Chris Bangle was gladly talking shit about one, or possibly all, of the major automakers during the Frankfurt Motor Show this past week, but that overshadowed one very important detail: he’s finally working on another car for a mystery company and claims it was so liberating it made one designer physically sick.
Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need to know.
Chris Bangle was one of the few modern car designers who nearly reached household-name status—and not always because people loved his work. As head of BMW design from 1992 to 2009, he oversaw a transformation of the brand’s styling from boxy and conservative to radical and forward thinking. Sometimes it worked,…
Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need to know.
With a curb weight of under 1,900 pounds, and total electric motor output of 430 horsepower and 563 lb-ft (to all four wheels), the Aspark Owl—developed by a mysterious Japanese company that, as far as I can tell, is primarily a technical consulting firm—promises an absurd zero to 60 time of two seconds. Flat.
This is the Borgward Isabella Concept, which is a prospective electric car that will probably never be manufactured. The company used it as a platform to talk about all of the SUVs it was flooding the European market with.
After a string of boring silver suppositories calling themselves “concept cars” at the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show, Honda’s Urban EV concept is like a slap in the face with your favorite sandwich: surprising, but delightful. It’s an all-new electric platform for Honda, though the character and look are clearly based on…
It’s notable that the Mercedes-Benz Concept EQA uses a large, color display screen in place of the grille, because that makes it easy to remove or change the big Mercedes tri-star badge and replace it with, say, any other company’s badge. If that happened, you’d never notice because this concept car, while sleek and…
Few vehicles out there are as immensely satisfying than the Porsche Cayenne Turbo. It angers snooty purists who hate that it exists, it’s fast and it can tow most other Porsches. The new 2019 Cayenne Turbo is quicker than ever, with a claimed 550 horsepower and 567 lb-ft of torque, complete with active aerodynamics…
I work hard. I pay my taxes, most of the time. I stay away from any hard drugs and I try not to commit crimes. I am good upstanding American; I know this because I keep telling myself that I am and that makes it true. But there is one thing I can never have: the latest generation Audi RS4 Avant.
For years, Tesla’s been pretty much owning the luxury electric sedan space. But BMW, a brand built on driving that now stresses electromobility as its “top priority,” has Tesla in its sights with a future sedan that may look a lot like this. Meet the BMW i Vision Dynamics concept.
We’ve been waiting patiently for the fantastic 8-series halo car to return to BMW’s lineup. Too patiently. We’ve devolved into madness, drooling over retrowave 8 series videos just to hold us over. But it’s here! It’s finally here! Here is the new M8 GTE race car BMW is taking to the 24 Hours of Le Mans—the marque’s…
Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations has turned out some pretty slick shit in its relatively short life so far; the Range Rover Sport SVR and Jaguar F-Type SVR are both filthy tarmac-torturers. But given Land Rover’s adventure pedigree we’ve been waiting for an off-road equivalent, and it looks like the…
We could laugh at Porsche for creating a “new car” by just ripping the rear spoiler off the 911 GT3... but scheisse it looks good.
Like Subaru, when you think of Audi you probably think of all-wheel drive. Traction, glorious traction, pulling you through the corners and conquering the elements! But now Audi has moved the drivetrain of hooligans and psychopaths, rear-wheel drive, to its R8 supercar. Meet the Audi R8 RWS, for rear-wheel series.
Behold! You are gazing upon the future of Volkswagen. It is not in peculiar diesel hatchbacks that find clever ways to skirt emissions regulations, but in clean electric cars built in crossover SUV bodies that Americans might actually buy. This is the Volkswagen I.D. Crozz II concept.
The biggest hole in Mercedes-Benz’s product lineup is likely something that can get to 124 mph in under six seconds, makes over 1000 horsepower from a 1.6-liter V6 with four electric motors, and tops out at about 217 mph. Oh, and it should look like a really, really pissed-off fish. That hole is now filled, thanks to…
Good morning! Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the important stories you need to know.
Listen: 2017 has been a bad year. When was the last time you woke up to any good news? Well, today is your day: after an eternity of delays, TVR, the British sports car company famed for its hardcore and uncompromising performance, is back with an all-new car. And they haven’t watered anything down.
BMW, constantly looking toward the future, said Thursday that it will have 12 fully-electric vehicles ready by 2025, in addition to 13 hybrids. One of those we’re expected to see unveiled at the 2017 International Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany, next week. The future is coming!
