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2021 Toyota Venza Interior Review: High Highs, and Low Lows
The 2021 Toyota Venza’s interior is a cabin of extremes. After driving the Venza and exploring its interior, we’ve found the midsize hybrid SUV very satisfying and disappointing, depending on where you look. You’re So Fancy Although I’m not a fan of our loaded 2021 Venza Limited tester’s black and brown color scheme, the contrasting brown piping on the doors and dash really caught my eye. It’s a cool, premium detail in this segment, and best of all, it’s not relegated just to the Limited trim. The mid-level XLE gets the same style of piping, too. Tons of Screen Space An 8.0-inch touchscreen is standard on the base 2021 Venza LE model. That’s good, but we do wish there wasn’t such a big border around the infotainment screen, which comes ...
Euro-Market Toyota Corolla GR Sport Is the Yin to the Apex Edition’s Yang
The GR Sport won’t make its way to the United States, though. For now, the only GR-branded product Toyota plans on bringing to the U.S. is the Supra (we’ll see how long that lasts, though). But that doesn’t mean we can’t look on from afar. The whole point of the Corolla GR Sport, per Toyota, is to bring the Gazoo Racing brand to other segments and thereby introduce it to younger buyers. Both Mercedes and BMW have done something similar with their AMG and M sub-brands, which offer less powerful variants as sporty entry-level options to many of the two performance arms’ racier models. The GR Sport is essentially an accent package to give the Euro-market Corolla a little bit more visual oomph. There are small changes all over the exterior of the car: black m...
The 2020 Ram Heavy Duty Limited Black Edition Hates Chrome, Color
What’s the cure for too much chrome? Why, a monochromatic exterior—which is exactly what you’ll find on Ram‘s latest blacked-out special edition for its HD trucks, which won our 2020 Truck of the Year award. Taking cues from the 2020 Ram 1500 Limited Black Edition, the 2020 Ram Heavy Duty Limited Black Edition is a 3/4- or 1-ton truck absolutely peppered with black exterior accents. The idea of a black-on-black truck isn’t a revolutionary trend—after all, other factory and aftermarket customizers have adopted the theme for years—but instead of dying out, it seems to be here to stay for a while. Even if it is a bit tiresome, we’ll admit the all-black look is a mysterious, somewhat sophisticated, menacing, and—importa...
Looking for More Roadkill? This Short-Form Series Is a Great Place to Start
OK, so you already binge-watched all of the latest Roadkill episodes and still want more. Well, between now and the next episode, why don’t you check out our top 10 Roadkill Extra episodes of all time. Roadkill Extra includes short-form behind-the-scenes clips, outtakes, tips, deep project car dives, and enough extra bits to fill the trunk of the Blasphemi ’55 Chevy. Aside from some choice junkyard finds and answers to all of your questions by hosts David Freiburger, Mike Finnegan, and the rest of the gang, we’re compiled the best Roadkill Extra episodes to fire up your ignitions—from the inside scoop on the best road-trip snacks to what passes for a muscle car these days. Return of the Rotsun? See all 18 photos See all 18 photos On episode 735 of Roadkill Extra, Finnegan...
2020 Volvo V60 Polestar Engineered First Drive Review: Boxy and Good
As the gray metallic 2020 Volvo V60 Polestar Engineered ticked, cooling in the SoCal air behind me, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What is a Polestar, anyway?” You have a right to be confused. Volvo, and its parent company Geely, have spent just enough money to make the general public reasonably aware that Polestar is the name of its new electric vehicle brand. But Polestar also has a two-decade history of developing stonking-fast variants of existing Volvo internal combustion cars in racetrack and street-legal forms. Volvo bought the Polestar racing division in 2016, then quickly made it the symbol for EV development and sales with the Polestar 1 and upcoming Polestar 2. What’s a Polestar? See all 31 photos And yet, Volvo still builds Polestar variants of its interna...
2021 Mercedes-AMG GLA 45 Closer Look: A Manic Mighty Mite from AMG
There’s an even more manic version of the Mercedes-AMG GLA coming: The Mercedes-AMG GLA 45, with 382 hp and 354 lb-ft of torque, will join the GLA 35 in U.S. Mercedes dealerships before the end of the year. Pricing has year to be announced, but don’t expect much change from $55,000. And what does paying something like $8,000 more than you would for the GLA 35 buy you? It buys you the world’s most powerful 2.0-liter production engine, for a start. Codenamed M139, and each hand-built by an AMG technician in Affalterbach, it makes its 382 hp at 6,500 rpm, with the 354 lb-ft of torque available from 4,750 to 5,000 rpm, enough to clip 0.7 second from the GLA 35’s 5.0-second zero-to-60 acceleration time. Although identical in terms of bore and stroke to the turbocharged f...
This 1965 Shelby GT350R Prototype Is the Most Expensive Mustang Ever
In the moments following the record sale of one of two ex-Steve McQueen and Bullitt film cars, a weathered and battered Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390, we wondered if another Mustang could ever match its final price of $3.74 million. We didn’t have to wait long to find out. Just half a year later, 1965 Shelby GT350R serial number 5R002—the first of two Shelby Mustang team prototypes for the 34 subsequent production Shelby GT350Rs—has sold for $3.85 million, resetting the world-record Mustang sales price. Any time bidding reaches the seven-figure range for a Ford Mustang variant, it’s a big deal, but in this case, it was really no surprise. See all 12 photos When Ford launched its Mustang sports coupe in 1964, the pony car was heavy on style but light on performanc...
2021 Chevrolet Silverado Yenko/SC: An 800-HP Truck That Preempts a Hellcat Ram 1500
The modified Silverado starts (and largely ends) with a 378-cubic-inch LT1 V-8 with a blueprinted aluminum block, forged crankshaft and pistons, and CNC-ported heads, then adds a centrifugal supercharger and custom quad-tip exhaust system for a whopping 800 hp and 720 lb-ft of torque. The Yenko/SC Silverado can be had in either two- or four-wheel drive, but in either configuration you’ll get an upgraded heavy-duty six-speed automatic transmission. Both the engine and transmission come with a three-year/36,000-mile warranty. See all 7 photos Like other products from the Yenko brand, which is now owned by Specialty Vehicle Engineering, the Yenko S/C Silverado will be built in limited quantities. In this case, just 50 trucks will be built for the 2021 model year. And unlike other turnke...
2019 Ram 1500 Laramie Long-Term Review: Our Verdict After 12 Months’ Hard Labor
If you don’t already drive a truck, you might wonder why so many people do in America today. Used to be a truck was a tool, a blunt instrument designed to do a job and nothing else. That hasn’t been true in more than a decade, and no truck proves it like my long-term 2019 Ram 1500 Laramie. Old-school truck guys like to complain we critics put too much emphasis on how a truck rides and drives, how many cupholders it has, and how big its touchscreens are and not on how it tows and hauls. Thing is, the Ram does all those things well. That’s why we made it our 2019 Truck of the Year. A truck may do everything right when you drive it off the showroom floor, but the proof is in how it holds up to abuse. If you’re buying a truck for any reason other than just to look cool,...
This Lifted, Safari-Style Toyota Corolla AE86 In Ironman Livery Gives Zero Trucks
We recently wrote about a safari-style Porsche 911, a lifted and off-road-ready sports car. Think of it as an speed-addled, desert-racing truck, minus the truck part. We love safari takes on cars—practically anything is a set of knobby tires, some raised ride height, and maybe a light bar or two away from nailing the look. Or maybe we’re suffering from pandemic cabin fever, and are wound up by these safaris’ seeming unbound sense of adventure. Definitely. And @track_hype, who shared these images with us, is throwing gasoline on our cabin’s wood stove with this Toyota Corolla AE86 rocking a vintage-style Ivan Stewart Toyota off-road racing livery. This is safari hotness on a whole ‘nutha level. The designer takes the theme to its extreme with a convincing load-o...
McLaren F1 Designer Gordon Murray Thinks His Cosworth GMA Is the World’s Best V-12
Gordon Murray thinks the Cosworth GMA V12 will be one of the most iconic engines of all time. The ultra-light, ultra-compact, naturally aspirated V-12, developed by Britain’s Cosworth Engineering to Murray’s precise specification, will power a pure, driver-focused, lightweight three-passenger hypercar called the T.50, a car designed to be the successor to his ground-breaking McLaren F1 that rocked the 1990s. The Gordon Murray Automotive (GMA) T.50 will make its public debut on August 4. But GMA has released a wealth of detail on the extraordinary engine that will power it. We brushed the surface of the engine’s magic recently, but consider this the deep dive. Murray wanted a 12-cylinder engine for the T.50 from the outset. “To be truly remarkable, an engine nee...
2020 Honda Civic Si HPT Sedan Long-Term Arrival
Sometimes in this line of work, there’s that one car you just never seem to drive. Not some million-dollar exotic no one else will drive, either, but something totally normal and common. For me, that bogey always seems to be a Honda Civic. The universe has made a sudden course correction because I’m now responsible for our 2020 Honda Civic Si HPT Sedan for the next few months. In keeping with the pattern, though, I won’t be driving this one a full year. Let’s see what we have to work with then. It’s a short and sweet list, but it requires a little decoding. The Si is Honda’s storied mid-tier performance sub-brand, focused more on handling and driver involvement than raw power. In this case, it means the turbocharged 1.5-liter I-4 has been tuned up from 1...
