Today, automakers reserve limited-production vehicles to high performance sports cars and supercars. But in the height of Japan’s Bubble Era, Nissan had a different, better idea. These are the Pike Cars. They’re cute, but there’s more to them than good looks.

It’s abundantly clear that any yahoo can turn an S13 Nissan 200SX into a drift car. But what’s it like turning one into a “Ring tool,” as they say around the Nürburgring? What’s it like lapping one on the Nordschleife? Well, it looks, uh, maybe as sideways as you’d expect.

These days it’s not at all uncommon to open up a car magazine or visit a car website and find a photo of some half-covered prototype long before a car company wanted you to see the thing. For that, you can thank Jim Dunne, the guy who might as well have invented the business of spy photography in the automotive world.…

Hello. Today I would like to announce that it (a 2002 Lexus IS300 SportCross) is yellow. That is the color that it is, at this moment, as in all moments before it, dating back to the build date of it (the 2002 Lexus IS300 SportCross in question).

Giant ovals seem to have a way of robbing our eyes of any sensation of just how fast Cup cars are going, and it’s easy to forget just how good NASCAR drivers are at, well, driving. Here is a good bit of a throwback to fix your mind.

Anyone who drives in Manhattan knows that it’s trash, but even I was surprised by new data published by the NYC Department of Transportation that average speeds were down to all of 7 mph.

Another day, another promising car startup with layoffs hitting and a co-founder bouncing out. All that and more for The Morning Shift for Thursday, August 15, 2019.

If you, like me, often dream of buying one of the car world’s masterpieces, the first-gen Mazda RX-7, this will be of some interest to you. It’s how much RX-7 you get for $400. After some review, it appears to be, uh, not a ton.

It’s 8/6 day in the rest of the world, and I’m sure you (like me) are spending most of it watching old drift videos. But the most iconic drift car of a generation is still one of the best old rally cars you can run.

Here we see what is both speed and metal together with humans, cast aloft in celebration of speed and metal together with humans. Of difficulty. In difficulty, we have the speed. Transformational speed, in that it transforms a car into a car soaring through the air, that air being the air that exists above the ground,…

What’s funny about the Renault Clio V6, even this later version with a higher-spec engine, is that it only makes 255 horsepower and 221 lb-ft of torque (as noted by EVO at the time, from a 3.0-liter mounted where the back seats ought to be.

For years, the first-generation Lexus IS was a wannabe BMW with a weird clock dashboard. But slowly, surely, the car has revealed its true self. These cars are absolute classics and icons in equal measure.

In a surprise turn, things could be going better for the company that hasn’t debuted an interesting new car in, what is this now, eight or nine years? All this and more in The Morning Shift for Friday, August 2, 2019.

The auto industry loves to incorporate little elements of aftermarket style into production vehicles. Look at the widebody kit on the new batch of hi-po Dodges, for instance. But there is a level of style, of modification, that would make even the wildest automaker blanch.

There’s lots to take in from the classic film The Terminator. There’s Arnold Schwarzenegger murdering dudes when he’s naked. There are also several explosions. But also: this wonderful Chevy pickup.

Observe: a widebody version of a standard performance car, ripping on a twisty course. This is not, sadly, a vehicle meant for competition in NASCAR but rather a Trans-Am Mustang of the 1990s.

It’s only a specific group of nerds that will quickly read a collection of letters and numbers and instantly understand what it means: 3S-GTE RAV4.

I am West Coast born, and that means I’m California raised. My nostalgia for the streetparked cars of my hometown will never fade, remembering ‘70s Corollas still used for commuting to rust-free Volvo 142s sitting with $500 for sale signs on them. But since moving East, I’ve fallen a bit for a different state’s…