THESE DAYS, factory hot-rod pickups are as commonplace as rock stars wearing guyliner, but all of them owe their heritage to the specially equipped Dodge D-100 Custom Sports Special you see here, which debuted in 1964—eight years before Ziggy Stardust painted his face. Yes, in the same year designer Mary Quant changed the fashion world forever with the miniskirt, Dodge attempted to upend the pickup-truck status quo by introducing a “personal-use” maximum-performance model of the D-100—a Hemi-powered hot rod truck lavishly trimmed with bucket seats and a console.
Perhaps some spark of inspiration came from San Diego DJ Dick Boynton’s success racing his 1963 Dragmaster truck, a Dodge D-100 powered by a 413-cubic inch 420-horse Max Wedge engine that won its B/FX (factory experimental) class at the 1963 Winternationals in Pomona by laying down a 12.71-second, 108.99-mph run. That’s impressive for a 3,900-pound truck carrying 70 percent of its weight up front. Soon the 413 [...]
“If the car was invented today and we said this consumer product will improve mobility and productivity, but … it will kill 33,000 people a year in America, do you think the government would approve it for sale?”
Volvo senior safety engineer Thomas Broberg’s measured iconoclasm came as the automaker defended its decision to restrict the top speed of all its vehicles to 112 mph.
I first came across this institutional mindset 30 years ago, when I interviewed Pehr Gyllenhammar, author, economist, lawyer, and, at the time, chairman of the board of AB Volvo. “We are not a luxury car producer,” declaimed Gyllenhammar bluntly. The smiles of the Volvo PR flacks became instantly fixed, brittle. Color drained from their faces. The Volvo chairman was happy to elaborate: “We design cars with high specification, but we are not in the luxury class as we define it, that is competing on price levels with the more expensive [...]
Cars require untold numbers of engineers to go from paper to sheet metal, so it always seems unfair to lay the success or failure of one at the foot of just one of them. That’s the nature of leadership, though. You take the win or the loss. Albert Biermann didn’t personally choose the parts and calibrations that make the 2020 Hyundai Sonata N Line drive like it does, but his philosophy has been so faithfully executed in the way it drives that it’s impossible not to recognize his influence.
Biermann, as it has been extensively reported, is a veteran of BMW. Before his hiring at Hyundai, it would have been hyperbole to compare the way a Sonata drives to a BMW because that wasn’t what Hyundai was going for, but now, things are different. Now, the new Sonata has a distinctly Germanic feel, and the new N Line performance trim especially so.
Last week, Bentley gave us a glimpse of a future that becomes reality today. The opulent SUV you see before you is the 2021 Bentley Bentayga Speed, which pairs the new Bentayga’s look with the tried-and-true existing mechanicals of the outgoing Bentayga Speed, just introduced last February. That means this exceptional fast SUV stays quick, and looks good doing it.
The short answer is that the new 2021 Bentley Bentayga Speed puts the current 2020’s mechanicals into the updated-for-2021 body. There is of course a lot more to it, since the updated sheetmetal and interior afford the Speed lots of ways to differentiate itself from its lesser V-8 powered siblings.
Another big chunk of new? The Speed model is also now the only way to get the W-12 engine in a Bentayga. Previously, customers could select non-Speed W-12-powered Bentaygas. Since most folks [...]
Maserati is doubling down on the performance of its sedans. “Trofeo” has been a byword for the fastest and most powerful version of Maserati’s Levante SUV for a while now, but the Italian brand is finally bestowing the Trofeo badge on both the 2021 Ghibli and the 2021 Quattroporte sedans. While the Levante Trofeo remains unchanged, the Trofeo upgrades to the two sedans are extensive, and both now boast top speeds of 203 mph, making them the fastest production sedans Maserati has ever made.
That incredible top speed comes as a result of what’s under the new Trofeo models’ hoods: A Ferrari-built, twin-turbo 3.8-liter V-8 cranking out 580 horsepower and 538 lb-ft of torque. A version of this engine made an appearance in the now-dead Quattroporte GTS, but the Trofeos’ new V-8 is more potent.
All that power is routed through a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox to the rear wheels—no fancy switchable all-wheel-drive systems here. [...]
