Gearheads with a thirst for the off-road are spoilt for choice – and there’s more on the way. Chevrolet has announced a truck at which they were strongly hinting earlier this year: The Silverado ZR2 Bison.
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We return to our coverage of Lamborghini’s front-engine grand touring coupes today, and the story of the company’s first prototype. A teardrop-shaped two-door with sweeping lines and an angular rear, the 350GTV was the first passenger vehicle Ferruccio Lamborghini ever made. His past experience was as a successful businessman and builder of stylish Italian tractors at Lamborghini Trattori.
The high-strung 3.5-liter V12 was completed (albeit in race car specification) and the coupe’s body had been casually assembled by the craftsman of Carrozzeria Sargiotto, who usually made plastic moldings and not cars. Was the next stop the 1963 Turin Auto Show? Nope.
Last week, news broke that Ferrari was plotting a third assembly line in Maranello dedicated entirely to EV production. But this turned out to be little more than a preamble for the obligatory announcement that the company would eventually transition toward building electric vehicles.
On Thursday, the Italian automaker told investors that all-electric and hybrid models will make up 80 percent of its global sales volume by 2030. This is to be done via a slew of new products it hopes to launch between now and 2026. Though the first Ferrari to run exclusively on battery power isn’t scheduled to arrive until 2025. According to the manufacturer, it’s plotting to launch 15 new vehicles as part of the overarching strategy. While some of those will undoubtedly be duplicates boasting open-air cockpits and slightly different powertrains, it has still got to be some kind of record for the brand. Read More >
In 2017, General Motors bowed out of the European market. The tactical retreat came after nearly two decades of struggling to make the region profitable and freed up cash the company could use to expand more profitable endeavors located elsewhere. This basically entailed widening its footprint in China, eliminating modestly sized passenger vehicles from its North American lineup, and setting aside any extra money for electric vehicle development. However, the automaker’s Western clientele has been slower to embrace EVs than hoped, even with gas prices becoming astonishingly high, and market analysts expect the United States to be the very last developed nation to see alternative powertrains go mainstream.
One possible solution for this conundrum is to sell those all-electric vehicles elsewhere — namely Europe. Read More >
We here at TTAC are happy to announce that we have a winner from the Bridgestone summer tire giveaway we ran at the end of April.
In 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked manufacturers to begin reporting vehicle accidents where Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and/or semi-autonomous driving aids were engaged. The agency was specifically interested in incidents where such systems were active at least 30 seconds prior to the crash, hoping it might shed some light as to the technologies at play while the industry continues to make it standard equipment.
If there’s one thing on which the moneyed set can be counted, it’s to do everything in the extreme. Witness the Mercedes-AMG G 63 4×42, an immensely powerful SUV with portal axles which will surely see duty on the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
We pick up our Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission coverage again today, as Ford’s first mass-produced gearbox found its stride in the Fifties. As consumers turned toward automatic transmissions in their two- and four-door domestic iron, they also turned toward more powerful V8 engines and big chrome bumpers and tail fins. Detroit’s manufacturers had to respond, and Ford’s answer was a second-generation Ford-O-Matic, the FX and MX. Both transmissions were marketed under the new Cruise-O-Matic moniker, while a new generation two-speed auto became the bargain basement Ford-O-Matic.
As we discussed in our last entry, in 1957 and 1958 Ford offered fiddly Keyboard Control. The whiz-bang new feature meant the Cruise-O-Matic was operated by confusingly marked dash-mounted buttons on select Mercury vehicles. And while Keyboard Control was limited to Mercury, an even worse version of the same idea was reserved for Edsel. Read More >
It’s a safe bet that most DIYers are grateful to the wrenching deities for the democratization of LED illumination – especially when talking about work lights. Your author used to toil under cars and in tight spaces with incandescent work lights that heated themselves to approximately the surface of the sun, as I’m sure you all did as well.
This invariably led to skin-searing hilarity when one had the temerity to accidentally move their arm or leg near the offending work light. One old lamp, whose pattern on its yellow metal housing remains etched into my forearm, would get hot enough on which to light cigarettes. Seriously.
LEDs provided way brighter light than those old units could ever muster, not to mention are infinitely cooler and more compact. We’ve selected eight of them for your consideration.
The latest data from Carfax has indicated that roughly 50 million U.S. vehicles presumed to still be in operation still have outstanding recalls that have yet to be addressed. Though the good news is that this represents a 6 percent decline from 2021 and a meaningful 19 percent drop against 2017.
Still, the metrics may not be wholly down to better communication on the part of the manufacturer and people taking recall notices more seriously. Between 2013 and 2015, the average number of U.S. vehicles and equipment subjected to recalls per year went from 26.3 million to 83.6 million. While the annual averages have come back down since, recalls have remained substantially higher than in decades past. Read More >
Bent on turning its Raptor trim into a wide-reaching line of off-road-ready rigs, Ford will be applying the name to not just its F-150 but also upcoming variants of the Bronco and Ranger. While this isn’t new information – after all, Jim Farley himself tweeted about the Ranger Raptor earlier this year and the Bronco Raptor is currently being driven in California – it is neat to learn the truck has shown up on the company’s build-and-price tool Down Under.
Is it possible to be both overwhelmed and underwhelmed? Does the whelming up and down cancel itself out, leaving one with just the right amount of whelm? Or is there some sort of exponential curve, resulting in either a surplus or deficit of whelmification?
The red squiggly lines provided by the good people behind Microsoft Word tell me that I’m stretching the bounds of both language and reason here – but reason may not have been in the room when the folks in Munich plotted this 2022 BMW M8 Competition Gran Coupe. Heck, we can quibble on the language there, too, when considering the traditional definition of a coupe. But looking at the specs and the window sticker can lead one to conclusions that are occasionally not delivered upon slipping behind the wheel, thus leading to my conundrum. Read More >
On Monday, Ford Motor Co. notified dealers that it would be issuing a stop-sale notice for the all-electric “Mustang” Mach-E. The note made mention that the high-voltage contacts on the battery could overheat and cause malfunctions — potentially causing the vehicle to lose power while in operation or even fail to start.
Considering how absolutely wicked battery fires can become, this was likely a prudent move on the part of Ford. Over the last several years, EVs have been getting some negative attention for fires related to charging or battery failures of late and Blue Oval is likely aware that any mishaps with the Mach-E will be amplified as a result. Nipping this in the bud immediately is wise. However, the resulting recall has defaulted to the industry standard solution of issuing a software update on the affected models. Read More >
The Continental Division was in a very difficult place when it designed an all-new Mark III as the (sedan only) replacement for the slow-selling and super expensive Continental Mark II coupe. As we learned last time, shortly after the Mark II went on sale the Continental Division was already on its last legs. It continued to lose money hand over foot after Ford’s huge initial investment and was doomed to a quick closure.
And so it was the 1956 and 1957 Mark IIs became the only Continental Division product and the only Marks that were hand-assembled in a factory-built, especially for Continental. After Continental’s closure, Ford’s new VP of passenger vehicles Lewis Crusoe quickly dismantled the division and integrated its employees into Lincoln. The Continental factory became the Edsel factory, and the three extant Mark III prototypes became a burden.
Far beyond the reaches of old-school car bras and hood protectors are these clear paint protection films. Targeted at drivers who give a damn about their car’s paintwork, these options are dandy ways to keep a vehicle’s finish in good shape while not hiding anything under a leather protector. Read More >
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