Leggo My Bug! Lego Introduces 1167-Piece Classic Volkswagen Beetle Kit

2017 Fiat 124 Spider – First Drive Review

2017 Fiat 124 Spider Driven: The Italian-badged Miata Is the Less Frenetic One.
It’s not easy when something you love changes, but there’s also no such thing as perfect. For, as much as we love the new Mazda Miata, after a two-hour slog down I-5 to San Diego in one with the top up, we were thinking earplugs would’ve been a good idea. We were on our way […]

2016 Toyota Yaris Automatic – Instrumented Test

Brit-stang Two: We Cruise with Aston CEO Andy Palmer in His 1980 V8 Vantage

Brit-stang Two: We Cruise with Aston CEO Andy Palmer in His 1980 V8 Vantage
Things didn’t go as planned the last time that Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer loaned out one of his cars. That was during his previous role as Nissan’s chief planning officer, when he had personally imported a NISMO GT-R into the UK. It arrived in time for the Goodwood Festival of Speed two years ago, […]

Ford Hopes to Fend Off Apple, Google with In-Car Infotainment
In many automotive circles, Silicon Valley’s takeover of in-car infotainment system is considered a foregone conclusion. But despite some of their clunky and cumbersome products, traditional manufacturers aren’t ready to give up that fight and ordain Apple CarPlay and Android Auto inevitable winners. Ford, for one, believes it can withstand the challenge and present a […]

12 Vintage Car Toys Now Worth Big Bucks
Kids who were into cars, trucks, and motorcycles had plenty of cool toys to choose from in the 1970s and 1980s. These toys were well built, and many moved under their own power. And since so many of these machines were modeled after the ones made famous on TV shows and movies, every kid wanted […]

2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Automatic – Instrumented Test

2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Automatic Tested: The Quickest Droptop Pony Car We’ve Ever Tested
When it comes to muscle cars, conventional logic equates convertibles with compromise—more show means less go. Heavier than their coupe counterparts and often more softly sprung and with flimsier structures, ragtops have almost always lagged behind hardtops when asked to do what these cars were designed to do in the first place: go fast. READ […]

Welcome to the Machine Learning, Mercedes-Benz Edition
Your car may not say much, but it knows what you’re up to. Among other things, it knows where you are, where you’ve been, and when. Based on the time and the day of the week (which, in many cases, it also knows) it can even take an educated guess as to where you’re going […]

Tesla’s “New” Model S 60 to Replace Model S 70 That Replaced Model S 60
As the saying goes, another day, another Model S variant! Tesla has announced yet another deck-shuffling at the bottom end of the Model S range, with the reintroduction of the Model S 60. Last year, the automaker replaced the base Model S 60—that’d be the model with the 60-kWh battery pack—with the 70 and all-wheel-drive 70D […]

All-Electric Acura 4-Motor NSX EV Concept to Tackle Pikes Peak
As if its “Quiet Mode” didn’t make the 2017 Acura NSX stealthy enough, Honda has decided to rip out its twin-turbo V-6 for a second pair of electric motors and a larger battery to race up Pikes Peak. The NSX EV Concept does not presage a production model being developed for sale. It will be […]

Down Periscope: Isdera Imperator 108i for Sale!
As strange as it seems now, in an age when every vaporware supercar trots itself onto the internet with grand fanfare, there was a time when these automobiles were practically a secret. And if they weren’t secret, they were certainly myth. Even heavyweights like Lamborghini and Ferrari didn’t produce as many cars at they do […]

INRIX OpenCar Wants to Make Infotainment Obsolescence Obsolete
One thing that automakers and most new-car shoppers can agree on is that the roughly five-year development cycle of a new vehicle is unacceptable. That gestation period means, among other things, that much of the onboard infotainment technology is obsolete by the time a new vehicle rolls into the showroom, especially compared to a smartphone that can be […]

2016 Cadillac ATS-V Sedan Manual – Instrumented Test

2016 Cadillac ATS-V Sedan Manual Test: A Clutch Performance
Imagine ordering a ton of bricks. That’s 400 red paving bricks weighing five pounds apiece. You know, the bricks that made Indianapolis famous. They’re yours. Now, do you want your ton of bricks dumped on you all at once? Or would you rather have one brick handed to you at a time? READ MORE ››

2018 Volvo V90 – First Drive Review

2018 Volvo V90 First Drive: It’s the Anti-SUV
Audi and BMW stopped importing the wagon versions of their mid-size sedans to America with the advent of the current-generation models. Cadillac ceased production of its wagon completely with the latest CTS. Jaguar has never offered its XF wagon in the United States, and Lexus and the other players in the luxury segment have never […]

After Failed Update, Lexus Working on Fix for Broken Infotainment Systems
Not even the great, all-reliable Toyota is immune from modern software glitches. A wireless update the company uploaded to late-model Lexus models on Tuesday rendered many owners without navigation, radio controls, and other critical functions within the infotainment screen. As of now, Lexus hasn’t come up with a solution. Customers reported their Enform systems were […]

2018 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Coupe: The Brits Jump On the X6 Train – Future Cars

2018 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Coupe Spied: A More Rakish Rover to Take On the BMW X6
What It Is: A more rakish version of the Land Rover Range Rover Sport SUV, following in the footsteps of the BMW X6 and Mercedes-Benz GLE coupe. Its swoopier roofline is meant to give it a more stylish look. Although the prototype in these spy photos has some sort of fake body cladding at the […]

To (Silently) Protect and to (Electrically) Serve: 100 BMW i3 EVs Join LAPD
The Los Angeles Police Department has been recruiting within the EV community and has just announced that 100 BMW i3 electric vehicles will join its fleet. The i3 is the LAPD’s first EV; BMW beat out Tesla for the high-visibility opportunity. The i3 purchase is part of an initiative by the city of Los Angeles […]

2016 Volkswagen e-Golf – Instrumented Test

2016 Volkswagen e-Golf Tested: It’s Got Good Genes
Like people, cars benefit from good genetics. Fortunately for the Volkswagen e-Golf electric car, starting with a Golf as the foundation gives it excellent DNA. The whole Golf range, including the GTI, has been a perennial 10Best Cars winner for the past decade. If a Golf two-door, four-door, or SportWagen can’t meet your automotive needs, […]

2018 Ford Fiesta Spied: The Party Continues – Future Cars

Spied! 2018 Ford Fiesta Caught Testing in Europe
What It Is: A prototype 2018 Ford Fiesta being put through its paces in Europe. Covered in the trendiest eye-straining black-and-white-pattern vinyl in recent memory, the four-door Fiesta subcompact appears to be adopting some edges at the front and rear where the current car features soft curves. Although extensively covered, the fascia looks to feature […]

Forza Adds #66 Ford GT Race Car Just in Time for 2016 Le Mans Race

Forza Adds #66 Ford GT Race Car Just in Time for 2016 Le Mans Race
As part of its release of the Forza Racing Championship, a new online simulated racing structure, the Forza video game franchise announced that it is offering customers a free download of a significant current Ford race car, the #66 Chip Ganassi Racing GT. Its non-pixelated real-world prototype will join three other Ford GT race cars […]

2017 Mercedes-Benz C-class Cabriolet – First Drive Review

2017 Mercedes-Benz C-class Cabriolet Driven: Four Reasons to Put Down Your Phone and Drop the Top
It’s a marvel that convertibles still exist in an era when many drivers care less about driving than they do about phone connectivity and in-car infotainment. Put the top down and, more often than not, sun glare washes out that colorful center-console display. No matter how good the wind blocker is, buffeting usually reduces hands-free […]

Isle of Man-liness: Subaru Breaks Record—Again [UPDATED]
Five years ago, Subaru and rally car driver David Higgins were out to break a record: They aimed to set the fastest lap time ever recorded by a production car around the Isle of Man’s 37 miles of public road-turned-race course. Traditionally run by motorcycles as part of the island’s near-annual Tourist Trophy race, Subaru […]

Show the Weave! McLaren Strips 675LT Spider of Its Paint, Creates MSO Carbon Series LT
Supercar buyers, it turns out, like to see—and show—the carbon fiber their cars are made of. McLaren learned that lesson with the ultra-limited-run P1 by MSO (MSO = McLaren Special Operations). So, the company’s special ops division is now giving the 675LT Spider a similar treatment, with the result being the MSO Carbon Series LT. […]

Volvo Introduces “Polestar Optimization” Performance Packages for S90, V90
Volvo’s performance division, Polestar, has announced that the same “optimization packages” introduced last year for the automaker’s Drive-E four-cylinder engines will be available on the new S90 sedan and V90 wagon. Of course, both new Volvos use Drive-E engines, so it’d be easy to port over existing upgrades, but we’re happy to see performance boosters on […]

2016 Ford Focus Sedan 1.0-Liter EcoBoost Automatic – Instrumented Test

2016 Ford Focus Sedan 1.0-Liter Turbo Automatic Tested: Displacement Replacement?
Our open-mindedness about everything automotive found our curiosity piqued by this Ford Focus SE sedan powered by the smallest example of the Blue Oval’s well-publicized EcoBoost engine family. Consider it an early indicator of what the future will bring. READ MORE ››

2017 Volvo S90 – First Drive Review

2017 Volvo S90 First Drive: Sleek, Sophisticated, and Not a BMW
After Ford sold Volvo to Chinese automaker Geely in 2010, the Swedish company’s first order of business was to fashion a new product lineup that would update its aging fleet of vehicles and catch up to the other luxury brands, which were surging. Geely had plenty of money to invest in Volvo, but even so, […]

2017 Mercedes-Benz E-class Wagon – Official Photos and Info

2017 Mercedes-Benz E-class Wagon Photos and Info: Keeping the Wagon Dream Alive
Much as we love station wagons, we’re forced to acknowledge the logic, often repeated to us by automakers’ product planners, that they don’t sell in the United States. Especially when wearing premium badges and with correspondingly chunky price tags. The outgoing E-class wagon was a classic case in point; the considerable praise heaped into its […]

What’s the Password? Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hacked Over Wi-Fi
Mitsubishi has some extra homework to do before it starts importing the 2017 Outlander PHEV this fall. Apparently, it can be hacked. A British cybersecurity company claims to have hacked into the Outlander’s Wi-Fi access and performed a relatively innocuous level of mischief, such as turning on the climate control and the headlights, scheduling the […]

2017 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S Manual – First Drive Review

2017 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S Manual First Drive: Seven and Twelve Pair Nicely
It’s too soon to spray champagne celebrating the return of the manual transmission, but we should at least put a couple of bottles on ice. Our preferred gearbox certainly isn’t saved quite yet. But it does seem to have more of a future in sports cars than looked to be the case for at least […]

Rumor: BMW M2 Could Gain Two More Doors as a “Gran Coupe”
Rumors that BMW will build a sedan version of the 2-series have been swirling ever since Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport reported that BMW’s head of development, Klaus Fröhlich, was pushing for one. And if BMW builds a 2-series Gran Coupe, it is likely also to build an M2 Gran Coupe. U.K. publication Autocar believes that not only […]

Supra Man: Toyota Trademarks Iconic Sports Car Name in Europe
It’s no secret that Toyota and BMW are collaborating on a sports car. While we’ve long suspected that this new car will be the spiritual successor to the beloved Supra, we weren’t sure if the Japanese/German hybrid would actually bear that name. Last week, though, the website supramkv.com turned up more evidence that the Supra nameplate will make its […]

Renault Twingo GT Is Une Petite Hatch with 0.9 Liter of Turbo Fury in Its Derrière
The French have always had a knack for bizarre hot hatches: Witness the mid-engine terror of the Renault 5 Turbo or the Renault Clio V6. Renault’s latest creation, the Twingo GT, has basic specs that sound like something straight out of Zuffenhausen: rear-engine, rear-wheel drive, manual gearbox. But the similarities stop when you get to the engine: a 0.9-liter three-cylinder […]

GaragePointer Wants To Be Airbnb for Cars
For many car enthusiasts, the desire for a collector car (or for another collector car) is held in check not by insufficient funds or spousal disapproval but by a lack of garage space. And yet—incredibly—there is garage space out there that’s going unused. A new startup seeks to remedy this cosmic imbalance by pairing shelter-seeking […]

An Amorphous Milestone: We Attend the First Autonomous Track Day
To the uninitiated, a track day might seem like a very cool-guy sort of thing to do. Take your car out, drive like a stripe-assed ape on a closed course wearing your Räikkönen-spec safety duds, and generally act the hero. The reality of the deal? It’s much more prosaic and nerdy. Drivers geek out over […]

What’s the Buzz? Transformers Director Reveals Next Camaro-Based “Bumblebee” Character
There’s another Transformers movie coming in 2017, and that means a new rash of mechatronic vehicles—er, we mean, characters—to debut. Director Michael Bay has already gotten started on those reveals, having slipped a photo of the new Chevrolet Camaro–based Bumblebee robot onto his Flickr account over the weekend. Surprisingly, the photo is free of explosions; […]

2017 Nissan GT-R – First Drive Review

2017 Nissan GT-R First Drive: Godzilla Learns Some Manners
For the source of the Nissan GT-R’s bad-boy nickname, look to Honda—Ishirō Honda. In 1954, that Japanese film director conceived Gojira, the monster born of World War II nuclear radiation that we know as Godzilla. After this icon wreaked havoc in 30 films, the name was a natural fit for Nissan’s sports coupe, which evolved […]

2016 Volkswagen Passat V-6 – Instrumented Test

2016 Volkswagen Passat V-6 Tested: A Little Prettier than Before
The Passat has been part of Volkswagen’s U.S. product program since the early 1970s. It started life here as the Dasher in 1974, back when the company began to wean itself from its Beetle-only roots, before evolving into the Quantum in the mid-1980s and then the Passat in 1990. READ MORE ››

Six Highlights from May 2016 U.S. Auto Sales
The sales boom couldn’t last forever. More automakers posted declines than increases in May, leading to a six percent drop in sales from the previous May to 1.53 million cars, according to WardsAuto. Several automakers that did show increases all hovered around one percent, aside from a few hot brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and […]

2016 Chevrolet Colorado Crew Cab 4×4 Diesel Tested: A Littler Truck for the Money
With the recent sales momentum of the revised To­yota Tacoma and the new Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon twins, GM’s introduction of diesel power to the mid-size-pickup segment seems like a clever play. But in a market built around established full-size trucks, the advantages of that combination are less than clear. READ MORE ››