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General Motors Dropping a Cool $1 Billion on Its Tech Center in Michigan

– If you’ve never been, General Motors’ Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, is an impressive sight to behold. The campus sprawls over 326 acres and features neat jet-age architecture, expansive water features, and the brand’s famous design dome. It’s also exceptionally old and in need of some renovations, and so GM has announced that it is dropping a full $1 billion on updates and expansions for its Warren campus. That’s a

Ezra Dyer: The Coolest Cars Are the Ones that Don’t Make Any Sense—Like a V-8–Powered Volvo 240

– Back in college, I got the idea that I wanted a V-8–powered Volvo 240. The V-8 Volvo is synonymous with Ross Converse, a mad genius whose brochure included a photo of a diesel-badged 240 doing a righteous burnout. I loved the notion of a sleeper 240 packing a Mustang 302, so I arranged a visit with Converse at his house in Portland, Maine. I was hoping he’d have a

SEAT’s Hot Leon ST Cupra Is Quickest Station Wagon to Lap the ’Ring [w/ Video]

– After driving Volkswagen’s für die Amerikaner verboten 292-hp, all-wheel-drive Golf R SportWagen and the under-the-radar Golf GTD SportWagen, you could say we’re harboring a yearning desire for a hot compact station wagon here in the U.S. There’s no relief for our affliction in sight, but it has flared up again now that VW’s Spanish subsidiary SEAT has announced that its 280-hp Leon ST Cupra wagon is officially the quickest long-roof car to circle the Nürburgring

Breaking Rad: Delving into What Makes Good Brake Feel, with the Help of Alfa’s Spectacular 4C

– From the June 2015 issue – We all like firm, solid-feeling brake pedals. But even on good per­formance cars, modern brakes often feel vaguely synthetic, with more pedal travel than seems strictly necessary. Then there’s the Alfa Romeo 4C. Its creators wanted the 4C to have a hard edge. “Our goal in development was to deliver the racing feeling and sensation,” says Alberto Cavaggioni, head of Alfa’s marketing, planning,

2015 Volkswagen GTI DSG Test: There’s No Shame in this Automatic

-What can we say about the Volkswagen GTI that we haven’t said before? After subjecting the perennial 10Best winner to innumerable reviews, it’s hard to come up with any praise or criticism that hasn’t already been heard. But just as the new seventh-generation Golf exists in many forms, there are many flavors of GTI, too, all of which are worth knowing from a raw-numbers standpoint. So this time, we’ve strapped

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