Autos
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2022 Jeep Grand Wagoneer Gets MPG—Just Not Many
See all 30 photos Under the hood of the all-new Jeep Grand Wagoneer sits a 6.4-liter V-8 producing 471 hp and 455 lb-ft of torque that pairs with an eight-speed automatic. The Grand Wagoneer can be had with four-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive. The 4WD Grand Wagoneer has an EPA-rated 13/18/15 mpg city/highway/combined, whereas the RWD configuration offers about the same fuel economy (albeit better on the highway) at 13/19/15 mpg. This unimpressive fuel economy should not be surprising. What else did you expect from a full-size luxury three-row SUV that will compete with the likes of the Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Navigator? One based on the Ram pickup truck frame? For comparison’s sake, the Navigator comes powered by a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V-6 mated to a 10-speed automatic good fo...
2022 Land Rover Defender V-8s Get Less Worse MPG Than Wrangler 392
We named the latest Land Rover Defender our 2021 SUV of the Year for its awesome design and incredible performance on-road and off. Land Rover announced the more powerful Defender variant earlier this year in February, confirming what we anticipated would be on its way: A Defender with a V-8 engine. And now fuel economy for that V-8-powered Land Rover is out; we’ve got mpg figures for the four-door Defender 110, as well as the two-door 90 series. See all 20 photos Sporting a rugged appearance and living up to its long-serving predecessor’s legacy, the modern Defender is an impressive off-roader. Surely it could be even more so with a V-8 under its hood, but of course, there is a price to pay. A supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 pumping out 518 hp and 461 lb-ft of torque just ain&...
Land Rover Will Build a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Defender Prototype
See all 53 photos Land Rover sees the technology as complementary to regular BEVs, and that’s largely true. Hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) benefit from rapid refueling, storing their energy in lightweight compressed hydrogen rather than heavy and slow-to-recharge batteries. Of course, the challenges are myriad: Hydrogen is explosive, hard to contain, and doesn’t have the infrastructure on the ground currently to support retail sales except for a few limited markets. Generating hydrogen fuel, too, is energy intensive and expensive (for now). See all 53 photos We think that may change in the near future, but either way, Land Rover wants to explore the technology, and so does the U.K. ‘s Advanced Propulsion Center, which has funded the project. A Defender fitte...
2021 Ford F-150 XLT PowerBoost Hybrid Review: Thunder Before the Lightning
Gasoline-electric hybrid pickup trucks have always been a good idea, and it’s frankly disappointing it’s taken this long for an automaker to build a good one. As good as the 2021 Ford F-150 XLT Powerboost is, though, it’ll be even better when the last few programming wrinkles are ironed out. Hybrid Power! Take the powertrain itself. It allows this full-size truck to hit 60 mph in 5.3 seconds, yet it’s also efficient, netting 24 mpg across the board with four-wheel drive, per the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA also claims the F-150 PowerBoost can travel up to 624 miles before needing to refuel. It’s a heck of a thing to spend a week driving all over Southern California in a truck this quick and see the gas gauge still sitting on three-quarters o...
Polestar Teases Made-In-America 3 Electric SUV
Polestar, the eco-performance brand spun out of Volvo and owned by Geely, is forming a beachhead in the U.S. And not just with imported vehicles like the (now discontinued) Polestar 1 and the (currently in production, with new upcoming variants) Polestar 2, but now with a manufacturing footprint and an upcoming EV. The Polestar 3 SUV will be built in Volvo’s Ridgeville, South Carolina factory, the company announced today. You can see the 3 hiding under a form-revealing, semi-translucent sheet—revealing a rakish roofline and sharp, aggressive nose, but frustratingly not much else. Polestar calls it an “aerodynamic electric performance SUV,” which hints at a high-riding but car-like crossover. Think Ford Mustang Mach-E or Tesla Model Y, but with the sleek and...
Jeep’s Hands-Free Driving Tech Sets Its Sights on Super Cruise and BlueCruise
Adaptive cruise control is so 2020. It’s the price of entry for vehicles above a certain price point, and indeed every trim level of the 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L gets this advanced driver assistance feature. To really wow buyers, automakers must offer a hands-free system like GM’s Super Cruise or Ford’s BlueCruise, the latter of which is just rolling out. With the launch of the 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, most of the pieces of Stellantis’ answer to these systems are in place by way of the automaker’s new Active Driving Assist feature, but the full hands-free variant is still some months off. How Active Driving Assist Works What separates Active Driving Assist from plain old adaptive cruise control is a more sophisticated sensor suite that involves camer...
You Can Buy Ken Block’s Menacing 1977 Ford F-150 Hoonitruck
See all 30 photos The widebody F-150 pickup truck premiered in Gymkhana 10, where the tire slayer wreaked havoc through Route 66 in Shamrock, Texas. He topped off his tire-slaying tour by drifting around a drove of artfully staged rusted vintage cars. But the career highlight of this custom Ford F-150 came when it conquered the allegedly most dangerous road in China, the Tianmen Shan Big Gate Road located within Tianmen Mountain National Park. See all 30 photos Peeking through the hood is a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V-6 EcoBoost pulled from the Ford GT Le Mans race car. The modified engine develops 914 horsepower and 702 lb-ft of torque, routed to all four wheels via a Sadev six-speed gearbox. The customization includes a tube frame chassis and military-grade aluminum bodywork, finished in the ...
How Gasoline Engines Can Survive in an Electric Car Future
Combustion engines won’t completely disappear any time soon, if ever. Certain transportation tasks or operating environments simply don’t lend themselves to battery– or hydrogen-powered electric propulsion. A century and a half of research and development has greatly increased the efficiency of combustion engines, and engineers have loads of additional tricks up their sleeves that promise to extract even more work from a molecule of fuel while producing even fewer harmful emissions. Here are but a few we’re keeping our eyes on, listed in order of complexity and cost to implement. A 98-Octane Fuel Standard Simply being able to design an engine to run 15:1 or higher compression greatly improves its thermodynamic efficiency and power density, permitting further e...
Busting Myths About Electric Vehicles at Reuters Car of the Future Conference
The warnings about electric vehicles abound: Dealers don’t want to invest in vehicles no one wants, the electric bits are too expensive to buy and maintain, and finding a place to charge these vehicles is a nightmare while finding a plug is a scavenger hunt. But executives taking part at the Reuters Car of the Future 2021 auto conference shot down many of these beliefs that remain widely held by many members of the public. Yes, there is still a lot of work to do to usher in the electric highway of tomorrow, but many of the perceived pratfalls of EVs are more myth than reality, these automotive execs told moderator Ed Loh, MotorTrend Group‘s head of editorial. Take consumer demand. In key regions, EV sales continue to soar. In Europe, about 25 percent of the market will be ...
1970 Chevrolet K5 Blazer Gets Stunning Ringbrothers Restomod Makeover for Charity
Ringbrothers has revealed a one-off 1970 Chevrolet K5 Blazer produced to support Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization focusing on disaster response and humanitarian crises. Fundraising company Omaze is giving away the overhauled classic Blazer in an online sweepstake that began on June 7 and will run through September 16. See all 37 photos After some years of customizing Blazers—among its other wild restomod projects—Ringbrothers built a vehicle for the sole purpose of charity, a first-time for the Wisconsin-based car builder. Ringbrothers co-owner Jim Ring says that since the company started working on classic Blazer models, the muscular 4X4 has become a popular request. Completely revised inside and out, the Ringbrothers 1970 Chevrolet K5 Blazer comes fitted with an LS3 crate engine g...
Is Your Jeep Feeling Chippy? The Brand’s New Gorilla Glass Windshield Might Solve That
Jeep owners who have reported their windshields getting a bit chippy over the course of their ownership experience may now finally have an option that will keep their glass intact. Jeep has recently announced that its dealers can now order a Gorilla Glass windshield for modern Wrangler SUVs and Gladiator pickups. In case you aren’t familiar, Gorilla Glass is essentially glass that’s been treated with a chemical compound that makes it more resistant to chips and scratches. It’s designed to be thin and lightweight, which is why it’s used in so many smartphone displays. The special glass is produced by a company called Corning, and is made by taking regular glass and giving it a hot potassium salt bath that’s then complemented by a chemical process known as ion e...
2021 Mercedes-AMG GT43 4-Door First Test: Pretensions of Performance
Brand purity and authenticity seem to be in peril. At least in the auto industry. Some examples stand out as being notably egregious: Four-door cars are widely being labeled as coupes; signature design elements, such as BMW’s Hofmeister kink and kidney grille, are losing their once traditional forms; and SUVs are morphing into lifted sedans. The AMG brand is undergoing an identity crisis, as well. Whereas it once adhered to a “one man, one engine” principle, its badge is now displayed on cars powered by mass-manufactured powerplants. The 2021 Mercedes-AMG GT43 4-Door is one such car; it looks the part of a super-sedan, but its engine’s specifications are identical to those of the Car of the Year-winning Mercedes-Benz E450, which is positioned as a lesser,...
