It was only a few years ago that I started actually spectating, volunteering at, then competing in actual rallies rather than just watching clips on YouTube. It has been a joyous experience (including the times I crashed and was on fire) but I fear that joy is to be replaced by jealousy, jealousy of how good they have…
The digital speedo clicked up from 265 to 266 kilometers per hour, a good 165 mph. It was safe as can be and completely legal, because we were on a de-restricted section of the Autobahn that is, quizzically, a dead end.
The German government is asking 800 Tesla Model S buyers to pay back a 4,000 euro EV subsidy after regulators found that the company was exploiting a loophole in the law. For now, the electric automaker is footing the bill, while it appeals the issue with German regulators.
Nowhere is safe for diesel. Stuttgart, home of two massive automakers that produce diesel vehicles, has announced that any diesels that don’t meet Euro 5 standards will be banned from city streets in 2019.
Finally, some potentially good news: in an effort to get the Trump administration to abandon its plan to place a 25 percent tax on all European auto imports, all three of the big German automakers—Daimler, Volkswagen, and NSU (just kidding, it’s BMW)—have come up with a proposal that would get rid of all car import…
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.
There are two things you notice when you first encounter car culture in Germany. The first is the surprising number of Opels, and the second is that they have two perfect words to describe a particular kind of car, words that we oddly don’t have in America but desperately need. Those words are youngtimer and oldtimer.
Google has published its first-ever trend report for the automotive industry, highlighting the interests of consumers and their search queries in the U.S., Germany and Japan. It turns out people are turning away from fuzzy steering wheel covers, and instead they want ways of recording what’s going on in and around…
Cities, states and countries around the world have their sights set on banning diesel cars by a set date. In particular, there’s some high-profile cases ongoing in Germany that could decide whether cities there can ban diesel cars. This, it turns out, has German retailers freaked out.
There’s a homeowner in Dusseldorf’s well-to-do Oberkassel neighborhood that came up with what might be one of the most expensive solutions do deal with the problem of people parking too close to his driveway: He bought two cars, just to keep them parked on either side of the driveway, like bookends.
Most of the time, the Nürburgring gets brought to my attention because some manufacturer was there and set a really fast, lightning-quick lap time and wants us all to know about it because car sales. It’s not always Very Serious Car Drivers there all the time, though! It actually does get fun!
One time in Brooklyn I walked to where I thought I’d left my car only to find that the street was empty and that every car had been towed for a film shoot. About 15 minutes into an angry conversation with the police, I found it; the car was sitting where I’d actually left it, about 100 feet from where I thought it…
This summer I joined my German friends Andreas and Josi on a road trip to a wedding in Romania. I knew little about the country, and even less about the bride and groom, but that didn’t matter. I was about to drive some of the greatest roads on earth in one of the Jalop-est new cars I could get my hands on: an…
Last month, Porsche flew me to Düsseldorf for the Porsche Cayenne Technology Workshop, where engineers in classrooms taught me detailed technical minutiae about what’s good on the new 2019 Porsche Cayenne. The whole thing was extremely German, and that’s a very good thing. Here’s what I learned.
Every time I get back to the U.S. from Germany, my friends ask me if I drove on the Autobahn. When I respond “yes,” they often tell me they’re jealous. But my friends shouldn’t envy me, because the Autobahn isn’t what most Americans make it out to be. Often times, Germany’s highway system actually sucks.
A businessman from Italy named Hadi Pourmohseni was so disappointed with the quality of his leased 2008 BMW M6 and with the dealer’s service that he decided to ruin the car with a sledgehammer and axe outside the Frankfurt Motor Show. That was in 2013. On Tuesday (over four years later) Pourmohseni set a 7 Series on…
Last week Germany’s titans of industry held a huge summit to try and convince European cities and the rest of the world that despite negative press from Volkswagen’s global cheating scandal, diesel passenger cars do have a future and should not face bans. But even Germany’s leader concedes she’s not optimistic about…
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.
In 1945, an American soldier gave my Grandpa—who was then an eight-year-old living in Southern Germany—a ride in a World War II Jeep. That short trip changed my grandpa’s life forever, beginning a chain of events that led him to vow never to drive an automobile for as long as he lives.
