“Motor Trend,” TTAC alum and occasional minor-event organizer Brock Yates once declared, “is for people who move their lips when they read.” Were Yates still with us, he’d likely be somewhat less than surprised at the breakneck pace with which MT is attempting to transform itself into a YouTube video first and a magazine-for-morons second. It’s a sound business model; why limit your content to the even vaguely literate when you can break the shackles of the written word entirely and deliver extended advertorials to the lowest possible common denominator?

Of course, it would be both crass and impolite for us to imply that Motor Trend thinks its consumers are complete idiots who will eagerly place their lips on the corporate cloaca of “TEN: The Enthusiast Network” and eagerly lap up whatever poorly digested material is splattered into their open mouths.

It would also be unnecessary, because — as of last night — Motor Trend has made that point for us.

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UPDATE: Other sites seem to have received some additional information from dealers. It has been added below the jump.

Those looking to put down money on one of the most storied nameplates in Lincoln’s history will have to shell out $45,485, which includes destination and delivery, for the privilege.

For that near-as-makes-no-difference $50,000, Lincoln will build you a Continental Premiere with a 3.7-liter V6 engine that sends power to the front wheels.

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TTAC regular PrincipalDan writes:

Sajeev,

With the price of gas dropping to levels not seen in many moons, a thought occurred to me: Many of us are driving around in an average vehicle that has an engine used by another vehicle advertised as having more horsepower and recommending premium fuel.

For example: Toyota’s 3.5-liter V6 powers the Camry and ES350, but the Toyota’s tests with 87 octane fuel while Lexus tests with 91 octane fuel.

Do the manufactures actually bother using different engine programing in these various vehicles? Or is greater horsepower just a premium fill-up away for those with lowlier vehicles with premium antecedents?

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Dear Fiat (FIAT?),

I didn’t want to love your little 500X crossover. I frankly find the very notion of it ridiculous. In fact, the only reason why I selected it as my rental car last week was because the keys were strangely missing from the cabin of the Ford Edge SEL that I really wanted to borrow. If I hadn’t picked your bug-eyed cute monster, I would have had my choice of three different colors of four-cylinder Altimas. Not cool, Emerald Aisle. Not cool.

So, as fate had it, I picked the 500X. And like all the best romance stories, our inauspicious beginning led to a quirky, odd pairing that neither one of us wanted to end. Well, at least I didn’t. You probably didn’t give a fuck.

But this is our story.

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It’s an all-too-familiar tale in the Crescent City of New Orleans, a city that has held the dubious title of “Most Dangerous City in America” on multiple occasions. 164 murders occurred in the city limits in 2015, the fourth highest murder rate per capita of any American city and the 32nd most of any city in the world, so it’s not unusual to hear of a shooting that occurred inside the Lower Garden District on Saturday night.

It’s a bit more unusual to hear that it might have been motivated by road rage, although we have certainly heard of that story before.

Yet, when a shooting involves one of the most beloved people in the history of the city, and when it begins to seem like there’s more to the story than just a traffic accident gone wrong, I begin to wonder how Will Smith ended up dead, slumped over the wheel of his vehicle, while his killer stood by calmly and waited to be arrested for murdering a local legend.  Read More >

A week during which I recently spent driving an Audi Q3 clarified once and for all that, against everything pointing to the contrary, there’s not a bone of pro-Audi bias in my lanky frame.

My father didn’t claim that his handful of Audi 5000 Turbo Quattros — including a couple beige examples — and his red Audi Coupe were the absolute best driver’s cars, but he never wanted to drive what everybody else was driving. No BMWs, no Benzes, no Lincolns.

All five of us kids loved those Audis. One of my older brothers and I would pretend that the unbuckled middle seatbelt attachment was a microphone as we called the race home between Bobby Rahal in the Chevrolet Celebrity alongside, Emerson Fittipaldi in the Ford Taurus up ahead, and our dad in the Audi. And what a race it was. Mr. Cain didn’t take it slow until the four-cylinder Subaru bug bit 15 years later.

With all my childhood experience in five hard-driven Audis, you may forgive the natural eventuality, that in my career as a full-time auto writer, I wouldn’t be able to escape a pro-Audi bias. I’m only human, right? Read More >

A group of Jeep fans wants Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne to make a Sophie’s Choice-style decision to save their beloved offroader.

To avoid the destruction of the storied brand at the hands of its parent company, FCA must cast it loose, the group states in a strongly-worded Change.org petition.

“As owners and fans of Jeep vehicles, we are calling on Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to separate Jeep from FCA’s stable of failing brands and debt,” the petition states. “We urge FCA to execute a spinoff to save Jeep.”

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Didn’t we all have a good laugh earlier this week about the confrontation between a low-talent Florida motorcyclist and a low-IQ Fusion driver? Shouldn’t it be a lesson to all of us to never ride a motorcycle in Florida, even though we now know how it started and how it’s gonna end? What kind of idiot would deliberately go rent a motorcycle and ride it around Florida immediately after watching that video?

Well, friends and readers, I am precisely that kind of idiot.

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“Get that thing off my driveway!” was how Ford’s former executive director of design Peter Horbury described his wife’s reaction the first time she saw the newest people-mover from Ford back in 2008. It was a radical shift for a company that recently exited the minivan market (goodbye Freestar) in favor of something more in tune with the times.

At least that was the plan.

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“I love it,” the man once said, “when a plan comes together.” And this was the mother of all ad hoc, free-range, domino-effect plans.

Avant-garde pianist Hiromi Uehara, along with six-string bass monster Anthony Jackson and noted over-drummer Simon Phillips, had a 7:30 p.m. gig one evening in Fort Lauderdale. Southwest had a nonstop from Columbus that touched down in Fort Lauderdale at 6:35 p.m. Could I get off the plane, get a rental car, and make it to my fourth-row center-stage seat by 7:30 sharp? Google Maps said that the drive was 27 minutes. This was the kind of concert where they don’t take you to your seat if you show up late.

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Jeremy writes:

I’m making about $60,000/year after taxes as a recent college grad and I’m still living with my parents. My expenses excluding student loans are minimal, and those loans are small enough that I should have them paid off this year.

I want to buy a car with limits far beyond mine and try not to kill myself with it. I’ve settled on the Dodge Viper ACR.

This is where you come in: I need you to talk me out of it.

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“My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests.”

— Walter Kirn 

I quote Mr. Kirn to begin this review not only because his novel, Up In The Air, may as well be an unauthorized Bark M. biography, but because he’s right. Writers need to go to New York. More specifically, autowriters need to go to the New York International Auto Show. Detroit is the biggest. Geneva gets all the supercars. But to see and be seen? To network with fellow writers? To get your finger on the pulse of what’s shaking in the car biz?

There’s only one show that matters, and that’s New York.

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It’s just the title of a recent Charlie Hunter album, but it says a lot about life in post-2008 America: Not Getting Behind Is The New Getting Ahead.

Here’s one example: According to Business Insider, the average middle-class family can no longer afford the average new car. Is that true? And if it is true, how and why did that happen, and what can be done to fix this sad state of affairs?

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Last week, I asked the B&B if this Civic-ramming incident was malicious or merely idiotic. No such question could possibly be raised about what you’re about to see. This video has it all: the stereotypical “Florida Man” (or possibly “Georgia Man”) in full assault mode, some of the most hellaciously dangerous motorcycling you’ll ever see, and plenty of Michael-Bay-movie-in-real-life swerving into oncoming traffic.

The best part, however, is how a fellow behind the wheel of a motorcycle that is literally faster than a Ferrari 599 Fiorano can’t quite escape the murderous attentions of … a previous-generation Ford Fusion.

Somebody sign that guy up for NASCAR!

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It looks like Volkswagen has inadvertently sent a fix for its illegally polluting TDI vehicles to a customer, along with a letter spelling out the costs of said fix.

The fix, which is included on an OBD II adapter, wasn’t supposed to be sent with the letter, explained the TDI owner who wished to remain anonymous. Other TDI owners can expect to receive their fix in the next 90 days, says the letter.

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