Style and Hollywood

Style and Hollywood

Only fashion fades, style remains the same – Coco Chanel Steve McQueen and his Ferrari Lusso Recently I was looking at one of those celebrity car sites, and was struck by the fact that none of the people listed were famous. Everyone on the site was a “wanna be” rapper, a Z-list reality star, or a drugged out bad girl. Every picture had them either standing next...

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Small Community Home to Vital Ford Testing

Small Community Home to Vital Ford Testing

Old Man Winter is not the most enjoyable companion and for those living where snowfall is common, it’s only a matter of time. If the rush of pumpkin spice, peppermint, cinnamon flavored everything wasn’t a sign of winter approaching, certinately the endless array of holiday romance movies, adorning my Netflix account are. Danielle informed me her holiday movie...

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Toyota Gets Serious About Performance with TMG Line

Toyota Gets Serious About Performance with TMG Line

The words “Toyota” and “performance” aren’t often spoken in the same sentence these days. Toyota, though, is getting serious about building performance cars, as the Lexus LFA, Lexus IS Fand Scion FR-S are tearing up tracks and backroads across the world. Now, it seems Toyota may want to take things even further by creating performance versions of existing...

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Would You Trust a Self-Driving Car?

Would You Trust a Self-Driving Car?

For the first time, a Google self-driving car is at fault for causing an accident. On Valentine’s Day a Lexus RX 450h with Google’s self-driving technology leaned in a little too close to a city bus in Mountain View, California. The two vehicles collided at low speed. Google has acknowledged at least 17 other accidents involving its cars, but this is the first...

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Are Convertibles Worth the Safety Risk?

Are Convertibles Worth the Safety Risk?

Yesterday we drove Highway 1 in California from San Simeon to Monterey. This is the most beautiful segment of the most beautiful road in America, but one thing started driving me crazy: One in ten cars that passed in the opposite direction was either a red convertible Camaro orMustang. That’s no exaggeration. I don’t know if there’s either a rental place that...

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Would You Buy This Damaged Land Rover?

Would You Buy This Damaged Land Rover?

What a short attention span we have in this world today. Less than a month ago, we wrote about the Hoegh Osaka. Remember that? If you’re anything like me, you’ll read that name and it’ll sound vaguely familiar, but you won’t remember why. Let me remind you: The ship was carrying around 1,200 Jaguars and Land Rovers before tilting dangerously and running aground...

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New BMW Headlights Solve Old Problem

New BMW Headlights Solve Old Problem

Imagine a world where you never have to worry about turning down your brights as you drive. We’ve all been there, happily zooming down a country lane or lonely highway with the road in front of us bathed in ample light, our cars cutting through the darkness with high beams in full force. Then a car approaches. We think nothing of it until the approaching...

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Most Beautiful Cars: The Citroen DS

Most Beautiful Cars: The Citroen DS

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it. – Voltaire It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lately, I’ve been reading some lists of “Beautiful Cars” that force me to believe the beholder was blind. One website, Edmunds lists the 1973 Pontiac Grand Am and the 1985 Chevrolet Camaro in the 100...

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Hypercar Hybrids from Porsche and Ferrari

Hypercar Hybrids from Porsche and Ferrari

Design study for the F70 We have written about the incredible Porsche 918 hybrid before, with details here and here. Now, 918 Spyder prototypes have been spotted testing, looking a little like the old 917 race cars (see pix here). The 918 will produce some 770 hp from a V8 and “two independent electric motors, one on the front and one in the drive line, acting...

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Top 5 Mercedes-Benz Engines

Top 5 Mercedes-Benz Engines

I was driving along Route 19 in McMurray, Pennsylvania several weeks ago and noticed a hot looking German car in the area’s cigar shop parking lot. I have seen so many Mercedes-Benz AMG cars there including, but not limited to, normally aspirated C63 AMGs all the way to the SLS AMG Coupe. “I bet that gets up and goes,” I thought to myself. I started thinking...

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How Automotive Payola Works: A Case Study Starring Wayne Gerdes and Volkswagen

How Automotive Payola Works: A Case Study Starring Wayne Gerdes and Volkswagen

When a self-described automotive journalist attempts a fuel economy record, you expect his attempt to be objective — or, at least, as objective as such an attempt can be. However, when an automaker is willing to pay that automotive journalist thousands of dollars for the effort, with payment possibly dependent on achieving the desired record, objectivity falls...

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Fifty years later, there’s still no racing like the original Can Am series

Fifty years later, there’s still no racing like the original Can Am series

Peter Revson’s 1972 McLaren M20 Can-Am car. In 1966, the SCCA’s U.S. Road Racing Championship spun off a new series, created in cooperation with the Canadian Automobile Sports Club (CASC). Officially called the Canadian-American Challenge Cup, or Can-Am for short, the series would go on to become, arguably, the greatest form of motor racing the world has ever...

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Does Snow Change Your Travel Plans?

Does Snow Change Your Travel Plans?

How much snow is too much? There was a debate at my house last night involving safety and weather-related travel, and I declared myself the winner, but now I’m not so sure. My wife, of course, had a good case. Here’s the situation: On Saturday we had made plans to go out Sunday evening and buy a day bed from a woman who listed it for sale on Craigslist. It was...

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