Regulators may rain on Elio’s parade even before they got started.
That, Volvo takes a serious stab at full-size luxury conventional wisdom, the big get bigger and Ford’s hybrids only go so far … after the break!
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Category: Enthusiasm
If you didn’t know it was Jeep’s 75th anniversary this year, it’s your fault for not paying attention. Pretty much all of the automaker’s SUVs are rolling billboards for its “Since 1941” branding, and now Jeep is officially doing something to celebrate.
Jeep launched its 75th Anniversary lineup Wednesday, which includes special editions for all its models. All of the Jeeps are candied in some sort of “macho” green — Jungle Green, Sarge Green or Recon Green — with bronze wheels, some sort of opening roof, and available cloth.
Oh, and there are a bucket-full of badges everywhere so you can feel special edition too.
Faraday Future revealed its FFZERO1 Concept in Las Vegas on Monday night. It is a striking artifact that continues to keep the company’s product plans mysterious. This “car of concepts,” as Head of Design Richard Kim called it, is an extreme expression containing select elements that foreshadow the company’s production vehicles.
We now know that Faraday Future (they like to be called FF) can design a theoretical 200+ mph, 1,000 horsepower, single-seat hypercar. Even in a world full of extreme cars, this one looks futuristic. But this is not an attempt to compete with Bugatti, Koenigsegg, or Ascari. It’s an extreme test-bed, right down to the drag reducing, heat-dissipating pair of see-through “aero-tunnels” channeling air directly through the vehicle.
Where do you end up if you’re the former CEO of a company guilty of cheating diesel emissions tests, the fallout of which wipes out billions of dollars of value from said company? Business Insider’s “The 15 biggest career crashes of 2015” list, of course.
That, and Nissan prices the new Sentra, oil is still on a well-lubricated downhill slide, Jeep is now online in India, and more … after the break!
Newly promoted, high-priced executives at Mazda seem to think there’s something to this crossover fad.
That, Hyundai’s landed a Benjamin Button to lead Genesis and I wish I would have known how cheap I could have purchased an F1 team … after the break.
Looking for a place to park that retirement cash? Find a Porsche crest.
Last year, the average sale price for 1974-1977 Porsches increased by 154 percent, according to Bloomberg — and the prices aren’t expected to drop anytime soon, according to the report.
“European sports cars in general have been on a real rise in the last couple of years,” Gord Duff, from RM Sotheby’s, told Bloomberg. “Ferraris lead the way and then you go to the next greatest European sports cars, which are Mercedes, and then you get to Porsches. If we are saying Mercedes have peaked, Porsches are the next best thing.” Read More >
From DNF to DNS, the Nissan GT-R LM project has finally been retired.
That, and it’s lights out for some Crown Vics, the UAW just wants to talk, Hyundai will spend more to lend more, and more … after the break.
The fine, fine folks over at Car & Driver spotted a trademark filing made by General Motors for “Corvette E-Ray,” which probably means they’re going to ruin the Corvette soon.
The trademark filing was made on Dec. 16, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, about three weeks after General Motors applied for a patent for a “Hybrid Powertrain and Modular Rear Drive Unit.”
Wait, what … so you’re saying hybrid, mid-engine brown manual Corvette could be real? Kill my mind. Read More >
The next-generation Nissan Z (which may or may not be: 1. A crossover; 2. Real; 3. Inspired by a bicycle; 4. FWD; 5. All of the above) may be less expensive than the current car, Nissan design chief Mamori Aoki told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
A lower price would appeal to a younger generation who can’t afford the Z’s current $30,000 price tag, Aoki said. Well, yeah.
Interestingly, the report notes that a less-expensive Z could make room for a more powerful Nissan sports car that isn’t called a GT-R. Aoki told the newspaper that the GT-R would remain a flagship performance car that wouldn’t compromise speed for something as silly as price. Wonderful.
During the last week, much has been written about the “Driven By Disruption” auction Dec. 10 by RM Auction/Sotheby’s.
Most of that reporting was about Janis Joplin’s Porsche, which sold for a mildly outrageous sum of $1.6 million (plus fees), which beat the estimate about 2.5 times. Other top-dollar cars were mentioned as well, especially the first Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato sold in almost a decade, or the Ferrari 290 MM that was driven by the famous Juan Manuel Fangio in the Mille Miglia. Both cars brought even more eye-watering amounts of money – $13 million for the Aston, $25.5 million for the Ferrari. The Aston even set a historical record for the most expensive British car ever sold at auction.
The message is clear: The collector car market is not only alive and well, it’s thriving. Cars sell for ever-higher sums and they are a marvelous investment value. After all, they aren’t making any more classic Ferraris and Astons, are they? So the value can only go up, right? Read More >
If recent reports that you may soon be able to hop a flight from Miami to Havana, Cuba have you scrambling for your passport to spy Che’s Chevrolet and Fidel’s Oldsmobile, tranquilo.
According to Reuters, although commercial airlines in the U.S. may resume service to Cuba after a 54-year blackout, travelers to the island country still need to fall within 12 different criteria to enter the country, and “car watching” isn’t specifically one of them.
Journalists, humanitarians, doctors and people named Tom Morello still get to go.
Multiple outlets are reporting that the vehicle seen in this teaser photo from Volkswagen is none other than an electrified version of the Microbus concept and it will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show next month. The photo follows an earlier report by Autocar (which has since been updated with the same photo and new text) that said Volkswagen would bring a new Microbus to the Las Vegas convention.
We won’t disagree. We also won’t hold our breath for a production model.
According to a report last week from Japan’s Nikkei, the Mitsubishi Montero — known as the Pajero in other global markets — is totally, completely, and utterly dead. Mitsubishi will instead focus on crossovers and electrification going forward.
Mitsubishi had teased “The Return of a Legend” earlier this year before the Chicago Auto Show, which many in the automotive press — including TTAC — thought might be a replacement for the flagship SUV. The automaker showed instead its Mitsubishi Concept GC-PHEV.
According to the Nikkei report, Mitsubishi has all but stopped development on a new Montero/Pajero. The large SUV was last redesigned for the 2006 model year, but that generation didn’t make it to the United States.
In my life, I’ve officiated exactly two LeMons races thanks to the good graces of Murilee Martin. At those races, I’ve watched tech inspectors go over seats, belts and harnesses with more scrutiny than border guards in Israel. To be sure, it’s astounding to me how much safety needs to be welded, worked and crammed into a “junker” from the outside — most people never see that. But even I wondered sometimes why tech was so hard to pass.
There are myriad things that can go wrong on a racetrack. However, there are only a few things that can save lives when those things go wrong. For those lifesaving devices, there’s no substitute or corner-cutting, and there are reasons why good teams spend more on a cage and brakes than they ever spend on an engine.
Case in point: Coming up on a blind crest and running face-first into the rear of a stalled car and everyone is OK after.
Proving that all turbo Porsches aren’t created equal, Porsche announced Tuesday its eye-wateringly expensive 911 Turbo and 911 Turbo S hardtop and droptop versions that make up to 580 horsepower and dropkick the car from 0-60 mph in under 3 seconds.
In the trunk is Porsche’s 3.8-liter flat-six married to twin turbochargers that spin up 540 horsepower in the Turbo and 580 hp in the Turbo S (20 more than the outgoing models). The Turbo produces 523 pound-feet of twist (553 pound-feet on overboost in the Turbo S) on the way up to its 7,000 rpm redline (7,200 in the Turbo S). Porsche didn’t directly specify its gearbox, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the new 911 Turbo will only come with a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic because of course it will.
Both cars for the first time feature a quasi-antilag turbo system that reduces delay from the turbos by interrupting the fuel injection during changes in throttle position, according to the automaker.
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