optimistically-guessed numbers. What I can say for sure, though, is that I really like the general design, so let’s just work with that.
Read MoreOur brains are wired to process what our eyes see in far more ways than we usually realize. We’ve evolved to expect things to look certain ways, and when things deviate too much from what’s expected in some key criteria, it leaves us feeling unsettled, like the famous ‘double face’ illusion. I think something similar is going on with the Farizon FX, a sort-of pickup truck version of the Geely Boyue Pro SUV. I mean, just look at it. It’s a little disturbing, right?
Read MoreNo one was quite sure what to make of carmaker Preston Tucker in his day. He was trying to design revolutionary vehicles that would have outshined the Big Three (if only they had worked), but his ultimate failure led a lot of folks to believe he was just a grifter looking for a quick way to make a buck off of prospective investors. But after seeing the Tucker Carioca, I’m more inclined to believe Tucker never got the chance he really deserved.
Read MoreFor the 10th consecutive year, more white cars were sold globally in 2020 than cars of any other color — and the margin between white and black, the second best-selling color, wasn’t even close.
Read MoreI imagine that many of you, even after reading our own David Tracy’s full review of the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, still have many unanswered questions about the car. And, I’d also bet that at the top of that list of questions is “can you get it with wood paneling, like an old Ford Country Squire?” Well, thanks to a reader named Chris noticing something on the Mach-E accessories page, we know that answer is a definitive “sort of.”
Read MoreIt’s not that often I see a car with a limited run of ten copies and think “that’s probably too many,” but I have to hand it to the Aznom Palladium, a Ram 1500 sent to Italy to be tortured into something that looks kind of like a sedan obscenely bloated with massive amounts of expensive materials, casino-grade carpet, and deep, crippling insecurity.
Read MoreIt’s fairly rare for a car to score a whopping zero start in a crash test here in the 21st century. We’ve worked pretty damn hard to make sure that even the cheapest, shittiest machines still have something holding them together and keeping the folks inside safe. Not so with the Ford Ka. Buckle up, buds, because we’re about to see what makes a zero-star crash test so bad.
Read MoreWhen Tesla released its Cybertruck, it made a splash because it was certainly a different look to, well, pretty much anything we see on the market today. With futuristic, inorganic lines and sharp panels, it’s the kind of car you’re either going to love or hate. And automotive designer Frank Stephenson… isn’t a big fan.
Read MoreThis isn’t exactly breaking news, as this car has been out for a while, but I realized that for all of my incessant bitching and whining and lamenting about the perpetually pissed-off look of modern cars, I’m not really doing enough to bring attention to those automakers that actually have the ‘nads to introduce a new car that doesn’t look like it wants to knee you in the gut and then urinate on your lunch. So, today, let me commend Ford for re-designing the Escape so it actually looks like it’s
Read MoreFrank Stephenson, the designer responsible for the Maserati MC12, McLaren P1, R50 Mini Cooper and many other recognizable vehicles, has turned his insightful, critical eye to the world of video game cars. In his latest YouTube video, he scrutinizes 11 models from Grand Theft Auto V.
Read MoreThe original BMC Mini designed by Alec Issigonis was an absolute triumph of design and, arguably, set the template for the most common automotive layout used today: the transverse-engine, FWD layout. When BMW bought the rights to the Mini brand around 2000, it set out to make a modern version of this very influential car. And while BMW did a pretty good job of it, I think it can be argued that Daihatsu did it better.
Read MoreNot all concept cars are far-future, starry-eyed fever dreams of a future populated with atomic self-driving space shark-pods; sometimes they’re just a normal car with one more pretty good idea jammed in. That’s pretty much just what the 1966 Ford Galaxie Magic Cruiser was: a mostly normal Galaxie with one very cool feature, a feature that I’m kind of baffled never made it to production on any car I’m aware of.
Read MoreIt’s too easy nowadays for carmakers to push out design studies with ludicrous imaginary specs and absolutely zero chance of production. The kid in me, who grew up mesmerized by the otherworldly concept cars of the ’90s, is kind of into this trend. Meanwhile, cynical me is fatigued by the hypocrisy of incessant wishcasting from corporations that you just know would never, ever undertake any project so risky, bold or progressive.
Read MoreI love a good pickup truck. The modern pickup is a vehicle you can use for work during the week, then drive to a gala on the weekend. But you know what a truck still can’t do? Load itself. Way back in 1987 Toyota had an idea for that.
Read MoreThe magazine Outside tracked every death of a bicyclist in a collision with a car so far in 2020 and found that despite COVID-19 dropping traffic rates and road miles traveled in the U.S., death rates for cyclists remain high.
Read MoreA car meet has claimed yet another victim. This time, the crash was not caused by faulty traction control but by one-upmanship and a poorly executed maneuver.
Read MoreThe Swedish Moose Test is likely the most infamous and one of the most challenging safety tests in all of motoring, I suppose because the Swedes have made some kind of deal with Big Moose where they agree to stop running cars into them in exchange for some kind of favorable status with the Moose King. It’s a big deal; moose are huge and can walk right into roads, requiring quick yet controllable evasive maneuvers. It’s a very hard test to pass, and the most recent victim is the new Toyota RAV4 P
Read MoreOn Wednesday video circulated around social media in which an unidentified man — we’ll call him ‘the protagonist’ — wearing nothing but an oversized panda costume head and rollerblades ripped his way down I-670 in Columbus, Ohio holding a selfie stick. The video appears to be from this week, which saw daily high temperatures no more than 34 degrees F in the greater Columbus area. I’m guessing this bare-assed bear was real damn cold, no matter how hot his blade skills are.
Read MoreA few days ago, 60 Minutes released on YouTube what has to be one of the greatest pieces of investigative video journalism I have ever seen. It’s an episode called “Cream Puff,” and it features awesome ’80s-era cars, absurdly eccentric personalities that seem as if they come from a movie, and utterly audacious fraud. The fact that this is real is just remarkable.
Read MoreDo you know the number of lumens your car’s headlight bulbs are supposed to be putting out? Do any of us? Probably not, unless you’re employed as a clerk at an auto parts store, or you’re a lighting expert. So, let’s not blame this individual in Washington State who fixed their busted-ass headlights by replacing them with flashlights for trying. He had lights!
Read MoreThe car chase horror movie is a niche but truly delightful genre. Nothing is scarier than having to outrun, say, a big ol’ truck like in Jeepers Creepers or a Dodge Challenger in Death Proof. But throw in Russell Crowe in a Ford truck chasing down chasing down a mom in a 1995 Volvo 960, and you’ve got Unhinged, one of the funniest but also most unsettling B-movie horror films that’s come out in a while.
Read MoreThe 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E is The Blue Oval’s first-ever high-volume electric car and an important step in keeping Ford competitive as the entire industry shifts towards EVs. I just drove the Mach-E for the first time, and while I wouldn’t call it exciting, it’s a good electric crossover SUV.
Read MoreThe 2021 Ford Bronco is finally here to take on the Jeep Wrangler, but don’t forget that Ford is actually attacking Jeep on a second front: small crossovers. The Blue Oval’s weapon of choice is the Ford Bronco Sport, and its aim is to steal away Jeep Compass buyers. Here’s why I think it will succeed.
Read MoreAnother week has passed and that means another week of sweet cars found online that I wish I could own. I like finding cheap used cars that can either be daily driven right away or daily driven after minor work. Over the past couple of years I’ve turned it into a bit of a skill.
Read MoreAs an aviation and motorcycle enthusiast, I’ve long wanted to combine my passions into one. Riding a motorcycle is fun, but riding a motorcycle that looks and feels like a plane? That sounds amazing. There have been a few of these concepts over the years, but the Pulse autocycle is probably the coolest to date.
Read MoreDuring one of my daily searches for interesting cars, I ran into a creation that made me do a double — no, triple — take. People converting old school buses is hardly a new concept. I’ve seen everything from drag buses to skoolie builds, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a 4x4 camper school bus like this one I found for sale.
Read MoreAnother week has passed and that means another week of sweet cars found online that I wish I could own. I like finding cheap used cars that can either be daily driven right away or daily driven after minor work. Over the past couple of years I’ve turned it into a bit of a skill.
Read MoreOne hundred thousand dollars. That’s a lot of dollars. That’s a pile of dollars so vast that if you really wanted something exotic and interesting, like an air-cooled, rear-engined V8 car with dramatic, bulbous styling you could buy one and still have like $30,000 left over. Or, you could do what the winner of this Bring A Trailer auction did and spend the entire amount on a non-drivable but full-size model of an air-cooled, rear-engined flat-six car with dramatic, bulbous styling that barely ha
Read MoreWhat you’re looking at isn’t the iconic 1983 GMC Vandura that served as transportation for the A-Team, but it is one of six officially licensed to promote the show in the 1980s. This example is a 1979 GMC Vandura to be precise. And it’s going up for auction in January.
Read MoreThere is exactly one Isdera Commendatore 112i in existence, and RM Sotheby’s will auction it directly from the manufacturer, without a reserve, this coming February in Paris. Whoever the lucky soul buying it is, I implore you: Look after the Commendatore, for it’s had a tough life and deserved so much better than to end up in your hands in this way.
Read MoreIf you’re into wacky car builds, chances are you’ve probably seen a jet car or a few. Here is one jet car that likely inspired many future builds. Remember the flame-spitting Jet Beetle? It’s for sale for a jaw-dropping $550,000!
Read MoreNic Hahn from Illinois recently became the new owner of a fascinating 1996 Saturn SL2 with only 3,800 miles on the odometer. The vehicle was a former engineering development car for one of General Motors’ main air conditioning parts suppliers, and when Hahn bought the car a few months ago, there was still testing equipment in the engine bay. To learn more, I scoured old news articles and even contacted the manager of the now-defunct Decatur, IL wind tunnel in which the car underwent air conditi
Read MoreAnother week has passed and that means another week of sweet cars found online that I wish I could own. I like finding cheap used cars that can either be daily driven right away or daily driven after minor work. Over the past couple of years I’ve turned it into a bit of a skill.
Read MoreSometimes searching Facebook Marketplace is less about searching for dumb cars you want to buy and more about finding something weird to stare at. I love crazy motorcycles. I also love crazy cars. This car-motorcycle-trike thing is both and simultaneously neither. All in all, I’m stunned.
Read MoreInnovation deserves praise, and a man from Canton, Ohio isn’t getting nearly enough of that for installing a second-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee’s front fascia onto his Ford Ranger. It’s time we change that; it’s time we raise a glass to this genius of automotive design.
Read MoreWhat sort of drugs pairs well with a factory-painted mint-colored 1996 E36 BMW M3? If you want to find out, there’s one listed for sale on Craigslist in Texas. There’s just one really big, really weird catch: this rare mint green M3 isn’t in Texas. It isn’t even on the continent.
Read MoreAnother week has passed and that means another week of sweet cars found online that I wish I could own. I like finding cheap used cars that can either be daily driven right away or daily driven after minor work. Over the past couple of years I’ve turned it into a bit of a skill.
Read MoreOK. I’m going to try something. You trust me, right?
Read MoreTime is a relentless jerk. Nothing looks perfect forever, and that definitely includes cars, especially economy cars. They have to live a working car’s life, after all. Which is why this 1986 Ford Escort is really special. It looks oh so clean after 34 years.
Read MoreI’m usually not one to question somebody’s personal car buying or selling decisions, and in general, times are tough. But is it intriguing to see that even the vice president of Ford’s design department is selling his very in-demand 2017 Ford GT? Yeah, it is.
Read MoreAnother week has passed and that means another week of sweet cars found online that I wish I could own. I like finding cheap used cars that can either be daily driven right away or daily driven after minor work. Over the past couple of years I’ve turned it into a bit of a skill.
Read MoreTo American car enthusiasts who love revered cars like the Nissan Skyline R34 and Land Rover Defender, the infamous 25-year import rule is the ultimate challenge. Yet while Skylines and Defenders were restricted under the watchful eye of the feds, the first-generation Smart Fortwo (1998-2007) is able to drive down our roads without fear of becoming a block of crushed metal and plastic. Here’s why.
Read MoreMy partner recently gave me a school bus as an early birthday present. Together we are going to build it into an RV. One of the biggest challenges facing so-called skoolie builds is getting the whole rig legal. Many states present a bunch of red tape to cut through, but there is one state that makes it easy. They’ll even mail your new plates to your current address. Yes, Vermont will register almost anything, even without a title.
Read MoreThe allure of the game of golf has always eluded me. Most 18-hole golf courses are spread out over between 100 and 200 acres of perfectly good land now ruined for any other use. I understand the fresh air and sunshine aspect of the sport, but there are so many better ways to get that feeling. Like riding a 4-horsepower turquoise art-deco scooter built in 1958. Instead of hauling some sticks around and getting mad about it, you could just throw the sticks into the ocean and ride around on this fe
Read MoreZero’s S, SR, and DSR models are all built on the same architecture with different suspension and purpose of ride. The DSR, introduced in 2016, is the most off-road ready of the three, playing the part of comfy upright adventure bike in the lineup. With 116 lb-ft of torque and 70 horsepower on tap, it’s plenty competent for mild off-roading as well as anything the street can throw at it. When equipped with the optional $2,895 power tank, it can achieve as much as 204 city miles of range.
Read MoreFew motorcycle manufacturers have been as successful at sensing what consumers want as well as Honda has. In 1958, Honda caught lightning in a bottle by selling the Super Cub to non-riders and bicycle riders. In a subsequent attempt to gain more riders, Honda attempted to bring new riders to the two-wheel lifestyle.
Read MoreThe next time you see a BMW motorcycle on the road, whether it’s a big GS with hard cases or a naked R Nine T, pay attention to its engine. It’s going to outlive us all.
Read MoreThere is a war of high performance V-twins raging on the highways of America right now. Big-bore twins from Harley Davidson and Indian pour out of opposing factories just a few hundred miles apart — some from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and some from Spirit Lake, Iowa. If the arms race continues to deliver big power bikes like the Screamin’ Eagle Street Glide I rode last month, I’ll promote this conflict from both sides.
Read MoreOne great aspect of motorcycle riding we don’t often hear about is the never-ending search for gear. I’ve sampled a lot of gear to find my perfect setup for a given ride or commute, and I want to share brief overviews in this ongoing series.
Read MoreOne great aspect of motorcycle riding we don’t often hear about is the never-ending search for gear. I’ve sampled a lot of gear to find my perfect setup for a given ride or commute, and I want to share brief overviews in this ongoing series.
Read MoreTrust me when I say that I was pretty bummed to hear Harley’s new management had decided to ax the streetfighter-style Bronx from the brand’s future plans. That burn was only salved by the fact that the wicked dual-sport Pan America is still planned for launch next year. The Motor Company is planning a launch for new products on January 19th, but the Pan America will get its own special event, featuring actor Jason Momoa, on February 22nd. Honestly, that’s sooner than I expected.
Read MoreHarley-Davidson has had a bit of a revolving door of future plans after the Motor Company underwent a major internal shakeup earlier in 2020. As part of that drama, much of the ambitious More Roads To Harley-Davidson initiative got Thanos-snapped out of existence, including the Bronx streetfighter model. The Custom 1250 was also presumed dead, but it just appeared on Harley-Davidson’s list of future models for 2021.
Read MoreThe Zero SR/S is a hard one to categorize. Just looking at it, you’d think it’s a super hardcore sportbike, but sling a leg over one and it proves itself an incredibly comfortable sport tourer. It’s quick, makes fun space ship noises, rides like a dream and has incredible range for an electric motorcycle. But after spending most of my Sunday ripping around some great riding roads, I’ve figured out the best feature the SR/S has over any other motorcycle that has ever been built. Fairing-mounted u
Read MoreEnergica Motor Company, an Italian electric motorcycle maker, is working on a technological collaboration with Italian startup Sealence to produce a new boat propulsion latform called DeepSpeed. If this electric jet technology takes off, it could be revolutionary for the medium-size seagoing vessel industry.
Read MoreDucati’s Il Mostro naked bike has been on produced non-stop since 1993 with dozens of different specs based on largely the same formula. It fits many different motorcycle lifestyles depending on spec and accessories, from daily commuter to track kaiju. It was the relatively inexpensive and highly accessible motorcycle that probably saved Ducati from the scrapheap of history. Hundreds of thousands of Monsters have left the factory, selling in an average year between half and two thirds of Ducati’
Read MoreFor a few short years, we could buy a made-in-America sport-touring halo bike, a machine from a daring startup that was built around half of a Chevy LS engine. Though it offered a muscular alternative to a BMW or a Harley-Davidson, at nearly $40,000 the Motus MST-R was either too expensive for this world — or simply too good for it.
Read MoreOne great aspect of motorcycle riding we don’t often hear about is the never-ending search for gear. I’ve sampled a lot of gear to find my perfect setup for a given ride or commute, and I want to share brief overviews in this ongoing series.
Read MoreIf you own a BMW and have recently experienced problems accessing CarPlay in your vehicle, you’re not alone. Several BMW owners took to Reddit over the last few days to share their inability to use CarPlay, seemingly due to a server-side issue rather than having anything to do with hardware inside the cars themselves or the drivers’ iPhones.
Read MoreIn what I suspect was an attempt by our nemeses (Big Lettuce, the American Council of Churches, etc.) we were sent a picture by a reader named Franck (yeah, with a ‘c’) of this odd car driving around Irvine, CA, on Nevada plates. So far, it’s baffled all of us, so I’m putting it out to the most powerful automotive hive mind in the Known Universe, the Jalopnik Hive Mind. What is this thing?
Read MoreIt’s strange, but cars like the Lincoln pictured above don’t really exist anymore. Displaced by the “European-inspired Handling” trend, those big, comfy, floaty cars never made much of a comeback. There are comfortable cars being made today — Mercedes makes them, Rolls-Royce and Bentley do, too — but the approach is different. Those cars start with a stiff chassis, competent-if-not-great handling, rubber band tires, etc., and add tricks like Magic Ride Control and active suspension to gobble u
Read MoreAnother year is in the books, and as 2020 was all kinds of a crap year, we shall be burning those books posthaste. That’s not before we delve into all the cars, the votes and the changes that made up Nice Price or No Dice in 2020.
Read MoreIt’s said that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and today’s Nice Price or No Dice McLaren certainly has a devilishly misleading look. Let’s see if this cleverly wrapped supercar has an equally clever price.
Read MoreA remarkable amount of work has gone into today’s Nice Price or No Dice Durango to turn it into a reasonable approximation of a classic WWII WC Wagon. Let’s see if its price seems just as reasonable.
Read MoreTransportation doesn’t get much more basic than today’s Nice Price or No Dice Plymouth Breeze. Let’s see if this Cloud Car is priced to put some wind in a new owner’s sails.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Carrera 4 has suffered an engine fire but otherwise looks to be in fairly decent shape. Let’s see if this back-burner Porsche is priced to ignite some buyer interest.
Read MoreWhile you may be too old to be eagerly anticipating the arrival of Santa’s sleigh, you may still be excited to find today’s Nice Price or No Dice Ducati Desert Sled as this year’s holiday gift. Let’s see whether this Scrambler’s price makes it a cup of good cheer.
Read MoreDescribed as an actual “Little Old Lady’s Car,” today’s Nice Price or No Dice Ford Tempo is an incredibly low-mileage time capsule of ’80s awesomeness. What might you pay for such an unfiltered Reagan-era driving experience?
Read MoreMaserati may be better known in the modern era for its series of sport sedans but as today’s Nice Price or No Dice GranSport Spyder proves, they’ve done some sexy sports cars of late too. Let’s see what this rare 400 horsepower two-seater might just be worth.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Saab is a special edition, named for the Alabama racetrack that’s among the fastest on the NASCAR circuit. Let’s see if that will make for a fast sale.
Read MoreIn an ad campaign for Nevada’s gambling epicenter, we were told that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Porsche is offered in Sin City, but a potential buyer might want to expand this Cayman’s horizons beyond the Strip. Let’s see if it’s priced to make that move.
Read MoreWhile it may be a couple of years until GM gets its new — but with decidedly retro styling cues — electric Hummer to market, there are still plenty of interesting gas-powered brutes like today’s Nice Price or No Dice H3 around to fill in the gap. Let’s see if this old-school truck’s price means it’s still relevant.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice 325i claims it to be a “solid commuter.” That runs counter to the model’s general reputation, but with a modest price, could it all potentially balance out?
Read MoreWith its dually back end, diesel V8 and four on the floor, today’s Nice Price or No Dice F-250 sure seems to have what it takes to get the job done. We’ll still have to decide if its price works for us.
Read MoreThe 1988 Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act, commonly called the 25-year rule, has opened the door to the importation of lots of interesting older cars. One such car is today’s Nice Price or No Dice Fiat Coupe. Let’s see how interested you are in paying its asking price.
Read MoreToyota’s Corolla hasn’t been particularly interesting in years. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice AllTrac, however, is old enough to raise an eyebrow or two. Let’s see if its price can do the same.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Lexus would prefer to keep the car, but life’s realities have flipped that notion on its ear. Could this remarkably low mileage IS300’s price also have you flipping out?
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Volvo V90 describes the car as a “sleeper” owing to its stock appearance that hides a swapped-in Chevy V8. We’ll just have to find out if its price will result in a rude awakening.
Read MoreChevrolet may have ceased production of the long-running Monte Carlo in 2007, but as today’s Nice Price or No Dice 5.3-liter SS proves, it went out with a bang. Let’s find out if its price is just as explosive.
Read MoreThe Ford Explorer was once at the center of one of history’s biggest tire recalls over its original-equipment Firestones. Luckily, today’s Nice Price or No Dice ’99 wears brand new Michelins. Let’s see if that, and its price, might make this a historic deal.
Read MoreWhile today’s Nice Price or No Dice Dart may be an updated interpretation of the Dodge Neon secret sauce, it hasn’t found the same fan base as that car. This particular one does seem to be fan-owned and operated, so let’s find out what that might all be worth.
Read MoreThere’s no doubt that today’s Nice Price or No Dice BMW E30 is rough, but with its Rieger bodywork it’s also appreciably rare. What might you pay to dig into this odd ’80s icon?
Read MoreThe K-car once saved Chrysler from financial ruin. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Plymouth K-car has been similarly saved and is in impeccable shape. Could its price turn you into a K-car convert without triggering your own financial ruin?
Read MoreHeart transplants afford recipients with younger and stronger organs, extending a lifespan. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice ’91 has had its heart replaced with a six-cylinder unit from a Subaru. Let’s see if its price can kickstart your heart.
Read MoreThe French are known for style, and right after World War II they were working on an aircraft design more akin to a sci-fi cartoon than anything seen on the battlefield before. It featured a cylindrical-wing design surrounding the main airframe, rather than traditional wide, flat wings. It never quite took off.
Read MoreDespite all the warnings, the advice to stay home, and the fact that the more we keep flying, the longer this COVID-19 pandemic will last, Americans have continued flying for the holidays. And our pre-Christmas spike in folks flying out to see their loved ones has been rivaling our pre-pandemic numbers.
Read MoreBoeing has had a bad year, you might have heard. Well, bad couple of years, really, as it tries to sort out the mess that is the 737 MAX. It is largely thanks to that mess that for the second straight year Airbus will out-deliver Boeing.
Read MoreOnce again, though air travel is just half of what it was last year, more than three million Americans boarded airliners over a three-day period spanning this past weekend. It represented the busiest three-day stretch of travel this year, outpacing Thanksgiving, with over a million people flying daily on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Read MoreFlying a plane is a complex job. Part of that job includes performance calculations so the flight goes smoothly. As this edge-of-your-seat Rada Airlines Ilyushin Il-62 takeoff shows, somebody got something wrong.
Read MoreThis past Saturday a man was spotted climbing around on the wing of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 while the plane was on the runway awaiting takeoff. After clambering around on the wing a bit and attempting to climb the winglet, he dropped heavily to the ground and was apprehended by airport officials. While I’m sure he had a perfectly good explanation for why he decided to do this, that has not been released as of yet.
Read MoreChuck Yeager, one of the pilots who helped change American aviation history, died on Monday, December 7, 2020 at the age of 97.
Read MoreFlying can be a fun experience regardless of whether you’re the pilot or a passenger. But sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, and an emergency landing is needed. As this excellent pilot demonstrates, if the plane can’t make it to an airport, a highway can sub for a runway in a pinch.
Read MoreI’ve loved airplanes for as long as I’ve loved cars. While it would take me until I was 24 to actually set foot on a plane, I wanted to fly for as long as I can remember. As a child, my dream was to become a pilot. I’m finally making that happen.
Read MoreFollowing his record-equaling seventh Formula 1 world championship title taken by a huge margin across the 2020 season, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pulled a few strings to get Lewis Hamilton’s name included in this year’s list of knights of the British Kingdom. Because Hamilton doesn’t count the United Kingdom as his country of residence anymore there were some concerns that he wouldn’t be eligible for a knighthood, but that was bypassed by adding him to the “Diplomatic and Overseas list
Read MoreThe global pandemic forced Formula 1 to get creative with its 2020 schedule, resulting in the series’ return to several locales where it hadn’t raced in years. Among those was Imola, in Italy, and a report from RaceFans indicates that the San Marino Grand Prix venue is currently the favorite to replace the canceled Vietnam race on next year’s calendar.
Read MoreBeing a Schumacher has its privileges. The 21-year-old son of Mr. Seven-Time Champ has been fast-tracked through the Ferrari Drivers Academy program, and after winning the Formula 2 championship this year, he’s been pushed into the care of Ferrari customer team Haas to partner with Nikita Mazepin. Ferrari have appointed legendary race engineer Jock Clear to help Mick Schumacher adjust to his new life in Formula One.
Read MoreAs an ambitious young woman in motorsport, Emma Kimiläinen was aiming for the top. After some success in Nordic motorsport, running Finnish Formula Ford and Swedish Radical championships, she was awarded a factory Audi team DTM test seat and continued in ADAC Formel Masters and Formula Palmer Audi. Then she walked away from it all, taking a four year hiatus from racing. She’s always said that her funding simply dried up and it was time to take a break, but the truth, as it turns out, is a bit mo
Read MoreWhile the ARCA Menards Series West is a mainstay for American racers looking to get into the stock car game, 19-year-old Bridget Burgess and her 40-year-old mother, Sarah, are something of an outlier. The family from Brisbane, Australia moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of speed, and the crew has never left.
Read MoreThe first round of Formula E’s upcoming season has already been postponed. The Santiago ePrix doubleheader in the heart of Chile’s capital was originally slated to take place on January 16-17, 2021; due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be rescheduled.
Read MoreThe Powers That Be in Formula One have a lot of ideas. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some of them come to fruition, while some of them languish away, never meant to be. And many of those ideas are track layouts. Enough to make a whole calendar out of them, in fact.
Read MoreIf you, like me, have ever wanted an old Grand Prix machine but do not have the money or the motivation required to maintain a classic car, then I’ve got some good news for you. A new Tipo 184 kit can turn an old Mazda MX-5 Miata into an Alfa Romeo 158, a late-1930s vehicle that won the first official Formula One race at Silverstone in 1950.
Read MoreDrivers have been racing under fake names since the start of racing began. Some of them were rich aristocrats that needed to protect their identity from a disapproving family. Some of them didn’t want to hurt mom’s feelings. Some of them were women trying to get away with racing under an ambiguous name. But I can only think of one of them that didn’t actually really exist: L. W. Wright.
Read MoreThere’s just something magical about a night race. Sparkling lights and fast cars always make a good pairing, but it seems like the cover of darkness just makes things all the more exciting. And we might just be getting more night races in Formula One now that a new and improved lighting system has hit the scene.
Read MoreIf anything has continued to improve in Formula One, it’s the graphics package that accompanies the broadcast—and that’s part of what makes watching old broadcasts so damn difficult. Who’s running where? Is that car legitimately running for position or is it a lap down—or more? And that is why I love every single person who superimposes modern graphics onto old races.
Read MoreThe Formula One wheel gun: It’s a simple piece of technology, and yet it’s responsible for some of the biggest triumphs and failures in the sport. Today, we’re going to let Mercedes walk you through the way these wheel guns work—and why, sometimes, they don’t.
Read MoreIf you, like me, have been wondering what to do with your free time during this holiday season and cannot stomach one more episode of whatever show it is your kids (or other loved ones) are watching on repeat one, never fear. I’ve put together a list of my favorite racing documentaries. Commandeer that remote, turn on the surround sound, and tune out the rest of the world for a little while.
Read MoreWe all know that running a Formula One team is stupidly expensive, but we don’t often talk about the fact that these teams still have to pay money to the series every year to have the privilege to compete—which can often be an absurd amount of money. Today, we’re going to run you through exactly how those entry fees work.
Read MoreThe British Touring Car Championship strayed from God’s light starting in 1990, switching to its own, more lax “Super Touring” car regulations. Other series followed suit a few years later, and Group A’s touring car golden years came to a close.
Read MoreGroup A rallying was certainly the golden era for homologation specials. That is, road-legal cars that served to homologate race-ready parts for competition. But that’s not all regular people could buy.
Read MoreIt’s hard to really lay out just how good Group A touring car racing was. Everyone and everything ran Group A.
Read MoreFor some reason, the R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R has always fit into the category of JDM cars. I get it. It’s maybe the greatest car never to be sold in the United States.But it deserves to be reconsidered as yet more than that, because it is in the same category as the BMW M3, the Subaru WRX, the Mitsubishi Evo, as a legend of Group A.
Read MoreThis is a V12 Jaguar XJS. You may have seen one before. It was probably rusting away in an auto repair back lot, or fading away on a side street on the far side of town. But this one is different, because one of the greatest stories in auto racing couldn’t have happened without it.
Read MoreCars from the 1980s and ‘90s had it easy. If you were something ordinary and plain, a Volvo 242 for instance, you could get turbocharged, tuned, and sent off to win a championship in DTM. Boom. Legendary status. Now, what do our normal cars have at their disposal?
Read MoreThe 1980s and 1990s glory years of Germany’s DTM were so good they made legends out of its competitors. The BMW M3, for example, was made to dominate this series alone. But no German car that race in DTM was ever as cool as the most powerful car of its time, and certainly the coolest: a Fox Body Ford Mustang, carburetor and all.
Read MoreEvery year, Jalopnik’s most Chosen members – well, just me this year – have brought you the very best of Group C and GT1 racing from the 1980s and 1990s. We even did a Group B rally theme once. But for some reason we’ve never covered arguable the most successful racing formula of all. It’s the awkwardly-titled Group A-smas, worthy of celebration.
Read MoreAfter video of Nikita Mazepin groping a woman appeared on Mazepin’s Instagram and then almost as quickly was deleted, it was an open question whether the Haas Formula One team — for whom Mazepin is driving next year — would discipline Mazepin in any meaningful way. Haas answered that question today with a “nah.”
Read MoreSergio Pérez is replacing Alex Albon on the Red Bull Formula One team next year, which sets up, among other things, the delightful prospect of Pérez beating Sebastian Vettel week in and week out. Beyond that, though, how do you think he will do? Because I think he’ll do pretty well.
Read MoreDid you know Infiniti was in Formula One? I’ve been watching F1 consistently for about the last three seasons, and at some point the Infiniti logo on the side of the Renault chassis simply vanished from my conscious perception.
Read MoreExtreme E’s teams and drivers got their first taste of full-power last week during the only official pre-season test of the 2021 season. Eight of the series’ nine teams arrived to Aragon circuit in Spain to run around two different dirt track layouts. The full 550 horsepower electric Odyssey 21 racers were wrung out to the full extent by a slew of international talent.
Read MoreNo longer is it just William Storey of Rich Energy taking racing teams to court: Dmitry Mazepin, father of 2021 Haas driver Nikita Mazepin and certified rich man, is still a bit bitter about Force India being sold to Lawrence Stroll. So, even though he tried to bring a lawsuit against Force India and failed, he’s going to keep on trying.
Read MoreMonday, December 14, 2020 was a sad day. Pornhub outwitted every other social media platform and made the decision to nuke all unverified content from its site. And while it is undoubtedly a smart move for an industry riddled with dubious legality, I’m still going to pour one out for all the full-length races that I am no longer able to watch.
Read MoreAround the Russian Grand Prix weekend, Formula One experienced its largest cluster of positive COVID-19 cases within its sporting bubble. Now, we might have an answer as to how that happened. It all came down to one translator.
Read MoreThe Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is a mainstay in American automotive culture. Since the first car chased the clouds in 1916, countless others have risked their lives in pursuit of new records and automotive performance. And now we have a new documentary to tell us exactly what it’s like.
Read MoreThe holiday season is upon us, and it’s a weird one. We can’t really go anywhere, which means we have an excuse not to meet with our least favorite members of the extended family… but you’re still trapped inside with the same people you’ve been looking at since this whole COVID-19 pandemic started. So, why not use this time to bury your nose in a book and tune out all the noise?
Read MoreFormula One has made sustainability its new goal, and the next step of that process has begun. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), which sanctions F1, has delivered power unit suppliers its first round of sustainable biofuels to power F1 cars.
Read MoreThe W Series, the all-female open-wheel series designed to highlight some of the world’s best woman racers in their progression up the racing ranks, is back for 2021 after a COVID-19-caused pause in 2020. And the first round of 18 competitors has been announced.
Read More2020 was a very bad year for Ferrari’s Formula One team, the kind that borders on embarrassing. And while neither driver had it easy, one had a significantly worse experience. In his final year with the team, Sebastian Vettel suffered mishap after mishap, be it a problem with technology, a bad strategy, or just plain shitty luck.
Read MoreThe 2021 IndyCar schedule is already facing its first big change as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Long Beach Grand Prix, one of IndyCar’s crowning events, will no longer take place in April as normal. Instead, it’s moving to September 26, 2021, and it will become IndyCar’s season finale.
Read MoreSadly, we’ve reached those dark, waning days of the year, when drivers have put down their helmets for the winter months and the thunderous roars from circuits around the world have gone quiet. What is a racing fan to do this weekend?
Read MoreWhen the ACO unveiled its plan for hypercars to return to the top class of global endurance racing in 2018, many fans had visions of beloved homologation-special road cars like the Toyota GT-One and Mercedes CLK-GTR swirling in their heads. The new rules drawn up by ACO, the sanctioning body for global sports car and endurance racing, dictated that manufacturers participating in the Le Mans hypercar (LMH) class had to produce a minimum of 25 road cars by the end of their second year of competiti
Read MoreSergio “Checo” Pérez Mendoza had a pretty great 2020 season of Formula 1, but for much of the year, his future was totally up in the air. For four months Checo had to keep racing for the pink Mercedes team knowing he’d be out of a seat, and probably out of a job, at the end of the year. Instead of letting that get him down, he turned up the wick and performed better than ever. And now, according to Dutch paper De Telegraaf, Pérez will be joining Red Bull Racing alongside Max Verstappen, displaci
Read MoreFor years, our northern neighbors in Canada have held a one-make racing series featuring modified versions of the plucky, perfectly under-powered Nissan Micra. Now that the Micra is (sadly) dead in Canada, the series has added a class for the dramatically more powerful, 149-horsepower Nissan Sentra, and I bet they’re excited.
Read MoreI’m not sure when, why or how the new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car became a mid-2000s Subaru WRC car, all scoops and vents in its nose, but I’m not complaining.
Read MoreIn May of 2020 Corvette Racing’s team suffered a huge blow with the announcement of long-time crew chief Dan Binks leaving to pursue other endeavors. On Wednesday the team lost another major pillar when team boss Doug Fehan was shuffled out of his position in what was described as a change in management. Also on Wednesday, it was announced that Pratt & Miller, the company behind Corvette Racing’s nearly three decades of success, has been sold off to defense contractor Oshkosh Corporation.
Read MoreTwenty-year-old Yuki Tsunoda will step into the Red Bull junior squad beside 2020 race winner Pierre Gasly for the 2021 season, replacing long-term seat- filler Daniil Kvyat. Tsunoda snagged global attention by winning the Japanese Formula 4 championship in 2018, which then netted him the support from Honda he needed to rise through Formula 3 in 2019 and Formula 2 this year. In F2 he won a trio of races in 2020, taking home third place in the championship points with the Carlin squad.
Read MoreWith all the coyness of a 19-time overall champion, Porsche announced on Tuesday that it is returning to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Read MoreAfter Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton said he wanted to stay with Mercedes for another year, which seems likely to happen even though Hamilton hasn’t put pen to paper on a new contract yet. But Hamilton’s definitely done after next season if he wins a record eighth title, right?
Read More2020 has been a hard year in the world of motorsport. Hundreds of events all over the world in every series have been cancelled, postponed, rescheduled, or replaced this year. The World Rally Championship only managed to fit in seven events, and three of those happened before global pandemic lockdowns. Ten different rallies were cancelled in 2020, though to be fair Rally Chile was cancelled due to political unrest. It was inevitable that the coronavirus cancellations would extend into 2021, but
Read MoreLast week I brought you a breakdown of the grid for the upcoming inaugural season of Extreme E racing. Well, since then there has been a pretty major change. HWA—which was one of the two teams without a 2021 lineup announced (the other being Techeetah)—announced that it would be withdrawing from the series due to coronavirus-related budget shrinkage. Within minutes of the announcement, the Spain-based Hispano-Suiza electric hyper-luxury carmaker jumped into the HWA-vacated spot on the grid.
Read More2020 has been really tough on the McLaren brand, both on the track and on the road. After the F1 season was delayed and then eventually run without fans in the stands for most of the season, the team was reeling with lots of development costs and no payoffs. Then, on the supercar production side of the business, demand tanked. The company survived by laying off 1200 employees in May, followed by a $200 million loan from the National Bank of Bahrain. McLaren floated the idea of selling a portion
Read MoreThe Subaru Crosstrek is a sensible, high-riding Impreza that can be moderately enjoyable to live with, so long as you opt for the six-speed manual and not the CVT model. What it isn’t — at least not normally, anyway — is a rally car.
Read MoreSeven-time NASCAR champion and upcoming IndyCar star Jimmie Johnson has founded his own film production company named Charlie Meatball with the intention of landing a new series with a big media company. And I have to say, the name is perfect—I’m here for any race car driver that wants to name a big project after his dog.
Read MoreWhen NASCAR announced that it would be racing at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, a track designed more for Formula One racing than for stock cars, opinions were divided. On the one hand, some fans were excited to see a new road course on the schedule. On the other hand, some fans were adamant that changes would need to be made to the track layout to make the racing, y’know, exciting. But NASCAR has decided to race the whole damn thing.
Read MoreFrom pole position to the checkered flag, the 2020 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was Max Verstappen’s weekend. A slower Mercedes team left a gap between themselves and Red Bull Racing’s winning driver, allowing the team to end a challenging season on a high.
Read MoreToday is Sunday, and Sundays are for learning new driving skills. Today’s skill comes to you straight from Team O’Neil Rally School, the fine folks who know the best tips and tricks for making you a better driver. Today, we’re learning how to perform the limo stop.
Read MoreI think everyone has become accustomed to the term “bubble” in this post-COVID world—but for racing to continue safely, Formula One is looking to get even more serious. In order to safely contest the Australian Grand Prix at the start of 2021, the series is looking to implement a biosphere.
Read MoreEver wondered how a 1980 Ford Mk11 Escort would fare in a rally battle against technology nearly 30 years more advanced? Well, have we got the video for you.
Read MoreFormula One has stated its intentions of becoming a more diverse racing series, but seven-time constructors’ championship winners Mercedes are the first to lay out a genuine diversity plan. Called Accelerate 25, the team is looking to diversify both its drivers and its workforce.
Read MoreTo say that Ferrari has had a dismal Formula One season would be something of an understatement. Where the team seemed capable of competing for a win or two at the end of 2019, the Maranello-based outfit seems to have completely dropped the ball in 2020. Apparently, that is in part down to some faulty pit equipment.
Read MoreIt only took until the final race of the 2o20 season for Red Bull Racing to score its first pole position. In a tense qualifying session, both Mercedes drivers outpaced each other only to be outpaced in the end by Max Verstappen. Surprisingly, this is only Verstappen’s third career pole position.
Read More74 years ago today, a baby named Emerson Fittipaldi was born in São Paulo, Brazil. His family couldn’t have known it at the time, but Fittipaldi would grow up to become one of the most iconic racing drivers of his era, with wins and championships to his name across countless disciplines.
Read MoreThe first season of Extreme E kicks off in March, and the teams are scurrying to secure the best off-road pairings possible. With nine teams on the grid, each having to hire one male driver and one female driver to contest each Extreme E race, top off-road talent is quickly filling up the lineups. On Friday Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team (above) announced its driver pairing, leaving only HWA Racelab and Team Techeetah without a driver announcement.
Read MoreI have no great nostalgia for past eras of F1 and I have no doubt that today’s F1 cars are easily faster than what was running a decade and a half ago, but just take in how fast 2005's championship-winning Renault looks, even today.
Read MoreLewis Hamilton has been cleared to return to Formula One this weekend in Abu Dhabi after returning “a number of negative COVID-19 tests,” according to an FIA statement issued today, Dec. 10. Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team has confirmed Hamilton will take part in the final race of the season, and that Williams driver George Russell, who filled in for the seven-time world champion last weekend in Bahrain, will return to his team.
Read MoreRussian racing driver Nikita Dmitryevich Mazepin, 21, was signed by the Haas Formula 1 team a week ago to drive one of its cars for the 2021 season. On December 1st, Mazepin, who finished fifth in the 2020 FIA Formula 2 points standings and won two races, thanked the team for putting its trust in him. One week later, that trust was betrayed, and the reputation of the team, as well as the whole of Formula 1, was put at risk by his actions.
Read MoreRomain Grosjean walked away from one of the worst Formula 1 crashes in years. The fact that he escaped serious injury in the incident, which took place on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix on November 29, is testament to the safety of the today’s F1 cars and firesuits. Grosjean credits his survival to the halo structure above the cockpit, a controversial safety measure when it was introduced. But that doesn’t really tell the whole story of what he went through.
Read MoreColombian driver Juan Pablo Montoya has raced the Indianapolis 500 a total of five times, and of those he’s won it twice. Perhaps even more impressive, his first win was as a 24-year-old rookie in 2000, and then he came back after a stint in Formula One, then NASCAR, and won the whole shooting match again 15 years later. Now, he’s plotting a return to the Speedway with the Arrow McLaren SP team after a stint in sports cars winning an IMSA championship with Acura.
Read MoreFlip the pages of rallying history and you’ll find a number of planned Group B contenders that never saw a single special stage. From the Porsche 959 to Nissan’s MID4 concept, the Ferrari 288 GTO Evoluzione and Toyota’s MR2-based 222D, it seems like almost every major European and Japanese automaker was mulling over a turbocharged all-terrain monster of its own to do battle with the likes of Lancia and Audi. Even Lada tried it!
Read MoreThis weekend in Bahrain, the Mercedes-AMG F1 team proved a couple of things. Chief among them was that the team is composed of humans, and humans occasionally make mistakes. It also proved that Valtteri Bottas is never going to be a champion-caliber driver, but George Russell definitely has the potential. More important for the point at hand, however, the team proved that the W11 chassis isn’t just the fastest Formula 1 car in history, but the greatest racing car of all time.
Read MoreIt’s been rumored for a while that Formula One’s feeder series programs—Formula 2 and Formula 3—will swap to a three-race-per-weekend format as opposed to their current two. But now both feeder series have confirmed the news. We’ll break down how race weekends will look for these feeder categories so you can make sense of it.
Read More2021 might just be the year of really cool electric racing, because Travis Pastrana is throwing a whole new EV rallycross series into the mix. Five purpose-built tracks in North America will show off the skills of these new machines next year, with a 10-race global championship coming in 2022.
Read MoreIn the modern era of motorsport, race performance is all about telemetry—or, a method of data collection that can be analyzed to understand even the most minute nuance of the race car. But it can be a little confusing to understand if you’re just looking at a big ol’ chart of numbers and graphs. Today, we’re going to run down the ins and outs of telemetry as it’s used in Formula One, one of motorsports most technical series.
Read MoreFormula One’s late-night Sakhir Grand Prix kicked off at Bahrain’s never-before-raced outer loop circuit, with a whole load of changes: No Lewis Hamilton, George Russell to replace him, Jack Aitken taking that seat at Williams, and Pietro Fittipaldi manning Romain Grosjean’s vacated Haas. And yet, one hell of a chaotic race saw Sergio Perez from Racing Point lead the field to the checkered flag, with Renault’s Esteban Ocon in second and Lance Stroll in third.
Read MoreIt was only a matter of time before Elon Musk decided it was time to get into racing on the moon, and 2021 appears to be that time. No, these aren’t manned cars: they’re going to be remote control machines designed by students. Because, hell, why not?
Read MoreiRacing has been on a kick these last few weeks when it comes to announcing completely-virtual content. Normally, the sim racing service aims to recreate real-life cars and tracks, but now, it’s pulling out all the stops. Italian chassis maker Dallara teamed up with iRacing to create the iR-01, a completely fictitious (but still incredible) open-wheel car that weaves together all the things you love about modern and retro open-wheel racing. And I cannot wait to race it.
Read MoreSix-time MotoGP World Champion Marc Marquez suffered a nasty accident at the belated start of the 2020 season that left him sidelined for the entirety of the year. He broke his humerus chasing Fabio Quartararo for the lead of the opening round of the year, and multiple surgeries put him out of contention. Now, though, it’s looking like he might not even be able to make his comeback in 2021.
Read MoreRomain Grosjean has had one hell of a month. From being forced to explore options outside of Formula One for the 2021 season to his horrifying crash on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix to now wondering what the future holds, the Frenchman has pretty much had his life turned upside down. But after experiencing a crash as bad as his, Grosjean knows one thing for sure: IndyCar is very much not the next step.
Read MoreElectric motorsport has a sustainability problem. No, I’m not talking about the complexities of recycling batteries or the ecological costs of electric vehicle development on the environment. I’m talking about an unsustainable manufacturer mindset—the very one that’s resulted in manufacturers leaving the sport in something of a mass exodus these past few days.
Read MoreQualifying for the Formula One Sakhir Grand Prix at the Bahrain outer loop looked a hell of a lot different than qualifying just one week ago: Lewis Hamilton is out after a positive COVID-19 test, George Russell has replaced him at Mercedes, Jack Aitken took Russell’s place at Willams, and Pietro Fittipaldi has taken over for the injured Romain Grosjean. Got all that? Good. All that chaos left Valtteri Bottas to qualify on pole—but not much farther ahead of his new teammate.
Read MoreBack in July, IndyCar announced that it was making diversity a primary goal of the series with its Race For Equality & Change program. Like a lot of motorsport programs announced at the time, it was pretty vague in its details and concrete goals—but some of the first benefits are popping up. Earlier this week, the sport announced the formation of Force Indy, a Black-focused USF2000 team designed both to get more Black drivers into the sport but also to hire more Black engineers, designers, commu
Read MoreThe Haas Formula One Team finally did it. It fired both of its current drivers and replaced them with two young guns that have been competing in the junior ranks of the sport. In 2021, Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin will hit the F1 grid for the first time in their careers. Let’s run you through what you need to know about both of ‘em.
Read MoreAs more and more motorsport series announced their 2021 schedules, I couldn’t help but think they seemed a little ambitious in thinking that the COVID-19 pandemic would have subsided. And it turns out that wasn’t a misguided thought—NASCAR has already placed attendance caps on the 2021 Daytona 500, its first race of the year.
Read MoreThere is nothing I love more in the world of motorsport than a legendary racing driver in one series leaving to pursue whatever kinds of racing they find fun. Jimmie Johnson has spent more than twenty years becoming one of the greatest NASCAR drivers of all time, and now that he’s closed that chapter of his life, he’s just doing whatever sounds fun. And he’s earned enough of a name that sponsors and teams will allow him the freedom to do them. IndyCar? Yeah, let’s join one of the best teams on t
Read MoreThere has been a lot of news this week about teams and companies shuffling their motorsport priorities, including BMW and Audi leaving Formula E, Bentley dropping its GT3 program, and Volkswagen leaving racing altogether. Here comes another startling addition to that pile, as BMW has also decided to end its partnership with Schnitzer after more than 50 largely successful years together.
Read MoreRomain Grosjean sat down with Sky Sports to narrate his fiery crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix. It was the first time Grosjean was interviewed by an English-language TV station about the wreck. His description of how everything went down is as terrifying as the footage made it seem.
Read MoreIf you’re in the bathroom at 2 a.m. that usually doesn’t signify good things. For George Russell, though, that happened to be the right place and the right time, as that’s when he got the call to drive for the Mercedes-AMG F1 team at this weekend’s Sakhir Grand Prix. Russell, a driver for Williams Racing most weekends, will replace Lewis Hamilton, who’s tested positive for COVID-19.
Read MoreDespite kicking off the 2020 Intercontinental GT Challenge season in fine fashion by winning the 12 Hours of Bathurst in Australia (above), Bentley put its factory GT3 racing efforts in conjunction with M Sport on ice in June at the height of the international coronavirus pandemic. After the legendary British brand’s customer teams failed to deliver quality results for the 8 Hours of Indianapolis and the 24 Hours of Spa, Bentley has decided to pull the plug.
Read MoreKevin Magnussen’s father, Jan Magnussen, had kind of a shitty Formula One career. From 1995 to ‘98 the Dane racer ran 24 Grands Prix with McLaren and Stewart, scoring just one point. After bouncing around a little bit, he finally found his home with Corvette Racing. As a tentpole of the Corvette program for 15 years, the elder Magnussen won Le Mans four times, the Daytona 24 once, and scored 31 other race victories on his way to four championships. The parallels of Jan’s early career to Kevin’s
Read MoreBMW on Tuesday announced that it is officially bowing out of the ABB Formula E Championship after competing in the series for seven seasons (as a factory team since season five). The automaker’s withdrawal is not effective immediately, but will finalize at the end of the upcoming season, which kicks off next month with a double header in Chile.
Read MoreTwo-time Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso is re-joining the grid next year after two seasons away, taking up the Alpine F1 Team seat vacated by Daniel Ricciardo at the end of this season. The Spaniard is wasting no time getting back into the swing of things, as he has already run a slew of test sessions with the Renault team (which will be renamed Alpine next year) in their 2018 car, as well as 1,000 kilometers of “filming day” allowance in the current car. Because of this lack of expe
Read MoreAt this point, we’ve grown accustomed to motorsports events being canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And while the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy isn’t exactly the first event that comes to mind when you think about safe conditions, the organizers have at least bowed to the deadly reality of the novel coronavirus.
Read MoreFormula E is an incredibly interesting series, with ten different drivetrain manufacturers, a dozen different teams, at least 20 world-class drivers on the grid, and races that are packed with drama from green to checkers. The races are short, but still manage to pack in more action than an entire season of Formula One. In the recent pre-season test, every single car turned a lap within 1 second of the fastest time of day, which should give us a pretty interesting 2021 season. But, for all that
Read MoreMercedes-AMG’s 2020 Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton is out sick this weekend with, what else, Coronavirus. I am sure I’m not alone in wishing the champ a quick and trouble-free recovery. Obviously, the Formula One show must go on, and the champ’s seat will need someone to keep it warm while he’s unable to participate. It’s unlikely that Mercedes will find anyone with the skill and talent of Lewis Hamilton, but they’ve got to try their best. Which is why I think they should take a risk and pl
Read MoreLewis Hamilton tested positive for COVID-19 and will not drive in the Sakhir Grand Prix this coming weekend, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team confirmed Tuesday morning.
Read MoreSpaceX’s test of their new Starship was very close to a success until the very end, when what looks like a premature shutdown of one of the three Raptor engines on landing caused the massive, silo-like rocket to crash in a massive fireball.
Read MoreThe American Apollo crewed missions to the moon brought back in total some 840 pounds of pure, uncut, sweet moon-meat. In 1976, the last bit of lunar material was brought to Earth by the Soviet Luna 24 sample return mission, all of about seven ounces of moon soil. Since then we’ve had no fresh, new moon material to study and enjoy. This dry streak may soon be coming to a close, as the Chinese robotic lander, Chang’e 5, successfully landed on the moon today, and will, we hope, soon send back abou
Read MoreIn what I can confidently promise will be the heaviest metal sentence you’ll read this morning, the European Space Agency is kicking off a plan to grab space junk with orbiting metal claws as a way to tidy up the skies. The claw then flings itself and its trapped cargo into Earth’s atmosphere, where it burns up on re-entry.
Read MoreOn Christmas Eve, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publicly released an application submitted by Toyota for a “car wash judgement system.” It’s not a patent application for a system that judges how well you washed your car, nor a system that washes your car while judging you and calling you a bad owner because you let it get to “Wash Me” levels of dirty.
Read MoreI know by now we’ve all seen that Simpsons meme where Apu, labeled “Weird Nerds” is throwing himself in the path of a bullet shot by a ginger-haired burglar, helpfully labeled “Valid Criticism,” that was directed at the person working behind a convenience store counter, labeled “Elon Musk.” What’s amazing is how often this silly meme gets revalidated, as it very much does in the response to an article published today that takes the bold stance that having all of your instruments go black while d
Read MorePorsche has been making more and more parts using 3D printing, including a new electric drive unit the company showed off earlier this month. Honestly, it looks sick.
Read MoreWhen infrastructure planners map out the future design of cities around the world, they generally do so with able-bodied folks in mind. Charging networks for electric vehicles have fallen into the same trap, with one-third of people with disabilities in the United Kingdom still struggling to find an accessible charger for their vehicle.
Read MoreFor many Tesla owners and fans, the deceptively-named Full Self-Driving (FSD) system that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promising is a very exciting and desirable thing. Of course, it’s also a $10,000 option, and not everyone has that kind of scratch just sitting around. Benevolent Elon, though, has a solution for you: You can pay for it by subscription starting early next year! Hot damn! Too bad it’s not really “full self-driving,” though.
Read MoreValeo, the French auto parts supplier, has developed a new 48-volt bicycle electric assist motor that also houses an integral 7-speed automatic shift gearbox. Valeo says the high-power motor, developed in conjunction with Effigear, provides up to eight times the forward driving force as the rider applies through the pedals. The system consists of the motor unit mounted in the middle at the pedals, a battery on the frame downtube, and the controller and digital display mounted on the handlebar.
Read MoreOne of the most common tropes of science fiction is that almost any vessel or vehicle capable of carrying humans will have some manner of self-destruct mechanism installed, ready to blow the whole mess to the kind of reens that smither. Is any of this based in reality? Are there real-world military vessels or aircraft that actually have such systems? And I don’t mean stuff like the timing chain guides on my Volkswagen Tiguan; I mean deliberate self-destruct systems. So let’s dig a little bit int
Read MoreThe annual Global Carbon Budget is here, and the news is... just as bad as it’s been for a while. Despite big changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we still haven’t reduced our carbon emissions to a satisfactory level, and we only have ten years before we run out of leeway.
Read MoreThe Freevalve engine impressed us mightily when Christian von Koenigsegg showed it to Jalopnik on a 2014 drive in Sweden. Today, the concept is alive and well, and Wesley Kagan, a “builder” in the best traditional sense, has applied the technology to a 6.5-horsepower Harbor Freight Predator engine.
Read MoreI’ve been a driver for ride-hailing services since 2016, and between Lyft and Uber, I’ve racked up nearly 10,000 rides. I’ve put more than 150,000 miles on my Chevy Sonic, driving something like 40 hours a week.
Read MoreHyundai is certainly looking toward the future these days. Wednesday we reported that the South Korean automaker is finalizing a deal to buy our future robot overlords Boston Dynamics for just under a cool billion dollars, and now Hyundai has reaffirmed its dedication to what it calls urban air mobility vehicles. Whatever Hyundai’s big plans, it involves taking to the sky in eight short years.
Read MoreI was thinking about Monday’s story where the autonomous robotaxi/small bus company Zoox was spotted shooting some sort of promo video with their new bi-directional autonomous transport cube-vehicle when it occurred to me that this company could be accomplishing all of their goals for likely a lot less money than the $1.2 billion Amazon put into them with one little change: use human drivers. I know, I know, the whole point is that they’re developing autonomous vehicles, but, let’s just take a m
Read MoreAfter spending years and billions of investor dollars trying to get its autonomous robotaxi fleet off the ground, Uber has cut its losses and dumped the problem child division on a Silicon Valley startup called Aurora. As part of the deal, Uber will invest an additional $400 million in Aurora, paying the new company to distance itself fiscally and legally from the disaster that Uber’s autonomous project has become.
Read MoreThe autonomous car startup that I once suggested may be showing “vaporware horseshit” has plans to unveil its new robotaxi thing on December 14, but the reveal seems to have been scooped by people who noticed the vehicles during what appears to have been a video shoot in San Francisco.
Read MoreI had a fever dream some years ago. In this dream I fed a MiniDisc into the dash of my E36 and smiled as it clunked into place. Once awake, I decided I would install a MiniDisc head-unit in my car. I wanted to be as cool as Neo in my BMW E36. And I wanted period-correct electronics.
Read MoreHonda is apparently working toward making Japan a place even more friendly to pedestrians than it is already. It’s not unusual for Japanese children as young as 7 to walk themselves to school, and that is causing a safety issue as they face vehicle traffic for the first time. To help make the trips safer, Honda is developing Ropot, a traffic-safety advice robot that attaches to the straps of a young child’s backpack.
Read MoreFor as long as any of us have been alive, car enthusiasm has largely meant burning hydrocarbons, emitting CO2 and building gas-guzzling sports cars for the sole purpose of going fast. For decades I’ve been opposed to the electrified future simply because it denied me a manual transmission and sporty suspension, but that attitude changed last year when I drove Porsche’s magnificent Taycan and rode Harley-Davidson’s incredible LiveWire. Those two experiences proved to me that it was possible to be
Read MoreAlmost everyone had a bad time in 2020 except Hyundai and Kia, Honda is done with Russia, and Tesla. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 30, 2020.
Read MoreFord has bungled just about every major launch for the past... too long, and everyone feared the same for the critical 2021 Ford F-150. Now there is some stuff happening that, well, looks a little unusual. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 29, 2020.
Read MoreTesla is reportedly going to India, Japan again says it is done with this gasoline nonsense, and the Volkswagen Beetle. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 28, 2020.
Read MoreFord executives had lots of conversations about the Mustang Mach-E, Tesla is already an S&P 500 downer, and Volkswagen. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 23, 2020.
Read MoreThe UK’s new strain of coronavirus is wreaking havoc, the VW copycat SUV tech case is developing and Michigan is simply too slow to get at Tesla. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 22, 2020.
Read MoreFiat and Peugeot’s merger is inevitable, Mitsubishi dealers are very excited about the new Outlander, and Tesla. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 21, 2020.
Read MoreThe British government is seeking innovation in the realm of taxing you. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 18, 2020.
Read MoreVolkswagen faces a Dieselgate legal setback, Boeing is still trying to come back from its 737 MAX disaster, and Jennifer Granholm. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 17, 2020.
Read MoreAll of this development money, this technological progress, this risk, for what? More range for Walmart pickups? This is what we’ve been building to? All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 16, 2020.
Read MoreVolkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is probably feeling a bit better about his job security, the Nissan Rogue is as important as ever to Nissan’s future, and Genesis. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 15, 2020.
Read MoreTacoma is still king, Mercedes will make EVs in Alabama, and Cadillac is up to some new tricks. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 14, 2020.
Read MoreFerrari is suddenly on the hunt for a new CEO, folks enjoy buying Lincoln and Mini and United Airlines may be putting you at risk. All that and more in The Morning Shift for Friday, Dec. 11, 2020.
Read MoreWhat COVID-19 has not brought to a standstill is America’s appetite for new cars. We can’t crank them out fast enough, according to the largest U.S. auto lender. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 10, 2020.
Read MoreIf you’re going to make a company with the sole mission of dodging regulations and exploiting workers, at least dump some of your ill-gotten gains into something entertaining. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 9, 2020.
Read MoreTesla is raising billions more, Nikola’s disgraced founder is doing just fine — and snakes. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 8, 2020.
Read MoreTesla, which has been sued for being a “hotbed” of “racist behavior” in the past, issued its first diversity report, Toyota is going electric in Europe and alleged fraud in Pennsylvania. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 7, 2020.
Read MoreI would not want to be a car dealer right now, as lockdowns shut things down as weather cools and cases spike. That and more in The Morning Shift for December 4, 2020.
Read MoreGM CEO Mary Barra gave an interesting interview, Japan is just about ready to move on from ICE cars and Rimac. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 3, 2020.
Read MoreSubsidies for EVs work ... until they don’t. What you need is something stronger. You need to go ahead and just ban fuel-burning cars, and Volvo is ready for it. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 2, 2020.
Read MoreVolkswagen’s CEO’s future is still up in the air, GM’s workers in South Korea are mad at GM, and Tesla. All that and more in The Morning Shift for December 1, 2020.
Read MoreThe Toyota GR Yaris — better known to devoted fans of the type as the Yaris GR4 — has been more universally hyped in recent times than any other car, in such demand I couldn’t even borrow a press-fleet car yet. To test Toyota’s homologation hot hatch, this street-legal version of a rally car that’s never actually going to compete in the World Rally Championship, I found one in a rental fleet and jumped at it.
Read MoreIt is important for me to notify you that you can buy one of the MTA subway trash cans you see at any NYC subway station for $300.
Read MoreI’ve been sitting here for an hour. Or maybe it’s been twelve. I think I might have just sat down. I should be home by now, I think, but I’m not even sure I’ve made it out of the country. Life’s greatest questions have always been, “Who am I? Where am I Going? Why am I here?” and they cycle through my head at an ever more rapid pace as I seek meaning in the blurred landscape outside the window. I have no answers. I am on a sixteen-hour Amtrak ride from Toronto, Canada to Philadelphia, Pennsylvan
Read MoreAs we look forward to distribution of the coronavirus vaccines and the eventual re-opening of schools, we also anticipate students again boarding a familiar fixture of American roadways: the yellow school bus.
Read MoreThere’s a certain, undeniable delight to be found in giving funny names to Very Serious Things, and there’s another different kind of delight to be found in being able to track things that have nothing to do with you, in detail, halfway across the world. Maybe that’s why this online map that lets you track Scottish snowplows is so enjoyable — it combines both of these things in large, heaping quantities.
Read MoreJalopnik loves a good bus, and the only thing better is a good, green bus. It seems as though Hyundai and Toyota are getting in on the love with not just any old buses, but with fuel-cell electric versions that are likely harbingers of a number of these to come.
Read MoreFor as much concern as there’s been over Real ID driver’s licenses over the last couple of years, getting one is actually pretty easy. I recently moved to Pennsylvania and just applied for one last week, with the same documentation and proof of residence already required to change states. It didn’t take long, but it also nearly didn’t happen, because some states are still hopelessly mismanaging what should be a dead-simple process.
Read MoreLast year, Jeep aired a commercial showing a scrapyard crushing a classic 1963 Jeep Gladiator. In the ad, the old truck’s crinkled sheetmetal morphs into the new 2019 Jeep Gladiator, which destroys the hydraulic press in a display of toughness. Unfortunately, a real, restorable 1963 Gladiator gave its life for this commercial, and I recently heard from the man that truck belonged to. Here’s his story.
Read MoreThe Lexus GX is not a small SUV. It seats seven, with ground clearance enough to get anywhere you need to go. And this one spotted by heatxdeath on Twitter comes up to the hood of the lifted Silverado HD next to it.
Read MoreYou can imagine just how dirty the Glickenhaus Boot had to get as it raced to the finish line at the Baja 1000 last month. That class win was undoubtedly a thrill, but for one guy, cleaning the SCG Boot afterward was better fun than ripping up the trail.
Read MoreI recently made a discovery that I can actually achieve a dream of mine to own a tiny Japanese kei car. I’ve been scouring the web for some good, cheap kei car fun. That’s when I found this 1995 Honda Acty Fire Truck, and now my heart is gushing.
Read MoreLordstown Motors has barely had a factory for a year, taking over the former GM plant in its namesake Ohio town last November, but the company is already testing moving prototypes of its Endurance pickup truck. The company uses a unique in-wheel motor with one motor at each wheel, each run from the same battery stack. In a recently-released video from the company, the new chassis, high voltage wheel motors, and battery stack get put to the test in a very wet and very cold run around Ohio.
Read MoreFord is going all-in on the “Tremor” name after offering the off-road package on the Ford Super Duty and Ford Ranger. Now there’s an F-150 Tremor. Here’s the off-road equipment that it offers over other F-150 models.
Read MoreJust in case you weren’t aware what all those truckers are doing at those truck stops while you load up on Combos and aged well-rotated hot dogs, they’re mostly doing things with fluids: ejecting piping-hot urine from their bladders and injecting tepid diesel fuel into their trucks. Trucks, of course, use an awful lot of fuel and generate a lot of emissions. Volvo’s new VNR Electric truck will help mitigate at least the injection part of this equation, though the range of “up to 150 miles” will
Read MoreI hate to overuse the term holy grail (actually, I don’t), but one look at this single-owner, diesel, manual, 1999 Ford F-250 and you’ll agree that it has to be one of the coolest modern heavy-duty trucks on the road. And an amazing find for the new owner, Nick Carl.
Read MoreI’ve long believed that the wheels you fit to your car make the entire look. You really have to get the wheels right, and sometimes stumbling on an unexpected wheel can completely change the direction you’re going with it. That’s what happened to me. In my search for new wheels for my cheap-ass Nissan Leaf, I stumbled upon these glorious three-spokers and instantly the car’s final form manifested itself in my mind’s eye.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at a new take on adjustable wrenches, hand impact drivers and tools to deal with rounded bolt heads. This week’s tool, the wrench extender, makes applying more leverage to a wrench an easier and safer task.
Read MoreTesla has the market cornered on EVs with weird gimmicks like seats that fart, doors that dance to the music, and steering that jerks toward the guardrail when you pass a highway offramp. My cheap-as-hell Nissan Leaf doesn’t have any of that. It’s just a normal everyday economy hatchback that happens to not take any gasoline. So I decided to give it a little more flash with a cheap set of LED underglow lights. As edgelord Elon might tweet, ‘for the epic lulz’.
Read MoreIn the mid-to-late 1980s, Buick somehow persuaded hundreds of people to purchase — and then never drive — its most expensive model. Could you imagine anyone going down to the Buick dealer and buying a new Enclave Avenir today, then storing it in the garage undriven until 2054?
Read MoreWhen I bought my Porsche Boxster, the seller gave me two keys, noting that the lock button on one had stopped working some time ago. Always up for a challenge, I dove in and found a fix that was cheaper than you might imagine.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at an electric jack for roadside emergencies, a new take on adjustable wrenches and tools to deal with rounded bolt heads. This week’s tool, a hand impact driver, makes removing stuck and rusty screws a breeze.
Read MoreSometimes you have to fill your day by watching dumb car videos on YouTube, and luckily for you, the world has a great new example of such a production. The Russian car-experimenters at the Youtube Channel Garage 54 hooked three engines together via belts to see how much power those motors could make in unison. Here’s what the team learned when it took the tri-motor machine out on a track.
Read MoreOne of the things I love most about cars as human-made objects we should be uncomfortably obsessed with is that they’re very full sensory experiences. There are strong visual elements, a huge auditory component, so many good surfaces and materials to touch, the feelings of motion and speed and vibrations — so much there for all the senses.
Read MoreDoes your car really need to advertise what it is on the road everyday? I’m sure that OEMs rely on vehicle badging for visibility and brand recognition, but that advertising is plastered on your car that you’ve paid for. Much like dealership license plate frames or bumper stickers, I have always preferred the look of a car without stick-on plastic lettering telling the world what it is. I don’t wear a name tag every day; neither should my car.
Read MoreSome of you may remember the 2010 Volkswagen Tiguan with the known Achilles’ Heel that I bought for my wife that then dramatically and forcefully bit me on the ass. Well, that car got its ass a little bitten itself recently, and I made such a janky-ass, ridiculous repair on it I figured I should probably share it with all of you, my internet-friends who will make fun of me. Because I probably deserve it.
Read MoreWhat happens when you take a car-obsessed single dude, put him on a spacious plot of land in the heart of American car culture, give him a job that promotes automotive tomfoolery and surround him with friends who love to wrench? He amasses far too many car parts (and also, the city reprimands him for owning too many vehicles.) I just took most of those spare metal car parts to the scrapper; here’s how much money I made.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at an electric jack for roadside emergencies and tools to help you reach tight spots and deal with rounded bolt heads. This week’s tool, pliers wrenches, combine the time-tested adjustable wrench and pliers into one.
Read MoreThis weekend I had some spare time to tackle a couple of small cosmetic projects on my recently purchased cheap-ass Nissan Leaf. In spite of the chilly weather, it was nice to get out and do a little light wrenching. Little projects like this feel great, because you can get them done in a few hours, and then you have that warm little feeling like you’ve accomplished something. This time I took care of three little things that have been bugging me about the Leaf ever since I got it.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we looked at tools you can use to help remove rounded bolts and tools that can reach tight spots. This week’s tools, electric hydraulic jack kits, help you jack up your car, remove wheels, replace wheels and inflate tires all with one simple box.
Read MoreLook, I’m not proud of this.
Read MoreThis year was a hard year for everyone and everything, including our friends, the cars. Models come and go as the market and automakers decide, but it’s still sad to see some of them go. This year saw a number of small cars and sedans taken out to pasture with only two crossovers being cancelled. Some fun enthusiast cars are getting the axe.
Read MoreThere are many outstanding and excellent cars introduced in 1996 that are finally becoming legal to import. But there are yet many more that only a lunatic, an oddball, a champion of the every day would bring to America for the first time.
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