All of this snow is a pain in the butt. If you don’t have the best tires for all of this mess you may wonder how you can get an upper hand. Buy studded snow tires? Those can get expensive. How about making them yourself using regular tires and barbed wire? Well, the guys at the Garage 54 YouTube channel decided to make some studded snow tires using barbed wire to see what happens.
Read MoreThe 2021 all-electric Polestar 2 compact sedan, designed specifically to compete against the Tesla Model 3, is now available for test drives in select cities across the U.S. While there are a few options, the most appealing test drive is the one where someone delivers the Polestar 2 to you, and here’s how to do it.
Read MoreSuzaynn is a professor who lives in San Francisco and studies air-pollution. She plans on using an E-Bike to get to work but still needs a small car to carry people and things. While she wants to limit her carbon footprint the lack of easy charging limits her from getting an EV. What car should she buy?
Read MoreAs an owner/operator of a Nissan Pao, I feel like I’ve earned the right to scrutinize auctions and prices and pass all kinds of miserably biased judgments, just like I do with parents, since I also own/operate a human kid. There’s a nice clean Nissan Pao on Bring a Trailer as we speak, so let’s see if we can guess what it’ll end up selling for.
Read MoreThe used car market has been a chaotic mess pretty much ever since the pandemic started, but according to one new study we’re pretty much back to normal.
Read MoreIf you drive a car with a featureless stereo system, you may feel compelled to toss it into the trash and get something better. Pioneer, Kenwood and Alpine are some of the big names in aftermarket car audio. Now, Boss Audio Systems is angling for a spot among the big guys with its latest head unit, the Elite BE950WCPA.
Read MoreIf you ask the question, “What automaker makes the best cars?” you’re cracking open a big, messy can of worms. What defines best? Is it speed? Build quality? Comfort? And who gets to decide what’s best: car enthusiasts, soccer moms, or algorithms? Well, after some rigorous testing, Consumer Reports believes it has the answer: Mazda.
Read MoreThe crosscoupe onslaught continues with Infiniti’s introduction of the QX55. Essentially an offshoot of the QX50, it’ll go up against models like the Audi Q5 Sportback and BMW X4, competing against sloped-roof models in a segment popularized by the Germans and most notable for taking a good deal of utility away from utility vehicles.
Read MoreEric is a field biologist from Oklahoma who finds rare plants. He wants something rugged for some light off-roading. He wants it to hold his gear, but he doesn’t want something too big or too thirsty. He has a modest budget of $10,000. What car should he buy?
Read MoreI had hoped that the billion-dollar startups of online car sales like Carvana and Vroom would utterly quash megamall car dealerships forever. In fact, the big brick-and-mortar dealers seem to be surviving just fine.
Read MoreI’m a 29-year-old single car enthusiast who has absolutely no interest in buying a crossover SUV. Why anyone thought it would be a good idea for me to review the new Audi SQ5 is beyond me — I had old Jeeps to drive. But I took one for the team and came away surprised. This little SUV is actually... good!
Read MoreWil is a priest for his local Episcopal church. While he runs his services online, the pandemic has dramatically reduced the number of patrons and he is being a bit more careful about his finances. He needs a cheap ride that is reliable enough to shuttle the family around but would like it to have a little character. What car should he buy?
Read MoreIt’s pretty much inevitable at this point, right? A new model, be it performance or special edition or whatever, gets released by an automaker. We’re told an MSRP, only for that to get thrown out the window once that model gets to dealers. Dealers are eager to drain every dime they can out of those customers who are willing to overpay. Those markups have started on the Ram TRX.
Read MoreI am not a fancy mom, or any kind of mom, really. I more self-identify as a childless dirtbag blogger, even more so these days thanks to my lax COVID-19 lockdowns dress code. But over the summer and fall I got to drive two of the fanciest of SUVs on the market, vehicles on opposite ends of the fancy car price spectrum: the Bentley Bentayga V8 and the Genesis GV80. I’m here to finally tell you which vehicle you should drop your big mombucks on.
Read MoreThe Audi E-Tron GT is finally here, and it’s going to kick off a friendly rivalry with its distant stablemate, the Porsche Taycan. But I can’t stop thinking that the real winner in all this isn’t Volkswagen Group. It’s Tesla.
Read MoreAs you all know, I love spending inordinate amounts of time looking for cheap used cars online. I also look at Bring a Trailer just to see what’s out there. Usually, the auctions are for yet another boring overpriced classic, but this minty 1980 Ford F-250 that sold for $97,000 is a real gem.
Read MoreYou would think that by 2021 car dealers would have wised up and fixed the broken mess that is car shopping. Many stores have adapted, but some are still relying on classic “stealership” tricks. One of the most egregious is preventing someone from leaving the showroom.
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 two leasing problems. The first is finding a deal for a car that doesn’t exist, and the second is how to handle a mold problem in your leased vehicle.
Read MoreNissan just announced that the all-new Frontier pickup should arrive this summer. The new truck has basically the same bones as the previous generation, but the outside gets a much-needed styling update. However, those of you not wanting to spend new car money on a mid-size truck may want to peek at the used market where great examples of the Froniter can be had for cheap.
Read MoreNelson is a Detroiter who owns his own business creating rad custom clothing, mostly suits. He wants a ride that’s as stylish as he is. He fondly recalls his dad’s old Buick, and he’s ready for an Electra 225 of his own.
Read MoreIf you want to catch a deal on a model-year leftover, shopping in February would usually find you late to the game, as most of those cars would be gone before the holidays. But a new study from iSeeCars reveals that some very popular cars still have 2020 models on the lot, which likely means serious deals.
Read MoreGus, like many of us, is thrilled that the Audi RS6 superwagon is now being sold in America. He would like to buy one, but also like many of us, he is coming up short on the budget by about $100,000. So he is looking for the fastest wagon available for “reasonable” money. What car should he buy?
Read MoreFor the past few weeks I’ve been on a quest to import a Honda Beat from Japan. There are some unique challenges to this like finding a car in the first place and learning how to read auction sheets. Before we even get that first car, my partner and I are already doubling down. We’re now going to import a tiny van, too. Why? Because you can buy one for as little as $30.
Read MoreWhile we’ve all been busy ooh-ing and aah-ing over the idea of the autonomous car, Hyundai went and somersaulted over our heads and developed the autonomous car salesman.
Read MoreFord is throwing its full weight behind accessorizing the new 2021 Ford Bronco to give the off-roader a leg up on its strongest competition, the Jeeps. Our friends at Bronco6G forum revealed a few accessories from the Bronco’s parts catalog, so let’s go through what’s hot and what’s not.
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 increasing Porsche prices due to the emissions recall and tax savings on out-of-state purchases.
Read MoreJaguar Land Rover is knocking back one quarter of its production over the next five years, Automotive News reports. The news has come via an investor presentation.
Read MoreI miss taking road trips. With the weird way my life is organized right now, it means that I’ve spent the last couple years doing long drives from Toronto to Philadelphia or from Philadelphia to San Antonio—and I didn’t realize how much I cherished those moments until the COVID-19 pandemic took away the carefree nature of the whole thing.
Read MoreI learned to drive in the winter in Michigan, so for the most part, the most eventful things that happened when I drove with my instructor was alternately getting blinded by snow during a sunny day and being blinded by snow during a blizzard. But there’s one incident—one horrifyingly embarrassing—incident that I’ll never forget.
Read MoreAfrican Americans have been faced with obstacles to their success in this country since its inception, and the auto industry rarely offered a path to move beyond that struggle. As a Black American, Homer Roberts was an early exception, managing to excel despite the prejudice he faced.
Read MoreRecently, the Cherokee Nation entered into a discussion with Jeep about the brand’s use of Cherokee in its lineup. After all these years, they pretty much told Jeep they have a problem with them using the Cherokee name. Jeep responded with the usual corporate answer of saying everything and nothing at the same time. So we asked readers if Jeep were to change the name of the Cherokee, what would it be?
Read MoreBrand new for 2021, the Grand Cherokee finally gains a third row after all these years and with that row adds an L to the model name. Jeep released pricing for that version today. While the build-and-price tool isn’t up on the site yet, Jeep has outlined some of the options for all the trim levels.
Read MoreI’ll be honest, among the vehicles I was expecting to write about in the Year of Our Whomever 2021 I did not anticipate including a hand-pushed railcar. And yet here we are, in an era of hand-held computer-camera-phone-navcomp-game systems and cars that help out with driving and we’ve somehow got diplomats shoving their kids and belongings out of a country on a crude, human-powered railcar. I guess this is how it’s gotta be, so, fine. Have it your way, 2021.
Read MoreI know we all love Kei cars, but what about cake cars? I know what you’re thinking and no, I do not feel bad about that play on words. If I had the capacity for shame I would not be working here.
Read MoreMany automakers are on a mission to make their internal combustion engines better at turning fuel into energy. Friday, Nissan says that it reached a breakthrough to reach 50 percent thermal efficiency through its e-Power hybrid technology.
Read MoreWe shouldn’t expect anything resembling a car from Apple in the next few years due to the company’s infamous slow-and-steady R&D, but another Big Tech company, Huawei, is now reportedly aiming for its own EV release by the end of 2021, as Reuters reports.
Read MoreBrooks Stevens has his name on a lot of vehicle designs throughout history. Stevens designed such greats as the Jeep Wagoneer, a bonkers car that turned into a boat and yes, the Wienermobile. Perhaps lesser known is his work designing vans and motorhomes like this modified 1941 Western Flyer.
Read MoreThere’s a new Hot Wheels game on the way from Milestone, the studio responsible for the MotoGP official games, Ride and Sebastian Loeb Rally Evo. Called Hot Wheels Unleashed, the game is headed for last and current-gen platforms on September 30. There’s a slick pre-rendered trailer you can check out, that shows recognizable Hot Wheels creations like the Twin Mill and Bone Shaker racing on a miniature track in a life-size garage.
Read MoreThe principal chief of the Cherokee Nation last week, said that Jeep should change the name of the Cherokee to something else. He believes that it’s time for sports teams and corporations to retire the use of Native American names. With that in mind, what name should Jeep choose to replace Cherokee?
Read MoreIn 1858, Peugeot introduced its signature lion, which has gone on to feature in a dozen logos since. On Thursday, Peugeot unveiled its next one, which you can see above. I’ll let you be the judge of how it holds up compared with the classics.
Read MoreThe Kia Stinger is probably one of the best performance buys on the market. Where else can you get rear-wheel drive, a choice of two turbocharged engines in a fastback body with a 100,000 mile warranty? Granted sales haven’t always been so hot, but you appreciate things like this while you have them. For 2022 the Stinger receives some updates. A report from Korean Car Blog indicates there’s more power and some lineup changes.
Read MoreThe Honorable Jennifer Granholm served as Michigan’s 47th governor from 2003 to 2011, among the most tumultuous time to have been a Michigander. The Canadian-born Democrat governor has been a vocal member of the political process, well outside of the borders of her adopted home state. Not only has she been integral to the survival of the American automotive industry, but has been a strong hand in favor of clean energy development. Having been nominated by President Biden to the cabinet-level pos
Read MoreWhen it comes to aesthetics, ugliness and beauty is always going to be subjective to the individual. Often times that ugliness will be offset by an attractive quirkiness that will make you forgive those ugly looks. Like a pug, some things are so ugly they come right back around to being cute again. Here are all your favorite ugly cars.
Read MoreThe winners of the Top Safety Pick awards are finally here! Though it might not be a huge surprise that the list keeps growing, it’s still good news that 90 cars received the award in 2021.
Read MoreThe best-selling BMW M cars are now 500 horsepower SUVs, the 7 Series and M3 sedans have gotten massive grilles, and the flagship 8 Series sports car doesn’t feel any more special than the old 6 Series coupe. With all of this change in the air, the 2021 BMW M550i luckily still proposes a relatively traditional BMW formula. What do you want to know about it?
Read MoreGM will temporarily stop production of the 2021 Corvette next week, according to reports, apparently because of a parts shortage — but it’s not related to the microchip drought that has plagued automakers for weeks.
Read MoreThis month marks the 56th anniversary of Malcolm X’s death which means it’s time to rewatch Spike Lee’s seminal 1992 film Malcolm X because it features one of the greatest car scenes in American cinema.
Read MoreIf you were happy that the dreadful Super Bowl ad featuring Bruce Springsteen was pulled, well I have some bad news for you: Jeep has announced that it’s bringing back the ad.
Read MoreLove or hate its polarizing neo-retro looks, the new Land Rover Defender is off to a very promising start. It may lack the “character” of its predecessor — and by that I mean all the strange cabin smells and bone-shattering judders — but it does pretty much everything well, on and off road. And it’s getting better, because now, there’s a V8 option.
Read MoreDon’t ever tell me that Rolls-Royce isn’t paying fierce attention to the entire scope of humanity and carefully selecting the absolute finest bits, like an ornithologist extracting the finest rat ribs from an owl pellet. If you even suggest such a thing, I’ll have my valet slap you with a fresh slab of Nova Scotia salmon. I mean it.
Read MoreThe Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicle — colloquially known as the new mail truck — has generated a lot of discussion over the past two days, weirdly for its exterior design more than anything else. Some people think it looks like a joke; others dig it. And others still wonder why anyone would care at all what a Postal Service truck looks like, especially given that the Grumman LLV in active duty could hardly be described as aesthetically pleasing. We just stopped noticing how ugly that va
Read MoreAfter years of strange enthusiast dreams that willfully ignored the inherent warnings of physics, the world has finally spawned a production V8-powered Jeep Wrangler. When the 392 Launch Edition arrives next month, it’ll cost you $74,995 to be an early arrival at the V8 launch party. Cheaper trim levels will also be offered.
Read MoreEvery one of us stood back mouth agape in awe of California’s Governor stepping up and committing to a statewide mandate for all new light vehicle sales to be electric by 2035. Fifteen years is not a very long time, and this seemed like an incredible power to wield from a gubernatorial executive order, especially because Newsom won’t be Governor in 2035 as his term limits will preclude him. Washington State’s House transportation committee just moved a bill one step closer to law, which if passe
Read MoreA Lordstown Motors Endurance electric pickup mule conducting testing—ahead of a small production run by the end of this year—burned to a crisp at the side of the road on January 13th in Farmington Hills outside of Detroit, Michigan. “We’re confident” this won’t happen again, Ryan Hallett, spokesman for Lordstown Motors told the Detroit Free Press. “It was human error.”
Read MoreBack in May 2019, former President Donald Trump tweeted that Workhorse, an electric vehicle maker, would buy the shuttered GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, causing Workhorse’s stock to surge. Workhorse’s stock has been going up pretty much ever since, along with the presumption that it could make the next USPS mail truck. Friends, it won’t be.
Read MoreThe 2017 Lexus NX was an impressively premium compact crossover that felt unrelated to its humble Toyota underpinnings when we last reviewed it. Now alleged images of the latest update to the edgy crossover have leaked online revealing a dramatically updated interior.
Read MoreRemember when that scary lady Kellyanne Conway tried to say Sean Spicer didn’t lie in the press conference, he used “alternative facts?” That’s what car dealerships try to do on a daily basis. They will lie to your face about something while trying to convince you it’s not a lie. Here are all those lies that have been told to you, the readers, by dealerships.
Read MoreWe got our first official look at the 2022 Mercedes-Benz C-Class on Tuesday and its many, many screens. Mercedes has only revealed the sedan and wagon versions thus far, and typically we’d expect the coupe and cabriolet to follow. This time around, though, that may not happen.
Read MoreSouth Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg struck and killed a pedestrian in September, first saying that he thought he hit a deer. He was later charged with three misdemeanors in connection. On Tuesday, the state released an extraordinary trove of evidence related to the case, including video interviews with Ravnsborg.
Read MoreThe 2021 Ford Explorer starts at $32,225, though its fanciest trim, the Platinum, goes all the way up to $54,480. Ford said Wednesday it will have a new trim just below Platinum for 2021, a King Ranch edition, which will start at $52,350. It’s a lot of leather and wood.
Read MoreConceptually, the C8 Corvette is pretty hard to fault. It’s an American midengine sports car — a rarity in itself — that costs less than midengine sports cars tend to and has been found to be generally enjoyable to drive by everyone who has driven one. Visually, though, it’s polarizing.
Read MoreThere is an old joke that goes something like this:
Read MoreThe surprisingly handsome 2022 Kia Carnival’s name change from Sedona was officially confirmed today; the news had leaked last month. We also get some trim details, and despite Kia claiming the Carnival is now a “Grand Utility Vehicle” it won’t go on sale with the option of all-wheel drive.
Read MoreToday we learned that the venerable Grumman Long Life Vehicle, the nation’s default mail delivery vehicle for over 30 years, finally has an actual replacement, and it’s made by Oshkosh Defense, which I’m told is not a subsidiary of the company that makes all those toddler overalls, though I am awaiting definite confirmation of that.
Read MoreThe United States Postal Service said Tuesday that it had given Oshkosh Defense a contract to build its next mail truck. The new truck is significantly bigger than the one we’ve all seen on the road for decades, and it looks significantly different from the one we saw tested a couple of years ago.
Read MoreAs we head into a future that’s sure to be full of electric vehicles, some have started to wonder if EVs are actually the way forward. Many automakers seem to be diving head first into EVs and nothing else. So we asked readers if we should continue on with EVs or invest in alternative fuel sources. These are your answers.
Read MoreThe world needs more BEVs. We need plug-in sedans, trucks, supercars. Yes, even plug-in crossovers and definitely cheaper plug-in bikes, too. But let’s not forget the BEV Vans.
Read MoreI really like Dirt 5. Codemasters made a good call in spinning off Dirt Rally as the sim-focused off-road racing series, letting Dirt 5 go all-in on arcade racing thrills. For those who haven’t played it yet, I reckon the Cheshire team’s work on Dirt 5 should delight anyone who fondly remembers the studio’s previous efforts for Sony under the Evolution banner, namely Motorstorm and Driveclub.
Read MoreLexus has finally revealed the secret V8 car it has been working on. It’s not called the IS F this time around, though. All new for 2022, it’s now called the IS 500 F Sport.
Read MoreThe 2022 Mercedes-Benz C-Class has been revealed a couple of days early after pretty much all of it leaked online yesterday. Considering the company claims the sedan has been its global best-seller for the last decade, it’s no wonder this model’s changes are most noticeable on the inside. I hope you like screens!
Read MoreThe Ioniq 5 is an important car for Hyundai. It’s the first to employ the manufacturer’s E-GMP architecture that will underpin its future electric cars, alongside those from Kia. In terms of design, it’s completely unlike any Hyundai on the road today. And if all goes according to plan, you’ll start seeing it on the road before the end of the year.
Read MoreOver the weekend we read Liz’s post on Porsche’s work on a clean-burning synthetic fuel. The stuff sounds way too good to be true. But it does make me think: Should we be exploring every alternative fuel option?
Read MoreUrbanization has its ups and downs, which mostly have to do with how the environment affects our physical wellbeing. Big cities have the best food, but they have pollution in many forms, and it turns out noise pollution is dangerous beyond causing harm to our hearing.
Read MoreI was driving with my kid over some fun back roads this weekend, and while zipping around I noticed something amazing mouldering by the side of the road: a 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith II, in resplendently shitty condition. I had to stop to just appreciate this thing, because there’s really something amazing about a Rolls-Royce completely gone to shit.
Read MoreFor most of the last two decades the recovered wreckage of TWA Flight 800 has been sitting in a hangar at NTSB’s Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia, used as a training resource. On Monday the NTSB said that it would dismantle and destroy the wreckage as part of a broader move from the site. That’s after the wreckage is 3D scanned and archived.
Read MoreSome modern technology/features in cars can be a bit much. Automakers may push them as a convenience. But ultimately they can distract or annoy you. Here are some of the modern car features you hate the most.
Read MoreThe story of the rear-wheel drive Tesla Model Y Standard Range model is a bizarre one. This car’s on-again-off-again relationship with Elon Musk has meant that it has been quietly introduced and even more quietly killed off twice in the last 14 months. It has, when available, been among the least expensive way to get into a compact electric SUV on the market. It was recently given an even lower price, starting under $40,000. Then removed from the company’s order books.
Read MoreMultiple images of what appears to be the upcoming 2022 Mercedes-Benz C-Class and one of its AMG-tuned trims have leaked online ahead of the car’s official debut. The photos reveal styling tweaks reminiscent of the Mercedes-Benz CLS and a massive tablet screen instead of dials in front of the driver.
Read MoreTo the generation that worshipped the McLaren F1 as the pinnacle of sports cars, there was no reveal quite like that of Gordon Murray Automotive’s T.50 last summer. A 12,000 rpm, naturally aspirated, 3.9-liter V12 producing 650 horsepower, sent through a manual gearbox in a package that weighs just under 2,200 pounds — it all sounds too good to be true, and that’s before you even consider the fan.
Read MoreThe pandemic has caused us all to drive less. More people are working from home, we’ve been through multiple lockdowns and in general there are fewer places to go. In California, where it’s legal to base premiums partially on mileage, you would think that this would mean better insurance rates. You’d be wrong, though. The L.A. Times reports that some insurance companies are basing premiums on inflated mileage estimates.
Read MoreHistory books are spilling over with people who have achieved seemingly impossible feats in their lifetime, but they often miss the awesome stories of many Black innovators. One of these people was one of the first Black pilots who also raced cars and designed a cloaking technology for ships. This is the story of Lucean Arthur Headen.
Read MoreHarley-Davidson is making waves to appeal to a broader audience and capture younger buyers. One of the Motor Company’s more interesting efforts is the Pan America. Harley-Davidson revealed the Pan America today and it blew away my expectations.
Read MoreThe new Chevrolet Bolt EUV and Bolt EV are two of the coolest new cars from the big American carmakers, and they are a good introduction to GM’s EV future. But these models will miss out on an integral part of GM’s Super Cruise.
Read MoreGoodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced Monday that it was buying Cooper Tire & Rubber Company for $2.5 billion. The announcement is extremely Ohio.
Read MoreAs the age of the electric car begins, there are plenty of reasons to believe that a V8-powered Ford Mustang may not be long for this world. With Ford announcing that it will offer only EVs in Europe by 2030 it’s worth wondering whether a V8 Mustang will survive past that date.
Read MoreFor all our nostalgia of the cars we grew up with, modern cars have some fantastic amenities we take for granted. Backup cameras are pretty awesome; so too are blind spot warning lights in side mirrors (though, dedicated blind spot mirrors are a low-tech solution to the same problem). Personally, phone projection software is one of the first things I’d miss in an older car, and we haven’t even touched on assisted driving features yet, like adaptive cruise control.
Read MoreJ.D. Power, the market research firm founded by the late Dave Power, released this year’s Vehicle Dependability Study last week. In the study, which aims to capture the reliability of specific brands and models, Lexus cleaned up, like it usually does, but it didn’t win for most dependable model. That would be the Porsche 911. Tesla, appearing for the first time, did poorly.
Read MoreEV startups are always trying to bring something cool to the table, and AK Motor International from Canada is no exception. But the Maple Majestic may not get the attention AK Motor is looking for, as the promo shots for the car clearly show it to be a scale model — one with little detail, at that.
Read MoreWhen we talk about the Isle of Man on Jalopnik, we’re generally talking about the Isle of Man TT, but today, the little isle is involved in something even wilder: an underground roundabout.
Read MoreIn a written statement to Car and Driver, Chuck Hoskin, Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, has stated that Jeep’s utilization of the Cherokee name is not befitting of the culture, its history, or its goals.
Read MoreEvery so often, a post will drift around Twitter where someone will ask about the cars you’d keep in your dream garage. Sometimes, there are stipulations—they can only be supercars, for example, or they have to be under $50,000. Sometimes, it’s just a free-for-all. So, I thought I’d ask—what cars are in your dream garage?
Read MoreI’ve been trying not to complain too much about Texas’s absurd weather because my family hasn’t been hit quite as hard as others. But there are just some people that had it even worse. Nothing will ever be as bad as walking out to discover your car has been completely engulfed by Mr. Freeze’s wrath.
Read MoreWhen I flew home from Canada to Texas last week, I was expecting an opportunity to soak up some warm weather and sunshine after months of being buried in snow. As it turns out, I brought the winter with me. I figured I’d give you all a run-down of what it was like to live through yet another historic event and give a little perspective about why things are happening the way they have.
Read MoreAs I write this, I’m sitting in the midst of a rolling blackout as a result of cold weather and snow in Texas, and I am regretting a lot of things in life. Specifically the fact that I did not travel home with any books and placed an order for some race car books that simply will not arrive until long after this internet exile has wrapped up.
Read MoreThe 2021 Nissan Rogue gets a five-star crash test rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for crashes from the side, a four-star rating for rollovers, and an overall three-star rating for frontal crashes. But it only gets a two-star rating for front passenger side, though Nissan said it has an update and the Rogue’s due for a new test.
Read MoreIt’s mind-boggling to me that the cars I grew up with are now classics. Admitting that would force me to face entropy and my own mortality and I just refuse to do that on a Friday. But If I have to, the right way to do it is by watching RadVentures.
Read MoreSome Tesla employees have recently shown up to work despite having COVID-19 symptoms or being exposed to people who had tested positive for the virus. This is according to a leaked February 9 email obtained by Insider (by way of Entrepreneur), in which the Tesla’s vice president of people, Valerie Workman, implored colleagues to please stop doing that.
Read MoreDealerships have a bad and well-earned reputation for being extremely shitty places. They are the worst part of the car buying process. Very few people like going to them or dealing with the salespeople and their masterful psychological warfare. That process takes on a whole other level of sinister when a dealer actively tries to keep you from leaving. Here are some of the worst horror stories of dealers keeping people from leaving.
Read MoreJoe Boever was stranded on the side of the road after his truck was disabled in a ditch on Saturday, September 12, 2020. He was struck and killed by a vehicle driven by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who has now been sentenced with three misdemeanor charges for the fatal hit-and-run.
Read MoreFor years America has waited for Chevrolet to give us an EV in a body style we want and now we have it, sort of! The 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV is a Bolt but slightly more Trax-shaped and we’re going to drive it!
Read MoreNot that I’m mad about it, but the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo is getting ready for production and it is basically what it’d look like if the sports car (sports SUV?) company made an Outback.
Read MoreLast month, it was reported that a Hyundai Kona Electric that had already been recalled and serviced for a potential battery defect in South Korea caught fire. The vehicle in question reportedly received new software, but Hyundai didn’t deem full battery replacement necessary.
Read MoreBy now you’ve possibly heard that there’s a new Chevy Bolt coming, and it’s going to have a very competitive range of 259 miles and a very competitive price of just under $32,000. You likely haven’t heard all that much about it because even though it’s a modern, capable EV built by a company that’s been building cars in quantity for over a century, it’s not a Tesla. And, as a not-Tesla EV, nobody gives a shit about it. But I have a plan to fix that, a way for Chevy to really sell a crapton of B
Read MoreDiscovery Channel’s hit show Mythbusters has been out of production since 2015, when the series finished by plowing through iconic episode props in a massive semi truck. But co-host Adam Savage is still working, now with his own website and YouTube channel, Tested.com. In a recent Q&A session, he shared a story about how the stunt driving instruction he received in the course of making Mythbusters has come in handy when steering his way out of some incidents that could have been gnarly real-life
Read MoreThis has been the coldest and snowiest winter in years for much of the U.S., which is perhaps why I’ve been subjected in recent days to various takes about whether it is OK to stand your windshield wipers up after parking when expecting snow or ice. Friends, it’s fine.
Read MoreJeez, reading the comments (currently sitting at 643) from Tom’s post on dealerships detaining people against their will, it’s pretty clear that a lot of you have awful dealership stories, which makes sense, because everyone who has been to a dealership has at least a few awful dealership stories.
Read MoreI usually like to spread my deeply strange taillight content out a bit more, but sometimes one pokes at the hidden mountain of weird taillights and causes a glorious avalanche, which, in this case, is an avalanche of one more weird taillight. But oh man, is it a good one. My fellow dorks, allow me to introduce you to the Studebaker Wig-Wag taillight.
Read MoreNobody seems exactly sure what’s going on over at SRT, the purveyors of Hellcats, Demons and other vehicles that embarrass Satan. Earlier this week, Stellantis released an official statement that “all of the core elements of the SRT performance engineering team were integrated into Stellantis’ global engineering organization” — a move that the newly minted conglomerate said would broaden “high-performance-technology applications across a wider mix” of its product lines.
Read MoreSome of your favorite car pictures were probably taken long ago in beautiful lighting conditions, with bright colors and perhaps a smiling model standing next to that cool car on a lovely summer day. Unfortunately, automakers rarely go for that sort of photo now. Instead, companies like BMW, Porsche and now Maserati release “official” spy photos that show absolutely nothing, and I hate them.
Read MoreI love car keys. I like to dress them up in little leather sleeves or put them on a nice keyring that shows off how dignified they are. I mean, keys only unlock one of my most prized possessions in the world, my car. They deserve love.
Read MoreRunning out of gas is almost a rite of passage with vehicle ownership. Everyone has likely experienced it at least once, an honest mistake to make. If you’re cheap like me, you try to burn every last drop you can before stopping. Or maybe you just forgot to fill up. Whatever the reason, it happens. So here are your experiences with running out of gas.
Read MoreHonda today revealed the third-generation HR-V it will sell in some global markets, and it looks both compact and beefy, if that is a thing. You shouldn’t expect it to look much different when it comes to the U.S.
Read MoreIn a twist that everyone except Big Tech saw coming, drivers for ride-hailing apps are reporting that no, Prop 22 did not actually improve things for them. The awful conditions they’ve been fighting have persisted.
Read MorePretty much every automaker is looking pretty enviously at Tesla, what with its high-flying stock price and piles of free publicity and increasingly, piles of cash too. Volkswagen, I guess, is no different.
Read MoreThe relatively new 2021 Cadillac Escalade is currently available with General Motors’ familiar 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V8 engine making up to 420 horsepower. Nice. There could always be more power, though. Now Motor Trend reports a factory supercharged option is on the way, with a boost of up to 200 more horsepower.
Read MoreConsumer Reports has published its car brand report card for 2021, and it holds some surprises. This report card issues rankings based on a combination of factors — road-test performance, predicted reliability, owner satisfaction, safety and how “green” an automaker’s range is — to award an overall score.
Read MoreThe 2022 Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV debuted this week, and a big part of Chevy’s sell on both cars was price. The Bolt will start at $31,995, while the Bolt EUV will start at $33,995, each several thousand dollars less than their Tesla Model 3 and Model Y competitors. Except now Tesla is cutting its prices (again).
Read MoreThese off-roading 911s really are all the rage, huh? A little more than a month after Singer dazzled us all with the 964-based ACS, we’re learning more about Marc Philipp Gemballa’s Dakar 959 project.
Read MoreSubaru wants in on the sweet, sweet profit margins that upgraded models of current production cars bring, so it’s going ahead with the strategy by forming a new sub-brand for the Outback and Forester.
Read MoreRunning out of fuel seems like a silly predicament in this age of electronic everything, but it still can happen. Stories of running dry were being shared around the office Slack channel, and they made me wonder: Do people still run out of gas?
Read MoreLet’s be honest: EV Range is subjective. You can’t really generalize range because everyone’s lives, needs and driving habits are different. Someone living in New England with a 20-mile round trip commute can’t say that the range on his Chevy Bolt would work for a super commuter in Southern California with a 120-mile roundtrip to work. Range anxiety is a real thing. Its been one of the barriers to EV’s catching on. So we asked readers what they thought was the right amount of range.
Read MoreThe Mach 1 is back for 2021, replacing the Bullitt in the Mustang lineup. The Mach 1 sits above the EcoBoost and GT models but below the Shelbys. Here are the details on pricing and options.
Read MoreThis is the new Kia K8, the successor to the Kia K7, which is known in the U.S. as the Cadenza, which has been discontinued in this part of the world. It looks like a fairly generic big sedan, certainly not ugly but also not particularly memorable in the way the Kia K5 is, either. I’ve already seen Ford Fusion comparisons, and I think they’re reasonable to make.
Read MoreYou may have noticed earlier today that a strange hashtag, “Disney’s Joker,” was trending on Twitter. It’s confusing until you realize it’s related to the release of the trailer for the movie Cruella, about the skeletal-yet-fashionable villain of the animated classic 101 Dalmatians, and more obvious when you watch the oddly dark trailer. But really, I don’t care that much about any of that — what matters to me is that the trailer is crammed so full of 1950s to 1970s British cars that it must be
Read MoreLate last year, Ford introduced an ST version of its Fiesta-based Puma small crossover in Europe. The Puma ST has the same engine as the Fiesta ST and offers the same amount of power but in a slightly larger, higher-riding hatch. And it looks great, it must be said — totally preferable to the miserable EcoSport we get over here. It’s a neat little thing, and it turns out Ford CEO Jim Farley is also quite fond of it, too.
Read MoreEverybody loves the Toyota GR Yaris, the new rally-inspired all-wheel-drive hot hatchback available with a six-speed manual and a three-cylinder engine making 269 horsepower. That car is good, but tuning-company Litchfield pitches that it could be better with its 300-HP tune package. Perhaps a drag race between the two cars can prove if it’s worth it.
Read MoreOn Saturday night in Japan, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake rocked the coast of the Fukushima Prefecture. The earthquake left over 100 people injured and caused massive infrastructure damage. One of the areas hit hard was the Ebisu Circuit, a beloved circuit for drift fans.
Read MoreJustified or not, range anxiety is real, and it factors into how people who don’t own electric vehicles perceive them. But the only way the public is ever going to overcome that fear is by owning electric cars. It’s quite the Catch-22.
Read MoreWe’ve known that McLaren was planning to reveal the new plug-in hybrid supercar, the Artura, for a bit now, and last night proved the company wasn’t just having everyone on. The Artura is here, and it’s so very lime-colored and crammed full of new tech, even if from the exterior it still looks very McLaren. And technically it has no reverse gear, but I’ll get to that soon.
Read MoreThe most interesting thing about the new Mitsubishi Outlander is that the launch of the new crossover was conducted via livestream on Amazon Prime Live. In fairness, that bit of information isn’t exactly interesting. Considering Mitsubishi calls this its “flagship” model, it seems like the company could have pushed the boundaries just a little more with this fourth generation.
Read MoreThe winter weather affecting huge swaths of the country right now is wild. Millions are without power, roads are dangerous and the temperatures are plummeting with more snow on the way. People are huddled in their homes and, I hope, staying safe. We asked readers how they are handling the situation. With conditions like these, you can only try and make the best of it.
Read MoreAt least not right now: Car and Driver (via Autoblog) reports that the car intended to be the first of Mercedes’s new line of EVs isn’t coming to the U.S. Everyone expected the EQC to debut early last year, but delays pushed the arrival to early ’21. The EQC was to start at $68,895.
Read MoreI’m going to be honest — today’s been sort of an off day for me. I had to take my wife to the dentist earlier, and I’ve just been swamped with various life things that have made work-focus elusive. It happens.
Read MoreMercedes and BMW have an annual contest in the U.S. in which they try to best each other in sales, because Cadillac is a sadness and the Germans — including Audi — have been on top for years now, in addition to Lexus. But it’s true also that Tesla is beginning to pose its own threat in the luxury race.
Read MoreThe new 911 GT3 isn’t really that new at all, at least in concept — and that’s what makes it brilliant. Oh, sure, the body is clearly wider, there’s that new swan-neck rear wing you could land a small aircraft on and the front suspension loses the struts for a double-wishbone scheme, similar to the one inside the 911 RSR. The new GT3 is definitely a better car on paper, but it’s also a familiar one in all the right ways.
Read MoreMany feared that the Chrysler brand was about to be axed by Stellantis. That didn’t happen, and as it turns out we were all looking at the wrong brand to fall.
Read MoreChevy showed off the new Bolt and Bolt EUV over the weekend, which will fight the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, respectively. The play seems to be almost entirely on price, given that Tesla has a superior charging network and probably cooler cars. That said, I like the look of the new Bolt and Bolt EUV.
Read MoreThe whole country is dealing with unprecedented winter conditions on track to shatter records, but the American southwest, in particular, is suffering under historic amounts of cold and snow.
Read MoreIs there any better way to get back to work after a long weekend than with a mildly inspirational image of a beige supermini on a beige beach in front of a beige cityscape? I bet it’s making you hungry for popcorn shrimp and fries and hush puppies while wearing khaki pants and sitting at a table of unpainted lumber, right?
Read MoreIn 2016 we reported that a little Swiss company wanted to revive the Isetta as an electric vehicle. They were supposed to release the car in 2017, then 2018, and when it never materialized it seemed that maybe the cute little cars were vaporware all along. But the Microlino is back, and it looks like it’s happening for real this time!
Read MoreToday both Jason and David leave Jalopnik, and it is my duty to roast them. I’ll start with Jason, who has worked at Jalopnik for 10 years now, a familiar name years before that. I remember Jason’s first days here, clear as a bell, as he dragged his beloved electronic typewriter up the stairs off the office, cursing the “new-fangled” elevators that he still refuses to use.
Read MoreThings look really dicy on the roads of Texas and Oklahoma right now. We truly hope our southern friends are staying safe and staying home. The footage online of trucks sliding around helpless on side streets and freeways reminded me of a trip I took many years ago: I was on my way to Michigan Tech University to attend Winter Carnival, a huge outdoor party in the middle of one of the coldest and snowiest towns in Michigan, Houghton-Hancock. I was driving my 2004 Saturn Ion which is not a vehicle
Read MoreOwners of electric vehicles don’t drive as much as other car owners, a new study from the University of Chicago, University of California, Davis, and UC Berkeley posits. In fact, the average EV owner hasn’t quite met the expected metrics anywhere along the road, both in terms of mileage and in terms of things like household energy usage.
Read MoreI love a good, silly world record involving cars. Whether it’s hurdling as many cars as you can in an hour or squishing as many people as possible into a Smart car, trying to set a record gives you the okay to do some wild shit. And Geely just set the record for largest car mosaic.
Read MorePlenty of cars these days come equipped with some form of stability control to prevent cars from skidding out of control—but it doesn’t make for particularly adventurous driving. But never fear, folks. Team O’Neil Rally School is here to show you how to slide with stability control activated.
Read MoreHappy Valentine’s Day. Hopefully you’re knee deep in pedals, getting ready to pop your second bottle of champagne and flip on the Daytona 500. The first big NASCAR event of the year will feature new faces, and some older faces in new cars. To help you keep it all straight, we grabbed a rendering of every car’s livery and posted them here because that’s how we show our love.
Read MoreWhen Mercedes-Benz introduced the eCall system, it sounded pretty damn promising—automatically calling emergency services to your location when you need help? I’ll take it. The only problem is, the system has a fault, and that fault has resulted in the recall of 1.3 million vehicles.
Read MoreIt’s Valentine’s Day, folks. What have you done for your significant other today? Flowers? Dinner? A last-minute box of those filled chocolates that are always half gross? Those things are nice, sure. But nothing would ever compare to a specially-commissioned pink Bugatti Chiron, and if you didn’t get your special someone that, then what the hell are you doing?
Read MoreI arrived back in Texas just in time for it to feel like I’d never left Canada. The south has seen sub-freezing temperatures, ice, and the threat of snow, which is not anything many folks down south are prepared for. So, from me (a former Michigander turned Texan-Canadian) to you (a southern-bound person dealing with an uncommonly cold day), here are a few handy tips to keep you safe and sane.
Read MoreElon Musk has been working his way around the world by opening Tesla manufacturing plants in one country after another. Now, government documents seen by Reuters seem to suggest that one of the next Tesla facilities will be coming in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Read MoreIt’s Valentine’s Day, and I suppose romance is in the air (not that I would know, considering my husband is like 2,000 miles away at the moment). Cars and the art of seduction go hand-in-hand, and I want to know all the times you’ve impressed a date with your car—or, y’know, any times it failed miserably.
Read MoreEvery so often, two of my interests collide. Sometimes, it’s finding out that a race car driver also likes one of my niche bands. Sometimes, it’s discovering the beautiful world of Animal Crossing crochet. Today, it’s discovering that people have actually taught dogs to drive.
Read MoreAny time a human being is offered a new piece of technology, chaos is likely to ensue. Imagine trying to use your air fryer for the first time without having read any of the instructions. That’s kind of how folks felt when cars first hit the scene back in the late 1800s. And that’s why we have owner’s manuals. But the Simeone Museum thinks it might be showing off the very first one.
Read MoreI had the misfortune of experiencing air travel a few days ago. I’d been in Canada almost six months, which meant my visa was about to expire, which meant I needed to get home at some point in the very near future. I weighed the options: I could drive from Canada to Texas and potentially infect people or be infected by people with that whole deadly virus going around, or I could fly and cut a three-day trip down to an eight hour one.
Read MoreHistory probably won’t remember the Speedsource Mazda Lola fondly, as it never really won anything, and for much of the car’s career it was an also-ran failure with under-performing production-based diesel power. With the death of Mazda’s prototype program coming at the end of the 2021 season, it feels all the more disappointing that this car never amounted to anything.
Read MoreCars have science all through them. From the chemical reaction created by the engines to the electronics that help operate the car and keep you comfortable. Without science, I doubt automobiles would exist. Conducting your own experiments with cars though? That something else that’s great. Here are some of the great experiments performed on personal vehicles.
Read MoreRoyal Dutch Shell, one of the supermajor oil companies, said this week that it could confirm it had reached peak oil production in 2019. As in, it thinks it will never produce that much oil ever again.
Read MoreOnce upon a time, you could snag a $7,500 federal tax credit on Teslas and electric General Motors cars. But ever since both automakers passed 200,000 EV sales in 2019 and 2020, respectively, that credit’s disappeared. It could return, however, thanks to a new bill.
Read MoreIt may not be a definite step towards actual production, but Alpha is back with another concept that intends to brings a little personality to the EV world. And this time, Alpha is showing off its safari everything take.
Read MoreAudi is extremely proud of its new e-tron GT. It shows in its flashy premiere for the pretty grand tourer. It also shows in a Neckarsulm, Germany, factory tour b-roll package that Audi released this week which shows the process of building the EV in some detail...including demonstrating that the car is water tight, that the roof is in fact attached to the car, and that the panel gaps are uniform. As Brian Gluckman noted on Twitter, 5 minutes of the video is devoted to showing workers checking pa
Read MoreBruce Springsteen, who is a musician, was arrested for DWI in November of last year, news which only came out this week and prompted Jeep to pull its Super Bowl ad featuring The Boss. This would seem to be a pretty cut-and-dry story except that it’s not.
Read MoreOur dear David is once again diving into science! He’s derusting the world’s rustiest axle, plucked from a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited, in a trash can using electrolysis. Specifically, he’s immersing the axle in a solution of water and washing soda and using rebar rods connected to a positive battery post (which has a Battery Tender connected to it) to provide the current that will freshen the surface of the rusty housing. It’s a process he’s done before, but this is a whole new level o
Read MoreIt’s Friday! The buttocks of the week, if you choose to measure it so. I thought you might like to see how a Porsche 959 and a Ferrari F40 looked as rendered on a Sinclair Spectrum, one of the biggest home computers in Britain in the 1980s. As the name suggested, the Spectrum could do color, but it was set up so that you could only have two colors per 8x8 block of pixels, so you ended up with lots of stuff that looked like this, in monochrome chunks.
Read MoreWheel design can make or break the whole look of a car. Good wheel design can catch one’s eye and draw you in. Whether it is a nice simple split-spoke or some huge 21-inch rims on a luxury car, it seems that a good deal of attention is lavished on wheels now, a great leap from the days of steelies and dog-dish caps. We asked Jalopnik readers what they thought were their favorite production car wheels. Here are the top 10.
Read MoreI’m not sure if my invite to the big media unveiling of the re-designed Cozy Coupe got lost in the email or what, but somehow this automotive icon got a significant facelift and I wasn’t notified. What the fuck, Little Tikes? Is that how you wanna play this? Fine. But, look, I’m a professional journalismist, so I’m going to rise above this slight and let it be known: The current iteration of the new Cozy Coupe is a dramatic improvement over the outgoing one.
Read MoreElon and those damn tunnels are at it again: Musk’s Boring Company and the San Bernardino County board of supervisors have agreed to dig one in my hometown of Ontario, California. And I’m on the fence about it. Our local newspaper, the Daily Bulletin, reports that if a final agreement is reached, the tunnel could be in operation by ’23 or early ’24.
Read MoreThe feds finally weighed in on the case of LG Chem (a battery supplier for GM and others) versus SK Innovation (a battery supplier for Ford and others). LG accused the SK of stealing trade secrets and wanted SK’s batteries blocked from the U.S., but Ford needs those batteries to make the electric F-150. Would the Feds screw the Blue Oval? The results are: kinda!
Read MoreWell, are they? I posed this question to a couple of colleagues in our office Slack channel, and the reaction was largely “no.” But, here’s the thing: If you happen to drive a car with a stupidly placed touchscreen (raises hand) that’s just out of reach for easy access without leaning forward, I could see how a touchpad, mounted near the shift controls, could be useful.
Read MoreThe 2022 Chevy Camaro has not undergone any significant changes for the updated model year. The 455-horsepower LT1 V8 engine fitted in the Camaro SS, unfortunately, did not find some extra horses in the last year, and nobody touched the design. GM’s muscle car did, however, steal the Corvette Stingray’s best color for the new year.
Read MoreBruce Springsteen, who is a musician, was reportedly arrested on November 14 and charged with DWI, but that news didn’t surface until today. This was highly inconvenient for Jeep, which ran a long and presumably very expensive ad featuring The Boss during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The ad is apparently in the midst of being pulled.
Read MorePorsche! You’re going in timeout! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, no setting Guinness World Records for speed inside the house. You’ve injured your brother and now he’s crying, and I’m just trying to get dinner on the goddamn table. Now, you sit there and think about what you’ve done. When I tell you not to rough house and carry on in the house, I mean it, mister!
Read MoreLike many great modern supercars, the Lexus LFA — I’ll take no arguments on this, it is a supercar — was born from the single-minded approach of one person, in this case Akio Toyoda. It’s this sort of approach that results in cars we remember the most: Gordon Murray with the McLaren F1, Ferdinand Piëch with the Bugatti Veyron.
Read MoreMcLaren’s got a new car coming — its first built on an all-new platform and powertrain in about a decade. It’s called the Artura, and we’ll get our first full look at it on February 16.
Read MoreToyota was practically forced into its official promise to bring an all-wheel-drive hatchback to the U.S. following the fanfare for the international-market GR Yaris hatch that America doesn’t get. A new rumor suggests Toyota may be pairing up with Subaru again to make it a reality by 2022.
Read MoreAs a jealous American who tends toward small hatchbacks, I have this perception that Europe is a promised land of fun cars I’d much rather drive than the oversized appliances dotting the streets here. And while that might be the case for the moment, it doesn’t seem it’ll stand true a decade from now. Little cars could eventually disappear on the old continent, too.
Read MoreGM is feeling itself these days, with a swaggering plan to go all-electric by 2035, a new logo, and even, it reported on Wednesday, big profits to go along with all that.
Read MoreWheels make the car, we all know this. They can totally transform a car’s appearance — even a boring or forgettable one. When I owned a Dodge Dart a few years back, I picked up a set of black Sparco Assetto Garas (as everyone does, because they’re cheap) and fell in love with the look. I bent one of the corners striking a pothole after just two weeks though, so I haven’t worked up the confidence to buy another set of cool aftermarket wheels since. Oh well.
Read MoreGM is one of the latest automakers to report that a global chip shortage is affecting its production, announcing downtime on Tuesday for three of its plants and saying that, in some cases, incomplete cars will be built. But GM is just the latest, as almost every major automaker is having the same problem.
Read MoreHonda will now sell you a full crate engine from its performance division, Honda Performance Development, and it comes with a wiring harness, an ECU and even a pedal.
Read MoreEver since CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla would have a $25,000 compact within three years I haven’t allowed myself to think of it as a realistic possibility. That’s not because I don’t think it will exist; on the contrary, I assume it’ll very much be a thing, but only for China and Europe. Except, according to a new report, I might be wrong.
Read MoreAudi first showed off the E-Tron GT as a concept three years ago, and today the all-electric grand tourer is finally making its formal production debut. If it looks familiar, that’s by design.
Read MoreIn the absence of a parent company named Chrysler, the individual Chrysler brand is...what is it exactly? Is it Stellantis’ American luxury brand, like Cadillac and Lincoln? Is it a Buick-like near-luxury brand? I’m not sure I can really even nail down a historical brand proposition for Chrysler after the second world war. I’m not saying there haven’t been some good Chrysler branded cars, there definitely have been. I am saying that I can’t really articulate what they all had in common, other th
Read MoreI know life can be hard sometimes, to the point where you may question even the basic existence of any sort of higher power that rules the universe. This is, of course, entirely understandable. And while I can’t say I know if there is, in fact, any sort of higher power, I think I may have seen the most compelling evidence of one to date: This hilarious VIN on a 2020 Honda CR-V that has pretty much everything one could ever want in it.
Read MoreUp until middle school, all the kids in my hometown had their birthday parties at the same roller rink. That roller rink contained a small arcade with games that seemed hopelessly outdated to us at the time but would rake in quarters at any Barcade now. Stuff like X-Men, Ivan Stewart’s Super Off Road and Killer Instinct.
Read MoreLotus said Monday that it would be sending off its current lineup in some degree of style, with three new Exiges and two new Elises, all labeled Final Edition. This is very sad, but there’s some joy in knowing that Lotus will keep going.
Read MoreOh, boy. How did it come to this, Mitsu? You had the Evo, the Montero, the Delica. And now you have this nondescript box that says Amazon prime on it.
Read MoreHave you visited Chrysler’s website recently? It’s a strange experience. The brand currently has a range of four models, three of which are essentially the same minivan. The Voyager — a vehicle I wasn’t even aware of until a couple of weeks ago — is basically a way cheaper version of the Pacifica, which has been around for the last four years as it is. And then there’s the second-generation 300, which is celebrating a decade on the market this year.
Read MoreFor about five minutes last week I started to actually believe Apple — the company that makes iPhones and other electronic devices — would actually be making a car, this time with Hyundai/Kia. Of course, yesterday, reports emerged that, actually, it wasn’t happening in the end.
Read MoreDuring the big all-analog, all-human version of Mattel Football that was played yesterday to a mixed crowd of people and cardboard cutouts of people, a number of automakers paid lots of money to make small, insipid movies that they hoped would set off a chain of events that would end with you buying a car. Cadillac’s entry was for their upcoming Lyriq electric SUV, and featured the son of one of modern culture’s most famous artificial humans with cutlery for hands. It also contributed to the pot
Read More“Jeep 1941: Let’s kill fascists,” writes YouTube user A D. “Jeep 2021: Let’s meet in the middle.”
Read MoreKnock the snow off your shoes before entering the vehicle. Keep your smuggy hands off the touchscreen. And did you just attempt to bring coffee into my car? Nope. Strike three, you are out, here’s the bus schedule.
Read MoreI don’t think I’ve ever personally met a single person that leaves the repair shop saying, “That was a very fair and reasonable price for a very fair and reasonable service”—but that could just be because I spend time with a lot of grumpy people. But whatever the case may be, they could actually have a point. When it comes to some machines, basic repairs can cost a hell of a lot more than the national average. And now we’ve got the numbers.
Read MoreThere are a lot of things I don’t necessarily understand about car culture—probably because it traditionally comes from a more traditionally masculine point of view, which leaves me wondering why photos of nudie women with cars have been a requirement for so long—but there’s one big thing that I don’t understand. Why is there so much crossover between car enthusiasts and watch enthusiasts?
Read MoreWhen I’ve had a long day, there are one of two things I’ll watch to relax before bed. I’ll either watch crochet videos, or I’ll watch people wash cars. Turns out, the latter of those two options actually plays an important role in relaxing children with autism.
Read MoreOn February 7, 1938, a man by the name of Harvey S. Firestone died of coronary thrombosis—or, a blood clot in the heart. He was the founder of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which he kicked off back in 1900. And he couldn’t have known how important his company would be to the American auto industry.
Read MoreAfter I graduated high school, I came back to Michigan a few times to visit my childhood friends. One of the times I arrived to find that they needed to fill their tires up with air, but neither of them knew how to do it, so they straight up waited two months for me to come help them. And when they did, they presented me with a tire pressure gauge.
Read MoreThe legendary Bruce Springsteen is a lot of things to a lot of people, but he’s never exactly been the face of a marketing campaign before. His music, yes, but not the man. But if you’re tuning into Super Bowl LV tonight, you’re going to see a familiar face—and learn that Springsteen has partnered up with Jeep.
Read MoreI don’t know what it is about the human brain that makes us want to collect stuff, but it seems to be a universal truth. What obscure car stuff do you folks collect?
Read MoreWe caught wind that Ford was under criminal investigation over emissions violations almost two years ago now. That followed an earlier lawsuit that accused Ford of cheating diesel emissions on a half-million trucks. Ford said today the Justice Department part of the probe is now closed.
Read MoreThe visually stunning 2008 live-action Speed Racer is an icon of modern cinema, or at least it should be. It was stylistically revolutionary in its day, and in the 2021 landscape of homogenous formulaic Disney-fication of everything, it’s a refreshingly unique experience. It’s fun in a way that many movies just aren’t anymore. Every inch of this movie is dripping with drama, hokey slapstick, and self-referential snark.
Read MoreHBO Max debuted its new two-part documentary about the life of Tiger Woods last month. It covers the golf icon’s early victories, struggles with relationships and his ballooning ego as fans and corporate sponsorships poured in. Unfortunately for Buick, its multi-million dollar investment in Tiger Woods ended with it facing down bankruptcy. It got off light.
Read MoreThis isn’t the first time Chinese media has looked at me with a mixture of amusement, pity and confusion, all stemming from the fact that I bought the cheapest electric car in the world and kind of love it. This is, however, the most I’ve felt like I’ve been associated with the “happy grandpa” nickname for this class of very cheap, low-speed vehicles, and that is giving me some complicated feelings.
Read MoreHBO’s new documentary series, The Lady and the Dale, is (from what I’ve seen so far) a pretty compelling retelling of one of the strangest scams in automotive history, at least until the Elio people try to make an escape in a flotilla of hot-air balloons or something. We’ve written about the whole strange saga of the Dale hoax back in 2013 (where we also suggested it would make a great movie) but there is something new in the HBO series: pictures of the actual, working car that started it all.
Read MoreThere are just a handful of cars in the U.S. that you can buy for less than $20,000, which is deeply disturbing. The Nissan Kicks, given a minor facelift and a price increase for 2021, remains one of them.
Read MoreThe new Suzuki Hayabusa has been the subject of many rumors and much speculation. The hype didn’t slow down when Suzuki posted a teaser of the new supersport motorcycle. Suzuki finally revealed the new Hayabusa, and it turns out that the new bike is more evolutionary than revolutionary.
Read MoreThere are three “premium” brands in Stellantis land: Alfa Romeo, DS and Lancia. And all three will get “jointly developed models” as part of a new collaboration among them, perhaps as soon as 2024.
Read MoreGoing viral on social media are pictures of a Jeep Grand Cherokee poking out of a huge snow mountain in a Pennsylvania parking lot. “OMG! How?” one commenter asks. “That can not be real” quips another. It seems that nobody understands what’s going on here, but as a Jeep Grand Cherokee owner, I think I have an idea.
Read MoreThere’s always a bit of a dilemma when it comes to finding engaging things to talk about. There’s an urge to be positive in one’s life; to focus on the good and uplifting. But then there’s the undeniable draw of the shitty, the pure, all-consuming joy of really bitching about something you don’t like. That’s why comics so rarely have bits about how effective spoons are, or whatever. So let’s do some complaining now, specifically about what feels worst while you’re driving.
Read MoreGM has said that it will spend $27 billion over the next five years on electric autonomous car development, which sure sounded like a lot until today, when Ford said it would be investing $29 billion. That’s $2 billion more! Also Ford had its first full-year loss in more a decade.
Read MoreIt’s happening too often. Someone spots a Tesla owner sleeping while motoring down the freeway, their car under the control of Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system. Next thing you know, it’s all over social media.You may wonder how Tesla was able to release this product onto public roads. Are there no regulations covering such features? Isn’t this a safety issue? According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, it really breaks down to oversight from the government.
Read MoreVolvo’s basic proposition that it will give you a big, safe, extremely comfortable car — that by the way, also costs a bit less than the German competitors — has always felt savvy, since there isn’t much point in challenging BMW or Mercedes on volume. It also works: Volvo had record profits in the second half of last year.
Read MoreThe new 2022 Nissan Pathfinder was released today alongside the handsome Frontier and honestly, I’m digging the new design. While the new SUV doesn’t have what I’d think of as particularly memorable looks, I think it’s way better than the blob the previous one was. Check it out.
Read MoreThe latest MEB-based EV from Volkswagen has leaked, and oh boy, this thing is ugly in all the right ways.
Read MoreOver the past two or three weeks, my home and all of the precious, precious cars parked by it have been the victims of a massive, possibly coordinated attack. The attack is a sort of carpet bombing, a raging shitstorm of literal shit, ejected (possibly with malice) from the quivering cloacae of many birds, leaving my humble fleet of shitboxes Jackson Pollock’d with thousands of spatter-strikes of dark, dark bird wastes.
Read MoreI don’t know if you’ve been paying attention — I won’t blame you for being too fatigued to care — but a whole lot of news dropped about the Apple Car over the past few days. And if you’ve already found whatever interest you had waning, buckle up, friend. The rumors are only going to flow faster and faster from here on out.
Read MoreHave you had any fury with your coffee this morning? If not, here’s a story to angry up the blood: Wealthy hospitals are using a century-old law to skip billing legitimate insurers and instead are going directly after the poorest victims of car accidents. No surprise, it’s to maximize profit.
Read MoreI’m guessing that for a lot of people it will be a pickup with a good motor. You know, for all that off-roading and overlanding and long-distance towing some people can’t get enough of.
Read MoreThe current Toyota 86 is no more in the UK, as Toyota announced it had just sold its last example of the low-power, high-fun rear-wheel-drive sport coupe there. But British fans shouldn’t despair, because Toyota’s teasing a bright future.
Read MoreI’m always on the lookout for recreational vehicles that stand out in the crowd. It’s not often a new RV interests me but clearly Bowlus is here to change that. The Road Chief Terra Firma is an art piece you can take off of the grid, and I absolutely adore it. If only it weren’t so expensive.
Read MoreOne of the world’s biggest video game publishers is on track to buy the world’s biggest racing game developer. And in case you question why Electronic Arts would be interested in Codemasters, it’s all about the annual potential.
Read MoreWhen my valet interrupted my morning hot spider-milk body soak to let me know that the parent company of Mercedes-Benz will no longer be Daimler, I was so enraged that I held his stupid face under the spider’s milk until he peed himself. I regretted this almost immediately because at the moment I only own one pair of pants and he was using them. Also, I realized that this may be the perfect opportunity to clear up some of the confusion about the Daimler name that some of you may have been afraid
Read MoreThe death of the Kia K900 and Cadenza wasn’t a huge surprise; well reviewed cars that don’t sell don’t usually stick around. But the failure of those two models wasn’t due to lack of experience. As early as the late ’90s Kia was flirting with moving upmarket.
Read MoreFerrari sales are down. Ferrari profits are down. Ferrari stocks are down. What’s not down is its order book, which is busting all the way through 2021.
Read MoreDaimler is the name of the company that owns both Mercedes-Benz and the world’s biggest semi truckmaker. But those two concerns will split, Daimler said Wednesday. Eventually, the maker of Mercedes-Benz won’t be called Daimler anymore but instead “Mercedes-Benz.”
Read MoreNew York City is notorious for gatherings of people in a square every year to collectively crap their pants, mountains of trash on the sidewalks, and a rigorous and punitive alternate-side parking schedule to keep the streets clean. Here’s a first-hand look at the sanitation professionals who get to drive the cool street-sweeping machines that handle tons of New York’s famous trash.
Read MoreYou’d think the chief engineer on a Galaxy-class starship should be able to fix his electric ground-car, or at least get some customer service, right? I mean, sure, Star Trek is fictional and Geordi is really respected actor LeVar Burton, but the part about not being able to get any service for his Tesla is sadly real, as Burton had to yell into Twitter, where everyone can hear you scream, to try and get some freaking Tesla service over here:
Read MoreRecalls are usually the result of an engineering or design flaw, or a break down in manufacturing. It’s unusual that they are pinned on one poor factory worker.
Read MoreThe other day I wrote an ode to my favorite Porsche headlights, and the reaction was honestly not as harsh as I expected. That’s good! It means we as a people are beginning to respect and understand the fried egg, which warms my heart. We’re healing folks.
Read MoreDaniel Macdonald has amassed millions of followers on TikTok and even more millions of views on YouTube by asking people in cool cars what they do for a living.
Read MoreIt would appear every owner of a new Volkswagen Golf R in the UK has a surprise waiting on page 347 of the owner’s manual. The book seems to suggest that an engine tune worth up to 13 horsepower more than the current model may be available at some point. Perhaps this more powerful trim is coming soon — that is, if it’s not just a typo in the manual.
Read MoreCadillac showed its new stick shift CT4- and CT5-V Blackwings, with a twin-turbo V6 and supercharged V8. I guess they’re meant to be Cadillac’s swan song for internal combustion today. I couldn’t be happier.
Read MoreTom Moore, a national symbol of hope for British citizens throughout the pandemic, died today from COVID-19, the New York Times reports. The 100-year-old Army veteran, known as Captain Tom for his military rank, raised $45 million for the British healthcare system and even recorded a chart-topping song. But Captain Tom was more than just a late-arriving national sensation, and he lived a life full of great feats.
Read MoreThe Mustang Bullitt starts at $47,705, or the most of any non-Shelby Mustang, and as such Ford probably makes a decent profit on each one. According to a report this week, though, Ford is done making the Mustang Bullitt.
Read MoreThe Cupra El-Born is like a more mischievous-looking version of Volkswagen’s all-electric ID.3, but the Spanish automaker says you shouldn’t chalk up the differences between the cars to merely sheet metal alone. That’s because the El-Born will have something the ID.3 doesn’t: push-to-pass.
Read MoreThis is the end. Cadillac, a brand with a rich history of stuffing gigantic gasoline motors under the hoods of luxury sedans, is about to call it quits on internal combustion, but not before going out with a bang. Well, two bangs, with one of them called the CT5-V Blackwing, a 668-horsepower 6.2-liter supercharged V8 sedan with a standard...standard transmission. The other is the CT4-V Blackwing, a smaller 472-HP twin-turbo 3.6-liter V6 sedan that also comes with a stick shift, in keeping with t
Read MoreIn the never-ending search for all the car news fit to blog, nearly every day I’ll come across a handful of creative renders of vehicles that don’t exist. I’m sure you’ve happened across a few yourself; I’m talking about drawings like “hey, here’s a Grand Wagoneer front end on a Lincoln Continental to simulate what a Jeep luxury sedan would look like” or “this Mazda RX-7 successor is the rotary-powered supercar we want,” etc., etc.
Read MoreI don’t know if there’s anyone out there that actually likes the check engine light. If you’re seeing it while driving, it just means that the rest of your day is going to suck and potentially end with you significantly poorer than when you woke up. It’s even a crappy solution to a problem—it’s crazy that cars don’t just tell you the OBD code itself that’s making the light go on, right there on the dash. On top of all this, as a symbol it kind of sucks, too. So let’s talk about that.
Read MoreWe had a bit of a hiatus for the holidays, but now we’re back with a brand new bag. It’s time again for another episode of Ten & Two with everyone’s favorite radio car fanatic. That’s me, by the by. This time I’m bringing you a very interesting story of international automobile theft. That’s right, it’s all about the time North Korea stole a shitpot of Volvos from the Swedish government! We’ve covered this story before, seven years ago, but this time it’s in convenient bite-sized radio show form
Read MoreMyanmar, a nation under military rule for the last five decades, has suffered a catastrophic blow towards its vision of a future democracy after military officials staged a coup against the country’s political leaders. One military convoy was apparently caught in the background of an online aerobics class while storming parliament.
Read MoreI know, we are a bit infamous for our bad pizza takes around here, but here is a pizza take I will gladly defend all day: Detroit-style pizza is the best kind of pizza. And I don’t hold that opinion just cause I love my town. I’ve had pizza across this great nation and Detroit’s is legitimately the best. It’s got a crunchy, airy crust like New York-style, that still manages to be thick and satisfyingly chewy but not cakey (or gritty from cornmeal) like Chicago-style. And like so many things in
Read MoreWe haven’t learned much new at all about Gran Turismo 7 in the seven months since it was unveiled, which feels a bit odd as the game is supposedly still on track for release later this year. Fortunately, series director Kazunori Yamauchi recently offered some clues as to what fans can expect in a new interview.
Read MoreOver the weekend we learned that Dodge recognized that the V8 engine isn’t long for this world. When a company currently known best for its crazy V8 engine is that brutally honest, it makes you think. Which auto manufacturer will be the last to make a V8?
Read MoreThis has been kicking around in my head for months, so now you get to have it kicking around in your head: Your car should warn other drivers if they’re about to back into it. It seems like it would be technically feasible, and I don’t see any real downsides. Here’s how I think it would work:
Read MoreYou may have heard, but just in case: the USPS is getting new trucks! The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) from Oshkosh Defense is good, but it was only one option out of a competitive selection process The Oshkosh certainly deserves a closer look into its design, but we should also look at the trucks that didn’t make it. In other words, let’s look at the mail trucks that did not quite deliver.
Read MoreI know we’ve been doing a lot about the new mail delivery vehicle, but think about it — this is, more than most new car introductions, a vehicle that all of us Americans (global friends, please feel free to weigh in) in some sense, own. And even though the Postal Service doesn’t actually use our taxes to buy these, they still do a job for us, and we encounter them nearly every day. It’s our new mail truck, so I think it’s worth really exploring.
Read MoreI’ve realized that I sort of have a type when it comes to people I hold as personal heroes. They tend to be mechanically-minded tinkerer/artists, people like Alexander Calder or Rebecca Horn or my friend Tom Jennings. They don’t necessarily take themselves too seriously, but they do meaningful work. There’s another big one on that list, someone I’ve admired for years: Bruce Meyers, the man who pretty much singlehandedly started the whole wonderful industry of Volkswagen-based kit cars and dune b
Read MoreRegardless of whether you buy the hype behind Cadillac’s upcoming EVs — the Lyriq and Celestiq — you can’t deny the ambition behind them. General Motors’ flagship is on the verge of its most dramatic reinvention in generations. And it’s happening, in part, thanks to Crystal Windham.
Read MoreTen years ago, Opel came out with a quasi-EV so stylish you’d never have guessed it was from GM. You probably haven’t spent much time thinking about the Ampera (shame on you), but I think we should reconsider its design. It demonstrated that GM could make a good-looking electrified car when it tried even just a little.
Read MoreEver since the Lancia Thema 8.32 became the best-selling car in the world in 1988, retractable/deployable rear spoilers have been the must-have accessory for any sporty car design. This is a false path.
Read MoreThe McLaren Artura is an exceptional feat of automotive engineering, featuring a plug-in hybrid powertrain, with an “inside-out” electric motor, no reverse gear, and blah blah blah. More importantly: It has little hand pods staring you down like an alien.
Read MoreLotus is dead set on making the best of their ridiculous 2,000-horsepower EV drivetrain and their latest design, the E-R9, takes all of that power and wraps it in a race car that you could almost mistake for an SR-71 Blackbird, were it not for its gold-tone and, oh yeah, four wheels.
Read MoreA reader wandering around a parking garage in China sent us some pictures of an exciting automotive unicorn: A new DARTZ truck, fully bonkers as is required of any fine DARTZ product, but this one has yet to be officially announced or shown. Even better, the pre-release truck is wearing a kicky yellow banner that has a stern and grimly comical message to, I expect, any number of other car-builders in China.
Read MoreI’ll freely admit that, not only am I not anywhere near the target market for a Mercedes-Maybach S-Class, I’m probably not welcome to be even physically near one, should that chance pairing actually occur. So, with that in mind, it may simply be that my opinion here has as much value as a subscription to the Utne Reader would have to a sea cucumber. I get that. That said, I also have to be honest and say that new Maybachs look like Mercedes that have had the contents of a Pep Boys decanted onto
Read MoreNissan performed a facelift on the March subcompact it sells in Mexico, and on its own that’s not major news — until you realize that the car has been on sale nearly unchanged for 11 years straight.
Read MoreThere are plenty of criticisms that float around regarding electric cars, but two of the big ones are: can it road trip, and can it handle cold temperatures? In a recent video, Jason Fenske from Engineering Explained set out on a journey in his Tesla Model 3 to answer those pressing questions.
Read MoreIt’s no secret that BMW’s latest designs haven’t been well received everywhere, and the company has responded to criticism in uncharacteristic, and borderline indignant, ways. There are many cars out there that could be described as visually polarizing, but BMW’s constant defense of its own, while dismissing critics as “boomers” even though many of its customers are in fact boomers, has been a strange and fascinating drama to watch unfold on social media.
Read MoreCenter consoles need to put themselves in the trash.
Read MoreSlowly but surely, automakers are beginning to shift away from offering leather upholstery as an option in their vehicles, replacing them with vegan leather or other synthetic alternatives. The latest is Mini, which announced today it’s switching to 100 percent recycled fabrics going forward for its car interiors.
Read MoreWhile Tesla seems to get all the credit for it lately, automakers have been leaving easter egg features on cars for forever. Not to be left in the dust by the Jeep Wagoneer with its Detroit map in the glass roof or Tesla fart mode, the new Ford Mustang Mach-E gets a secret, too.
Read MoreI wasn’t planning on talking about Tesla’s Model S refresh and their goofball new yoke-like steering wheel anymore, and that felt fine, just fine, to me. But then I happened to notice this headline on an InsideEVs story and it reminded me that, when it comes to Tesla, everything just works a bit differently. For instance, you get takes like this one that extrapolates huge and ridiculous technological advancements from what the rest of us just see as a dorky over-yet-under-thought steering wheel
Read MoreIn my interview for this Jalopnik job, one of the editors asked me for my most controversial automotive opinion. (We actually asked him for his worst opinion. —ED.) After all, what are bloggers if not bad-take dispensers? There are many answers I could have given, but I’m still relatively new, so I’m going to save those for another similarly slow news Friday.
Read MoreThe one-of-one Isdera Commendatore 112i hits the auction block in Paris this weekend, and it’s touched off a mini celebration of ’90s supercars on social media. Most of these cars, like the Commendatore, Ford GT90 and Indigo, Italdesign Calà, McLaren F1 and Ferrari F50, are forever linked by their inclusion in Need For Speed II, a game that elevated them to legendary, otherworldly status among players.
Read MoreToday Mitsubishi announced their freshly re-styled 2022 Eclipse Cross and an all-new concept car that consists of Mitsubishi’s vision of a near-future Eclipse Cross that’s exactly like the one they showed today, but people are actually buying it. It’s this kind of wild, out-of-the-box thinking that makes concept cars so special, people.
Read MoreIt’s not often I want to listen in on anyone’s calls to the insurance company, but I suspect this one would have to be pretty good. “A what hit you? On the 580? On the road?”
Read MoreTiger Woods has been hospitalized and is in surgery following a single-vehicle car accident in a Genesis GV80 in Palos Verdes, California, on the morning of Tuesday, February 23rd.
Read MoreThere are many good reasons to not crash a McLaren. There is the cost, of course, but also the sinking feeling knowing that your local highway patrol is about to air you out on Twitter.
Read MoreOn a Houston, Texas highway feeder road this weekend, hundreds of sickos showed up to encourage assholes to “fly by” at speed to show off their ability to spend money on cars and go-fast parts for the express purpose of putting others’ lives in danger. It all went perfectly to plan when this bright yellow Camaro impacted an innocent bystander’s Chevy Malibu reportedly with a baby inside, sending that car into the gathered crowd, injuring one, and killing two. The impact is said to have been well
Read MoreThey say everything is bigger in Texas and unfortunately that seems to be true of the car accidents, too.
Read MoreA very lucky driver survived a 70-foot fall after his pickup truck hit a snowbank on a higher ramp of Milwaukee’s “Zoo” interchange and landed wheel-side up on westbound I-94 below on Saturday. The horrifying crash was captured on surveillance video from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
Read MoreFor all of the hype surrounding the Toyota GR Yaris hatchback and its rally-inspired all-wheel-drive powertrain, the only thing that matters is how effective all that fancy tech is at the limits of high-speed grip. Like perhaps when a giant moose crosses the road in front of you.
Read MoreAre you having a good day? Well Jalopnik, via ProPublica, is here to ruin that for you. The nonprofit news organization published a story in June about how the blue wall of silence protects cops who speed into groups of children with their squad cars. I just spotted it this morning and man, will it make your blood boil.
Read MoreDrinking and driving is bad. This is a message no driver should need to be told, doubly so if you’re a police officer. Yet, it sounds like one Philadelphia officer didn’t get that memo and crashed his car into a house at high speed. The crash severely injured a woman and killed her dog.
Read MoreIt’s not too often you get to see a genuine, completely preventable, bona fide fiasco actually happen. But that appears to be exactly what is happening here in Hong Kong, starting with what was really a very minor parking accident. Which then turned into an attempted hit-and-run. Which then turned into something like a subscale T.J. Hooker episode. Which then, somehow, got worse.
Read MoreBack in 2008, Murray Siple released a documentary with the National Film Board of Canada called Carts of Darkness. It follows a group of homeless men in Vancouver, British Columbia that found dual uses for shopping carts: a vessel for picking up glass bottles that can be recycled for the money they need to survive and a vehicle for extreme sports.
Read MoreIf Speed Racer were a real driver today, we would hate him for being a pay driver with a rich dad.
Read MoreMinari is an excellent movie, but I’m going to be upfront and honest with you: There’s only, like, one car in it. I’m writing this because I dropped $20 on a digital ticket and I want to get some SEO.
Read MoreHBO debuted its Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation documentary last night, which I dutifully watched. It’s called The Lady And The Dale, and I highly recommend it, if for no other reason than a lot of it will sound very, very familiar.
Read MoreAnother week means another entry in the sweet cars found online that I wish I could drive. 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 MoreI know some folks have been a little grumpy that the cars featured on Bring A Trailer aren’t the cool barn finds they used to be and that they’re getting quite pricey, and I can normally agree with that. But right now, there’s a 2014 Chevrolet Corvette C7.R GT machine that actually raced in the IMSA series going for $350,000 on BaT, and that... is pretty cool.
Read MoreReaders have been sending me pictures of crazy RV builds ever since I embarked on my own school bus camper journey. We’ve seen everything from 4x4 lifted buses to a milk tanker that tried to circumnavigate the globe. Today’s bus build remains in the realm of strange bus builds. It’s a school bus with a van on its roof and a cabin hanging off of the back!
Read MoreSebastian Vettel is off to greener pastures this year — see what I did there? — leaving a struggling Ferrari squad for the rebranded Racing Point outfit, now called Aston Martin, that’s coming off a stellar 2020 campaign. Vettel, a four-time Formula 1 world driver’s champion, is also selling eight sports cars from his collection, five of which are Ferraris and none of which are Astons.
Read MoreAnother week means another entry in the sweet cars found online that I wish I could drive. 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 MoreThe manual transmission “holy grail” Jeep Grand Cherokee is my second favorite Jeep of all time (the Jeep Cherokee XJ is number one), and yet, when a beautiful example popped up for sale 45 minutes from my house, I resisted. And I’m here to tell you about it because I need positive reinforcement to help me kick my Jeep-hoarding habit once and for all. Also, you really should check out this beautiful machine.
Read MoreNot too long ago, there was a special class of obscure supercars that claimed they could hit a top speed of 200 mph, usually from automakers people hadn’t heard of yet with names like Pagani, Noble and Gumpert. Ascari was another one and with only 19 examples of its first-ever production car built, the 1997 Ascari Ecosse now up for sale is a rare car in a club of rare cars.
Read MoreAnother week means another entry in the sweet cars found online that I wish I could drive. 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 MoreA lot of gearheads dream up vehicles that can do double duty, hauling toys while also being a kick-back space. It’s the idea behind many school bus builds like my own. But there is another, potentially easier way to get this done. How? Take an existing RV and chop off the back. It’s actually pretty brilliant!
Read MoreAbout a month ago, we wrote about an excellent human on the internet who goes by The Rad Report and how they were selling their absolutely gorgeous Subaru Legacy wagon. Now, The Rad Report is back at it again, and the listing is as incredible as the one before.
Read MoreSomeone in Ohio had a really bad day. Not only did their Aston Martin DB9 quit working, but the shop they took it to investigated the source of the problem only to find it was the crankshaft. The literal heart of the car decided to crunch itself only to leave the otherwise gorgeous Aston in a state of inoperative decline. Instead of sinking good money after bad, the owner of this car decided to cut their losses and bail. And unfortunately, that has set my mind into motion thinking the Bad Though
Read MoreAnother week means another entry in the sweet cars found online that I wish I could drive. 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 I step toward the checkout at Winn-Dixie I realize I’ve forgotten something: The greatest and quickest archive of forgotten hopes, dreams, aspirations, and exciting paint jobs America has to offer. The Truck Round-Up at the end of the magazine counter.
Read MoreMuch like the eternal question of Shouldst Thou Warm Yon Car Up In The Winter?, it seems like the question of Do I Really Have To Turn Off My Car When I Fill It Up? is capable of generating more intense responses than one would expect. Also, those signs at the gas station that ask you not to use your cellphone — what’s up with those?
Read MoreIt sucks having a motorcycle tire punctured on the highway or a trail. A tire plug can get you back on the road long enough to get to a shop, but what type of plug works best? As YouTube channel FortNine found out, the old way is still one of the best ways.
Read MoreThe new Halcyon 450 by Janus Motorcycles leaked ahead of its March 5 launch, and it looks awesome. Dare I say, Janus does vintage way better than almost anyone, even Harley-Davidson?
Read MoreThe 2021 Triumph Bonneville lineup includes more great examples of retro done right. I suppose I should be tired of these modern retro bikes, but I’m not. How could I be?
Read MoreBuell Motorcycles has resurfaced, and it has some ambitious plans for the future. But that future will be without its creator, Erik Buell.
Read MoreI’m generally a supporter of allowing motorcycles to split the lanes of slow or stopped traffic. But I’ve always wondered how truly safe the practice is. We now have some insight as a French study concluded that lane splitting caused a 12 percent increase in motorcycle crashes in the areas the study was conducted in.
Read MoreUnveiled a few weeks ago, the Sondors Metacycle hit the world with some pretty impressive specs for a commuter motorcycle. With a claimed top speed of 80 miles per hour, and up to 80 miles of range (admittedly not at 80 mph), it seems like a great machine for the daily city rider. This bike, for example, could do pretty much everything I do with my Leaf. When those specs came out, some were incredulous of the possibility.
Read MoreThe Indian brand has been on a tear lately, selling bikes practically faster than Polaris can build them. Doing its best to keep behemoth Harley-Davidson honest, it’s delivering gorgeous bikes with an exceptional riding experience, good value and lots of really cool tech.
Read MoreLast year we said there was never a better time to go on a motorcycle ride. With everything canceled, and gathering in groups being dangerous, riding is extremely compelling. Still, it is surprising to see that motorcycle sales are through the roof even while car sales are down. What’s going on?
Read MoreA few months ago I took a Harley-Davidson LiveWire electric motorcycle on a reasonably lengthy road trip from Carson, California to my home in Reno, Nevada. That one didn’t go so well, and I really only have myself to blame. The bike did more or less what it was supposed to do, but it was the loose nut attached to the handlebars (that would be me) who screwed it all up. I felt like I owed the bike a second chance to prove itself, taking everything I had learned and working with the LiveWire to m
Read MoreIt seems as if the Honda Neo-Sports Café platform wasn’t “Neo” enough for Big Red, because we could see yet a newer bike from that family in the near future. Except that this time, it’s electric.
Read MoreThere’s a new Husky in town, and it’s not so husky. The new Svartpilen 125 is the cutest little motorbike you ever did see. Building on the success of Husqvarna’s larger Svart 701 and 401 models, the company rolled out a smaller, more nimble, and more affordable model for the masses on Wednesday. It’s like the Honda Grom’s cooler European artist friend who smokes.
Read MoreLast November I went on a road trip with this delightfully weird electric Harley-Davidson, and you may recall that everything went pear-shaped. It wasn’t the fault of the bike, it was all down to an unprepared dingus riding in the saddle, and an unfortunately timed EV charger meltdown. I wanted to do better by the bike, mostly because I wanted to prove that it was indeed possible to travel by LiveWire. You know, if you’re dedicated and perhaps a little broken inside.
Read MoreWe’ve long known that the lovable brainiacs over at JPL and NASA like to hide Easter Eggs and messages in their machines; we’ve already discussed a bunch in the new Perseverance robotic rover. Yesterday, we saw some incredible footage from cameras on the spacecraft system as it landed, including a camera that was looking up at the parachute as it deployed.
Read MoreWhat do you do if your headlights have gone foggy? Well, you Ask a Clean Person!
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 factory orders with mix-and-match options and whether rust proofing is ever worth buying.
Read MoreThe ad for today’s Nice Price or No Dice 911 is the kind you want to see: full of details, warts and all. That makes our job a whole lot easier, but will that make its price a slam dunk as well?
Read MoreBecause you’re you, I’m assuming you were distracted from the second half of the Super Bowl trying to figure out what kind of car the Weeknd was sitting in when the halftime show opened — and maybe trying to figure out where you’d seen him before. Thanks to Raph, we know that it was an S-Klub Roadster, a sort-of-restomod made by S-Klub in Los Angeles.
Read MoreI’m no thief, but I am smart enough to realize that, if you’re going to steal a car, and you hope to get away with it, you’re probably going to want to jack something common. You know, that way you can blend in with the crowd. But some imbecile in Arizona apparently didn’t get that memo, because he or she apparently stole the ugliest off-road vehicle of all time. Just look at this thing.
Read MoreYou know how there’s some remarkable cars that just sort of perpetually bounce around the collective consciousness of gearheads, periodically re-emerging to once again dazzle/delight/disgust a new crop of car-fetishists? Of course you do. One of the most enduring of these comet-like cars has to be the hilarious half-Subaru Brat, half-Volkswagen Beetle that we here at Jalopnik have been writing up for years, going all the way back to 2009. That’s pretty amazing. It’s for sale yet again, which mea
Read MoreIn the H.G. Wells literary classic, The War of the Worlds, Earth is invaded by three-legged Martians hell-bent on humankind’s destruction. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Polaris Slingshot has three wheels, and its styling makes it look like it came from another planet. Let’s see if the price will soon have it invading a new owner’s driveway.
Read MoreWhile Porsche never sold a six-cylinder 356, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Speedster proves such a combo is possible. Let’s see if this Corvair turbo-powered chimera can bring some serious cash as a result.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Jeep has a roof rack to carry your stuff, but only two-wheel drive to get it where it needs to go. Could that inequity demand a more equitable price?
Read MoreThe plastic body panels on today’s Nice Price or No Dice Saturn are the model’s most innovative feature, although the Honda V6 under its hood is probably the most surprising. Let’s see what this hot cross-brand crossover can command in today’s dollars.
Read MoreThe Dodge Daytona/Chrysler Laser twins once reigned as the hottest-looking of all of Chrysler’s K-cars. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Laser is a survivor of that era, but will its price make it worth taking a second look?
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Escort is a Mad Lad of a car, set apart from other Ford econoboxes by its turbocharged engine and Subaru STi-esque hood scoop. As crazy as it is, could the price actually prove to be the sanest thing about it?
Read MoreWhen you think of Volvo, you probably picture rectilinear designs with the aerodynamics of an open umbrella. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice 122S may fly in the face of that paradigm, but does it come with a price that’s grounded in reality?
Read MoreIf you’ve ever looked at a Suzuki Samurai and puzzled over whether the tiny truck could hold a 440-cube V8, today’s Nice Price or No Dice project truck is the answer you’re desperately seeking. Could its price be equally desperate? Let’s find out.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Rabbit GTI claims its value will multiply just like real rabbits do when left to their own devices. Let’s see if its current price adds up at all.
Read MorePracticality takes a back seat to fun with today’s Nice Price or No Dice Bucket T. That is, it would if this hot rod had a back seat. As it is, there are barely any amenities at all. Could all that parsimony add up to its nearly $10,000 asking?
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice 500E has two parents — Mercedes-Benz and Porsche — who jointly engineered and built this special model. Let’s see if this rare German hot rod’s price makes you seriously consider an adoption.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Callaway Camaro represents the tuner’s attempt at an à la carte car build. Let’s see if the price tag proves to be a chef’s special.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Chrysler is probably the cheapest running car in America wearing the Maserati nameplate. It’s pretty worn, so let’s see if it’s cheap enough.
Read MoreHaving two fewer doors than expected makes today’s Nice Price or No Dice 4Runner a rare enough beast. Let’s see if its price tag also makes it a rare deal.
Read MoreThe seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Mustang GT claims it to be the “Cheapest Running & Driving V8 Mustang on CL!!” As you might expect, it’s a bit rough around the edges, so we’ll just have to see if it’s cheap enough.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice C4 may not be the most desirable Corvette model of the moment, but with its 6-speed stick and reasonably low miles, it may be one of the best values. Let’s see if it’s actually worth it.
Read MoreRover is a pretty good name for a dog, so it was appropriate that the quality issues that dogged Britain’s Rover would lead it to rebrand as Sterling here in the States. Today’s Nice Price or No Dice 825SL was an offspring of the breed. Let’s see if this handsome survivor’s price will keep it out of the doghouse.
Read MoreToday’s Nice Price or No Dice Turbo Coupe carries the only four-cylinder engine ever to sit behind Ford’s iconic Thunderbird badge. Fortunately, that four was shared with the SVO Mustang, so it brings some heat. Let’s see if this old coupe can get you hot and bothered over its price.
Read MoreWhile magicians often have tricks up their sleeves, today’s Nice Price or No Dice BMW 5 Series keeps its tricky bit at the back, where a two-hatch tailgate offers multiple loading options and marvels onlookers. Let’s see if this tricky GT offers a trick price as well.
Read MoreYou know that Phoenix Yellow BMW E46 M3s are out there, somewhere. Sure, you don’t have one. I don’t have one! Where are they, then? Well, they’re all here, doing stunts. All of them.
Read MoreI am just as confused as you are but I am suddenly stricken with love and appreciation for a mid-level French sedan of the 1980s. The 1986 to 1994 Renault 21 has no styling, almost no history, and I adore it.
Read MoreThe ’90s were a strange time for electric cars, in that they simultaneously existed but also weren’t really taken seriously or promoted by the manufacturers who built them. Aside from the well-known GM EV-1, you had the Toyota RAV4 EV, Chevrolet S-10 EV, Ford Ranger EV and Honda EV Plus, among others. They were typically powered by lead-acid or nickel-metal hydride batteries, and often sold to corporate or government fleets.
Read MoreThe current Honda HR-V, which is about to be replaced, is pretty forgettable even among forgettable crossovers. I know a few folks who have either purchased or test driven one, and none of them had particularly enthusiastic things to say. One told me she comforts her HR-V with words of encouragement while merging onto the highway, because the CVT whine makes the thing sound like it’s dying an agonizing death.
Read MoreRemember early this week when that Boeing 777's right-side engine failed, blowing off the entire engine housing and other parts, which rained down onto the Denver-area homes below? Of course you do, it was in all the papers that your local newsies were hawking. You may also recall seeing amazing pictures of homes with massive airplane parts sitting in their front yards. If you’re like me, you probably wondered, hey, if that happens to your house, can you keep that massive aluminum bezel? What’s
Read MoreOn Saturday, United Airlines Flight 328 suffered an engine failure over Denver, Colorado, returning to the airport safely with no injuries to anyone onboard. What we didn’t realize over the weekend was that ejected engine parts actually punched a hole in the fuselage. This incident could have had a much worse ending.
Read MoreUnited Flight 328 suffered a little bit of a problem just after it took off from Denver International Airport yesterday: the right-side engine failed, leaving nothing but a glowing core on the plane while pieces of debris rained down on yards, soccer fields, and homes in the Denver area.
Read MoreAn alarming set of pictures is making the rounds on social media lately showing a pilot fixing a badly damaged plane with tape. It turns out these pictures are very old, but they still elicit similar responses from people: How can a plane fly held together with tape? While this use-case is extreme, it’s actually not unheard of or unsafe to use tape on a plane. Here’s why!
Read MoreHave you ever had a word all of a sudden lose its normal, expected associations and then reveal itself to you, in all its inherent weirdness? You can get there by repeating a word over and over until you force all meaning out of it, but sometimes the weirdness of the word is so close to the surface it just happens.
Read MoreThe next time you see a drone buzzing overhead, try to keep an open mind about these goofy, oversized R/C planes. Some are actually doing incredible work.
Read MoreHave you noticed that we, as a society, have grown increasingly liberal about what we define as a car? I’ve generally been under the impression that a car is a type of powered vehicle with four wheels that is smaller than a truck but does its job nonetheless—a vehicle that spends more of its time on the ground than, say, in the air or on the water. Now, though, Airspeeder wants me to believe that its plane racer is actually a car. And folks, I just can’t do it.
Read MoreLast year was the worst in aviation history from a financial standpoint according to industry analysis, and all that downtime has left pilots feeling a little rusty, leading to an increasing number of in-flight mistakes.
Read MoreWe may be getting close to March, and spring is in the air... but there are still plenty of Northerners who have at least another month of snow and ice to cope with. So, here are six tips from Tanner Foust, rallycross champion and Top Gear America host, on how to best navigate roads in freezing temperatures.
Read MoreWhat would you do if you happened to find your drag Camaro trying to escape from the tarmac by taking off into space? I have no idea, because I’d probably have passed out long before even reaching the point where the nose lifted from the ground. But Tim Slavens barely blinked an eye—and he even managed to save the damn thing.
Read MoreAt the tail end of yesterday’s second Diriyah ePrix, Mahindra Formula E driver Alex Lynn suffered a nasty crash that ultimately resulted in his hospitalization and the race being red flagged. Details were sparse at the time of the accident; Formula E elected not to show crash footage and only spoke about the accident after the podium ceremony had been completed. Thankfully, Lynn has been released from the hospital and deemed fit after a series of routine tests.
Read MoreBack in 1972, four men developed something called the Black American Racers Association. Leonard W. Miller, Ron Hines, Eugene Gadson, and Charles Singleton recognized that the accomplishments of Black racers in automotive and racing fields were criminally ignored when considering the scope of racing history. BARA wanted to give those members of the racing community their time in the spotlight—and to help develop future Black talent in motorsport.
Read MoreWith the 1983 World Rally Championship under his belt, Hannu Mikkola earned his place among the rally legends from one of the sport’s most competitive eras. At the age of 78, his son has confirmed that Mikkola has died of cancer.
Read MoreWhen Rajo Jack first got behind the wheel of a race car, it was only because he’d spent years getting to know the people at the track, who decided they liked him enough to let him get behind the wheel. As a Black man in California during the 1920s during an era where it was physically dangerous for him to drive alone to the race track, he was lucky to have even gotten that far. That’s the story Bill Poehler tells in The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack’s Drive to Integrate Auto Racing.
Read MoreI don’t know what’s going on with the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus Twitter admin, but I’ll have what they’re having.
Read MoreFormula E finally got the chance to kick off its seventh season this weekend with the 2021 Diriyah ePrix in Saudi Arabia, and it proved something that folks have been wondering about for a while: FE night races are awesome.
Read MoreWatkins Glen International existed in my imagination long before I ever saw it in person, so tangible that I could transport myself there just by closing my eyes. It had that faint sepia tinge in my brain, like it was perpetually golden hour in upstate New York, because of how many old home movies I’d watched and photos I’d accumulated: race fans lighting cars on fire in the campground, people packed into the tall front stretch grandstand, a beloved French racing driver crossing the line in his
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreThere’s no question that Romain Grosjean, the former Formula 1 driver who is now an IndyCar hopeful, is lucky to still be with us after his harrowing crash during last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Grosjean’s car split apart, sending the portion he was in underneath a guardrail where he was nearly trapped in the blaze. If he had been unable to escape, he would have been killed.
Read MoreThis Friday kicks off the seventh season of Formula E, an all-electric single-seater racing series designed to push the boundaries of e-mobility. And if you haven’t already jumped onboard — or if you like the concept but haven’t quite convinced yourself to really dive in — we’re going to give you everything you need to know before the first event.
Read MoreI am the first to admit that I’ve been a bit of a downer about the collapse of the FIA’s Le Mans Hypercar class. When it was teased a few years ago, there was interest from seemingly every major automaker in the world, and it would be coming to fruition at exactly the time Aston Martin, Mercedes-AMG, and McLaren were introducing new street hypercars. All of that support for the class pretty much evaporated overnight, and Toyota and—to a lesser extent Glickenhaus—were left holding the bag on thei
Read MoreMostly because its inaugural season is yet to be run, I don’t particularly follow Extreme E. But the machines are cool and the series’ conceit is fresh.
Read MoreWell here’s one nobody saw coming: Ferrari will fight for the overall win at Le Mans with a full-on hypercar program beginning in 2023. The Italian automaker confirmed the news this morning.
Read MoreAmong all the discussion about the new US Postal Service and its new mail delivery vehicle, my beater-addled mind immediately drifted to the idea of hundreds of thousands of well-used Chevrolet S10-based Grumman LLVs coming to market via government surplus auctions all over the country, and what could possibly be done with them. I’d like to lay claim to twenty of them right now for a genius spec racing series idea I’ve had.
Read MoreWe all know the story of the 2020 Indy 500. First the race was pushed back from its May date thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic. Track owner Roger Penske was none too pleased by that, but vowed to run the race with half-capacity spectators, then lowered that number to 25 percent, but said he’d never run the race without spectators. And finally, the race went off in August with nobody in the stands, because Indiana University health fought to make sure the race wouldn’t be a superspreader event.
Read MoreThis weekend was an extraordinary one in the world of NASCAR. Just a week after the Daytona 500's pomp and circumstance, all three of the sanctioning body’s major national series were racing at Daytona International Speedway again, but this time on the slightly modified international road course. It was totally awesome to watch these heavy and powerful beasties working out of their element, but could have been made significantly more awesome with just a few rules tweaks.
Read MoreFor years, the Sauber Formula 1 team — racing officially for the last two seasons under the Alfa Romeo brand — has played the role of reliable backmarker. It’s not the worst-performing squad on the grid, mind you, with Haas prone to its flashes of life but ultimately hampered by a lack of consistency and Williams trundling along even further behind. But you rarely see any forward progress from the Swiss-Italian outfit, either.
Read MoreThis weekend, we celebrate a beautiful thing: NASCAR competing at the Daytona International Speedway road course. And it’s got me thinking about how we can solve the whole “rained out NASCAR race” thing.
Read MoreOn February 21, 1948, the National Association for Stock Car Racing was officially born. This isn’t the date that celebrates the meetings at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, nor does this date commemorate the first time a stock car hit the track. This is the date when NASCAR was incorporated, meaning it became an official business entity separate from its owners. In a word, it became legitimate.
Read MoreAlbert Park, home of Formula One’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, is getting a makeover. The race normally opens the season but has been rescheduled due to COVID-19 concerns in the country, which means that scheduled resurfacing will be taking place sooner rather than later. And with that is coming a change to the track layout.
Read MoreEarlier this week, Haas Formula One Team boss Guenther Steiner lamented the social media backlash against his newly signed Russian driver Nikita Mazepin. He told RACER, “We continue to have dialogue with Nikita about many things, including what happened at the end of last season. He took immediate responsibility for his actions—he apologized; he’s learned from this experience, he’s undoubtedly been chastened by it, and he’ll apply that moving forward in his Formula 1 career.”
Read MoreGrowing up in Michigan, there reached a point in most folks’ evolution where they stopped being an individual and instead embraced the redneck stereotype. These are kids who could be top of their class, or high-level athletes, or whatever the case may be—and at some point, they grew a beard, started wearing nothing but camo, and throwing around Confederate flags like it was no big deal. Because that’s just what you did in that town. That’s kind of what Netflix’s “The Crew” reminds me of.
Read MoreWhen it comes to incorporating wheel color into your F1 livery, very few teams have considered it. As near as I can tell, you have to look back to 2015 to find any teams painting their wheels a shade other than the standard black or silver. Back then it was the JPS-stylized Lotus F1 team incorporating gold wheels into its stylistic package. Finally, for the 2021 season, a team is taking a slight risk with its wheels. The Scuderia AlphaTauri team has chosen to run with white wheels!
Read MoreFollowing the Busch Clash last week Tuesday on the Daytona road course, NASCAR made a decision to change the layout of the Bus Stop chicane ahead of this weekend’s return. When the series first raced on the international road course layout last summer, it was determined that an extra chicane would be needed, and it was added at the exit of NASCAR 4 down on the apron where it wouldn’t be a problem for the Daytona 24 race.
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreWe’ve finally reached the season of new Formula 1 car reveals. McLaren kicked things off earlier this week, unveiling its MCL35, and today we’re getting our first glimpse of Scuderia AlphaTauri’s 2021 contender, the team’s second-ever car after taking over from Toro Rosso last year.
Read MoreWhen you think of a motorsport team that could conceivably be carbon neutral, you probably first jump to something like a Formula E or Extreme E squad. When I say NASCAR, you probably think of big roaring pushrod V8s, pumping carbon and particulates into the air, not green initiatives. But, Roush Fenway Racing has been leading the series toward a more environmentally conscious future, and on Thursday announced that it has become the first carbon-neutral team in the sport.
Read MoreWilliams Grand Prix Engineering had some real wild up and down times in Formula One across the 2010s. Despite showing some promise in 2014 and 2015 with Mercedes power at the start of the hybrid era, the team dug itself a hole and has thus far not been able to haul its way out. In 2018, 2019, and 2020 the team has scored tenth and last in the World Constructors Championship, and the 2020 season marked the first time in history that Williams failed to score any points at all. It’ll take a lot to
Read MoreAfter just 14 laps, there was a Big One, a crash that caught up 16 cars, ending the race for several drivers, which I didn’t see because I wasn’t watching. But then there was a nearly six-hour weather delay, and by the time it restarted — not long after 9 p.m. — I was in the proper position. The race was as delightful a NASCAR race as I’ve seen in years.
Read MoreI’m sure at least some of this is emotionally charged, but I truly believe that McLaren really has its shit together in 2021. Despite recent pandemic-induced money troubles, the Papaya Orange team has a new engine supplier in Mercedes, a new sponsor in Gulf, a new championship-caliber driver in Daniel Ricciardo, and the only truly new chassis on the grid with its recently launched MCL35M.
Read MoreIn Formula 1, it almost doesn’t matter how good your chassis is if your power unit underperforms. Red Bull discovered this the hard way through the middle of the last decade and was only beginning to put the pieces together with Honda’s help over the past two seasons. But with the Japanese engine supplier now leaving F1, Red Bull is now left with no choice but to take its power unit development in-house.
Read MoreThe Big One—that massive wreck that wipes out a good portion of the NASCAR field—is inevitable at a big track like Daytona International Speedway, but I don’t think anyone was expecting it to come so early or to wipe out so many cars. Yep—the Daytona 500's Big One came on lap 14 and knocked out about a quarter of the field: 16 cars.
Read MoreOne of my fondest memories of elementary school was when our science teacher was out for the day and the substitute would wheel in a tube television strapped to a metal cart and stick in one of my school’s few VHS tapes of NOVA, PBS’s long-running science program. I never thought I’d be that excited for an episode of NOVA again—and then the show featured IndyCar.
Read MoreIn December of 2020, IndyCar announced that its Road to Indy program would be bolstered by a new all-Black racing team designed to feed promising Black drivers, mechanics, and more into the top level of the series. Now, that team—called Force Indy—has signed its first driver: Myles Rowe.
Read MoreWendell Scott, one of NASCAR’s first Black drivers and team owners, has long been a passing mention in the sport’s history. We’ve seen more features celebrating his accomplishments over the years, but as it stands, NASCAR still hasn’t given Scott the place in history he deserves. Now, new projects are aiming to change that.
Read MoreNASCAR’s Daytona 500 is one of my favorite racing events of the year for plenty of reasons, but in large part because it’s one of the tasty appetizers we get before the full race season really kicks off around the world. We’ve already seen the Duels, we have a qualifying lineup, different series are hitting the track, and if you have no idea how to follow the race, then don’t you worry—we here at Jalopnik have you covered.
Read MoreHow do you convince manufacturers to stick around and keep on participating in your racing series? Why, you fine them, of course! At least, that’s Formula E’s strategy.
Read MoreOn Thursday, Feb. 11, Formula One teams approved an engine freeze that will be instituted in 2022 as one of many new and different concepts being discussed to keep the series interesting. Here’s what you need to know.
Read MoreFerrari unveiled the sound of its 2021 car Friday for some good Friday content. Well, if you think that Formula One cars even sound good anymore.
Read MoreThe entry list for the 99th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was released on Friday, and there are some pretty exciting entries on there for this year. After the event was postponed in 2020, and it was limited to pretty much only American entries thanks to COVID-19-related travel bans, the game is back on in full swing for 2021. There are some cool new electric car entries, a few exciting returns, and holy shit is that a freakin’ IndyCar?
Read MoreWelcome to the Jalopnik Weekend Motorsports Roundup, where we let you know what’s going on in the world of racing, where you can see it, and where you can talk about it all in one convenient place. Where else would you want to spend your weekend?
Read MoreIMSA is getting beat up in the ring lately. With the collapse of its factory-supported GTLM category, the sanctioning body has already had to pivot its GT classes to a more affordable GTD-based program. Friday’s announcement that Mazda would be ending its DPi program at the end of the 2021 season and would not be pursuing a replacement LMDh program in the future has been a serious hit to the series. This leaves only Acura and Cadillac participating in the class in 2022.
Read MoreTwo-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso has been taken to a hospital after being hit by a car while cycling, according to a report. The incident occurred on a road in Switzerland.
Read MoreI’ve been reading a new book that author and car designer Steve Saxty sent over for me to review, Secret Fords: Volume One, and it’s a great look into the development of Fords that reached production, as well as a bunch that didn’t. Included in that is the story of the infamous Ford Escort RS1700T and an interesting Porsche connection I didn’t know.
Read MoreFormula 1's 10 constructors support Saturday sprint races at “selected” grands prix this year, orgaizers announced following a Thursday commission meeting. Additionally, F1 will freeze power unit development beginning in 2022, a year earlier than originally planned, until the start of the 2025 season when new regulations will kick in.
Read MoreEvery single compact hatchback on the market needs to be powered by a 1-liter 11,000 rpm Suzuki screamer sitting behind the driver and powering the rear wheels. This is the truest fact in the universe, and I will not hear any argument to the contrary. This Citroën is the purest and most audible example of the term ‘hot hatch’ that has ever existed. This is what peak performance looks like. And ‘nyoooooom’ is what it sounds like.
Read MoreThere are so many different streaming platforms these days that nobody seems to be able to agree where their motorsport product should be broadcast. Terrestrial television is a non-starter, and cable goes out to far too few households these days, so what is a series to do? Hell, NBC can’t seem to get it right, putting IndyCar on Peacock and everything else on NBC Sports Gold Trackpass. There really needs to be one centralized location for streaming motorsport. Australian Supercars has chosen You
Read MoreToday is a day ending in “y,” which is as good a reason as any to compare the sound between two six-cylinder engines tuned within an inch of their life. The trick is the V6 is the old one and the straight-six is the new one.
Read MoreFormula 1 tried to liven up grand prix weekends with proposals for reverse grids and sprint races several times last year. Those schemes never came to pass, but the race organizers will give it one more shot this week, putting a plan for three Saturday sprint races in 2021 to a vote this Thursday.
Read MoreLewis Hamilton’s weird contract situation is finally over after the Briton re-upped for Mercedes for one more year, according to reports on Monday. Hamilton has a new one-year contract for 2021 to go after a record eighth title. But it sure seems like after that that might be that.
Read MoreAt least once a year, the inevitable happens. Someone in the ol’ Formula One camp has decided yet again that, actually, America is very high on the series’ priority list, thank you very much. America is so important, in fact, that we’re going to get some more races and even better activation opportunities! We promise!
Read MoreSir Stirling Moss may not have won a Formula One World Championship, but he was one of those drivers so damn good that you could easily forget about that. His decade-long career was cut short by a devastating accident that left him in a coma and with partial paralysis. But the recently-released Ciao, Sterling isn’t so much about the man as it is about his impact on the people and the world around him.
Read More“You know how you could fix F1?” my husband asked me while we were laying in bed the other day. “If the team that dominated the championship just fucked off after they won.”
Read MoreThe path to competing behind the wheel of a race car has always been an evolving one, and now we’re starting to see that path change even more drastically. Nowadays, excellent real-life racers are getting their start behind the virtual wheel—and Jimmy Broadbent is the epitome of that journey.
Read More21-year-old racer Toni Breidinger is something of a badass. She’s the winningest female driver in USAC history with 19 victories, and now she’s set her sights on stock car racing in 2021 with part-time seats in both the ARCA Menards Series and the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series—making her the first-ever Arab-American woman to compete in any division of NASCAR.
Read MoreA former Formula One driver with a decade-long tenure, a seven-time NASCAR champion, and a three-time Australian Supercars champion walk into a room. This isn’t the setup to a joke. These are the new drivers battling for IndyCar’s Rookie of the Year honors.
Read MoreAround 11pm local time on Friday night, a massive fire swept through the Autodromo Termas de Rio Hondo circuit in Santiago del Estero Province, Argentina. The venue is best known for hosting MotoGP but has also been the locale for World Touring Car Championship events.
Read More“Reverse grid” is a thing that people in Formula One have been uttering for years, as a way to make races a little more interesting, since it would force the quickest cars to make lots of passes. Finally, this week, F1's CEO uttered the blessed words, “Reverse grid is over.”
Read MoreThe aero cars of Formula 1 in the late 1970s and early 1980s were already playing with modern concepts, but they were doing so without the aid of anything close to the modern computer analysis of aerodynamics today. So what would it look like if we plugged the legendary McLaren MP4/2 of 1984 into some new software?
Read MoreRomain Grosjean is headed to IndyCar. The 34-year-old Frenchman will return to racing after his harrowing crash at last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix on behalf of Dale Coyne Racing in the #51 Rick Ware Racing car — though he won’t be behind the wheel for every stop on the 17-round calendar.
Read MoreAnthoine Hubert’s deadly crash at Spa in a 2019 Formula 2 race was the first fatal accident at an F1 event since 2014 and also left Juan Manuel Correa with severe injuries. Though Correa said this week he’s now ready to come back and race.
Read MoreAfter years of efforts to bring Formula 1 racing to Rio de Janeiro, the city is officially abandoning the proposal for a circuit in the Camboata Forest region out of environmental concerns.
Read MoreChina has been in the process of developing a modular space station for years, and the core module of such a station is now ready for launch. The station core module, called Tianhe (that means “harmony of the heavens” and would sound hopelessly new-agey if it wasn’t for the fact it’s a space station) looks, at least in general design, a lot like an updated version of the original Soviet Mir space station core module. This isn’t a dig! That was a design that worked very well, for a very long time
Read MoreHyundai is back with another robot, but this one won’t sell you a car. This creation wants to go to space, and I’m a little confused about what prompted the urge.
Read MoreBoth China and the United Arab Emirates reached Mars orbit this week in what promises to be a fascinating month for space exploration. And NASA will be landing on the Red Planet next week.
Read MoreSpaceX may be a lot of things conflicting things, but you have to admit one thing: NASA approves. So much so that it’s going to use SpaceX as launch company for the SPHEREx program.
Read MoreThe Biden White House released a statement today reaffirming the U.S. commitment to return to the moon via the Artemis missions. While the ambitious deadline set for 2024 by the Trump administration might be a distant dream — budget issues, don’t you know — it seems the new administration is renewing efforts to put man and woman on the moon.
Read MoreYou may recall back in December when SpaceX was doing a short up-and-down test of their colossal new Starship that ended in a crash and a gigantic fireball when the quad-winged-silo-like rocket attempted to make a vertical landing but came in a bit hot and crashed. This time, the rocket didn’t even manage to get to the proper orientation, instead of coming down at about a 45-degree angle and then meeting the ground, immediately to be consumed by a ball of flame. Rockets are hard, friends.
Read MoreIf you think that having to deal with Spectrum or Comcast is a pain in the neck, just ponder how much worse it will be to deal with Russia’s Spacelink competitor and sole state-approved satellite internet provider, Sphere.
Read MoreSome of Hyundai’s electric vehicles have had a pesky problem: they can light on fire. So far, there have been only been 15 reports of fires, but the risk is too great for Hyundai to ignore the problem. And its global recall of 82,000 vehicles is one of the most expensive recalls in history.
Read MoreStartup carmaker Lucid has been promising some frankly gorgeous electric vehicles, including the Air. This sedan has been set up as a serious rival to the Tesla Model S CEO Peter Rawlinson announced via letter that deliveries of its latest vehicle—originally scheduled for spring of 2021—due to COVID-19.
Read MoreI have been a lot of things in the passenger seat of a car, and ‘sore’ is very frequently one of them. But I can’t say that I’ve ever imagined I’d need a foot massager on the floor of my vehicle. Nevertheless, General Motors has applied for a patent for one.
Read MoreAutonomy is constantly presented as the future of the automotive industry. Having cars that can truly be termed “self-driving” is the goal. But if you ask consumers, they’re not all that interested in that. Not when there’s work that can be done now.
Read MoreThe Ariya is one of Nissan’s best designs in a while. It feels like a return to form for the carmaker but I can’t help feel a sense of déjà vu as I take in its contours.
Read MoreThe next two to four years are going to see a slew of EVs from almost every automaker come to market. From startups like Bollinger to established players like Cadillac, the number of these models is expected to swell. Automakers are counting on the number of choices to drive sales. So if you’re wondering what’s coming, here are some of the EVs expected to arrive in the next two years.
Read MoreI suppose I may as well start this off with a reminder that no sinister baby-eating organizations are paying me to say bad things about Tesla. I think Tesla designs some amazing cars, and has revolutionized the electric car landscape. There. That said, I also think it get an absurd amount of unsettling adoration, especially for their Level 2 semi-autonomous Autopilot system. Today I saw a tweet that gave Autopilot credit for saving a person’s life, complete with dashcam video, but what I see is
Read MoreIn 2008, Nissan was gearing up to go all-in on electric cars. The Leaf was still two years away, and it needed to get its tech out in public. What we got was one of the company’s biggest misses: the Nissan Cube EV.
Read MoreEarlier today, I wrote about a fictional ’80s-era EV on a television show and how it had a remote locking system that featured, comically, a telescoping antenna. Because our commenters are composed of the world’s most elite group of painful car geeks, I was soon informed that even in our boring old reality, there were remote key fobs in the early 1980s, and they required no ridiculous antennae. And the first car to feature such an innovation was one I’d not expected, and this realization affecte
Read MoreElectric vehicles, for now, are a relatively small part of the broader automotive market. There are currently 23 different BEVs (battery electric vehicles) on sale from 20 different automakers spanning 35 variants. This list covers every BEV currently on sale with their MSRPs and driving ranges.
Read MoreJalopnik’s first-ever budget EV build is here, and it’s going to be incredibly challenging. With the help of automotive engineers in the Detroit area, I’m doing an electric vehicle conversion on this rusted-out 1958 Jeep Forward Control that I bought sight unseen for $1500. If your first reaction is “My god that thing looks rough!” trust me when I say: That’s the least of my worries.
Read MoreI know most of us probably subscribe to more streaming services than rational people should do, which is why I wasn’t crazy about finding out that someone in my household (looking at you, cats) signed us up for AppleTV+. (Gotta admire how long Apple has stuck with that “+” thing). Still, this does mean that I can finally watch that alternate-space-history show I’ve been curious about, For All Mankind, and even better, there’s an interesting take on an alternate-1980s electric car in there. So th
Read MoreAt the 2009 Detroit Auto Show Dodge was there with the fourth-generation Ram, Chrysler had a ceremony to recognize its best suppliers, and Chrysler also said it was working on something called “advanced wireless technology.” Oh, and also Chrysler had deeply serious plans to make a huge bet on electric cars.
Read MoreDid you own a Ford Ranger EV back in the ‘90s? Do you have a Nissan Leaf in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from a fast charger? Do you keep your Tesla Roadster in Manhattan, even in a blackout? The world of EVs is full of interesting stories, and we want to hear yours!
Read MoreHello, friends. Welcome to Jalopnik Tech, an editorial initiative aimed at demystifying electric cars and advanced driver assist systems. Starting today, a new section of the site will be where we tear down EVs, build them and post deep dives that illustrate exactly how they’re engineered.
Read MoreWhen you’re facing a world that seems to be moving away from the internal combustion engines that we’ve always known and loved to electrification, it’s time to maybe reconsider your options. But in addition to making some cool electric cars, Porsche is considering a different option: clean-burning synthetic fuel.
Read MoreBack in 2018, a trade group that represents John Deere promised farmers that it would help them prevent lawmakers from passing repair regulations that would make tractor repair next to impossible via software locks that would make it impossible for farmers to repair their equipment at home. Instead, those farmers would have to go to John Deere-certified dealerships to perform even the simplest of repairs.
Read MoreAs Texas continues to cope with the results of the historic cold brought about by Winter Storm Uri, folks are coming up with seemingly ingenious plans to power their homes or provide enough electricity to cook a meal. But buyer beware: using your Tesla battery to provide that power will void your warranty.
Read MoreI don’t know which is the more dramatic news: that Nissan is selling a series hybrid in a major global model, or that Nissan somehow made an interesting crossover.
Read MoreIn the 1970s, there was a lot of talk about ESP. I’m not exactly sure why, but Extra-Sensory Perception was just one of those things that kept coming up in popular culture, from pseudoscience television shows hosted by Spock to books to even robots in Disney movies. And while today cars having some sort of ESP system isn’t weird if it stands for Electronic Stability Program, Toyota offered an ESP system well before that, and it really had nothing to do with psychedelic mind-reading or keeping yo
Read MoreAdopting an EV can come with challenges, so Chevrolet is here to make sure those challenges don’t stop its customers from going electric.
Read MoreTo show that it’s keeping up with the times, Jeep has a new campaign called “The Road Ahead,” which lays out the brand’s electrification plans. Those plans include debuting what looks to be a downright primitive “All-Electric Wrangler BEV Concept.” Check out the vehicle that has my engineer-friends and me baffled.
Read MoreThe all-electric 2020 Porsche Taycan 4S does not quite have Tesla-defeating performance on paper, especially after the EPA initially gave it a disappointing estimated 203-mile range. Real-world testing by InsideEVs reflects something different and backs up the decision to boost Porsche’s estimated range for the 2021 model year.
Read MoreCheesy Superbowl ads and even cheesier clapbacks aside, it’s irrefutable that Norway really does love its EVs. All the proof you need is in the following video of Youtuber Bjørn Nyland overcome by joy when he sees three Volvo BEV trucks recharging at the same station as his Tesla Model 3.
Read MoreThe blending of new technology and old makes me extremely excited these days. Whether it’s the idea of shoving an electric motor into an old VW van, or powering my near nonagenarian home with modern photovoltaics, it gets me so amped. Of course the pun is intended, whatchou think? We downsized and moved into a lovely little Paul R. Williams-designed Lea Steel home in downtown Reno last June, and late last year we decided that it was time to convert as much of our energy use as possible to renewa
Read MoreFollowing the launch of its 4Xe lineup of plug-in hybrid vehicles last year, Jeep made a promise that it would install stand-alone charging stations at trails across the United States. It would seem that Jeep is serious about the future of electrification for the brand, which makes sense as torque available from zero rpm is a great idea for rock crawling. And with Hummer returning as a full electric BEV, surely there can’t be an electric Wrangler too far behind. I hope that every Jeep hybrid and
Read MoreThe U.S. Navy brass seems to be watching a bit too much Star Trek because the military branch recently filed some mind-blowing patents for things like a compact fusion reactor strong enough to power cities, an electromagnetic field generator and an aircraft that’s also a submarine. Wait, what?
Read MoreWe’ve heard it endlessly, and it’s still true: Making cars is hard. One of the ways this message is delivered to the masses is through the reports of manufacturing glitches, sometimes as recalls. For smaller issues, reminders may come in the form of Technical Service Bulletins, documents that car companies create to provide repair instructions for those issues.
Read MoreIntellectually, we all know that the advancements and technological marvels that we all take for granted in modern cars — big center-stack color touchscreen displays, integrated computers, global navigation via a network of satellites, and even video game systems built right into the car — didn’t come out of nowhere. But it’s still surprising when you see just how far back some of these roots go. In the case of the modern novelties I’ve just mentioned here, you can find them all in a Ford concep
Read MoreRoad departments deploy plow and salt trucks to keep roads clear and safe this time of year. But that safety comes at a cost, in the form of damage to infrastructure and cars. One possible solution to this problem is a road that can heat and cool itself. It’s a clever innovation but it has a massive catch.
Read MoreA couple of weeks after General Motors and Microsoft announced a partnership that will see the tech giant providing the cloud data backbone to support GM’s autonomous driving initiatives, Ford and Google have joined forces as well. And in Ford’s case, data is merely where this collaboration begins.
Read MoreVolkswagen announced a pilot program for EV battery recycling in Salzgitter, Germany, and it’s about time one of the biggest carmakers started addressing the inevitable EV question: What about the batteries?
Read MoreNikola bust onto the scene with a lot of braggadocio. Then whispers that the founder was spouting bullshit turned into murmurs and yells, and then he resigned amid a workplace scandal. Now an internal review from Nikola affirms that he was full of shit. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 26, 2021.
Read MoreTesla has a mysterious production stoppage, Aston Martin claims it’s almost doing fine again, and the new Mercedes C-Class. All that and more in the The Morning Shift for February 25, 2021.
Read MoreApple’s car project may be forever in limbo, but Foxconn, the company that manufactures the iPhone, has just made another step into the auto industry. All that and more in the The Morning Shift for February 24, 2021.
Read MoreElon Musk still isn’t poor, Ford has an F-150 recall, and Mitsubishi. All that and more in The Morning Shift for Feburary 23, 2021.
Read MoreThere is no god, but it does make for a convenient explanation why Boeing is asking for airlines to ground some Boeing 777 jets after a chunks of an engine fell in someone’s yard. All that and more in The Morning Shift for Feburary 22, 2021.
Read MoreHonda has a new CEO, Kia begins its Carnival ramp-up, and Renault. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 19, 2021.
Read MoreI can’t believe I am typing this, but once again the Taiwanese postal service has snubbed yet another foreign government. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 18, 2021.
Read MoreFord is making a bunch of noise about electric cars, Nissan reacts to an earthquake, and Bentley. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 17, 2021.
Read MoreJaguar was just about to debut its EV replacement for the legendary XJ sedan only to cancel it at the last moment. Then it declared that it would make a new EV XJ, just a different one. Jaguar is going all-electric in the dumbest way possible, and I still think it’s a good idea. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 16, 2021.
Read MoreBillions and trillions are spilling out of the Federal Government, or at least they’re trying to. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 12, 2021.
Read MoreIf I was a Chrysler 300 worker I’d be running for the hills, the Infiniti QX60 is going to get redone, and electric cars. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 11, 2021.
Read MoreIt’s Ford vs GM, but not a battle about truck sales or pony car quarter-mile times. It’s a battery battle, backing an electric F-150 on one side, and everything else electric from GM on the other. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 10, 2021.
Read MoreNissan may have turned a corner, Volvo wants 2021 to be epic, and Honda. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 9, 2021.
Read MoreWelcome to the most Tesla story imaginable: The EV company is investing $1.5 billion into Bitcoin and plans to accept the cryptocurrency for its cars, as Bloomberg reports. All that and more in The Morning Shift for Monday, February 8, 2021.
Read MoreIt is the season of earnings reports, Tesla might be going to Indonesia, and this chip shortage is something else. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 5, 2021.
Read MoreAmazon’s working conditions are notoriously horrible, but the company thinks its drivers are the problem. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 4, 2021.
Read MoreApple, the computer company, is still making noises about an electric car, Toyota thinks 2021 will be good, and Elon Musk. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 3, 2021.
Read MoreGM dropped support of one of Trump’s anti-environment measures back in November, and now Toyota and FCA are joining in. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 2, 2021.
Read MoreLexus is reimagining itself, Ferrari needs a new CEO, and Elon Musk. All that and more in The Morning Shift for February 1, 2021.
Read MoreI am a huge fan of internal combustion-engine driven cars. I think they’re loads of fun to drive, and from a mechanical complexity standpoint, they really satisfy the engineer-y side of my brain. But another joy of the outgoing method of vehicle propulsion came to my mind yesterday when I ran out of gas: It’s easy to get un-stranded when your tank is empty. Like, really easy.
Read MoreMultiple studies have shown that women stand a greater chance of being killed in a car accident than men, and a significantly greater chance to be injured. A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety proposes some reasons why that’s the case, like vehicle choice. Unfortunately, it also downplays the most obvious one.
Read MoreHave you ever wanted a Raptor but thought it just wasn’t large enough? Shelby may have just the truck for you with the F-250 Super Baja. This ridiculous truck is like a Raptor, but with everything cranked up to 11.
Read MoreThe disagreement between Jeep and the Cherokee Nation over the use of the Cherokee nameplate for its SUVs is far from over.
Read MoreIn Reno, Nevada sits a Jeep so rare that I’m certain it’s the only one of its kind remaining. Not only is the vehicle outfitted with a manual transmission, making it one of roughly 1,500 “holy grail” Jeeps ever built, but it’s also missing the big plastic, questionable-looking door cladding found on 99.9 percent of all Grand Cherokee ZJs. Here’s why that makes this Jeep the holy grail of holy grails.
Read MoreWell, folks. The time is here. It’s time for me to audit one of my first-ever collectively despised Jalopnik takes. It’s time to say that I’ve changed my mind and that pickup trucks are not a plague and should not be banned, contrary to my previously stated beliefs.
Read MoreThe Jimny is one of the coolest off-roaders bar none, but did you know that there’s room for improvement even for the Jimny? This is what peak performance looks like, and its name is the Maruti Suzuki Gypsy.
Read MoreI’ve said it many times: America has some of the weirdest car cultures in the world, due largely to our lack of vehicle inspections. Germany, for example, would never allow someone to just swap one car’s face onto another — it’s madness. But that madness exists here in the U.S. in spades; just look at this low-mileage Toyota Land Cruiser with a Toyota Tundra face.
Read MoreWe know the Glickenhaus Boot as a gnarly off-roader, and now Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus says it will follow up that desert-buster with a fuel-cell version called the Zero Emission Boot. It’s such a terrible idea that it actually ends up being kind of awesome.
Read MoreHere, we have a classic conundrum. You’ve got your car (in this case, a little primer-colored van) on one side of a thing (in this case, some kind of drainage ditch) and you want it to be on the other side of the thing. So you get to puzzling it out. Maybe a jump?
Read MoreThe 2021 Ram 1500 HFE EcoDiesel looks just fine, which is to say it looks like a Ram, which is all I will say about the matter because Ram owners love their Rams. That’s not what Ram wants you to think about the 2021 Ram 1500 HFE EcoDiesel anyway, because the 2021 Ram 1500 HFE EcoDiesel can get up to 33 mpg.
Read MoreWacky vehicular mashups tend to be the work of ambitious home builders with a reciprocating saw and a welder or shops with way too much time on their hands. At first glance, this 2007 Tropical Cabines Tropiclassic appears to be just that. It’s a Ford F-250 Super Duty pickup morphed into a sedan. But there’s more to this weird chimera’s story than that. This truck is one of the few ways Brazilians can own a diesel-powered vehicle.
Read MoreSemi trucks are cool. I don’t know what law of humanity determines this to be so, but it is a basic fact of life that big honk honk diesel daddies are among the most awe-inspiring modes of transportation in the world. Among them, a COE rig is significantly cooler than the standard engine-forward tractor configuration. There’s just something extra about climbing up into a seat above the front wheel, hanging it all out there, and hauling a little more than ass.
Read MoreFord’s F-150 Raptor is a favorite for off-roaders wanting to give their pickups the fullest send. However, the trucks weren’t always up to the task of massive airtime jumps. If this awesome jump is anything to go by, the new Raptor is properly tough.
Read MoreFord is feeling even more nostalgic as the Bronco takes off. It announced the new Bronco 4600, which nods to the 1969 Baja 1000 champ. The new offroader is a desert-racing modified version of the Bronco Sasquatch.
Read MoreThe reveal of the 2021 Ford Raptor has made me realize that American pickup truck advertisements and videos are often shot and edited almost exactly like a horror movie. This clip of the new off-road pickup tearing through the dust clouds its kicking up as its 3.5-liter V6 roars is just about as intimidating as most mainstream horror.
Read MoreThere’s a new 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor, and it’s getting a V6 as standard. That’s the same deal as the current generation. The difference is that the new Raptor will also get a Raptor R model that comes with a V8, like the original. This had me wondering: Did Ford switch up the Raptor’s engine because the six-cylinder was a dud?
Read MoreThe 2022 Nissan Frontier has finally been officially revealed after months of leaks, pairing the new 310 horsepower 3.8-liter direct-injection V6 engine introduced on the outgoing pickup last year with a much-needed styling overhaul that makes the truck refreshingly unrecognizable, and definitely seem heftier.
Read MoreI am staring at this truck and it is simultaneously a 1979 Ford with a 2014 Raptor grafted into it, and a 2014 Ford Raptor with a 1979 Ford grafted on top of it.
Read MoreWe’re living in a time when pickup trucks are hitting unbelievable power numbers, tow ratings, and all sorts of handy technology. But you know what modern trucks are? Too soft. Or at least, that’s what Roadster Shop wants you to think as it releases a turn-key resto-modded Chevy square body truck.
Read MoreFord is shoving a V8 back into the F-150 Raptor and calling it the “Raptor R.” (And yes, it will be street legal, contrary to what you may have read earlier). Keep reading this article for a little more on that and on the all-new 2021 Ford Raptor, which for the first time ever brings coil springs to the F-150.
Read MoreThe Patina wars are once again underway, this time with a 1965 Chevy C10 taking the crown from a Florida-based 1957 Ford F-100 (which itself stole Patina King honors from a 1985 Ford F-250 located in Washington state). Behold an incredible, somehow “rust free” Chevy pickup.
Read MoreA new teaser video for the upcoming next-generation Nissan Frontier pickup truck gives us a good look at some key design features and reveals what we long suspected: The U.S. Frontier will look a little like the facelifted Nissan Navara already sold around the globe. It’ll supposedly be bigger, though.
Read MoreThe 2021 Volkswagen Arteon feels like one of those car-designers sketches made real, and in a world now mostly populated by tall, clunky-looking SUVs, driving something low and elegant like the Arteon feels like a statement. Based on sales, though, it sadly looks like it’s not a statement many people are interested in making.
Read MoreA few months back, I got lucky. My 1980s mountain bike, a 1987 Schwinn Cimarron I got for $150, snapped in half. The luck was twofold: First, I was just putting along a little trail and not flying over a jump, and second, I would get to see how an old steel bike gets brazed back together.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at thread checkers to identify nuts and bolts, battery desulfators and heat-shrink self-solder butt-splice connectors to make wiring connections easy. This week’s cool tool, the Mini-Ductor II, loosens stuck bolts like a torch could but without all of the flames.
Read MoreOne of my favorite pastimes is watching other people make progress on their wacky build projects on various YouTube channels. I subscribe to literally hundreds of car channels, and these are a few of my favorites to watch right now, you know, while we’re in between Project Binky episodes. Electric swaps, body swaps, engine swaps, and wholesale ground-up builds are totally my jam, and I could watch them all day. Here are a handful of my favorites on the internet right now.
Read MoreThe last time we looked in on the ambitious Wesley Kagan, he had managed to put Koenigsegg-style Freevalve engine tech into a lowly Harbor Freight Predator engine. The little engine ran, even if it had a few glitches to be ironed out. Now Kagan is taking his idea to the next level: He’s adapted Freevalve technology to a Miata four-cylinder.
Read MoreHis name is Tizian, and there is nobody else like him in the world. As a young German who also happens to be the world’s foremost expert on Chrysler Voyager minivans, he is a true anomaly. His shop, located in a former textile mill in Aachen, Germany, is cluttered with rare parts for the American-engineered family hauler. A few months back, I drove to this minivan safe-haven in my own Chrysler Voyager, Project Krassler.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at thread checkers to identify nuts and bolts, handy flexible hose clamp pliers and battery desulfators. This week’s cool tool, generically known as heat-shrink self-solder butt-splice connectors, make wiring jobs quick and seemingly safe and reliable. The big deal is that you won’t need to plug in a soldering iron or fire up a torch — these make the connection and seal the joint using a hot air gun (like a paint stripping tool) or even a pocket lighter.
Read MoreThe garage is the absolute soul of the automotive hobby. It’s the place where the beers are cold, the benchracing is impressive, the project cars are hellish, and the camaraderie cures all that ails you. Having a comfortable and useful garage is almost as important as the cars you keep in it. As near as I can tell, this garage was installed almost 90 years ago, and after all that time I decided that it needed some upgrades. The best place to start for such a thing is with useful storage.
Read MoreOf course, the one I didn’t try was “do things right the first time.” Still, with at least three and a half correct elements out of five, I got some not-quite tubeless tires to mount and hold air.
Read MoreA guy in a 997 911 that he clearly loved more than life once pointed to the black tape and the nicks on the bumper of my Honda Fit and, a bit jealously, said, “You know, there’s a freedom in that.”
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at handy flexible hose clamp pliers, screw-holding screwdrivers and battery desulfators that rescue batteries from the dead. This week’s cool tool, the nut and bolt thread checker, can identify the exact thread size of your project car’s most random bolts.
Read MoreEvery time I feel like I’ve kicked my car hoarding habit, a new temptation enters the fray. It’s like being a recovering alcoholic who works as a bartender — it really is an exercise in futility. The latest vehicle threatening the over six-month auto-sobriety that followed my unfortunate City Ordinance fiasco is 2002 Lexus LX470. It’s basically a fancy 100 Series Toyota Land Cruiser, and given its rust-free nature and low price, I’m really struggling to turn the thing down. This is where you com
Read MoreI cannot begin to tell you how excited I was to clear off a table, lay out a pair of cone wrenches, a little jar of mineral spirits, and a few other little rags, tweezers, and tools and start tearing apart a completely obsolete and needlessly complicated set of Shimano XTR v-brakes.
Read MoreA few months ago my significant other gave me a school bus for my birthday. It’s a dream come true, and I can’t stop thinking about what I want to do with it. Now that we have a platform to build a camper on and it’s legal for me to drive, it’s time to get our hands dirty. But before I dive too deeply into the camper build, I need to square away a few issues.
Read MoreThere’s an awful lot to like about Brian Turney’s video documentation of his quest to class up his Dodge Magnum by swapping on the more dignified and upscale face of a Chrysler 300: first, there’s the swap itself, which results in a Chrysler 300 wagon, something that, I think, works wonderfully. Then, there’s the process of seeing it all happen in stop-motion video, which is the real innovation here. The whole thing is just so fun and effective. I love it.
Read MoreOver the past few weeks we’ve looked at handy OBD-II monitors, flexible hose clamp pliers and screw-holding screwdrivers that make dropping screws less likely. This week’s tool, a desulfator battery charger and maintainer, can revive weak batteries from deep sleep.
Read More