– Wheezing up the passes of France’s Vosges mountains in a European-market, 208-hp Mercedes-Benz GLC250, we felt that a few extra ponies will be in high order. And indeed, Daimler will bring to the U.S. market the GLC300 instead—powered by the same 2.0-liter turbo four but jacked up to 241 horsepower. But it might be worth waiting for the 2017 model year. – Next summer, the company will launch the
-The best thing about Fiat’s new 500X crossover is that it has almost nothing in common with the Fiats currently languishing on dealer lots. Fiat sales are down 13 percent overall this year, and June sales were off 30 percent from the same month in 2014, the worst performance among all auto brands. Nobody at Fiat-Chrysler should be surprised. The Italian brand’s core product, the tiny 500, is entering its
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– The McLaren 675LT takes everything we like about the 650S (which is a lot) and just makes it all better. Who cares if the “long tail” is just an inch longer than the car it’s based on and is more for marketing than for a true long tail? – We don’t. – Just listen to the way the V-8 sounds and look at how it goes around those corners.
–Overview: The full-size Nissan Armada SUV is at this point so old, you’d be forgiven for thinking it earned its name for having been part of the Spanish Armada. Introduced for 2004, the big Nissan remains an iconoclastic choice in the face of the more-popular big haulers from GM and Ford and is based on the outgoing Nissan Titan truck chassis. (We expect a new Armada based on the redesigned
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-What could be more American than a Ford Mustang GT? How about a custom one-off Mustang built to commemorate the Apollo moon missions? It’s not powered by a Saturn V rocket, but it does have 627 horsepower. – Admittedly, special-edition Mustangs can run toward the cheesy side, and this one is no different: The insignia that served a purely functional purpose on the Apollo rockets looks a little costume-y when draped
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– Toyota is recalling 109,000 Prius V hybrids in the U.S. that can potentially stall while driving, the company said Wednesday. – – The 2012-2014 Prius V (the wagon thing, not the egg-shaped hatch) has two ECUs managing the hybrid and electric motor that can burn out their transistors and send the car into a limp-home mode or completely disable the power without warning. Toyota said it would update the
– The new, second-generation Audi R8 is launching with a 5.2-liter naturally aspirated V-10 as its sole engine offering, the previous entry-level 4.2-liter V-8 having been jettisoned from the lineup. Now Motoring is quoting two senior Audi executives as saying that the car will get a second engine offering, one that features turbocharged power. – The ten-cylinder in the 2016 R8 comes in two strengths: The standard version makes 540