Miscellaneous

This week began with the 2013 Ford F-150 shedding the camouflage that once covered the full-size light-duty truck's front-end. BMW's M branch, the performance wing of the German automaker, celebrated its 40th birthday on Wednesday and in honor of the milestone, we've compiled a list of the top five BMW ...    Read more

Hybrid naysayers constantly say hybrids aren't worth the extra cost because it will take years to recover the premium paid for their high-tech vehicles versus a non-hybrid equivalent. Interestingly, they fail to mention hybrid vehicles are extremely well-equipped with many standard features, while their gasoline-only siblings are usually the cheaper ...    Read more

Former Ford CEO Harold Arthur 'Red' Poling passed away last Saturday at his home in Pacific Grove, Calif. at the age of 86. Poling helped navigate the Blue Oval boys through some turbulent economic times back in the 1980's and can also be attributed with saving the automaker from the ...    Read more

The car business is big business—very big business. And charting the changes from year to year can be a little tough. But when investment banks get involved, their goal is to be absolutely sure of what's on the horizon to keep investors interested in the right companies, referencing knowledge of future ...    Read more

When we got our first look at the Fisker Atlantic ahead of this year's New York International Auto Show, we were stoked to see a stylish car from the automaker that would be more accessible than its more than $100,000 Fisker Karma. In fact, early word had it the Atlantic ...    Read more

If you live in California, Texas, New Hampshire and a handful of other states, you can get away without insurance—albeit with a very important caveat. Some states will let you drive without car insurance, but only if you can prove to them that you can pay for all liable damages out ...    Read more

In a bizarre mashup that combines a $375,000 vehicle from a luxury company known for its somnolent properties and one of the most legendary skateboarders in the world—the man that made it possible to use the words "skateboarding" and "legendary" together in the first place—Lexus lent Tony Hawk an example ...    Read more

When we journalist folk are gathered up at meetings before getting to drive new cars, there's inevitably some louse in the back of the room who will raise his hand and ask if the automaker will eventually offer a diesel engine/manual transmission/cool feature available in European cars or some other ...    Read more

The picture you're looking at with the Audi was taken on flat land. The Aud R8 LMS above was riding a track with an incredible 60-degree banked corner. Now that we have your attention with that tidbit, here's your unusually present update of race cars simply too awesome to ignore. We're ...    Read more

Everywhere you look someone is gripping tightly to an iPhone, Android, or some other type of smartphone, because whatever the need, there's an app for that. As so, Hyundai announced it launched a refreshed version of Blue Link, an app that can control and peek into a variety of vital ...    Read more

It's funny how time flies when you're having fun. And what fun the BMW M division, the company's motorsports offshoot, has been. BMW M came on the scene in 1972, complementing what connoisseurs had already found out with the "Neue Klasse" cars the automaker started making in the 1960s. BMW already built incredibly ...    Read more

Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps not the most cheery fellow to say this, once said, "In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play." It's only unfortunate that he lived in an age before the invention of LEGOs, dying a mere 49 years before the invention of those colorful ...    Read more

Honda is always trying to experiment with getting humans out of their products and onto its other products. How else could you explain a company that builds cars, motorcycles, the HondaJet, and—for professionally supervised landscaping shenanigans—riding lawnmowers? This, more than anything, will explain the gestation of the UNI-CUB, ...    Read more

The nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently announced three vehicles -- the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu ECO, the 2012 Hyundai Azera, and the 2012 Toyota Prius c -- as the latest recipients for its Top Safety Pick award. The IIHS tests vehicles for safety in frontal and side crashes, rollovers, and ...    Read more

Love it or hate it, there's no denying that the Chevrolet Corvette can keep up with the best of them both on and off the track. Since the end of the 2011 model year, Chevrolet has produced 1,526,747 Corvettes since production began back in 1953. Since 1981, when the National ...    Read more

After hanging around with Germans for a while, it's possible to get the impression that most are born without a sense of humor. Then they surprise you every once in a while. Take, for instance, Porsche CEO Matthias Mueller. He told German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung that the automaker was no longer ...    Read more

High-tech electric cars with high-capacity, quick-recharging batteries are 10 years away. That's been the story for about 30 years. It's a joke, of course, but only barely. The twin holy grails of electrically powered cars—long-range and quick recharging—always seem to be just out of reach. And it's those two characteristics, naysayers ...    Read more

Oh boy, it's Saturday! No school! No classes! No facing that stupid bully Trent in gym class! Saturday! Gonna run downstairs in my PJs! Mom, where's the Captain Crunch? Where's the remote? FOUND IT! Yes! Disney XD, scroll scroll scroll...oh sweet, Motorcity's on! Yes! Mom! Mom! Mooooom, come watch this with ...    Read more

You may not know who Patrick Long is, but he's a big deal around Porsche's motorsports activities as the only American race car driver to drive a car for the automaker. Adding to his credits are three American LeMans GT2 racing championships and a slice of a class championship at ...    Read more

Sitting in a long commute with hoards of traffic is probably bad for your blood pressure, sure. But a new study says it could also be a factor in poorer fitness levels and putting on the pounds. That news comes by way of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine which recently ...    Read more

Nissan is keeping itself busy, quickly expanding its partnership with Daimler, Mercedes-Benz's parent company. Announced this week, the Japanese automaker broke ground on a new plant in Decherd, Tennessee, to build engines for the 2014 Mercedes-Benz C-Class, and likely the next Infiniti G sedan, a car rumored to share the ...    Read more

The year: 2008. The situation: $4 gasoline and impending global economic meltdown. The hardest-hit victims other than Bernie Madoff's clients: SUVs. Truck-based sport utility vehicles have been part of American lexicon since before World War II, before they were even called SUVs. They've held a position as a rugged carryall for ...    Read more

While many states have already outlawed texting, grooming, reading, and eating while driving, Rhode Island is taking distracted driving to a whole new level. Representative Peter Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, R.I., has presented a bill that would outlaw dogs from riding in the lap of the driver. If this ...    Read more

More automakers continue to update the user interfaces for their vehicles' infotainment systems but many are tough to comprehend.  Ford has seen firsthand what happens when an infotainment system is tough to use, while rival Chrysler enjoys a steady stream of compliments with its Uconnect. Ford in response has recently ...    Read more

After more than four months of legal battles, a Torrance, California, judge overturned the February 1 decision that awarded $9,867 to 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid owner Heather Peters. She won the judgment in California's small claims court system, convincing the court that Honda made false claims about her car's ability ...    Read more