After one week with a 2016 Ford F-150 XLT SuperCrew 2.7-liter EcoBoost, I’m convinced that this small turbocharged V6 engine is the pick of the current F-150 range.

Stunning acceleration, a positive working relationship with the F-150’s six-speed automatic, minor capability cutbacks, and a lower price tag combine to make the 2.7-liter completely worthy of full-size pickup truck duty, difficult though it may be for owners of 6.8-liter V10-powered Ford Super Dutys to believe.

But based on our week-long experiences with each F-150 EcoBoost engine, fuel economy hardly plays into the 2.7-litre’s favorable equation. Read More >

Retired Formula 1 cars are often relegated to a sedentary life as displays in museums or as pieces on a collectors wall. But one couple decided to change the fate of a Honda Earth Dreams Formula 1 car and turn it into their track day and hill climb vehicle.

Bjorn Arnils and Nadine Geary purchased the retired Earth Dreams RA107 Formula 1 car at Bonhams auction in 2010 for £37,000 ($53,110 USD at today’s exchange rates) and set off on a quest to turn it back into a running race car.

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The heavy financial cost of Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal is becoming clear.

After reaching a settlement yesterday with U.S. consumers and regulators, the automaker is more than doubling the size of its “make the problem go away” cash pile, Bloomberg is reporting.

Volkswagen set aside 16.2 billion euros ($18.6 billion) today to deal with the scandal’s fallout, up from the 6.7 billion euro ($7.6 billion) figure previously stated.  Read More >

Update: I made a decimal flub. The math is corrected. Thanks to commenter ChemEng for pointing it out. We’ll post a new piece on Monday.

There’s no denying it: Volkswagen cheated. It confessed to the crime of emitting up to 40 times over the legal limit allowed for NOx. We learned yesterday (and the day before, to some degree), that Volkswagen will fix the vehicles that can be fixed, if owners so choose.

But what happens to all those diesel cars, which are perfectly good aside from emitting more NOx than they should, if owners decide to cut and run? And what happens to all those vehicles that can’t be fixed? Volkswagen has vowed to buy them back from customers — to which I ask, what then?

There are few options Volkswagen can employ to unload the massive windfall of cars coming its way, and none of them are particularly environmentally friendly.

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Nissan is trying to play Tesla’s lengthy Model 3 waiting list to its advantage.

A print ad that landed in the country’s most-read newspapers this morning is playing up the Model 3’s wait times, according to Automotive News, and encouraging EV buyers to go the faster route by buying a Leaf.

There’s nothing subtle about the ad, which would have been green-lit by Nissan’s intimidating sales and marketing head Christian Meunier. Since taking on the role in January, Meunier has laid out an aggressive marketing strategy, meaning the Leaf spot could be the first of many cheeky ads. Read More >

A day after its head office was raided by Japanese Transport Ministry officials, the U.S. is going to put Mitsubishi’s mileage claims under scrutiny.

The scandal began when Mitsubishi admitted it overstated fuel economy numbers on its Japanese market eK mini wagons, but Reuters is now claiming the false data extends to U.S. market vehicles. Read More >

There’s a chance drivers may be in for an even tougher smog test next time around, all thanks to Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal.

Like the kid who made a ruckus in school and caused the whole class to be sent to detention, VW’s “defeat device” shenanigans may cause drivers of all vehicle brands to be studied under a more glaring microscope at test time, Bloomberg reports.

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Always dreamed of becoming a YouTube sensation? Wish you could get millions of clicks and finance your life from it?

That dream is a reality for Parker Nirenstein, a 21-year-old automotive engineering student at the University of Michigan and star of YouTube’s Vehicle Virgins channel.

Young, tech-savvy entrepreneurs always draw a crowd, and the BBC is the latest to take notice of this creator of viral car videos. Filmed on his own time, featuring supercars one day or simple used car advice the next, the channel sometimes generates nearly $1,000 of revenue a day. Read More >

Besides making steaks seem fancy and sending rebellious teens to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, it turns out mushrooms have another use.

Fibers from a type of wild mushroom outperformed graphite anodes on lithium-ion batteries, Wards Auto reports, a finding that surprised researchers at Purdue University.

As electric cars slowly proliferate, the knowledge could revolutionize the future of high-capacity batteries. Read More >

Note: In light of today’s news regarding an agreement between Volkswagen and U.S. regulators, we believe it’s pertinent to rerun this piece considering Volkswagen still plans on fixing some of the affected 2.0-liter TDI vehicles. —MS

In all reality, Volkswagen probably won’t pay $37,500 for each car that cheated its way through U.S. emissions standards, but the German automaker will probably pay thousands for each car to fit a device that would clean up their acts.

The presumed fix would come by retrofitting a Selective Catalytic Reduction (Adblue or urea) system although that wouldn’t be the only fix necessary. Researchers discovered that the Passat TDI that they tested, fitted with the SCR system, was 5 to 20 times over the NO limit — less than the 10 to 40 times by the lean NO filter cars, but still illegal.

The long list of items needed to fit models of the Volkswagen Golf, Jetta, Beetle and Audi A3 doesn’t include the engineering needed to retrofit the cars and the costs to crash test the models after the significant modifications. That’ll add hundreds of millions to the bottom line.

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Embattled automaker Volkswagen reached a long-awaited settlement deal in principle with regulators this morning in a California courtroom.

Before presiding judge Charles Breyer, Volkswagen agreed to buy back afflicted diesel models from U.S. buyers, while compensating their owners from a newly created fund. The automaker would accept early termination on leased models, and fix some vehicles if requested by owners. Read More >

Of all the Bond movies, there’s no doubt Goldfinger is the most iconic. Glamorous women, exotic locales, evil (and expendable) henchmen, nifty gadgets galore, and cars, cars, cars.

The 1964 film created the template for the movie franchise, and provided us with timeless images of vehicles we’ll probably never own in places we’ll probably never drive.

The man behind the movie, director Guy Hamilton, shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday at the age of 93. Though his career includes such classics as The Third Man, we can’t remember that film containing an ejection seat-equipped Aston Martin. Read More >

After a brief hiatus, the Honda Accord Hybrid is back, and it’s feeling good about itself. It thinks you’ll feel good about it, too.

Arriving this spring as a 2017 model, the Accord Hybrid hopes to capture more customers this time around. The previous generation proved to be something of a Jekyll-and-Hyde affair, with reviewers walking away reasonably impressed, or not so much. Read More >

Dirty Volkswagen diesels equipped with illicit “defeat devices” could soon be flying off driveways and into oblivion.

Sources briefed on the matter told Reuters (via Automotive News) that the automaker will offer to buy back up to half a million 2.0-liter TDI models in the U.S. that emit illegal levels of smog-causing emissions.

They expect that Volkswagen will make the offer tomorrow before a federal judge. The company’s deadline for a U.S. fix is tomorrow, and a failure to act will result in a trial the automaker desperately wants to avoid. Read More >

On the eve of a key U.S. deadline for a diesel emissions fix, Volkswagen has reportedly agreed to pay all American owners of afflicted TDI models $5,000 each.

The deal, reported by Germany’s Die Welt newspaper, would allow the automaker to avoid going to trial this summer, according to Automotive News.

Volkswagen was facing an April 21 deadline to outline a comprehensive fix for the 580,000 U.S. diesel models equipped with “defeat devices” designed to sidestep emissions regulations. The deadline was set in March by a U.S. District Court judge. Read More >