The new smart electric drive is making its world premiere at the upcoming Paris Motor Show. The smart fortwo electric drive is now available on the new-generation smart platform in both the smart fortwo coupe and cabrio models and, for the first time, in the smart forfour (not available in the U.S.). With this next generation, smart will be the only car manufacturer worldwide to offer its entire model range with both combustion engines and pure battery-electric drive. The market launch will start in the US in December 2016 and in Europe...Continue reading »

If you are someone who enjoys being out on the road, then chances are you are keen to make it work as well as possible. Living in this way is a real mission, even for those who are really dedicated. As such, it is vital that you are certain that this is what you want to do. Life on the road can be famously very tough, and you need to have the ability to carry on regardless. To help you with that, we have put together this short post. In this article, we are going to look at the main ingredients of a successful life on the road. You should...Continue reading »

With the sun setting over Circuit of the Americas, the magnificent new Ford GT Le Mans racecar roars, snarls, and pops as the driver lifts going into a series of chicanes flanked by broad red, white, and blue stripes. A bald eagle flies overhead. Maybe. It’s quite the spectacle. But it’s all rather put to shame when a four-cylinder Porsche blitzes past the GT at full throttle as if it was a rental Mustang that took a wrong turn out of the nearby Austin, Texas, airport. Which brings us to the 2017 Porsche 718 Boxster that is...Continue reading »

A five-cylinder engine is an odd duck in the modern automotive world, so why put it under the hood of a sophisticated sports car like the 2018 Audi TT RS? We’re posing this question to an engineer when a loud, guttural sound interrupts the conversation. A TT RS blasts by, growling and percolating as it shoots down the front straight of the historic Circuito del Jarama in Spain. Oh, that’s why. The RS treatment brings the sound and the fury to the TT, transforming a cute, sporty little car into a sports car with mettle. With...Continue reading »

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV continues to dominate the plug-in electric vehicle market with 21,708 of the vehicles licensed in the UK at the end of Q2 2016. The Outlander PHEV makes up 33% of the total of 66,374 plug-in grant eligible vehicles on the road. In second place after the Outlander comes the pure battery-electric Nissan Leaf at 12,837. In third place is the BMW i3 (4,457) which is available with a choice of drive trains: pure battery electric or a range extended version (where a petrol internal combustion engine is used to...Continue reading »

Climbing up into the cab of a semi-truck and cruising around the country on the highways and byways sounds like a fairly simple and amazing job to many people. However there is a lot to this industry and this line of work that many people never even realize or stop to consider until they really start exploring truck driving as a career. The truth of the matter is that few jobs require more expertise, caution, and stress-coping skills than being a trucker. Many people find rewarding careers as a truck driver or an owner-operator in the...Continue reading »

With a partially frozen lake and majestic Colorado mountains as the backdrop, Volvo unveiled a newcomer to the lineup today: the 2017 V90 Cross Country wagon with the higher clearance and capability that are the hallmarks of the Cross Country models. Volvo has never had a V90 Cross Country before. The new rugged wagon slots between the V90 wagon and the XC90 SUV. It fills a gap left when Volvo discontinued the XC70 last year even though the new wagon is larger in size. The wagon, which goes into production in Torslanda, Sweden, at the...Continue reading »

It is one of those rites of passage which all car owners needs to go through. Taking your car to the garage can be something of an arduous task, but there are ways to make it both easier and more worthwhile. We would all like to avoid having to go to the garage at all, but for the majority of cars this is impossible. The fact is, it is part of driving a car just like any other aspect of it. If you need to take your car to the garage any time soon, then it might help to know what you can do to make it more worthwhile. In this article, we...Continue reading »

Funnily enough, in light of dieselgate, Volkswagen is one of the few brands (along with Volvo and Subaru) to preserve the notion that you don’t need a fuel-sucking SUV to meet your life-carrying needs. And, yes, VW’s history of addressing off-road desires with all-wheel-drive dates to the mid-1980s with the Quantum Syncro (a.k.a. Passat) and Golf Country – the latter, sadly, never came stateside. The latest offering toward this effort is the 2017 Volkswagen Alltrack. What’s an Alltrack? It’s a slightly lifted,...Continue reading »

Hyundai pulled the wraps off of the European-designed i30 hatchback ahead of the Paris Motor Show, and the automaker confirmed that it will appear in the United States next spring under the Elantra GT name. The exaggerated curves and swoops from the previous model were discarded in favor of straighter, subtler lines. According to Hyundai, the i30 represents the future of the brand’s design, and the “Cascading Grille” will be its signature. On the inside, the i30 features a wide dashboard that is slightly less driver-oriented...Continue reading »