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Thursday, December 24, 2020

What You Missed | Your Autoblog Daily Digest for December 24, 2020

Dec 24, 2020

Top Stories of the Day

2021 Ford F-150 early builds reportedly sidelined for fixes

The 2021 F-150 appears to be yet another victim of quality control issues at Ford, as the company has reportedly filled Detroit-area parking lots with early-production models in need of further inspections, repairs and components, the Detroit Free Pr…

Toyota announces the current-generation Land Cruiser is dead after 2021

Toyota confirmed a rumor we first caught wind of earlier in 2020 by announcing that the current-generation Land Cruiser will retire after the 2021 model year. The next-generation model will be introduced in the coming months, but we're receiving mixe…

Guilty as charged: Electrify America site delivers a slow flow to a Ford Mustang Mach-E

As Ford touts its electric Mustang Mach-E, the company is also promoting its owners' access to an existing public-charging network built by ChargePoint and Electrify America. Ford calls the network, with some 13,500 stations and 35,000 total plugs, t…

Baby Bugatti II First Drive | Classic car hijinks at three-quarter scale

The Bugatti Type 35 is one of the most unmistakable race cars in history. Powered by a screaming straight-eight engine that was often fitted with a supercharger, the open-wheel single-seater earned more than 1,000 victories back in the day, making it…

Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid pricing announced

Jeep has posted pricing for its first plug-in-hybrid model, the Wrangler 4xe . At launch, the PHEV Wrangler is being offered first in Sahara and Rubicon trim and is four-door only. Pricing for those two versions has now been announced: For the Wrangle…

U.S. regulator drops ban, allows Mahindra Roxor sales over Jeep's objections

DETROIT — A U.S. regulator ruled on Wednesday that Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd's new design for its Roxor off-road utility vehicle did not infringe the intellectual property rights of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' Jeep brand, six months after barring the …

UK and EU reach a post-Brexit trade deal in the nick of time

BRUSSELS — After months of talks and at almost the last minute, Britain and the European Union struck a provisional free-trade agreement Thursday that should avert New Year chaos for cross-border traders and bring a measure of certainty for businesse…

2021 BMW 2 Series Gran Coupe gets a more affordable front-wheel-drive version

BMW branched out into a new segment when it released the 2 Series Gran Coupe for the 2020 model year. It expanded a little more downmarket by launching a cheaper front-wheel-drive variant of the sedan for 2021. Called simply 228i, the new entry poin…

SSC Tuatara tries for top speed record again, but runs into heat issues

A number of months have gone by since the SSC Tuatara controversy broke, and ever since Jerod Shelby announced a second attempt , we haven't heard much of anything out of SSC. We still haven't heard anything from SSC directly, but they've been busy. …

C7 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 to get enhanced warranty owing to overheating issues

We reported about the C7 Chevrolet Corvette Z06's overheating problems way back in 2016 . Chevy said it had a solution for owners with a new hood design that featured larger vents and a new supercharger cover. Even then, Tadge Juechter said there was …

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

What You Missed | Your Autoblog Daily Digest for December 23, 2020

Dec 23, 2020

Top Stories of the Day

2020 McLaren GT | Grand Touring, with an edge

As the winter settles in, I find myself reflecting on the most memorable cars that I've tested this year. Chief among them, the McLaren GT . I drove the GT on a damp midsummer evening. After a lengthy heatwave, temperatures dipped into the low 60s an…

Carroll Shelby's personal 1965 427 Cobra will cross the auction block

Genuine examples of the Shelby Cobra are extremely sought-after in a sea of replicas built with varying degrees of accuracy. One of the most famous examples, chassis number CSX3178, promises to spark a merciless bidding war when it crosses the auctio…

2021 Toyota 4Runner Review | A living legend fends off Father Time

Like the canyons and mountains through which it traverses, the Toyota 4Runner is timeless. Mechanically, this latest 2021 edition is pretty much the same truck that debuted 12 years ago – an eternity in car terms. On the one hand, that's great: it ha…

Alpha Motor Corporation unveils Ace electric coupe

We're always tickled by the new startups producing what appear to be interesting and fun electric vehicles. Lately, it seems like the vast majority of those have been trucks and SUVs. Fairly quietly last week, a company called Alpha Motor Corporation…

McLaren Sabre revealed with over 800 horsepower and 218-mph top speed

The McLaren Sabre is out and ready for business. While McLaren hasn't provided its usual full information drop and detailed set of photos, McLaren of Beverly Hills has posted the first customer car on its website and released some details about the c…

Mini Cooper Hardtop will soon receive its biggest makeover in two decades

Now well into its third generation, Mini's retro-styled Hardtop has been around since BMW rebooted the brand 20 years ago . Stylists and engineers are working on the fourth-generation model, and the company revealed the cheeky hatchback is in line to …

LG and Magna announce $1 billion joint venture to build electric car components

TORONTO/SEOUL — South Korea-based LG Electronics Inc and automotive supplier Magna International Inc are launching a joint venture that will make key components for electric cars, the companies announced on Wednesday. The joint venture, tentatively …

'Christmas Vacation's' Clark Griswold powers up again with help from the Ford Mustang Mach-E

This is the time of year when families all over America cue up "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" for a repeat viewing, reassuring themselves that whatever went wrong during their holiday season, it probably can't hold a candle to the travails t…

BMW to send its drivers in-car animated holiday messages

The proliferation of in-car screens and over-the-air updates provides an as-yet mostly untapped potential for automakers to communicate with drivers. As an example, here's BMW, beaming holiday greetings animations out to its owners. The New Year's g…

Elon Musk says he tried to sell Tesla to Apple, but Tim Cook snubbed him

Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk said on Tuesday he reached out to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook "during the darkest days of the Model 3 program" to discuss the possibility of the iPhone maker acquiring Tesla for a tenth of its current v…