It’s classic middle child syndrome. The internets are ablaze with news of the yoke-controlled, ridiculously quick, 520-mile-range Tesla Model S Plaid+. But will anyone notice the Model X is getting many of the same changes?
Tesla’s big SUV gets its own version of the new Model S’s interior, including the Roadster-inspired yoke, landscape-style center screen, and Model 3-like simplicity. The Model X also gets its own three-motor Plaid version, although performance is somewhat reduced. Tesla claims the tri-motor Model X Plaid will get to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds, top out at 163 mph, and run 340 miles on a charge, numbers that are 0.51 sec, 37 mph, and 50 miles below that of the Model S Plaid. The retail price, however, is the same $121,190.
The bigger news on the Model S side of [...]
Another two sedans bite the dust as the market-wide move to SUVs continues to cut down the remaining four-door holdouts. Add the Kia K900 and Cadenza to the list: Both are dead for 2021, as originally reported by Car and Driver.
That said, the shift toward SUVs isn’t new, and the K900—an S-Class-sized bargain luxury sedan—was already essentially a footnote in annual sales figures. The K900 had a steep hill to climb in a segment where brand prestige is a large part of the selling proposition, although anyone able to ignore such considerations found an excellent luxury car for tens of thousands less than its German competition.
August 2019. MotorTrend Car of the Year competition. I’m behind the wheel of the Mercedes-AMG GT63S and senior features editor Jonny Lieberman is riding shotgun. As we evaluated the big AMG, I distinctly remember asking him, “where would you ever use all 630 horsepower?” His response was simply, “everywhere.” Clearly, he isn’t the only person who thinks this, because BMW has now given the M5 largely the same amount of grunt. Meet the 2022 BMW M5 CS, now with 627 hp, 553 lb-ft of torque, and way less fat.
In simple terms, the new M5 CS is the most powerful BMW to ever hit public roads. But it’s much more than that. BMW claims a 0-62 mph time of 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 190 mph. Not only that, but the M5 also goes on the Atkins diet in its transition to CS state. The base M5 is a bit of a porker [...]
From the December 2012 issue of Popular Hot Rodding magazine: It’s called “stealing a shot,” a Hollywood term that means shooting commercial footage without a permit. Technically, anytime you whip out a camera in the L.A. Basin with the intent to publish the results (movie, print, interwebs, whatever) for personal gain, you need a permit.
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We’re about to “steal a shot” on a forlorn stretch of pavement wedged between scrap yards. A few cracks in the pavement are large enough to swallow small children. Broken bits of glass and metal litter the ground. If this were a movie, a car would be spewed from these fissures, a car [...]
Way back in 2015, Congress passed the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act (LVMVMA). It required the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) to come up with guidelines to allow certain small vehicle manufacturers (those that sell less than 5,000 vehicles globally per year) a path toward producing turn-key replicas, instead of kit cars, in a limited number and with a variety of restrictions. And then … nothing happened. Until now.
The NHTSA has finally gotten its act together after prodding (and lawsuits) from SEMA and others, and we finally have a look at the LVMVMA’s final rules (PDF document). Here’s the gist: these companies can build up to 325 replica cars annually for sale in the U.S., and they don’t have to be kit cars. More importantly, companies don’t have to adhere to modern safety regulations. And while the cars are required to resemble vehicles 25 years old or older, they are not required [...]
