Best Shots

Friday, January 31, 2020

What You Missed | Your Autoblog Daily Digest for January 31, 2020

Jan 31, 2020

Top Stories of the Day

A spotter's guide to Super Bowl LIV car commercials

Set to kick off on Fox at 6:30 ET on Sunday, February 2, from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida, the big game will feature the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. Throughout Super Bowl LIV, viewers will see about 50 commercials, each of…

Giant X-ray trucks helping keep Super Bowl LIV safe

As one of the biggest events in the United States and one of the largest sporting events in the world, the Super Bowl will always be regarded as a potential target of attack. No security cost is seen as too overboard, which is how Hard Rock Stadium e…

GMC could have used Jeep's prized grille design on its born-again Hummer

General Motors confirmed it's bringing the Hummer nameplate back on an electric, GMC-badged pickup by publishing a dark photo of its front end . The battery-powered drivetrain under the sheetmetal represents a tectonic shift, but we noticed another fl…

2020 BMW 840i Gran Coupe Drivers' Notes | The high-style 7 Series alternative

The 2020 BMW 840i xDrive Gran Coupe is dangerously close to the bottom rung of the 8 Series lineup . Take all-wheel drive away, and the base 840i Gran Coupe is actually the cheapest 8 Series money can buy, even more so than the actual two-door Coupe . …

2020 Morgan Plus 4 First Drive Review | Out of time

LOS ANGELES — Necks swivel, heads nod, and thumbs spring up reflexively in approval. Those who dig the Morgan Plus 4 simply can't help themselves. The anachronistic roadster turns heads, and has been since 1936 – that's no typo – when the Plus 4's di…

BMW M2 CS Racing makes North American debut

Besides bringing home a class win at the Rolex 24, BMW also brought out one of its latest race cars that will be lapping circuits in America next year. It's the BMW M2 CS Racing, which will be the successor to the M235i Racing and M240i Racing that c…

2020 Toyota 4Runner Luggage Test | Lean, green, bag-stuffing machine

Of course all the luggage in my garage fits inside the 2020 Toyota 4Runner. I mean, duh, it's a midsize SUV and a boxy one at that. Thankfully, then, there's a lot more to talk about here than answering "will it fit?" There's the matter of just how…

Mercedes-Benz quickly pulls the plug on its slow-selling X-Class pickup

Mercedes-Benz is getting out of the pickup truck game not long after it got into it. The brand confirmed that it will cease production of the X-Class midsize pickup in late May due to poor sales. Mercedes unveiled the X-Class , the brand's first-ever…

Acura MDX PMC priced at $63,745

The 2020 Acura MDX PMC edition, first unveiled as a prototype at the 2019 New York Auto Show last spring and later shown in production form at the L.A. Auto Show this past fall, is finally arriving in showrooms. And that means we now have actual pric…

[VIDEO] The Ripsaw M5 is a miniature robotic tank

Transcript: A mini robotic tank. The Ripsaw M5 is an unmanned tank. Howe & Howe collaborated with Textron Systems to create the Ripsaw M5. The modular design allows it to be configured to fit mission needs. It has a top speed of 40 mph, a 360 deg…

Thursday, January 30, 2020

What You Missed | Your Autoblog Daily Digest for January 30, 2020

Jan 30, 2020

Top Stories of the Day

Hummer officially returns as an EV with 1,000 hp in Super Bowl ad

Hummer , the iconic, controversial and long-dead truck and SUV brand, returns this Sunday in a Super Bowl ad that previews its comeback under the GMC brand. General Motors announced the move and previewed the vehicle with a series of clips (below) Thu…

Kia blind spot monitoring and crash avoidance wins 2020 Autoblog Technology of the Year Award

The Autoblog 2020 Technology of the Year winner is Kia's blind spot system. We judged the combination of blind spot monitoring and active blind spot crash avoidance on the 2020 Kia Telluride as the best in the industry. The Kia blind spot system won…

[VIDEO] Timelapse video: Watch heavy machinery build a coronavirus hospital in days

The construction sites of the two hospitals with around-the-clock livestreaming, broadcast by China Media Group's social media video platform Yangshipin, have received over 50 million hits from Chinese netizens, calling themselves "volunteer supervis…

2020 Volvo S60 T8 Long-Term Introduction | We plug in with an electrified Swedish sedan

A 2020 Volvo S60 T8 is joining the Autoblog long-term vehicle test fleet. Now that the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid has officially made its exit, we felt it was time for another long-term tester with a plug. Enter our Crystal White Metallic sedan in Insc…

Record sales push Tesla to 2nd straight quarterly profit

DETROIT — Record electric vehicle sales in the fourth quarter helped to push Tesla Inc. to its second-straight quarterly profit, giving bullish investors optimism that sustained black ink lies ahead. The Palo Alto, California, company said it made a…

Toyota RAV4 passes moose test after electronic stability upgrade

Last year, Swedish publication Teknikens Värld gave the Toyota RAV4 a failing grade after it showed video of it performing poorly on the so-called moose test. That's a test that puts a vehicle under maximum load through an abrupt S-shaped course corr…

Lincoln confirms the MKZ only has a few months left to live

Lincoln confirmed it will put the MKZ out to pasture in 2020. The sedan is based on the Ford Fusion, which is also scheduled to retire in the coming months as the company pivots towards high-riding models. Introduced at the 2012 New York Auto Show, …

[VIDEO] More Honda E details, video, photos emerge, and it's still cute

Thanks to Honda hosting media in Valencia, Spain, for first drives of the Honda E, we have more details on the city car we're condemned to lust after from afar. The power and range specs we already knew — either 134 horsepower from the base model, or…

Japan issues arrest warrants for Ghosn, Americans suspected of helping him escape

This security camera image shows men identified as Michael Taylor and George Zayek during their checkpoint processing at the Istanbul Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. They are suspected of smuggling Carlos Ghosn out of Japan to Lebanon via Istanbul. &nb…

2020 Mini Cooper SE First Drive | Little range, big fun

The all-electric Mini Cooper has been a long time coming. The company's first step toward electrics began in 2008 with the experimental Mini E , a car that used a powertrain co-developed with an outside company and that had some major compromises. It …