The San Francisco Giants got a rally-starting at-bat from an unusual source. The bad news: No doubt Madison Bumgarner might be picking up a bat more often whenever the team needs a little kick. ”Yeah, now we’ve got to hear it from him for a few days, saying how easy that was,” manager Bruce Bochy said after Bumgarner’s first career pinch-hit helped produce an insurance run in a 2-0 victory
– Allow us a moment and we’ll detail the fresh product updates Nissan has cooked up for 2016. We’re disappointed to report the lack of a V-8 Altima or any mention of the litigation-courting ZEOD RC/BladeGlider EV, although there are more important, more normal things afoot: The company will refresh its best-selling Altima and smaller Sentra later this year—no information or photos have been provided as of yet—the Xterra is dead, and
Feel that slight chill in the air? That’s right—summer is on its way out, with a new season right behind it: Teaser Season, the transitional state that precedes Auto Show Season. And the first leaf to blow into our yards is this Audi e-tron Quattro concept sketch, teasing a concept set to debut at this year’s International Motor Show in Frankfurt. It’s pretty much your first look at the upcoming
-Thirty-five years ago, who knew that rugged utes, subscribers to the oldest school of SUV-dom, would become status symbols? Mercedes’ Geländewagen makes news when some guy buys one for Kylie Jenner. GM takes the hoary Suburban, slaps a Cad badge and some Volvo-esque taillights on the thing and prints money. And staid Toyota still trickles out a stream of serious-business Land Cruisers outfitted in a manner that reminds old-timers that, before
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– Acura was the first Japanese carmaker to challenge the luxury establishment, rolling into the big-bucks banquet in 1986 with a bold corporate mantra: “Precision Crafted Performance.” Yet it didn’t take long for Honda’s luxury division to stray from that lofty credo and embark on a meandering identity quest that’s only now beginning to show tiny glimpses of returning to its roots—on the passenger-car side of the house, at least.
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-There was plenty of money being waved around in Monterey, California, last week, particularly on the various auction blocks around the Peninsula. We shared lists and photos of the top 10 sales from each of the four days of auctions, and now we’ve gathered the top 25 from the entire weekend, which includes two new additions—a Porsche RS60 racing car and a Ferrari California Spider that were each sold post-block following no-sales during the live
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– Last year, a gaggle of Porschephiles descended on Carmel Valley’s Rancho Cañada Golf Course for the first annual Werks Reunion. Run by the Porsche Club of America, the show’s a handy Saturday morning stop on the way to the Quail from Pebble Beach. So once again, we stopped in to have a look. – – This year’s show was light on our beloved 914s—we ran across one with a
