Autos
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Elon’s Talking Shift: Tesla CEO Says New, Shifterless Model S Selects Drive and Reverse Itself
Tesla no longer has a public-relations department, so when the automaker’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk, tweets vehicle-related information (as opposed to stuff such as “Bitcoin is my safe word” or “420 is ten times better than 42”), the automotive media treats it as the de facto company line. Musk’s latest eye-opening Tesla-related tweet was sent in reply to a reaction to the new Model S‘s yoke-style steering wheel: Yep, the refreshed Tesla Model S and Model X lack physical controls for operating each vehicles’ direct-drive transmissions. Instead, per Musk, the function now lives within the models’ touchscreens. That said, users may never need to fiddle with the on-screen buttons to switch between reverse and drive, as Musk ...
GM’s X-Cars: Anatomy of a Miserable Failure
How bad does your car have to be before it attracts a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice? Welcome to the story of General Motors‘ X-body project, started in the late 1970s as a response to the onslaught of front-wheel-drive imports that were making inroads thanks to a combination of affordability, reliability, and high fuel economy. Initially, there was a lot of internal excitement at America’s largest automaker for what promised to be the light that would lead GM into the future. Yet right from their 1979 on-sale date, and all the way through their ignominious retreat from the market by the middle of the next decade, GM’s X-car family provided a master class in how not to engineer, build, or handle defects for brand-new automobiles. This was the peak of the Gene...
How Randy Pobst Saved This Record-Setting Porsche 911 GT2 RS From the Crusher
But seriously, why crush cars? Well, in the case of those Vipers, they were pre-production models that can never be sold. Why not? Because if they ever somehow “get loose” and are involved in a road crash, the manufacturer is hosed—just ask your nearest lawyer, any lawyer. Fact is, it makes great economic sense for automakers to destroy certain cars. They would hurt themselves, shareholders, and future crash victims if they didn’t make sure certain cars were good and dead. Even cars you really like. But what about special cars? Or even really special cars? Like, say, the 2018 Porsche 991-series 911 GT2 RS Weissach Edition that set the production car lap record in July 2018 on the big track at Willow Springs International Raceway? The very car driven by our own Randy Pobst...
2021 Lexus UX200 F Sport First Test: Experience or Appliance?
Lexus UX Full Overview Your phone, laptop, smartwatch, heck, even your smart speakers are all a massive pain in the neck. Not for you, but for the people who made them. User experience and interface designers agonize over products for months or even years to deliver an intuitive user experience, and you always notice when they haven’t. It’s the same story for cars like the 2021 Lexus UX200 F Sport. Engineers spend countless hours working through endless permutations of designs so they can get the little things like the detent on that volume knob just right. It’s all part of an endless quest to satisfy the user. So when we see the letters “U” and “X” arrive emblazoned on the rump of a small subcompact luxury Lexus SUV, the expectation is a satisfyin...
Conquer the Dakar Rally With This Collection of Bowler Land Rover Defenders
In nearly every single parameter, the new Land Rover Defender improves over the old warhorse Defender it replaced. While Land Rover’s O.G. Defender’s capability as an expeditionary lance and an agrarian implement is undeniable, the British brand worked extraordinarily hard to develop a new Defender that drives and performs like something from the 21st century, and not the 19th. However, with unibody construction and a suite of tech aimed at improving on-road manners, the new Defender isn’t quite the boulder-basher it used to be—especially if your needs include bombing through the Dakar dunes on a rally raid. For that, you turn to the mad minds at Bowler. The U.K.-based manufacturing workshop established itself as the premier name in making Defenders rally-raid-ready ...
Overlanding in Supercars? What Has Top Gear America Done Now!?
Don’t worry, things have not gone completely off the rails at the MotorTrend offices, despite last year’s best efforts. As fun as it would be to watch, supercars are not built for overlanding (but maybe they are nowadays?), and even the Top Gear America hosts wouldn’t subject those rolling pinnacles of art and engineering to the rigors of the great outdoors. But what is a “supercar,” really, and how exactly are you supposed to drive one? And overlanding? Aren’t we all over land in some way or another all the time? We got to chat with Top Gear America co-host Jethro Bovingdon about these questions, meeting Dax Shepard and Rob Corddry for the first time, and generally living up to the legacy of the one of the greatest franchises in automotive m...
All-New 2022 Nissan Pathfinder Is Coming Soon—Here’s a Peek at It
The Nissan Pathfinder skips the 2021 model year as the Japanese brand prepares to release an all-new iteration of its mid-size three-row SUV for 2022. Details about the next-gen Pathfinder are scarce at the moment. That changes come February 4, 2021, when Nissan officially unveils the latest generation of Pathfinder. Nissan officially announced the news in a teaser video it uploaded to the web. The six-second long clip shows very little of the new SUV as it motors through mud and dirt. Still, we are able to see the basic details of its front and rear ends, the former of which appears to sport a set of 2021 Nissan Rogue-like LED daytime-running lights. Meanwhile, the back end appears to feature an upright and boxy tailgate with Pathfinder script running its width, as well as a pair of ...
Look the 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor in the Face
We’re less than a week out from the debut of the next-gen 2021 Ford F-150 Raptor, and the anticipation is killing us. Happily, Ford continues to chum the waters with this briefest of sneak-peeks, which Ford CEO Jim Farley posted to his Twitter account. We’ve previously shown you leaked photos and sketches of the F-150 Raptor’s front end, which clearly show the unique grille with massive F-O-R-D lettering, bulging fenders, and bespoke lower fascia. The short preview video shows us what the lighting will look like. The 2021 F-150‘s white inquisitive-eyebrow DRLs are redone in yellow, and the three clearance-style lights at the leading edge of the hood are bracketed by two more on the fender extensions. We like the new pattern—it’s reminiscent of both the new F-1...
No One Puts Enough Respect on the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren’s Name
Cast your mind back to 2002. Covid-19 wasn’t anything to anyone, Elon Musk was only known for creating PayPal (and, after selling it, buying a McLaren F1), and Porsche, Ferrari, and Pagani were setting the automotive world alight with the Carrera GT, Enzo, and Zonda. It was one heck of a time to love cars, not least of which because the Chrysler PT Cruiser was MotorTrend’s reigning car of the year. But there’s another, oft-forgotten member of the early 2000s supercar aristocracy: the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. See all 15 photos Born out of a partnership between Mercedes-Benz and McLaren that started with their joint Formula 1 program, the SLR was both an homage to the old and an exploration of the new. The McLaren F1 had been out of production for several years, and the n...
2022 Chevy Corvette C8 Z06 Spied Testing—Is That a Flat-Plane V-8 We Hear?
We’ve already speculated as to what engine might rest behind the driver (along with other juicy details) here. A source from inside Chevrolet told us the Z06 will abandon the pushrod V-8 in the standard ‘Vette and use a naturally aspirated twin-cam 5.5-liter V-8 rocking a flat-plane crank. Even though Chevy is being very tight-lipped about final powertrain details, the video does plenty of talking. See all 38 photos Listen closely and you can hear a high-pitched wail similar to that of the Ferrari F430 or 458 Italia. This clearly isn’t the deep grumble of a typical cross-plane crank V-8. As for the way it looks, well, see for yourself. The mule we stumbled across was covered in extremely heavy camouflage, but from what we can tell, very little about the bodywork on t...
Today in Elon Tweets: Updated Tesla Roadster Arrival Date Announced
You either love the way Elon Musk drops major news or you hate it. (For the record, we’d be okay with it if Tesla retained a PR department to provide sanity and accuracy checks. Alas, the company disbanded its PR department late last year.) Today, in addition to making other announcements and pronouncements, the Tesla CEO casually provided an update on the hotly anticipated Tesla Roadster on Twitter. After discussing some of the capabilities of the new Tesla Model S—at one point asserting “It can play Cyberpunk [2077],” the popular new open-world video game—a Twitter user by the name of ‘Earl of Frunkpuppy’ asked Musk, “What happened to the Roadster?” Elon provided a direct reply, likely shocking the esteemed Earl’s puppy right out ...
Jaguar Classic Will Build You a Brand-New C-Type
As it has with its stunning continuation Lightweight E-Type, XKSS, and D-Type cars, Jaguar Classic will assemble a limited number of brand-new, hand-built Jaguar C-Types for well-heeled customers of exceptional taste. It’s been 70 years since the C-Type hit the scene, its timeless grace and technical innovations forever changing motor racing. These new C-Types—and we mean new, not restored or remanufactured—will be as correct as possible and even eligible for vintage racing. See all 26 photos That is sure to be good new for anyone interested in hearing these straight-six-powered cars roar around a track. Rare and costing well into seven figures for even the most pedestrian original C-Type, it’s getting to the point where sheer rarity and value may mean owners might think twice ...
