There’s nothing quite like Death Valley to shake down a car. Not only is it the hottest place in the United States, but the twisty park roads and scenery are quite lovely—so long as your car works. So, naturally, we saw quite a few automotive testers when the LeMons Rally took us straight to Car Hell.
I made a Scoob in a headline.
Via car!
Over $200,000 worth of wheels and tires went missing overnight from 48 cars at Peltier Chevrolet in Tyler, Texas, reports Automotive News. That’s a lot of wheels! Tyler Police Department Public Information Officer Don Martin told Automotive News that they believe the heist only took around four hours.
ICON is used to customizing more classic fare, but if you just want to go fast and not be noticed, nothing beats a big old ex-cop car. ICON’s Jonathan Ward told Road & Track the insane story of how one ICON client decided to pump serious cash into an old Caprice, of all things.
After the Dieselgate emissions scandal came to light, Volkswagen dealers got stuck with a toxic brand and a bunch of cars they couldn’t sell. Now the real heroes in all of this—650 hardworking Beetle-pushers across America—have reached a deal to be compensated a reported $1.2 billion by Volkswagen for their losses.
The Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance was a sight to behold with all manner of drop-dead gorgeous vintage machinery on display. Unfortunately, that’s also its problem. It’s no longer an event for cars. It’s a glorified museum on a golf course.
One of the best things a manufacturer can do to prove a car’s worth is to race it. Keep it mostly stock to demonstrate its capabilities. Unfortunately, Toyota discovered something they shouldn’t have kept close to stock on their rally-prepped 2016 Toyota RAV4 at the Gorman Ridge Rally: the car alarm.
The WeatherTech Sports Car Championship’s Prototype Challenge cars may be pretty long in the tooth by now, but they’re still mighty quick, especially in WTSC’s mixed field. Case in point: just watch driver Kyle Marcelli pick off cars one by one in this race pass supercut. Watch in awe.
If there’s one feature I miss from old cars, it’s the hood ornament.
Lest we mistake them for vaporware, autonomous racing series Roborace has a “DevBot” that looks suspiciously like a real car. It has a standardized safety cell for a driver and all. Only that cell isn’t there for what is likely that most terrifying joyride on the planet—it’s for testing and development.
There’s nothing like staring into the deep finish of fresh carbon fiber and watching the gentle waves dance in the sunlight. The only thing that tops it is, well, more carbon fiber—in color!
Why does Waze want to send me around the track instead of on it?
Most of the writers here got their start in more humble ways like “applying” or “writing a lot on OppositeLock.” I did a lot of that last one, too. But before that, I also owned Jalopnik’s then-editor-in-chief Matt Hardigree in the ultimate regular-car track battle first—and I’ve waited nearly four years to gloat.
Brazil may be hosting the Olympics this year, but one of their greatest sporting triumphs is in a discipline not eligible for the Olympics at all: Formula One. That doesn’t mean that Brazilians won’t use Senna’s retelling of his incredible drive from the 1991 Brazilian Grand Prix as motivation to win, though.
While neither side will comment directly on the end of the messy Nissan DeltaWing lawsuit directly, DeltaWing Technology Group chairman Don Panoz had a few interesting words to say on Nissan’s very DeltaWing-like BladeGlider concept today.
“Well, I understand your occasional need to haul spare parts to the track, but really, the Miata’s trunk is surprisingly big, and you can always buy a trailer,” says the obnoxious, often leathery Miata owner, as a pre-cancerous mole ever-so-slowly engulfs a small chunk of his forearm.
