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Will a proposed rule from the Environmental Protection Agency really hinder your plans to turn your daily driver into a badass track-only machine? It will, officials from aftermarket trade association SEMA and the EPA itself confirmed to Jalopnik today. Here’s what all of this means.
Artificial intelligence: it will replace us all one day! Eventually, I won’t have to deal with Jalopnik staffers and their problems, until I too am replaced by a bot that understands headlines and spreadsheets and can field endless complaints. Until then, we’ll have to settle for bots writing Craigslist ads, and that is fine because their work is delightfully bonkers.
Every driver has seen a strange dashboard symbol or found an unfamiliar button in their car and wondered, “What the hell is that?” Luckily, Jalopnik readers know what they mean, and they’re here to help.
I started my career at a big daily newspaper. I learned to be a journalist in the trenches with people who were thoroughly steeped in the community they covered. The idea was that you weren’t just some detached observer chronicling things from afar. You were a part of that community, just as affected as any reader by what happened in it.
Nissan’s U.S. sales are so bad that furloughs and cost cuts are in order, everybody knew about the defective Ford transmissions, Toyota can’t make enough hybrids and more for this Morning Shift of Friday, Dec. 6, 2019.
Traffic sucks, so why not start your morning off with some music? You provide the toast and we’ll provide the jams.
You remember the Acura SLX, don’t you? Wait, what’s that? You... don’t remember the Acura SLX? How disappointing. I was counting on all of you to keep track of the world’s obscure Isuzu Trooper variants. (It was a Holden and an Opel too!) But now the SLX is back, and more rad than ever because this one is using modern powertrain from an Acura RDX.
It’s probably good I’m not rich. I’d just spend my money on excessively stupid shit, like an Aston Martin V8 Vantage from the 1980s. And I have no business owning that! Nobody does.
Traffic sucks, so why not start your morning off with some music? You provide the toast and we’ll provide the jams.
I don’t think I’m being unfair when I say the American versions of Top Gear have had a rough history. Top Gear USA made it through four seasons with some okay episodes, but it never landed as well as the British original. And Top Gear America, starring the banker who gets shot at the beginning of The Dark Knight? I don’t know who asked for that. I also don’t know if anyone asked questions when it got axed.
This is a Mazda RX-7. It is not the car our David Tracy bought this weekend in Colorado for $700, despite my best efforts. He bought something else instead. I’m trying here, people.
Generally speaking, I like most of the stuff BMW is putting out these days. The new Toyota Supra is excellent, the 8 Series is a delight and even that little 2 Series Gran Coupe proved to be a nice surprise when I drove it in prototype form. But if you can’t get your bread and butter right, what’s the point of everything else? I’m about to see if the new 3 Series is any good.
The Volkswagen GTI is a signifier of good taste in cars. As one of the most well-rounded hot hatchbacks on the market, when you see one, you can safely assume its owner likes to have fun behind the wheel. Now that a new Volkswagen Golf is out, it’s no great surprise to learn what the next GTI will look like, but we’re happy to see it anyway.
Traffic sucks, so why not start your morning off with some music? You provide the toast, and we’ll provide the jams.
When I think of cars from the Fast and Furious franchise that I could drive in real life, not only would I rather take the bus than be seen in Tyrese Gibson’s purple and silver Eclipse Spyder from 2 Fast 2 Furious, I’d actually also rather be hit by said bus instead.
I couldn’t sleep much last night. My dreams were filled with visions of stainless steel triangles, glass cracking and electric ATVs flying through the air. The Tesla Cybertruck, she is a demon who haunts my nightmares and will not give me a moment’s peace! The thing is, after a lot of thought, I don’t hate Tesla’s truck. But I am perplexed by it, and not convinced it’s going to be the kind of volume-seller that can take on the Ford F-150 and the rest.
Traffic sucks, so why not start your morning off with some music? You provide the toast, and we’ll provide the jams.
What’s the next big thing for electric vehicles? Probably pickup trucks. Ford is doing it and so are startups like Rivian. But Elon Musk isn’t about to be outdone, and tonight at the Tesla Design Center in Los Angeles, the electric automaker unveiled something truly different.
Here’s what we know: Elon Musk loves Blade Runner, and that is why he has chosen tonight to unveil something called the Cybertruck. And we’ve seen—if you can call it that—some very vague and murky teaser shots of... something. Beyond that, we have few solid details about what Musk is up to tonight. So what do you want to see from this event?
We find ourselves in an odd time when automakers are putting out their own camouflaged “spy shots” of prototype cars to drum up pre-release hype. As an editor, I’m fine with this; it’s less freelance money I have to spend buying photos. But it is a bit of a strange practice, and most of the time I don’t really care. Unless it’s a new sports car from Maserati that seems to have very familiar bones. Then we care.
The last thing the world probably needs is a go-fast crossover, but that’s what the people demand, and so that’s what we are getting. At the LA Auto Show yesterday, we were introduced to the Mercedes-AMG GLS 63—the AMG-ified version of Benz’s biggest and most luxuriant crossover. It has 603 horsepower, a 48-volt electrical system and... wait. Wait. Good Lord, those wheels!
“Wait a minute. Holy shit,” I said out loud in near-total disbelief as I walked up to my friend and Jalopnik contributor William Clavey as he started up the new BMW M235i Gran Coupe. I was not expecting a bellowing and cracking exhaust note I could hear from 20 feet away. “That was you? That’s what it sounds like?”
Auto industry jobs centered around “traditional” powertrains are on the decline, electric SUVs are our future and a coup may be underway at the United Auto Workers. All this and more for The Morning Shift of Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019.
We live in an era when 500 horsepower is no longer the exclusive purview of supercars. This isn’t a bad thing. There’s more performance out there than ever before, and it’s more accessible than it’s ever been. And this trio represents the really diverse ways to get to 500 horses.
Ford has been saying its new electric crossover is “Mustang-inspired” since last year’s Detroit Auto Show. And with the official name, they really, really went there.
