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100+ Junkyard Photos! Steve Magnante’s Decades-Long Quest for Hidden Treasure

If you watch Roadkill’s Junkyard Gold, the Barrett-Jackson live auctions, or have been to any of Dodge’s SRT clinics at Mopar events across the country, you may recognize Steve Magnante as the on-camera expert on all things muscle cars and performance. Magnante eats, breathes, and sleeps everything related to muscle cars, and if you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s never met a muscle car he didn’t like! He has been poking around junkyards all his life, but what you may not know about “Magneto”—as his friends call him—is that long before he stepped in front of a camera, he spent decades behind one. For a solid two decades, Magnante crawled through junkyards from coast to coast with a camera, documenting what he has found for many magazines over the year...

2021 Mitsubishi Mirage First Look: The Subcompact Lives

Once again sold in hatchback and sedan forms (the latter of which dons the G4 mark), the 2021 Mirage welcomes a fresh face that incorporates the latest Mitsubishi styling cues. While the Japanese automaker’s United States arm is mum on details about the updated car, Mitsubishi’s Canadian division notes the reworked Mirage includes items such as LED headlamps and taillamps (likely restricted to higher-end models), a 7.0-inch infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility (0.5 inch larger than the current Mirage’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto-compatible unit), and additional safety kit, including newly available features such as automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, a lane-departure warning system, and automatic high-beam headlamps....

How a $700 Beater Became the 11-Second Roadkill Crop Duster

Here’s an intro to the old school for the young generation of Roadkillers. This is the Crop Duster—a 440-engine-swapped 1970 Plymouth Duster that runs in the 11s—which was built for what today would be considered cheap for a vintage muscle car. It’s also the story of the resurrection of an old car that spent years wallowing in farm soil laden with sundry vegetal and animal residue. “You’re still going to have 20 grand duplicating that car,” David Freiburger says in his trademark deadpan. “That’s the problem. That’s expensive.” But insofar that cubic dollars can be replaced by fanatic hoarding, ingenuity, and elbow grease, this is it. “The key to the whole thing—the reason why people think it’s cool—is the six pack scoop, Cra...

2021 Hyundai Kona Night Edition Desaturates Normally Colorful Subcompact SUV

The Hyundai Kona is a funky, sportyish entrant in the oftentimes bland and underpowered subcompact crossover SUV segment. Its headlights are seemingly in the wrong place, Hyundai offers fun paint colors for it, and it even offers a punchy turbo engine option. For the new model year, the subcompact Kona adds a sleek-looking special edition to its ranks: The 2021 Hyundai Kona Night Edition. As its name suggests, the Night Edition features a blacked-out exterior and other dark and brooding cosmetic upgrades, per a seeming unspoken industry playbook for blacked-out trim packages, which are beginning to feel pretty played out by now. Go ahead, name a mainstream automaker that doesn’t offer some variation on the “night,” “midnight,” “shadow,” and [insert...

2021 Audi E-Tron S: Audi Adds Some Hot Sauce to Its EV SUV Formula

The S, for those unaware, denotes the extra sportiness Audi baked into the model. That means bigger brakes, a sportier suspension, and more power. There are now three electric motors on board—two at the rear and one in front—instead of one at each axle, as in the normal E-Tron. Audi claims that the E-Tron S can make up to 718 lb-ft of torque in Boost mode. This is way up from the normal E-Tron’s 490 lb-ft (also produced in Boost mode). The E-Tron S uses the same 95-kWh battery pack available in the standard model, but the sportier model’s driving range takes a slight hit. The normal E-Tron goes an estimated 248 miles on a full charge on Europe’s optimistic WLTP test cycle, but the E-Tron S only manages approximately 223 miles on the same cycle. The Sportback model sees a ...

Not a Bronco: 2020 Suzuki Jimny 4×4 Tested in a Tiny Way

We’ve been pining for a new Suzuki Jimny to be sent to America for years, and our lust only intensified when the newest model arrived this year. Here is a small, lightweight, four-cylinder 4×4 that’s basic and cheap, exactly what Jeep’s Wrangler used to be before it swelled to fit ever-swelling American bodies and the comfort and convenience items they demand. What makes the Jimny’s absence from our market hurt all the more is that its ancestor was long ago sold here. Remember the Samurai? Anyway, we managed to get our hands on a Kinetic Suzuki Jimny for a little test—and we do mean “little.” Okay, if you’ve been looking at the photos here, you may have caught onto our gambit: The Jimny we tested isn’t exactly full-scale. It’s...

F1 2020 Video Game Review: Codemasters Outdoes Itself, Again

Let’s get this over with at the jump: Codemasters’ F1 2020 is the best F1 video game to ever hit home-gaming consoles, period, and you should buy it now if you haven’t already. That’s my visceral gut reaction after spending a good chunk of time with the title that released on July 10. It’s not a proclamation I make lightly. Racing gamers are a massively discerning lot, and hardcore Formula 1 fans might be even more demanding when it comes to how companies virtually depict their favorite form of motorsport. Throughout the past several decades, F1 games have been all over the map in terms of realism, playability, and pure fun. Take a spin through online forums devoted to racing games/simulators—any racing game—and you’ll find a seemingly never-ending strea...

2021 BMW X7 Dark Shadow Edition: Lights Out for Bimmer’s 523-HP SUV

BMW loves its special editions, and the company has rolled out some dark-themed schemes as of late, including the almost unseeable Vantablack X6 and the 8 Series Golden Thunder edition. But it seems the Munich-based automaker isn’t letting up, and it’s just taken the wraps off the BMW X7 Dark Shadow Edition. Essentially, the Dark Shadow Edition is an eight-cylinder X7 M50i with a lot of blacked-out bits to give it a stealthier vibe. The paint, however, isn’t black. Wait, what? No, really—this special X7 is coated in matte Frozen Arctic Grey Metallic. Even though the color is an option in BMW’s Individual catalog, the company says this is its first SUV to wear the hue. In photos, it at least appears very close to black. The mirror caps, window surround, roof rails, a...

Look Out, Gran Turismo: New Forza Motorsport to Launch Alongside Xbox Series X

Today is a big day for Xbox fans all over the world. Microsoft teased a number of games for their next console, the Xbox Series X, including legendary titles such as Halo and Tetris, but the one we’re most interested in is, of course, Forza Motorsport. It will be the first Forza game to bear the classic Motorsport subtitle since 2017, and it already looks spectacular. While the trailer doesn’t display the same degree of variety in cars and locations that Sony showed in its new Gran Turismo trailer a few weeks ago, what we can see is extremely rich in detail. Check out the teaser below for a stunning look and what racing-sim fans now have to look forward to. The engine bay of a Mazda RT24-P, a BAC Mono sitting in a garage, and a slew of Apollo Intensa Emozione’s racing thr...

Ford Doubles 2021 Bronco First Edition Production

Good news for fans of the 2021 Ford Bronco who missed their chance to claim one of the 3,500 First Edition models—Ford just doubled production of the limited-run trim, to 7,000. The $60,800 First Edition model builds on the high-end Wildtrak trim by offering an even longer list of standard features and adding First Edition-specific graphics to the SUV’s hood and body sides.  Is the First Edition worth its $10,430 price increase over the Wildtrak? That’s up to buyers to decide. Given overwhelming demand for the Bronco First Edition—despite doubling the number on offer, they’re already all claimed— it seems many folks think the limited-edition model’s special kit more than justifies its price tag. See all 23 photos It’s no surprise that Ford’s already...

2021 Ford Bronco 6×6: More Wheels, More Axle, More More

Is there an off-road-focused truck or SUV that can’t be improved with the addition of a second rear axle and two more wheels? If so, we haven’t seen it—or driven it. Remember, these things (dubbed 6x6s) exist in the real world, not merely in the minds of talented graphic artists. The Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6×6, for example, that made Jonny Lieberman giddy as a 12-year-boy when it caught massive air. There also is Hennessey’s Goliath 6×6, based on the Silverado, and the VelociRaptor 6×6 based on the F-150 Raptor. But what about the 2021 Ford Bronco? We have to assume that someone, in the future, will build one. Until that happens, you can imagine a Bronco 6×6 here with designer Abimelec Arellano in digital form. The Bronco’s big...

For $25,000, You Can Make a Chevy Corvette C8 Look Like This

It has been just over one year since the 2020 Chevrolet C8 Corvette, the first-ever mid-engined Vette, made its debut.  In that time it has garnered acclaim, praise, and proved so thoroughly excellent that we named it the 2020 MotorTrend Car of the Year. But what if none of the performance matters to you? What if you just want an exotic-looking mid-engine supercar to be seen in? Perhaps the Ferrari F8 Tributo and the Lamborghini Huracan Evo are exactly what you’d want, but they’re a little out of your price range. Well, fear not, the C8 Corvette can play that role, too, although it can do so a whole lot better with Sigala Designs’ decidedly unsubtle body kit. The Sigala kit for the new Corvette is transformative, least not because the C8’s styling is fairl...