Long-time TTAC readers will recall that we tested a Hertz Penske GT around MSR Houston earlier this year and were thoroughly charmed by the factory-modded Mustang. There’s no doubt that the Penske is significantly superior to a standard Mustang GT, but if resale values for them once they leave the Hertz fleet follow those demonstrated by the 2006 Shelby GT-H, you’ll never get a bargain on one.

However, the black-and-yellow bomber wasn’t the only special-edition Mustang that Ford built for Hertz this year, so if you’re willing to be a little flexible on specification, you can buy a pre-abused Coyote-engined GT Premium for twenty-five grand or less…
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On June 15th of this year, three people who had stopped to help the driver of a stranded vehicle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were struck by a vehicle driven by sixteen-year-old Ethan Couch. All three people were killed, as was the driver. The two passengers in Ethan’s car were ejected; one suffered from multiple broken bones, while the other was paralyzed to the point that he must now use his eyes to communicate with others.

Testing revealed that Ethan was drunk, with a BAC of .24, and had traces of Valium in his system. The prosecution asked for a twenty-year prison sentence. What they got was something else entirely.

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Distracted driving is a problem, and if you don’t believe us, just ask Sally Kurgis’s dad. (Miss Kurgis, by the way, got a sweetheart deal from the Columbus courts, something that is currently being hotly debated within the city itself.) Because distracted driving is a much safer and easier arrest to make than, say, drug dealing such a danger to the public, many police departments in California and elsewhere have a laser-like focus on punishing anyone crazy enough to touch a cellphone while operating a motor vehicle.

A Los Angeles comedian has decided to gum up the easy-ticket-money works a bit —- but there’s some genuine irony involved.
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When a New Mexico state police officer fired shots at a minivan that was fleeing the scene of an arrest, TTAC’s readers were sharply divided on the merits of his actions. Now, officer Elias Montoya has been terminated from his job as a highway patrolman — and many New Mexico residents are rising to his defense.

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Most of the details regarding the new BMW M3 and M4 are pretty well-known already, but a new round of official images has been leaked ahead of the cars’ North American PR releases. Supposedly, this will be the lightest M3 in three generations, with an all-time high horsepower and (particularly) torque rating courtesy of twin turbos and a completely revised in-line six engine. Gallery after the jump.

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While TTAC typically covers at least three of the major US auto shows and a couple foreign ones, usually by proxy in the latter cases, we have never formally sent anyone to SEMA or PRI. This is changing for 2013, courtesy of NASA racer and Great Lakes Region Instructor Of The Year, Melissa Davis, who is not the dude on the right.
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In a rather terse and self-consciously matter-of-fact column released earlier today, Jalopnik’s Matt Hardigree drew a line in the sand: the website will not honor any product embargoes not related to new-car drive events and opportunities. He’s careful to point out that it’s business advantages, not ethical considerations, underlying the change in policy.

To the PR people in their metaphorical ivory towers who consider Jalopnik to be nothing but a heavily-JavaScripted sewer for mouth-breathing teenagers, bronys, unemployed Millennials living at home with their parents, and euphoric-fedora-wearing forever-alone virgins who were perma-banned from “9GAG” for failing to meet that site’s minimum IQ requirements, Mr. Hardigree’s decision probably appears to warrant no action other than taking all Gawker-domain email addresses off pre-packaged product communication. The serenity with which they will do so probably closely approximates what the last Brachiosaurus felt as he calmly chewed the first of the day’s ten thousand leaves while watching a bright flash streak across the morning sky, and for about the same reason: their ability to see the future stops at the hindbrain. In the long run, however, everybody will suffer — or almost everybody, including you.

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On the same day that a Chinese firm announced that it would restart production of the 9-3, I happened to bump into the poster child for Saab’s decline and fall.

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Normally, my adopted hometown of Columbus, Ohio is a pretty booooring place. But every once in a while, a young woman rams a police cruiser with her Nissan Rogue and starts an awesome police chase that ends with a full-on PIT.

Now, after this jump, we’re going to show you a few photos of this nice young lady from Facebook, along with a link to the genuinely awesome dashcam video compilation. BUT IF YOU’RE AT WORK, WAIT TILL YOU GET HOME, OKAY?

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On the days when my Honda CB550 can be bothered to wake up and run properly for my daily commute, I’m frequently passed by everything from HEMI-powered Grand Cherokees to Vulcan-powered Mercury Sables. That’s because the Honda CB550 is only slightly more powerful than a KitchenAid mixer.

This fellow, on the other hand, has a motorcycle capable of reaching 300 km/h on the rev limiter. That’s 186mph in American money. But as you’ll see, it isn’t quite enough.

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Fast and Furious star Paul Walker lost his life last night While riding passenger in a Porsche Carrera GT driven by fellow gentleman racer Roger Rodas. The car struck a tree and burned; both Mr. Walker and Mr. Rodas failed to survive.

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Oh, Cayenne owners, you so crazy! And I should know — the $96,000 GTS 6MT above was briefly my company car way back in the day. I also had a plain “S” in 2004, although that proved to be so popular with a business partner of mine I wound up trading him for a Cadillac STS. Neither of the Touaregs-in-drag ever managed to spend more than a few months away from the loving embrace of our local Porsche dealer, so there was no third Cayenne in the plan. You know what they say: fool me twice, I won’t get fooled again.

But there are people out there who have found the Cayenne even more painful than I did.
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“When,” I asked her, “did you realize that you, were, well, you know, an actual prostitute?”

“Well,” she said, rubbing her cigarette out in the waffle-patterned wrought-iron table, shielding her eyes against the sun as it set in the distance, “I’d been dancing for a while, and there was kind of a grey area there, you’d date a guy and he’d toss you some money to stay home from the club some nights, and then I started being less picky about the guys I’d let cash me out, if a guy was decent-looking he didn’t have to necessarily be my boyfriend. And then I had a friend who did a few parties from time to time, bachelor parties and stuff, and I went with her, and it was good money. And you get used to the idea that you can make five hundred or a thousand bucks really easy. So I stopped dancing because that was getting in the way of my ability to do parties.”

“And…”

“And, I started taking calls to hotels in Beverly Hills. And one night I was on my way back from one of those and a guy in a nice car pulled up and offered me three hundred bucks for a quick date. It was bonus money, so I took it. Well, I went back to that street on a night when I wasn’t going to a hotel.” She frowns and looks down at the table for a moment before continuing. “So I’m out on the street, and I’m talking to a guy, and all of a sudden there’s a cop car there and they’re cuffing me, and I’m asking what’s going on, and they say I was soliciting, and I asked what they meant, and they said streetwalking, and I’m all, like, you have me confused with somebody else, I’m not a whore, I’m not a hooker, you know?”

Her hands flutter and she takes a sip of her soda, then she looks me square in the eye, level, expressionless. “Except, it turns out that I was.”
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Yaris: It’s A Car! If you go to the Toyota website to learn about the logical successor to the original, and fabulous, Corolla Tercel, that is the slogan with which you’ll be confronted. Yaris: It’s A Car! What you won’t find is any mention of how much power the Yaris makes (106 horsepower) or the […]

Die-hard TTAC readers who stick with us for the weekends might notice something strange about the site today: we’re missing a post. On Sunday morning, we republished a story that originally appeared on SVTPerformance.com. We did this after coming to an agreement with the administrator of that site to “re-pop” news and features that might be of interest to the Best&Brightest, in exchange for links back to the original site.

Yesterday afternoon, the fellow who had originally given us permission to publish the article changed his mind and demanded that we take it down immediately, stating that “[the article] was a direct copy with no link-back initially. When one was added it was a pitiful effort; a single hyperlink that looks identical to several other hyperlinks that lead back to your site.” We’ve honored his request to take the article down and to never, ever, ever link to the “SVT Performance” fansite again.

However, one important piece of the article — an email written by Jamal Hameedi regarding the merits of Nurburgring lap-time marketing — was delivered to us under separate cover by another source, so we’re republishing that after the jump.
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