So far, Jeep has been somewhat left out of the V8 party. The Wrangler 392 soldiers on, and Gladiator 392 is coming, but at the other end of the spectrum, the V8 has been eliminated from the Grand Wagoneer and was essentially DOA in the current-generation Grand Cherokee. The latter ostensibly launched with a Hemi option, but good luck finding one. It only lasted until 2023, and the long-wheelbase L model lost its Hemi option in 2024.

Things are a bit weird at Stellantis right now, to put it mildly. Virtually every brand has a new (or freshly un-retired) exec at the helm, and each of its brands is still fighting to overcome the whiplash of the past five years. Two things are happening here. First, Stellantis has had other priorities for the Hemi, and second, the company just spent a ton of money to develop a new family of turbocharged inline engines (both 4- and 6-cylinder) that it needs to try to recoup.

They’re good motors, and the company has every incentive to make a return on that investment. More and more, it seems like Jeep is going to be the program’s primary beneficiary, since Durango is leaning hard on the Hemi-ssance. In fact, between stuffing them into Dodge’s volume leader and the Ram 1500, Stellantis started running out of V8s.

The 4xe plug-in hybrid took its place, and, well, we saw how that worked out. Even as a replacement, it didn’t match the Hemi’s 7,200-pound tow rating—nor does any other current powertrain option in the Grand Cherokee lineup. This leaves a subset of potential buyers in the lurch. Jeep has teased the return of a Hemi to the Grand Cherokee, which seems virtually inevitable at this point. But I’d like to propose an alternative: How about a Wagoneer Classic?

Hear me out: You give the Durango a seven-slot nose job, jazz up the interior with some nostalgia-soaked design elements, and stick a Waggy badge on it. Offer it with the 3.6, 5.7, and 6.4, and since it’s a Wagoneer, it doesn’t have to be “Trail Rated” to fit with Jeep’s modern branding. Translation? No need to mess with the powertrain. The Durango is essentially the cheaper version of the Grand Cherokee L we didn’t get until the current generation—a long-wheelbase WK2—and since it’s already in production, the tooling costs would be relatively insignificant.

Is this as easy as dropping the 5.7-liter Hemi back in the Grand Cherokee and shipping it? Certainly not, but it would be a relatively low-stakes move for a company determined to make hay while the sun shines. Plus, it’s an opportunity to attract more enthusiasts to the Wagoneer sub-brand. That’s no bad thing, right?

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The post Jeep’s Best Path to a V8 Wagoneer Is Hiding In Plain Sight appeared first on The Drive.

What has nearly 700 horsepower, weighs a little more than two tons, and makes beautiful V8 noises? I can think of two answers. One of them is the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing. The other? You’re looking at it: the 2027 Bentley Supersports.

Bentley has been down this well before, so a muscular yet agile coupe from Crewe shouldn’t come as a surprise. The “Supersports” nameplate dates back to the 1920s—and you also need to go back nearly that far just to find a Bentley grand tourer that weighs less than two tons. For as long as I’ve been reading (or involved in) performance car tests, weight has always been a glaring issue with Bentley’s speedier machines. Remember, this is the company that gave us the W12, and for more than a century, it embraced a level of maximalism rivaled only by Maybach and Rolls-Royce.

And that has always left me with one nagging question: How much fun can you really have in a coupe that weighs as much as a Chevy Suburban? We’ve seen them try to answer that with the Mulliner and GT Speed models, which have pushed the limits of power output while offering casual nods toward weight reduction. Sure, there are big, heavy trucks that do big, silly things, but we’re talking about luxury touring cars here, not a TRX knock-off.

So, when Bentley’s head of comms, Mike Sayer, sat down across from me in Monterey and said, “This is the car that the GT3-R should have been,” needless to say, he got my attention.

What does that mean, exactly? Like the Supersports, the GT3-R was a limited-production nod to Bentley’s motorsports history, but unlike this latest take on the formula, the 2015 Continental GT3-R still leaned heavily toward the road car. It still had standard all-wheel drive, and, despite its engineers’ best efforts, still weighed nearly 5,000 pounds—a figure that makes even a Hellcat appear svelte.

Bentley’s more-is-more approach to speed certainly produced some wicked fast cars, but they were only good for a few laps around a race track before everything—brakes especially—needed a little nap. With Supersports, Bentley has finally flipped that script. In what Sayer described as a true “skunkworks” effort, the Continental’s engineers ripped all of the heavy bits out of the coupe and gave the 4.0-liter V8 some massaging. It now delivers 657 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque exclusively to the rear wheels.

With the hybrid system and front drive line yanked out, Bentley then went after every body part it could realistically replace. All said and done, the Supersports is over 1,000 pounds lighter than the Continental GT Speed. It also inherited virtually all of that car’s party tricks, plus a few more. The meaty brakes bite 17.3-inch carbon-ceramic rotors up front and 16.1-inch rotors out back. Bentley says it’s the largest brake setup in the business. You also get the GT Speed’s rear-axle steering setup and electronic anti-roll system. Sway bars—who needs ’em?

The Supersports may not be the most luxurious Continental, but it is still a Bentley. The company quotes the Supersport’s maximum lateral acceleration at 1.3G on the optional Pirelli Trofeo RS tires, but buyers can also opt for the more garden-variety Pirelli P-Zero tires. That’s still a summer tire, but it’ll wear (and ride) better than the Trofeo.

Put that all together, Bentley says, and you get the company’s first truly track-ready car. And to prove it, it invited me to Laguna Seca so I could turn a few laps and find out.

When engineers get the opportunity to go this nuts with a platform, the result is a bit unhinged—that’s often the result when the inmates are given responsibility for running the asylum. Given how dramatically this car differs from the standard Continental, Bentley would have been forgiven for handing us the keys to something with a few physical and metaphorical screws loose. But in keeping with Bentley’s philosophy of “effortless progression,” the Supersports is almost apologetically composed even when you start exploring its limits.

What hits you first is just how uneventfully the Supersports gains speed. Mat the accelerator and you’ll feel your organs jockey for position near the back of your ribcage as the V8’s torque swells, but there’s no manic wail from the twin-turbo V8. It blats out a sharp, warm baritone that retreats into an upshift just when things are starting to sound nasty. It’s both novel and a bit deceptive, because it only takes a couple of those interruptions before you’re in triple-digit territory.

Laguna is a big, wide, fast racetrack. Cresting the blind kink in Turn 1, the Supersports feels planted, imparting confidence. The big brakes are welcome in the downhill approach to Turn 2, and the same weight that trivialized the front “straight” forces you to be a bit more patient here. You want it pointed the right direction before you unleash all that torque through the rear wheels.

The electronic limited-slip diff does a good job keeping the big Bentley’s rear end in check through the flatter portions of the track, but sitting side-seat, Sayer eggs me on to push even harder, insisting that the Trofeos will hold on—and they do. The rear-axle steering really comes alive when you start to speed up the cornering transitions; get all the weight on the Bentley’s nose, and it’ll rotate gracefully as you trail off the throttle. That’ll help keep Turn 11 exciting even when you’re not going wheel-to-wheel.

I’d be curious to further explore this Bentley’s duality of character off the racetrack, but sadly that wasn’t on the agenda. While our peers got their turn at the wheel on Laguna, we busied ourselves cruising CA’s picturesque Route 1 in a pair of Continental GT Cs instead.

Contemplating my time behind the wheel of the Supersports, I can’t help but contrast it with the Aston Martin Valhalla. They couldn’t really be more different in character. The Bentley is a remainder—it’s what you have leftover when you strip a luxury grand tourer of the things you don’t need to go fast around a race track. The Valhalla, meanwhile, is a race car freed from the draconian restrictions of a sanctioning body. Aston’s approach was additive where Bentley’s was subtractive. Despite not having any real-world seat time in the Bentley, I suspect it would take far longer to tire of the big, Continental-based coupe than Aston’s admittedly sublime supercar.

It seems unfair to compare the Supersports to the Valhalla at face value, but in the real world, these cars are for very similar people. Both are being produced in extremely limited numbers, and even if you’re among the first to read this review, you’re still months late to actually reserve an example of either car. Yes, the Bentley’s MSRP (just under $490,000) is half that of the Valhalla’s, but with cars like these, what the manufacturer recommends to retailers is simply an irrelevant abstraction. The price is whatever number gets you to the front of the line with a dealer who manages to wrangle one of the 500 global allocations Bentley made available—emphasis on made. It’s sold out worldwide.

It’s a shame that Bentley’s first compelling foray into the track-day space will be constrained to such a small production run, but the Supersports proves two things conclusively. First, Bentley can build a performance coupe that weighs less than your three-row family SUV, and second, there’s support within Bentley for pursuing such frivolities.

They have my support too.

Bentley provided The Drive with travel, accommodations, and access to the vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2027 Bentley Continental Supersports Specs

Quick Take

At last, a proper track-day Bentley. But good luck finding one.

The post 2027 Bentley Supersports First-Drive Review: The Lightweight Sports Car Bentley Should’ve Built All Along appeared first on The Drive.

The folks at Ingolstadt sure knew what they were doing with the new Audi Nuvolari. Yes, in some ways it’s simply a stopgap supercar, but it’s also a reminder that the company employs passionate engineers who want to build emotionally engaging cars. Unfortunately for them, Audi is busy trying to relaunch pretty much its entire product line.

As you might imagine, that makes it tricky to pitch passion projects. In times like these, Audi is looking to make the most of what it has in front of it, and in the age of increasingly software-defined vehicles, a lot of that boils down to tech. We may not be getting a more affordable Nuvolari, but we are going to see its tech trickle down to the rest of Audi’s lineup.

Rouven Mohr, Audi CTO and head of R&D, called the Nuvolari the company’s “North Star” during a Monterey Car Week Q&A attended by The Drive. This short-lived halo model will guide Audi in tuning its broader portfolio.

What sort of cars might benefit from the Nuvolari’s niche performance tricks? Audi hasn’t quite decided yet. Mohr says the company wants to get back to building cars that attract enthusiasts, but the reality of the company’s situation makes it impossible to promise anything right now.

“You’ll see other emotional products,” Mohr said. “This does not mean R8—yes or no. This is not decided. We have different priorities at the moment.

“But you can be sure that it will be not the last emotional car of Audi because this is also something that [CEO] Gernot Dollner, Massimo and myself, we are standing for,” Mohr continued. “All of us, we love cars. And emotionality is very important also for a brand that wants to sell more volume. But you need an emotional connection.”

Audi hopes the tricks learned from Nuvolari will help make its other cars more engaging, too. Programming from its newfangled all-wheel-drive system, for example, will make its way into Audi’s more mainstream offerings.

“You will find a different interpretation in the standard cars of the intelligent drivetrain, meaning that the torque distribution in the car is done on a very intelligent and self-learning base,” Mohr said. “You will see it in the future of Quattro, even on the standard cars, in two kinds of interpretations.”

“One interpretation is to maximize traction and driving fun,” Mohr said. “But you can use this technology also to have the most efficient four-wheel drive system based on self-learning.”

The former will be the default for RS models, according to Mohr, while the latter will be the baseline for its non-enthusiast lineup. This is made possible because Quattro is no longer strictly defined by its mechanical components.

“In the past it was always hardware, which kind of central differential you are using,” Mohr explained. “And then you have a different four-wheel drive system today. It’s a mixture between which kind of hardware you’re using and also which kind of functionality, which kind of software intelligence you have to use for the actuation.”

But when it comes to physical hardware, there are far more limitations to consider.

“It’s clear not everything is possible in the [typical] car. I mean, we cannot do titanium aluminum rings embedded in the carbon structure, like in the rear wing,” Mohr added.

“But let me say the typical click noise, the perfect mixture between haptical elements and digital experience. This kind of feeling embedded in the car was also always Audi’s strength. You come, you close the door, the door has a super solid closing sound, and you sit in the car and you feel relaxed, you feel whole. This is an aspect you see in the Nuvolari, and you will see also in the future Audi cars,” he said.

According to Mohr, Audi is best at connecting with drivers when it goes against the grain.

“Like the first TT,” Mohr suggested. “People were saying, ‘Oh, what is this?’ Also our story with Avant, we have a lot of things that we were going a little bit against what the others were doing. And in this situation, Audi was always most successful.”

And don’t expect Audi’s future treasures to be relegated to the European market.

“America, I can tell you it’s a very important thing for us, especially now,” Mohr said. “We want to strengthen the American market, because Audi in the past unfortunately was losing a little bit of the awareness in the US.”

We’ll be waiting—some of us less patiently than others.

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The post Audi Wants to Build More ‘Emotional’ Cars Like the R8, but It Has ‘Different Priorities’ Right Now appeared first on The Drive.

Audi’s 1,000-horsepower Nuvolari supercar sure looks like the old R8. Heck, it even shares its underpinnings with a Lamborghini, just like its iconic “everyday supercar” did. Audi would love to build a third-generation R8, but the company has stubbornly refused to nudge the Nuvolari in that direction.

Instead, Audi has pitched the Nuvolari as a more exclusive halo model. For such a thing, the Nuvolari seems to have come out of nowhere, which seems antithetical to the meticulous planning that brought us the R8. Is that why the Nuvolari is destined to be a limited-run footnote rather than a series-production supercar?

The Drive Editor-in-Chief Kyle Cheromcha sat down with Rouven Mohr, Audi’s chief technology officer and head of R&D, and asked him why we got this niche offering rather than another R8. Turns out, the answer is threefold, and it came down to more than simple manufacturing logistics.

“One is, timing was king, because you want to catch the first year in Formula One,” Mohr said.

To move that quickly, Audi put together a relatively small, nimble team—not the normal behemoth that you’d find at work behind an effort like the R8. And that meant sacrificing some of the potential scale that comes with a larger project.

“There are aspects that are enabling the short timeline that you cannot transfer to mass production,” Mohr said. “We decided also for the small volume to be fast and to accept higher material costs because we are choosing the carbon technology. In carbon technology, they are super fast with the tooling timing.”

“If you go with metal,” Mohr continued, “starting to make the tool until you have the tool is defining a big chunk of your industrialization timeline. So this is for sure not representative because you cannot do it in mass production. You are not fast enough.”

There was another critical timing concern too. Missing its desired launch window would have forced Audi to re-engineer the Nuvolari’s powertrain to comply with a new set of regulations.

“Secondly, we wanted to catch the regulation window of the change from Euro 6 to Euro 7, because otherwise the effort would increase a lot,” Mohr said. “So this means we have to produce the cars for Europe in a certain time window; otherwise, it’s gone.”

To truly take advantage of economies of scale, Audi would have to build the Nuvolari in much larger numbers, which presents its own set of problems—especially since, like the rest of us, Audi has to contend with rising prices.

“To make the car cheaper is simply not possible with the material cost,” he said.

That means Audi’s up-front cost has a pretty high floor, and asking customers to pony up big bucks for something mass-produced is a dicey proposition. Audi would rather bank on the Nuvolari’s niche appeal to maintain interest from car collectors. Take away that cachet and the Nuvolari’s business case starts to evaporate.

“We have chosen the technology, but the technology is then so expensive that it would also not make sense to have a 10,000 volume because the market for 10,000 of this, you lose the exclusivity,” Mohr said.

“We really always try to underline that it was never planned as a successor of the R8,” Mohr said. “It’s a different animal because it’s more a halo brand vision related to the Formula One entry.”

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No matter how you slice it, this is one heck of a time to try to launch an EV. Political headwinds abound; federal subsidies are dead, and public sentiment toward is probably about as poor as it has been in close to a decade. That’s all a shame, too, because EVs are really starting to get interesting. Enter the Bentley Torcal.

You may think “Interesting EV” is a contradiction in terms, and you’re entitled to believe so. But let’s also confront a few inconvenient realities. First, EVs make exceptional luxury cars. They’re naturally silent, eerily smooth, and eminently capable of delivering bursts of extreme performance that keep them interesting enough for passers-by to gaze enviously in their direction. And second, love them or hate them, they still represent the new and different. Never underestimate the power of novelty, especially in the wandering eyes of new-money millennials.

But those are things luxury EVs have in common. In fact, they even have those things in common with not-so-luxurious EVs. And that’s a bit of a problem, because nothing ruins the allure of the new and novel quite like ubiquity. Oh, your Mercedes can do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds? So can my electric Kia. If the first major electrification hurdle for most automakers was making an actual electric car, the second obstacle is making an interesting one. Being somewhat late to the party, Bentley is in the unenviable position of trying to accomplish both in a single go.

Bentley is keenly aware of its precarious position. If you lingered in Monterey after this year’s Car Week festivities, you may have noticed some camouflaged machines running around the seaside resort. One of them was this Torcal prototype, which was being used to shuttle journalists (your author included) around to give them a taste of the company’s first electric SUV.

We can say all we like that Bentley’s mission is simply to make an interesting EV, but the company has its own metrics to hit, and chief among them is, well, the car’s Bentley-ness. After all, Bentley dealers have to sell these cars to Bentley customers. They’re a picky bunch, we’re told, and not just by those whose job it is to maintain Bentley’s elevated brand image. The follow-up question asks itself: How do we define Bentley-ness?

A proper answer to that question would consume more space than I’m prepared to dedicate to the subject, so I’ll boil it down to the two words product line manager Martin Page used often to describe the what his engineering team had in mind when they were tuning the Torcal’s powertrain response: “effortless progression.”

Certainly, Bentley’s got that part covered. The Torcal’s underlying platform is shared with the electric Porsche Cayenne‘s, and thus far shares virtually all (but not 100%) of its underlying capability. We already know that Porsche’s version goes like stink, and the Bentley will land between the Cayenne S and Turbo in terms of power (more than 840 hp) and weigh about the same. Their missions are similar, but unlike Porsche, Bentley isn’t chasing ultimate performance, but rather the ultimate expression of luxury.

Where the Cayenne’s steering is calibrated so that the road nudges the driver, Bentley’s elbows back at those perturbances. A Bentley controls the road, not the other way around. The Torcal’s response on-center is deliberately somewhat muted, progressing as the driver turns the wheel, helping maintain the illusion that the Torcal’s mere inertia is sufficient to carry it through irregularities in the path ahead.

But this sense of control isn’t meant to feel artificial. That’s incredibly complicated with electric cars, since the combustion process is responsible for a great deal of a petroleum-powered car’s inherent character. These days, the degree to which engine sounds are “real” is, like many things right now, a matter of debate, but at the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s typically nothing organic about the aural experience of an EV. With rare exceptions, EV sound is little more than an affectation.

But rather than trying to emulate an internal-combustion soundtrack, Bentley looked instead to the sensations and stimuli that we associate with natural engine sounds, if not their actual source. Engines are imperfect, and so are the noises they make. This nudged Bentley toward using sound made by living beings, rather than something synthesized. The result? An instrumental soundtrack.

Think about the lope of an aggressively cammed V8—all those tiny explosions tapping against the piston heads in somewhat imperfect rhythm. There’s your idle beat, represented in Bentley’s propulsion sound by drums. The sound was filled out with other instruments, including the viola and bass guitar. And like an actual combustion engine, the noise from the Torcal is linked not to the car’s speed, but to the actual work being demanded of its motors. As motor load increases, the sound gets deeper and thumpier, to the point where you feel it in your chest. Accelerate briskly and the beat speeds up and the higher frequencies come in. It sounds right. It sounds like it belongs there.

And before, when I mentioned that Bentley left some of Porsche’s tech on the table? I was referring to Porsche Active Ride. It’s a neat thing, but it doesn’t contribute to making the car feel more organic. The 800-volt electrical system that supports the chassis tech exists in the Torcal, so its suspension is every bit as responsive as Porsche’s. There are lot of things that will make the Bentley Torcal an interesting—even compelling—EV, but Bentley simply opted not to fiddle with something that runs counter to its mission.

And before we close this particular commentary on “Bentley-ness,” I can’t help but point out one more feature—or rather, the lack thereof. Bentley says the Torcal will not have a passenger screen. That seems like a good sign that the driver’s luxury car brand still has its head on its shoulders, right?

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The post 2028 Bentley Torcal First Ride: A Luxury EV that Moves to a Different Beat appeared first on The Drive.

[Update: Aug. 27, 2026, 4:30 p.m. EDT – Thursday’s “Extended Look” trailer confirmed what the community has long suspected: GTA is getting an actual race track. This story has been updated to reflect this development.]

It’s official! Grand Theft Auto is getting its first real race track. Friday’s “Extended Look” trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI included footage of a wheel-to-wheel race in progress at what we assume is Gellhorn International Raceway. Netflix subscribers can see it for themselves as of Thursday afternoon (check the 17:45 timestamp); others will have to wait for the trailer to appear elsewhere.

The track appears amid a montage of other in-game activities. In fact, the clip immediately preceding the track footage is from a strip club. There’s nothing to see (and come on, it’s a video game), but fair warning if you’re in mixed (or professional) company.

There’s enough footage here to suss out a few key details. First, this is an actual race, not just intra-mission shenanigans. There’s an actual lap counter, timer and position tracker on the right side of the screen, plus the competitors are visible on the mini-map to the left. Second, this appears to be confirmation that the in-game race track will not, in fact, be a 1:1 re-creation of Sebring International Raceway, as we previously had reason to suspect.

How’d we get there, exactly? First, we need to back up a bit. GTA 6 leaks seem to have becoming something of a quarterly event. This last round was even juicier than most, and if it weren’t for the rampant cease-and-desist orders being issued by Take-Two in response to the footage being shared, we’d suspect the whole thing was little more than a publicity stunt ahead of the game’s release later this year.

Among the items that surfaced in the recent gameplay footage release was a zoomed-out image of the game’s map. That’s a solid find for anybody who’s enthused about the upcoming installment in Rockstar’s iconic heist franchise, but it’s pure gold for a subset of that fanbase that has been working diligently since the earliest leaks to crowdsource a map of the game world.

This project originally caught our attention largely because of the possibility of Sebring being represented within the game world (as “Gellhorn”). If the new leaked map is to be believed, the in-game raceway abandons Sebring’s real-life configuration outside of the start/finish and front/back straightaways. Instead of Sebring’s awkward, improvised road course, we appear to be getting something that more closely resembles a modern, technical race track—one that even crosses bridges, based on the brief in-game footage we’ve now seen.

GTA 6 map got leaked and the community map project was pretty accurate
byu/Proof-Ad516 inGTA6

As you might imagine, the leaks and extended look trailer have both set off a new flurry of activity within the mapping community, with many looking to resolve the differences between their original layout and what has been revealed. That effort has been complicated by the fact that the leaked map is fairly zoomed out, and lacks the detail necessary to fill in many of the missing areas.

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We’ve made quite the to-do about Porsche’s last-second decision to revive the manual transmission in the 2027 911 Carrera S. That’s to be expected, right? After all, stick-shifts are dying left, right, and center; any move in the other direction is worthy of praise, even if it does come at a somewhat exorbitant cost. But even with cost being almost no object, Porsche wasn’t able to simply issue a decree that all 911s ship with a manual gearbox, and that’s at least partly due to the mechanical realities of the 992.2 Carrera GTS and its newfangled hybrid system.

To hear it from Porsche Cars North America CEO Timo Resch, it’s currently pretty much impossible to mate the 911 GTS’s hybrid powertrain with an old-fashioned gearbox. The Drive Editor-in-Chief Kyle Cheromcha joined a media roundtable with Resch during Monterey Car Week and took the opportunity to extract some more insights—and perhaps a few scraps of hope.

“So, the technology setup that we have in place right now and a manual transmission… they are not compatible,” Resch said. “That’s something that we see right now. But at the same time, it’s great to have an engineering team in Weissach that never stops thinking and has a lot of great ideas.”

You think that’s a tease? It gets better:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point they come up with a solution,” Resch said, “but it probably will not be a combination that you see here.”

That’s interesting for two reasons. For starters, Resch has essentially done everything short of confirm that Porsche’s engineers are actively working on a manual 911 GTS. That’s as good as the real thing, in our book. And second, it implies that Porsche will have to make other significant mechanical changes to accommodate it.

Per Porsche, it takes about a year just to implement a production change if the company already has the necessary hardware in the proverbial parts bin to do it. In this case, assuming Porsche is actively working on a manual GTS, its engineers would have had to start from the ground floor, not by reaching into the company’s warehouse of existing parts.

Reading between the lines, we probably won’t see a manual transmission paired with the hybrid system until either very late in the 992.2 product cycle (as a special edition, shortly before production ends?), or perhaps not even until the next-gen 911 arrives. Based on Porsche’s historic product cycles, we’d normally be just about due for a new 99x, but given the events of the past few years, the 992.2’s production run will likely be stretched out to keep development budgets in check.

That gives Porsche’s 911 nerds more time to come up with a creative solution to their current hybrid predicament. In the meantime, Porsche will keep offering manuals when and where it can.

“You can be assured that we will try to offer manual transmissions as long as we are legally allowed to and as long as there’s customer demand,” Resch said. “And we see customer demand for the optional manual transmission also lasting well into the next decade.”

Could that mean the 992.2 will still be for sale well into the 2030s, or is that confirmation that the next-gen 911 is being engineered to accommodate a manual? Guess we’ll just have to wait to find out.

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The post Porsche Says the 911 Hybrid Is ‘Not Compatible’ With a Manual Transmission, but There’s Hope appeared first on The Drive.

Mitsubishi is returning to America’s truck market with a little help from corporate partner Nissan. In the coming years, Mitsubishi will offer a pickup, very likely based on the Frontier, and return to the segment it abandoned when the Dakota-based Raider exited the market more than 15 years ago.

Rumors of a new Nissan-based Mitsubishi pickup have been swirling for years. At one point, it was suggested that the resulting product might be something more closely aligned with the unibody Ford Maverick, rather than the midsize, body-on-frame Frontier. Based on what we can see here, not to mention Nissan’s current financial situation, it makes far more sense for the two to produce a new vehicle on an existing, U.S.-built platform. That’s the Frontier you hear in the back corner, shouting, “Ooooh, pick me!”

Mitsubishi confirmed the truck’s introduction as one of the next steps in its “Momentum 2030” initiative, which includes several other models we already knew about, including a Leaf-based Eclipse EV.

“As part of this strategy, Mitsubishi Motors also intends to re-enter the pickup truck segment in North America through its collaboration with Nissan, further expanding the brand’s reach and relevance in the U.S. market,” the company’s announcement said.

“When we launched Momentum 2030, many questioned whether such an ambitious vision could be achieved. Today, that vision is taking shape,” said Mark Chaffin, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. “Mitsubishi Motors is fully committed, and the path forward for the U.S. market is clear. This is the most comprehensive growth plan we have ever undertaken in the region, built around delivering greater value to customers, creating new opportunities for our dealer partners, and strengthening the long-term future of the brand.”

Mitsubishi has also confirmed that we’re going to learn more about the revived Montero (sold elsewhere as the Pajero) soon—quite soon, in fact. The global reveal is slated for next Wednesday, Sept. 2, but we’re not expecting the U.S.-specific model to arrive for a few years.

This feels like a promising development for those who might be in the market for an affordable pickup truck. How about some fun cars next, eh?

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The past decade or so has been, shall we say, eventful for Porsche fans. If you’re not among the elite few jockeying for prime 911 allocations, you may find it difficult to get your hands on a proper enthusiast-spec Porsche. If you’re like us, you were heartened by Porsche’s seemingly last-second decision to sustain production of a manual variant of the Carrera S in the 992.2, but of course, there’s a catch. Well, more like 8,550 of them, really.

Previously, the manual was a no-cost option without any mandatory add-ons. This time around, the manual package adds $8,550 to the price of a Carrera S coupe, bringing it to $167,100 before any other options. Now, you get more than just the stick-shift for your $8,550 clams; the bundle also includes the titanium exhaust, rear-axle steering, and the nifty-if-impractical centerlock wheels. That’s a lot of value for your money, PCNA CEO Timo Resch argues.

“The Carrera S always has been the enthusiast kind of choice of the car for the people that think, ‘maybe I’ll forgo an all-wheel drive version, I’ll go for a real wheel driven version.’ And that is kind of what are the options that are most likely such a customer would actually pick,” Resch told a group of journalists during a Monterey Car Week Q&A. “And that’s where you end up with stuff like rear axle steering.”

“You have to look at the entire package of things that you get,” Resch said. “For example, the centerlock wheels, you don’t even get them on the Carrera S.”

And of course, Porsche is facing the economic realities of keeping the manual viable. As much as Porsche may have wanted to pursue a lower entry price for enthusiasts, at the end of the day, the premium approach won out. According to Resch, there could well be more where that came from.

“I think we have not seen the very end of this development,” Resch said. “I think there are a lot of interesting changes in the world of manual transmissions. And what we do with the Carrera S, with the manual transition package, I think is the most authentic one.”

And love it or hate it, at least it happened at all. Back when the 992.2 was first planned out, a manual wasn’t part of the brief. But after seeing customer reactions to manual gearbox availability online, Porsche decided it was worth keeping the manual on the menu.

“And I think that’s the really cool thing about Porsche as a company,” Resch said. “They really want to listen to the consumer and to the market. And so if we, the United States being the biggest market for Porsche, if we raise our voice, we’re like, ‘We really want to have this.’ They are open to listen and they work with us to come up with a solution for that.”

Granted, it doesn’t always come together immediately.

“Yes, that sometimes takes a bit of time because over here, all of that has to come together as a package and has to be tested, has to be approved,” Resch said. “And that takes a little bit more than one year. But at the beginning phase of the 992 generation, it was not planned.”

Count your lucky stars, I suppose.

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The post Porsche Explains Why the 911 Carrera S Manual Isn’t a Free Option Anymore appeared first on The Drive.

Ram has been making a lot of noise—both literally and figuratively—with the revival of its Hemi engine in half-ton pickups. Heck, the company even came out with a whole new set of trucks just to showcase the V8. But there’s more engine news in Ram land, and it comes from the heavy-duty side of the shop: the 2027 Cummins Power Wagon is officially here.

This is one of those combinations that has made sense forever, but never happened because of Power Wagon’s capability angle. While the Cummins would fit under the hood no problem, the truck’s standard winch made it prohibitively difficult to cool the thing. Ultimately, the winch was sacrificed to make way for the compression-ignition lump. That could change if Ram’s engineers can work out the plumbing, Ram says, but for now, if you want the diesel, that’s the deal.

And here’s the thing, you really do want the diesel. Normally, I’m wary of oil-burners. I get the appeal from a spec sheet perspective, especially for owners who benefit from the superior highway mileage and towing capability. But they cost a ton up front, and it takes a long time to pay off the difference. I guess if you’re getting paid for your time and you spend a lot of it behind the wheel, that could change the equation for you.

$12,995 is a mighty big figure to balance for most of us, and that’s what you’ll pay for the 6.7-liter Cummins upgrade in a 2027 Power Wagon. That gets you 430 horsepower and 1,075 lb-ft of torque, along with a DEF system and all that entails, plus a 3.42:1 axle ratio and a GVWR of more than 11,000 pounds. Yep, sounds like a diesel.

And remember, this is a Power Wagon, so you’re adding the package that includes locking differentials front and rear, a push-button sway bar disconnect, and factory 34-inch tires. That means you get 13.2 inches of ground clearance, a 26.1-degree approach angle, a 26-degree departure angle, and a 20.6-degree breakover angle. If you’re looking for the ultimate jack-of-all-trades truck, this here is it.

The problem with trucks that claim to do everything is that they typically come with compromises. Big honkin’ duallies with insane payload and tow ratings tend to ride like oxcarts, for example—especially without a load on. The Power Wagon is less extreme than that, as evidenced by its max tow rating of 19,630 pounds—a touch less than the tippy-top for 2500 models. See? Compromise.

But compromise isn’t all bad. In this case, Ram’s choices make the truck a far more pleasant everyday conveyance. The big Cummins is perfectly happy idling along from stoplight to stoplight if that’s all you want from it. There’s no sense that you’re holding back a manic thoroughbred; it simply does what’s asked of it. And if you ask for full-send, you’ll get all 1,075 of those pound-feet right in the small of your back. The only downside? No Hemi bark.

I got two opportunities to drive the 2027 Power Wagon. The first was way back in late June, when we had our first go at the 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT, Second of Its Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, etc. That was a prototype which was missing several physical pieces, but fundamentally worked as a truck. My second came later in July, when Ram gave its test trucks a 48-hour pass to hang with members of the media. As you might imagine, the second round was far more informative since I was no longer distracted by the alluring prospect of taking a 777-horsepower pickup truck flat-out over an expertly constructed jump.

The second truck was also far more complete than the first, and felt subsequently more coherent on the road. It was still a prototype, but honestly, I couldn’t have told you as much without looking at the window sticker. It rides beautifully, especially for such an unstoppable truck with hard-charging off-road credentials. And remember, this is a 2500, so at most, you have the option of a self-leveling rear air suspension, not the benefits of air bags all around. Despite the heavy-duty chassis, it also hides its weight surprisingly well. This just doesn’t feel like that big of a truck, although it quite plainly is. It even feels confidently over-braked, which is a great way to score points with truck buyers.

Put simply, this is all about the Cummins, and the engine is an absolute gem in this configuration. It’s hard to find any faults with the diesel Power Wagon apart from its distinctly non-V8 soundtrack, but it exists in a space that makes sense. Ford offers the Super Duty Tremor with the Power Stroke, and GM does Duramax variants of its heavy-duty ZR2 and AT4X off-road trucks. It’s easy to spend six figures on all of them, so “value” is getting pretty subjective here. If anything, Ram was simply playing catch-up, and its pricing strategy aligns appropriately.

If you were already sold on the Power Wagon save for the gas-only powertrain configuration, well, your truck has arrived.

2027 Ram 2500 Power Wagon Diesel Specs

Quick Take

The diesel daily sweet spot with just a little extra attitude.

The post 2027 Ram Power Wagon Cummins First Drive Review: The Diesel You Asked for in the Unstoppable Truck You Want appeared first on The Drive.

Human beings are competitive creatures. If there’s a thing to be done well, people will forever vie to be the best at it. We’re certainly not strangers to it in the automotive realm, so it doesn’t surprise us when we come across another niche motorsport. Look no further than NYS FD‘s motorized ladder drill, in which a truck carrying a ladder team races from a dig to reach a gantry, where the ladder team drops from the still-moving truck to erect a ladder which one of its members must then climb to reach the gantry and complete the run.

It’s drag racing meets American Ninja Warrior. Things go wrong about as often as you’d expect, but it’s all in the name of friendly competition, and perhaps keeping sharp in the event of a real emergency. Either way you look at it, it’s spectacular.

But don’t take my word for it. NYSFDRacing posts runs from its ladder competitions (along with its other events) all over the internet. You can see all of the absurdity for yourself:

Live on the second floor without an escape ladder? Fear not; they’ve trained for this. Although this approach certainly seems problematic for the driver in a real-world situation—not to mention the structural integrity of the home you’d be hoping to escape were this a real-world scenario. Fine, so the practical applications are limited. Who cares when it’s this objectively awesome?

C-Ladder is just one of many events in a typical competition, and while finding lay descriptions of the events is tough, there’s a published rulebook that would put your regional SCCA inspector into a tizzy. In the organizers’ defense, these people are tossing each other off the back of a truck. It would be no stretch of the imagination to think this could descend into buffoonery.

Obviously, these aren’t anything approaching “stock” ladder trucks. The rulebook requires them to have some of the basic features of an actual vehicle (brakes at all four corners, etc.), but they bear little resemblance to any modern firefighting equipment. There are limitations on vehicle length and tire size (and no duallies), and you can have only one(!) engine up to 440 cubic inches.

And no wheelie bars allowed, so please think of your friends’ dangling appendages when you launch that thing, OK?

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The post NY Firefighters Melded Drag Racing and Ladder Climbing Into One Ridiculous Sport appeared first on The Drive.

23 years ago, the California State Legislature passed a bill (AB 844) directing the California Energy Commission (CEC) to author and implement a new tire efficiency program. According to the CEC, the program’s stated mission is to “ensure that replacement tires sold in the state are at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold in the state as original equipment on new passenger cars and light-duty trucks.”

How’s that going so far, you ask? Well, it took Boston 16 years to complete the Big Dig. California needed seven more just to translate the above clause into the framework for a policy. This week, we’re finally finding out what the real-world implications of its rulings will be.

On spec, CEC’s argument is fairly straightforward: Automakers typically spec their cars with tires you simply can’t buy off the proverbial rack. Sure, the make and model name may be the same as what you see on your favorite car-part e-tailer, but automakers often request alterations to the finer details. Performance tires may have shallower tread than the generic models they’re based on to reduce squirm and make test-drivers feel more confident; the same can be done with efficient tires to reduce drag.

In some cases, automakers even specify entirely different tread compounds for their original equipment variations. And yes, one area that automakers tend to optimize for is fuel efficiency—often at the expense of tire longevity, advocates for the new rules argue.

Ever wonder why you didn’t get anywhere near the tread on your original tires as what manufacturers claim for replacement models? As we noted above, optimizing the tread for grip and/or efficiency can simply mean shaving down the tire’s tread—intentionally reducing its wear life, in other words. Consider that the next time you read customer reviews of original-equipment tires. Michelin, Goodyear, et al, may not necessarily be to blame for the poor longevity of factory rubber.

On the flip side of this equation, drivers often find that their replacement tires don’t perform as well at the fuel pump. Their new tires may end up lasting them longer, but those savings often go right back into the gas tank.

“Tire efficiency has a significant impact on the energy consumption of vehicles. How easily a tire rolls, referred to as rolling resistance, affects how much drivers spend on fuel for their vehicle, whether gasoline, diesel, electricity, or hydrogen fuel,” CEC’s summary says.

Ostensibly, California’s new rules will close this gap. Once this rule goes into effect in 2035, aftermarket tires will have to meet the same efficiency targets as their original-equipment equivalents. If you’re used to having your tires replaced at the dealership, this probably doesn’t seem like a big deal. Of course they have the original tires for your car, right?

“The regulations proposed in this staff report are, if adopted, expected to save each California driver of a gasoline passenger vehicle about $179 (2024 dollars) in fuel costs over the typical four-year life of a set of tires,” the summary says.

“In total,” it continues, “the regulations are anticipated to save California drivers about $979 million (2024 dollars) in fuel costs annually in 2035 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 2.0 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2035.”

That’s a little less than 2% of California’s total passenger fleet CO₂ footprint.

Under the new rule, we’re likely to see tire manufacturers expand their offerings to include varying rolling resistances, much the same way we see tires specced for various load ratings today. Expect options for niche or limited-run models to be expensive, because hey, what choice will you have?

And speaking of choice, what about enthusiasts who actually want “worse” tires? Well, for starters, don’t panic. These new laws only govern what retailers are allowed to sell you, not what you’re allowed to do with your own car. And second, track and off-road groups were given the opportunity to weigh in on the new rules, and the CEC agreed to allow exemptions for ultra-low-treadwear track tires, though the regulations may pose challenges for high-performance summer tires that aren’t quite sticky enough to meet the threshold to be considered track equipment.

Critics are worried that forcing aftermarket tires to behave like OEM might ultimately hurt customers given how short-lived they tend to be, but the CEC is not convinced that this will be a limitation in the real world.

“The CEC staff analysis shows that the regulations proposed in this staff report are technically feasible, are cost-effective, and will not compromise safety, reduce tire life, or increase tire waste.”

The real impact will largely be felt by folks who simply get work done at dealerships as a matter of course. In that regimented environment, it will be tougher to skirt the rules. Plus, service departments stand to make fat margins on O.E. replacement tires. For dealers sweating the pivot to electric cars in California, anything that might encourage repeat service business is good news.

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The post Don’t Panic: California’s Aftermarket Tire ‘Ban’ Explained appeared first on The Drive.

“It’s the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.”

“Goodyear?”

“No. The worst.”

I fly a lot. It’s part of the gig. I’m also a deeply curious person, and that curiosity has often led me on deep dives into aviation accidents—frequently the night before or the day of a scheduled flight. Don’t ask me why, but reading about inescapable death doesn’t trigger anxiety in me the way it can in others. Chalk it up to a childhood of watching educational disaster porn on television, but if there’s a way for a plane to fall out of the sky, I’ve probably read the NTSB report describing it in full. What can I say? I find closure satisfying.

But as a millennial who grew up in the peak CD-ROM era, I have a very weird relationship with blimps. What could one possibly have to do with the other? If you also happened to live through the 1990s, you may have had a copy of Microsoft’s Encarta. Taking advantage of the greater media space offered by the format, CD-ROM editions contained video (gasp!) of select entries. Among the small number of included clips was Hindenburg disaster footage. I can’t tell you how many times I watched that loop as a kid. I’m no doubt a contributor to the zeitgeist that helped propel “Oh, the huge manatee!” to peak memedom.

But do I have a flaming zeppelin on my mind as I’m boarding Goodyear‘s “Wingfoot Two”? No. It’s that stupid line above from The Naked Gun. And I’m chuckling at it because I’m genuinely giddy about getting to ride in an airship.

Despite what you may have heard about this business, the vast majority of my time airborne is spent deep in steerage. The Wingfoot Two seats seven; there ain’t a bad seat in this house.

The “ship” part of airship is something to be taken seriously. If you think about it, a blimp is really just a submarine turned conceptually inside-out. The skin keeps the helium in rather than keeping water out (though, strictly speaking, it does that too), but the general principles of buoyancy still apply. To study the wind is to study fluid dynamics.

And since it behaves like a seafaring craft, it’s treated like one. Boarding the Wingfoot Two is like boarding a ferry that is already underway. The gangway ladder is fitted with wheels so that it can move with the blimp as it pivots about its mooring cable. The blimp may be drifting at anything from a gentle amble to a spirited jog, and that pace can change in an instant. Fall down in front of the ladder, and you risk being run over by a 20,000-pound party favor.

Moreover, because the Wingfoot Two is nothing more than a giant gas bag with propellers on it, its natural inclination (so to speak) is to go up. Because the Goodyear team is trying to run through a packed schedule of passenger rides, they never truly “land” the thing in between trips. The passengers themselves serve as ballast, and new riders board before the previous ride’s passengers disembark, to err on the side of keeping it too heavy. All the while, the pilots are effectively flying the ship into the ground just to keep it from floating away.

With the last of the previous ride’s passengers off and the boarding hatch shut (window open for comfort; there’s no AC onboard), there’s a quick safety briefing, and then we’re cleared for takeoff. The ground crew casts us off and the ship noses up immediately as the pilot rotates the props to send us vertical.

A plane glides. A helicopter beats the air beneath it into submission. A blimp… floats. It’s eerie; you feel every thermal and wind gust. The whole thing occasionally drifts sideways on a whim. But it’s gentle—muted by the sheer size of the helium bladder holding you up. We’re cleared to move about the cabin at our “cruising altitude” of 1,000 feet, but we’re encouraged to hold onto the various rails and purchases until we find our “sea legs.”

Since the Wingfoot Two’s props are only there to provide thrust and not lift, they’re not terribly noisy. One of the crew members stands facing us throughout the flight to present the standard “tour” and never once needs to raise his voice, even with the windows open to provide ventilation. It’s not silent, but it’s not intrusive either.

It’s no stretch to imagine that this was once the peak of luxury travel. The ride is smooth and the views are spectacular. But even a gentle gust reminds you just how much you’re at the mercy of the weather. Muted though the effects may be, there’s no getting around the sheer physics of it. Wingfoot Two may be shaped like a torpedo, but it might as well be a sail; it’s about as aerodynamic as anything else originally conceived over a century ago—which is to say, not very.

The low altitude and surface-street pace tend to draw attention to the big airship too. At both lift-off and landing, cars stop along the side of the airfield and curious onlookers emerge carrying phones and cameras. That’s a sign that Wingfoot Two is doing its job. The first Goodyear blimp was a vanity project conceived as an airborne yacht for landlocked gentry.

Goodyear isn’t selling these to Sam Altman as pleasure cruisers in 2026, but they still perform the same basic function they did more than a century ago—spreading the word. Goodyear calls these “exposure” flights. In this case, the company wants to bring attention to the new flagship store it just opened off Woodward Avenue in Detroit proper. We can’t quite see the skyline through the haze, but it’s out there, somewhere to the southwest.

The open windows make for great photo opportunities, but despite what appears to be a leisurely pace, we’re reminded that the blimp is cruising along at 40 knots—about 46 miles per hour. That’s quick enough to snatch a phone out of your hands if you’re not being careful, and our flight from Oakland County Airport to the Woodward corridor takes us over quite a few of Michigan’s prime lake communities. One mistake and “blooper” simply becomes “bloop.”

Forty-six mph may not sound like much, and even compared to some of the more affordable general aviation options, it isn’t. Some consumer-grade drones can run circles around Goodyear’s airships. If getting there quickly is your priority, even a car may be better, though our crew tells us that they could make the run from the northern Detroit ‘burbs to the company’s Airdock in Akron, Ohio, in about three hours at their typical cruising speed. You could nearly double their pace in a car, but the ships get to take a shortcut over Ontario and Lake Erie, while the automobile has to take the long way around via Toledo.

Huh. That sounds like the makings of an interesting race. How ’bout it, Goodyear? First one there gets bragging rights and a victory lap around the test track? I’ll bring the car; you bring the ship.

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The post Flying in the Goodyear Blimp: Surprisingly Boat-Like appeared first on The Drive.

What do you do when you’ve got a malfunctioning part that won’t quite cooperate? If your answer was “smack it with a hammer,” then congratulations: you might be qualified for a job in Toyota’s warranty department. Because that’s the sophisticated solution the company’s engineers have come up with to test Toyota and Lexus trucks for the potentially catastrophic engine defect that prompted a massive, ongoing recall campaign covering more than a quarter-million trucks and SUVs.

Yep, a hammer—In this case, a tiny, plastic hammer built specifically for the purpose of creating a vibration that can be measured in a controlled environment. Pickup Truck + SUV Talk shared a fairly detailed breakdown of the procedure over the weekend. Essentially, by measuring the vibrations that move through the engine when struck by the tool, Toyota can determine the health of critical components without having to tear the engine down for a costly, time-consuming physical examination.

“Fundamentally, this inspection uses the resonant frequency of the front of the crankshaft to assess the condition of the #1 main bearing,” a Toyota spokesperson told The Drive via email. “Toyota’s development of this inspection included testing numerous engines to identify the resonant frequency differences between a #1 main bearing with and without abnormal wear.”

This is the same principle behind a tuning fork. High-quality ones are manufactured to exacting specifications to assure that they chime at the correct frequency—the note we hear. The sound of a tiny plastic hammer hitting a metal crank pulley probably isn’t going to sound particularly melodic, but vibrations are measurable things that produce predictable data. To nerds, that’s a tool.

After changing the engine’s fluids and inspecting for any other potentially confounding variables, Toyota techs connect a small accelerometer to the crank bolt and then strike the pulley itself with the hammer at the 3:00 position. The impact strength has to fall within a certain range for the software to get a good reading, and the hammer itself provides feedback to the technician if their swing is too weak or too strong—kind of like Mjolnir, one must be worthy.

Every component is manufactured to an identical spec—same shape, same material composition, same mass—and this means they all vibrate at the exact same frequency. It’s not quite that precise, of course. The tools used to machine those parts wear with time, and tolerances become less tight, but manufacturers provide a range for what is acceptable and standard quality control procedures assure that the product remains within the manufacturer’s specs. But of course, mistakes happen.

In this case, Toyota says that debris left behind during the manufacturing process is degrading one of the main bearings (the parts on which the crankshaft “floats” inside the case), eventually leading to engine failure. Toyota says it has taken steps to prevent debris from entering the crank case in trucks produced more recently, but in many instances, the damage has already been (or is still being) done. This is one of the reasons why Toyota’s recall campaign for the V6 has seemed so disjointed. To this day, Toyota still maintains that not every truck with the V35A actually needs a new engine.

Owners are understandably skeptical, but Toyota hopes this new procedure will give them some reassurance that the process isn’t entirely arbitrary. By measuring the frequencies transmitted through the engine, Toyota can tell how much main bearing #1 has degraded. When combined with a software analysis of the truck’s service life, Toyota techs will be able to tell with a reasonable (but not 100%) degree of certainty whether a given engine is a goner.

“Toyota developed this remedy to be effective in identifying if the engine needs to be replaced in a covered vehicle,” Toyota’s rep said. “Using an inspection software, dealers will evaluate the #1 main bearing and collect available vehicle drive data to confirm the condition of that bearing. If the inspection software cannot confirm that the bearing will be free from abnormal wear due to this issue, dealers will replace the engine.”

This solution is primarily meant to help Toyota discern whether a given truck might have an issue down the road; it’s not meant to serve as a diagnostic method for trucks that are already showing signs of a faulty engine. In that case, don’t wait:

“[O]wners with vehicles experiencing any symptoms, such as engine knocking, rough running, or no-start, should contact their Toyota or Lexus dealer,” the spokesperson told us.

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The post ‘Hit It With A Hammer:’ Toyota’s Actual Official Procedure for Diagnosing Recalled V6 Engines appeared first on The Drive.

If you’re a regular reader of The Drive, you’ve probably noticed that we sign off our stories with a note that we’re always seeking news tips. Sure, it results in lots of pitches for quirky air fresheners and AI shovelware, but occasionally we get a doozy. Want to get the attention of the editorial team? Try an opener like this one:

“I’m curious why I haven’t seen any articles on the crash of the ultra-luxury market.”

That’s a big statement, and it raised our eyebrows for two reasons. First, it came attached to a big name—one that we’re not going to share with you because we guaranteed anonymity in exchange for their insights, which were plentiful. Here’s another taste.

“Lamborghini—not selling,” he elaborated. “Bentley—struggling since 2024. Aston Martin—clients love their Valhallas, but other than that, sales are poor.”

And on top of that, he offered up the “why.”

What Gives?

“People don’t see the value anymore as prices have risen for all these brands. Clients complain on lease payments—many would need to pay an additional $2,000 a month to upgrade to a new vehicle, which is basically the same car as their current car,” he said.

The result is the erosion of the market from the middle out. So far, the traditional “S-tier” brands (Ferrari, Bugatti, et al.) are immune to the effect. At that level, market trends are almost entirely irrelevant—most of them, anyway—but even buyers with money to burn aren’t in a big hurry to spend it right now.

“And depreciation is crazy,” he said. “Clients may have money, but they aren’t stupid.”

If the trend is impacting those wealthy enough to otherwise ignore it, it naturally follows that the pinch is being felt up and down the sales spectrum. That brings us to the second reason why our tipster’s email caught our attention: He’s not the only one sounding the alarm. Kelley Blue Book reached out the same week with insights into July’s sales numbers, and the underlying trends were staring us right in the face.

Price Pressures

Ever since COVID, prices have been rising near-universally. Up until recently, customers were simply sucking up the price hikes because they had no choice. But at some point, likely in the past year, we quietly hit an inflection point. Now, when faced with both higher sticker prices and spikes in fuel costs, customers are simply pivoting to smaller, more affordable alternatives.

“Consumers continued gravitating toward more affordable segments, with subcompact SUVs, compact cars and midsize cars all seeing year-over-year sales gains,” KBB’s report summary said.

Critically, KBB’s report noted that average transaction prices didn’t increase as much in July as they have recently, but that’s not because sticker prices are going down. Instead, it’s because buyers are simply refusing to be upsold. In fact, the shift has been so dramatic that demand is keeping prices high on mainstream, “affordable” models while larger, more-expensive alternatives are overlooked.

“That shift is helping keep overall price growth in check, even as four of the five best-selling segments posted ATP [average transaction price] gains well above the industry average,” the report went on.

In other words, customers are still overpaying for cars, but they’re overpaying for smaller, more-efficient models, rather than upgrading to something larger and more luxurious. The definition of “luxury” may be murky in 2026, but “small” and “more affordable” aren’t typically on the list, and that’s bad news for lux-market dealers.

As a result, automakers with greater exposure to the high end of the luxury market (Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz) are feeling the pinch more than those whose lineups appeal more to the masses (BMW, for example). Transaction prices are still creeping up, but brands are losing sales at an unsustainable rate.

The Numbers

Just how bad is “bad?” Traditionally, the upper end of the luxury segment is where manufacturers play with thick, juicy margins that help justify corporate investment in halo models. Mercedes doesn’t need to sell 10,000 Maybach SLs every year just to break even, because they’re far more profitable than the average Benz on a per-unit basis.

But even with fat margins, luxury brands need to maintain a degree of volume. Porsche has spent the past several years bragging about its brand expansion, for example, but 2025 appears to have been an inflection point. Not only were its global sales down last year (largely blamed on a collapsing Chinese market, but Europe is doing it no favors), but the company eked out only a small gain over its 2024 performance in the United States. Given the tactics we’ll dig into below, even that result seems dubious.

Meanwhile, U.S. sales of Porsche’s certified pre-owned cars were up 11% in 2025—yet another sign that customers are bargain-hunting. According to multiple sources, many customers have also soured on Porsche’s inventory allocation system after dealers tied the availability of high-end 911 variants to purchases of less-sought-after models, such as the Taycan EV, in addition to charging exorbitant markups on each sale.

As a result, customers are closing their wallets. And Porsche isn’t alone in seeing less dealer traffic. According to our tipster, Bentley, which does not publish regular sales reports, moved fewer than 150 units in the U.S. in July.

“The current lineup is not selling, and the upcoming EV will be a disaster,” he remarked.

Things aren’t any better at Lamborghini. Profit is up (yay margin!), but volume is down. How long can the company stretch that out before things inevitably collapse? And that’s not even getting into smaller outfits, like Aston Martin.

Bridging the Gap

One thing people do expect from luxury is the latest and greatest, and that’s another area where automakers are currently suffering. Manufacturers just ate billions of dollars in sunk costs in the EV development whiplash from the last two U.S. presidential administrations. Spending a fat stack of cash to re-engineer a small number of luxury-market entries is not a cost-effective move when you’re pinching pennies.

Consequently, those models are rapidly aging out of their moments in the spotlight without replacements in the pipeline. Manufacturers often counter “model fatigue” with special editions, but how many ways can you skin a single nameplate before customers grow tired of it and want something new?

According to our tipster, at least, we’ve already passed that point. And with the attention-deficit demographic quickly becoming America’s economic engine, demand for the new and novel is only becoming more pronounced. And to hear our tipster tell it, we’re not merely on the brink of seeing this bubble pop. It has already started deflating.

His proof? Look at the sales numbers, and then look again.

A Shell Game

“It’s all smoke and mirrors; morale is way down at the manufacturers and at their dealerships,” he told us.

What appears concerning on the surface is merely the tip of the iceberg, he says. Dealers aren’t just struggling to move cars; they’re resorting to desperate tactics to clock sales in a market where customers simply aren’t showing up.

Have you been given a particularly swanky service loaner lately? Or perhaps enticed with a particularly long take-it-home style test drive? Those cars may have been “punched” by dealers—a practice many have widely assumed to be commonplace in challenging sales environments, but few openly acknowledge.

“Any halfway decent retail sales months are due to dealers being forced to ‘punch’ cars, the act of placing cars into their demo fleet, so these cars are ‘retailed,’ but they are not vehicles delivered to customers.”

In other words, dealers are selling these cars to themselves just to record a sale. They’re essentially milked for their depreciation and then sold off as pre-owned (likely with a hefty surcharge for “certification”) before they get too dinged up to be presentable.

But even these tricks aren’t enough to keep the numbers where manufacturers want them. And according to multiple sources we’ve spoken to, frustration is mounting on both sides. If the ship is already taking on water, what’s to prevent it from sinking?

Do you work in luxury sales? We’d appreciate your insight. Reach out to us at tips@thedrive.com or contact the author directly at byron@thedrive.com.

The post The Luxury Car Market Is Crumbling from the Top Down appeared first on The Drive.

The best-driving three row money can buy is getting an upgrade. Introducing the 2027 Lucid Gravity GT-S—what Lucid is calling “a new performance-focused expression” of the Gravity—and what they mean by that is that it’s really freakin’ quick.

“With 1,070 horsepower, Lucid Gravity GT-S is America’s most powerful three-row SUV,” the company’s announcement said.

Most-powerful? Yes. Quickest? Hmm. At 3.1 seconds to 60, it’s no slouch, but the Tesla Model X Plaid is a bit of an elephant in the room here. Tesla claims it’ll do 0-60 in just 2.5 seconds, which speaks for itself, really. Lucid didn’t quote a top speed figure, so once again the Plaid looms large with its 163-mph cutoff.

Then again, the Tesla Model X is now dead.

Let’s face it, the hyperspeed-capable SUV segment is relatively small, comprising mostly luxurious EVs and a few V8-powered brutes. The Dodge Durango Hellcat is the most accessible way to go stupid-fast in a three-row family car thanks to the Escalade V‘s high price tag. The Caddy also weighs more than the Lucid (cue the frantic Googling) and has less power. Sure, batteries are heavy, but so are full-size SUVs.

But 1,070 horsepower is about 50% more than the Gravity Touring’s output (560 hp), though only about a 20% bump over the already-quick Grand Touring (828 hp). The GT-S also gets the Dynamic Handling Package as standard equipment. That’s bundled with a three-chamber air suspension that helps the Gravity hunker down at high speeds. It also comes with rear-axle steering.

“With Lucid Gravity GT-S, we’ve created a more expressive and exhilarating interpretation of the Gravity SUV,” said Lucid Chief Creative Officer Derek Jenkins in the company’s announcement. “It combines extraordinary performance with the comfort, space, and versatility that define Gravity, delivering an exceptional experience for our customers that is uniquely Lucid.”

And it’s all yours for the low, low price of $127,750—assuming you live in the States, which is the only market slated to get the Gravity GT-S for now. That sort of scratch get you a Durango Hellcat and a half these days, I’d wager. Is that extra half a second worth a 50% premium? Maybe, maybe not, but never having to visit a gas station again? That may well be priceless.

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!

The post The Lucid Gravity GT-S Is a Sapphire-Inspired SUV with 1,070 HP appeared first on The Drive.

Looking to replace the tires on your off-road daily driver? That’s a much easier chore than it was just a few years ago. These days, virtually every tire manufacturer has some flavor “on-road all-terrain” designed to blend everyday comfort with some fairly serious off-road chops. At BFG, that tire line is the Trail-Terrain T/A—and now there’s a new one, denoted by a simple “+” at the end of the name: BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A+.

BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A+: What, Why, Who

Where the KO lineage appeals to diehards, the T/A+ is for the weekend warrior. This tire is aimed squarely at the driver who needs some degree of serious off-road capability in what otherwise amounts to a daily driver. If you’re just looking for a highway tire, the T/A+ is more capability than you’ll ever need. If you occasionally need to lock your rear end because your driveway resembles a rally stage for a significant part of the year, this is the category for you.

Slotting beneath the KO2/KO3 the BFGoodrich’s Trail-Terrain T/A+ earned its “+” with improvements in three key areas, BFG says: all-weather traction, longevity, and fuel efficiency. Two of these (traction and fuel efficiency) lend themselves to evaluation in a review format. Long-term reliability is beyond the scope of what I’m capable of evaluating within a reasonable time frame.

I’m particularly interested in evaluating Trail-Terrain’s wet-weather traction. Since it’s an all-terrain, it lacks the well-defined circumferential grooves that help street tires effectively shed water. This weird, zigzag tread pattern is great for clawing at rocky surfaces, but it’s not the best setup for a rainy day.

BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A+: Review

The Price

If you associate BFG with the premium end of the off-road space, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the T/A+ isn’t exactly bargain-priced. In the standard fitment for my Wrangler (255/75R/17), these check in at about $315 apiece at the time of publication; in the size we’re currently testing (265/70R/17), they’re about $15 cheaper.

These “replaced” a set of Nokian Outpost ATs (since superseded by the nAT; same tire, different letters) that run about $30 less per tire in the equivalent size.

The Curb Appeal

The Trail-Terrain T/A+ is advertised as a white-letter tire, but that’s only true of one side. The symmetrical/nondirectional tread pattern lets you mount it however you like. I decided to try white-side-out just for kicks, and it works reasonably well with the knock-off OEM steel wheels. The shop apologized profusely for not being able to remove all of the blue dye, but I’m not sweating it too much.

Letters-out-choices-aside, the T/A+ has a nice, chunky look to it. The wide rubber looks extra aggressive on my factory-height JK, making it appear more grounded than the wimpy factory 16s and fuel-economy tires.

The First 500 Miles

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and BFG really knocked it out of the park with the new T/A+. Despite their physical size and heft, the beefy BFGs ride beautifully. They soak up sharp impacts without wallowing over softer ones. There are two downsides, however. First, with the lack of impact transmission comes a similar loss of feedback. Second (and partially as a result of the first), they tend to feel a bit fidgety and vague in deep water, and the substantial width of this particular fitment further exacerbates the situation.

It’s hard to judge the impact of these wider tires on fuel economy with so few miles on them so far—after all, we’re talking about a Wrangler here. Mediocre fuel economy is just part of the experience, but it’s something I’ll keep an eye on over the next few fill-ups, as I expect the trend to become obvious long-term.

The Casual Drive

Around town, the T/A+’s mild road manners play huge dividends. Even with the Wrangler’s top town, there’s virtually no roar, and the thick sidewalls absolutely soak up bumps. This is the most comfortable tire I’ve ever run on the Jeep, far surpassing the original-equipment Goodyears.

While I haven’t driven enough for good sample numbers, the extra weight over the 16s I replaced is tangible. The take off is noticably more sluggish with these heavier tires, and my clutch yearns for less un-sprung weight, but the trade-off in ride quality is worth it for DDing.

The Off-Pavement Adventure

I’ve only barely broken these in, so we’re still eyeballing our first opportunity to test them out in the dirt. Stay tuned for some proper off-road impressions.

The Foul-Weather Factor

BFG sent me these tires long after the final frost had passed, but I’ll be testing them well into the winter months thanks to their severe snow/ice handling. That’s the beauty of all-season truck tires—you can actually find them with a genuine Three-Peak Mountain rating. Hey, sometimes it pays to drive a “big” truck.

The Passenger Comments

The Trail-Terrain T/A+’s on-road manners haven’t gone unnoticed by my wife, who commented on how much less jarring the ride is now than it was on the Nokians. It’s tough to compare them 1:1 given the extra sidewall and mass of the BFGs, but the upgrade is welcome nonetheless.

The Verdict

It’s early days, but the Trail-Terrain T/A+ is already hit here in your author’s driveway. Look for more updates as I put more miles (and rough ground) behind me.

BFGoodrich provided a set of tires for this review.

The post Driven: BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A+ Blends Capability With On-Road Comfort appeared first on The Drive.

Were you one of those elementary-school car enthusiasts who wondered things out loud like, “If bumpers are so good for crashes, why don’t we put them everywhere?” If you’re like me, you had an adult in your life who patiently explained how that would be a waste of taxpayer money, and that it wasn’t necessary because the bulk of drivers were reasonably safe, sensible people.

Fast forward to 2026, and we’re sticking pinball bumpers on the back of dump trucks to make sure people don’t crash into the scene of a crash that already happened. These things aren’t hypothetical. They exist, and, as our friends at Jalopnik pointed out, they’re being deployed in the real world. Have we mentioned lately that the future sucks?

It’s called the Scorpion II, and it’s manufactured by TrafFix Devices. So it’s a bumper you stick on the back of a truck. Big deal, right? Well, as a nice little bonus, these barriers are meet MASH (not that one) standards. This means they’re rated to perform as well as an equivalent fixed barrier. In other words, this is like having a full-blown median divider bolted to the back of your hauler.

“The Scorpion II TMA consists of strut and cartridge sections that are linked together on a support frame,” said TrafFix. “The curved side rails are made from corrosion resistant aluminum tubes, which offer full width impact protection along the entire length of the unit. The side rails were designed to redirect errant vehicles away from the rear of the truck (coffin corner). Other manufacturers Crash Attenuator models have little or no side-angle impact protection.”

“The aluminum boxes are filled with a moisture proof, aluminum honeycomb material,” TrafFix said.” The boxes, together with the curved side rails, absorb the energy from an impacting vehicle. The aluminum boxes are painted with a bright yellow powder-coated finish, for lasting durability.”

TrafFix says you’ll need at least a 15,000 pound truck to mount the Scorpion II. That heft guarantees as little movement as possible in the event of an impact. The trailers can be equipped with monitoring equipment and lit signage—just in case you want to give idiots something besides their phones to read in the moments before to impact. Stay safe out there, folks.

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!

The post These Wild Truck-Mounted Crash Barriers Exist Because Drivers Can’t Stop Staring at Their Phones appeared first on The Drive.

These days, you can order just about anything on your phone or computer and have it delivered same-day (or close to it), but if you’re the DIY type and/or you own older cars, you may often find yourself relying on dealers for hard-to-find wear items. If you’ve ever been hung up on a project because you need an obscure bolt or washer that you can only source that way, you likely know the pain of being assured on the phone that the parts department has something in stock, only to show up and find out that they haven’t even kept space on the shelf for it in over a decade.

Now, DoorDash and AutoParts.com are offering to spare you those unproductive trips. Rather than having to inquire dealer-by-dealer, you can just search DoorDash for the part you need and order it, often for same-day pickup or delivery. Not actually in stock? You’ll simply be refunded. No wasted trips, no circular conversations with a stoned counter jockey, no endless arguments over VIN numbers or parts interchange. And perhaps even better, nobody trying to point you toward buying a new car instead of a $7 seal. Just tap or click, then sit back and wait.

That’s the idea, anyhow. As one of those DIYers with an older car, I’m all too familiar with having to hunt-and-peck my way through brutal online dealer interfaces trying to find poorly labeled (or completely unlabeled) replacement bits for this or that. Unfortunately, DoorDash doesn’t help much in this regard. Item descriptions were clearly just scraped from existing inventory systems, which means they’re only as good as the effort that went into the dealer’s part listing.

It may be imperfect, but anything that makes it easier to get ahold of oddball factory parts (or OEM parts in general, should you need them to maintain warranty cover, etc.). And while some maintenance parts (and fluids) have been available via DoorDash for quite some time (mostly by virtue of the fact that they’re sold through just about every general-purpose retailer—convenience stores, home improvement stores and grocery stores come to mind), but this is the first time we’ve seen OEM-specific replacement parts for sale on the platform, by itself, that’s a win, especially with consolidation coming for the aftermarket business.

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!

The post You Can Now DoorDash OE Car Parts Like Ordering Pizza appeared first on The Drive.

If you’re a car enthusiast with a home and car-hole to call your own, chances are you actually store a vehicle in it. At least, that’s the case based on a brief and completely unscientific survey of my immediate circle of friends/colleagues. But if you believe surveys of the general public, only about a third of people with a garage actually use it to store a car. That makes us the weird ones, apparently, but the logical follow-up question is simple: Why?

The answer to that question is twofold. The first is pretty straightforward. If you’ve been paying attention over the past, oh, 30 years, you’ve noticed that cars and trucks are getting bigger. Meanwhile, garages are getting smaller. Yep, ironically, one of the most American elements of the modern household is actually shrinking—especially for newer builds in popular suburban areas, where property values are high and lots are aggressively subdivided to milk as much single-family real estate out of them as possible.

Let’s put some numbers to it. The typical F-150 (a SuperCrew with the 5′-5″ bed) is 230 inches long—or a little over 19 feet. That means you could just squeeze it into a garage that is about 20 feet deep, assuming you have full clearance inside, but unless you don’t care about your bumpers (or for that matter, your drywall job), the smallest garage most people would feel comfortable parking it in is about 22 feet deep, and even then, you’re not walking around either end of the truck with the garage door shut. 22 feet is still smaller than the average attached garage depth in many parts of the country, where the average attached garage measures 20’x20′.

That’s long enough to park a typical compact crossover (Think Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV4) with room to room to walk around it. Even a midsize truck would fill the space; the shortest Toyota Tacoma on the market is still nearly 18 feet long.

What gives? It should be no surprise that this comes down to dollars and cents. For starters, real estate is at a premium near urban centers, and local building code often prevents the obvious alternative of simply expanding the home’s footprint. Developers instead cannibalize garage space to create more livable square footage. To make matters worse, these attached garages often need steps up to the main house that can further compromise the actual interior space. 20 feet on paper may only be 17 or 16 feet in real life.

Simultaneously, space that was traditionally available for storing seasonal or bulk items is quickly vanishing—not to make more livable room, necessarily, but instead due to modern construction methods. Old-school, high-pitched roofs largely went out of fashion decades ago, replaced instead by low-pitch, colonial-revival and ranch-style roofs that significantly limit available attic configurations. On top of that, modern roof trusses are often engineered only to hold up the roof on top, the drywall below, and the insulation in between, rendering them inadequate for supporting an attic load. Add to all that the popularity of slab-on-grade construction, rather than traditional basements, and you have a recipe for a storage crisis.

Where does all that crap go instead? Yep, right into the garage. As you can see in the pictures above, even I am not immune to stuff-creep. We own a 1920s house (with a 1940s garage) in an urban neighborhood. Since our attic and knee walls are both encapsulated and our basement was built before they were expected to be perpetually water-tight, our “stuff” ends up in and above the garage too. It’s something we’re looking to mitigate by building a new, bigger garage… but one that won’t be any deeper.

Why? Well, for starters, being someplace where code officials hold real power, we’re limited to just 800 square feet. Most three-car garages designed with that footprint in mind are 32’x25’—just deep enough for even a relatively big pickup truck, but if you’re like me and you’re more inclined toward low-slung, two-door coupes and roadsters, you might cringe at the thought of only having 10 feet per bay, and it’s actually less than that once you factor in the space the garage walls themselves take up. So I went wider, aiming for 12 feet instead, landing at 36’x22′. That’s a foot shallower than our existing garage, but it won’t have the foot-thick, brick-over-stick walls of our 1940 structure, so the interior depth will actually work out to be about the same.

While it may be small by Super Duty standards, it was at least designed for my automotive use case, not just to tick a box in a Zillow listing. So don’t feel guilty if your car doesn’t fit into its designated spot. Garage space is simply yet another thing at a premium in the modern economy.

So how about you? Does your daily actually fit in your garage, or are you suffering from the pressures of stuff creep just like the rest of us?

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!

The post Does Your Car Even Fit In Your Garage? appeared first on The Drive.

Dodge will give buyers more opportunities to customize their rides in 2027 thanks to some new appearance options and a new twist on the “Jailbreak” customization program that originally launched on the old Dodge Charger and Challenger. Soon, Dodge Charger buyers will be able to select from a far more extensive list of paint colors, rather than being restricted by model and trim availability.

For the time being, the brand is simply referring to it as “Color Jailbreak,” and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

“The new Color Jailbreak initiative unlocks creativity for all by bringing to a broader audience a custom color program similar to those previously offered for Dodge ‘halo’ vehicles, such as the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 and Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak,” Dodge’s announcement said. “The Color Jailbreak program cracks open the rainbow and gives more Dodge enthusiasts the chance to go crazy and color beyond the standard Dodge palette, with a starting U.S. MSRP targeted at the masses rather than the select few.”

We’ll have to wait to find out exactly what that MSRP is. Dodge brought several cars to Roadkill Nights to give fans a preview of the new customization options, but says we’ll have to wait until later this year for formal pricing and other program details.

“Dodge owners have never been shy about standing out, and Roadkill Nights gives us the perfect place to announce an all-new custom paint program right from the factory,” Dodge CEO Matt McAlear said in the company’s announcement. “Nothing cements the authenticity of a 1:1 car like a special paint, and we want to make that more affordable than ever. Whether it’s a favorite body color or you are looking to push the limits to the edge with unique calipers, stripes, spoiler color or even two-tone, we’ve got you in mind.”

To that end, Dodge also announced that a new tinted stripe package will be available on 2027 models (Charger and Durango alike). The package is one of many custom elements on the Dodge has on display at Roadkill Nights.

In addition to the stripes (shown on the “Redeye” Durango R/T), Dodge has an additional show model dubbed the Durango “Smokescreen” concept, which gets its name from its base paint finish. Dodge further modified it with “Cryo Blue” graphics, 20-inch forged wheels (also in Cryo) and “Petrol Blue” Laguna leather seats.

Look for more into on Dodge’s new customization options as the 2027 model year rolls out.

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The post Dodge Goes the Porsche Route and Makes Custom Paint Colors Available to the Masses appeared first on The Drive.

Say hello to the 2027 Dodge Charger Super Bee. With the help of SRT and a new, even-more-powerful High Output Hurricane inline-six, the first true high-performance Charger variant will hit the streets soon with 600 horsepower and 531 pound-feet of torque.

“Compared with the SIXPACK H.O. Charger Scat Pack, the Super Bee powertrain delivers more peak power, a broader torque curve, more powerful boost response, stronger top-end acceleration and greater sustained output during extended high-performance driving,” Dodge said in its announcement. “The result is a Charger that pulls harder out of corners, charges more aggressively toward redline and continues making power deep into the speedometer.”

What does that translate to, exactly? Dodge says the new car is pretty much a full second quicker to 60 than the 2023 Super Bee (which was powered by the 6.4-liter 392), getting there in 3.6 seconds. That advantage dwindles to a little more than half a second in the quarter mile, which it clears in 11.8 seconds. Thank the 2027 Super Bee’s standard all-wheel drive for that advantage in the 0-60. It’s curious that the lead shrinks on the way to the 1/4, given that the new car has more power too.

Those numbers give it a good leg up on the old Super Bee, but they don’t quite reach Hellcat levels of insanity. That’s OK. Dodge keeps reminding us that there’s plenty more still on the table with this platform, both from this I6 (this announcement made no mention of SRT’s new “eBoost” tech) and the forthcoming revival of the Hemi V8. Dodge has yet to confirm timing for the latter, but we expect it to happen sooner rather than later.

In the words of virtually every Dodge and SRT executive, they’re “just getting started.”

And while this may be a muscle machine at heart, Dodge says the Super Bee package is more than just a power boost. The Super Bee is lower and stiffer than the standard High Output Sixpack, and the front end was further modified for improved steering response and reduced understeer. Adaptive dampers keep the ride pleasant while offering maximum grip characteristics when called upon. The drive mode system has been updated with two new options: Track Mode and Drag Mode—optimized precisely the way they sound. The tires are Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3s in 305/35ZR20, and behind those wheels sit “Hyper Lime” Brembo calipers (six-piston up front, four-piston out back) grabbing 16.-1 inch rotors.

The Super Bee will also ship with a 1080p video and data recording system (similar to GM’s Performance Data Recorder) that promises drivers the opportunity to share their performance exploits directly with the world. That could be… interesting.

The interior gets some attention too. The Bee theme is evident here with the yellow highlights (the exterior color is called “Sucker Punch,” but the yellow hue inside is “Sour Lemon”) and Super Bee seat embroidery. There’s a badge on the cluster too, just in case that bright yellow center stripe on the wheel wasn’t enough of a reminder.

The Launch Edition will come equipped as you see it here (or in black, if you’re so inclined). Dodge hasn’t announced pricing or an ordering window yet, nor do we have details of how the standard Super Bee will be packaged. Stay tuned for that; given the 2027 model year, we should know more soon enough.

Got a news tip? Let us know at tips@thedrive.com!

The post 2027 Dodge Charger Super Bee Buzzes With 600 HP From a Highly Boosted Inline-Six appeared first on The Drive.

You’ve heard it a million times: A car is often the second-most-expensive purchase a person will ever make. It’s never been truer than today. With skyrocketing costs and expensive credit (not to mention other factors) driving up prices across the board, shoppers are desperate for options that won’t break the bank. So, how are automakers responding to this clamor? By trying to milk even more money from their customers, of course.

I’m 42; I grew up in the era of “bean counters.” These nefarious little nannies were blamed for every cool model that didn’t make it to our shores, and every sweet performance option left on the table (not to mention every part that fell off of an American car built between 1979 and 1999). They were nothing but thieves of joy, cutting costs at the expense of fun—the boogeymen in the back room telling the engineers that we weren’t allowed to have fun.

I never thought I’d speak of that era with any sort of fondness, but here we are, in 2026, and the accounting autocracy of the late 20th century seems like a paradise next to the Black Mirror-verse slowly settling in around us. Our latest reminder of just how much everything sucks right now comes from BMW (by way of @metav3rse on Instagram).

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Yep, that’s a promotional spot for Spider-Man… and the iX3, somehow? And done in soft, friendly tones intended to soothe you. It’s a cute, cuddly, entirely innocuous little clip in the same vein of Google’s search doodles—remember when those still felt harmless? It’s fine if you don’t; that moment passed nearly a decade ago.

The Bavarians aren’t strictly alone in this strategy, broadly speaking. Jeep is doing it, and even Toyota will try to up-sell you on a subscription for its infotainment service using its touchscreen real estate. But the example before us is particularly egregious, especially since it’s not simply selling you on BMW parts or accessories. It’s a full-blown ad for a non-automotive product—a movie, of all things.

This strikes me as the sort of thing a marketing type might call a “cross-promotional opportunity” rather than “advertisement,” but that really means you’re watching not one but two separate ads: one for a Marvel movie and the other for BMW. I expect there’s also some sort of BMW product placement within the movie itself (sure enough), which is yet another billboard for further euphemistically labeled corporate revenue orgies. Mmmmm… can’t you just smell all that synergy!?

I get that automakers still have accountants to please and shareholders to satisfy, but this sort of naked greed serves no one but the MBAs patting each other on the back for their clever little play. Enough is enough. Get this off our screens.

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The post Dear Automakers: Get Your Ads Out of Our Cars appeared first on The Drive.

Last summer, when Ram announced that the Hemi’s comeback was just the beginning, we asked company executives whether we’d see the return of factory-backed power upgrades for the now-iconic V8. The answer, delivered with a smile and maybe the hint of a wink, was something along the lines of “stay tuned.” Well, our patience has been rewarded.

Starting this fall, you can order your 2027 Ram Rumble Bee with an extra shot of pure, unadulterated horsepower. Whether you opt for the 5.7, 6.4, or supercharged 6.2-liter Hellcat, there’s a new Mopar Direct Connection supercharger package that unlocks even more oomph (more than 900, if you start with the Hellcat)—without sacrificing your factory warranty.

Mopar says it’s aiming for more than 600 horsepower on 5.7-liter Rumble Bee, over 700 horsepower on 6.4-liter Rumble Bee 392 (including the Track Pack, of course), and over 900 horsepower on Hellcat-powered Rumble Bee SRT.

If installed by a Mopar-certified technician, they do not impact the factory five-year / 60,000-mile powertrain warranty, the announcement confirmed.

And if you’re looking to inject a bit more personality into your new short-wheelbase sport truck, Mopar has suspension and exhaust options in the pipeline too. A new Ridetech kit both lowers the Rumble Bee and offers 24-way adjustable damping, and a new Magnaflow cat-back kit will give the Rumble Bee’s exhaust even more bark.

Mopar says the suspension kit should sticker for $4,590, and the Magnaflow exhaust for $1,599 on the 5.7-liter Rumble Bee or $2,299 on the 392. The SRT model checks in at $2,399. You know the old saying: You gotta pay to play.

Packages for the 5.7-liter Hemi will begin to trickle into the supply line starting late this year; 392 and SRT owners will have to wait for early 2027.

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The post 900 HP With a Factory Warranty: Direct Connection Supercharger Packages Are Back on the Ram Rumble Bee appeared first on The Drive.

Last month I spent a couple of weeks with a pair of $250,000 sporting machines: a 2026 Aston Martin Vantage S, and this, the 2026 Mercedes-Maybach SL680 Monogram. Both are roadsters. Both are powered by an AMG-engineered V8. Both were even green (Ireland dark green metallic in this case—a $9,900 “Manufaktur” option). But despite the similarities, you’d never mistake one for the other in a blind test—whatever that might look like.

The last time I had the pleasure of driving the SL680, I never really ventured outside of my normal routine. This time around, I had not only the benefit of swapping straight out of the Aston Martin, but a prime opportunity to take the Maybach on a proper road trip. Sure, it may be a sports car, but this little drop-top is first and foremost a luxury car. How bad can it be, right?

I called it “little,” but that’s not really accurate. Where the Vantage felt crisp and light on its feet, the Maybach turned bulky and boat-like. The highfalutin’ Benz noses rapidly into turns thanks to its super-quick steering, but the whole thing feels so light as to defy physics, enhancing your persistent awareness of how much artificial boost is built into the wheel.

This most commonly manifests as a bit of twitchiness on-center, and it’s something you’re more likely to notice if you’re steering the car manually (as in, not letting the car do it for you, which it can) on relatively straight roads—the kind you tend to encounter frequently on a 400-plus-mile road trip through the Midwest. If you’re out there really hustling the thing through the bends, you won’t spend enough at dead-ahead steering to even notice.

On the rare occasion that I did encounter a nice set of twisties, I was struck by how slow the Maybach manages to feel despite its insane power reserve and relatively small stature. There are cars that shrink around the driver when you push them; others seem to elongate the instant you turn the steering wheel. Carrying nearly 4,400 pounds under that svelte sheet metal, the Maybach is very much the latter.

While we’re on the subject of carrying things, let’s talk cargo. Storage space isn’t typically at a premium on my usual commute (from my bedroom to my home office, to be clear), but an overnight trip means packing the usual toiletries and at least one change of clothes. For that, I went with my usual L.L. Bean roller duffel, which fits in any commercial airline overhead bin in America. I could probably stack two of them in the SL, tops. My dayback rode up front.

Even just puttering around in traffic, the Maybach’s shift programming (even in its most aggressive drive mode) feels lethargic. The exhaust doesn’t bark, pop, or rumble when you let off the throttle. This thing was designed to be noticed without making a lot of noise. Mission accomplished, I suppose, but the result feels flat to me, even if the car performs just fine despite its subtle soundtrack.

Being Michigan, arrow-straight roads are the exception here rather than the rule. On the highway, the Maybach’s nose likes to dart around at the slightest input. To complicate things further, the chassis itself seems almost allergic to the road crown. At any point when I wasn’t letting the car drive itself, it seemed like it was constantly trying to nudge me onto the shoulder—as if the self-driving system’s passive-aggressive intrusive thoughts were somehow leaking past the “off” button.

It’s possible that the car was just embarrassed to be seen with me in public and was merely trying to end its own misery. I should have asked; the built-in AI assistant probably would have given me a diagnostic report on its mental health. Let’s talk about that thing for a minute.

Last year, I took a (non-Maybach) GL 580 on a road trip to Chicagoland and back. Apart from the finicky touch controls and over-intrusive driver assists, I rather liked it. It too had “Hey, Mercedes” functionality, but it politely remained quiet until summoned. Rarely am I the Eric Cartman in any given crowd, but he and I see eye-to-eye on the proper social hierarchy between humans and machines. I don’t need my creepy digital data-miners getting all ambitious.

Case in point: The weekend prior to my road trip, my wife and I drove into the city to catch a show. All went well; the drop-top Maybach even made for easy maneuvering in the parking garage (not to mention eye contact with SUV drivers). As we neared home, I spotted one of the neighborhood strays bolting away from the road. I tried to point her out to my wife, who, at 5′-2″, could only barely see over the Maybach’s long hood.

“I can’t see anything in here,” she said.

“Turning on the defroster,” the Maybach replied.

Sure enough, having wildly misinterpreted my wife’s comment, the car dutifully put the heat on full blast—no option to decline, no prompt, nothing—and in this instance, without any input whatsoever from the driver. Look, I’m a man of honor, but if one of us is going to suddenly lose their vision while I’m behind the wheel, let’s just say chivalry ain’t riding shotgun. Love you, babe, but it’s my eyes the Maybach should be worried about. And yes, I’m quite certain the SL680’s in-cabin tech can tell exactly which occupant is speaking at any given time. This thing has a more sophisticated sensor array than the U.S.S. Enterprise.

So it’s presumptuous and disloyal.

Before, one only had to avoid saying “Hey, Mercedes?” (or occasionally, something that kind of sounded like it) and the assistant would wait patiently in its solid-state cave until deliberately summoned. Now there’s a whole host of phrases that can potentially send HAL 9000’s great-grandversion on some digital errand you never intended. Better yet: If you’re the type to express your frustration with this sort of thing through colorful language, the computer will also admonish you for being rude.

Hey, Mercedes? The future sucks.

It probably seems like I’m bagging on the poor Maybach, but the reality is that this simply isn’t my kind of automobile. I prefer the Vantage because it’s more of a driver’s car; this, on the other hand, is a status symbol on wheels. Sure, it’s a sports car in spirit, but it coddles and caresses, and makes every effort to do all the fun parts for you.

With the top up, it’s quieter than my Cadillac (though people tend to react to tire roar and wind noise differently; YMMV), and, frankly, it’s just as comfortable to sit in for long periods.

In fact, the Maybach might be even more accommodating of tall drivers than the baby slicktop Blackwing, especially if you have need of the Caddy’s rear seat. The Maybach, of course, has no use for such practicalities, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at its curb weight. But if you absolutely must take a sports car on a many-hundred-mile highway trip, the Maybach is certainly well-qualified.

Mercedes provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Mercedes-Maybach SL680 Specs

Quick Take

Not the most exciting Mercedes to look at, nor the best one to drive enthusiastically. But it is a good Maybach.

The post 2026 Mercedes-Maybach SL680 Review: All Chill, No Thrill appeared first on The Drive.

The fifth-generation Toyota Supra has effectively come and gone, and with no direct replacement expected for the foreseeable future. And it feels a little weird to say that, because as Caleb pointed out as few months ago, it really doesn’t seem like the car was with us for all that long.

We sat down with Alex Shen, Studio Chief Designer at Calty Design. Calty is Toyota’s California-based design studio, and it’s the outfit that was responsible for (among many other things) the concept car that eventually became the MkV Supra, who helped explain the disconnect between concepts and their modern production equivalents. And in the process, he gave us some insight into how modern customer demands are shaping new design trends.

Calty handles a lot of exploratory design. With that directive, it stands to reason that its concepts will push boundaries—often beyond what is feasible from a production standpoint. The team produces a lot of what Shen calls “early studies”—vague designs intended to suggest stylistic elements and not necessarily indicative of any final product.

“We’re an advanced design studio so a lot of our work is not really intended for the public consumption,” Shen said. “Maybe those ideas aren’t quite hashed out yet, or still kind of in the works.”

Naturally, not every design the studio churns out will end up being featured by the brand, let alone produced. So when something does make it all the way through the pipeline, the way the Toyota FT-1 eventually became the new Supra, it tends to prompt reflection.

“Time always tells how good of a product you designed,” Shen said.

Each year, Calty designers choose a project that they want to explore. The Supra (which wasn’t yet called that) was one such selection, and the team decided that the best way to pitch a new design would be to give the brass an opportunity to actually experience it.

At the time, Shen said, sports cars were viewed as money-losers. It never occurred to him this was likely to be approved, and Toyota wasn’t struggling with the traditional appeal issues that might normally prompt an automaker to roll the dice on something exciting.

“We hadn’t heard anything about, you know, any production plans in the future,” he said. “We had a pretty good image at the time already.”

“The thing that kind of kept it a Supra was kind of the spirit of what it’s supposed to do, right? Version by version, it changed from like a Celica Supra to a pure sports car,” Shen said.

Naturally, that prompted the team to ask a fairly obvious question: “What should it be next?”

The result was the FT-1. But given the headwinds facing the segment, looks alone wouldn’t seal the deal with the brass. Calty decided it needed to take a more sophisticated approach.

“You’re supposed to drive these sports cars. It should be visceral,” Shen said. “It’s not enough just to put a car out there, right?”

There was just one problem. At the time, Calty didn’t have anything remotely like an actual car to show; all they had was a design. That’s where Polyphony Digital came in.

“So we put it in the machine. We put it in Gran Turismo,” Shen said.

After just a couple of laps in the digital FT-1, Akio-san was sold. Word came down immediately from Calty leadership that the team was cleared to build a show car—something automakers are less and less inclined to do these days—and nobody had even come close to green-lighting production yet.

The joint platform with BMW and all the complexities that would entail weren’t even Calty’s team radar. They’d have to reconcile their design with both the physical constraints of the shared hardware and the financial constraints of a program that—perhaps not in so many words—really wasn’t expect to make any money.

Given all that, it’s a wonder they made the thing at all, right?

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The post Lost in Translation: FT-1 Designer Explains Why Toyota’s Production Supra Didn’t Match the Concept appeared first on The Drive.

The Cadillac sedan replacement rumor mill has been going full-tilt this week, and we’re prepared to add a little more fuel to the situation. A top Cadillac sales person just shared some more big news: Cadillac is not only working on a gas-powered replacement CT5, but it sounds an awful lot like it will essentially be a Cadillac version of the rumored Camaro Sedan—and it’ll have a naturally aspirated V8 with a manual gearbox.

Andrea.sells.cadillac shared the news in an Instagram reel that also appears to confirm that the XT6 crossover will return sooner rather than later.

“My sources confirmed this and I haven’t heard it anywhere else,” she said. “The CT5-V is going to have a naturally aspirated V8 engine available in a manual transmission and automatic.”

View this post on Instagram

She speculated that pricing would land somewhere in the $70,000-$80,000 range, which would align with the current CT5-V. We were immediately skeptical, given that this appears to be new info, so we reached out to Cadillac for confirmation.

That “naturally aspirated” part is the new piece of information here. Previous to this, we’ve only heard rumors of a revived Camaro (likely as a four-door) and a potential revival of the Blackwing with its supercharged V8. The current CT5-V is equipped with GM’s twin-turbocharged V6 and sold exclusively with an automatic.

“We don’t comment on future product speculation, and we have nothing new to announce at this time,” a Cadillac spokesperson confirmed to us via email. “That said, Cadillac has confirmed that the CT5 will return as an internal combustion product in the future.”

So, in other words, we’re not hearing a “no.”

If (when?) this bears out, it will be the first time since the Chevrolet SS was discontinued that GM has offered a naturally aspirated V8-powered sedan with the stick.

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Update 7/242026, 6:40pm ET— The Instagram reel was deleted by Andrea.sells.cadillac after The Drive ran this story, presumably at the request of GM/Cadillac for releasing information about future product. The broken embed for the reel is still in the story and the exact quote from the reel remains in the story along with the link to the original post that has since been deleted.

The post Next Cadillac CT5-V Will Offer a Naturally Aspirated V8 and a Manual Transmission appeared first on The Drive.

If you’re still riding the 1980s nostalgia bandwagon, we’ve got more good news for you. The much-anticipated (around here, anyway) sequel to Days of Thunder is reportedly one step closer to reality. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount is eyeing Jonathan Levine to direct the new installment.

Levine is just the latest name attached to the project. Cruise, who has been championing the idea since not long after the release of Top Gun: Maverick. Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the original Days of Thunder, has also signed on to the project. It also has the endorsement of Jeff Gordon, whose career many people erroneously credit for inspiring the movie. That distinction actually goes to Tim Richmond.

Other potential returning talent has not yet been confirmed. We’ll have to make do without Robert Duvall, sadly. But it’s 2026 and reality is very out of fashion, so maybe don’t take that all the way to the bank? Cary, if you’re reading this (you’re not), do it. This is a way better nostalgia play than “Stranger Things.”

Levine doesn’t appear to have dabbled in racing flicks previously (not that there are many of them out there to begin with), but he does at least have some experience with sports dramas. According to the Reporter, his upcoming film, Mr. Irrelevant: The John Tuggle Story, has tested well with audiences. It’s an inspired-by-real-life flick that tells the story of the final pick in the 1983 NFL draft due to release near Christmas this year.

The next few years may turn out pretty decently for fans of motorsports-inspired movies. In addition to the Days sequel, a second installment of Brad Pitt’s F1 franchise is also reportedly in the works. Which will hit theaters first? Hmm, sounds like a race. Either way, sign us up for some IMAX screenings, please.

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The post It’s Happening: ‘Days of Thunder 2’ Is Closing in on a Director appeared first on The Drive.

North of Detroit’s east side sits Macomb County. It trades neighboring Oakland County’s Minnesota-like spattering of eclectically populated lakes for one big one: Lake St. Clair. It’s very suburban and home to several automobile assembly plants and suppliers. It’s also home to Kid Rock—a man whom the almost imperturbably polite Ken Jennings once called “a little Florida-coded.”

Its close proximity to Detroit makes Macomb County part of my improvised grand loop around the city, and it’s home to some of the few roads in the immediate metro area that actually turn left and right, though I wouldn’t venture so far as to call many of them “fun.” Sometimes they turn from asphalt to gravel almost on a whim, just to keep things spicy.

It’s also the third-most populous county in Michigan, with just shy of 900,000 residents. And every time I’m behind the wheel of a fine British machine, I seem to have a novel encounter with one or more of them. This time, it was at a gas station in Sterling Heights. The Stellantis employees in the audience just winced.

I was out in the 2026 Aston Martin Vantage S. It was a gorgeous Saturday projected to be free of rain long enough for us to complete some variation of my circuitous test route. The weather and traffic cooperated to deliver flawless cruise conditions, and all was going swimmingly when I decided to make an unscheduled pit stop.

My wife had asked for a break to hit the restroom and refill her water; I was content to hop out and stretch a bit. I picked a clean-looking gas station off a major road and tucked into the first available parking spot—at the end, where I figured I had the lowest odds of an encounter. I was still patting myself on the back for my strategic thinking when the sound of rear glass desperately clinging to a liftgate under a barrage of cranked bass broke through my self-congratulatory haze. It could have been coming from any direction; it could have been departing on an equally infinite number of vectors.

But of course it wasn’t.

I was picturing a big, American SUV. I wasn’t disappointed. I was surprised, however, to see a nearly-new Escalade, not the ten-year-old claptrap of a Durango that had coalesced in my mind’s eye. It was clean, and piloted by somebody who was clearly no stranger to handling large equipment. It glided into the spot on my passenger side; the window rolling down in perfect time with its arrival. A pretty, smiling face greeted me.

“Hey, there! Are you a father?” The voice was young, but the tone was polished.

I’m 5 feet, 7 inches, and not as far below 200 pounds as I’d like to be. I was wearing a green Hanes T-shirt over Levis and the first pair of Skechers I spotted on the landing that morning. There I was, casually leaning over the open cockpit of a $250,000 Aston-freakin’-Martin. Sure, I’m a car journalist, which means I’m obligated to be at least a little bit socially dysfunctional, but I’ve long since learned the difference between a pass and a proposition.

And remember, as all of this was running through my brain, my wife was 20 feet away, separated from my situation by nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows and the equally transparent facade of social etiquette. For all I knew, she was standing within reach of a fresh box of BBQ skewers. To this day, I’m still not sure where the next six words out of my mouth came from, exactly, but I will remain eternally thankful that I managed to string them all together without hesitation.

“No, but I am a husband.” I didn’t have time to pat myself on the back for that one either, because she was already executing her pivot.

“Do you guys go to strip clubs!? I was going to offer you some Father’s Day coupons!”

Right. That inquiry as to my paternal status seems way less unhinged with that bit of context, doesn’t it?

“Not really our scene,” I said, trying to pretend I wasn’t putting extra emphasis on “our.”

“I love your car!”

Maybe it was because I caught her off the clock, or maybe it was dawning on her that I might not actually have any cash to shake loose, but she had clearly abandoned her script in favor of a more extemporaneous approach. That’s perhaps lending a bit too much credit to somebody saying, “I love [that last thing you said],” over and over again.

When I stopped feeding her new nouns for her mad-libs sheet, she pivoted to her life story. Somewhere between hearing about her (five?) kids and how she’d recently totaled her much-beloved BMW by crashing it into the very Cadillac I saw before me (in an attempt to stop its driver—her significant other—from “going to” his other girl), my grip on reality started to fade.

“Oh, I love your wife!”

Sure enough, my significant other was rounding the nose of the Cadillac, smiling coolly at my new friend. Sensing that her slowly closing window was about to slam all the way shut, our entrepreneurial acquaintance flashed her best smile and hopped out to complete whatever errand had brought her there in the first place.

“Have fun in that thing!”

I was ready to settle for surviving the next three minutes. She disappeared inside before I was done maneuvering out of the now-tight corner spot.

“She was cute,” my wife said neutrally.

“She said she makes two grand a day stripping,” I replied. That had come out somewhere in between the baby drama and the daddy-ramming drama. At least I think he was the dad… either way, I’m pretty sure I heard my wife’s eyebrows go up at “two grand.”

“You know, if I didn’t hate men so much…”

I’m partially to blame for these close encounters of the slurred kind. After all, I’m the one who insists on pulling into any old Detroit-area gas station to grab a bottle of water. Another Aston driver might call their butler, but I left mine in my other reality—you know, the one where the Vantage doesn’t have a sticker price high enough to make my house sweat nervously.

Usually, this is the part where I’d simply acknowledge that I don’t get it. I’d explain that this is a car meant to be used more symbolically than for any of its mechanical advantages, and we mortals are meant to simply appreciate the brief moments when we’re exposed to its beauty.

And it is a beautiful little thing. As wealth signposts go, I quite like it. But I quite like it as a car too.

Originally, this story was going to be about how the Vantage embodies some of the language I’ve heard the company’s engineers and designers use to describe the likes of the Valkyrie and Valhalla. They use the vocabulary of cinematography—all in an attempt to keep the car’s occupants grounded in the moment. It’s meant to be an experience. We certainly had one of those, but not the kind Aston had in mind.

When the Vantage departed, an SL680 Maybach replaced it. Yeah, this job is awesome sometimes. But this swap wasn’t just advantageous to my ego. It was also beneficial for comparison’s sake. Both are drop-tops. Both are even powered by the same AMG V8. Despite these commonalities, their characters couldn’t be more different. The Vantage may make some concessions to style and comfort, but it’s a sports car through and through. The SL’s nose may feel light thanks to the super-boosted steering, but it makes it more twitchy than responsive. The Aston, on the other hand, dutifully and crisply responds to inputs.

I ended up taking the Maybach on a 450-mile road trip. The squirrelly nose aside, it was a decent way to eat up the interstate, but I found myself longing for the Aston’s reflexes, especially on the tighter roads of rural southwest Michigan, where the British roadster would have felt right at home.

I wish it could make its home here.

Aston Martin provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Aston Martin Vantage S Specs

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The post Driving an Aston Martin Brings Out the Best in Those Around You appeared first on The Drive.

Have you ever looked at one of those huge truck stop gas station signs and wondered just how somebody performs maintenance on such a thing? I have an answer for you—along with what might be your new source of nightmare fuel. As it turns out, they cheat and use a little lift. And sometimes, it decides not to work.

For my part, I’m not climbing one of those without a gun to my head, so I salute the men and women who are willing to scale such heights for a dead light bulb, and I’ll keep my hand to my brow a little bit longer today for the man who spent nearly six hours cooped up inside a Petro shopping center sign in Wilmington, Illinois this week.

The maintenance contractor used the sign’s lift to reach the top of the 130-foot sign at the Lorenzo Road exit off Interstate 55 on Tuesday. At about 11:30 a.m. local time, he called for help when he discovered that he couldn’t get back down. Police and fire units swarmed, but little happened until nearly 4:00 p.m., when responders were finally able to pluck him from the tiny enclosure.

According to the local fire department, the delay was caused by simple math. The sign is 130 feet tall; the department’s longest ladders top out at about 100 feet—that’s a gap the size of a 2-1/2 story house. On top of that, the worker was unharmed and relatively unperturbed, so while there was some urgency to retrieve him, it was not exactly a life-and-death situation. The contractor even threw a thumbs-up to a passing news chopper.

Responders eventually sourced a lift from a job site in Joliet—about 25 minutes away. According to Chicago’s ABC 7, the contractor was physically unharmed and refused treatment at the scene. Based on comments in a private Facebook group, it appears he remained in good spirits throughout the incident. Better him than me!

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The post This Poor Maintenance Contractor Got Stuck 130 Feet Up Inside a Truck Stop Sign for Nearly Six Hours appeared first on The Drive.

During the peak of the COVID supply shortage, dealers greedily raked in money hand over fist as customers who needed cars were faced with two choices: overpay or live without transportation. Now, many of those customers are looking to trade in their COVID-era purchases on something new, and finance departments are fighting uphill battles trying to get them approved for credit because nearly a third of them are now completely underwater on their existing loans.

Edmunds sounded the alarm earlier this year after the number of underwater customers being denied new loans began to spike. Back in March, we saw a report that more than 25% of buyers carried negative equity from a previous loan. As of Q2, that number had reached 30%, Automotive News reports, and has held steady since.

And the problem is self-perpetuating. Rolling negative equity into a new purchase means customers are effectively paying off two cars at the same time, while only enjoying the benefit of the most recent one they purchased. That deficit is then more likely to be carried over into further purchases down the line. A driver carrying negative equity has an average monthly payment of $944 per month—$167 more than the average buyer without one. Yes, the average new-car payment in America is now $777 per month.

That $944 figure assumes, of course, that the buyer can get financing at all, which AN says is becoming a more commonplace issue. Dealers are complaining that their finance departments are having to spend more time on each transaction simply because it’s harder to finance loans when the buyer is carrying negative equity, and tracking down a lender who will play ball makes the process slower for everybody involved—including other customers still sitting in the showroom.

What’s perhaps even more concerning than the raw figures (and their knock-on effects) is the fact that this latest round of negative-equity buyers doesn’t match the traditional variety. Typically, this pattern is most common with buyers who over-extend themselves to purchase a rapidly depreciating luxury vehicle.

This time around, however, it’s afflicting people who made far more responsible choices, including buyers of the Toyota Tundra, Ford F-150, Jeep Wrangler and Honda CR-V—all known to hold their value far better than the average model. The choice of vehicle wasn’t the problem, as an analyst put it; it was the financing terms that should take the lion’s share of the blame. Higher sticker prices, dealer markups, and more expensive credit all conspired to push loan numbers up—and get buyers into trouble.

A lot of trouble, potentially. Edmunds is now saying that the average buyer who was underwater on their trade-in was carrying nearly $7,000 in negative equity at the time of purchase. Over the course of a loan, they paid nearly $6,500 more than the average buyer in interest alone. That’s 60% more than the average buyer, all for the pleasure of doing it again in three years. Yikes.

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The post COVID-Era Price Gouging Is Coming Back to Bite Car Dealers—Right on Schedule appeared first on The Drive.

Hey, there! Do you like cars? Of course you do! No matter what niche you’re into, this auction is for the estate of John Harrah—yes, that Harrah. From Porsches to heavy-duty pickup trucks and high-quality tools, there’s something here for anybody who loves to turn a wheel (or a wrench) for fun.

This collection isn’t as massive as some of the museum lots we’ve seen auctioned off in the past, but what it lacks in sheer volume it makes up for in diversity. This item is probably one of my favorites, and it’s not even really a car. It’s a replica Porsche 356 ride-on toy designed for kids. Pow-Pow-Power Wheels, eat your heart out.

The cars themselves run from showroom-stock to heavily modified street and track cars. There’s a super clean E46 Coupe (done up in kind of an homage to the E46 CSL, by the looks of it) along with virtually all of the equipment you’d need to build another one.

We’re talking lifts (both two- and four-post), a Snap-On tire mounting rig, and enough tool cabinets to support your own hardware business, and all the fabrication tools to start churning out your own. Need your own CNC rig? Yep, they’ve got that too. There are also fume extractors, drill presses, and all the portable equipment you could possibly want.

It’s also pretty clear that Harrah liked Jeeps. There are four in the auction—three Wranglers and a Gladiator—and three of them look like they came right off of one of Mopar Performance Parts’ SEMA haulers. The closest one to stock appears to be the 2023 model finished in Earl Grey. That’s a 20th anniversary Rubicon with the 392, which is probably why it has been left untouched.

If you’re looking for something to serve as a bit more of a blank canvas, there’s a 2024 Rubicon 392 in the mix. There’s no threat to your future Barrett-Jackson chances if you start hacking up the sheet metal on that one. After all, Jeep has made it clear that the V8 is no longer a limited-edition feature.

Everything shown here (along with the rest of the collection) will go live on August 5th, and the auction will end on the 15th. There’s no reserve for anything, so here’s your chance to maybe score some high-quality shop equipment (or your next off-road rig) on the cheap. Happy hunting!

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The post Sports Cars and Snap-On: Casino Magnate’s Estate Auction Is an Automotive Jackpot appeared first on The Drive.

When I bought my house in the Detroit ‘burbs in early 2022, it was, like many local century-ish homes, a bit haphazardly kept up. The interior was livable, and the families that owned it from its construction in 1928 until the early 1990s kept it up religiously. But that was the inflection point. The neighborhood wasn’t doing so hot back then, and it was a big ask to get people to invest heavily in homes whose values were lucky to pace with inflation.

Three and a half years is a narrow window to accomplish 30 years of catching up, and it was further complicated by the state of the property when I purchased it. My time for automotive-related hobbies has shrunk to near zero as a result, but doing this job every day helps keep me grounded in both worlds, so to speak—and far more sensitive to scenarios where the two overlap.

No, this isn’t one of those “everything I need to know about the industry, I learned from gardening” type posts, but the idea did come to me while I was planting a tree, and it’s going to be a minute before I bring this back around to anything with four wheels. If that’s not your bag, I respect it. This is your chance to check out.

In 2020, a young GM employee bought the place and began updating it in earnest. Among the projects was revitalizing the 80-year-old landscaping, and by “revitalizing,” I mean he hired a guy with a mini-skid to scrape the back yard into a pile against the fence in anticipation of covering the entirety of the back yard with pavers. This house sits on half an acre; that’s a lot of freakin’ bricks.

But somewhere in between de-sodding an eight-decade-old yard and ordering a few pallets of ugly 16x8x4″ concrete blocks, he knocked his wife up (again) and decided that, while the lot was plenty big, the house itself simply wasn’t adequate for his growing family. Being a seller’s market, he listed it for what he’d paid plus what he had into it, and I gladly came along and offered him another $20,000 on top of that.

So I had a perfectly habitable house with a mud pit for a back yard. Up front, I got some gravel, stumps, and a host of aggressively pruned Japanese Yews that entered and subsequently departed their bush era decades ago. The wasteland in back was the first priority; I moved into the house in March and the first thistle leaves were already visible by April. I threw some mulch over the white gravel in front and planted a few arborvitaes and junipers along the retaining walls that wing our front grade, but by and large my attention was elsewhere.

At the time, I knew little about a lawn except how to mow it. It took a solid two years to turn all the brown parts into something green and get the artificial berm out back under control. By the spring of ’24, I felt like I was ready to tackle the part people actually looked at. I’d never planted a flower in my life apart from helping my parents around the yard as a kid. I didn’t know a thing about designing a garden, but I knew I wanted something besides the moat-like expanse of evergreen that typically surrounds these old Tudor-inspired homes. I wanted something that popped.

My search query was simple: “Trees that have fall color in summer.” My journey down the rabbit hole led me to what I now know to be a classic gateway plant: a red Japanese maple (a Bloodgood, for the tree fans). I ordered it from the equivalent of a big-box online nursery. It arrived looking far greener than it did in photos but I took The Internet‘s word that it would perform better the following year.

And man, did it. From the instant it leafed out bright crimson last spring, I was hooked. I needed another one. I knew from my prior research that there were other varieties, and I remembered seeing some rather spectacular (too good to be true, perhaps?) photos pop up in my Google results from a little outfit in North Carolina called simply “MrMaple.”

Being in this business, I get pitched a lot of schlock. I don’t necessarily mean cars, though more than a few vaporware-based outfits have tried to sell me on one fantastical supercar concept or another. Bust mostly I just mean junk. Every week brings another “must-have,” “epic,” or “legendary” road trip accessory or another vibe-coded pile of junkware produced by somebody who assumed (confidently and without verifying) that nobody had thought of their amazing idea previously. Here I was, looking at the site for a business purporting to offer hundreds (nearly 1,500 now) varieties of this tree, some promising leaves that make ornamental flower blossoms look dull. My skepticism came in just as many shades as their photographs.

If you’ve spent any time browsing the tree selection at a local nursery, you probably think of Japanese maples as being somewhat expensive. And they can be. Mature Japanese maple trees are smaller than their larger American red or sugar maple cousins, which really just means they’re slower-growing. The dwarf varieties prized by collectors are even slower still. It takes years for some of them to grow to just a few feet high. The smallest trees you typically find at a nursery are usually in a three-to-five-gallon container or maybe even larger, and those trees needed years in a greenhouse just to get that big. That investment translates to a higher price tag—a higher barrier to entry.

But as I continued browsing MrMaple’s stock, I didn’t find that to be the case. Most of the listings were quite reasonably priced, in fact, because they were all for smaller trees. $35-45 will buy you any number of varieties that you’d typically only see in much larger sizes if you went shopping locally. And it’s not just the common, everyday varieties at those prices—they stock their rarest cultivars in the same small sizes. Some may carry a slight premium just due to how much time and work goes into growing them, but we’re talking $10-15 more than the big-box staples.

And sure, you might find a one-gallon Tamukeyama or Crimson Queen (not a knock against either; I own one of the former) at Lowe’s or even Walmart, but that’s like saying you can always go down to the local used lot and walk away with a running Corolla. Meanwhile, if you care about driving and you know where to look, you could have a Miata or a Mustang for the same money.

There you go, boys, girls, and gender-nonconforming: We’re back on wheels. And we’ve also arrived at my broader point: Like many other modern businesses, the car market relies heavily on FOMO. Why do the ordinary when you could do the extraordinary? Why settle for what you have when you could get something newer and just a little bit better?

The enthusiast market distills this to its purest, arguably most toxic, essence. Just look at Porsche. The 911 has gone from being something akin to Germany’s version of the Corvette to being a model defined not by accessibility, but by scarcity. In the not-at-all-distant-past, Porsche dealers were reportedly forcing Taycan purchases on buyers just to guarantee slots for hot-ticket 911 allocations (think GT3, GTS). The MSRP of a modern 911 is effectively meaningless; it’s a direct-to-speculator market. And this problem is not isolated to Zuffenhausen; the R35 Nissan GT-R was no different, and there are countless other examples in the enthusiast car scene, even among ostensibly “affordable” models like the Civic Type-R.

Traditionally, the enthusiast market has relied on replacement and depreciation to keep a healthy surplus of options circulating in the secondary market. New cars come along, rendering older ones cheaper and more accessible. But the enthusiast new-car pipeline is drying up, which means fewer fun cars are entering the secondary market, driving prices up and further limiting the hobby’s accessibility.

A used car typically won’t carry the same prestige as a new one, much the same way a one- or three-gallon ornamental tree won’t wow like a far more mature specimen, but in time, they’ll all end up the same, and for the burgeoning hobbyist, just being able to take part is a huge win.

My Bloodgood was my gateway tree the way my 1995 Volkswagen Passat was my gateway car. Appropriately, that old green VW would look good in front of the deep-crimson maple that sits outside our living room window. We now have 27 of them of various sizes (each a different variety) scattered around the property. The Passat was the first of 12 manual-transmission cars I’ve purchased (five new; seven used); only three of those (my NA, my JK and CT4-V Blackwing) are still with me, but in my defense, it probably costs me less to water my yard every month than it does to insure the cheapest of those three. Hobbies—even expensive ones—don’t all scale the same.

I’m sure that MrMaple could have branded itself as a premium-oriented business offering a far smaller variety of more-mature plants and achieved the same level of profitability, but if it had, I probably wouldn’t be writing about it today. Instead, the family running it decided to “go wide,” so to speak. The buyer who starts with a $45 Purple Ghost might come back next year for that $70 Golden Falls or that $100 Fireglow. In five years, they’ll be pulling up out front with a Uhaul and driving off with thousands of dollars in purchases out back—all because MrMaple was willing to sacrifice the promise of bigger margins per unit to gamble on potentially reaching a wider audience.

Imagine that.

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The post Short-Sighted Profiteering Is Killing Enthusiast Cars—And Future Enthusiasts appeared first on The Drive.

Automakers have long counted on parts-sharing to keep costs down—not just across individual lineups, but even across brands and market segments. Volkswagen Group’s MQB platform became the poster child for modern parts-sharing architectures in the 2010s, and many other automakers have since consolidated their lineups to the bare minimum of fundamental platforms to make manufacturing cheaper and more consistent.

But there are downsides. VW Group has long been accused of offering the same sausage in different lengths, as it were, and commonality across brands tends to invite accusations of cost-cutting and even badge-engineering—sometimes fairly, in both cases, but not always.

Now, imagine that sort of commonality across not just multiple brands under the same corporate umbrella, but across multiple manufacturing entities. That’s what the Japanese auto industry is reportedly considering (sub. req’d), Automotive News reports.

Sure, we’ve seen cross-brand platform joint ventures before. BMW and Toyota just built the Z4 and Supra as part of a joint program, and Mazda had the same arrangement with Fiat to produce the modern 124 Spider (just a reskinned MX-5). What the Japanese auto industry is proposing would be something on a much larger scale.

Says who? Toyota CEO Koji Sato, who is also the current chairman of JAMA, the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association. The group represents Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki.

“We have a strong sense of crisis that the Japanese auto industry is in a massive period of transition,” Sato said. “Now is exactly the time to further develop and evolve with the challenges and reform initiatives that the auto industry as a whole must face.”

Sato, joined by Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa, told the outlet that standardization of parts will free Japanese manufacturers to concentrate their development resources on developing emerging technologies that customers actually want, such as new software interfaces, advanced driver-assistance tech, and EVs that charge more quickly.

In addition to being the JAMA chairman and Toyota CEO, Sato is also Toyota’s “Chief Industry Officer,” putting him in charge of lobbying for policy changes that will benefit the automotive sector.

“We are really talking about what we can do together, because we do see that other industries in other countries or other parts of the world are better organized than us,” Espinosa told the outlet. “We will see a lot more collaboration among Japanese OEMs.”

What will that collaboration look like? In the short term, the goal is to standardize the parts customers won’t see, much the same way automakers do within their current lineups. Think wiring harnesses and fluid hoses, rather than sheet metal or frame components. Sato didn’t suggest that commonalities would extend to platforms or body castings; in fact, such processes weren’t even brought up.

We’ve seen hybridized platforms before, though usually in more formal joint ventures and mergers. Chrysler’s LX platform was engineered to play nice with components from Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz and Sprinter lines, for example, despite being derived from Chrysler’s own LH architecture.

There are potential upsides and downsides to an arrangement like this. As we’ve seen at Ford and GM, collaboration doesn’t always mean copying. Their respective 10-speed automatic transmissions were developed jointly but engineered separately, resulting in very different outcomes for their respective customers.

Let’s face it: Sameness isn’t something we crave as enthusiasts. It might make cars easier and cheaper to produce, but it doesn’t do anything to give them character. At the same time, having parts that interchange across manufacturers is a boon for the DIYer, who will find it easier to source replacements when things inevitably break. At best, this seems like a wash. At worst, it sounds like a win for the accountants.

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The post Japan Wants to Standardize Car Parts to Protect Its Auto Industry appeared first on The Drive.

A Ford owner in San Diego has given voice to a question many have asked since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in February that the administration’s imposition of tariffs under the IEEPA was unconstitutional: Who actually deserves a refund?

Those tariffs cost automakers (both foreign and domestic) a fortune. Corporations lined up left and right to sue the government immediately after the ruling came down, but given how much of the cost was ultimately borne by consumers, should it stop there? Jason Bullock doesn’t think so, and that’s why he’s suing Ford for his cut of the tariff refunds coming the automaker’s way.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Ford expected to get $1.3 billion back from the Feds. Bullock bought a Mach-E in February, before the decision came down, the suit says, and he was forced to pay more than he would have otherwise as a result.

His legal team’s argument is pretty simple. While Ford may have been the entity that cut a check to the U.S. government, at least part of the tariff burden fell on customers, who were forced to pay inflated prices for their vehicles. Accordingly, they should get a share of the refund—not all of it, mind you, but some.

Otherwise, the suit argues, Ford is getting paid on both ends of the deal—by the customers who helped the company eat the rising costs in the first place, and then again by the government when they get a refund. The customer, meanwhile, gets zero.

The tariff impacts were reflected in rising sticker prices and higher non-negotiable destination and freight charges. According to the Detroit News, Ford isn’t alone in being targeted by customer suits. Amazon, Costco, and Nike have all been hit with similar litigation. More automakers may be next.

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The post This Class-Action Lawsuit May Decide If an Automaker Owes You a Tariff Refund appeared first on The Drive.

California has demanded that approximately 11,000 residents re-take their written driving tests after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles discovered “discrepancies” suggesting that widespread cheating may plague one of the simplest evaluations known to humankind.

The DMV has not outright said what methods are being used to cheat, but after parsing its rather circumspect description, it seems fairly obvious that they’re referring to some sort of digital shenanigans:

“The California DMV has identified irregularities in certain driver knowledge test results that may indicate instances of cheating,” a DMV spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Through our routine internal monitoring, we reviewed multiple data points and found patterns suggesting that some individuals may have attempted to circumvent the testing process using various cheating methods.”

Any driver whose test results were determined to be “potentially problematic” was sent a notice (like the one above) informing them that they would have to re-take the test if they did not want their license to be revoked.

The DMV performed an internal audit and determined that the discrepancies are not related to any technical (or A.I.) errors or issues with the test itself, though the Department did not rule out the possibility that drivers used A.I. to take the test for them. The DMV declined to say which version of the test was vulnerable to the methods being utilized by the alleged cheaters; Calif. offers both online and in-person testing.

According to the DMV, that information will remain under wraps until the state has concluded its criminal investigation. Yeah, this goes beyond simple grade-school plagiarism. The DMV has already referred “several” cases to law enforcement; no further details were provided, but it seems likely that prosecutors would target those responsible for making it possible to cheat in the first place.

Look, I get it. That driver’s handbook is thick, but even the state of California offers resources for people looking to study up before taking their written tests.

It’s not that hard, people. Seriously.

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The post California DMV Threatens to Cancel Drivers’ Licenses, File Charges Amid Massive Cheating Scandal appeared first on The Drive.

Every now and then, a wild opportunity to save (or at least attempt to save) something special pops up on Copart—every bored automotive sleuth’s favorite source of “What the heck happened here?” material for workday speculation. And today we’ve got a particularly weird one: a 2024 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen with the most curious case of “vandalism” that I’ve ever seen.

This G63 has been stripped to the bones and then some. Apparently, somebody looked at this body-on-frame 4×4 and decided they needed only part of each, because they left everything else, including the twin-turbocharged V8, the front axle, and much of the beautiful tan interior.

As of publication time, the auction still hadn’t hit reserve, but the bidding had crossed the $22,000 mark. Judging by Ebay prices, that’s about what you’d pay for just a low-mile V8, so it’s no surprise that the seller expects this one to tick up a bit more before the gavel drops. And that’s going to happen soon. We’ll know just how much somebody’s willing to spend to get the better half of a G63 before the day is out.

Considering how aggressively this car was chopped up, it’s surprising how much of it is intact. The roof’s been butchered, but the dash, steering wheel and seats remain, as does virtually everything forward of the firewall. Need a side mirror? Need two?

Social media has already caught on to this one, and as others have already noted in the comments, the remaining shell would make for an elaborate sim cockpit. Are we still dropping $20k-plus on projects for the ‘grams these days? Because if so, be sure to send us the link when it’s done.

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The post How Much Is Half a Mercedes G-Wagen Worth? We’re About to Find Out appeared first on The Drive.

If you’re an auto enthusiast, you probably have a favorite gas station. If not, you probably at least have a favorite chain. Maybe it’s the station closest to your home or your job; maybe it reliably stocks all of your favorite road trip supplies. Or, maybe (and especially if you’re tuned) your favorite gas station simply has the best gas. And if you ask a lot of enthusiasts who has the best gas, you’ll often hear the same name come up a lot: Shell.

It’s with good reason. Virtually every time gasoline blends are objectively compared, Shell’s comes out at (or near) the top, making it a prime candidate for those of us whose cars are, for whatever reason, particularly sensitive to fuel quality—something Shell takes seriously enough to excel at.

But what if you pull up to a Shell station only to be greeted by a sign saying that the fuel being dispensed there isn’t actually Shell fuel? Yes, this sign is real. We know that because we reached out to Shell to ask about it. While Shell has a great deal of control over its gasoline suppliers, that isn’t as universally applicable to its diesel sources, and that’s why this sign was displayed at the station posted on Facebook.

Call it a gentle reminder that there’s more to fuel branding than whatever you see on that 80-foot sign hanging over the freeway exit. The fuel supply chain is set up such that many fuels are actually sourced from just a few larger suppliers; frequently, the additives in your station’s signature blend are all that separate it from generic dinosaur juice.

“At select Shell-branded retail locations, diesel fuel may be supplied by a third party rather than Shell,” a Shell spokesperson told us. “In those cases, signage is used to inform customers that the diesel fuel is not a Shell-branded product.”

“The decal referenced in this instance applies only to the diesel fuel offering,” the spokesperson said.

Sure enough, if you look carefully, you’ll note that the pump in the pic does in fact dispense both gasoline and diesel. The positioning of the sticker beneath the ethanol disclosure (and next to the gasoline pump handle) is a bit misleading, admittedly, but the strategic use of the word “fuel” rather than gasoline does support Shell’s official stance.

Like its gasoline, Shell’s diesel blend is well-regarded by consumers. So take note, oil-burners: Make sure you’re getting what you think you’re paying for.

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The post Even Name-Brand Gas Stations Can and Will Sell You Off-Brand Fuel appeared first on The Drive.

It has been a wild couple of weeks for the Big Brother news beat—wild enough that a particularly alarming item managed to slip beneath just about everybody‘s radar. According to the Daily Mail, the European Commission wants the power to force cars to obey speed limits with help from GPS.

European cars already leave the factory with speed monitoring systems installed, and no, I don’t just mean speedometers. Starting in 2024, the EU mandated that all new cars come equipped with a GPS-based system that tracks the current speed limit and alerts the driver audibly if it is exceeded. These “Intelligent Speed Assist” systems are often installed on cars sold outside the EU as well, though the warning component is often optional or disabled.

This is apparently a “watered down” version of what the Commission initially wanted, which was a full-blown, satellite-based speed governing system. European automakers, likely fearing a massive customer backlash, lobbied hard to get the proposal tossed. Now, Commission officials are once again pushing for full control, the paper says.

“This was always just an interim stage,” a source reportedly told the Mail. “But eventually we will just fix the speed of the car so you can’t go over the speed limit.”

Could this be slippery-slope fear mongering? Consider the source, as always. But consider this too: We’re already seeing bits and pieces of the ISA tech trickling into U.S.-bound cars. If remote speed governors become mandatory in Europe, the tech itself likely will come here, even if it is rendered dormant by regional software packaging.

On top of general public sentiment, there’s another problem with relying on ISAs as speed governors: they’re simply not accurate. According to a study in June, these GPS-based indicators miss critical events (such as a speed limit suddenly changing) up to 25% of the time.

“The worst performing vehicle in real-world testing scored 91.3% accuracy across the driven distance,” the report said. “When assessed on an event-based metric, the system was 74.3% accurate. This means that for roughly 1 in 4 events, ISA is displaying the wrong speed limit.”

“This is simply below the level of performance for most drivers to accept and trust ISA,” the report said.

“The best performing vehicle in real-world testing scored 98.39% accuracy across the driven distance, which implies a near-perfect system,” the report continued. “This same vehicle’s event-based accuracy was 90.3%. This demonstrates with roughly 1 in 10 events being incorrect, even systems which perform comparatively well on UK roads are still not good enough for widespread acceptance.”

But don’t worry, they’ve got a solution for that. These proposed super-ISAs will incorporate 5G data from nearby connected devices to fine-tune your location. That sounds awfully familiar. But it’s not such a big deal that we’re constantly being monitored, right? After all, if you’re not a criminal, you have nothing to worry about.

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The post The EU (Still) Wants to Control Your Speed Via Satellite appeared first on The Drive.

It was only last December that Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis was called out of retirement to right Mopar’s sinking pickup brand. The “Father of Hemis” came back with a pretty simple simple mission: Give the customers what they want. And Ram customers? They want V8s—even if they don’t actually end up buying them. Don’t try to parse it, but if you somehow still needed evidence that cars are highly emotional purchases, look no further.

Fortunately for Ram, the company was still building some Hemis to supply its heavy-duty truck line, so bringing production back online was more a matter of scaling back up than rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. Still, the fact that Ram managed to get the Hemi Ram back into production inside a year is pretty impressive. It’s even more impressive that we’re here, at roughly the 18-month mark, and now we’re talking about not one engine, but four: the mild-hybrid 5.7-liter, the 6.4-liter 392, the 6.2-liter Hellcat, and now the de-hybridized 5.7 (returning for both the Rumble Bee and the standard 1500).

It helps that Ram had a head start on the de-regulatory push. Several months ago, when asked during a media event whether presidential politics played into the V8 revival, Kuniskis said it was the changes in leadership within Stellantis, rather than in America, that made all the difference. Trump’s election and subsequent gutting of CAFE regulations certainly softened the landing, but when asked whether it was the deciding factor, Kuniskis responded stoically and succinctly:

“I was gonna do it anyway.”

That didn’t make the job itself any easier, of course, but at least Ram hit the ground running. When the newly reconstituted SRT was given the go-ahead to bring TRX back, the team knew it had to be more than a simple continuation of the old truck, especially since Ford snatched the most-powerful-gas-truck title with its updated Raptor R. So, the number had to be higher than 720. That meant SRT’s engineers needed to scare up at least 19 horsepower. After a sticking their arms shoulder-deep in the parts bin, they came back with 75.

And since the TRX is a pretty old-school truck, it probably won’t surprise you that they found that power the old-fashioned way: throwing more air and fuel at it, and then spinning it a little faster. That’s where the Redeye comes in. The old TRX’s power curve was quite pretty, and its top end was limited only by its ability to breathe. By swapping in the valvetrain from the Redeye, SRT freed the Hellcat to rev a little higher—just 300 RPM—and keep riding that curve upward.

The 2.4-liter, twin-screw supercharger was massaged and fitted with a slightly smaller pulley (3.17 inches; down from 3.43 on the previous TRX), and the whole works is fed by a new cold-air intake system. A new fueling setup increased pressure from 5 bar to 7 bar to keep the 6.2-liter well-fed.

The result is 777 horsepower. And yep, it’s quite a giggle.

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The post Ram’s New 777-HP Hellcat V8 Is Secretly a Redeye appeared first on The Drive.

Ram didn’t invent the fast off-road pickup. In fact, when it was discontinued in 2024, the TRX wasn’t even the most powerful V8 truck on the road. That honor went to Ford, which arguably has a better claim to starting this whole movement. Well, the 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT is here to right those wrongs, and a few more besides.

Yep, the TRX is officially an SRT model now—though it always has been in spirit. The revived off-roader not only benefits from all of the updates the rest of the Ram 1500 lineup received during its mid-cycle overhaul, but it also gets an updated version of the 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V8. Ram increased fuel pressure and improved airflow, so it now has enough of both core combustion ingredients to boost output from 702 to 777 horsepower. That figure was further improved by fitting the engine with the old Hellcat Redeye valvetrain, which allows it to rev all the way to 6,500 rpm.

With that change, the TRX now makes more power and torque than the Raptor R with 680 lb-ft of twist. And of course, you get a fully loaded Ram 1500 with a BorgWarner 48-13 transfer case providing full-time four-wheel drive. Out back, there’s a Dana 60 with full-float shafts and an electronic locking differential. No limited-slip nonsense here.

You’ll still find 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler tires at all four corners, and a set of adaptive Bilstein Black Hawk e2 shocks ported over from the Hurricane-powered Ram RHO. With credentials like this, the TRX is the sort of antisocial jock-rocket that’s best exploited in the middle of nowhere, far from judging eyes and sensitive ears.

With that in mind, let me tell you about Buchanan, Michigan. It’s a nice little pocket of civilization nestled in the greener folds of the state’s southwest corner. It’s an old factory town—the former home of a Clark Equipment plant—whose industry (and population) have been in gentle decline since its peak in the early 1980s. It’s a charming collection of largely well-kept, middle-class homes from the early 20th century, enclosed on all sides by swaths of agriculture and nearly empty brown fields.

Just north of town along the St. Joseph River, you’ll find a little chunk of real estate known as RedBud MX. If you’re a motocross fan, you’re probably already familiar with the venue. It’s the home of LaRocco’s Leap—a three-jump obstacle named for Mike “The Rock” LaRocco’s video-game-caliber move that cleared all three on a 125cc dirt bike.

Fortunately for us and “downtown” Buchanan, RedBud is where we spent the bulk of our day, tearing up a hillside course that was carved out just to give the TRX room to play. No, we didn’t actually get to drive the TRX on the motocross course itself; our setup was much larger and free of troublesome obstacles like walls and grandstands. It was also free of the two-foot-deep layer of loose soil that RedBud is famous for.

That said, our setup was fairly straightforward: six or seven turns, depending on how you count ’em, interspersed with as much straightaway as possible, plus a handful of obstacles with some verticality. Yep, that’s my fancy way of saying “jumps.”

Two of them were more like bumps, to be fair. One was a set of whoop-de-doos that commanded straight-ahead steering more than any sort of throttle discipline. The other was a small bump at the beginning of the back straightaway. With any real throttle, it became essentially nonexistent.

That leaves only two. One was technically just a set of whoops big enough to do real damage. The course designer told us that the final layout emerged after no small amount of trial-and-error, perhaps resulting in some of the test trucks’ bumpers being replaced while the grades and their corresponding target speeds were set. This was almost certainly the spot that caused the most headaches.

The sweet spot for this one, as it turns out, is 45 mph. Under, and you risked slamming the front axle (or worse) down on the second hump; over, and you risked going full lawn-dart on the far side. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t hit that thing with the truck still rotating. Neither of those outcomes improves if you manage to initiate them sideways. No pressure.

And then there was, shall we say, the main event.

This job has granted me many opportunities to experience a true four-wheel liftoff. Most of the time, they are elaborately orchestrated photo opportunities with razor-thin tolerances for anything extemporaneous.

But with Ram? Nah, **** that noise.

Situated in the middle of the front “straight,” the only thing keeping our speeds in check here was the course design itself. The front straight emerges from a well-banked but downhill left-hander (tighter than 90° but not by much). It’s nice and wide, allowing plenty of room to set up for the uphill charge to the top—and charge is precisely what Ram wanted us to do.

That final corner is all about one thing: Getting the nose pointed straight as quickly as possible. Throwing the throttle at a 6,500-pound truck approaching full steering lock is an excellent way to make a whole lot of noise and not a lot of progress. Going up the hill ass-out may look insanely cool, but it’ll come at the expense of hang time.

There’s something about blasting uphill, looking over that hood at nothing but dust and patches of sky, and just having faith that the dude with the walkie-talkie, standing 50 yards away from your future crash-landing site, did all his calculations correctly (Warning: Language). This is probably how astronauts feel, right? Totally valid comparison.

And maybe it’s just because I’m of a certain age, but every time I feel that distinct sensation of the suspension dropping out beneath me, time slows and the horn section roars. This is better than any roller coaster.

Turns out that dude with the radio didn’t screw up the math one bit. (His name is Tom, by the way, and he’s a bit of a magician.) The built-up landing pad comes up to greet the massive all-terrains as they touch down. From there, you have just enough room to gather up the truck again before a quick right-left leading into the baby whoop-de-doos.

Having that hillside playground to ourselves proved invaluable because it truly highlighted what the TRX is good at: being an absolute menace.

Outside the gates of RedBud, the tight, single-family neighborhoods that built up around Buchanan’s old commercial corridor made the TRX feel enormous. Any conspicuous behavior could easily draw the ire of a small but likely very bored police department. The open roads farther out of town were more inviting, but since many of them were just as old as the surface streets in Buchanan, they were equally narrow and in dire need of repair.

The tight lanes felt constricting, but the TRX shrugged off the battered surface with aplomb. Ram reminded us over and over again during the program that luxury is a key component of the TRX formula, and the truck’s suspension coddles admirably when called upon. In fact, despite the big rig’s performance-forward attitude, I’d argue that it makes a case for itself as more of a “touring” machine than a sporting one—think Biloxi Bentley, not Vicksburg Viper.

I know, I’m probably losing some of you, but hear me out. The TRX is pretty darn quick in a straight line, but everything else you do in this truck—stopping, turning, turning, turning, turning—takes an eternity. The tall cab and high seating position also mute any sensation of speed or connection to the road. Sure, its long and wide footprint provides excellent stability, but in physics, as in philosophy, stability is the enemy of changing direction. Consequently, that’s simply not something the TRX excels at—unless, of course, you’re talking about doing filthy-huge donuts.

Right about now, my favorite Ram PR guy is sending one of his interns to pick out a 2×4 in my size, so allow me to get to the point: This is all by design. TRX doesn’t need to be a hunkered-down street bruiser. That’s Rumble Bee’s niche to fill—lighter, lower, shorter (though just as wide), more stiffly sprung and riding on street-performance tires, not all-terrains.

And trust me, you won’t want to try those whoop-de-doos in the Hellcat-powered Rumble Bee. You’ll lose more than your front bumper, and you might want to check your dental policy exclusions before attempting to prove me wrong.

Confession time: I shed no tears when the Hemi “died.” I was still crying out from losing my beloved V10. But full stop, this is the most fun you can have in a full-size pickup truck. “TRX” was never going to adorn another Ram without a Hemi under the hood. Selfishly, I wish it were part of a new generation of lighter, more compact Hemis designed to be shared with something that more closely resembles a sports car, but alas, Stellantis just wrote off the equivalent of Mongolia’s GDP in EV investments. I doubt a billion-dollar V8 redesign is in the cards right now.

So, here it is, in all its Redeye-augmented glory. It’s big, it’s dumb, and yeah, that thing’s got a Hemi. Love it or hate it, the TRX was designed to make you feel something. Ponder that the next time you really peruse the current crop of EVs.

Ram provided The Drive with accommodations along with the use of a vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT Specs

Quick Take

Love it or hate it, the TRX is back in all of its V8 glory as a dual-purpose bruiser and cruiser.

The post 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT First-Drive Review: Prehistoric Power in a Modern Off-Road Monster appeared first on The Drive.

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, the fastest Ram on Earth was the RHO. Ram’s Hurricane-powered off-roader came with all of the old TRX’s goodies except for two—a Hemi V8 and a name straight out of the Cretaceous period. We were told at the time that “TRX” would never adorn a truck without a Hemi. After all, the nameplate had nearly 48 months of tradition behind it.

In a single year, Ram has gone from a light-duty lineup completely devoid of V8s to one with three of them, and each will be available in virtually every flavor of the 1500. And that means the TRX is about to meet its match—not in the form of an updated Ford F-150 Raptor R or some newfangled super-truck from GM, but from within its own showroom. Yeah, I’m lookin’ at you, Rumble Bee.

So, in the battle of the ultimate SRT-powered pickups, which one is truly top dog? Well, that all depends on what you plan to do with it. The 2027 Ram TRX SRT and SRT Rumble Bee Hellcat are indeed powered by the same supercharged, 777-horsepower Hemi V8, but the wrappers around those monster engines are quite different.

2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT vs. 2027 Ram 1500 SRT Rumble Bee Hellcat

If you tell a TRX drive to go pound sand, they may not properly internalize your message. After all, that’s what a TRX is built to do—mercilessly. It’s equipped with off-road tires, comes with more standard ground clearance, and has trail-friendly Bilstein adaptive dampers designed to keep the body in check on rough terrain. There’s also the locking rear diff, which is handy in case you encounter uneven/technical terrain.

Rumble Bee, on the other hand, is built to go fast on pavement. The wheelbase is more than a foot shorter (along with the rest of the truck), so there’s less weight to carry around and the truck should change direction more quickly. It also sits lower to the ground, with a minimum ground clearance of just 8.1 inches, and the suspension will be much stiffer too. The Rumble Bee also gets a limited-slip rear differential, which is superior to a locker on-road and helps put power down more effectively when the rear end has inconsistent traction.

You can see how things shake out by the numbers in the table up above there; the items with differences are bolded.

The other big difference between these two trucks? You can order the TRX right now (for the low, low price of just $102,790); if you want a Rumble Bee, you’ll have to wait until later this year to bring one home.

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Cadillac has ordered dealers to stop selling the 2026 and 2027 Vistiq three-row electric crossover due to a new recall campaign targeting its third-row seat. According to the manufacturer, the seat’s power-folding feature can trap an occupant in the rear seat, potentially leading to a hazardous situation.

“The third-row seatbacks in these vehicles can be commanded to power fold into the stowed position with a single press-and-release of the ‘down’ control button located in the cargo area or on the pillar adjacent to the seat,” Cadillac’s recall report said. “The seatback stops and does not automatically reverse if it encounters an obstruction in the seat.”

“Smaller occupants could become trapped under the seatback, increasing the risk of injury,” the report said.

According to GM’s report, the automaker discovered the issue after Hyundai issued a similar recall and stop-sale order for the 2026 Palisade, which was blamed for the death of a two-year-old in Ohio.

“On March 31, 2026, a GM engineer submitted a report through GM’s Speak Up For Safety (SUFS) program after reviewing an evaluation of the third-row power seatback folding function on a 2026 Cadillac VISTIQ,” the report said.

“GM conducted this evaluation after the March 2026 announcement of a recall by a different vehicle manufacturer,” the report continued. “[T]his recall related to second- and third-row power seats in certain vehicles failing to appropriately respond to contact with an occupant or object during powered-seat operation.”

GM says the cars can be sold if the power-folding third-row seat feature is disabled prior to delivery. This will “freeze” the seats in place temporarily, so customers are being consulted to determine which position they’d prefer in the meantime.

Instructions for disabling the Vistiq’s third row have been distributed to dealers; owners who already have a Vistiq at home will receive notices to visit their service departments to have the feature disabled until new parts can be installed.

Once parts are available, Cadillac will update all existing and future Vistiqs so that the third-row seat will automatically return to the previous position if an obstacle is encountered. The earliest expected window for new parts is the week of August 3rd.

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If you look at the history of “mild” AMG models (which really isn’t all that long), the 2026 Mercedes-AMG E53 hybrid is an outlier. Previous takes on this formula paired a tuned-up version of the E’s six-cylinder engine with a throatier exhaust and perhaps a performance-tuned air suspension. The last E53 made a whopping 429 horsepower. I’ll save you the math; that’s less. 2026

If you squint at the spec sheet, you’ll see the old E53 hiding underneath all this hybrid hullabaloo. This wagon’s inline-six makes 443 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque on its own; the electric motor adds another 161 hp and 354 lb-ft. Combined output is 577 horsepower, but if you opt for the Dynamic Start package, it bumps it to 604 horsepower thanks to its “Race Start” system, which is basically launch control with an extra shot of electrons. We’ve seen similar things before; remember Dodge’s “PowerShot” hybrid boost in the Hornet?

With all of that, this AMG only gives up about 20 horsepower to the V8-powered Audi RS6 Avant, but at the cost of some weight—though perhaps not as much as you’d expect. At 5,401 pounds, the E53 is almost 400 pounds heavier than the Audi, pitting it more favorably against the BMW M5 Touring (5,525 pounds), though the big Bavarian bruiser has about 100 horsepower more than the Benz.

Let me try that again: Remember the Dodge Hornet?

If you’re thinking that’s a pretty big generational leap for what should be a mid-grade performance car, you’re not alone. I suspect that Mercedes had every intention of turning the wick up on this car even more and offering it as the E63, but pivoted at the last second in the wake of the four-cylinder C63 fiasco, perhaps concerned that customers would shun it in favor of a V8-powered competitor, whether it offered superior performance or not.

The difference here, of course, is the E53’s excellent inline-six, which makes a big chunk of the E53’s power without feeling high-strung. The somewhat novel inline configuration also lends it a unique sound, and of course, the performance exhaust system plays up that attitude. Crank the drive modes over to the Sport/Track end of the dial, and everything sounds properly beastly. And it goes like stink, too. With Race Start, it’ll hit 60 mph in just 3.8 seconds.

Getting there takes some doing. By default, the E53 Hybrid starts in EV mode, which is fine for cruising around town or navigating parking lots, but I don’t care how much torque you throw at it, 161 horsepower in a 5400-pound family car is never going to feel quick. If the battery is too depleted for electric-only operation, the gas engine will fire up too—good news perhaps for those who deliberately neglect to charge their PHEVs.

On the road, the E53 is all Mercedes. In Comfort mode, it coddles, piping in less noise and transmitting less vibration into the cockpit. My tester came with 21-inch AMG cross-spoke wheels that did little to diminish the E53’s excellent ride quality; the add-on performance seat package was also appreciated, but for this enthusiast’s backside, it might not be the right vibe for a long-haul family wagon.

Quick though the E53 may be, it’s neither EV-quick nor as quick as the aforementioned BMW M5 Touring and Audi RS6 Avant; both can pull off a 0-60 sprint about a half-second quicker. And that would all be fine if there were an E63 Wagon above it to defend that territory. But for the moment, that’s not the case.

That’s not the only thing that grounds the E53 in its second-tier status. There’s also the price, which is quite a bit lower than that of the flagship Audi and BMW models. The Mercedes starts under $95,000, and even loaded to the gills, my test car checked in at $116,980 including destination. The E53 also probably has little to no waiting list at that price, which is still cheaper than the tier-one competition, which is also likely to be saddled with hefty dealer markup (assuming you can find them at all; the Audi is already on its way out of the market).

The 2026 Mercedes-AMG E53 Hybrid Wagon does many things well, but it’s simply trying to do too much at once. With a little polish, this formula seems like a solid second-tier offering for the next chapter of Mercedes-AMG, but it’s a bit of an awkward fit for this one.

Mercedes-Benz provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review. 

2026 Mercedes-AMG E53 Hybrid Wagon

The post 2026 Mercedes-AMG E53 Hybrid Wagon Quick Review: A Bit Mild, a Bit Wild, But Mostly Confusing appeared first on The Drive.

We’ve been talking about the Jeep Wrangler vs. Ford Bronco sales rivalry since the latter was released for the 2021 model year. And yes, we’ve pointed out more than once just how close that race has come. Midway through 2026, Jeep has sold 86,254 Wranglers to date, while Ford’s sales tally stands at 76,936—still a good bit behind the Wrangler—but Ford says it has momentum on its side.

“Bronco delivered record Q2 and first-half results, outselling the Jeep Wrangler for the quarter,” the company said in an 8-K securities filing posted to its investor site Thursday. “Q2 sales rose 15.9%, while first-half sales grew 6.8%.”

The numbers do indeed back up Ford’s claim. Jeep’s cumulative lead comes care of a strong Q1 (44,461 units). The past three months weren’t quite so robust (41,793). A spring/summer sales decline seems like an odd trajectory for a convertible off-roader, but then again we’re not privy to Jeep’s marketing or incentive strategies.

Ford, on the other hand, seems to be pushing Broncos plenty hard. The company sold 45,739 of them in Q2, handily beating its Q1 total (31,197), but that early 13,000-unit deficit put Ford in a pretty big hole. Two more quarters of beating Wrangler sales by ~4,000 units isn’t going to get it done by itself, and while Jeep sales may be flat, they’re not declining.

On top of that, Ford is crediting a record-setting Q2 for the Bronco’s gains. That means Ford will have to continue setting quarterly sales records if it hopes to gain enough ground to dethrone its cross-town rival. This is still anybody’s game; let’s see what happens on the far side of halftime. In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks.

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You’re in the middle of nowhere. Let’s say it’s hot, dry, and you’re low on water. Suddenly, there’s a gust of wind and something rolls into the road. You try to dodge it, but you catch it with a rear tire. You hear that telltale fwop of a tire depressurizing and the TPMS light starts flashing at you urgently before you can even finish pulling to the shoulder.

For enthusiasts, the above sounds like the makings of mild inconvenience. Most of us could have a spare on (or at the very least, the slurry can inserted) in a matter of minutes—perhaps a little more if it’s our first rodeo with that particular car—but if you’re a less-experienced (or incapacitated) motorist, you might find yourself suddenly stranded.

Picture yourself in that moment. Now, ask yourself this: When a pair of headlights appears on the horizon, who are you hoping to see behind the wheel?

According to Autotrader, your answer is likely “Anybody who isn’t Gen Z.”

The story came out of the used car dealer’s U.K. arm, but the company’s researchers surveyed 3,000 motorists worldwide and asked them which generations they’d trust to get them out of a simple automotive maintenance jam. The only other generation to score as low as Gen Z is—to put it somewhat indelicately—no longer with us.

I’m sure there are more than a few octogenarians out there still changing their own tires, but the oldest members of the Silent Generation will hit the century mark in 2028. Largely, this is a group of people that is either no longer driving, or on the cusp of hanging up its proverbial keys for good. The larger share of drivers over the age of 65 are Baby Boomers, who made precious few appearances in the survey highlights, despite scoring high marks for credibility in the UK, specifically.

Most of the commentary was instead focused on younger groups, whose knowledge (and mechanical skills) aren’t held in particularly high regard by anybody.

“Globally, just 2% of drivers trust Gen Z, those currently aged between 14 and 29, most to change a tyre,” the report said. “In the UK, USA, Portugal and Australia, that figure drops to zero.” 

While our youngest drivers may not have the world’s confidence, they do at least have some of their own. Between about 30 and 45% (depending on the country) of Gen Z drivers surveyed had confidence in their own ability to perform basic repairs, and many even reported having successfully performed one or more.

“Of the Gen Z drivers who have attempted a repair, the majority say they did not make things worse: 88% in Italy, 86% in the UK, and 85% in the Netherlands report the same,” the report said.  

So, Gen Z’s reputation is likely a bit undeserved, but even those Gen Z drivers who felt confident in their own abilities still put their faith in older generations when it came to know-how. Otherwise, the list wouldn’t look like this:

Which generation is most and least trusted

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the world’s trust in Gen X appears to have been earned the old-fashioned way, and probably won’t be easily eroded.

 “Car knowledge has always been passed down through hands-on experience, through parents, mechanics, and years of figuring things out at the roadside.” said Tom Roberts, car selling expert at Autotrader. “What we’re seeing now is a generational shift in how that learning happens, not a loss of appetite for it. Gen X has earned its reputation over decades, proving that credibility is something that is accumulated.”

That shift of course refers to the wide availability of maintenance and repair guides on social media, which Gen Z cited as its primary source of information. Here in the United States, Millennials (who are quickly becoming America’s economic core) are on that bandwagon too. This category does not include AI-based sources, which the study covered separately:

“86% of Gen Z in the UK say they would use AI for car maintenance guidance, the highest of any generation in the country, against a global average of 65%,” the report said. “In the USA, Italy and Greece, it is Gen X who leads on AI car advice.”

As for which generations are most overconfident in their repair abilities? Those responses were a bit more mixed. Millennials, Baby Boomers and Gen X all took some shots, depending on the location of the respondent.

Stubbornness and overconfidence extend beyond simple generational mindsets. Cultural differences also come into play, as became evident when Autotrader asked respondents what they’d do first in the event of a breakdown.

“Globally, most drivers call a friend or family member first (39%) when in a breakdown, followed by a breakdown service (30%) and a professional mechanic (19%),” the report said. “Only 6% turn to online advice immediately, and another 6% would attempt a fix alone.”

“Interestingly, while Canadians might be the least likely to reach out to friends and family (37%) or even breakdown services (35%) when stranded, it’s the USA that is home to the most self-reliant drivers across the board,” it continued. “10% of Americans say that, if they were stranded at the roadside with a car issue, they would try to fix it by themselves without calling anyone, the highest of any country.”

Just 10%? My fellow Americans, those are rookie numbers. Let’s get to work on that!

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It’s that time of year again. The grass is green, the sun is hot, and the automakers are looking ahead to the 2027 model year. That means it’s time for our annual blitz of “American Made” rankings. If you’re expecting two years of protectionist policies to have shifted things in America’s favor, the 2026 rankings may represent a bit of a mixed bag.

If you’re all about marching to Sousa behind a proper American machine, your definition may need some tweaking. Of the top 10 cars in the 2026 Cars.com American Made Index, only four—two Teslas and two Jeeps—come from traditionally American manufacturers. The remaining six are all Toyotas and Hondas.

1. Tesla model 3
2. Tesla Model Y
3. Jeep Gladiator
4. Jeep Grand Cherokee
5. Honda Ridgeline
6. Honda Odyssey
7. Lexus TX 350
8. Honda Accord
9. Acura MDX
10. Honda Passport

Many of the entries here aren’t altogether surprising. Honda’s been building the Accord here for decades, and it’s a frequent entry in lists of cars built in America with American-made parts; its traditional competitor, the Toyota Camry, fell to #11 this year—bumped rather unceremoniously by the list’s biggest mover: the Jeep Grand Cherokee, previously ranked #70. Ditching the plug-in hybrid 4xe model (and its overseas-sourced battery) likely contributed significantly to that bounce.

Jeep’s own Wrangler doesn’t appear on the list until #23 (one spot below the Ford Mustang, which often hangs out near the top of the list). The first “big” SUV on the list is the Lincoln Navigator at #12, followed by the Ford Expedition at #13. The GM full-size SUVs occupy positions 36-39, while the Jeep Grand Wagoneer brings up the rear at #44.

Of the approximately 350 cars for sale in the U.S. in 2026, Cars.com narrowed its list to just 86 that are built or produced somewhere in America. If you’re surprised by the lack of big, American trucks in the top 10, you’re not alone:

“When asked among a selection of vehicles which they thought was built in the U.S., the overwhelming majority went to the Ford F-150, with 71% of consumers believing it to be American-made,” the report summary said.

The F-150 isn’t even the most-American fullsize pickup on the list; that honor goes to the Toyota Tundra, sitting at #16. The F-150 checks in at #27 and #26 (Hybrid and Non, respectively), and the Ram 1500 lands at #55. The GMC Sierra and Chevy Silverado, meanwhile, are way down at #78 and #82, respectively, kickin’ it with the likes of the Genesis GV70 and the Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid (both of which are built in Alabama).

“This year’s list represents the ongoing evolution and diversification of American-made vehicles,” said Patrick Masterson, Cars.com’s lead researcher. “Notably, nearly two-thirds of this year’s list was produced by foreign automakers, about the same as in 2025, while the Detroit Three holds approximately one-third of the vehicles.”

“[T]he automakers contributing the most vehicles to the AMI might surprise many, with Toyota contributing a total of 14 and Honda 13. The founding fathers fall into line next — GM, Ford, then Stellantis with 13, nine and six, respectively. Notably, by state, Michigan still has the most AMI-ranked factories, but overall, half are in the South, 7% more than in the Midwest.”

But even in the heart of Dixie, many of those operations are sending their profits overseas.

“Of the 46 U.S.-based auto plants, 25 are run by foreign-owned automakers and 21 by domestic-owned,” it said.

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California residents may find it difficult to acquire new wheels next month if state legislators can’t hustle a bill across the line to delay the implementation of a series of digital privacy measures. If the state fails to extend its July 1st deadline, every “connected” car in California will become a very expensive lot ornament.

That’s probably not what the state’s legislative body had in mind in 2024 when it passed a law which (among many other consumer electronics privacy provisions) required automakers to implement new hurdles for would-be electronic stalkers. State law now requires manufacturers of any connected device to allow owners to terminate shared access to location-tracking services when presented with evidence of a restraining order.

Well, according to Automotive News, automakers are collectively warning California that they’re not going to finish implementing their new safeguards in time to meet the July 1 deadline—and likely won’t be able to fully comply with the new law before the end of 2026.

As it stands, dealers would have to stop selling any connected car (new or used) whose manufacturer has not yet complied with the law next Wednesday. California’s state legislature is crafting a bill (SB 719) to postpone the first of the new measures by a year, and full implementation until 2031; that would align it with California’s new remote kill switch requirement.

That would represent a three-year delay for full compliance; currently, all elements are required to be in place by Jan. 1, 2028.

With the the intrusiveness (and exploitability) of modern connected systems, it’s hard to fault California for implementing consumer protections, but it seems automakers simply couldn’t stand things up in time. So, how ’bout it? Can California’s State Senate get itself in gear quickly enough to make this a nothingburger? There’s less than a week to go, sports fans.

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Just recently, the New York Times published a rather damning study about America’s simmering pedestrian safety crisis. Perhaps you saw our coverage; perhaps you read about it elsewhere. Perhaps you’re one of the many with a particularly strong opinion on the subject. We’ve certainly heard from our fair share of you. At the moment I’m writing this, that story has more than 260 comments and climbing, just on our site alone.

And a lot of them say a variant of the same thing: “It’s the cell phones, stupid!”

Is it, though? Look, it’s a perfectly reasonable argument at face value. The iPhone was introduced in 2007; pedestrian deaths in the United States began ticking up roughly two years later—and peaked during the pandemic. I get it; I was on my phone for most of that too.

There’s even data to back up this common sense assertion. Some kind redditor went so far as to overlay a chart of pedestrian deaths, vehicle weight and U.S. cell phone adoption all in the same handy-dandy visualization. And it would all check out beautifully if it weren’t for one little catch: They have cellphones outside the United States too.

What does that have to do with anything? Simple: If cell phones are responsible for the uptick in pedestrian deaths, that trend should be visible wherever smartphone adoption and car ownership overlap—the world’s powerhouse economies, in other words. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably already guessed what I’m going to say next: The math ain’t mathing.

Since we like visualizations, here’s one more. The above is based on public data from the UN Economic Commission for Europe (and the U.S. stats are backed up by NHTSA), and it paints a pretty obvious picture.

Don’t like my slopped-up trend lines? Don’t worry; others have already covered the same ground, and in far greater detail. No matter whose lines you look at, they all point the same direction, and it’s not the right one.

In 2013, total pedestrian deaths in the United States and Western Europe were roughly equal. That was four years into the reported uptick in pedestrian fatalities here in America, and as we can see, Europe’s steady downward trend has continued largely unabated, apart from an uptick in 2016. As of 2021, America’s pedestrian fatality figure was more than double that of Western Europe’s; according to IIHS, things haven’t changed much since.

The picture doesn’t change outside of Europe. Japan, which has struggled with pedestrian safety due to its historically dense development, has likewise seen a downward trend in fatalities during the same period, and it has adopted a very pedestrian-first safety culture. Australia has been dealing with an uptick since the pandemic, but is not showing the same trend as the U.S.A. Neither, for that matter, is Canada.

China, meanwhile, represents a bit of a black box. One estimate put the country’s pedestrian fatality rate as high as 17 per 100,000, which may not seem so bad in the abstract, but it would suggest that walkers and cyclists are being killed at a rate that would have appalled residents of America’s urban centers during the 1920s, where the wide availability of automobiles pushed that number up to 12 in 100,000; today, America’s pedestrian fatality rate sits around 2.3. These are signs of explosive industrialization, certainly, and likely not attributable directly to the number of Chinese citizens glued to TikTok.

Is distracted driving (and walking/cycling) a problem? Certainly. But is it the reason why America’s roads are becoming increasingly unfit for pedestrians and cyclists? Feel free to decide for yourself, but the numbers rarely lie.

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