Foot on brake. Foot on accelerator. Wait three seconds… launch control is ready. I sidestep the brake pedal and my head slams against the headrest as the low-slung four-door leaps off the line. I feel the front tires momentarily scrabbling for grip, and what feels like a gearshift at about 50 mph. Then it’s a volcanic surge of thrust that continues unabated even as the speedo flicks past 150 mph. Make no mistake, the 2020 Porsche Taycan is a seriously fast car.
The Taycan is not only fast. It’s also fun, as I discovered on the 15,000-foot-long runway at Vandenberg Air Force Base. With the nannies off and Sport + mode selected, the Taycan’s rear-biased dual-motor all-wheel-drive powertrain allows lovely long power slides, the instant-on torque easily overwhelming the rear tires. There’s a precision to the relationship between right-foot input and powertrain output that an internal combustion engine, with all its reciprocating masses and efficiency [...]
Ferdinand Piech, the former CEO and chairman of Volkswagen Group, has died. He was 82.
The grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, Piech was born in Austria in 1937 and brought up in an automotive mindset which would define his life. He studied engineering in Switzerland before his uncle Ferry Porsche gave him a job at the company’s Stuttgart headquarters, where he worked as a manager on projects including the 906 and 917 race cars. In 1972 he moved to Audi, overseeing development of the Audi 80 and Audi 100, as well as five-cylinder engines which would become a brand hallmark.
In 1993 Piech was appointed to CEO at Volkswagen. Through aggressive restructuring, Piech turned the company around from the brink of bankruptcy. Under his tenure, Volkswagen found profitability and improved product quality, accomplished under a Piech-devised vehicle platform strategy. Considered a crowning achievement in his work at Volkswagen was the company’s 2012 acquisition of Porsche, a [...]
The General Motors pickup strategy is pretty simple; attack the market with two brands where competitors only offer a single choice. As it relates to heavy-duty consumers, we’ve already seen what they’ve done with the all-new platform, controversial styling, and impressive towing technology in the 2020 Silverado 2500 and 3500, and now it’s time for the GMC side of the family to roll out their HDs and unique features.
The 2020 GMC Sierra 2500 and 3500 models are founded on an entirely new, stronger, longer, and taller ladder frame, specifically designed to deliver bigger max towing and payload numbers. Across every configuration, specific considerations to thicker, lighter, and more advanced materials have been included in the frame, upgraded suspension components, and even in the powertrains themselves, resulting in higher maximum payload (in excess of 7,000 pounds) and maximum towing numbers (in excess of 35,000 pounds). Here’s a fun fact GM engineers want you to know: [...]
Not that it’s any surprise, but Chevrolet has hinted that more powerful Corvettes are coming. Given its storied legacy and the fact it has been around for the past three consecutive generations of Corvette, we can bet a new Z06 will be among them. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these renderings that provide an idea of what the hotter Corvette could look like.
If you thought the Corvette Stingray had a bold design, get ready for the new Z06 to turn up the heat even further. As it has in the past, the Corvette Z06 will likely share design cues with the racing version. The C8.R, which is set to debut this fall, should give us an idea what to expect. Its aggressive rear wing, new front splitter, side vent, and diffuser would certainly give the Z06 the sharp look it needs to live up to its high-performance aspirations.
Bugatti wowed crowds at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance when it unveiled the Centodieci. Based on the Chiron, it’s meant as a tribute to the EB110, the oft-overlooked yet unforgettably styled supercar that’s among the fastest of the Radwood era. With the Centodieci, Molsheim had to accomplish two things. First, make it a worthwhile business endeavor. Given that all 10 of the limited-run hypercar are sold at some $9 million each, that’s a clear success. Second, it needed to make the Centodieci a worthy homage to the EB110. Here, in rare form, Bugatti may have faltered.
While the Centodieci is undeniably cool, its design is polarizing to say the least. Let’s examine Bugatti’s latest creation in detail.
First, the front. As a clear tie-in to the original, the brand’s signature horseshoe grille is very small, much more so than other modern Bugattis. It’s flanked by horizontal grille openings as a nod to the EB110’s [...]
