AUTOS
– Takata may be forced to recall every airbag manufactured with ammonium nitrate propellant if the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration turns a Congressional request into a formal order. – – A letter from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) urges Takata to recall all of its airbags using the questionable propellant after a side airbag produced by the Japanese supplier ruptured on a 2015 Volkswagen Tiguan in
– Externally, it appears that there’s a lull at Bugatti. The last Veyron, “La Finale,” was sold before it appeared on the stand at this year’s Geneva motor show. Its successor has not been formally announced, although rumor suggests it will appear at next month’s Frankfurt auto show. In between, there’s been a flurry of activity in Molsheim, keeping Wolfgang Dürheimer, head of both Bentley and Bugatti, a very busy man.
The 2017 Ford Raptor is coming, with its 450-hp twin-turbo EcoBoost V-6 and its 10-speed gearbox and nifty 4×4 drivetrain. But between now and the autumn of 2016, when Ford says the thing will go on sale, there’s still some testing to be done—including shakedowns of an off-road variety. – We’ve already seen Ford conducting some off-road verification of the rad new Raptor’s capabilities. And, frankly, the ’wheeling in this
We are, it’s safe to say, extremely excited about the 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia. The tidy rear-drive sports sedan very clearly has BMW in its gunsights—particularly in 510-hp, twin-turbo V-6 Quadrifoglio spec. And from what we’ve heard so far, it’s got a scintillating soundtrack. This Nürburgring video of a lightly camouflaged example only confirms that. – Posted by Nürburgring maven and solid YouTube poster “cvdzijden,” what we have here is
-How many of us members of the hoi polloi bemoan the fact that when someone buys a supercar it never sees a track? That millions of dollars of R&D and lightweight racing material are simply wasted on Sundays-only garage queens? – Canadian automotive retailer Pfaff Automotive recently released a video of a private track day held at the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Ontario, where a McLaren P1, a Porsche 918 Spyder, and a Porsche
– As reported by Carscoops, Hyundai’s South Korean mothership took to Facebook to release design sketches of its upcoming new Avante—the Elantra to us. This teaser comes ahead of the car’s expected debut next month at the Frankfurt auto show. – The sketch teaser pretty much validates this shot of a new Elantra that appeared in the Korea Economic Daily last spring. That car was labeled as a 2016 model,
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-Mercedes-Benz currently builds almost as many models off the basic E-class platform as General Mills has flavors of Cheerios. Whole grains processed into toroid toddler kibble can be had in 15 varieties at last count. Count up the sedan, wagon, cabriolet, and coupe bodies; tally engines with four-, six-, and eight cylinders; and then stir in high-performance AMG editions, and we count 14 E-class models for 2015 without even stretching
Modern transponder-equipped car keys are supposed to be ultrasafe: The chip-keys and key fobs communicate with readers inside the car, allowing the car to start only once a secret digital password has been transmitted. But a team of security researchers says they’ve figured out a way to circumvent the system used by some of the world’s largest automakers—and that Volkswagen Group used a lawsuit to keep their findings from going
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