First Drives
2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1 First Drive: Thunder Macher!
Ford Mustang Full Overview Rest in thunder, 2016 to 2020 Shelby GT350. Your ethereal 5.2-liter Voodoo V-8 was too good for this low-redline world; not even the recently introduced, supercar-baiting GT500’s 7,500-rpm cutoff can match your 8,250-rpm supernova scream. Your loss is so profoundly felt, we’ve been casting about for some car—any car—to fill the hole in our heart. But that car won’t be the new 2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1. Not because it’s not great, but because it’s not supposed to be. Conceptually, Ford asks you to consider the Mach 1 as an heir to the 2012 to 2013 Boss 302, as they’re both hopped-up, handling-focused evolutions of the contemporary Mustang GT. We partially agree, but that’s because the old, hardcore Boss is best lined up wit...
2021 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 V-8 First Drive: Bronco Who?
Jeep Wrangler Full Overview If we told you there’s a new vehicle on the block with an output of 470 horsepower and 470 lb-ft of torque from a 392-cubic-inch V-8, a zero-to-60-mph time of 4.5 seconds, a quarter-mile time of 13 seconds, and that it’s an all-wheel-drive convertible, would you guess we’re talking about a Jeep Wrangler? Maybe—if we also told you the doors come off, the windshield folds down, and it still has a crawl ratio of 48:1. Meet the 2021 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392. What Even Is the 2021 Jeep Wrangler 392? After years of customer requests, the wait is over and Jeep has finally put a factory V-8 in the Wrangler for the first time, and, boy, is this one worth the wait. But before we get into driving details, we should tell you what the 392’s eng...
2021 Chevrolet Blazer RS AWD Review: Set Blazer to Stun
Chevrolet Blazer Full Overview Think of the 2021 Chevrolet Blazer as Michael B. Jordan to the original Chevy Blazer’s Michael Jordan. Much as the actor and former NBA star share the same basic name but are gifted at different crafts, the new and old Blazers bear the same moniker but feature contrasting talents. Just as we know which Michael Jordan we want to watch perform on the silver screen and which we want to watch drop buckets, we know which Blazer we want to drive on twisting tarmac and which we want to take to the trails. Admittedly, the 2021 Blazer is no Camaro or Corvette. Still, the midsize SUV is arguably among the most entertaining options in its segment. Well, at least in Blazer RS guise. The $41,995 RS trim forgoes the four-cylinder engines that power its peers—a 193-hp...
2022 VW Golf R First Drive on Ice (Sort of): That Thing It Do
Volkswagen Golf R Full Overview Drifting a VW Golf is weird. Like, really weird. The Golf has stood through seven previous generations as a beacon of front-wheel-drive—and FWD-based all-wheel drive—excellence, but getting its rear end to swing way out wide typically meant yanking a handbrake or getting hit by a dump truck. But now the hottest version of the MkVIII Golf, the 2022 VW Golf R, will do proper power-on tank slappers, happily drift in a circle, and sashay its way through a slalom. And it’s still a front-driver at its core. Huh? Credit the new 4Motion all-wheel-drive setup standard on the R, which cans its predecessor’s Haldex center differential in favor of a 50/50 torque-splitting power takeoff and a torque-vectoring electromechanical rear axle. The latter employs cl...
2022 Audi E-Tron GT RS Prototype Drive: Fun While It Lasts
Audi e-tron GT Full Overview Ever been on one of those roller coasters where a sign warns you to keep your head pinned against the headrest? Well, the 2022 Audi E-Tron GT RS needs a sign like that, and we have the headache to prove it. It took us four good stabs of the accelerator—and four slams of our skull against the headrest—before we learned our lesson, partly because we’re slow learners and partly because it’s hard to wrap your head around how quickly the Audi E-Tron GT can accelerate from virtually any speed. Audi claims a 0-to-60-mph time of 3.1 seconds for the 590-hp E-Tron GT RS (an overboost feature bumps output to 637 horsepower in short bursts), but as is so often the case, that number doesn’t tell the whole story. Its 3.1-second time isn’t just mash an...
2021 Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 First Drive: Absolutely Mind-Melting
Lamborghini Aventador Full Overview Not your average hybrid The 2021 Lamborghini Sián will catapult to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds and hit 220 mph, leaving in its wake a shock-and-awe wall of sound from its mighty 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V-12. The Sián is long and low and extreme, with a menacing, almost alien road presence that signals its status as a tarmac predator ready to pounce and devour random Ferraris. The Sián packs an 807-hp punch, making it the most powerful Lamborghini road car ever built. It’s also Lamborghini’s first-ever gasoline-electric hybrid. But we’re a long, long way from Toyota Prius territory here. The limited-edition Sián is fundamentally an Aventador SVJ with more radical exterior styling and a redesigned interior that features a new center conso...
2021 Jaguar F-Pace SVR First Drive: It’s the Little Things
Jaguar F-PACE Full Overview “It’s the pinnacle of six years’ worth of tuning,” JLR Special Vehicle Operations vehicle dynamics manager Ross Restell says as he shows us around the 2021 Jaguar F-Pace SVR. And after a few hours behind the wheel on some quiet English back roads, we’re not about to argue. From a distance, the revised F-Pace SVR may not look all that different from the SVR crossover it replaces, which originally debuted in Europe in 2016. Even the power output—550 hp—remains the same. Up close, you’ll notice the new exterior hardware and the revamped interior with its upgraded infotainment package. But one drive of this deftly refreshed Jag SUV proves that sweating the details pays off. Thanks to a bunch of small changes under the skin, the 20...
2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV First Drive Review: Chevy’s Model Why?
Chevrolet Bolt EUV Full Overview We’ve known the tall-hatch Chevrolet Bolt EV—winner of our 2017 Car of the Year calipers—was getting an SUV sibling for some time now. As details of the 2022 Bolt EUV began to emerge, the MotorTrend internal Slack channels lit up with questions: Why’d Chevy make the two vehicles look so similar? Why is the new one named like a trim level? How does Chevy expect showroom sales personnel to steer buyers into one or the other of these plug-in twinsies instead of a cheaper (perhaps more profitable) gasser of similar size and configuration on the same lot? (Should buyers even consider that choice?) And finally, how is it that the 6.3-inch-longer model features less cargo space? Might a two-hour drive in a high-spec version of the new Chevrolet Bolt EU...
2021 Polaris Slingshot R First Drive: Shot in the Dark
Polaris redesigned its surprise hit Slingshot three-wheeler for 2020, and the improvements make a night and day difference. With that kind of work put in already, you might be surprised to hear the company is making more changes a year later, but they’re some of the key improvements I was hoping to see, making the 2021 Polaris Slingshot R the best one yet. The biggest upgrades are software-related. Polaris has gone through and recalibrated its “Autodrive” five-speed automated manual transmission after only a year on the market to improve shift time and smoothness. A five-speed manual remains standard and it should be noted the automatic is a $2,000 upcharge. 2021 Polaris Slingshot R: Updated Gear If I’m honest, I didn’t notice much of a difference. The Autodri...
2021 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet First Drive: Money Moves
Porsche 911 Full Overview In the summer of 2012, for reasons still unknown, a family friend and father to one of my old schoolmates threw me the keys to his then-new 997.2 2012 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet. He took delivery of this GT Silver over red streak just a few days before he jetted out of town for business, so naturally, he thought the best course of action was to entrust his fresh 493-hp super-toy to a college-aged ultra-dweeb for a few days. That week of sublimating on-ramps and hosting high-speed joyrides with friends and family left this nascent enthusiast dazed and confused, like some sort of weird vehicular DMT bender. That wasn’t entirely because of the 911 Turbo’s wild performance. The sharpest memory of that weeklong blur occurred while charging around my friend...
Honda HPD Civic Type R TC Race Car: Attacking the Track
Honda Civic Full Overview The official MotorTrend position on the Honda Civic Type R is pretty clear: It’s awesome. In fact, we think it’s the best front-wheel-drive sports car on the market. As good as it is, no street car is actually a race car. That said, you can absolutely turn a street car into a race car with the proper application of money, parts, time, and labor. Or you can skip all the hard work and hand Honda Performance Development (HPD) a stack of cash to build one for you. HPD calls it the Honda HPD Civic Type R TC, and the HPD people let us lap one. The “TC” (short for “Touring Car”) appellation is important because it refers to the SRO Motorsports race sanctioning body’s TC Class (formerly Pirelli World Challenge), which is roughly e...
2021 Audi SQ5 First Drive: Best of Both Worlds
Audi SQ5 Full Overview It seems like it was just yesterday that I was driving the 2020 Audi SQ7 on Angeles Crest Highway before the blazing Bobcat Fire tore through that area of the San Gabriel Mountains this summer. That three-row family SUV perfectly blends sportiness with the comfort that enthusiast parents are looking for. Yet, the 2021 Audi SQ5 is the popular family member. The Q5 lineup represents about 25 percent of Audi’s sales in the U.S., and with three variants available—the regular Q5 TFSI, the efficient Q5 PHEV, and the sporty SQ5—the German brand is covering its bases well in today’s most popular segment. For the 2021 model year, the SQ5 is getting a midcycle refresh that continues where the Q5 TFSI left off. With a turbocharged V-6, Quattro all-wheel drive, and a...
