Yes, the sales of little Japanese Kei trucks (it’s pronounced “kay”) were up in 2023, one reason they have been getting a lot of attention from the media. The compact haulers, built to conform with Japan’s keijidōsha class of light vehicles, are practical as well as cheap and charming, so smitten American buyers have been importing them from their home markets at a higher rate. But we should keep things in perspective: According to the Japanese Used Motor Vehicle statistics, 7594 Kei trucks were imported into the U.S. last year. Ten years ago, before many of these Japanese market vehicles met the 25-year age limit to legally import into the U.S., that number was 797.

Meanwhile, Ford sold 750,789 new F-150s in 2023. Those who suggest that the backlash from state governments seeking to keep Kei trucks off the road is even partly motivated by the desire of manufacturers of full-sized pickups to keep the market for themselves, a view that has also been represented in the media, are probably incorrect.

Governments keeping them off the road is the other reason the tiny, right-hand-drive Kei trucks have been in the news, and we blame Rhode Island. While the federal government writes the rules controlling the importation of foreign market vehicles like Kei trucks, it’s up to individual states whether or not you can register and drive them on the road. According to multiple sources, Kei trucks are street-legal in 19 states. But in Rhode Island there are only 30 or so Kei trucks on the road so, as they’ve done in many places, Kei trucks have sort of driven under the radar when it came to the law.

Until this happened, as told last month by the Providence Journal: “Imagine this: You import a mini-truck from Japan after calling the Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles and being assured that you’ll be able to register it here. Several years later, you receive a notice from the DMV: The Japanese mini-truck’s registration has been revoked, and you’ll need to hand over the license plates.”

One of those owners was a constituent of State Senator Louis DiPalma, who began asking questions. Apparently, the state DMV had, since 2021, been re-evaluating its decision to issue registrations for Kei trucks based on existing law, and recently started demanding that owners return their license plates.

Publicity ensued, and the story was picked up by a raft of media sources, and officials in other states began asking questions about what their DMVs were doing about the danger represented by allowing Kei-sized vehicles on the road. Citizens began picking sides, and the next thing you know, outlets like NBC News and The Economist are reporting on the Kei kerfuffle.

And the whole mess is confusing. In Wyoming, you can drive your Kei truck on any road but an interstate highway. In Georgia, the Motor Vehicle Department conclusively insists that Kei vehicles “are not ‘street legal.’ Kei vehicles are barred from titling and registration.” That said, “…both customers and county tag offices have been confused by the title and registration laws relating to these vehicles. Due to this confusion, certain customers have successfully, albeit unlawfully, had their Kei vehicles titled and registered in Georgia.” Gee, whose fault is that?

Angry Kei truck owners have pointed out that motorcycles and scooters are allowed on public roads, as are hundred-year-old, 20-horsepower Ford Model Ts: Are they any safer than a Kei truck? In some states, the battle over Kei rights is getting downright contentious. Kei truck owners are banding together to advocate for fair treatment; the Texas Kei Vehicle Advocates, for example, report that they’ve already been successful in getting the state to reverse its ban on titling Kei trucks. A memo issued April 4 by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles said, “The department has revised the titling and registration requirements for these vehicles. Effective immediately, mini vehicles are required to be titled and must be registered if operated on public roadways.”

This cultish American enthusiasm for Kei trucks likely calls for an explanation. While we are talking about the tiny, single-cabover pickups or microvans that you’ve likely seen, say, doing maintenance on a golf course, “Kei” refers to more than that.

Kei is short for kei jidōsha, which is Japanese for “light motor vehicle.” A vehicle that is considered a Kei—and this has changed over the years, dating back to 1949—is, since late 1998, the following: Has an engine no larger than 660cc (about 40 cubic inches); no more than 63 horsepower; is no longer than 3.4 meters (just over 11 feet), and no wider than 1.48 meters (just under five feet). By comparison, the 2024 Nissan Versa, one of the few remaining small cars sold here, is 14.7 feet long and has 122 horsepower.

Since—obviously—the tiny Kei is not built to the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, only Kei vehicles that are older than 25 years can be imported into the U.S., because vehicles that elderly aren’t subject to FMVSS. That’s why the newest Kei vehicles you see for sale in America are typically 1999 models.

There are also Kei cars, including some sporty ones like the Honda Beat and Suzuki Cappuccino convertibles, and the Autozam AZ-1, built by Mazda and featuring gullwing doors: Those three are especially appreciated by American collectors, and quite a few have been imported. Decent Beats and Cappuccinos start at under $7000, while the rare Autozam AZ-1 starts at about $12,000, and can climb to over $30,000.

But it’s the Kei truck that is pulling in the (relatively) big numbers, and there are many companies in America that want to sell you one. Among them is Japan Car FL, based in Oldsmar, Florida, just south of Tampa. They have been importing JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) vehicles since 2018. The small, family-owned company advertises that they are licensed, bonded and insured, which is important in the JDM world, because not every company is.

Among Japan Car FL’s Kei vehicles is a 1999 Honda Acty Kei truck with four-wheel-drive, air conditioning and custom wheels for $10,850, and an air-conditioned 1999 Subaru Sambar Classic Kei microvan for $12,250. Each, says Japan Car FL, “comes with a clean Florida title, and is ready to be driven home on the day of purchase.”

While Japan Car FL handles all types of JDM imports, the business is driven by Kei trucks and microvans, said owner Lana Kashchuk. “There has been an increase in queries as they become more and more popular. It’s the top seller.”

Buyers vary. Some customers use them for work—Kei trucks are affordable, maneuverable, and their small engines are easy on gas. Many have six-foot beds that rival bigger trucks in cubic-foot capacity. “We have a lot of small business owners who buy them for tree-trimming, pool service, that sort of thing. But we also have customers who use them instead of golf carts locally to take them shopping or to Home Depot, or they drive them on weekends to go to the beach,” Kashchuk said.

There’s no problem in Florida—for now, anyway—to get them registered and tagged. The state now officially refers to them “mini trucks,” for use on roads where the speed limit is 35 mph or less. “But at the same time they are not branded as ‘low-speed vehicles’—they are not golf carts, so they get a regular tag and a regular title,” she said. “We have a lot of customers who aren’t having any problems or issues because they have a license plate like any other car, and they have a title like any other car, but it says ‘MT’—mini truck.”

Modern Kei trucks and microvans have no problem keeping up with the normal flow of traffic—that 1999 Subaru Sambar Classic, for instance, has 54 horsepower, and is good for 70 mph. Yes, they may technically be limited to roads where the speed limit is just 35 mph, but many traffic officers will look the other way as long as a Kei isn’t holding up the show.

As in most states, you can’t register a vehicle in Florida without proof of insurance. You can insure Kei trucks, but you may have to shop around for an agent familiar with the category, Kashchuk said. “It all depends on the agent. He or she might be confused about the shorter VIN number—because it isn’t the usual 17 digits and letters like a typical U.S. car, and because they may have a model name that is not familiar to them, not in their system.” As far as financing, Japan Car FL works with several companies that make loans on Kei trucks.

Even as states struggle to decide exactly what a Kei truck should—or should not—be allowed to do, there will likely still be a market for them, if for no other reason than because they are reasonably affordable. And cute.

Oh, and what’s happening in Rhode Island, where this confusion arguably began? Senator DiPalma is co-sponsoring legislation that would restore the ability of Kei truck owners to register their vehicles, and get license plates. That’s the good news. The bad news for Kei lovers: The new law would only apply to the 30-odd Kei trucks that are already on the road there, for use “until they can’t function anymore,” DiPalma said. There is no provision for adding any new Kei trucks to Rhode Island roads.

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Welcome to This Week on Hagerty Marketplace, a recurring recap of the previous week’s most noteworthy cars and significant sales from the Hagerty Marketplace online auctions.

How do you take your horsepower–American or British? This varied trio of collectible cars check a lot of boxes for enthusiasts.

1964 Studebaker Avanti

Sold for $38,788

One of the cars offered from the Studebaker-centric Dr. Karl Peace & Georgia Southern University Car Collection, the lovely Avanti was styled in just 40 days by esteemed industrial designer Raymond Loewy and his team in 1962. Loewy was responsible for the look of everything from the Shell gas logo, to Coca-Cola vending machines, to the livery of Air Force One. The Avanti was essentially a Hail-Mary effort by Studebaker to compete with Ford, GM and Chrysler for attention, and while the reception was quite positive, the company went dark in 1966.

Just 4,643 copies of the fiberglass-bodied four-seater were built, making it a true collectible. This example is a 1964 model, likely one of the first ones built, as early 1964’s had round headlight frames instead the rectangular ones found in most ‘64s. It’s powered by a 240-horsepower, 289-cubic-inch V-8 with the coveted four-speed manual transmission. Since it as been in storage as part of the collection, it will take some work to bring it back to pristine condition, but once that is completed, the new owner will have one of what we consider to be the most gorgeous American luxury sports cars ever built.

1968 Jaguar E-Type 2+2

Sold for $51,895

Speaking of gorgeous, here’s a Jaguar E-Type, which Enzo Ferrari reportedly called “the most beautiful car ever made.” The E-Type, or the XK-E as U.S. customers came to know it, had a long life, being built from 1961 to 1974. This car is a 1968 model, and comes with a numbers-matching 4.2-liter straight-six engine with 245 horsepower, coupled to a four-speed manual transmission. It’s a 2+2, meaning it has the compact rear seat that folds down for additional space in the rear. The optional 15-inch knockoff wire wheels set the car off with a proper British profile. To be able to buy a well-cared-for classic like this for just over $50,000—sign us up.

1971 Chevrolet Nova SS

Sold for $34,775

How about a little all-American, Detroit-built muscle? The Chevy Nova was long waiting in the shadows of its stablemates, the Corvette and the Camaro, but performance versions of the Nova have truly come into their own as legitimate collectibles. This 1971 Nova SS is powered by a 350-cubic-inch V-8 backed by a Muncie M20 four-speed manual transmission. While the engine was rated at 270 gross horsepower, it’s likely this car makes more than that, judging from the Hooker headers, Flowmaster dual exhaust, and a Winters intake manifold with a Holley double-pumper carburetor. The last owner, who had the Nova SS for nine years, believes the displayed mileage of 81,640 is correct, and it seems likely there are plenty of enjoyable miles left in this pampered car.

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A glowing review? Sure, you can call it that. We published it on April 2, 2023. The second-generation BMW M2 is “The M car to get, and the one that tracks most closely to enthusiasts’ image of the brand,” we wrote. The M2 “remains the pure driving enthusiast’s choice in BMW’s lineup.”

So what can the 2025 BMW M2 do for an encore? An extra 20 horsepower, for one thing, upping the muscle from 453 horses to 473. Which lowers the 0-to-60 mph time to 4.1 seconds, a tenth of a second quicker with the manual transmission, and quicker still with the M Steptronic automatic transmission at 3.9 seconds.

Called in the business a “mid-cycle refresh”—which happens when a manufacturer updates a current vehicle to keep it interesting until the arrival of the next-generation model— BMW has tweaked that second-gen M2, introduced in 2023. The worldwide launch of the ’25 model happens this August. It will continue to be built in BMW’s plant at San Luis Potosí in Mexico, alongside a similarly-refreshed 2 Series Coupe.

As far as increased performance goes, that added horsepower can come with more torque, too, but at an experiential price. Torque remains a healthy 406 lb-ft in the manual, but opt for the M Steptronic plus the no-extra-cost Drivelogic feature that enhances the Steptronic’s shifts, and the torque jumps to 443 lb-ft. BMW also says that “advances have been made with the accelerator mapping and response in all the drive modes selectable via the M Setup menu,” resulting in a quicker response when you hit the accelerator, regardless of which transmission you have.

Aside from that, the powertrain is untouched—it remains a twin-turbo 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine, connected (thankfully) to a standard six-speed manual transmission, or the eight-speed M Steptronic.
Other updates for the ’25 model include new design accents for the exterior and interior, four new exterior colors, and the introduction of BMW Operating System 8.5 to support the latest generation of BMW iDrive. We’ll be interested to see how OS 8.5 works; in our review of the 2023 model, we reported that the “iDrive 8 interface is reasonably intuitive,” but that leaves some room for improvement.

More digital controls have been added, including for the seat and steering wheel heat and the climate control system itself, thus reducing the number of buttons and switches. The instrument panel has also been redesigned, and there’s a new flat-bottomed steering wheel. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto remain as standard equipment.

Wheels are double-spoke alloys in Jet Black or a bicolor finish, or—and this is new—a bright silver finish. The M quad tailpipes will be finished in black, and the model designation badges, located on the trunk lid and grille, are also now black, bordered in silver.

And those four new colors we mentioned: Java Green metallic, Voodoo Blue, Grigio Telesto Pearl Effect metallic and Twilight Purple Pearl Effect metallic. If you can guess exactly what those colors look like from their names, congratulations.

In all, probably not enough enhancements here for 2025 to make you trade in your 2023 or 2024 BMW M2, unless 20 more horsepower means that much to you. As expected, the price goes up, but not by a whole lot: The 2025 M2 starts at $64,900, plus $1175 destination and handling. The second-gen model was introduced for 2023 at a base price of $62,200, plus $995 destination and handling.

When it comes to four-wheel transportation that just makes you smile, the BMW M2 has been doing that since it was introduced as a 2016 model. We see no reason why that won’t continue.

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British race car driver Jamie Chadwick continued her American invasion last weekend with a history-making win in the Indy NXT Series, which used to be called Indy Lights. It’s the developmental feeder series for IndyCar, and many of its graduates have gone on to solid IndyCar careers, recently including Kyle Kirkwood and David Malukas, and in less recent history, Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Helio Castroneves, Pato O’Ward, Marco Andretti, James Hinchcliffe, Colton Herta and Tony Kaanan.

Chadwick, who drives for Andretti Global, qualified on the pole for the Grand Prix of Road America, a 20-lap race on the tough Wisconsin road course. She is only the third female driver to win in the NXT/Indy Lights series, with the first being Ana Beatriz, who won in 2008 and 2009, and Pippa Mann, who was the most recent winner in 2010. Those wins were on oval tracks, so Chadwick becomes the first female driver to win on a road course.

“I have no words,” Chadwick said after her victory on Sunday. “Honestly, I’m a bit emotional. We’ve had an unbelievable car this year and just haven’t been able to do anything about it. I’m just so happy we held on there.”

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She beat Andretti Global teammate Louis Foster by 0.82 seconds, with Jacob Abel in third. Foster and Abel already have two wins each this season, and are the top two in the points, with Abel leading.

This is the second NXT season for Chadwick, 26, after winning three championships in the Europe-based, all-female W Series. That series was cancelled after three seasons for lack of finances, and last ran in 2022, when Chadwick returned with support from Caitlyn Jenner to win her third championship, this time for the newly-formed Jenner Racing team. The W Series was essentially replaced by the female-only, F1-backed F1 Academy in 2023. F1 Academy is on the Formula 4 level, considered a step down from the competition in the W Series.

Prior to racing in the W and NXT Series, Chadwick competed mostly in Europe, but she had several starts in the F3 Asian Championship. She has also been a development driver for the Williams F1 team, and a test driver for the NIO Formula E team. Chadwick co-drove an Aston Martin to a win in the Silverstone 24 Hours in 2015, and to fifth in class in the 2019 running of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring. She’s also competed in Extreme E, the electric off-road series.

Additionally, Chadwick is also the official advisor for 17-year-old Lia Block, daughter of the late stunt driver and rally racer Ken Block, as she competes for Williams in the F1 Academy series this season. After four of the scheduled 14 races, Lia is 14th in points out of 17 drivers.

Chadwick moved to the NXT series in 2023, where she had a best finish of sixth, and ended the season 12th in points. It took her a while to get acclimated to U.S. tracks and the NXT car, which is a Dallara chassis with a turbocharged 2.0-liter Mazda-AER four-cylinder, with six-speed gearbox. The series is owned by IndyCar, which means it’s owned by Roger Penske. Her best finish this season had been third on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course.

While Chadwick led Sunday’s race from the pole and never gave up the lead, it wasn’t easy. A crash on lap 16 caused officials to fly the red flag, stopping the race to allow for a clean-up and ensure that it wouldn’t finish under a caution flag. It was restarted with two laps to go.

“With the red flag at the end, I was like, ‘Come on!’” Chadwick said. “We started to lose the tires a little bit. I just knew I had to be aggressive. I knew they [Foster and Abel] have a championship to worry about, and I just had to get my head down. I really wanted to win today.” The victory moved Chadwick up to ninth in points.

This was the sixth race in a 13-race NXT season. Next up is a doubleheader at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on June 22-23.

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If you plan to win one of the two inaugural Ford Mustang Challenge races this weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, you’ll have to beat one of the biggest names in Ford Motorsports.

No, not a professional race car driver, but the chief executive officer at Ford, Jim Farley. It shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise that the company CEO wants to compete—Farley is no stranger to racetracks, especially historic racing, competing in cars from his collection that include a 1965 Ford GT40, a 1966 427 Cobra, and a 1978 Lola 298.

“This is an amazing time for Mustang as we grow our family to include grassroots racing all the way up to the Mustang GT3 which will compete at Le Mans next week,” Farley said. “Like all the racers this weekend, I have a lot to learn in a short amount of time, but I can’t wait to get out there and enjoy some close battles with like-minded Mustang racing fans.”

He’ll be racing the number 17 Mustang, with a livery that recalls the first Mustang to win a race at Mid-Ohio—Jerry Titus’ Trans Am victory in 1967 in a Terlingua Racing Team entry.

The new Mustang Challenge series was created last year by Ford, and sanctioned by IMSA. The one-make series features the Mustang Dark Horse R, powered by a 500-horsepower, 5.0-liter Coyote V-8 with a Tremec manual transmission, racing on 19-inch Michelin slicks. The engine has been upgraded with enhanced cooling and oiling, and has a Borla racing exhaust. The track-only Dark Horse R starts at $145,000.

There are two 45-minute races per weekend. Besides Mid-Ohio, the series will also travel to Watkins Glen International, Road America, Circuit of the Americas and the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

There are 26 entries for this weekend’s series kickoff. Farley will be driving a car owned and prepared by MDK Motorsports, which also has two additional cars in the field for drivers Tom Tait, Jr., and Gabe Tesch. MDK is owned by Mark David Kvamme, a venture capitalist based in Ohio and an experienced competitor. He has raced in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The original Mustang Challenge series launched in 2008, using the Mustang FR500S. It was the brainchild of the late Larry Miller, a Ford dealer in Salt Lake City, Utah, who built the Miller Motorsports Park outside the city. The cars, which sold for $75,000, were turn-key racers powered by a 4.6-liter V-8 and a Tremec manual transmission. You can watch a race here.

As with the new Mustang Challenge series, the original featured two 45-minute races per weekend. It was sanctioned by Grand-Am, which became IMSA, and it lasted for three seasons.

For information on the new Mustang Challenge series, click here.

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We’ve known for quite some time that Formula 1 is changing the rules, beginning in 2026. The cars themselves, as well as the engines, will be significantly different, and now we have the answer to just how different the F1 future will be.

Formula 1 has released many of the details, condensed into this 15-minute, 48-second video. In short, says F1, the cars will be “lighter, safer and more competitive!” That’s part of the caption on the video, titled “The Future of F1.”

You’ll also hear “more nimble” several times in the presentation, as well as multiple references regarding the new car’s ability to close up behind another car, something “dirty air,” generated by the lead car’s extensive aerodynamics, prevents in the 2024 F1 field of cars. You’ll also hear “more sustainable,” including the use of renewable fuel and an increased reliance on hybrid electric power.

These 2026 rules are set to be approved on June 28 by the FIA World Motor Sport Council. None of it comes as a surprise to the teams, the manufacturers, or the powertrain suppliers, as they have been kept in the loop, and have even run some of the proposed configurations on their simulators.

The FIA is estimating that the new car’s less-aggressive aerodynamics will reduce downforce by 30 percent, which is expected to reduce cornering speeds. But a 55 percent reduction in drag will mean higher straightaway speeds. Both front and rear wings will be cockpit-adjustable.

Pirelli, the tire manufacturer, will make the tires narrower by 25mm (almost one inch) in front, and 30mm (1.18 inches) in the rear. The cars will still use 18-inch wheels.

The new cars will be about 66 pounds lighter, with a wheelbase nearly eight inches shorter and a width about four inches narrower. Replacing the DRS (drag reduction system) on current cars is a “manual override” that will provide more electrical boost to a following car. F1 has been stung by complaints that there isn’t enough passing, and they are seeking to change that for 2026.

The cars will still be hybrids, with a far greater concentration on the electric aspect. The internal combustion engine will still be a 1.6-liter turbocharged V-6, though its power will be reduced, while the electrical end of the power unit will be increased by about 300 percent. F1 claims a record six future “power unit” suppliers—Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault, Honda, Ford and Audi. No mention of Cadillac, which hopes to power the proposed Andretti entry.

While the cars will be smaller and lighter, F1 says they’ll be safer, too. The rollover hoop has been strengthened, and the new nose will be recast as a two-piece unit, with the forward piece designed to give way in the event of a collision, while the second piece will still offer protection in the event of a subsequent impact.

“The key features of the 2026 F1 Regulations are advanced sustainability, technology, and safety,” said FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem. “Our aim, together with Formula 1, was to produce a car that was right for the future of the sport’s elite category. We believe we have achieved that goal.”

We’ll see.

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After September 24, 1994, it was always about Page. Most every conversation I had with Parnelli Jones, the racing legend who died Tuesday, was about his son, Page, who was 22 and racing in the famous 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora Speedway in Ohio, a famous dirt oval track now owned by former NASCAR champion Tony Stewart.

Page was driving his black number 26 sprint car when he hit the wall and flipped, then was struck by another car. Page suffered a traumatic brain injury, and for three days, as he was in a coma, doctors feared for his life.

It took years, but Page recovered to an unexpected degree, eventually becoming a husband and a father. “He’s doing better,” Parnelli would say, and then tell me about Page’s latest small step back.

A documentary, Godspeed: The Story of Page Jones, was made about Page’s life. He was 37 when he said this: “I had just won the race and I hit the wall and flipped on to my side,” Page recalled. It is his last long-term memory. “I remember looking through the window of the car at the flag guy and he was throwing the yellow flag up and I thought, ‘Throw the red flag up so they stop.’ But it was too late. The guy that had crashed with me hit my roll cage and I was (unconscious).”

That day, brother P.J. was racing in Tucson; IndyCar team owner and STP CEO Andy Granatelli offered his Learjet to fly the family to see Page. P.J. boarded the plane in Phoenix, flew to Los Angeles to pick up mother Judy, flew to Utah to pick up Parnelli, then headed to Dayton, Ohio, where Page was in the hospital, still not out of the woods. It was a month before Page could be flown to a rehabilitation center in California.

It was 18 months before Page could speak, and then it was just one word at a time. It was two years before Page could get out of his wheelchair and begin the long process of learning to walk again. “He was like a six-foot-tall baby,” Judy said in a 2004 story posted by USAC, the sanctioning body for the 4-Crown Nationals and for the Indianapolis 500 when Parnelli won it in 1963.

At the beginning of rehabilitation, physicians painted a dark picture. “One of the doctors told me that he was going to need 24 hours of help a day the rest of his life, as well as a special training table, a handicapped bathroom, wheelchair, the whole shebang,” Parnelli said. “He gave me the worst scenario in the world.”

Rehab was frustrating for Page, who Parnelli said tore up nearly 150 T-shirts. “He would reach down, grab them and put them in his mouth and just rip them right off his chest,” Parnelli said. “He was just nervous; it was just unreal. But he never ran out of T-shirts because his friends kept sending them to him. One of his friends sent him a T-shirt that had a dotted line across it, and it read, ‘Tear here, Page’. His friends really, really stuck by him.”

“It was like being born again,” Page said. “The simplest things were difficult. Instead of being a baby two or three feet off the ground, I was six feet above the ground.”

After two years in rehab in California, Page was sent to Indianapolis, then New York City, for more specialized rehabilitation. Page continued to improve. He married Jamie on April 14, 2001, and they have two sons.

“He’s just a little bit different than he was before,” Parnelli said. “What he might have lost he gained in a lot of other ways.”

Older brother P.J. went on to an uneven but generally successful racing career, the highlights being a win at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona sports car endurance race in 1993, co-driving Dan Gurney’s All American Racers Eagle MkIII Toyota. He also made two Indianapolis 500 starts, 60 IndyCar starts and 33 starts in the NASCAR Cup series.

As for Rufus Parnell Jones, born August 12, 1933: His racing career began in 1950, at age 17, and ended in 1974, when he was 41. As he was easing out of the driver’s seat, he became co-owner of Vel’s Parnelli Jones Racing, and won the Indianapolis 500 in 1970 and 1971 as a car owner, with Al Unser driving. Then he built a Formula 1 car for Mario Andretti; it was called the Parnelli VPJ4. He helped develop a turbocharged version of the Cosworth DFV V-8, which went on to win every Indianapolis 500 for the next 10 years. Parnelli was an astute businessman, investing in real estate and maintaining a close relationship with Firestone, which began in 1960 when he became their test driver. He owned a Ford dealership, 47 Parnelli Jones Tire Centers in four states, and was a Firestone racing tire distributor in 14 states.

Decades after he hung up his helmet, his name still resonates. In 2021, at a Mecum Indianapolis auction, Parnelli’s Baja 1000-winning 1969 Ford Bronco, named Big Oly, sold for $1.87 million.

So, there was never a shortage of topics to cover. But he always wanted to talk about Page, and how P.J.’s racing career was going.

Just seven months ago, P.J. posted this on Facebook: “Parnelli is still hanging in there at 90, driving my mom crazy!” But yesterday, P.J. confirmed that his father had died with a sadder Facebook post. “My father, Parnelli Jones, passed away today at the age of 90. He had battled Parkinson’s for the last few years. I will miss him greatly!”

Acclaimed motorsports journalist Bones Bourcier is the official biographer of Parnelli, titled As a Matter of Fact, I AM Parnelli Jones, named for the answer to multiple traffic cops who, at the time, would pull drivers over for speeding and ask, “Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?”

The day Parnelli died, Bones posted this on Facebook: “If you love racing of any kind, you understand that this is a great redwood falling in the forest. He was among the very best in an era when the very best drove any vehicle they could climb into. Parnelli won Indy Car races in front-engine roadsters and rear-engine Lotus creations; won in NASCAR and USAC stock cars; won in USAC, CRA, and IMCA Sprint Cars on dirt and pavement; won in USAC Midgets on dirt and pavement; won in SCCA sports cars and Trans-Am sedans; won in Baja off-road trucks; basically, he won in everything he sat in, all the way back to the 1950s heyday of the California Jalopy Association, where it all began for him. ‘There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it,’ A.J. Foyt said of his old pal and rival. ‘Parnelli was a great race driver.”’

We’ll leave the last word to Roger Penske, who owns IndyCar, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a NASCAR Cup team and an IMSA GTP team, and, at 87, is a contemporary of Parnelli: “The racing world has lost a great competitor and a true champion. Parnelli Jones was one of the most accomplished racers in history, and his determination and will to win made him one of the toughest competitors I have ever seen,” Penske said. “I was proud to call Parnelli a good friend for many years, and our thoughts are with his family as we remember one of the true legends of motorsports.”

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If any car deserves a cheerful color palette, it’s the Mazda Miata, introduced in the U.S. for 1990 in your choice of bright red, white, or blue.

Now, muted variations on that original red, white, and blue are still offered, but so are four additional colors: black, two shades of gray, and Zircon Sand Metallic, which Mazda says is an “earthy tone.”

It’s kind of a funeral, this trend toward neutral car colors. That was not overlooked in our review last week of a 2024 Mazda Miata Club that Andrew Newton drove: The Miata’s color options are “bland as a bowl of sawdust,” he wrote. “If you’ve been praying for a handsome British Racing Green or a nice bright blue, keep praying, because Mazda has ignored you yet again. There is a new shade for 2024 but it’s… another shade of gray.” His test car was Zircon Sand, which he described as a “sort of muddy sand color, with some green in it.”

Turns out that it isn’t just the Miata—the entire industry has been steering away from colorful cars, according to a study by the website iSeeCars.com. Grayscale colors (white, black, gray, and silver) made up 80 percent of cars in 2023 compared to 60.3 percent in 2004, the study said. This despite the fact that there were nearly the same number of colors offered in 2023 as there were in 2004, with an average of 6.7 colors per model today compared to 7.1 colors per model 20 years ago.

iSeeCars analyzed the colors of over 20 million used cars from model years 2004 to 2023 sold from January 2023 to April 2024. The share of each color within each model year was calculated, as was the difference in share between model years 2004 and 2023.

“Colorful cars appear to be an endangered species,” said Karl Brauer, iSeeCars executive analyst. “Despite a diverse palette being offered by automakers, there are far fewer non-grayscale cars sold today. They’ve lost half their market share over the past 20 years, and they could become even rarer in another 20 years.”

Colors like gold, purple, brown, and beige have each lost more than 80 percent of their share over this period, and even mainstream colors like green, red, and blue gave up some ground. Interestingly, green has made a small comeback in the last few years as the only non-grayscale color to gain some market share back since 2020.

And it isn’t just cars. “Trucks followed the overall market trend, though some primary colors, like red, lost far more share than others, like blue,” said Brauer. Red is down 57 percent in the truck segment, while blue lost less than one percent.

“If drivers think they’re seeing less color on the roads these days, they are,” he said. “Every non-grayscale color lost ground over the past 20 years.”

It should not come as a surprise, then, that color affects resale value, but it doesn’t necessarily follow the grayscale-dominant formula. Hagerty Valuation Analytics Director John Wiley wrote a year ago that cars “slathered in eye-catching colors never fail to garner attention. The degree to which those colors impact value, however, can vary wildly from model to model.”

For vehicles with relatively few trim choices or minimal differences, color can be a much more important consideration, Wiley said. The 2012–13 Ford Mustang Boss 302 didn’t offer a lot of options, but it did allow buyers to select from 10 colors: Black, Competition Orange, Gotta Have It Green, Grabber Blue, High Performance White, Ingot Silver, Kona Blue, Race Red, School Bus Yellow, and Yellow Blaze.

Three of those colors—Black, Kona Blue, and Yellow Blaze—can mean a discount of up to 11 percent (sorry, Yellow Blaze) on the average value, while three other colors, High Performance White, Competition Orange, and Gotta Have It Green can provide owners a premium of about 17 percent.

Wiley wrote another story in 2021 about how color affects the value of Chevrolet Corvettes. Comparing apples to apples, the research was applied to 1700 sales. “The median premium for each major color group reveals white as the most valuable [adding 8.9 percent], followed by yellow, purple, and red. At the other extreme are earth tones like copper, green, bronze, and brown [down 10.2 percent].”

Still another story from that year explored what color does to Porsche 911 values. “The winner? Yellow. Porsches painted that color tended to sell for nearly $3000 more than average.” At the other end of the (color) spectrum, “black Porsches tended to earn $1385 below average.”

If you’re talking about a pure, mainstream, just-transportation car like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, the exclusively-grayscale palette may be a good rule of thumb to help bring solid resale values. But for sportier cars, the answer may lie somewhere over the rainbow.

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On June 21, 1974, which was 50 years ago this month, eccentric oil and gas millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 (as in “the third,” but that’s one of the things that made him eccentric) and the crew from the Ant Farm in San Francisco completed work on Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas.

Along with The Big Texan Steak House—home of the “World Famous 72-ounce Steak Challenge,” where if you can eat the whole steak in one hour (along with the shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad and a buttered roll) it’s free—the Cadillac Ranch has become one of Amarillo’s top tourist attractions, an admittedly short list.

Really, that’s not fair. Amarillo was once known as the “Helium Capital of the World,” and it operates one of the largest meat-packing areas in the United States, and it’s also the home of Pantex, the only nuclear weapons factory in the country (thanks, Wikipedia!).

You have about as much chance of making sense of Cadillac Ranch as you do finishing a Big Texan steak which, incidentally, 11 percent of the people who attempt it actually do. Sort of a Texas tribute to England’s Stonehenge, except Stonehenge is about 2800 years older, Cadillac Ranch consists of 10 vintage Cadillacs (they weren’t “vintage” in 1974, they were just old) buried nose-first, at a 60-degree angle, in a field alongside Interstate 40.

That field was way out in the country when Cadillac Ranch was constructed, but as Amarillo grew, the Cadillacs were dug up in 1997 and planted in another field on I-40 two miles west of the original, and that’s where they are today.

The idea essentially belonged to the Ant Farm, formed in 1968 in San Francisco by architects Doug Michels, who died at age 59 in 2003, and Chip Lord. They were eventually joined by New Orleans artist Hudson Marquez. They called themselves the Ant Farm in recognition of the plan they made to become underground [as in “ants”] architects, “ready to restructure the built environment of the counterculture,” Lord wrote in an obituary of his friend Michels, who died while climbing to a whale observation point in Eden, Australia.

If you weren’t around then, the “counterculture” was big in 1968.

One columnist described the Ant Farm’s projects, including Cadillac Ranch, as “half art, half science, half social commentary and half outright prank.” They include “Media Burn,” in which a Cadillac Eldorado was driven through a pyramid wall of burning televisions, and “The Eternal Frame,” a surprisingly serious video reenactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, in which Michels, sporting a Jackie Kennedy wig, plays the First Lady. Stanley Marsh 3 even plays Texas Governor John Connally.

Marsh turned out to be the perfect partner for the Ant Farm. For the Cadillac Ranch project, the members of the Ant Farm mailed letters to various eccentric millionaires around the country, asking for funding. Marsh reportedly responded in a letter written in 36-point type, roughly the size of the headline on this story, saying that he was interested, but only if the project took place in Amarillo.

This is a good place to mention that the Ant Farm members really liked cars in general, Cadillacs in particular. After all, counterculture or not, in August of 1968, Michels and his wife, Carol, arrived in San Francisco in a lime green Cadillac convertible. From an article in Texas Highways: ‘“At Ant Farm, we were car crazy,” Hudson Marquez recalls. “It was always drawing cars, collaging cars, making art with cars. I had an idea to make seed packs where you could plant seeds that would grow cars. You could have a field of ’49 Fords or ’59 Cadillacs that would grow out of the ground.’”

So the Ant Farm temporarily moved to Amarillo. Marsh would pay them $2000 and give them a budget of $3000 to buy 10 Cadillacs, plus $250 to rent a backhoe. The Ant Farm started looking for cheap Cadillacs. The 10 they found ranged from 1949 to 1964 models.

It took five days to bury the Cadillacs. According to the Amarillo Globe-News, Marsh—who lived with his attorney wife on a 262-acre estate he named Toad Hall, after the residence of Mr. Toad, the fictional character in the 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows—would show up with fried chicken and beer.

On July 21, 1974, and every 10 years since, there was a party at Cadillac Ranch. For that inaugural party, the Ant Farm members rented tuxedoes and celebrated with Marsh 3’s friends, then promptly returned to San Francisco to work on other irreverence.

To passersby on Interstate 40, Cadillac Ranch was an unbilled surprise. There were no signs, no explanation, no road to the unconventional art exhibit. Nobody outside of Amarillo knew what it was.

That changed when CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, who toured the country in a motorhome collecting stories for his popular “On the Road” segments that aired on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, discovered Cadillac Ranch, and made it famous in a 1975 broadcast.

Here’s a link to that story. It features Kuralt and Marsh 3, who is wearing his trademark “Mad Hatter” top hat, telling Kuralt that Cadillac Ranch is “the most important roadside attraction of our generation.” What’s amazing about Kuralt’s story is that it shows the Cadillacs as they were then, before tourists began bringing cans of spray paint and covering the cars with graffiti.

According to the Texas Highways story, Stanley Marsh 4, son of Stanley Marsh 3, has placed a merchandise truck at the site selling, among other things, cans of spray paint to tourists who forgot to bring their own.

In its 50 years, Cadillac Ranch has become a legitimate exhibit of abstract art, even spawning imitators, most notably Airstream Ranch next to Interstate 4 in Dover, Florida, where Frank Bates planted seven and a half Airstream trailers, as in 7.5, commemorating the 75 years Airstream had been in business. Bates, a Texas native inspired by Cadillac Ranch, was an Airstream dealer, known for ads that showed him dressed in a black and white cow suit, dancing and holding up cards that suggest you can save some MOO-lah at Bates RV. But neighbors complained, and Bates’ efforts to have Airsteam Ranch declared art, in the same fashion as Cadillac Ranch, failed. The county gave him 30 days to remove the trailers. He did. That was in 2008.

As for Stanley Marsh 3, he continued his puckish ways, like the time he interrupted a live Weather Channel broadcast from Amarillo when he performed a Native American snow dance in front of the cameras while wearing an Indian headdress and a fringed jacket. Here’s a link to it. He also had hundreds of diamond-shaped signs posted around Amarillo, an effort he called the Dynamite Museum, with a variety of often-nonsensical messages such as “The Wine Has Eaten Away My Brain,” and “Wild Packs Of Chihuahuas Dragged Conquistadors From Their Horses And Ate Them For Snacks,” and “His Father Was A Rancher But He Could Not Eat The 72 Ouncer.”

Despite his antics, he and his wife, Wendy, were highly regarded in the community for decades of philanthropy.

Marsh 3 suffered strokes in 2011 that left him incapacitated. Unfortunately, his legacy was tainted by a series of lawsuits first filed in 2012 that alleged Marsh paid at least a dozen underage male teens for sex. In 2013, he was indicted on eight felony counts of sexual performance by a child, four counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. It never went to trial. He died in a hospice in 2014 at the age of 76.

Cadillac Ranch, though, has a life of its own, though most of the cars are rusting into the ground, held together by coats of Krylon. And as for Marsh 3: In 1994, he was asked what he wanted on his tombstone. He said, “Thanks, everybody. I had a good time.”

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Yes, of course, we miss the Subaru WRX STI, even though it could be a bit, well, frantic. An acquired taste, and arguably a bit extreme as a daily driver, unless you live on a dirt road in the mountains of Colorado. But knowing it was out there was a comfortable confirmation that extreme performance vehicles were still available without a six-figure buy-in. Subaru dropped it from the U.S. lineup in 2021, and there are no immediate plans to bring it back.

As a consolation prize, though, meet the 2025 Subaru tS, which, we’re told, stands for “tuned by STI.” It will make its first appearance Sunday at Subaru’s Wicked Big Meet at the Stafford Motor Speedway in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, a legendary half-mile oval owned by the Arute family, a name familiar to most racing fans in New England. The annual Wicked Big Meet is the world’s largest gathering of Subaru enthusiasts.

If you’re headed there, here’s a primer on the WRX tS so you can ask informed questions when you see it.

The Wicked Big News is that the tS features a new STI-tuned suspension with electronically-controlled dampers. It has Brembo brakes—six-pistons up front, two in the back—in the signature gold color, with larger pads and rotors. Rubber is the 245/35 R19 Bridgestone Potenza S007, chosen for their increased wet and dry grip and improved braking performance. Its wheels are finished in satin gray.

The outside mirrors, roof-mounted shark fin antenna and rear spoiler are painted Crystal Black Silica. There’s a tS badge on the rear deck, next to taillights that “glow with a look inspired by volcanic magma,” Subaru says.

Under the hood: The familiar 271-horsepower, 2.4-liter turbocharged Subaru boxer engine, connected to a six-speed manual transmission. Active Torque Vectoring is also standard as is, of course, Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive.

Inside, there’s a new 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster, which offers improved legibility and the capability to show additional information to the driver, including map display and route guidance. Gone is the power moonroof, deleted to save weight and provide some headroom for helmeted occupants. There’s also an 11.6-inch center information display and touchscreen for multimedia, climate control, and vehicle configuration settings. Drive Mode Select, which you could previously get only on the WRX GT, controls those dampers by offering Comfort, Normal and Sport settings.

WRX tS owners will be sitting on Recaros, which have a “Y-shaped design at the center of the seat backrest that embodies a design concept in which the sides and shoulder blades of the occupant are securely supported to maintain proper driving posture.” Upholstery is charcoal Ultrasuede with blue accents and a WRX tS logo embossed on the front headrests and carpeted floormats. The driver’s seat is eight-way power adjustable.

Subaru says the WRX tS will be at dealers the first quarter of 2025. Price? Doesn’t say. The base WRX starts at $32,735, plus $1120 for shipping. Prices rise for the Premium, Limited, TR and GT models, with the GT topping out at $44,215, much of that going towards the automatic transmission that has an eight-speed manual mode.

The existing TR is closest in content to the tS, including the moonroof delete, Brembo brakes, 19-inch tires and wheels, the six-speed manual transmission and Recaro buckets, and it starts at $41,655, before shipping. So we’d guess the new tS might start at a price close to the GT, somewhere around $45,000.

It’s still not an STI, but it’s probably the closest we’ll get until the next-generation model shows up.

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Welcome to This Week on Hagerty Marketplace, a recurring recap of the previous week’s most noteworthy cars and significant sales from the Hagerty Marketplace online auctions.

We have a trio of rides—a killer 1960s-era cruiser, and a pair of low-mileage luxury cars. Let’s start with one of those.

1997 Lexus LS 400

Sold for $35,310

Few of us were expecting a lot when the Lexus LS 400 debuted as a 1990 model; Japan had tried to sell luxurious cars in the U.S. before, such as the fourth-generation Toyota Crown, which was marketed for a couple of years in the early 1970s. But it just didn’t fit with the American concept of luxury. When Toyota tried again, it was a laser-focused effort that benchmarked cars that U.S. customers definitely considered luxurious, such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Cadillac sedans.

While the LS 400 was a near-immediate hit, Lexus continued to refine the car, and for 1995, the company introduced the second-generation LS 400. Though it looked quite a bit like the original—why mess with success—90 percent of the parts were new or upgraded. This 1997 model is a suitable example of the Lexus flagship, with just 21,217 miles at the time of listing. Equipped with the optional moonroof and Lexus/Nakamichi sound system, this Lexus was clearly loved by the original owner from 1997 to 2019. There should be a lot of miles left in the car.

1966 Plymouth Sport Fury

Sold for $18,725

We can only imagine the pride the first owners of this Plymouth Sport Fury felt when their car was delivered to the Cooper Motor Company in Hayward, California in August of 1966: With a muscular 383-cubic-inch V-8 under the hood, mated to the durable Torqueflite transmission, with bucket seats inside and a black vinyl roof outside, it represented the epitome of Detroit performance and flair. This car spent its life in California, and came with a substantial file of paperwork, dating back to the original sale. A bold mix of the original and the updated, this Sport Fury is an appealing recollection of 1960s style in very nice condition at a very reasonable price.

1979 Cadillac Seville

Sold for $50,825

Who would have thought that a 45-year-old Cadillac Seville would have gotten this much attention? Apparently the nearly 168,000 people who viewed its online auction. With just 1927 miles on the odometer at the time of sale, this Seville was loaded with features, including wire wheels with time-capsule whitewall tires. It’s powered by a fuel-injected 5.7-liter V-8, mated to a three-speed Turbo-Hydramatic transmission. (Suitably) sold new in Boca Raton, Florida, this car, aside from some surface rust on the undercarriage, was in near-showroom condition. Priced originally at $12,479 (equivalent to $68,000 today), the Seville was the most expensive Cadillac you could buy in 1979.

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This is a story about the track-ready Porsche Cayman R, which we’ll get to in just a moment, but let’s spend a minute talking about how the Cayman came to be.

It did not take a financial analyst to discover that Porsche, circa 1992, was having issues. The 911 was selling passably well—it almost always finds its audience—but the pricey 928 was failing to win the hearts and minds, not to mention to pocketbooks, of the Porsche faithful, especially near the end of its run, which finally occurred in 1995.

Similarly, the 968, introduced in 1991 as a replacement for the 944, wasn’t being embraced by sports car fans looking for an entry point into the Porsche brand. Though the company insisted that 80 percent of the 968 was new, it perhaps wasn’t different enough from the 944 to ignite a fire among potential customers. By the time it was dropped from the lineup in 1995, it was quite a good car, but it just wasn’t selling.

Meanwhile, Porsche executives were rethinking the whole entry-level-model conundrum. They arrived at something that felt comfortable—the Boxster concept car, which debuted at Detroit’s North American International Auto Show in 1993. “We had originally planned to present our concept car in Geneva in spring 1993,” says Grant Larson, lead designer of the car. “But we decided on Detroit in January because we did not want to waste any time.”

The mid-engine roadster was an unqualified hit. When the production car hit the market in 1996, it was very faithful to that concept. Twenty-five years later, total Boxster sales had topped 350,000.

But not everyone wants a roadster, those Porsche executives reasoned. (Especially Porsche fans, it turns out—coupe models are consistently valued higher than their drop-top stablemates within this brand.) What if they took the Boxster platform and made a coupe? Versatile designer Pinky Lai, who joined Porsche after styling the BMW E36, was assigned to the car. Yes, it was influenced by the 911, but it was different enough not to tread on its territory. Thus was born the Cayman, which debuted as a 2006 model.

The base Cayman was powered by a 2.7-liter six-cylinder engine, while the Cayman S got a 3.4-liter engine. But Porsche thought there was room for a more performance-oriented Cayman, which finally came in 2011: That was the Cayman R. But after 2012, it was gone, with the pending arrival of the third-generation Cayman.

A nice little niche market remains for the 1621 Cayman R models that Porsche cranked out. It isn’t that much more powerful than the Cayman S and Boxster Spyder—just an additional 10 horsepower from the 3.4-liter six-cylinder, achieved by tweaking the exhaust system.

But it’s what surrounds that 330-horsepower engine that gives the Cayman R its track credibility. Taking a page from the Lotus playbook, Porsche designers and engineers put the Cayman R on a diet, not that the Cayman S was all that porky. They managed to trim as much as 121 pounds, starting with aluminum doors, lighter seats, different (19-inch) wheels and a fixed rear wing. Fabric straps replaced interior door pulls.

Additional pounds were shed by those willing to, as Porsche put it, “Do without convenience equipment.” That included air conditioning and a sound system, which is good for a 33-pound savings. (Thankfully, you could add those two back in if you valued being cool and entertained.) After that, it got expensive. A lighter lithium-ion battery could save 26 pounds but would cost you $1700. Carbon-ceramic brakes cut seven pounds, at a cost of $8150.

The standard transmission was a six-speed manual, but you could swap that out with a seven-speed PDK automatic, though it weighed an extra 55 pounds.

Fortunately, there were other changes. “With its specially adapted sports chassis,” Porsche said, “it provides an even more precise driving experience than the Cayman S.” Improved aerodynamics substantially reduced front and rear lift. The addition of the Sport Chrono package whacked three-tenths of a second off the 0 to 60 mph time, trimming it to about 4.5 seconds. Top speed was 175 mph with the manual transmission, 174 with the PDK automatic.

While all these adjustments made for a potent track rat, the R was as accommodating on the road as any Cayman model. As thin and lightweight as those seat were, they weren’t nearly the punishment you’d expect them to be.

There remains a strong market for the Cayman R, which was introduced at a base price of $67,250. Hagerty values a Cayman R in #2 (“excellent”) condition at $90,300, and a #3 (“good”) example at $74,000. By comparison, a 2012 Porsche Cayman S in #3 condition is valued at $40,000.

Values started increasing during 2019 and through the pandemic boom, but have been largely flat for the last two years. From the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2022, condition #2 values for the Cayman R grew 54 percent, which was a higher percentage than any other version of 2006-12 Cayman. They haven’t moved at all since the end of 2022.

Buyer interest for all 2006-12 Caymans pretty much mirrors the classic car market as a whole. Baby boomers make up 36 percent of Cayman policyholders that Hagerty covers, with members of Generation X representing 33 percent. Millennials appreciate the Cayman, too, making up nearly 20 percent of policies.

Bringatrailer.com has sold at least four Cayman Rs in the past year or so: Two for $75,000 each, one for $74,500, and one for $68,250. As of Wednesday afternoon, two Cayman Rs are presently being offered on the site.

As with any performance car, a Cayman R that has been consistently beat on during track days is likely to need more work than the proverbial, school-teacher-just-driven-to-church-on-Sunday car. Though many of these cars have led a coddled life, plenty did get used as intended, so be sure to shop for your particular use case.

And we don’t know about you, but we like our air conditioning and sound systems.

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Magna Steyr is an automotive manufacturer in Graz, Austria. It builds vehicles for other companies and is, in fact, the world’s largest builder of cars and trucks for other manufacturers, with—according to a press release from the company—the capacity to build 200,000 vehicles a year.

The company has built four million vehicles for 11 different companies in the past 120 years. Those products range from the Jaguar I-Pace to the Aston Martin Rapide to the Mini Countryman.

And, since 2018, the Toyota Supra and BMW Z4.

That’s the background for a story this week in Automotive News focused not on the sporting BMW/Toyota pair but instead on chronicling the troubles of Fisker, the electric vehicle company, which also used Magna Steyr as a manufacturing outlet for the Fisker Ocean SUV. The story quoted a statement released by Fisker on Tuesday: “Fisker’s Austria entity is primarily focused on managing the contract manufacturing of Fisker’s revolutionary electric vehicles; it has recently faced challenges to its operations and financial health.”

Consequently, Fisker’s Austrian division essentially filed for bankruptcy, and apparently cancelled its contract with Magna Steyr. Which is part of what has caused Magna Steyr to lay off 500 employees—contracts will also be up for the company to build the BMW 5-Series and a pair of Jaguar models.

Fisker’s woes are not really news. But the real lede, at least as far as enthusiasts are concerned, was buried way down in the seventh paragraph of the Automotive News story: “Production of the BMW Z4 and Toyota Supra models, which share a platform, will end in 2026.”

Reports that the Z4 was coming to the end of its life have circulated, with the production end supposedly in March of 2026. And it makes sense that the Supra would end production about the same time, since the GR Supra is basically a fixed-roof version of the Z4, sharing with it a platform as well as a BMW-sourced engine and transmission. The loss of the Supra, one of the last performance vehicles still offered with a manual transmission, hurts. (The 2025 Z4 will also have a manual-transmission option.)

Not that the Supra set the world on fire sales-wise. Says a companion story in Automotive News: “U.S. sales have declined precipitously since peaking at 6830 vehicles in 2021. Last year, Toyota sold 2652 Supras in the U.S., down 46 percent. Through April, deliveries are off an additional 29 percent to 817 vehicles. Since going on sale in 2019, the Supra has recorded a grand total of 24,022 deliveries in the U.S. — the equivalent of a strong month’s worth of Corolla volume.”

Certainly, a company with Toyota’s resources could build a sixth-generation Supra if it wanted to, but given the disappointing sales of the fifth-generation model, that seems unlikely.

And Toyota isn’t talking. “We cannot comment on future products,” said Toyota Senior Analyst Breanne McCallop.

Our best advice: If you want a Supra, or for that matter, a Z4, don’t wait too long.

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On Tuesday, NASCAR team owners Tony Stewart and Gene Haas made a joint announcement that Stewart-Haas Racing would be closing at the end of the 2024 season, leaving six NASCAR drivers and hundreds of support personnel out of a job.

What went wrong? Why is one of NASCAR’s most prominent teams leaving the sport? We’ll explain. But let’s start with a brief look at how Stewart-Haas Racing reached the breaking point.

In 2002, beyond-wealthy businessman Gene Haas decided he wanted to enter the world of NASCAR. He started Haas-CNC Racing as a way to promote the company he owns, Haas Automation, which manufactures CNC (computer numerical control) machines, which use computers to operate tools, such as lathes and grinders, with far more precision than an operator can manage on his or her own.

Haas-CNC Racing was, at best, a mid-pack runner, and by 2008, its drivers were averaging a 27th-place finish. Haas knew he needed to make some changes, so he made two-time NASCAR Cup series champion Tony Stewart an offer he couldn’t refuse: Leave Joe Gibbs Racing and move to Haas-CNC Racing, and Haas would give Stewart half the team. Thus was born Stewart-Haas Racing. In 2009 the team brought aboard Penske Racing driver Ryan Newman, the year after he won the Daytona 500.

The team matured and grew. Stewart won his third Cup championship in 2011. In 2013, with great fanfare, Stewart-Haas Racing hired IndyCar driver Danica Patrick who, despite lackluster performance on the track, consistently made headlines as the only female driver to make an actual living in the NASCAR Cup series.

Fast forward to the 2024 season: Tony Stewart quit NASCAR Cup racing in 2016, and his interest in NASCAR gradually faded. Also in 2016, Gene Haas, who had bought what was left of the bankrupt Marussia Formula 1 team, started his own F1 effort, called Haas F1 Team, which is still looking for its first win, having never finished higher than fourth. This year, Haas’ two F1 drivers are presently 13th and 17th in points out of 21 drivers. Haas, 71, is still running Haas Automation, has been sick for much of 2024, and is still struggling to make Haas F1 into a contender, or at least improve on 2023’s dead-last finish in the standings.

Other factors are at work here, too. Stewart-Haas driver Kevin Harvick retired from full-time racing at the end of 2023, which meant the end of his lucrative Anheuser-Busch sponsorship. Driver Aric Almirola also left Stewart-Haas after the 2023 season, meaning the loss of his Smithfield Foods sponsorship.

Still, Stewart-Haas entered the 2024 NASCAR season with four Cup entries for drivers Noah Gragson, Josh Berry, Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece—none of them household names in the world of NASCAR. Stewart-Haas also has a pair of NASCAR Xfinity series drivers: Riley Herbst, who has one win in the series and sponsorship from Monster Energy, and Cole Custer, who is the 2023 Xfinity champion, and the son of Joe Custer, Stewart-Haas Racing president, and the man who has mostly been running the day-to-day operations of the company.

None of the Stewart-Haas drivers have won this season. Among its Cup drivers, only Chase Briscoe has won a race, and that was in 2022. In addition, Stewart-Haas’ deal with Ford ends this year; it had been one of the top Ford teams since it switched from Chevrolet in 2016.

It hasn’t helped that Ford has had a terrible 2024 season in all three NASCAR series. By the time Ford won its first and only Cup race of the season, which was Brad Keselowski’s victory on May 12, Chevrolet had already won seven races, and Toyota five. Besides inexperience in the Stewart-Haas Cup driver lineup, that has been a crippling factor for the team.

Finally, Stewart, who has been spending less and less time at NASCAR races, discovered drag racing when he began dating NHRA Top Fuel driver Leah Pruett in 2020, and they got married on November 21, 2021. He promptly founded Tony Stewart Racing, fielding a Top Fuel car for Pruett, and a Funny Car for four-time champion Matt Hagan. Stewart, 53, began drag racing himself, competing in the second-tier Top Alcohol Dragster class in 2023, scoring two wins and a runner-up finish in the season championship. He and Pruett, 36, are trying to start a family, which led Pruett to quit driving in 2024, turning over her 330-mph Top Fuel car to drag racing novice Stewart. He has yet to win a race, but he is a legitimate contender.

Bottom line: Stewart and Haas have lost interest in NASCAR. In a joint statement issued Tuesday confirming the long-standing rumors that they would close shop, the pair said, “Racing is a labor-intensive, humbling sport. It requires unwavering commitment and vast resources, with a 365-day mindset to be better than everyone else. It’s part of what makes success so rewarding. But the commitment needed to extract maximum performance while providing sustainability is incredibly demanding, and we’ve reached a point in our respective personal and business lives where it’s time to pass the torch.”

That torch will be passed to the highest bidders. The relatively modest Stewart-Haas shop is rumored to already be sold to Front Row Motorsports, which currently has two full-time Cup teams with drivers Michael McDowell, who is moving on after 2024, and Todd Gilliland.

Along with a lot of cars and parts, Stewart-Haas also has four valuable NASCAR Cup series charters to sell, which are essentially guarantees that no matter how poorly a charter team qualifies for a race, it is always awarded a starting spot. It’s invaluable when trying to attract sponsors to be able to assure them that their car will always be in the race, and should spend at least some time on the TV broadcast. There are 36 charters and 40 starting spots available, meaning non-charter teams have to try to qualify for one of just four open positions.

The price for a charter has varied wildly the past few years, with the high coming last year when Spire Motorsports reportedly paid $40 million for another team’s charter. The four Stewart-Haas charters won’t bring that much, but $25-$30 million apiece is not out of the question. Rumors suggest that Trackhouse Racing wants one of them, as does Denny Hamlin’s 23XI team, and maybe Front Row. The fourth charter might go to Joe Custer, as he tries to create a job for his son Cole in 2025.

All six Stewart-Haas drivers are talented, and should be able to land a job in one of NASCAR’s top three series. Still, pending unemployment is a bitter pill. Tweeted driver Chase Briscoe: “Stewart-Haas has been home to my family and I for the last 7 years and at the end of the year myself and the entire organization will be looking for a new home and new opportunities in the Cup series.” Tweeted Josh Berry: “Today was a tough day for all of us. It is pretty hard to find the right words.”

We’ll leave the final word to the two, with this comment from their Tuesday statement: “We’re proud of all the wins and championships we’ve earned since joining together in 2009, but even more special is the culture we built and the friendships we forged as we committed to a common cause—winning races and collecting trophies.”

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This should be much-needed shot in the arm for rallying, and specifically the FIA World Rally Championship: Lancia, a legendary brand within the sport, is returning the WRC.

Lancia quit rallying, all forms of motorsports for that matter, in 1992. This past year, the rumor mill has run at full tilt that the company would have a new entry in rallying, something that parent entity Stellantis confirmed on Monday.

The vehicle will be loosely based on the Ypsilon HF, which Stellantis calls “a high-performance version of the first car of the brand’s new era, a 100-percent electric model that will be launched in the market in May of 2025.” Which is kind of confusing, because the rally car, the Ypislon Rally 4 HF, is decidedly an internal-combustion vehicle. It will be powered by a 1.2-liter turbocharged, 212-horsepower three-cylinder engine, mated to a five-speed manual transmission and a mechanical limited-slip differential.

Lancia also announced the revival of the high-performance HF designation with both the new electric model and the rally version of the Ypsilon. Lancia will be introducing an HF version for each of the brand’s new models.

The Ypsilon Rally 4 HF “is the ideal solution for all rally enthusiasts to enjoy,” Stellantis claims, “but is also a serious candidate for drivers aspiring to victory in the Rally 4 class and in the two-wheel drive championships.” The Rally 4 class is essentially an entry point into pro rallying, populated by “young drivers beginning their careers with a passion to become the professionals of the future.”

The Rally 4 class was created in 2019 as part of the “rally pyramid”—a clear blueprint of how a driver and team can climb the pyramid up to Rally 1, the elite class in the WRC.

The Lancia will be competing with models from manufacturers that include Stellantis-owned Peugeot and Opel, as well as Renault. The announcement was made during the WRC Rally Italia Sardegna, Lancia’s home rally and the sixth event on a 13-event calendar.

Despite not competing for more than three decades, Lancia is still the most successful brand in the sport, with 15 World Rally Championships (11 constructor’s titles and four driver’s titles), as well as wins in the Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio and the Carrera Panamericana. Martini Racing teamed with Lancia in 1982 for the then-new Lancia 037 and drivers Attilio Bettega and Markku Alén, creating the famous red, white and blue exterior color scheme.

This could be just the start of a serious effort on Lancia’s part to return to glory on the rally circuit. According to DirtFish.com, it’s possible that Lancia could absorb Citroën’s C3 Rally 2 effort, which is plausible since that company is also controlled by Stellantis. Its customer racing manager Didier Clements “was one of the masterminds of Citroën’s generation of world championship domination with Sébastien Loeb.”

Regardless, it’s a happy day for Lancia enthusiasts, said company CEO Luca Napolitano, in this slightly awkward translation: “Lancia has always been in people’s hearts, also thanks to its competitive soul represented by some iconic models from a past that made the brand the most successful one of all time in the rally world. And that sporty heart is starting to beat again today!”

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The latest research available on the new-vehicle transaction price pegs it at a substantial $47,218. And while that may be down 5.4 percent over the market peak in December of 2022, it’s still prohibitively pricey enough to convince a lot of motorists to hang on to vehicles they already have.

But for how long, though? According to research by S&P Global Mobility, the average age of cars and light trucks in the U.S. has risen to a new record of 12.6 years in 2024, up by two months over 2023.

That means the average car or truck on today’s roads was new in 2011.

“With average age growth, more vehicles are entering the prime range for aftermarket service, typically from six to 14 years of age,” said Todd Campau, associate director of aftermarket solutions at S&P Global Mobility. “With more than 110 million vehicles in that sweet spot—reflecting nearly 38 percent of the fleet on the road—we expect continued growth in the volume of vehicles in that age range to rise to an estimated 40 percent through 2028.”

That should guarantee plenty of work for auto mechanics for a long time. Indeed, according to research posted on Consumeraffairs.com earlier this year, there are approximately 592,000 auto mechanics in the U.S., and the number has been falling, even as the need is growing. “There is an urgent need to recruit and retain new auto mechanics in the coming months and years, as car maintenance and repair will always be a necessity for vehicle owners. Currently, there are approximately 56,000 auto mechanic positions available, and by the end of this year, over 1.3 million technicians will be needed to keep up with demand.”

Certainly there are plenty of vehicles out there. According to S&P, the size of the U.S. fleet was 286 million vehicles in operation (VIO) in January of this year, up two million over 2023.

And the distribution of vehicles by age is changing. Vehicles newer than six years old accounted for 98 million vehicles in 2019; today they represent fewer than 90 million vehicles. “Vehicles six-14 years of age, and even older vehicles, are expected to represent about 70 percent or more of VIO [growth] for the next five years, which will serve as a tailwind to aftermarket service opportunities.”

A specialty in working on trucks and SUVs would be beneficial to new mechanics, as sales of cars, as we all know, is suffering. S&P research bears that out by citing vehicle “scrappage” rates. Since 2020, more than 27 million cars were scrapped, replaced by about 13 million cars. The number of trucks and SUVs scrapped was just over 26 million, while 45 million new trucks and SUVs were registered.

As consumers keep their vehicles longer, proper maintenance is ever more important, as is finding someone qualified to work on your older vehicle. A recent report by the non-profit TechForce Foundation, which is “committed to the career exploration and workforce development of professional technicians,” said that the demand for automotive technicians remains an ongoing issue. “As in past years, the demand from occupational separations far outpaces the demand from new growth. For example, between 2023 and 2027, 406,000 positions will be needed due to operational separations, while only 60,000 will come from new growth.”

But there may be reason for hope. TechForce’s report says that for the first time in 10 years, the number of graduates in the automotive maintenance sector has slightly increased. “We are beginning to close the gap in the transportation technician shortage,” it says.

But that will take a while. Our best advice: Be kind to your current mechanic, if you have a good one.

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To say the Ford Mustang GTD has been eagerly anticipated is an understatement. Ford closed the GTD’s application window in North America for the 2025 and 2026 model years on May 21, with over 7,500 applications filed for the $325,000+ limited-production supercar. It appears that you can’t even buy Mustang GTD merchandise any longer: Everything, including the $80 T-shirt that was offered by Ford, is sold out.

If you missed the North American window on the car itself, there’s one more path left to buying a GTD—but you need to be willing to move to Europe. “Mustang GTD’s arrival in Europe comes as the continent prepares to begin accepting applications from prospective owners,” Ford says. You can’t apply yet, though—details on how you can will be released in June.

Meanwhile, by “Mustang GTD’s arrival in Europe,” Ford means that the car will cross the Atlantic for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which runs on June 15-16, and then the Mustang GTD “will also take to the roads of Europe for testing that will pave the way for an official timed run in the fourth quarter of 2024 at the famed Nürburgring Nordschleife.”

Last September, Ford essentially promised a sub-seven-minute lap at the Nürburgring, thanks in part to “active aerodynamic tech never before used on a street legal Ford car and illegal in GT3-class race cars. The heart of Mustang GTD’s aerodynamic performance is its Drag Reduction System, which uses a hydraulic system that can change the angle of the rear wing and activate flaps under the front of the car to find exactly the right balance between airflow for speed and downforce for grip, depending on performance conditions,” Ford says. The top speed, according to the company, is over 190 mph.

A certified lap of under seven minutes would likely put the Mustang GTD on the roster of the 10 fastest production cars ever at the ‘Ring, according to this list. The 1049-horsepower Mercedes AMG ONE, with a lap time of 6 minutes, 35.18 seconds set on October 28, 2022, remains the fastest production vehicle on the circuit.

None of the cars on the top-10 list are American-made. The GTD team wants to change that.

“With Mustang GTD, we set out to build a road-going race car with the heart of a Mustang and the will to beat Europe’s best. Since opening applications to North American consumers, we’ve seen customers respond to that motivation,” says Mustang GTD Brand Manager Jim Owens. “Whether they own a rival’s sports car or have another Mustang in the stable, the Mustang GTD’s race-derived performance is registering.”

To that end, “Every surface, body opening and vent on and under Mustang GTD’s body is functional,” says Greg Goodall, Mustang GTD chief program engineer. “Some air is directed for cooling, other for aerodynamics and downforce. All of it to help GTD go faster or stick to the pavement no matter what the conditions are. Our Le Mans drivers would love to have the technology Mustang GTD has for the track and street.”

Of course, having in excess of 800 horsepower available from the 5.2-liter, supercharged V-8 doesn’t hurt, either. “Mustang GTD shatters every preconceived notion of a supercar,” says Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO. “This is a new approach for us. We didn’t engineer a road car for the track, we created a race car for the road. Mustang GTD takes racing technology from our Mustang GT3 race car, wraps it in a carbon fiber Mustang body and unleashes it for the street.” It will be the most powerful street-legal Mustang in the car’s 60-year history.

There are, as we’ve told you before, Brembo ceramic brakes to make it stop, and an eight-speed rear transaxle connected to a carbon fiber driveshaft to make it go. “Recaro front seats optimized for track days are complemented by available 3D-printed titanium paddle shifters, rotary dial shifter and serial plate, all made from retired Lockheed Martin F-22 titanium parts. The rear seating area has been removed to reduce weight and provide cargo space,” Ford says.

The Mustang GTD will be built at the Ford Flat Rock Assembly Plant near Detroit, and then transported to Multimatic facilities in Markham, Canada, where it will be “handcrafted for racing-inspired precision by the Ford Performance and Multimatic teams,” Ford says.

As for that trip to Europe: “We’ve tested the Mustang GTD in North America extensively, including laps at Sebring International Raceway and Virginia International Raceway. This has all been in service of engineering a car that can lap the Nürburgring in under seven minutes,” says Goodall. “Moving onto European roads and dedicated test sessions at the Nürburgring is the next step, ahead of a timed run later this year.”

According to the ever-present spy photographers stationed around the track, the Mustang GTD is already there.

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On April 15, MotorTrend.com published a story about the 2023 Ford Maverick pickup that the publication bought. “We still love the Maverick,” the story said, but “Ford has sent us a whopping five recall notices since we purchased the truck last year, one safety-related, two regarding emissions, and two for compliance-related problems.” Since that story ran, there have been two more recalls issued for the Maverick, including one for faulty taillights that affects 242,000 of the 2022-24 models.

Still, the very appealing compact trucks are selling well, as they have been since they were introduced as a 2022 model, which mostly went for well over list price. Finally, Ford dealers are seeing the Maverick pipeline filling, and some are offering discounts. According to our local Ford dealer, not much of a discount—$475 on a loaded 2024 Maverick that listed for over $38,000—but a discount nonetheless.

If the accompanying spy shots are any indication, Ford is freshening the truck for 2025, and perhaps offering a sportier version, which may or may not be called the Lobo, Spanish for wolf, of course. Or it might just be called the Maverick ST, although this particular pickup has a Lariat badge on the two front fenders.

The truck shown here its revised headlights, a bigger Ford badge, and a new front fascia, fog lights, and grille, definitely has a hunkered-down look. Its new turbo-style wheels really set the pickup off. The 19-inch wheels are sporting some meaty Goodyear radials. Inside, we’re told that there’s a new 13.2-inch infotainment screen.

Like Motor Trend, we love the Maverick, too. Hopefully by this fall, when we expect to see the debut of this updated pickup, Ford and its Hermosillo plant in Mexico will have solved the problems that have caused these excessive recalls.

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Alexander Calder was best known for his sculptures, not for his painting, but near the end of his career some of his paint jobs were hard to ignore. In 1973 he was contracted by Braniff Airways to paint one of its four-engine DC-8 jets. The bright, cheerful result was dubbed “Flying Colors.”

In 1975, Hervé Poulain, a gentleman race car driver, commissioned Calder to use his imagination and paint a BMW 3.0 CSL that Poulain would race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year. It became the first of 20 official BMW Art Cars. It was also one of Calder’s last works; he died in 1976.

BMW Art Car number 20 debuted on Tuesday at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Designed by New York-based contemporary artist Julie Mehretu, the 640-horsepower BMW M Hybrid V-8 racer will compete in the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 15-16, carrying the number 20. Drivers will be Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns and René Rast.

Mehretu, 53, was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2020. Last October Mehretu, who was born in Ethiopia, broke the auction record for an African artist at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when her piece Untitled sold for $9.32 million.

Mehretu attended the Rolex 24 at Daytona last January, and watching the BMWs race provided some inspiration. “Designers, engineers, aerodynamicists and so many other creative minds are working on taking this vehicle to its extreme,” she says. “When it goes out on the racetrack now, so many dreams will be fulfilled.”

The car’s abstract visual form is the result of digitally-altered photographs, which are superimposed in several layers of dot grids, neon-colored veils and the black markings characteristic of Mehretu’s work.

“In the studio, where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V-8, I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: What would happen if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it?” Mehretu says. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.” She employed 3D mapping to apply the artwork to the contours of the car.

Art Car artists are chosen by a panel of international judges. Perhaps the most famous BMW Art Car is number 4, created when artist Andy Warhol applied the paint himself, rather than do what most Art Car artists do: Paint a model of the car, and have the full-sized BMW colored separately. “I attempted to show speed as a visual image,” said Warhol, who died in 1987 at the age of 58. “When an automobile is really traveling fast, all the lines and colors are transformed into a blur.” Warhol took the speed aspect literally, as he applied 13 pounds of paint to the BMW M1 in just 28 minutes. The car went on to finish sixth overall at the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Indeed, the first four Art Cars all competed at Le Mans, a trend broken in 1982 when Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs painted flames on a stock BMW 635 CSi for Art Car number 5. The Le Mans tradition was revived for Art Car number 15 in 1999 when American artist Jenny Holzer, known primarily for her words, applied some to her artwork. The BMW V-12 LMR went to Le Mans with PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT emblazoned on the top of the race car, LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL on the rear wing, and THE UNATTAINABLE IS INVARIABLY ATTRACTIVE on the driver’s side bodywork.

Leading up to this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, Mehretu’s Art Car will make an appearance at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este in Italy’s Lake Como on its way to the track in France. As part of the exhibition for historic vehicles organized by the BMW Group and the Grand Hotel Villa d’Este, Mehretu herself will present the 20th edition of the BMW Art Car Collection.

It will be on the grounds of the Villa Erba, also on Lake Como, together with the BMW Art Cars by Calder (1975), Frank Stella (1976), Roy Lichtenstein (1977), Warhol (1979), Holzer (1999) and Jeff Koons (2010), which all made their race debuts at Le Mans.

For a look at all the BMW Art Cars, click here.

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For Rick Hendrick, owner of the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR racing team, it represents a milestone. “I never thought I’d get to have an entry in the Indy 500 in my life,” he said. But he does, and his car will start Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 from fifth place on the grid.

It began when one of his NASCAR drivers, Kyle Larson, expressed a persistent interest in adding IndyCars to the list of vehicles he has raced. And that’s a long list, ranging from IMSA prototype sports cars to dirt late models. “Everybody knew that Kyle wanted to run the Indy 500,” Hendrick said, so he started talking to Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing, about entering Larson in one of Brown’s Arrow-McLaren IndyCars. “We put a deal together,” said Hendrick, and so far, “It couldn’t have gone any better.”

“Yeah, it’s been awesome from day one. Mr. H and his entire organization are absolutely legendary in motorsports,” Brown said. He and Hendrick met the media Tuesday on a Zoom call.

Larson is doing “the double”—racing at Indianapolis early Sunday, then jetting and helicoptering to Concord, North Carolina and the Charlotte Motor Speedway for the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600. He’ll be the fifth NASCAR driver to attempt the feat. Only Tony Stewart, in 2001, completed all 1100 laps. Larson will be the first driver to try it since Kurt Busch’s attempt in 2014.

And yes, it’s hard to imagine that things could have gone any better—so far. Larson, 31, took to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway quickly, increasing his speed as he practiced for last weekend’s qualifying. As mentioned, Larson qualified the HendrickCars.com Dallara/Chevrolet fifth out of 34 cars, with a four-lap average speed of 232.846 mph.

“Nervous as I’ve ever been watching qualifying,” said Hendrick. “The pressure of running four laps is something I’m not used to. One lap maybe at Daytona, or two. It’s just biting your fingernails. But Zak and his whole group have just done an amazing job, and we’re very fortunate to be partners with him and his team.”

Still, “I’m not used to watching a car go into the corner at 241,” Hendrick said.

Brown said that prior to qualifying, “I would have said the front half of the field would have been an awesome result. I wouldn’t have put much money on qualifying fifth. I think that’s a testament to Kyle’s ability and the collective effort of both teams to give him a race car and an environment to compete at the front.”

Well, true, but he hasn’t exactly competed yet. But given Larson’s raw talent, a very fast car and hopefully a competent pit crew, he may indeed run at the front. That said, there may still be obstacles ahead. Larson is the NASCAR Cup series points leader, so it’s important for him to make it to Charlotte on time. Driver introductions are at 5:25 p.m. ET.

But what if there’s a rain delay at Indy? This is Weather.com’s forecast for Sunday in Indianapolis, as of Wednesday morning: “Thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High around 75F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%.”

Would Hendrick pull Larson out of the Indy 500 and insist that he head to Charlotte? “It would be very hard,” Hendrick admitted. “It would be very tough. It would be very disappointing because of all the effort that everyone has put in.” Not to mention the fact that Hendrick is flying in a huge number of guests—five airplanes’ worth, he said.

“It’s going to be pressure all day,” Hendrick said. “How does the race go? Is it going to rain? What time do we have to leave to get back to Charlotte? This is going to be a tremendous amount of pressure, but we signed up for it.”

The one thing Hendrick and Brown are not worrying about is Larson. “He’s just a die-hard racer,” Hendrick said. “He’ll race in this race just like he would when he flies somewhere and gets in a sprint car or a midget. He just wants to get in the car and race. I think all the racing he’s done has kind of built his confidence so much that he believes in himself and he believes in the team and what the team tells him the car will do, and then he figures it out on his own, and he’s off to the races.”

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Further cementing the contention that he is America’s most versatile race car driver, Kyle Larson turned in the fastest qualifying lap by a rookie in Indianapolis 500 history Saturday with a pass of 233.453 mph. He formally qualified fifth of 34 drivers on Sunday with the second-fastest four-lap average at 232.846 mph, just shy of Tony Stewart’s record rookie run of 233.100 in 1996.

After qualifying, Larson jumped on a private jet and flew to North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina, where he ran as high as third before finishing fourth in Sunday night’s NASCAR All-Star race. Larson, the 2021 NASCAR Cup series champion, is currently leading the series in points.

Larson will be the fifth driver to attempt “the double”—racing in the Indianapolis 500 and the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 about 430 miles away at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina on the same day. The other drivers who’ve done the double are John Andretti, Robby Gordon, Kurt Busch, and Stewart, who is the only one to complete all 1100 miles of racing.

At Indy, Larson will be driving a Chevrolet-powered Dallara jointly entered by his NASCAR team owner, Hendrick Motorsports, and Arrow McLaren. Larson’s resume already includes wins in a dirt-track midget at the Chili Bowl, in a sports car at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and he won the Knoxville Nationals twice in a sprint car. As his schedule permits he continues to race 800-horsepower dirt sprint cars in the World of Outlaws and the High Limit series, which he co-owns with brother-in-law Brad Sweet.

The pole winner for the Indianapolis 500 is Scott McLaughlin, who averaged 234.220 mph for his four qualifying laps, a new track record. It is the first Indy pole for McLaughlin, whose previous best start was 14th. “Indy hasn’t been kind to me,” McLaughlin said, “and a lot of it was my doing. I need to work on things. This is the first step.”

The entire three-car front row is Team Penske, with Will Power starting second and defending race champion Josef Newgarden starting third. Team owner Roger Penske also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the sanctioning body, IndyCar. The three front-row cars are powered by Chevrolet. Starting fourth is former winner Alexander Rossi, an Arrow McLaren Chevrolet teammate to fifth-place starter Larson.

The Sunday before the race has long been called “Bump Day,” because there are typically more entries for the 33-car field than can be accommodated. This year, there were only 34 entries, so one team had to go home. That was decided late Sunday, between British racer Katherine Legge, former winner Marcus Ericsson, 19-year-old rookie Nolan Siegel, and veteran Graham Rahal, who was the only driver bumped in 2023.

This year, it’s Siegel who will be watching from the sidelines. His Dale Coyne Racing car failed in a last-minute qualifying attempt, when Siegel crashed into the Turn 2 wall. He was uninjured. “I’m fine but I don’t really care if I’m fine at this point,” he said. “That’s somewhat irrelevant.”

Rahal ended up with the final spot. He knows how Siegel felt. “I’ve been there—last year, it still stings,” Rahal said. “It’s not much better being 33rd, I can tell you that. At least we’re in the field, and we’re going to go racing.”

Both engine manufacturers—Chevrolet and Honda—faced problems in qualifying. With Chevrolet, the problem was plenum fires. With Honda, it was simply trying to make a little more speed. The top eight qualifiers were Chevrolet-powered, and the four cars that had to run on Sunday in last-chance qualifying were all Hondas.

Chevy’s plenum-fire issue shouldn’t be a problem for the race. The plenum is a carbon-fiber box atop the engine. It’s fed by fuel and pressurized air from the twin turbochargers. Under pressure, the fuel/air mix is crammed into the injectors. If an engine valve stays open for a millisecond longer than it should, a spark can climb back up into the plenum and ignite the mixture before it reaches the injectors. On at least six Chevrolet-powered cars, a plenum fire occurred on Saturday. An article at Racer.com has a comprehensive explanation.

Really, it isn’t as serious as it sounds—the engine loses power very briefly, then picks back up where it left off. But it is a big deal during qualifying, where it is more likely to occur due to the high level of turbocharger boost being used. At Indy, the plenum fires mostly happened when the driver was shifting gears at near 12,000 rpm. With the milder engine tuning used for the race itself, it isn’t likely to happen, although it has: In last year’s season opener in St. Petersburg, Pato O’Ward was leading when his car suffered a plenum fire with three laps to go. The momentary loss of power was enough to let Ericsson get by and take the win.

At Indianapolis, it was important enough for Chevrolet to address the issue in a press conference late Saturday, where GM motorsports head Jim Campbell said he would have engineers around the world work around the clock to investigate the plenum fires.

As for Honda, there was no report of plenum fires, but for a company that qualified on the pole for the last four years straight, Indy qualifying was a bitter bill. The fastest Honda, driven by Felix Rosenqvist, had a four-lap average of 232.305 mph. Pole winner McLaughlin’s Chevrolet ran, as mentioned, 234.220 mph, nearly 2 mph quicker than Rosenqvist. Honda will need to find a bit more power before next Sunday.

Speaking of which: The 108th running of the Indianapolis 500 takes place May 26, with coverage beginning at 11 a.m. on NBC. Here’s a link to the starting lineup.

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Welcome to This Week on Hagerty Marketplace, a recurring recap of the previous week’s most noteworthy cars and significant sales from the Hagerty Marketplace online auctions.

We have a trio of rides—a convertible, a truck, and a convertible truck. We’ll start with that one.

2005 Chevrolet SSR

Sold for $37,450

This later-production classic has fewer than 8700 miles on its odometer, and looks it. The powertrain, new for 2005, is arguably the most desirable in the SSR’s four-year model run—it’s the 6.0-liter LS2 V-8, shared with early C6 Corvettes. While earlier SSRs made do with the 5.3-liter Vortec V-8, the addition of the LS2 boosted the muscle to 390 horsepower. Also, for the first time, the 2005 SSR had a manual-transmission option—a six-speed Tremec—and this Redline Red model has one, making it one of the rarer SSRs. The man responsible for the design was Automotive Hall of Famer Ed Welburn, who went on to be named the head of global design for General Motors. Any SSR is fun to drive, but the powertrain on this cherry 2005, along with the ZQ8 sports suspension, makes us envy the new owner that much more.

1976 Triumph TR6

Sold for $18,404

Another red drop-top: The Triumph TR6 was offered from 1969 to 1976, making this ’76 model one of the last of the line, among just over 6000 copies imported to the U.S. that final year. As were all TR6s, this one is powered by the gutsy 2.5-liter inline six-cylinder engine, mated to a four-speed manual transmission. The engine has dual Zenith-Stromberg carburetors, which are reportedly original. In a significant departure from the Giovanni Michelotti-designed TR models that came before it, Triumph employed Karmann of Germany to handle the means-business styling of the TR6. Due in part to the long model run, there is a strong aftermarket for TR6s, making parts availability better than for many imported sports cars. This mint example showed fewer than 58,000 miles on the odometer; there should be a lot of miles left ahead of it.

1954 Chevrolet 3600

Sold for $37,450

See that red 2005 Chevrolet SSR further up the page? This three-quarter-ton 1954 Chevrolet 3600 is representative of the era that was the inspiration for it. Chevy called this generation of trucks the Advance Design model, part of a family offered from 1947 to 1955, and they were the best-selling pickups in the U.S. at the time. The design was tweaked over the years, with the biggest change coming in 1954, when, as you can see, the two-piece windshield was replaced by curved one-piece glass. An automatic transmission was finally offered, but this particular truck has a four-speed manual with a floor shifter. It’s powered by the new-for-1954 Thriftmaster inline six-cylinder engine with 235 cubic inches, replacing the 1953’s 216-cubic-inch six-cylinder. The electrical system was upgraded from six volts to 12 volts as part of a 2005 frame-off restoration, which reportedly was just 1444 miles ago. Painted Duchess Blue, this is a handsome truck, updated with features that would make it a comfortable, likely reliable cruiser.

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The latest episode of Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter, just posted on YouTube, took me back to some joyful memories, and I highly recommend it. Host Tom Cotter, a racer himself, visits the home of late racer and automotive writer Linda Sharp, and buys the historic number 22, 1968 Datsun 2000 roadster that she raced.

I knew Linda. You know how some people look better in a fire suit than others? I don’t mean more attractive or more stylish, I just mean more natural—like the Nomex just suits them.

That’s the way Linda Sharp was, which is fortunate because she spent a lot of her life zipping up her one-piece. I noticed that when I met her 28 years ago at Talladega, where Saab had gathered some 900s and a bunch of auto writers; she appeared a lot more at ease than most of the journalists wearing new white Saab fire suits, many of whom spent a lot of time in front of the mirror and taking what then passed for selfies.

Linda had a lot of experience behind the wheel of race cars, in SCCA and various club racing and some pro series, like the IMSA Kelly American Challenge. She had been introduced to racing by her then-boyfriend of 20 years, Jim Fitzgerald. Yes, the same Jim Fitzgerald who won 350 SCCA races as well as multiple Runoffs, and was also a NASCAR Winston Cup driver. He also helped Paul Newman get started in racing, and eventually became his teammate. Fitzgerald had a deal with Datsun, and typically raced their sports cars. Consequently, so did Linda.

Back to Talladega: In 1986, Saab had set a bunch of world speed and endurance records at Talladega in 9000s, and a few journalists were invited to come watch, and in a limited role, take part. There were not many of us there in 1986 available to return in 1996, when Saab set even more records, this time in 900s. And this time, journalists would play a larger role, actually helping set some records, too.

Linda and I gravitated to each other; I was amazed at the breadth and depth of her motorsports and production car knowledge, and being from Tennessee, her Georgia-bred accent sounded like home. On track, we paired up as often as we could get away with it. We were told not to draft, but we did anyway, running nose-to-tail as we tried to get as much speed as possible out of the Saabs.

At one wonderful point, for an hour, we had identical cars, and were running right at 160 mph. Drafting, we could hit 162. I led for a while, and kept trying different lines—high, low, high-then-low, looking at the speedometer for feedback. This line got us 163 on the back straight; that line got us 161. It might sound daring but Talladega is such a nice track, and the Michelin-shod Saabs handled the 33-degree banking with aplomb. Occasionally Linda and I would hear over the radio, in an invariably polite Swedish accent, “Cars 4 and 5, kindly separate,” and we would, until we hit the back straight again, front and rear bumpers drawn together like magnets.

That’s when I knew I had a friend for life: Linda and her husband, Bob, who built engines for NASCAR teams, moved up to that list of people you can count on two hands that you know are kindred spirits, bolstered when I learned that Bob and Linda, like me, couldn’t turn away a stray animal.

A few years later Linda and I, along with a third journalist who never really got comfortable, were invited to run a two-race weekend at Lime Rock in the Neon Challenge series. Our Neons were painfully slow—we had one of the regular drivers test Linda’s car, and the driver came back and said, “Huh. Apparently there’s stock, which are our cars, and REALLY stock, which are your cars.”

It was good to hear that because we were questioning our own ability, but let’s face it: If we were right on the tail of Chrysler hotshoe Eric Heuschele’s Neon coming down the hill onto the front straight of Lime Rock, and then Eric ended up 150 feet ahead at the first turn—well, Linda and I were pretty confident in our ability to shift and floor the accelerator, so it had to be the cars.

So basically we raced against each other, seldom more than a few yards apart. At the end of the first race, Linda finished a car length ahead. For the first time in my life, I was beaten by a girl. Not that there aren’t millions of girls who can outdrive me, but it had never happened before, and as enlightened as I think I am, it was a blow.

So onto the next race: Halfway through, Linda and I were side by side, and here comes the lead pack to pass us. I gave them room on the left, and Linda gave them room on the right, but somebody still body-slammed Linda’s car, giving me about a hundred-foot lead on her. I won that race, and she very generously told everyone then and since that we split the races, but if I’m present, I correct her: You won the first race, and got crashed out in the second one. Slow-talking, Southern-drawlin’ Linda Sharp is a better driver than me. Can kick my ass at will.

Soon after that, Linda, who worked as a driving instructor, and as a columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, started a dirt-track magazine called Muddslinger. I wrote for it, and she and Bob paid me more than the stories were worth. Linda and Bob semi-retired to a farm outside Mount Airy, North Carolina, the town that Andy Griffith’s Mayberry was modeled after, where they took in even more stray animals. Linda and I emailed several times a weekend about racing, about politics, about dogs and cats.

One of her longest and uncharacteristically angry emails came after she watched “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman,” the Adam Carolla-produced documentary that aired in 2015. With Fitzgerald—who was killed in an awful crash in a Trans-Am race at St. Petersburg in 1987, a race that Newman was also in—Linda was there for Newman’s racing career, and she was upset about how many people in Carolla’s documentary talked about how close they were to the action when, as Linda wrote, “Paul never knew they existed.”

One of my favorite passages from that email: “Robert Redford is also a very present ‘interview’ in the film. Paul would sometimes speak of Redford, but he never came to a race to my knowledge.  I can recall Paul saying, ‘Never go to dinner with Redford, because he eats off of everyone else’s plate before he touches his own food.'”

The last week of December in 2016, Linda went into the hospital for a minor surgery. Something went wrong. On December 30, she died. Leaving Bob, the nicest guy in the world, a widower, a couple dozen dogs and cats and horses nobody else wanted without a benefactor, and hundreds of friends like me stunned and saddened and ready as hell to get 2016 over with.

Cotter’s Barn Find Hunter brings all that back. Good memories of a friend taken too soon.

***

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In May of 2019, IndyCar announced that it would be moving to a hybrid powertrain. That August, IndyCar finalized its plans, confirming that the hybrid system would debut in 2022.

The new system was expected to do three things: First, it would allow drivers who stall out on track to re-start their cars and rejoin the race, rather than have to bring out a caution flag and summon a safety team to drive to the stalled car and re-start it. Second, it would boost the powertrain’s total output to over 900 horsepower.

And third, certainly having the real-world relevance to hybrid power in passenger cars would attract a much-needed third manufacturer to sign up for the IndyCar series, joining Honda and Chevrolet.

On Tuesday, five years after that original announcement, IndyCar said that the hybrid package would debut at the Honda Indy 200 race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, which is set for July 5-7. Obviously, it has been delayed multiple times.

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Addressing IndyCar’s expectations of the new hybrid systems: The drivers will indeed be able to re-start their cars without the aid of the safety team. This will mean fewer caution flags.

Second, in Tuesday’s announcement, IndyCar said the hybrid system would boost horsepower to “800+ for the first time in two decades,” and though it did say more power might be possible down the line, it’s still short of the promised 900.

That 800-horsepower figure will be achieved when the driver presses two buttons: One will deploy the available electricity to supply additional power. The other is the existing Push to Pass feature, which lets the turbochargers briefly increase the boost, itself worth about 50 hp. (Push to Pass has been around since 2004, when the competing ChampCar series introduced it on its Ford Cosworth engines.)

The two power enhancers come with different rules. Push to Pass will still have a restriction on amount of time per use and total time used over the course of a race. Rules for the hybrid power unit will limit the amount of energy deployed per lap based on track length. Drivers will be able deploy the electric boost on all the circuits that the series visits. They will be able to combine it with Push to Pass on road and street circuits, but not ovals since Push to Pass is not available on those tracks.

The new hybrid system, jointly developed by Chevrolet and Honda, was more of a challenge than they were expecting, but the end result is a low-voltage, 48-volt unit that stores energy in 20 ultracapacitors instead of batteries. Capacitors work well for storing energy for brief periods, but aren’t great at long-term energy storage, which is fine for this application.

The hybrid equipment, called the ERS for energy recovery system, weighs in at about 120 pounds, a significant increase given the cars weigh 1630 pounds on most tracks, slightly less on ovals. It is contained in the bellhousing, located between the 2.2-liter, twin-turbocharged V-6 engine and the gearbox. IndyCar has done 23,518 miles of testing on hybrid-equipped cars, with more planned at the Milwaukee Mile in June.

Oh, and that third thing the hybrid system was supposed to do? Attract at least one more OEM, or original equipment manufacturer, besides Honda and Chevrolet to the IndyCar series? Hasn’t happened.

“This technology is very important to our current OEM partners, Honda and Chevy,” IndyCar President Jay Frye told the Indianapolis Star in 2019, “so if it’s important to them, then you can logically conclude it’s important to other OEMs.”

Perhaps, but it seems only IMSA, the sports car series, has been able to attract many new manufacturers, as it currently has 18. The competing SRO series, in the GT3 sports car class alone, has nine.

So we’ll see if another manufacturer will sign up for IndyCar. Regardless, the series is pretty strong now, and excitement is building for the 108th Indianapolis 500 on May 26. Maybe the hybrid system will keep IndyCar in the conversation well after its biggest race.

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Screech!

That noise you heard today was the Biden administration trying to put the brakes on the sale of Chinese EVs in the U.S. by quadrupling the existing tariff from 25 percent to 100 percent. The White House has also slapped a 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made batteries that are used in electric vehicles. The tariff was previously 7.5 percent.

As he announced the EV tariffs, President Biden accused China of unfair labor practices. “It’s not competition. It’s cheating,” he said, during a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.

So what will be the immediate effect?

“It’s not going to make much of a difference at the moment,” said Sam Fiorani, vice-president for global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. “The current level of tariffs was already preventing most vehicles from coming in from China, and raising it isn’t going to make much difference. There are some companies in China that are targeting the U.S. at any cost, and it’s likely their plans will be delayed as they find alternate routes. But in the near term, there will be little to no effect.”

“Alternate routes” could be assembling vehicles outside China, and then importing them to the U.S. “Presuming the government doesn’t find some way to prevent Chinese-branded vehicles from coming in, they are likely to find factories in Mexico or South Korea or some other friendly nation in order to bring their vehicles into the U.S.,” Fiorani said.

The added tariff on Chinese-made EV batteries may be an issue for U.S. manufacturers that use them, which includes Tesla and Ford. “There are a number of vehicles that are using Chinese batteries,” Fiorani said, “and it will hamper the profitability of those vehicles, and potentially speed up the production of batteries sourced from other countries.”

Chinese-built electric vehicles may not be an immediate threat to the U.S. automotive industry, but in the future, that may not be the case. An Associated Press story was distributed May 13 with this headline: “Small, well-built Chinese EV called the Seagull poses a big threat to the U.S. auto industry.”

The story is about a car manufactured by the Chinese company BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams.” The Seagull sells for about $12,000 in China, has a range of 252 miles, and is available with six airbags, disc brakes, and electronic stability control. It has “American automakers and politicians trembling,” the story says.

A company named Caresoft Global, which does automotive benchmarking, imported a BYD Seagull and dismantled it at their Livonia, Michigan, facility. The company president, Terry Woychowski, was so impressed with the quality of the Seagull that he told AP it should be a “clarion call” to U.S. manufacturers. “Things will have to change in some radical ways in order to be able to compete,” he said.

A Reuters story cited federal data that said only four vehicles presently sold in America are made in China. They are the Lincoln Nautilus, the Buick Envision, the Polestar 2, and Volvo’s S90 sedan. Polestar and Volvo are “affiliates” of Chinese automaker Geely, the story says. Geely also has a controlling stake in Lotus and multiple other brands.

We’ve tested the China-built 2025 Volvo EX30, a small electric SUV that was supposed to come to market in the U.S. by the end of this year at a base price of $36,245. No word yet on how Volvo is reacting to the new tariff. The company will build the EX30 in a plant in Belgium beginning in 2025, but early models will come from China unless Volvo’s plan changes.

Make no mistake, said analyst Fiorani: Tariff or not, “The Chinese are coming. It may take a third country, but the U.S. market is so desirable by any nation whose economy relies on the automotive business. These vehicles are going to find their way here.”

That’s because America is “the goal market” for the Chinese, Fiorani said. “To bring a vehicle into the U.S. shows that you have made it.”

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NASCAR is hoping to drive fans to some new television partners in 2025 by instituting a mid-season bracket tournament, with the winner taking home $1 million.

The sport’s new TV deal has the first 12 NASCAR Cup series races of the season televised by Fox Sports. The final 14 races will appear on NBC Sports. It’s the 10 races in the middle of the 36-race season that figure into the bracket tournament—the first five will air on Amazon Prime and the second five on TNT.

The drivers will compete for race wins and points as they do now, with the bracket tournament being a separate component. Here’s how it will work: The bracket will feature 32 drivers. They will be determined by how they do in races 15 through 17, aired on Amazon Prime. The actual competition among those 32 drivers will take place in races 18 through 22, aired on TNT. Drivers will compete head-to-head, with the top-finishing driver of each race advancing over five rounds.

NASCAR has not yet announced its 2025 season schedule, so it isn’t known what tracks will be represented in the 10 races airing on Amazon Prime and TNT.

“With the launch of our new media rights partnerships in 2025, we were excited to partner with Prime Video and TNT Sports to collaborate on fan engagement concepts that drive storylines in our sport and innovation from a production perspective,” said Brian Herbst, NASCAR senior vice president for media and productions.

“The idea of an in-season tournament has been discussed within the NASCAR industry, and as we started to focus on adding promotional elements that drive interest throughout the season, we were excited by the opportunity to leverage the marketing weight of Amazon and TNT Sports to bring this concept to life,” Herbst said.

The new seven-year TV deal is reportedly worth $7.7 billion, which includes an agreement with The CW network to air the entire 33-race NASCAR Xfinity season each year from 2025 to 2031.

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The celebrated salvation of Detroit’s massive, long-abandoned Michigan Central Station can trace its abstract roots to the Great Irish Potato Famine, which began in 1845 and lasted for eight years. Potato blight resulted in the death of a million people, and caused another two million to flee the country. Many came to America.

And many of those came to Detroit. A substantial percentage ended up in a neighborhood less than a mile southwest of downtown called Corktown, so named because many of the new residents migrated from the Irish county of Cork. One of those famine-era immigrants from Cork was 20-year-old William Ford, the father of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford. And yes, that’s important to our train station story.

Michigan Central was logically located in Corktown, the oldest surviving neighborhood in Detroit, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As with multiple neighborhoods in urban Detroit, Corktown has had its problems, perhaps with the most recognizable sign of distress being the 18-story eyesore Michigan Central had become.

The train station opened in 1914, designed by the same architects responsible for New York City’s Grand Central Station. As rail travel sagged, so did Michigan Central, until it finally closed in 1988, quickly becoming a larger-than-life example of how grim things had become in the city. Looters and vandals and the inevitable graffiti artists descended. “At one point there wasn’t a single unbroken window in the place, and water filled the basement,” said a story on Hagerty.com published in September 2022.

Now, Michigan Central will soon be a leading example of Detroit’s resurgence, thanks to Ford Motor Company in general and executive chairman Bill Ford in particular. In 2016, the company began buying property in Corktown, including vacant land, a book depository, and a former factory. Within two years that factory became the home of Ford’s electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle business teams, signaling the plans Bill Ford had for a high-tech, 30-acre Corktown campus called the Michigan Central Innovation District.

In June 2018, Ford Motor Company announced the purchase of Michigan Central for $90 million, perhaps a tenth of what Ford has reportedly spent on a total renovation of the station in the past six years. It will include 640,000 square feet of retail, hospitality, community, and office space when work is completed.

It has been a labor of love. For years, Bill Ford drove past the decaying Michigan Central on his way to work. “I kept staring at the train station thinking, ‘What if? Wouldn’t that be amazing?’” he told the Detroit Free Press in 2018. “If all we did was to restore this fabulous building and make it sparkle, that would be great. But we’re going to do much more than that. It’s really about creating the future of transportation. And doing it in Corktown.”

From June 6 to 16, an event called “Michigan Central Open” will welcome the public to celebrate the rebirth of the Michigan Central, including an opening night concert featuring “iconic Detroit performers,” followed by a 10-day open house to tour the first floor of the revitalized landmark.

“This is a milestone we can all celebrate,” Bill Ford said. “Michigan Central Station was once a symbol of Detroit’s decline, and now it is going to represent its renewal and bright future.”

William Ford, who died in 1905, two years after his son founded Ford Motor Company, would be proud.

For more information, log onto VisitDetroit.com.

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How the almost-mighty have fallen.

It was a different time then, in 1990: Auto shows were at the peak of their popularity, and manufacturers, from the smallest to the largest, recognized the value of putting their best foot forward in front of the massive audiences and prodigious media coverage that the shows received.

The car companies typically had a separate budget for the four major U.S. car shows, which were, and still are, in Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago. And part of that budget usually included show cars—from barely-disguised upcoming models, to fanciful ground-up concepts designed to test out new ideas in front of what was often one of the world’s largest focus groups. Some concept cars made it to production, and some were forgotten almost as soon as the show’s doors closed.

That was the fate of the Cadillac Aurora, a sedan that was presented to the audience of the Chicago Auto Show. Founded in 1901, the Chicago show may have lacked the global credibility of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which was inevitably bolstered by its proximity to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, but Chicago, in terms of crowd size, has long been the country’s largest.

The fact that the Cadillac Aurora was assigned to Chicago in February, instead of the Detroit show a month earlier, may have demoted it a bit in the eyes of the attending media, but it guaranteed that it would be seen in person by the most attendees.

The Aurora concept was a car taken very seriously by Cadillac. In a series of GM-sourced photos available on Carstyling.ru, the entire design process is chronicled, from the initial freehand sketches of the car, to the full-sized clay model created to see what the Aurora would look like in the flesh.

Unlike many concept cars of the era, which may have had darkened windows because the manufacturer didn’t take time to design a proper interior, or be displayed with the hood closed because they used some generic powertrain, the Cadillac Aurora was presented as though it was ready for the showroom.

The engine was a 200-horsepower, 4.5-liter V-8 that was mounted longitudinally to better package an all-wheel-drive system, complete with advanced traction control. The clean, functional interior was decidedly ahead of its time. The tapered rear is awfully busy and dates the car, with lights that extend from one side of the car to the other, contained in 30 separate horizontal bars, atop dual exhausts.

Its exterior styling eschewed the angular, now-dated look of multiple GM sedans from the period. It recalled a variety of GM influences that both post- and predate the 1990 concept, from the EV1 electric car to European Opels to the 1992 Oldsmobile Achieva, which shared the horizontal body line across the top of the rear wheel, even more pronounced on the Cadillac Aurora. Its prominent world debut occurred atop a revolving platform at the Chicago show, beneath a sign that read “Cadillac Style.”

Though the Aurora name was subsequently deeded over to Oldsmobile for the handsome sedan that would become the brand’s four-door flagship upon its debut in 1994, none of the prominent styling cues from the Cadillac Aurora would carry over.

We mention all this because a series of photos surfaced this month that show the Cadillac Aurora in line at a junkyard, presumably waiting its turn to be crushed. Manufacturers were turning out concept cars at a prodigious rate in the 1980s and ‘90s, and if a concept wasn’t important enough to merit a place in a museum, there was a good chance it would be destroyed, rather than take up warehouse space. The Aurora was obviously treated roughly: It’s scratched and dented, has a big hole in the driver’s side door, and sits on a nearly flat left rear tire.

The Cadillac Aurora did at least get a brief post-show moment in the sun, when it was a bit player in the 1993 film Demolition Man, the Sylvester Stallone police pic that was set in the future. A photo posted on Imcdb.org shows the silver Cadillac Aurora, right down to its stylish custom wheels, in a background shot in the movie, and it does indeed look futuristic for the time.

And now, even with its haphazard placement in the junkyard, squeezed in next to a Buick LaCrosse and a Chevrolet Malibu, this show car still evokes an emotion: Sadness. But we guess you can’t save ‘em all.

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When we last left the saga of Elvis’ airplane, a 1962 Lockheed 1329 Jetstar that had been abandoned for decades at a New Mexico airport, it had been auctioned off for a gavel price of $260,000 at the 2023 Mecum auction in Kissimmee, Florida. The new owner disassembled it, loaded it on a huge flatbed trailer, and the plane, in pieces, headed for a warehouse in Plant City, Florida.

You may be interested in what has happened since.

To recap: YouTube personality James Webb, responsible for the Jimmy’s World video channel, was the unlikely buyer. Jimmy’s World typically shows Webb searching out long-abandoned airplanes, buying them, fixing them up and flying them. Usually. There have been a few failures. If this sounds like too much inside-aviation, it really isn’t; Webb’s eccentric sense of humor and a near-childlike fascination for his online mission propels Jimmy’s World into the mainstream—he has 463,000 subscribers.

Webb typically rescues small single- or twin-engine Cessnas and Pipers, along with the occasional MiG 15. But when he learned that a 60-foot-long, 42,500-pound business jet once owned by Elvis Presley was up for auction about two hours from his home in Tampa at Mecum Kissimmee, he was interested. He noted that a startling number of people watched a short pre-auction video that Mecum posted about the jet. “I thought if that video can find a big audience, it might be something I should look at.”

So he registered as a bidder, and drove to Kissimmee. That was January 8, 2023. He had $100,000 to spend. Mecum wisely hadn’t provided an estimate of the value of the dilapidated plane, but in 2018, for one of two previous unsuccessful attempts to sell the Jetstar, GSW Auctions estimated the value at between $2 million and $3.5 million. The other auction was in 2008, when Kruse International said it was worth between $700,000 and $2 million. “I knew it wasn’t going to go for that kind of money,” Webb said. “There was no way.”

The atmosphere inside the auditorium at Osceola Heritage Park that day was a little surreal. It was Elvis’ birthday, and Mecum had arranged for Elvis’ widow, Priscilla, to appear. She gave bidders a pep talk, urging high bids to honor Elvis on what would have been his 88th birthday. Minutes later she was hawking Cilla, her brand of skin serum, selling on the premises for $75 a bottle. Elvis’ jet, of course, was not on the premises, and the buyer would be responsible for moving it.

Webb started the bidding at $50,000, “and it immediately went to $150,000. It sort of stumbled around until it went over $200,000.” Webb kept bidding, up to $230,000, unsure where he’d get that extra $130,000, but he’d worry about that later. But when bidding reached $260,000, Webb bowed out. A telephone bidder had won the plane. “So I walked away. My emotions were all over the place.”

An hour into his drive home, his cell phone rang. It was a Mecum executive. “He said, ‘Hey, the phone bidder backed out, do you want it?’ And I told him sure, for the right price.” Negotiations ensued, until the Mecum employee mentioned that they’d have to cut the seller a check for $234,000. The call ended.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Dana Mecum, the auction house’s founder and president, trying to save the deal. “I told him that I was willing to spend $100,000 on the plane. I said, ‘If you’re willing to carry the rest of it, I’ll give you the hundred thousand and I’ll buy it for $234,000, but you’re going to have to finance it, and give me some time to pay it back.’ And he said, ‘Yep, done.’ That way they saved face—they sold the Elvis jet!—and I was able to get my terms on the financing for my business.”

Wait, what is his business, exactly?

It’s all YouTube, producing at least one airplane video a week, usually more. Webb only got his pilot’s license in 2020, during the pandemic, primarily so he could fly up to Jacksonville once a month, where he had to report as a member of the Florida Air National Guard. The drive is almost five hours one way, but it’s a one-hour flight. Webb bought a Piper Cherokee 180, sight unseen: “I had never even sat in a little airplane before.” He took his training in the Piper. Aviation gas was “crazy cheap” during the pandemic, he said. “I was flying three, four, five times a week.”

He was far more taken with flying and airplanes than he expected to be. He bought his first zombie airplane, planning to fix it up and flip it, something he’d done with classic cars. “I took a video of me, not thinking anything of it—‘Hey, if you want to see me go bankrupt fixing up old airplanes, stay tuned!’—and people seemed to like it. That video led to another one, then another, but I still never thought anything about it. That was in January of 2021.”

Shortly after, Webb was trying to decide what to do to earn some money. He had a roofing and construction company when he lived in Colorado. The company had grown dramatically after a promotion in which he offered customers an AR-15 rifle with each new roof. He changed the name of his company from Weather Proof Roofing to GetaRoofGetaGun.com. Business boomed. He sold his company and moved his family of five to Florida to be near beaches and close relatives.

Then, in May of 2021, “I was having dinner with a guy who was running a big podcasting convention. I was looking for another business to buy, trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up, and I told him I had poked around and put a few videos on YouTube. He looked at them and said, ‘Forget trying to find another business, you need to focus on YouTube.’ Never in a million years did I think somebody could make an actual living doing that stuff. I thought YouTube was just cat videos and pranks.”

Initially, Webb gave it six months to make a profit. “In the first month I took it seriously, worked at it, and it brought in decent money. The next month it doubled, and it doubled again the third month, and it doubled again the fourth month. I thought, ‘Holy cow! Maybe there is something to this.’”

There was indeed, but not enough to live on and still pay the note on the $130,000 he had borrowed on the derelict Jetstar. But he wasn’t worried. “I don’t have a quarter of a million bucks to dump on something without a plan to make money on it. This was a business investment.”

The plan was never to get Elvis’ plane back in the air—it was simply too far gone. Among the missing parts were its four engines, probably Pratt & Whitney JT12s or Garrett 731s turbofans, and either would be expensive to replace. And even if he could find them, they are too loud to pass the FAA’s current sound requirements.

One of Webb’s multiple videos that was shot at the Roswell, New Mexico airport, where the Jetstar was parked, featured two aviation experts from Aero Design, an engineering company, who, for fun, added up what it would take to get the 62-year-old jet flying again. Their total was $5.7 million.

So Webb announced he would mount the plane’s fuselage on a truck chassis, and turn it into an RV. Like his AR-15 promotion, that received its share of publicity, too, including a story in the New York Post titled, “YouTuber ‘destroys’ Elvis’ private jet to turn it into a motorhome.” Judging from the reaction, the idea was not unanimously well-received. “To cut up a piece of history to make money is insane and selfish!” wrote one Post commenter.

“I’ve learned that you either love the idea, because it’s so crazy, or you hate it because I’m destroying a piece of Elvis history,” Webb said. “I haven’t found too many people in between. But plenty like the fact that I’m at least doing something with it, otherwise it would have continued to sit outside and rot away, and eventually be chopped up and sent to the grinder. Doing it this way, I get to tour the country, and hopefully bring it to tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people. I think that would be fantastic.”

And to pay off the loan, Webb is carving up parts of the plane’s exterior—such as the wings and outboard fuel tanks, for which he has no need—“into collectible medallions, each one serial-numbered.” The oval medallions come with a certificate of authenticity, a photo of the plane (when it was in one piece), and a copy of the airplane’s bill of sale. “We’ve sold just under 500 of them, which is really great, especially at the price point, because they’re not cheap, 300-something and 500-something dollars,” Webb said. “But this is all that will ever be made, based on how much material we have.

“We have to sell a thousand of them to break even on the entire project. Less than a year in and we’ve already sold half, so that’s a pretty good return. I think more of them will sell when we get the RV done and it goes on the road.” The less expensive version of the medallion, at $329, is offered on Webb’s website.

It should be noted that Elvis never actually flew on this Jetstar, unlike another Jetstar (the “Hound Dog II”) and a big 1958 Convair 880 (the “Lisa Marie”) that are on permanent display at Graceland, Elvis’ tourist-attraction mansion in Memphis. The bill of sale, to Elvis from Omni Aircraft Sales for $840,000, was signed on December 22, 1976. Elvis died on August 16, 1977. The Jetstar in question was sold that year, and had several more owners before it was dumped in Roswell.

Proving how far Webb will go out of his way for a video: As the Jetstar was being ferried from New Mexico to Florida, Webb talked Tim, the hired truck driver, into detouring to Memphis. The enormous rig steered into a parking lot at Graceland where Elvis’ other two planes are parked. “It was the first time all three of his airplanes have been in the same place, at the same time,” Webb said. “Of course we didn’t have permission, and Graceland security went nuts. I thought it would be a neat thing to have them all together, but they didn’t see it that way.” (“You want to pay to park?” asked a security guard on the video. “It’s gonna be $15.”)

Meanwhile, the plan to put the Jetstar RV on the road is progressing. The project is located in a warehouse at the end of a dirt road outside Plant City, 23 miles east of Tampa. Webb and his small crew, which is mostly a helper named Grizzly, acquired a moldy 38-foot motorhome, a Coachmen Class A diesel “pusher,” meaning the Cummins engine is in the rear. The body was removed by an enormous diesel fork lift.

The remaining chassis needed some repair. “We changed out some suspension parts, fixed the brakes—the motor and transmission were about all that worked on it. It was not usable as a motorhome, but ironically, it is the perfect size for this. You talk about serendipity.”

As for the Jetstar, it may look like junk—or souvenirs—on the outside, but it’s remarkably well-preserved inside, especially the red velvet upholstery on the couch and six seats. That amazed Webb. “You’d think that after all that time sitting in the desert sun, this would have turned to dust,” he said. “It’s the best part of the airplane.” Even the entertainment system is in place, including the VCR.

As daunting as all this sounds, Webb didn’t go into the airplane-RV combination effort completely blind. Gino Lucci, an airplane parts broker in Nashville, Michigan, mounted the fuselage of a vintage DC-3 on an International truck chassis and turned it into a handsome RV. “Before I even went to bid on this plane, I called Gino. I said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about doing this—how hard was it to do what you did?’” Lucci said Webb’s plan was definitely in the realm of possibility, and told Webb that he even considered using a Jetstar for his own RV before he found the abandoned DC-3 sitting on its belly in a field in Missouri. With that, Webb proceeded on the path that led him here, working in an un-air-conditioned warehouse in Florida’s unseasonably hot May.

Webb isn’t entirely sure what it will take to get the vehicle registered and insured. “My understanding is that since this is already tagged and titled as a 1999 Freightliner motorhome, that should carry over. I just have to make sure it has all the safety equipment—lights, horn, brake lights, that kind of thing. And it’s privately owned, it’s not a commercial vehicle, it’s not for hire. And it still has a working bathroom. Ironically, that was one of the weird things—in order for it to be considered a recreational vehicle, it has to have a working bathroom.”

Webb set a tight deadline to finish his RV: He announced on another aviation YouTube channel named Taking Off that he plans to debut the Elvis motorhome at the huge Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which is July 22–28. The vehicle presently moves under its own power—“The most sketchiest thing I’ve ever driven in my life,” Webb says on the inevitable video—but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

And once he’s finished, “I really have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it. Some Elvis impersonators have contacted me about taking it on the road for their tours,” Webb said. “That sounds about as good as anything.”

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What’s a company like Cadillac doing in sports car racing?

Winning, mostly.

Since Cadillac joined the International Motor Sports Association series in 2017 in the top prototype class, it has earned four championships and won the Rolex 24 at Daytona four times. 

But changes have come to sports car racing—In 2023, IMSA introduced a total redesign of the cars eligible to compete in its premiere GTP class, including a new body, chassis, and revolutionary hybrid power.

An added incentive came with that new GTP package: The specifications for IMSA’s fastest class meant that the cars were now eligible to enter the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most prestigious sports car race in the world. Manufacturers from all over the globe come to Le Mans each June to compete, and Cadillac received three invitations to enter the 2023 race, celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the event. Three teams were dispatched to France to race the Cadillac V-Series.R in the Hypercar class.

A documentary team followed Cadillac as they embarked on their ambitious return to Le Mans, and the result is “No Perfect Formula,” which premieres May 31 at 7 p.m. EST, on the Hagerty channel 1194 on the Samsung TV Plus app on Samsung Smart TVs, Galaxy Devices, and on the web. Global audiences can view the documentary on Hagerty’s Facebook page.

Want a sneak peek? You can view the official trailer for “No Perfect Formula” below.

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Frank Stella, the abstract painter and sculptor who was the second artist after Alexander Calder to design a BMW Art Car, died Saturday at age 87. The New York Times said that Stella had been battling lymphoma.

Stella loved racing—both automobiles and horses—and had many friends in both communities. His 1976 contribution to the BMW Art Car Project was a white BMW 3.0 CSL overlaid entirely by small black checkers, resembling graph paper. Over that base he painted thin geometric outlines in black. The car, driven by Brian Redman and Peter Gregg, raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but didn’t finish the race due to an oil leak in hour five.

Stella also designed the exterior of an “unofficial” art car—it is not considered one of the official works commissioned by BMW—in 1979 at the invitation of his friend Gregg, the sports-car racer who had a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and five victories at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Gregg bought a BMW M1 Procar, used in the one-make racing series created by the automaker, and had Stella paint it. The car was displayed in the Guggenheim Museum.

Stella considered the M1 part of his “Polar Coordinates for Ronnie Peterson” series, which he created to commemorate his friend Peterson, the Formula 1 driver who died in a crash at the 1978 Italian Grand Prix, when his Lotus collided with the car of James Hunt. Gregg and Stella, who often traveled to races together, were present at the Grand Prix to watch Peterson and his Lotus teammate, Mario Andretti.

Stella was the passenger in a car driven by Gregg in 1980 en route to the Le Mans circuit when they collided with an oncoming car outside Paris. Both were injured but recovered, but there was damage to Gregg’s vision, which never improved and ended his racing. Seven months later, Gregg took his own life.

Stella was considered a major contributor to the freewheeling abstract expressionism movement that began after World War II, swirling around mostly in the art community of New York City, where Stella lived. In its definition of abstract expression, the Guggenheim points to Jackson Pollock as the movement’s leading artist, “who placed his canvases on the floor to pour, drip, and splatter paint onto them and to work on them from all sides, which set him apart from the tradition of vertical easel painting.”

Stella’s “Black Paintings” are his most famous work. They consist of mostly geometric shapes on a white canvas, using black paint.

“Stella was courtly, charismatic and formidable,” wrote Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee, in Stella’s obituary. “Even when he wasn’t speaking, a terrific intelligence came off him like steam.”

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Aston Martin has a 25-year tradition of powering its flagship model with a V-12 engine, and apparently that will continue. The British manufacturer has released some details about a new twin-turbocharged V-12 that will debut in Aston’s upcoming flagship, which apparently will be called the Vanquish, reviving a name first used 23 years ago.

The new engine, Aston says, pumps out 824 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque. That’s 64 more horses than you’ll find in the company’s most powerful current V-12, used in the limited-edition DBS 770 Ultimate. ”One last tour before extinction,” says the Aston Martin website for the 770 Ultimate, so get it while you can. Actually, you can’t, at least from Aston: The 300 coupes and 199 convertibles Aston is producing are already sold.

The new V-12 uses a strengthened cylinder block and connecting rods, redesigned cylinder heads with new camshafts, plus new intake and exhaust ports. Spark plugs were repositioned, and there’s new higher flowrate fuel injectors.

“The V-12 engine has long been a symbol of power and prestige, but it is also a statement of engineering passion and technical prowess,” said Aston Martin chief technical officer Roberto Fedeli. “This unparalleled engine represents nothing less than the dawn of a dazzling new V-12 era for Aston Martin.”

The flagship that will be powered by the new V-12 apparently won’t be the Vanquish Vision Concept that the company displayed in March of 2019 at the Geneva Motor Show. That car, which Aston told us “previews the design language of Aston Martin’s first series production mid-engine supercar,” has apparently been shelved, along with its planned V-6 turbocharged hybrid engine. The upcoming Vanquish, we hear, will be a conventional front-engine, rear-wheel-drive GT car. It’s expected to break ground later this year.

It’s likely no coincidence that word of the new V-12, and its accompanying mention that a fresh flagship model is on the way, arrives about the same time Aston Martin’s first-quarter financial report was released. It shows that Aston, according to Reuters, “made fewer cars and burned more cash than analysts anticipated, sending its shares 7 percent lower.”

In fairness, that reflects in part the downtime required to change over from one model to the next, as Aston has been busy building new or freshened models this year. According to Motor Trend, by the end of this year, “Aston Martin will have on sale four models that will have been redesigned or heavily refreshed in the previous 18 months.”

“Our first-quarter performance reflects this expected period of transition,” Aston chairman Lawrence Stroll said. According to Forbes, fashion mogul Stroll has a personal net worth of $3.9 billion; with that Aston Martin the car builder, and Aston Martin the Formula 1 team, should be on firm ground, though it’s rumored he’d like to sell 25 percent of the latter.

Regardless, we can’t wait to see what Stroll has up his sleeve for Aston Martin, both in the showroom and on the track.

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It’s official: Adrian Newey is leaving the Red Bull Formula 1 team next year to do—what? Now that he has made his departure formal, that’s the big question: Where will the greatest engineering mind in F1 go next?

According to Red Bull, Newey will pack up and go sometime in the first quarter of 2025. Newey is not a job-hopper—he has spent 19 years at Red Bull and has presided over up and downs, with substantially more triumphs than disappointments. Since he joined the team in 2006, Red Bull has won seven F1 Drivers’ and six Constructors’ Championship titles, with 118 race victories and 101 poles. There’s no question Red Bull driver Max Verstappen is a genius behind the wheel, but an unknown percentage of his winning equation is that he is driving an Adrian Newey car.

Until he leaves, Newey, Red Bull says, will focus his attention on the two-seat, 1100-horsepower hybrid RB17 track-only hypercar that Red Bull is developing. Production is expected to begin for 50 well-heeled customers in 2025. Reportedly, the car’s price will be about $6.4 million. “The final stages of development of RB17 are upon us,” Newey said in a statement, “so for the remainder of my time with the team my focus will lie there.”

After that, the motorsports world is Newey’s oyster. Every F1 team on the grid would love to have him, and some heavy hitters have made it known that they’d be willing to pay him big bucks for a contract. At the top of the list is Ferrari, which would be delighted to pair Newey with the newly hired Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time champion hoping to reinvigorate his career.

Not far behind Ferrari in the Newey lottery is Mercedes, which is on its own rebuilding program after losing Hamilton to Ferrari. And then there’s the perennially rebuilding Aston Martin, helmed by the uber-wealthy Lawrence Stroll, who, like Ferrari, has ostensibly made Newey an offer.

Somewhat less likely is that Newey, 65, would simply hang up his calipers and retire, a suggestion bolstered by the news that he has special-ordered a sumptuous yacht. Or, given the obvious pleasure Newey has taken in designing the world-beating RB17, there’s a chance that he could sign with an automobile manufacturer to build more road-going vehicles.

If you take one of his departing statements literally—“I feel now is an opportune moment to hand that baton over to others and to seek new challenges for myself,” he said—retirement doesn’t seem to be in the cards quite yet.

The smart money seems to be on Ferrari. Joining them in early to mid-2025 would arguably put him there too late to have much of an impact on the 2026 F1 car, which will be built under a new set of regulations, but he may be there in time to leave some famous Newey fingerprints on the car.

The F1 community waits with bated breath.

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The new-for-2023 Subaru Solterra, the company’s only electric vehicle, practically had “first effort” written all over it. Essentially a kissing cousin to Toyota’s first electric, the bZ4X (arguably the worst-named import since the Merkur XR4Ti), the Solterra SUV gave Subaru an electric toe to dip into the water, and claim its share of those $7500 federal tax credits.

An aside: That tax credit is applicable for leases only. Since the Solterra is built in Japan (65 percent Japanese parts, 35 percent Chinese, says our window sticker), the $7500 can’t apply towards purchase. The main difference between the bZX4 and the Solterra, by the way, is that the Toyota is offered in front-wheel-drive, and the Subaru is exclusively all-wheel-drive.

For 2024, the Subaru Solterra has enough updates to make it feel like a plucky second effort. Mainly, it charges more quickly: For 2023, Subaru said that on a DC fast charger, the battery could reach 80 percent capacity “in about an hour,” which lagged the competition. For 2024, it’s down to about 35 minutes. It can also charge, Subaru says, “significantly faster” in cold climates than the 2023 model.

Range is the same as in 2023, an estimated 228 miles from a full charge for base models with 18-inch tires and wheels, or 222 miles for models with 20-inchers, which includes this test vehicle. Our test Solterra was delivered with a 94 percent charge, which, said the dashboard, equated to 198 miles’ worth of juice. By comparison, Kia says the 2024 EV6 Wind e-AWD has an estimated range of 282 miles, and a combined 320 horsepower, which is 105 more than the Solterra, at a comparable base price to our test vehicle.

Size-wise, the Solterra measures out to match most of the competition. Length is 184.6 inches, one inch shorter than a Ford Mustang Mach-E. Width is 74.1 inches, a tenth of an inch wider than a Kia EV-6. The Subaru has 23.8 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seats in place, 63.5 cubic feet with the rear seatbacks folded down.

Inside, it’s roomy for four, a little tight for five. The interior has an upscale look and feel; the exterior styling is pretty busy and angular, but in the cockpit, the design is mostly conventional, aside from the new oval steering wheel. I like flat-bottomed steering wheels like this one—they make sliding into the driver’s seat easier.

In the middle, there’s a wide console, leading up to the 12.3-inch multifunction touchscreen. Instruments and controls, while not exactly intuitive, are reasonably easy to figure out. The sound system, a 576-watt, 11-speaker Harmon Kardon was just fine, but most premium stereos are consistently good nowadays.

Specs: 2024 Subaru Solterra Touring

• Base price/as tested: $44,995/$54,558
• Powertrain: Dual electric motors, one at the front axle and one at the rear, with a 96-cell, 72.8 kWh lithium-ion battery
• Combined Output: 215 hp; 249 lb-ft of torque
• Layout: All-wheel-drive, four-door, five-passenger SUV
• Estimated range at full charge: 222 miles
• 0-60 mph: 6.7 seconds
• Competitors: Toyota bZ4X, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Kia EV6

Outside, the design doesn’t look particularly like a member of the Subaru family. I kind of like it, but opting for the “Elemental Red Pearl” paint also gets you “Galactic Black” trim (the colors cost an extra $890, the peculiar names are free), plus those big charcoal arches over the front and rear wheels that sort of blend in with colors like gray or blue, but contrast loudly with the red. Not everyone was in favor of it. The bZ4X has the same plastic cladding—neither company tried very hard to differentiate the exterior styling. Nor the driving style, for that matter.

Being a Subaru, the company’s marketing does what it can to paint the Solterra as an off-roader, but that’s a stretch. Yes, it has 8.3 inches of ground clearance, but that’s barely more that the Toyota bZ4X’s 8.1 inches, and Toyota press materials make only a passing reference to “off-pavement exploration.” Both companies offer Snow/Dirt and Deep Snow/Mud settings, and Grip Control and Downhill Assist Control, both using the same name for all those self-explanatory settings, sort of unusual for two separate brands.

Another aside: In case you were wondering (I wasn’t, but maybe you are), the name Solterra “was created using the Latin words for ‘Sun’ and ‘Earth’ to represent Subaru’s commitment to deliver traditional SUV capabilities in an environmentally responsible package,” the company says. That’s likely one reason the comfortable seats were trimmed in polyurethane “StarTex,” which definitely isn’t leather. Base models use “cloth.” Helpfully, Subaru explains that polyurethane is “synthetic plastic,” presumably in comparison to plastic that grows wild in nature.

On the road, the Solterra, despite having just 215 total horsepower, has more punch than you’d expect, and our 0-60 mph time of 6.7 seconds isn’t bad. During quite a bit of local and highway driving, I never wanted for more power. That said, the base AWD Ford Mach-E comes with 266 horsepower, and Ford says the 0-60 mph time is 5.2 seconds. Not that owners are likely to drag-race either vehicle.

The Solterra handles nicely in town, but its long suit is its highway performance. The rather basic independent suspension—MacPherson struts and coil springs up front, double wishbones in the rear—offers a smooth ride on all but the most uneven pavement. The steering has a precise feel on-center, and doesn’t require continual adjustment to keep the Solterra going in a straight line.

I didn’t have the opportunity to comprehensively test out the Solterra’s off-road capability; the cow-trailing we did could have been mastered by a Ford Crown Victoria. I don’t doubt that the Subaru could handle some moderate obstacles, and it certainly has enough electronic assistants to help navigate a variety of surfaces. Before I tackled anything challenging, though, I’d want a more aggressive tire tread than what’s available on the Solterra.

The Solterra is offered in Premium, Limited and Touring trim, with Touring being the top of the line. Our Solterra was a Touring model, with a starting price of $51,995, a significant step up from the Premium’s $44,995. With freight ($1345) and a handful of small options, our test car listed for $54,558.

For that, you get about everything you’d want, from a panoramic moonroof to a 360-degree camera to the handsome alloy wheels, plus a long list of electronic safety features. Like the Subaru-Toyota marriage that birthed the successful Subaru BRZ and its near-twin, the Toyota GR86, this Solterra/bZ4X collaboration works very well.

2024 Subaru Solterra Touring

Price: $54,558

Highs: Upscale interior; excellent ride, especially on the highway; comfortable seats front and rear, best-in-class ground clearance.

Lows: Middling range and charging time, polarizing styling, pricey unless you just want an electric Subaru.

Takeaway: If you can live with the range and mediocre power, pretty much a viceless electric SUV with some moderate off-road chops.

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You may not be aware that history was made last weekend, but apparently quite a few techno-geeks did: It was the inaugural event of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League at the Yas Marina road course, with eight driverless formula cars from around the world competing, or trying to, as the event revealed that autonomous racing isn’t quite ready for prime time.

That said, the Autonomous Racing League claims that 10,000 spectators watched the event in person, while over 600,000 watched it online. Since the broadcast was more than three hours long, and the actual race was just eight laps among four cars, with two that actually finished, it took some stamina to watch the whole show.

That broadcast was decidedly of the rah-rah variety, including contributions from American broadcaster Amanda Busick, absent from her usual role as pit reporter for the NHRA drag racing. It was a “stupendous weekend!” for the Autonomous Racing League’s inaugural event, Busick posted on her Instagram account. “Hard to verbalize how professionally satisfying this experience was.”

Competing were modified versions of the Dallara Super Formula SF23 car, which is described in the press release as being “the fastest open-wheel race car in the world after Formula 1,” which is probably surprising to IndyCar given these SF23s are powered by a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine.

In one time-filling segment, former Formula 1 driver Daniil Kvyat raced against one of the autonomous cars, provided by the Technology Innovation Institute, and beat it by 10.38 seconds. That would normally be a substantial margin, but the Autonomous Racing League described it as “a narrow victory.”

There were multiple qualifying sessions, in which one autonomous car simply turned right into a barrier along a straightaway, and another car locked up all four wheels and braked to a dead stop as it approached a left-hand corner. “It appears to be a coding error,” we were told repeatedly when a car misbehaved.

By the time the eight-lap race was ready to run, only four cars made it to the starting line, and two of them seemed to disappear from the broadcast, as cameras concentrated on the race between TUM, the car entered by the Technical University of Munich, and an Italian entry named UNIMORE. TUM passed it on the last lap when UNIMORE simply stopped on the track, right in the racing line.

Still, the organizers were jubilant. Said H.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of the Advanced Technical Research Council: “Through the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League, we’ve sparked a race revolution … This event isn’t just a race; it’s a transformative moment where technology, imagination, and ambition converge.”

Much can be excused for an inaugural event of this sort: The technology, though unreliable, was impressive, and it’s easy to imagine it improving dramatically over the next few years. But the question remains: Can you get excited by a race with cars driven by AI instead of a person?

You can watch the three-hour, 12-minute Autonomous Racing League broadcast here.

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Complain about journalism in America if you want to, but compared to journalism in Europe, we are the arbiters of accuracy and fair play. That’s why it is so much fun to see what publications across the pond are saying about the apparent departure of Adrian Newey—the man who began working as an engineer and designer for Red Bull in 2006 and has guided the team to Formula 1 greatness. Driver Max Verstappen, undeniably, has aided his success.

According to the European F1 media, Newey is either leaving Red Bull tomorrow, or at the end of 2026, or someplace in between.

Regardless, there’s no question that Adrian Newey is Formula 1’s current prom queen, apparently being asked to the big dance by a variety of well-heeled suitors.

There’s Lawrence Stroll, head of Aston Martin, who reportedly (these Newey stories use the word “reportedly” a lot) offered Newey $100 million to leave Red Bull.

There’s Ferrari, which reportedly is willing to match Stroll’s offer to have Newey come to Maranello and reinvigorate the career of driver Lewis Hamilton.

And there’s Mercedes, which is the quietest of the key suitors, but there’s no question it would welcome Newey with open arms and an open checkbook.

Since Newey is 65, the subject of outright retirement has come up. What does he have left to prove?

A little background on Newey for readers who aren’t F1 geeks: In 1980, after he graduated from college, he began working in Formula 1 for the Fittipaldi Formula 1 team. The next year, he moved to March, and began designing race cars. His initial project was the March GTP car, which won the IMSA championship twice.

In 1984, he went to work on the March IndyCar. His design won the 1985 and 1986 IndyCar championship and the Indianapolis 500 both years. He returned to March’s F1 design team, but moved to Williams in 1991, where Newey’s star really began to rise. In 1992, Nigel Mansell drove Newey’s FW14 chassis to a constructor’s championship, Newey’s first of many.

His time with Williams ended in 1997; he departed with a solid record, though, of 59 wins for his cars, and four world championships.

Next up was a long stint with McLaren, from 1997 to 2005 with titles in 1998 and 1999, and very nearly in 2000. The later years were less productive, and Newey departed for Red Bull in 2006. His influence was felt early on, but the team did not become a genuine contender until 2009, with Red Bull finishing a close second in the constructor’s championship.

In 2010, Red Bull won the constructor’s championship with driver Sebastian Vettel. In 2011, Newey’s car took 18 of 19 pole positions, and won 12 races and the constructor’s championship. Repeat championships came in 2012 and 2013.

Starting in 2014, Newey’s car suffered from using Renault’s turbo V-6 engines, and it wasn’t until the 2019 switch to Honda power that the team became competitive; in 2020, Red Bull was second in the constructor’s championship.

In 2021, it all came together again. Newey’s design, paired with driver Max Verstappen, won the driver’s championship, and they’ve been dominant ever since. At this point in the season, Verstappen and team driver Sergio Perez lead the standings in driver’s points, and Red Bull leads Ferrari 195 points to 151 in the constructor’s standings.

So why would Newey want to leave Red Bull? Reportedly—there’s that word again—he is upset about the internal handling and investigation of a complaint lodged by a female employee against team principal Christian Horner for alleged inappropriate behavior. An internal inquiry dismissed the charge. Is that so upsetting to Newey that he would leave a place he was worked, with great success, for 18 years?

According to the European media, yes. Apparently Newey is under contract with Red Bull until the end of 2025, and there are multiple reports that there’s a 12-month no-compete stipulation included in that contract, so Newey wouldn’t really be available to work for a new employer until the 2027 season.

Yet “Wow! Adrian Newey is reportedly leaving Red Bull,” reads the headline on Top Gear. And “Red Bull stunned by shock news F1’s top designer Adrian Newey to leave,” in The Guardian. And “F1 rumor: Adrian Newey decides to leave Red Bull ahead of formal resignation.”

Oops, that headline is from Sports Illustrated.

Regardless, the F1 media must have some sort of soap opera underway 12 months out of the year, and it’s Adrian Newey’s turn under the microscope now. No one denies that his departure, imminent or otherwise, is Big News in racing, but until he decides his next move, it’s just fodder for dozens of talented headline writers.

Stay tuned, bloke.

***

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Motorsports has long been a high-stakes industry, backed by major auto manufacturers and underwritten by hundreds of corporations, some of them Fortune 500 companies. But despite ever-rising levels of professionalism, cheating still occurs on the highest levels.

How that cheating is treated by the major sanctioning bodies, though, differs. Minor infractions are typically addressed promptly, with a loss of finishing position, a fine, or a points penalty, or all three. When a major infraction occurs—well, that’s where it gets interesting.

For years—decades, actually—NASCAR maintained a tacit policy of allowing winners that did not pass post-race technical inspection to keep the win, sometimes despite rather egregious violations. Example: The 1983 Miller High Life 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which was won by Richard Petty.

In post-race inspection, it was found that Petty’s car had left-side tires installed on the right side of the car, which supposedly gave the car an illegal advantage. But worse, after tearing down the engine, it was found that the V-8 in Petty’s Pontiac measured out to nearly 382 cubic inches. NASCAR’s limit was, and is, 358 cubic inches.

NASCAR officials met for three hours and determined that Petty should be fined $35,000 and docked 104 points, but he would be allowed to retain the win. The decision was in keeping with NASCAR’s unspoken opinion that fans should be able to go home Sunday knowing who the winner of the race was, and not learn that he had been disqualified in Monday’s newspaper.

It was not always that way. In NASCAR’s very first race, apparent winner Glenn Dunaway was stripped of the victory after officials found illegal rear springs on his Ford. The win was given to the car that came in second, Jim Roper.

That was in 1949. Between then and 1960, NASCAR took the wins away from seven drivers for violations that ranged from a fuel tank that was too big, to illegal cylinder heads.

It was not until July of 2022 that NASCAR would strip another Cup series winner of a victory, when Denny Hamlin, driving a Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, was disqualified from the M&Ms 400 at Pocono Raceway for having a front spoiler that had been bolstered by illegal tape. Kyle Busch, who finished second, was also disqualified. His Joe Gibbs Toyota had the same tape treatment. This gave the win to Chase Elliott, who had finished third.

We mention this because on Tuesday, IndyCar took away Josef Newgarden’s win in the 2024 season opener at St. Petersburg. Scott McLaughlin, who finished third, was also disqualified. Both drive for Team Penske, owned by Roger Penske, who also owns the IndyCar series as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Very disappointing,” Penske told the Associated Press. “Very embarrassing.”

The gutsy call was made by IndyCar President Jay Frye after it was found that Team Penske had manipulated the “push to pass,” or PTP, system that allows drivers, under certain circumstances, to push a button and get a 50-horsepower boost from the turbocharged engine. The gimmick, similar to what Formula 1 uses, is supposed to make the racing more interesting.

The problem in St. Petersburg was that PTP cannot be used on starts and restarts. In fact, the PTP system is literally disabled then by IndyCar. But somehow, the Penske Chevrolets had managed to enable the system, and Newgarden, the reigning Indianapolis 500 champion, and McLaughlin used it. Teammate Will Power did not, and IndyCar just fined him 10 points and allowed him to keep his fourth-place finish. Pato O’Ward, who drives for Arrow McLaren, was elevated from second to first place.

So how did the Penske team circumvent the PTP shutoff? In a statement, Team Penske President Tim Cindric said that the “push-to-pass software was not removed as it should have been, following recently completed hybrid testing in the Team Penske Indy cars.

“This software allowed for push-to-pass to be deployed during restarts at the St. Petersburg Grand Prix race, when it should not have been permitted,” said Cindric, regarded as Roger Penske’s right-hand man. “The car driven by Josef Newgarden and the car driven by Scott McLaughlin both deployed push-to-pass on a restart, which violated IndyCar rules. Team Penske accepts the penalties applied by IndyCar.”

Also interesting is that it took 45 days for IndyCar to bust Penske. That’s because they didn’t find out about the breach until a practice session for last Sunday’s race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. IndyCar did not activate the electronic PTP system during the early part of the session, but noticed that it was activated in three of the 27 cars on the grid—the three Penske cars. An immediate investigation followed. Two days later, the Penske penalties were announced.

According to Racer, the PTP system is activated under all circumstances when there is a test of the hybrid system on IndyCars. Cindric said that by mistake, PTP software left on his cars after the hybrid test was not removed. They have the option to protest the penalties, but instead are pleading guilty.

It is reminiscent of the last major motorsports cheating scandal, which occurred at the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona, the opening race of the season for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The cars race on Michelin tires, and in the then-new GTP class, the tire company suggests a minimum tire pressure. When a GTP car’s tires fall below that minimum, it is electronically broadcast to IMSA’s race control. As a penalty, IMSA requires the car to drive slowly through the pits while the race is on.

But for the winning car, the Meyer Shank Acura, the team managed to jam the telemetry that broadcast the low-pressure message back to IMSA, presumably allowing them to lower their tire pressures, which is a distinct performance advantage. It appears Meyer Shank, which was celebrating its second straight Rolex 24 victory, may have been ratted out by a competitor, who reported it to Honda Performance Development, which reported it to IMSA. The sanctioning body investigated and found it was true. It took six weeks.

In a controversial move, IMSA, which is owned by NASCAR, did not take the win away from the Meyer Shank Acura, but chose to penalize the team heavily with a loss of points earned, a fine of $50,000 and the loss of the winner’s purse, an amount that IMSA has not disclosed. Acura pulled its sponsorship of the Meyer Shank team, taking it to the other Acura team, Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti, which is now fielding two cars instead of one for 2024.

Does it pay to cheat? Not when you get caught. But that’s the only time in racing we learn who’s really breaking the rules.

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April 17 marked sixty years since the Ford Mustang’s public debut at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The original pony car immediately became a pop-culture and automotive phenom, and it remains one of the most impactful cars in history. Click here to follow along with our multi-week 60 Years of Mustang coverage. -Ed.

The world’s fastest Mustang lined up on the far left at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, one of two drag strips in the country configured to race four cars at once. Besides Bob Tasca’s Ford, there was Austin Prock’s Chevrolet, Matt Hagan’s Dodge, and Ron Capps’ Toyota—every brand that races in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Funny Car class.

For Tasca, it was a point of honor to beat the other three manufacturers. Tasca Automotive Group was founded in 1943 by Bob Tasca, Sr., and in 1953 he opened the original Tasca Ford in Bristol, Rhode Island. Just one year later, this dealership was destroyed by Hurricane Carol. Bob Sr. ultimately opened up the new Tasca Ford in East Providence, Rhode Island.

It was here in the 1960s that Bob Sr. and his team became the second largest Ford dealership in the world. This was also the birthplace of the Tasca Racing program and multiple historic muscle cars such as the Ford Cobra Jet, the Tasca Street Boss, and the Mystery race cars. Bob Tasca III carries on the Ford racing tradition, working at the family dealership when he isn’t at the track.

On the afternoon of April 14, those four cars lined up on The Strip. The starting lights flashed, and Tasca was off first, with a 0.34-second reaction time. Even though his top speed of 329.75 mph was only second-quickest to Capps’ 333.00, his quick reaction time was enough to get Tasca’s Mustang to the finish line first. It was Tasca’s first win of 2024.

“When you put together a final round where there’s one Ford, one Dodge, one Toyota, one Chevy, that is why we do it,” Tasca said. “It’s the only reason we come out here to win for all our Ford fans all around the world. That’s going to go down as one of the best final rounds in Funny Car history.”

But it wasn’t in NHRA competition where Tasca earned the honorary “world’s fastest Mustang” title. Since Tasca’s 341.68 mph record run didn’t come at an NHRA event, the sanctioning body still recognizes Robert Hight’s 339.87 mph mark, set at Sonoma Raceway in 2017, driving a Chevrolet Camaro SS.

Where Tasca made history was at Bradenton Motorsports Park, located in Manatee County, Florida, about an hour south of Tampa. Founded in 1974, it’s a quarter-mile asphalt drag strip and considered one of the nicest, most competitive grassroots strips in the country.

Though it may not host any major NHRA races, the Bradenton track held the inaugural PRO Superstar Shootout last February 8–10, an independent competition with a $1.3 million purse, making it the richest drag racing event in history.

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A post shared by Bob Tasca III (@tasca3)

As you would expect, the three-day show attracted the top professional drag racers in the country, including regulars on the NHRA circuit in the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes, which race from a standing start to 1000 feet. With speeds well over 300 mph, the Top Fuel and Funny Cars used to race the full quarter-mile—1320 feet—but some drag strips don’t have enough real estate in the shut-down area for the cars to come to a safe stop.

The official distance was shortened to 1000 feet in 2008, following the death of racer Scott Kalitta after his engine blew during a qualifying run in Englishtown, New Jersey. His Toyota Solara Funny Car’s twin parachutes were damaged by the explosion, and Kalitta’s car vaulted a concrete retaining wall at the end of the strip and hit a steel post, and then a piece of heavy equipment. Kalitta, 46, died as the result of blunt trauma injuries.

It was thought at the time that trimming the competition distance by 320 feet likely meant that Top Fuel and Funny Car records would be frozen, as it would be impossible to go faster in 1000 feet than the cars had gone in 1320. That logic sold short the ingenuity of drag racing crew chiefs and Goodyear, and many major quarter-mile records have been eclipsed by runs on 1000-foot tracks. That includes the world’s fastest Mustang.

Which brings us back to Bradenton.

A perfect run for a nitro-powered Top Fuel or Funny Car is dependent on so many factors: Track preparation, temperature, dew point, prevailing wind, and, of course, the driver’s ability to launch the 12,000-horsepower car and keep it in the dead center of the lane. Worth noting is that the record is for “wheel-driven” cars, which leaves out the handful of jet-powered dragsters out there.

There was something in the air on opening night for the PRO Shootout, a Thursday; it was obvious to the veterans there that the atmospheric conditions were right. Multiple cars had easily topped 330 mph, and fans were speculating which of the rear-engine Top Fuel cars, which are typically a bit faster than the front-engine, full-bodied Funny Cars, would go the fastest.

So it was a bit of a surprise when Funny Car driver Tasca went 339.87 mph in his PPG-sponsored Ford Mustang Dark Horse that Thursday at Bradenton. And it was even more of a surprise when Tasca came back Friday night and went 341.68 mph.

That’s not only a record for Funny Cars and Ford Mustangs—it was the fastest pass in the history of drag racing.

That it happened at a little country track in Florida, and not at one of the major NHRA events at a premiere facility, shocked everyone.

But there’s no argument that it is legitimate, and it makes his car the world’s fastest Mustang. Of course, it’s lost on no one that there are very few parts on Tasca’s car that would fit on a stock Ford Mustang Dark Horse, but that’s to be expected by any vehicle that can go over 340 mph in 1000 feet. That said, Tasca credited Ford Performance for his record pass. “Their support and Ford’s aerodynamic and engineering expertise were crucial in breaking the 340-mph barrier,” Tasca said.

Of course, Tasca, 48, would like to set the NHRA record, but in his opinion, it’s a done deal already. “Now, doing it officially at an NHRA national event, I’d love to do it, but it’s already been done, and I’ve made this point very clear to everyone who’s asked me. It’s already been done,” Tasca told Autoweek. “Whoever does it is going to do it for the second time, not the first time. The first time at a national event, I’d love to do it—but we already did it.”

Tasca went on to say that the next big milestone, 350 mph, probably won’t happen in his lifetime. After all, Tony Schumacher broke the 330-mph barrier in 1999, and it has taken 25 years to creep up to 340.

Regardless of whether it is “official” by NHRA standards, Bob Tasca III did it in the world’s fastest Mustang.

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For five months—6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week—Derek Drinkwater’s life was consumed by a race car that competed only once, in the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it finished a middling eleventh. Drinkwater could never own it: It’s worth too much money, and happily resides in a museum in Naples, Florida, while Drinkwater and his wife, Pat, live in Chiddingfold, England, where he wears several hats—a truck mechanic, a caterer, a race car driver, a popular television host.

The car he’s so taken with is called Le Monstre, French for “the monster,” so named by fans and the media at Le Mans, because the car’s styling is somewhere between cartoonish and hideous.

If Drinkwater couldn’t have the monster, he’d just build one. He told Pat that he’d be eating in the garage for a while. She begged him not to do it. “I have to get it out of my system,” he told her.

It’s all the fault of Briggs Swift Cunningham II, who was the sort of man who could make the average Joe feel good about millionaires. Born in 1907, family money funneled into Cunningham’s bank account from a variety of sources: A growing company named Procter and Gamble, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Citizen’s National Bank, the meat packing industry and multiple other businesses. And this was before he married Lucie Bedford, granddaughter of the founder of Standard Oil.

Cunningham didn’t smoke or drink or carry on like the rich people in The Great Gatsby. He preferred to spend his money in competition: He built a boat and sailed it to victory in the 1958 America’s Cup, and—along with college chums he met at Yale, brothers Miles and Sam Collier—he built and raced cars.

Cunningham was already an established racer when a pair of entries for the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans fell into his lap. You’d think he would just buy a pair of Ferraris or Talbot-Lagos, but Cunningham was different: If he was going to France, he wanted to take something American.

But what? Cadillac was building a potent 5.4-liter, 160-horsepower V-8; stuff that into a short-wheelbase Cadillac Series 61 two-door, and at least you’d have something that might go the distance.

That wasn’t quite enough for Cunningham and his cohorts: Sure, they sent a stock-appearing Series 61 with an auxiliary 35-gallon fuel tank and twin carburetors as one entry, but for the second, Cunningham noticed the rule book said modifications to the body were allowed. He removed the steel body completely and had an engineer at Grumman Aircraft design something in aluminum that would be lighter and more aerodynamic. It looked like a bar of Procter and Gamble soap. The French dubbed it “Le Monstre.”

Technical inspectors at Le Mans scrutinized Le Monstre, rule book in one hand, fine-toothed comb in the other. No, the rules didn’t say you could replace the entire body, but they didn’t say you couldn’t. It was judged legal. Cunningham, along with tuner Phil Walters, drove Le Monstre. The Collier brothers drove the other Cadillac, which the French were calling “Petit Pataud,” which translates to “Little Clumsy.”

Little Clumsy finished tenth, while Le Monstre was 11th, a victim of Cunningham stuffing the car into a sand bank early on in the race. It took him about a half-hour to dig the car out by hand.

For some reason, all this resonated with Derek Drinkwater, who usually works on and sells Diamond T trucks, known mostly for the rugged six-wheel vehicles built for use by the military in World War II. He uses vintage trucks in his high-profile catering business, and he also appears on several auto-related TV shows.

This may not be the first time he has been obsessed with a famous vehicle: He was profiled in a documentary about director Steven Spielberg’s first film, the low-budget, made-for-TV Duel, about a sinister Peterbilt truck that chases a hapless traveling salesman (Dennis Weaver) driving a Plymouth Valiant. In the documentary, titled The Devil on Wheels, Drinkwater says he “fell in love” with the 1971 movie. He found a vintage Peterbilt attached to a tanker like the one in Duel, bought it on eBay, drove it 2700 miles from Portland to Houston, put it on a boat and had it sent on a four-week cruise to England.

So maybe spending five months building a replica of a car that raced once, years before Drinkwater was born, is not that out of character. After all, he had already built and raced a Cadillac like Little Clumsy, but that wasn’t enough.

It was Pat who actually got the ball rolling: She located a short-wheelbase 1950 Cadillac in Arizona. “We bought that and used its chassis,” Drinkwater said. It would not be easy. Le Monstre and Little Clumsy both remained in Cunningham’s considerable car collection, along with subsequent Cunningham-built cars, many with Cadillac engines. That collection fell into the hands of Miles C. Collier, son of Cunningham’s Yale friend and Le Mans team driver, who houses the collection at the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida. The Revs Institute was of great value to Drinkwater, supplying all sorts of photos and measurements of Le Monstre.

But what they didn’t have was any sort of blueprint. So Drinkwater built a big projector and a huge screen, on which he projected a life-sized side photograph of Le Monstre. He outlined the entire car on the screen, matching the appropriate measurements, and effectively made his own blueprint of the car he would build.

Gradually it took shape. Inside, it used the same Cadillac V-8 engine, down to Le Monstre’s odd five-carburetor fuel system with a Carter carb in the middle, surrounded by four Holleys. The same three-on-the-tree shifter and transmission that, incidentally, made downshifting for sharp turns at Daytona a challenge. The same drum brakes. Drinkwater resisted the urge to update the suspension.

Outside, Drinkwater formed the aluminum panels himself, which he admits is not his specialty. The panels were affixed to a tubing framework by airplane-style Dzus fasteners. Rear lights, like the original, come from a 1948 Ford. The factory Cadillac steering wheel was replaced. A small engraved plate placed on Le Monstre’s dashboard, just left of that steering wheel, read “Custom built by Frick-Tappet Motors Inc.,” of Long Island, New York. A nearly identical plate in Drinkwater’s car reads, “Custom built by Derek Drinkwater Motors Inc.” of Chiddingfold, England. The car was painted white with a big blue stripe down the middle, which was a Cunningham staple.

On Facebook, a growing number of people watched Drinkwater’s build take place. He let it be known that he was in search of a special gauge like one used on Le Monstre: Two people responded. The first guy had one he’d sell Drinkwater for $3000. The other guy also had one. He wrote, “I’ve been following you on Facebook. You can have it for what I paid for it 20-odd years ago: $200. I’m honored to be part of the build.”

Drinkwater finished his monster in 2018, and began driving it at some racetracks in Europe, including Brands Hatch and at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. He also raced it at Le Mans, in the Le Mans Classic, a series for vintage cars.

At Goodwood, both the original Le Monstre and Drinkwater’s tribute car showed up, and he had the opportunity to compare them side by side. The tunnel behind the driver’s head, containing the roll bar, is two inches taller and wider than the original, because, Drinkwater said, that’s what the rules require now. And the white on Le Monstre’s body has turned to more of a cream color, likely due to age. Otherwise, they appear to have emerged from the same factory.

Last November, he drove his car at the Classic 24 Hours at Daytona, an annual event patterned after the Le Mans Classic. The event was designed for cars raced in 1965 or newer, but Drinkwater asked the organizers, Historic Sportscar Racing, if they would allow him to come, “and they said, ‘Of course, we’d love to have you.’” His car hit 142 mph in practice, faster than Le Monstre went at Le Mans.

This month he returned to Daytona—his car wintered in Florida—and Drinkwater fabricated a trailer hitch for the car, hooked up a teardrop camper, and he and wife Pat hit the road, leaving Daytona and bound for California. He spoke to Hagerty during a quick stop, about 40 miles east of Austin.

“No roof, no windshield wipers, no heater—what could go wrong?” Drinkwater said, laughing.

“So far, the trip has been fantastic. We’re taking the scenic route.” He and Pat have basically taken a year off from work, so there’s no hurry to get home. Surprisingly, there’s no chase car full of parts and a mechanic following them—“We’re on our own, just me and Pat in the little camper. Tonight, though, we’re getting a hotel room. The camper is great, but a hot shower, you know…”

So far, only one thing has gone wrong: A couple of days before our conversation, Drinkwater said he received an email from the vaunted Monterey Historics, held at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca each August. Drinkwater had asked to race there, but he was turned down because his replica of Le Monstre wasn’t, well, Le Monstre.

“They said the car’s not original, and I know it’s not the original car, but underneath, everything is a 1950s short-wheelbase Cadillac. It’s still an historic car, there’s no new aftermarket parts or anything else.” He said there are multiple well-positioned automotive enthusiasts advocating for him, “So I hope we still have a shot.” After all, he said, the event’s first race is even called “The Briggs S. Cunningham Trophy.” Even if he’s refused an entry, he plans to park it in the spectator lot.

Drinkwater’s car is scheduled to return to England in November, and he and Pat have a lot of America to see between then and now. A couple of days ago, he checked in to their Instagram account from the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. It was colorful.

Taking a year off doesn’t mean they’ll be relaxing. On the morning we spoke, Drinkwater and Pat had spent nearly two hours using the free internet at McDonald’s updating their social media accounts and returning texts and emails.

“The response has been fabulous,” he said. “The way people slam on the brakes to take a video of us on the freeway, I’m sure there’s going to be an incident.”

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Five men, heroes all to the automotive culture in general and the Corvette community in particular: Zora Arkus-Duntov, Dave McLellan, Dave Hill, Tom Wallace, and Tadge Juechter.

The Chevrolet Corvette has only had five chief engineers, and Tadge Juechter, the current one, announced his retirement today. It will take place later this summer.

Juechter, 63, will leave behind a 43-year career working for General Motors. He started with GM in 1977, at the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant.

He transferred to Corvette in 1993. “It’s been the honor of a lifetime to work at this company, leading the men and women who have brought to life one of the most iconic and recognizable vehicles in recent American history,” Juechter said in a statement. “Their tenacity and ability to push what is possible with every variant and generation of Corvette was inspiring to see. I know the future of the nameplate is in the right hands.”

Juechter worked for chief engineers Dave Hill and Tom Wallace before being named to the job himself. Juechter did not bring as strong of a motorsports background to the job as some of the chief engineers he succeeded, but he’s responsible for the biggest change in Corvette history—moving the platform from front-engine to mid-engine—and seamlessly dovetailing that into the Corvette C8.R mid-engine race car.

After launching the C5 and C6, Juechter was appointed to what he described as “the promotion of a lifetime,” as executive chief engineer for Corvette. In this role, he led the development of the 7th- and mid-engine 8th- generation cars, including the Corvette E-Ray hybrid.

“His most recent involvement will be reflected in the upcoming ZR1, which Chevy teased earlier this month and is expected to be revealed this summer,” said Chevrolet, but you can be certain that when the C9 Corvette debuts, it will have Juechter’s fingerprints on it.

Chevrolet has not named Juechter’s successor, and it may be a bit complicated, as Josh Holder was named Corvette chief engineer in 2020, while the retiring Juechter is, as mentioned above, executive chief engineer. Whether Holder gets Juechter’s job, and his title, remains to be seen.

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Forty-eight years after Detroit’s Renaissance Center opened, it still sparkles. Especially at night, when the mirrored glass walls reflect everything, from the boats on the Detroit River to casinos in Canada to the handful of small businesses located towards Greektown and Ford Field.

For much of its life, the RenCen reflected a city that sagged and swayed under every economic storm. Now, it reflects a city that is slowly but surely making its way back, regaining the swagger it never entirely lost.

As for the other glass buildings located near the Renaissance Center, they are now reflecting a 73-story white elephant.

General Motors bought five of the seven Renaissance Center towers in 1996 for a fire-sale price of $96 million, and proceeded to spend a billion making the RenCen fit to become GM’s global headquarters, moving thousands of employees over from Cadillac Place and other GM worksites.

On Monday, GM and the City of Detroit announced that General Motors would be leaving its still-sparkling home, taking up residence in a new skyscraper a mile away built by the billionaire darling of downtown Detroit real estate, Dan Gilbert. Last Friday, Gilbert formally named the building Hudson’s Detroit, reflective of the J.L. Hudson’s Department Store that sat on the site from 1891 till 1998 when it was demolished.

The rationale behind the move is that GM wants to transition from owner to tenant. GM will lease the top two office floors of the new 12-story building next to showpiece of the Hudson’s development, a 685.4-foot-tall mixed-use tower, which is now the second-tallest building in the state.

And it will happen quickly, with GM planning to move into the $1.4 billion Hudson’s Detroit development next year. It may be a classic good-news, bad-news scenario for the city. The city’s first new skyscraper in years is “a milestone for Detroit’s renewal,” Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School, told The Detroit News. “The bad news is the decline of RenCen, the most identifiable building in Detroit’s skyline. It’s going to be difficult to find tenants for all that space, and they are unlikely to be as prestigious as GM.” Indeed, the News cited a survey that said the Detroit metropolitan area had the highest office vacancy rate in the country, a sobering 25 percent.

Gilbert’s company, Bedrock LLC, had previously looked into buying the RenCen to add to the other properties it bought along the riverfront. Like a private real estate customer balking over the price of repairing a drafty old house, Bedrock backed away, faced with estimates of what it would cost to update the RenCen’s heating and air conditioning. One source said adding plumbing to turn much of the space into residential property would also be cost prohibitive.

The fact that, initially at least, GM needs just two floors of Hudson’s Detroit to replace the 5.5 million square feet of space it had available in the RenCen points up just how few workers GM needs in its main office. “We’ve been sort of limping along with what the capacity is since the pandemic,” GM President Mark Reuss told The Detroit News. “About 80 percent of the companies here have hybrid work schedules, including ourselves, so we’ve been sort of trying to figure it out.”

The view from the central tower, still the tallest building in Michigan, can be breathtaking, especially during cold winter months, when huge ice floes populate the river. But General Motors has seen enough of the RenCen, both outside and in, and no doubt wants to relieve itself of the financial responsibility that comes with owning the property.

GM CEO Mary Barra said that GM would partner with Bedrock and the local government to “plot a new path forward” for the RenCen over the next year or so. We look forward to seeing where that path leads.

***

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Editor’s Note: The 29^th annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, held last March on Amelia Island, Florida, named Rick Hendrick its 2024 honoree. As you likely know, Hendrick is the owner of the Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR team, chairman and CEO of Hendrick Automotive Group, and a major classic car collector. Hendrick brought a sample of his collection to the Hagerty-owned Amelia celebration, including the Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro that ran at the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans and was built by Hendrick Motorsports.

Last weekend was the 40^th anniversary of Hendrick Motorsports’ first NASCAR Cup win, at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. That race was to be the last for the team, because supporting it was draining Hendrick, putting his car dealership business in jeopardy. They put driver Geoff Bodine in the car, planning to shutter the team after the race. All that could save them was a win.

Against all odds, the team did just that. A major sponsor signed on as a result, and Hendrick’s NASCAR team, as well as his dealerships, flourished. Hagerty’s media team prepared a story for the Amelia’s program, in which Hendrick pinned most everything good that has happened to him and wife Linda on that first victory.

Last weekend, Hendrick’s initial victory was celebrated at Martinsville with over 1500 of Hendrick’s employees in attendance. (Rick and Linda stayed home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was having knee surgery.)

What did they miss? A remarkable 1-2-3 finish for Hendrick Motorsports, with drivers William Byron, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, in that order, claiming the podium. Jeff Gordon, presently the vice-chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, where he earned four championships as a driver, stood in for his boss. “Sunday was awesome,” Gordon posted on X. “Thank you to our friends, family, teammates and all of the fans for celebrating with us.”

For the first time, we’re publishing the Amelia Concours cover story here. If you’re not a fan of Rick Hendrick now, we think you will be after reading it.

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Rick Hendrick, the 2024 Amelia Concours d’Elegance honoree, has a car collection that now numbers more than 300 vehicles. But it had an unassuming start 60 years ago when Hendrick, now 74, was barely 14.

“I was going to a drag race in Virginia with my dad, and we pulled over into a service station to get gas. Sitting on the side of the building, painted in primer, was a ’31 Chevrolet.”

Hendrick, the Charlotte auto megadealer and NASCAR team owner, had never seen one. “So we approached the guy at the station about selling it, and he finally said he would for $250.” But Hendrick didn’t have $250.

Hendrick’s father, “Papa Joe” Hendrick, had a small tobacco farm in Palmer Springs, Virginia, where Rick grew up. “My dad gave my brother and me a quarter-acre of tobacco for working during the summer, and that would always bring us $250 or $300, so I asked him if he would buy the car and let me pay him back. So we bought it and brought the car home.

“My grandad had a general store that was a converted schoolhouse, so it had a girls’ bathroom and a boys’ bathroom, and he wasn’t using the girls.’ So we cut a hole in the wall, took the stools out and put a 55-gallon drum in there for heat, and that’s where my dad and I built that car. I ended up drag racing it.” That was Hendrick’s first experience with motorsports, and he was pretty good at it.

“The car stayed in the family all those years, but I hadn’t seen it since I left home. On my 40th birthday, my dad drove it into City Chevrolet,” Hendrick’s first major Chevrolet dealership, located in Bennettsville, South Carolina, “with my wife and two kids in the rumble seat. He’d converted it back to a street car and surprised me with it. So that’s the most important car in my collection.”

The second most important car is a Corvette, which Hendrick lost, and then found again. “I had this love affair with Corvettes, but I never thought I’d be able to own one. I was going to school and I was working in a gas station and a friend of mine said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a buddy who’s going to college and he’s got this 1963 Corvette that won’t crank.’ I went over to diagnose it and when I opened the hood, I saw water standing on top of the air cleaner.

“I took the top off the air cleaner and I saw a little bit of water in the carburetor’s butterfly. We put a battery in it and I couldn’t get it to turn over, so I said, ‘I think it’s locked up.’ The guy asked me how much it would cost to fix it, and I told him I don’t know—you’d have to rebuild the motor or put one in it.

“He said, ‘Well, do you know anybody who might buy it?’ I asked him how much he wanted for it, and he said $1000. I got my mother to get me a 90-day note from the bank where she worked and I bought it.”

They overhauled the carb, “but we still thought it was locked up. I pulled down on the crankshaft and it turned over. We put some gas in it and cranked it, but it had a knock. This was at night—when I turned the light off, I could see a spark down around the harmonic balancer. I shut the engine off, and I could see where the water-pump pulley was hitting the harmonic balancer.

“In true redneck fashion, I took a belt off it, cranked it again and held a file against it while it was running. And the motor ran pretty good. That was my first Corvette.” Both the Corvette and the ’31 Chevy will be on display at Amelia.

Hendrick had to sell the Corvette to buy his first dealership—more about that in a moment—“but I started looking for it and I found it about 25 years ago. Pulled it apart, put a new chassis under it—it was a pretty amazing deal, to be able to find it.”

Hendrick’s all-time favorite car is the Corvette, and his favorite Corvette is the 1967 model. “It’s the side pipes and the 427 motor, and the stinger hood. That was the model I remember seeing on a Chevrolet showroom floor, and I thought it was the prettiest car I’d ever seen.

“I started collecting them in 1977. I have every color they made in a big-block ’67 Corvette. Right now, if you include the newer ones, I have somewhere around 130, 135 Corvettes.” (It’s actually 147, nearly half of his collection.) “It represents a 40-year love affair with cars.”

He became especially interested in Corvettes with a “1” in the vehicle information number (VIN) years ago. “Jim Perkins, then the head of Chevrolet, got me the first serial number of a 1990 Corvette back when the first ZR1 came out.” Having the first car of specific models resonated with Hendrick, and he started seeking them out.

“I’ve got the very first 1955, the first ’56, the first ’57, and we just found the first ’58. It’s in bad shape but we’re working on it now.” Later-model “1” Corvettes are sometimes featured at major car auctions with the proceeds going to charity, and Hendrick has bought several of them. “I also found the only Corvette ever raced in NASCAR. We found it in a basement—a guy was pulling cable for a cable company, and he called and said, ‘There’s a car under all these boxes.’ It was a 1954 model, and it raced at Bowman Gray Stadium, and we’ve got it almost back together. I have 8-mm video of it racing, plus a story in the local paper about it, and I’ve got a picture of the lady we bought it from, when she was 17—the car had the number 17X on it—and I’ve also got a picture of her sitting in it a year or two ago. She’s about 90 years old now.”

Hendrick’s collection started with the Corvettes, “and then it was Camaros—I went through a period when I was trying to get different Z/28 Camaros, and then would come the COPOs and then the ZL1 aluminum-motor cars, then it jumped over to the first 2010 Camaro that came out, serial number one, then the first convertible, then the first new Z/28, then the ZL1 and the 1LE.”

Back to the story about Hendrick having to sell that 1963 Corvette, and almost everything else he and wife Linda owned, to afford his first dealership. Before that, things were actually going quite well for Hendrick. At 23, he convinced Raleigh, North Carolina, super dealer Mike Leith to give him a job running Leith’s import division. “Then I got recruited by General Motors and Chevrolet.” Hendrick wanted to own a dealership, and in true be-careful-what-you-wish-for fashion, Chevy said “Okay.”

The dealership GM had in mind was a failing store in Bennettsville, South Carolina, a tiny burg southeast of Charlotte. In the mid-1970s, Bennettsville’s population was around 7900. “My wife and I had just built a new house. I was driving a BMW, she was driving a Mercedes. This store in Bennettsville was a nothing deal, but GM said if you want a bigger store, you got to start there.

“So we sold our new house, bought a $28,000 house in Bennettsville, and sold everything else we had. That included our ’63 Corvette. Went down there—they were only selling 200 cars a year. There was no showroom.” Rent was a whopping $1700 a month. “They had two mechanics, who didn’t have tools. It was open, but it was out of business. That’s where I had to start.” He became the youngest Chevrolet dealer in the country. Hendrick dove in headfirst, working day and night to turn Bennettsville around. Turn it around, he did—soon it was the most profitable Chevy store in the region.

“GM lived up to what they had told me. They said if you can turn this one around, we’ll see you get a bigger opportunity. Eighteen months, three days, four hours and 46 seconds later, I got the call that City Chevrolet was available. Other opportunities started coming our way, and it just grew from there.”

He parlayed that little store in Bennettsville into Hendrick Automotive Group, the largest privately held dealer network in America, and the seventh-largest in the country. “We have about 11,000 employees, and we’re selling about 200,000 cars a year. We’re servicing about 2.5 million. From nothing, really. It’s been good.”

Hendrick has had opportunities to sell out, and he could have taken his company public. “But that’s not me. I want to take care of my people. You have to put people before profit. And I believe if you do that, you’ll make plenty of money. I don’t want to have to deal with analysts, I don’t want to have to attend board meetings. I like the private way, and I’ve grown to where I am today and I don’t need to be any bigger. The car business and the racing deal both started the same way, just a handful of people. I don’t really know how it happened. Good people, in the right place at the right time.”

Ah, the racing deal. He owns Hendrick Motorsports, a four-car NASCAR Cup team with drivers Kyle Larson, William Byron, Alex Bowman, and Chase Elliott. Previous drivers include Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Jeff Gordon, who now works for Hendrick as vice-chairman of the racing group. They’ve won 14 championships, including seven for Johnson and four for Gordon, and more total races than any other team.

But Hendrick Motorsports had a beginning that was every bit as modest and unlikely as Hendrick Automotive Group’s was. It was 1982, and Hendrick was racing drag boats. Hendrick drove one, his brother drove another one, and world-record holder Jimmy Wright drove a third one, named Nitro Fever. That September, the team was racing at Lake Lou Yaeger, a 5.5-mile-long reservoir in Illinois.

Wright was clocked at 213 mph when something went wrong, and Nitro Fever crashed into the embankment. Wright was killed. He was 47. It put an end to Hendrick’s drag boat racing. “After that, I went back one time and I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

Hendrick was always involved with auto racing, working on the crew for the legendary Flying 11 dirt modified driven by Ray Hendrick (no relation) when he was a teenager. In 1983, Hendrick had been helping out his friend Robert Gee, a dirt car racer who also owned a NASCAR Grand National series (now Xfinity series) race car, and who also happened to be Dale Earnhardt, Jr.’s grandfather. “I became partners with Robert, and in our first time out, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., won a 300-mile race in Charlotte in our car. I thought, ‘Well, this is easy!’”

He’d learn soon enough that it wasn’t.

Hendrick had been keeping his drag boats at the shop of Harry Hyde, a NASCAR crew chief. The next step of the journey was a genuine twist-of-fate moment. Max Muhleman, a journalist who went on to be a noted sports promoter, “had been working to find a sponsor for one of the boats. For some reason, NASCAR called him.” C.K. Spurlock, who was singer Kenny Rogers’ manager, was looking to get into NASCAR, and had cut a deal with Richard Petty to drive for them. They were looking for a partner.

“Max called me one day and asked, ‘Hey, would you like to be partners with C.K. Spurlock and Kenny Rogers, and be part of a team that has Richard Petty driving?’ I thought it was a trick question. Who wouldn’t want to do that?” Hendrick had already been talking to Hyde about NASCAR, so it seemed like a logical step to have him involved with the team, which would be called All-Star Racing, recognizing the star status of Rogers and Petty.

On October 9, 1983, Hendrick and Hyde were in the garage at Charlotte Motor Speedway after the running of the Miller High Life 400 race. “Harry and I were waiting for Richard Petty. He was going to sign the contract to drive for us.” Petty won the race, but was caught in tech with a 382-cubic-inch engine (358 was the legal maximum). Still, he was allowed to keep the win, because that’s how NASCAR rolled back then.

But when it came time to sign the contract, Petty backed out. “He wanted to keep the STP sponsorship with him in Level Cross,” the North Carolina shop where Petty was based. “And when he did that, Spurlock said they didn’t think they could go forward.” That left All-Star Racing with no stars, and Hendrick and Hyde holding the bag. “There I was—no sponsor and no driver,” Hendrick said, “but we had built a couple of cars and had five people working for us, so Harry and I hired Geoff Bodine to drive. We started a few races, wrecked a couple of times. We were going to quit.” Hendrick couldn’t continue to fund the team out of his pocket.

“Harry said, ‘Well, let’s go one more time, to Martinsville, because Bodine is good there.’” Hendrick didn’t even make the trip to the half-mile Virginia track for the Sovran Bank 500. “I had promised my wife we’d go to a church service in Greensboro.”

After the services, Hendrick found a pay phone to find out how All-Star Racing had done. “I called my mother and she said, ‘You didn’t hear? He blew up.’ And I said, ‘Well that’s that.’ I told Harry we were going to shut the doors after that race.”

Then his mother laughed. “Naw, he won!” Recalls Hendrick, “So we went to Bodine’s house and wrapped his yard in toilet paper!

“You know, thinking back, what it took to get into racing then, compared to now—we were working out of Harry’s shop, we were renting the equipment from Harry, I was renting the Chrysler transmissions and rear ends, running them in a Chevrolet. It was a shoestring operation, but we made it, and actually won three races that year, which is unheard of for a new team.”

They made a movie in 1990 based on the story: Days of Thunder, starring Hendrick’s friend Tom Cruise as fictional driver Cole Trickle. Randy Quaid played Hendrick (the character’s name was Tim Daland), and Robert Duvall played Hyde (Harry Hogge). It was no coincidence that Cole Trickle drove a car with City Chevrolet on the side. That movie car is part of Hendrick’s Amelia display.

After Martinsville, the sponsor problem was solved when Northwestern Security Life Insurance stepped up. “It was a $400,000 sponsor, which was like $4 million today,” Hendrick said. “And before the end of the year, we got Levi Garrett. We won the last race of the season.” It was a trying time, obviously, but it was fun. Is it still as much fun as it was then? “No way. It’s too big, too much pressure, too much money… you have to have big sponsors. Back in that day, I would decide I’m going to drive a race, or Paul Newman, or Jim Fitzgerald, and we’d just pull another car out of the garage and go race. No, it was a lot more fun back then. It’s big business today.” Hendrick, as a driver, is credited with two NASCAR Cup starts, and one start each in the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck series. He’s also driven in the Mille Miglia in Italy.

“Big” and “less fun” sound like it could apply to selling cars, too. Is Hendrick ready for the future in retail, which everyone tells us is electric? “I’m a dinosaur, man, no! But we’ll sell what the people want. The customers will decide what cars are built. You can only force so much on them.”

He’ll revel in hydrocarbons this weekend at the Amelia Concours d’Elegance. Has he been here before? “I’m embarrassed to say I have not. Ray Evernham,” Jeff Gordon’s longtime crew chief, “has been after me to go year after year, but between racing and everything else, I’ve just never been. This’ll be my first trip.

“I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been a car junkie my entire life.”

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When the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg takes the green flag March 9 of 2025, two new cars will debut in the NTT IndyCar series. They’ll be fielded by PREMA, an Italian team that was founded in 1983 by Angelo Rosin.

PREMA, with more than 80 titles in multiple series, may be the best open-wheel organization that you’ve never heard of.

Though PREMA may not yet have raced in Formula 1 or IndyCar, graduates of the multiple ladder-type series that PREMA competes in certainly have. Those series include FIA Formula 2, Formula 3, Formula 4, the GP2 series, and other championship series that race in Europe and Asia.

And those drivers include F1 world champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Jacques Villeneuve, and IndyCar racers like Ryan Briscoe, Felix Rosenqvist, Marcus Armstrong and Callum Ilott. In F1, PREMA grads include Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly. The team is the partner of choice for every Formula 1 driver development program.

PREMA already has a deal with Chevrolet for use of its new, 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged hybrid V-6 engine, and it’s building a “brand-new, state of-the-art facility” in the Indianapolis area. The addition of PREMA will increase the IndyCar grid to 29 cars, and the Indianapolis 500 entry list to probably 35.

No drivers have been selected, but you can bet resumes have been rolling in. PREMA has long had a good eye for talent: Members of its racing family include Rinaldo Capello, Kamui Kobyashi, Lance Stroll, Mick Schumacher, Daniel Juncadella, Arthur Leclerc, Jamie Chadwick, Robert Kubica, Renger van der Zande, Enzo Fittipaldi, Sebastian Montoya, Eddie Cheever III, Ben Hanley, this year’s IMSA Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring winner, Louis Deletraz, and the lone American competing in F1, Logan Sargeant.

IndyCar will become the 12th series that PREMA currently participates in. PREMA also operates Lamborghini’s new SC63 GTP program, which just debuted at the IMSA Mobil 1 Twelve Hours at Sebring.

“PREMA Racing, with their global reach and extraordinary presence in open-wheel racing, will be a great addition to our growing and highly competitive paddock,” IndyCar President Jay Frye said.

“This new chapter will also be beneficial for PREMA Racing and its people, producing amazing learning opportunities and know-how transfer,” said Rene Rosin, team principal. “We want to thank IndyCar for the warm welcome and Chevrolet for supporting this project. We cannot wait to start operating in our new Indiana shop and get on track as soon as possible.”

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Full disclosure: I am not one of the 57.93 percent of cellphone customers in the U.S. currently making calls on an iPhone. This also means that I don’t use Apple CarPlay.

I’m not looking for sympathy here—I’m only suggesting that if I felt my life would be better with an iPhone and CarPlay, I’d have it, but I get by fine with Google-owned Android Auto. (Except in General Motors electric vehicles—you’ll recall the announcement last December that GM is dropping both CarPlay and Android Autos in their EVs, in the name of safety. You’ll still be able to pair up your phone using Bluetooth.)

I mention this because the automotive media have suddenly been paying attention to the Department of Justice’s March 21st announcement that the DOJ is suing Apple for monopolizing smartphone markets.

It isn’t surprising it has taken this long—in the DOJ’s own press release on the suit, it mentions iPhones, Super Apps, cloud streaming, cross-platform messaging apps, the Apple watch and the Apple Wallet, but nowhere does it mention that the DOJ is going after Apple CarPlay.

In fact, it devotes only one page in the 88-page report to CarPlay. According to the suit, “Apple’s ‘moat’ around its smartphone monopoly is wide and deep: it uses a similar playbook to maintain its monopoly through many other products and services,” such as CarPlay.

Here’s a link to the full report. The CarPlay bit begins on the bottom of page 48.

“After leveraging its smartphone dominance to car infotainment systems, Apple has told automakers that the next generation of Apple CarPlay will take over all of the screens, sensors, and gauges [emphasis ours], forcing users to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience if they want to use any of the features provided by CarPlay. Here too, Apple leverages its iPhone user base to exert more power over its trading partners, including American carmakers, in future innovation.” That’s an assertive assessment—one that will need to be proven.

So how important is the case against CarPlay? Pretty important, says Sam Fiorani, vice-president for global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. “Apple’s use of data gathered by CarPlay is, at this point, minimal, but it will grow. And I don’t know how this lawsuit affects that.” Definitely, the market will be huge for “whoever can get that data. So if it’s Apple, they are definitely going to be affected by any sort of lawsuit where they’re limiting resources.”

Despite the wide-reaching potential to impact how we connect our smartphones with our increasingly smart cars, the suit is unlikely to impact the consumer in the short term. The DOJ, however, can move quickly. It filed a comparable suit against Microsoft on May 18, 1998, “to remedy the affects of its past unlawful conduct.” It was settled in 2002.

Still, the Apple lawsuit is very wide-ranging, and Apple doesn’t plan to roll over. “If successful, [the suit] would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect,” said the company in a statement. “It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.”

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Six feet, four inches: That’s the height of actor Tom Selleck, who debuted in the CBS detective series Magnum, P.I. on December 11, 1980. Selleck was so tall that padding had to be removed from the driver’s seat cushion of his Ferrari 308 GTS so his head wouldn’t stick out of the top of the car during filming.

At 79, it’s unlikely Selleck could leap into his Ferrari the way he did through the show’s eight-year run. But for many of us who grew up during Magnum’s tenure in Hawaii, posters of his appropriately Rosso Corsa red Ferrari hung on our bedroom walls, forever imprinting the coolness of the Prancing Horse brand.

So you may be excused for a bit of primal blood-rush when you see this Auction Pick of the Week: A Euro-model 1982 Ferrari 308 GTSi, finished, of course, in Rosso Corsa.

The Ferrari 308 GTB, designed by Leonardo Fioravanti, was first shown to substantial acclaim at the 1975 Paris Salon. It was a successor to the Dino, but it wore true Ferrari badges, and this example is powered by the comparatively durable 2.9-liter V-8 with the Bosch K Jetronic fuel injection, paired with the syncromesh five-speed manual transmission with a gated shifter.

By the end of 1977, Ferrari had added the 308 GTS model, which it called a Spider, but it was really a targa roof, with a vinyl-covered removable panel that could be stashed behind the seats. The GTS quickly outsold the fixed-roof GTB, and the design allowed owners to experience fresh-air motoring and still be able to lock up their 308 without having to deal with a soft top.

This particular car comes with multiple options, including fog lights,16-inch, five-spoke wheels with Continental ExtremeContact Sport tires, and air conditioning, which is currently inoperable. It’s a desirable Euro-market model, fitted with U.S.-spec bumpers and side marker lights. The car has an aftermarket Kenwood sound system.

Last August, the engine was the subject of a major timing belt and ignition service which also included a compressor conversion, full fluids change, and a new exhaust system.

Known imperfections are minor rock chips on the front bumper and spoiler, minor paint bubbles on the lower passenger-side door, and headrest leather that is “dry and creased.” The current owner says that he has found no evidence of rust.

This Ferrari is no trailer queen, with just under 80,000 miles showing on the odometer. “Every car I own, I drive, and I have great folks locally that help me make sure a car will do everything it was originally designed to do, and this car does exactly that,” says the owner. “I do not trust the cars that have not been driven, maintained and enjoyed.”

Want to relive those Magnum, P.I. dreams? Bidding ends Tuesday, April 16, at 3 p.m. ET.

***

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Collectively, we pity the fool (but be careful using that phrase—it was trademarked by the man who made it famous, Mr. T) who tries to replicate the charcoal GMC van from his series The A-Team, the oddly-non-Emmy-winning NBC television show from the mid-1980s.

Not because it’s so hard to do—after all, there’s a YouTube video on how to build a replica of the A-Team van—but because it’s so much easier just to buy one at auction.

Which, incidentally, will be possible this Saturday at Mecum’s auction in Houston. The van is part of the 10-vehicle Texas Movie Car Collection, which will be sold consecutively, likely in the afternoon, judging from the lot numbers.

It appears, however, that none of the vehicles have ever actually been in a movie, or on a TV show. They are all replicas, except for two of the four NASCAR Cup cars, which apparently are very real. Besides the A-Team van, they include:

The Flintstones Flintmobile Golf Cart, which features “simulated wood construction” and “decorative front and rear rollers”—decorative in the sense that the Flintmobile actually motors along on golf cart tires. It’s powered by four batteries. Yabba, dabba, don’t try to operate it on public roads.

The 1923 Ford Munsters Koach Replica, certainly the most ambitious of the offered vehicles. Its V-8 engine has an “ornamental multi-carb setup placed on top of air cleaner,” which sits atop an Edelbrock four-barrel carburetor. A bonus: It’s signed by Butch Patrick, the actor who played little Eddie Munster. Patrick is 70 now.

A 1952 Chevrolet Ice Cream Truck, which apparently isn’t modeled after a movie or TV vehicle, but does have a Tecumseh 110-volt refrigeration compressor located behind the rear axle, along with a Honeywell 110-volt fan in the fiberglass freezer box.

The 1966 Chrysler Imperial Custom Sedan, which is “built to resemble the Black Beauty from The Green Hornet TV series.” It’s powered by a V-8 with an automatic transmission. This may turn off some potential buyers: Front and rear missile launchers and trunk-mounted machine guns are “simulated.”

This 1984 Chevrolet K5 Blazer, “built to replicate Chief Jim Hopper’s Blazer from the TV show Stranger Things,” sort of comes from left field. It includes “simulated bullet holes and Hawkins Police Department graphics.”

The four stock cars include replicas of a Darrell Waltrip 1987 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS and a Richard Petty 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix Aerocoupe, which is signed by Petty. The real stock cars are a 2007 Chevrolet Impala which was (“purportedly”) driven by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and a Tony Stewart 2005 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Both of those cars are powered by 850-horsepower V-8s. The dashboard of the Tony Stewart car bears a sign that says, “KEEP YOUR HAND OUT OF THE SNAKE’S MOUTH.” We aren’t sure what it means, but it seems like good advice.

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A surprise? Not so much. Monday’s announcement that Liberty Media, owner of Formula 1, would acquire 86 percent of Dorna Sports, which controls MotoGP, for an estimated $4.5 billion in cash, debt and F1 stock, was expected.

The central question was whether it would be Liberty Media or some other outlet, such as Qatar Sports Investments or the TKO Group, which controls the WWE and the UFC, signing the big check.

Wisely, Liberty is keeping Dorna CEO-since-1994 Carmelo Ezpeleta in place, as MotoGP management retains a 14-percent stake in the company.

“If Liberty has been looking for us, we have been looking for Liberty as well,” said Ezpeleta, 77, in an interview with a European sports publication. “It is important for us to have access to their resources and knowledge, to better tell the story of our championship. Liberty is happy with the way we have run the company, and we will continue with our own people, independent of Formula 1.”

MotoGP’s 21-race season began March 10 in Qatar, and ends November 17 in Spain, which is MotoGP’s home. Liberty says the company will remain headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

The Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, held at the Austin, Texas, Circuit of the Americas, is scheduled for April 12-14. It will be the first look for U.S. fans at the new Trackhouse Racing MotoGP team, backed by the Aprilia factory. Trackhouse, known for its successful NASCAR entries, is the first U.S. team in MotoGP in over a decade. Riders are Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira.

MotoGP is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, tracing its history to a June, 1949 350cc motorcycle race on the Isle of Man. Thirty countries have staged Grands Prix, with the most recent being India, with Buddh International Circuit hosting MotoGP for the first time in 2023. This year, Kazakhstan is set to become the 31st country, with the Grand Prix of Kazakhstan taking place on June 16th.

The buyout is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Still, Liberty Media’s ownership of MotoGP is likely to face some scrutiny: The purchase will be subject to “the receipt of clearances and approvals by competition and foreign investment law authorities in various jurisdictions,” Liberty said.

Likely its legal team is ready for challenges, especially with the foresight that CVC Capital Partners was forced to sell MotoGP in 2005 in order to satisfy the European Union that it should be allowed to take over Formula 1. CVC had owned MotoGP since 1998. The Commission was concerned that owning both MotoGP and F1 would lead to television price increases and less choice for consumers.

Regardless, “We are thrilled to expand our portfolio of leading live sports and entertainment assets with the acquisition of MotoGP,” said Greg Maffei, Liberty Media President and CEO. “MotoGP is a global league with a loyal, enthusiastic fan base, captivating racing and a highly cash flow-generative financial profile.”

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The NTT IndyCar Series held a test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last week for teams that had not yet experienced the new hybrid system that will be used in races during the second half of the season, following the Indianapolis 500 on May 26.

Participating were AJ Foyt Racing, Dale Coyne Racing, Ed Carpenter Racing, Juncos Hollinger Racing, Meyer Shank Racing and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. With this test, all the IndyCar teams have now experienced the hybrid system. Reviews were mixed.

“It’s a complex system,” said Romain Grosjean, driver of the Juncos Hollinger Chevrolet. “It’s quite different. There are a lot of buttons to push.”

It’s the latest of many changes over the years to the venerable, long-lived IndyCar chassis. First introduced 12 years ago, the Dallara-designed DW12—“DW” for driver Dan Wheldon, who helped develop the car before he was killed in a crash at Las Vegas—ran its 200th race at the 2024 season-opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in March.

The DW12, used by both the Chevrolet and Honda teams, has undergone multiple body redesigns and safety adjustments. The addition of the hybrid system is considered a major update: Both the Motor Generator Unit (MGU) and Energy Storage System (ESS) fit inside the bellhousing, which sits between the new 2.2-liter, twin-turbocharged V-6 engine and the gearbox.

One of the additional responsibilities for the driver is management of the regeneration system, which uses braking to supply more electricity to the ESS, to add more boost. There’s a manual and an automatic option for regeneration, and it will be up to the driver to fine-tune the system on track. “I think that it could change the racing, but at the same time, everyone has the same package to work with so it will be who uses it the wisest,” said Sting Ray Robb, driver for AJ Foyt Racing.

The central value of the hybrid system is that it will allow drivers to initiate a boost of power, similar to the existing “push to pass” feature, which is only allowed at certain times and on certain parts of the track. Another major improvement is that the hybrid system will allow the driver to re-start the engine should it stall, after a spin, for instance. Presently, restarting a car requires a caution flag to slow the race and allow safety crews to drive to the stalled car with a portable starter.

As you would guess, the hybrid system adds a moderate but undisclosed amount of weight. It’s expected that the car will need some new chassis tuning as a result.

The unit was developed jointly between the two engine suppliers. “The partnership between Chevrolet and Honda has been phenomenal,” IndyCar President Jay Frye said. “The IndyCar-specific hybrid power unit is dynamic and an engineering marvel, and we’re completely committed to its successful introduction.”

“I’m not fully comfortable with it, but I am very much enjoying it,” said Santino Ferrucci, who drives for AJ Foyt. “I can’t wait until we have it in the series full time.”

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The new EPA proposals decidedly aren’t a 180-degree turn from the Biden Administration’s aggressive stance from last April that called for battery-electric vehicles to make up more than half of new-vehicle sales just six years from now, and two-thirds by 2032.

But Wednesday’s revision in those standards may indeed be a 90-degree shift from what Biden and the EPA wanted.

This new proposal now estimates that battery-electric cars, light trucks, and SUVs will make up 30 to 56 percent of new vehicle sales between 2030 and 2032, but even that may be ambitious unless cooling trends in electric vehicle demand warm up quickly. Though there are 83 battery-electric vehicles on the market, just two, the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, accounted for 57 percent of retail new EV registrations across the industry in 2023.

Critics of the new proposal, including the National Automobile Dealers Association, say that even the softened guidance is “too aggressive and far ahead of consumer demand.” In 2023, according to data released last week by the S&P Mobility research firm, battery-electric vehicles made up 8.5 percent of new, light-duty vehicle registrations in the U.S. last year.

As you’d expect from the other end of the environmental spectrum, anti-pollution advocates criticize the reduced target because of what it might do to the fight to against carbon emissions. This is despite the fact that the new EPA proposal would set tougher limits on tailpipe pollution through 2032, and enable manufacturers to use other clean-ICE technology rather than just add more battery-electric vehicles. The new regulations also give more credit to the plug-in hybrid’s ability to trim pollution.

The EPA’s new rule slow-walks last April’s stricter pollution standards from 2026 to 2029 while increasing them up through 2032, ending up very nearly where last April’s initiatives would have landed, assuming this strategy works. It is lost on few that the election of Donald Trump in November might well cause a major re-write of Wednesday’s proposals.

Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen advocacy group claims that this new proposal “falls far short of what is needed to protect public health and our planet. EPA is giving automakers a pass to continue producing polluting vehicles,” Public Citizen says. “The Biden Administration had the opportunity to shift the automotive industry away from a model that’s driving record profits for automakers while literally killing us, toward one that still provides strong profits but keeps the world safer for humans.”

As it exists, the EPA’s proposal allows a manufacturer to sell ICE products, BEVs or PHEVs in whatever combination it chooses, as long as it makes its numbers. According to the EPA, a manufacturer should be able to sell between 30 and 56 percent BEVs in order to meet its pollution requirements. The new standard is based on grams-per-mile of emissions, not on the powerplant used.

Bottom line, the 1181-page document that covers the Biden Administration and the EPA’s new proposals—the “Final Rule” for vehicles “that will phase in over model years 2027 through 2032”—deftly offers something to both sides: A pause in having to worry as much about the timeline for the integration of battery-electric vehicles in a down-market EV sales atmosphere; and increasingly tough pollution standards that will, by 2055, prevent more than seven billion tons of carbon pollution from reaching the atmosphere.

So neither side is happy, but both can declare a win.

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The top story of the 2024 Rolex 24 at Daytona, the season-opening race for the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in late January, was the nicely executed win by the No. 7 Penske Porsche 963. That victory notched team owner Roger Penske his first overall victory in the Rolex 24 in 55 years. At the second race of the season, Saturday’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours at Sebring, the Penske Porsches certainly figured into the race, with the No. 7 coming in third.

This time, however, the lead story was the intense GTP battle in the closing stages between the Acura ARX-06 of Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti, and the Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac V-Series.R.

Acura’s Louis Deletraz and Cadillac pilot Sebastien Bourdais put on a racing driver’s seminar, fighting the very rough, dark track, slower-lapped cars, and each other. Deletraz made a brilliant move with just five minutes left to squeeze by Bourdais and drive on to a victory margin of just 0.981 seconds.

That was sort of the story of all four classes in the race: LMP2 was decided by 1.127 seconds; GTD Pro by 0.121 seconds, and GTD by 0.646 seconds: incredibly tight finishes before what IMSA said was, like Daytona, a record crowd, though IMSA, owned by NASCAR, quit announcing crowd sizes in 2013. The complete results are available here.

Deletraz, just starting his first full IMSA season, co-drove with Jordan Taylor and IndyCar star Colton Herta, while Bourdais co-drove with Renger van der Zande and IndyCar’s Scott Dixon. It’s worth noting that a week ago, Chip Ganassi and Cadillac announced they’d be ending their partnership at the end of 2024. No real reason was given.

The race was, according to Bourdais, a little too physical, with multiple contacts between him and Deletraz. “Definitely, that was way too many contacts,” Bourdais said. “Both sides of the floor, toward the rear, are significantly damaged. I think we were both be pretty lucky it didn’t rip a stem off a wheel because we probably could have picked up a puncture four or five times during the last few laps there. I’m not really accustomed to that and not a big fan of it. To be honest, I don’t think he needed it because he had so much pace. Hats off to them anyhow. They had the package at the end to make the difference. We just had to settle for second.”

The LMP2 winner was, like Daytona, the Era Motorsport Oreca. In GTD Pro, it was the Vasser-Sullivan Lexus RCF GT3, after a very disappointing Daytona. And in GTD, it was a repeat for the Rolex 24 winner, the Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3.

What else did we learn at Sebring? Read on:

1: Two spectacular crashes, no injuries: If any one driver has owned Sebring the last 10 years, it’s probably Pipo Derani, currently a driver for the No. 31 Whelen Cadillac. He won in 2023 and set a fast time in qualifying this year. In the seventh hour, leading by a whopping 12 seconds, he was passing a slower car, a Ferrari 296 GT3 driven by Miguel Molina; they made contact. It was enough to upset Derani’s Cadillac and send the car onto the grass and head-on into the tire wall, and then the Cadillac flipped and landed upside-down atop that tire wall. Just like that, the favorite was done.

The other crash occurred on the final turn leading to the front straight. Katherine Legge, driving the Gradient Racing Acura NSX GT3, was making the right turn when Fred Makowiecki, driving a Penske Porsche 963, took the turn to Legge’s inside rather than wait and make the pass on the straightaway, and appeared to boot the Acura into the wall, hard. She walked away, but the car was done.

2: Once again, the Corvettes and the Mustangs have teething pains: We expected it at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, where the highest-finishing Mustang came in sixth in class and 31st overall, in a 59-car field. The top Corvette finished fifth in class and 30th overall. And while the new-this-year Ford Mustang GT3 and Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT.R benefitted from another seven weeks of testing and development time, the 12 Hours of Sebring finish saw the two Multimatic Mustangs finish seventh and eighth in class, but the Corvettes didn’t have much to show for a hard-fought day.

The top-finishing Corvette was ninth in the 22-car GTD class—one of the AWA-backed cars, not one of the favored Pratt Miller Corvettes, which finished tenth and 11th in GTD Pro, a class that only had 12 cars. The GTD Pro finishes don’t tell the story, as the No. 3 car was hit from behind and spun in the closing minutes of the race while running second. “It was very hectic out there and people were acting over-aggressive,” said the victimized Corvette driver, Dani Juncadella. “It gets dark here and there’s not much (camera) footage, so people start believing there are no rules.” The number 4 sister car battled clutch problems all day, with the crew eventually choosing to change the clutch, which cost multiple laps. The other AWA Corvette made it only two laps before being sidelined with electrical issues.

3: The dreaded BOP: No one much likes IMSA’s “Balance of Performance,” a formula the sanctioning body uses to level the playing field among the cars in each class, as well as level out the class itself. Let’s get to that one first: BOP ensures that the GTP class is the fastest, followed by the LMP2 class, followed by the GTD Pro and GTD classes, which use the same cars, but GTD Pro allows for additional professional drivers.

In the race itself, GTP cars averaged lap times of about mid-1 minute, 49 seconds, up to 1:50 or so. That kept them well ahead of the LMP2 cars, which are limited to spec-500-horsepower V-8s, and lap around mid-1:51s, up to 1.53. GTD and GTD Pro lapped in the low 2:01 range, up to 2:02.

It’s still remarkable that the rules allow such a wide variety of makes and models to fit in such narrow windows. It’s a combination of regulating horsepower, fuel flow, airflow, weight, aerodynamics, and other sophisticated factors. But balancing V-8s against V-6s, naturally-aspirated vs. turbocharged, and front-engine vs. mid-engine is a science, and sports car racing has it down.

4: The Lamborghini cometh. We initially saw the all-new Lamborghini SC63 the first week of last December at an IMSA open test at Daytona International Speedway, sort of a quieter Roar before the mandatory Roar Before the 24. Since the Lamborghini wasn’t racing at Daytona, it didn’t show for the official test but did for the preliminary one. There, surprisingly, it was the fastest GTP on the track.

We aren’t sure what happened between December and March, when the Lamborghini formally debuted at the 12 Hours of Sebring. It was now slower than most of the field. BOP, we’d guess. But it was a good day for the Lambo, finishing seventh out of 11 GTP cars and on the lead lap, thanks in part to an all-star driver lineup, including Romain Grosjean. Well done.

5: Youth is served, part 2: As it was at the Rolex 24 at Daytona in the LMP2 class, the winning Era Motorsport Oreca LMP2 07 featured 17-year-old Connor Zilisch, teamed with Era regular-season drivers Dwight Merriman and Ryan Dalziel. But this time, Zilisch was tasked with finishing the race, taking over with about 90 minutes left. He drove like a veteran. If Connor Zilisch were on the stock market, I’d buy some shares. Zilisch spent most of his young pro racing career in the Trans Am Series, winning 10 times in the TA2 class, and winning his debut race in the top TA class. It was the first time in Trans Am history that one driver had won both the TA and TA2 race in the same weekend.

Zilisch signed a NASCAR development deal with Trackhouse Racing, and he makes his NASCAR Craftsman Truck debut this weekend with Spire Motorsports at Circuit of the Americas. Said IMSA co-driver Dalziel, himself an overall winner at the Rolex 24, on Zilisch’s final stint at Sebring: “You look at the list of drivers that were behind Connor on that restart—the talent and the guys with experience—and the kid just kept his head cool and brought it home.”

6: The Michelin Pilot Challenge series is healthy, too: Friday’s opening act for both the Twelve Hours of Sebring and the Rolex 24 at Daytona is the dual-class Michelin Pilot Challenge, a four-hour race at Daytona, and two hours at Sebring. The Alan Jay Automotive Network 120 at Sebring was the usual rough-and-tumble affair, with 40 cars total in the GS class (such as the Aston Martin Vantage GT4, Ford Mustang GT4, Toyota Supra GT4), and the less powerful TCR class (Hyundai Elantra N TCR, Honda Civic FK7 TCR, Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce TCR).

First taking the checkered flag were Frank DePew and Robin Liddell in the Rebel Rock Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo, 1.8 seconds ahead of the van der Steur Racing Aston Martin. In TCR, the winner was the JDC-Miller Motorsports Audi RS3 LMS TCR of Chris Miller and Mikey Taylor, over the Star-Com Racing Hyundai Elantra, which was elevated from third after the second-place Hyundai failed post-race inspection.

7. Two races in, two record crowds and large fields: Only IMSA starts its season with what are, by far, its two biggest races. Race three is pretty important, though: the 100-minute Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, April 19-20. Eight more races follow, ending with the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. In a surprise move, IMSA announced its 2025 schedule at the Sebring weekend, and it looks pretty much like this year’s. With 18 manufacturers paying to compete in it, pound for pound, IMSA may be America’s healthiest race series.

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When you speak of superb Italian car design, and you possibly often do, one of the names typically mentioned is Marcello Gandini. The man most responsible for the look of the seminal Lamborghini Miura, the outrageous Lamborghini Countach, the diminutive Fiat X1/9, the first generation of the BMW 5-Series, and dozens of other cars, died on Wednesday.

The versatile Gandini, a native of Turin, Italy, was the son of an orchestra conductor. Gandini was working as an interior designer when he showed some of his automotive designs to Nuccio Bertone in 1963, but Bertone’s top designer at the time, Giorgetto Giugiaro, didn’t care for Gandini and he wasn’t hired.

Giugiaro, responsible for designs of the BMW M1, the De Tomaso Mangusta, the Maserati Ghibli, and the Lotus Esprit S1, moved on to a job with Ghia in 1965, and Gandini was brought on at Bertone.

During the 14 years he was at Bertone, Gandini worked on a massive variety of designs for a long list of manufacturers. He is best known for his exotics—the Lamborghini LP500 prototype, which became the Countach; the confounding Lancia Stratos Zero concept; the remarkable Alfa Romeo Montreal; the grand touring Maserati Khamsin—but he designed many vehicles for everyman, including the original Volkswagen Polo, the second-generation Renault 5, and the Citroën BX.

During his later years, spent in a 17th century home and studio located just outside Turin, Gandini enjoyed designing non-automotive projects, such as the graceful Angel helicopter. There was also a large house in Corsica that he designed, built, and then sold, plus the interior of a nightclub that he’d rather not be remembered for. “Happily, it burned,” Gandini told author and fellow designer Robert Cumberford in a story for Automobile in 2009.

Italian designers are often known for the size of their ego, but Cumberford found Gandini to be “self-effacing, modest, and quiet. He doesn’t attend motor shows and has no use for public relations but is neither particularly shy nor a recluse.”

Marcello Gandini was 85 years old.

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According to Porsche’s annual financial press conference held today in Germany, the parade toward more electric power is right around the corner. That said, the company is holding fast with some ICE and hybrid models, including, in early summer, a “product upgrade” to the 911, “including a high-performance hybrid drive,” Porsche says.

The long-awaited 911 hybrid is finally coming? Apparently, it is.

“Once again we are deploying technology in series-production models that we have derived from the world of motorsport,” said Chairman of the Executive Board Oliver Blume. “And our customers can look forward to further technological innovations along those same lines.”

Porsche has already said the 911 hybrid won’t be a plug-in, thus eliminating the need for a heavier battery that is typically required for this drivetrain type. Much like the Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray, which is also a conventional hybrid, the 911 hybrid is expected to use a compact electric motor powering the front wheels, thus making the car all-wheel-drive.

Nowhere in the materials or even in the rumor mill is it even suggested that the 911 will become all-electric anytime soon. “Porsche is committed to a combination of three types of powertrains: efficient ICEs, exciting plug-in hybrids and innovative all-electric models,” the company says. But it does expect to have 80 percent of its fleet “fully electrified” by 2030.

In the 2023 Sustainability Report, Chairman Blume discusses his personal influences. “People buy certain clothes and even furniture because they identify with them. Take me, for example. I drive a 911 and a Taycan, prefer Apple devices, and have a Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe.” Like him, we presume, “Many of our customers are open-minded and design-oriented and value modern technology.”

The company notes that there are about 1.3 billion vehicles with combustion engines worldwide currently, and “many of them will probably still be used in 30 years or more.” To that end, Porsche and its partners built the first commercial eFuels plant, located in Chile. “With this pilot plant, Porsche and its partners show how the production of eFuels can work on an industrial scale.”

More on Porsche’s upcoming product plans: “It begins with the third-generation Panamera,” with “even more powerful powertrains.” Then this spring, there’s the next generation of the all-electric Taycan. “The new version has more power, a longer range, accelerates faster and charges in less time with greater stability.” The company has already premiered the new Taycan Turbo GT, with a top speed of 190 mph, and a 0–100 km/h (62 mph) time of 2.2 seconds.

Later this year, the second-generation Macan joins the lineup in all-electric form. “It will be manufactured in Leipzig alongside its ICE sister model, which will continue to be offered,” Porsche said.

In news that should interest Cayman and Boxster fans: “The all-electric 718 is planned for the middle of the decade. It will be followed by the all-electric Cayenne. Porsche is also planning to expand its product portfolio upwards, with an all-electric SUV, sportily positioned above the Cayenne. This completely new car concept is based on the SSP Sport platform developed by Porsche and is to be built in Leipzig.”

In sum, Porsche says the future for the company and its 42,140 employees looks bright, as if lit mostly by electricity. It sold 320,221 vehicles in 2023, up 3.3 percent from 2022.

“Porsche proved in 2023 that we are resilient, highly profitable and financially robust even in volatile times” said Lutz Meschke, deputy chairman of the executive board. “On this basis, we’re laying the groundwork in 2024 for a flying start in 2025.”

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I’ve always felt kind of sorry for cars saddled with a continental kit—that upright spare-tire holder that protruded from the rear bumper of some larger cars, mostly in the 1950s, but made popular by the 1939 Lincoln Continental. Such a kit is a long, relatively heavy appendage attached to the back of a vehicle so you can—what? Have more room in the trunk, assuming you can load and unload it, reaching around and over your continental kit?

Of course, Wikipedia points out that the term continental kit “also describes a non-functional bulge stamped into the trunk lid or a cosmetic accessory to the rear of the car giving the impression of a spare tire mount,” which has never been an impression I’m interested in making.

That said, I’ve owned a few cars that could have conceivably made use of a continental kit, including a white-and-salmon 1957 Mercury, kin to the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser that was offered in ’57, and was the pace car for the Indianapolis 500. The Turnpike Cruiser was offered with a continental kit, which made the otherwise handsome car appear to be puckering at the rear.

(I do kind of wish my Mercury had the “Seat-O-Matic” feature, one of the first electric memory seats, which moved back and forth when the ignition was cycled on and off, but then, few of the electric features it did have worked, so I doubt my car’s seats would have done much moving on their own.)

This inevitably brings us to the company Chevys of the 40s, based in Vancouver, Washington. As the name suggests, it offers part for Chevys of the 1940s, and into the ’50s. Model year 1954, to be exact, since its catalog stops short of the 1955, ’56, and ’57 Chevys, for which there is a plethora of parts available elsewhere.

Which means Chevys of the 40s offers continental kits for the 1949–50 Chevrolet for $1935; the 1951–52 Chevrolet for $1936 (wonder what the extra dollar is for?), and the 1953–54 Chevrolet for $2098. Each kit comes with a chrome rim that covers the tread on your spare tire, but can either have a full face or an open face if you have a fifth wheel cover in your collection.

Let’s split the difference and look at the continental kit for the 1951–52 model. It takes “six to eight weeks for delivery,” which I take to mean the company is so surprised that someone actually wants one that it takes six to eight weeks to wake up the manufacturing division and have them build it.

OK, that was harsh. The continental kit really doesn’t look that bad, in a low-riderish sort of way. Googling this brings up multiple images of something else I didn’t know existed—custom continental kits for lowrider bicycles, which actually kind of makes sense. Or you can buy a whole chrome lowrider bike for $1179, with a continental kit, four mirrors, “gangster mufflers” with dual exhausts (!), and dual squeeze-bulb horns. I thought the whole point of building a lowrider bicycle was that you created it, not uncrated it, but what do I know?

Anyway, make up your own mind about whether or not you want to add a continental kit to your 1951–52 Chevrolet, which is a rather attractive, long-unappreciated model that I’m not sure is much enhanced by the addition. But then, I never knew I needed four mirrors or gangster mufflers on my 20-inch lowrider bicycle. Now that I have them, somebody just try to take them away! They will, eventually, here at the old folks’ home.

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Three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart’s professional drag racing debut lasted fewer than five seconds and was over before 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

Leading up to the 55th annual NHRA Gatornationals, the opening event of the season, Stewart’s move to the pro ranks of Top Fuel got the top billing in the NHRA’s pre-race television commercials, over second-billed John Force. (Interesting that the sport, anxious to attract younger fans, focused on a 52-year-old rookie, Stewart, and a 74-year-old, 16-time Funny Car champion. But whatever works.)

Stewart’s 11,000-horsepower Dodge Direct Connection dragster faced Justin Ashley’s Scag Power Equipment car in Sunday’s first Top Fuel matchup. Both left the line about the same time, and both cars began to lose traction about halfway down the 1000-foot track.

Stewart and Ashley both “pedaled” the cars—getting on and off the throttle, trying to let the rear tires stop spinning without losing too much forward momentum—and the more experienced Ashley was able to resume racing a split-second before Stewart, beating him to the line with a run of 4.414 seconds, to Stewart’s 4.453.

But the reviews were good for Stewart. Ashley, 30, is the Top Fuel’s best “leaver,” shorthand for someone who is particularly adept at minimizing the time it takes them to get the car going after they see the green starting light, giving them a head start. In this case, Ashley turned in an excellent .031-second reaction time. Stewart took only .021 seconds, which was actually the best Top Fuel reaction time all day.

Stewart was buoyed by his performance. “I’m extremely pleased with my first Top Fuel weekend, even with the first-round loss today,” said Stewart. “I cut a 0.21 light against the best leaver in the Top Fuel division and beat him off the line. We were the first pair of cars down the track on Sunday morning, so we really didn’t know what to expect.” Indeed, the Gainesville asphalt proved very hard to get a handle on, even for the most experienced teams.

“I feel we showed a solid performance with the car and myself,” said Stewart, who qualified ninth with a 3.725-second pass at 310.34 mph. “There is zero shame in my eyes, even losing to Justin. Seven other guys went home after the first round, too.” The eventual winner was Kalitta Racing’s Shawn Langdon, who defeated Billy Torrence.

Stewart was not expecting to take over the driving duties of the Top Fuel car he owns, but wife Leah Pruett, the regular driver of the car, stepped aside for the 2024 season as she and Stewart try to start a family. He raced in the less-powerful Top Alcohol class last year. Stewart is also co-owner of a four-car NASCAR Cup team, Stewart-Haas Racing, which competed Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.

“I’m not leaving here thinking I know everything about Top Fuel racing,” Stewart said. “I know it’s going to be a long learning process. It’s a tough situation for Leah not being in the car right now, but she has been the best coach for me. I would have liked to advance further today, but that’s racing and I’m still learning with each run down the track.”

The next NHRA race in the 20-event season is the Winternationals at Pomona Raceway in California on March 22–24.

***

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We’ve known for some time—and you have too if you’re a regular reader—that Jaguar, as we know it, is in trouble. Sales have cratered, the dealer network is shrinking, and future electric products may or may not connect with current Jaguar enthusiasts, who are a dying breed.

The uncertainty facing the brand has even negatively affected the Jaguar collector car market. “Jaguar, as a brand, is on the rocks,” according to a story we published last month. Vintage Jaguars, the story says, “are getting harder to sell, and over the past five years many prices are either stagnant or decreasing.”

“On the rocks” may be a strong statement, but a story in Road & Track suggests that it may not be inappropriate. As the brand moves to an all-electric future—sooner, rather than later, in 2025—the transition, so far, looks rocky. An interview with Joe Eberhardt, Jaguar Land Rover’s North American president and CEO since 2013, makes it apparent the brand realizes it is alienating core Jaguar enthusiasts.

“Obviously we don’t want to leave anybody behind, especially since the brand has such a history,” Eberhart told the magazine, “but there does come a point where you just need to focus on the future. It may not be a brand for everybody, and that’s by design… I can’t tell you exactly what percentage of current Jaguar owners we will leave behind, but clearly given the positioning of the brand and the vehicles we will lose some clients along the way. It’s a difficult decision to make, but brands need to be focused and to decide what their purpose is. We just knew that we didn’t want to be another volume luxury brand, that is not something that aligns with the Jaguar philosophy.”

Jaguar and Land Rover have been owned by Mumbai, India-based Tata Motors since it bought the brands from Ford in 2008. Ford had no real clue what to do with the Jaguar and Rover, and many in the industry assumed that when they were obtained by Tata, the storied past of each brand may be lost. But Tata has been a patient benefactor: It essentially allowed both Jaguar and Land Rover to proceed on the path that seemed the most natural.

That turned out to be the correct strategy for Land Rover, which is a fully realized brand, but not Jaguar. R&T points out that sales of Land Rover’s products this past year totaled nearly 280,000. During that same period, Jaguar’s global sales were fewer than 43,000. Contrast that with 2017, when Jaguar sold 179,000 vehicles.

Jaguar Land Rover announced a year ago that it would invest more than $19 billion in the company’s “industrial footprint,” which, when it comes to Jaguar, means electricity. So Jaguar is bent on changing direction. Three years ago, when electric power seemed like a near-immediate solution, Jaguar said it would go all-electric by 2025. Now, when other manufacturers are dialing back electric production based on slowing sales, Jaguar is forging ahead. According to Jaguar’s website: “Jaguar will transform into an all-electric luxury brand by 2025, with uniquely expressive vehicles defined by pioneering technologies and visionary design.”

Jaguar is initially planning on at least three electric vehicles, the first being a “four-door GT” that the company announced a year ago. It will have a starting price of $124,000, Jaguar said.

The F-Type, powered by a 5.0-liter supercharged V-8, starts at $77,900, and is still selling well into its concluding year. “F-Type celebrates the final model year, and 75 years of Jaguar sports cars,” Jaguar says. If that sounds like this is the end of 75 years of sports cars, that may be true.

“The majority of our products cease production in June, but they will be on sale for a much longer time,” Eberhart said. “We will have a production schedule that enables us to have a continuous supply of vehicles until the new cars come… We’re trying to time it so we have enough volume to take us through to the launch of the new product and have a clean handover.”

The brand’s U.S. dealer network is also taking a hit. Eberhart told R&T that “more than 40 have already voluntarily surrendered their franchises.” All Jaguar dealers will be integrated into the Land Rover network, if they aren’t already, leaving “between 120 and 130” dealers that sell all the Jaguar-Land Rover products.

One thing is clear: That Jaguar internal combustion engine’s exhaust note will live on, perhaps, as we told you last July, but only in a library.

***

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Maserati is (finally!) launching a new convertible version of the GranTurismo coupe. Called the GranCabrio, a name last used in 2019, it’s based on the GranTurismo platform, in Trofeo trim. The base Modena and electric Folgore trim may come later, as they are both offered on the GranTurismo. The company has been building convertibles since 1931, so they know something about drop-tops.

The GranCabrio Trofeo is powered by Maserati’s 3.0-liter, twin-turbo Nettuno V-6 engine. Pumping out 542 horsepower at 6500 rpm, Maserati claims it’ll reach 100 kilometers (62 mph) in 3.6 seconds. Top speed, the company claims, is 196 mph.

The engine is a detuned version of the MC20 Cielo’s 621-horsepower V-6—for one thing, the GranCabrio has a wet-sump system, while the MC20 uses a dry sump. EPA ratings are 17 mpg city, 26 mpg highway, and 20 mpg overall. The only transmission offered is an eight-speed automatic.

There are four driving modes: Comfort, GT, Sport, and Corsa, with Corsa being the hang-onto-your-hat mode. There is also the ESC-OFF option to turn off all electronic controls. It also has launch control, for all those Maserati convertibles that will be invading your local drag strip.

The soft top, available in five colors, can be raised or lowered at speeds up to 31 mph. It opens in 14 seconds and closes in 16. With the convertible top down, trunk space is moderately trimmed.

The car itself is available in six colors: Bianco Astro, Nero Assoluto, Blu Modena, Green Metallic, Grigio Incognito, and Grigio Maratea Matte. We know what “Green Metallic” probably looks like; for the rest, we’ll refer to our Italian-to-English dictionary.

The tires measure 265/30 ZR20 up front and 295/30 ZR21 out back. The brake calipers come in five different colors: Black, yellow, blue, red, and red anodized. Wheels come in six different designs, in four finishes.

Weight is 4316 pounds, not exactly a featherweight, even with all-wheel-drive. The body makes extensive use of lightweight materials, Maserati says, including aluminum and magnesium, together with high-performance steel for the most critical functions. Over 65 percent of the car is made of aluminum.

The GranCabrio “provides four real seats,” the company says. For top-down driving, a neck warmer comes standard, to heat the driver and passenger’s necks at three different levels of warmth. Optional ($1280) is a “wind stopper,” which can only be used with front-seat passengers, reducing turbulence inside the passenger compartment.

So how much? A lot. “Prices starting from $203,000,” Maserati says. We clicked off a few options—$6800 for adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitor, a 360-degree camera, and active driving assist, and we wanted the head-up display for $2000—on Maserati’s “build your own” page and got to $211,800.

Is it a double six-figure car? We’ll wait until we drive one to offer an opinion. Keep in mind, though, that Stellantis-owned Maserati says it will go all-electric by 2030, so this could be one of its last, if not the last, ICE convertibles.

***

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This is the third and final installment on our trip from Indiana to South Carolina in vintage International Harvester Scouts, en route to the groundbreaking for the new Scout EV plant. Check out Parts one and two by clicking here, and here.

I’ll admit it: It was my fault.

After we made it to our hotel in Asheville, North Carolina—losing the white, much-modified Scout II en route, to a fried ECU—it seemed our four remaining vintage Scouts would have an easy drive down to Blythewood, South Carolina, site of the new $2 billion Scout Motors plant and the groundbreaking we’d attend.

On the way, though, the oldest model in our caravan, the red 1967 Scout 800, pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. Sean Barber, owner of three Scouts and our trip companion, stopped to diagnose the problem.

Turned out to be nothing. I had driven the Scout last and filled it at the gas station. What I didn’t realize was that the Scout had two gas tanks and two fillers, one on each side. I’d filled the tank on the driver’s side but not the one on the passenger side.

So, one of the other two journalists on the trip was driving along until the Scout ran out of gas. Barber flipped the switch to the other tank, which I’d never tapped into on account of not knowing it existed, and the red Scout was back in business. That was our final issue.

Aside from the ECU failure in the Chevrolet-powered white 1975 Scout II, the only real problem we’d encountered in more than 800 miles of driving was a dragging right rear brake on the bronze 1979 Scout II Rallye edition. That Scout II is owned by Navistar and had sat on display for years. “Almost all the springs in the brake were broken,” Barber said, after he pulled the wheel off. He fixed it, and the rig exhibited no more problems besides a slightly balky carburetor during our off-road adventuring.

On to Blythewood.

***

Three of the five vintage Scouts we drove from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the Scout Motors groundbreaking are owned by the aforementioned Sean Barber: The red 1967 Scout 800, the blue 1979 Scout II, and the yellow 1978 Scout II. He owns Anything Scout, which opened in 1993 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Barber and his wife, Heather, bought the company in 2003. In 2005, the company moved to Ames, Iowa.

He speaks fondly of all three Scouts, but it’s obvious he’s the most attached to that patina-laden 1967 Scout 800. “I’ve had it for about 25 years. I found it up in the mountains of Santa Cruz in the 1990s. I paid $500 for it, with the original paint, which it still has. It was not running at the time, so it’s been through several iterations of International engines. But now it’s back to its original configuration.”

That powertrain is a gutsy little 266-cubic-inch V-8, rated at 154 horsepower, mated to a four-speed manual with an unsynchronized first gear. It does not like to start off in second, so you’d best be up on your double-clutching. Otherwise, driving the old Scout was a breeze. The ride was firm but not punishing, and the steering was spot-on. The hood fluttered a bit on the highway; Barber had loaned the Scout to a friend, who had run it into a tree, denting the hood. That dent sort of complimented the gash on the driver’s side of the body, which was there when Barber bought the Scout.

While Anything Scout deals mostly in parts, Barber opened another company, New Legend 4×4, also in Ames, that does Scout restorations and powertrain conversions. There’s the Legend series, which takes “a respectfully restored original body on a modern chassis, integrates the latest technology in engine and drivetrain, provides all-new interior and upholstery, and curates luxury appointments with personality.” They start at $295,000. The Retro series “is built on the original frame and tastefully restored throughout.” They start at $205,000.

You may be wondering: Was Barber shocked that his three vintage Scouts made it all 800-plus miles with zero problems? “I’m happy they all made it,” he said, “but I’m not that surprised.”

Why Scout? “When I was about 24 years old, I’m 50 now, so it has been a while, I drove my first Scout. It was instant love at first drive. I was a muscle-car kid growing up. My wife, Heather, had just bought a brand-new 1993 Jeep Wrangler with the 4.0-liter fuel-injected six-cylinder. It was a great vehicle, but I just didn’t love it. It didn’t connect with me.

“But when I drove a Scout for the first time, a 1978 with a four-speed manual, it really spoke to me. In the next three years, I had four or five of them. Since then, my whole life has been dedicated to Scouts, and their preservation—introducing them to a new generation.”

So what in the Scout world has changed in the past 20 years? “I think the most exciting change is more young people discovering the brand. Young enthusiasts seem to value old things and a connection to the past, whether it’s the aesthetics or the mechanicals.

“With the rise in social media, there has been more connectivity between Scout owners, and I think that’s really good. Event attendance has been steadily growing, and with the introduction of the new Scout, I think more people will connect with the legacy models.”

***

It is no coincidence that the Scout Motors team is leaning into a connection with the past to help validate the new, all-electric Scout. At a media roundtable held on the new plant’s premises, Scott Keogh, president and CEO of Scout Motors, said that embracing the history of the Scout was critical to the new company’s marketing plan.

“You start at the highest level—what was the product, what did it do, what did it stand for? In my opinion, it basically invented the category that became the American market for an SUV. They built a vehicle that was highly capable,” Keogh said. “Honestly, they were ahead of their time.

“We love the very name. It’s a powerful thing. That name would mimic most every SUV. ‘Scout’ means to go first, and be followed by Explorer, and 4Runner, and Discovery, and Blazer, and Trailblazer, and on and on. So this is the godfather, the prototype, and a good place to start.”

There are, Keogh said, hurdles to clear regarding the Scout’s integration into the SUV market. “Hurdle number one is if the Scout community doesn’t see us to be authentic and real, then you’re a poser. And if you’re a poser, it’s not going to work. The dream of any brand is that you start on day one with some momentum and love from the community.

“And once you get that, the next thing is to make sure we build something that is credible. If you have a mismatch between what the brand was anchored in and what you put on the market, that disconnect is going to be smelled out. I feel confident we have something that fits.

“But we also don’t want to be trapped in the ‘70s. It’s not as if we want to create Scout III. This will be the Scout VIII or IX, if you project it out. And why we did it is clear: It’s an American icon, and the time is right.”

The new Scout SUV, and the pickup version which will follow soon after, will be body-on-frame, like a proper truck. “We want to build something that is highly robust, and highly capable,” Keogh said. “Scout came from that, and we want to keep that integrity.”

Of course, image is important: “I think of Scout a little bit like Levi’s. They can be worn in Malibu or a work site, and it’s a cool, iconic American brand,” Keogh said. “We’re not building something to navigate the strip malls of America, we’re building something that can navigate America.” The Scout will have “character and personality, that’s not an optimized jellybean.”

The electric Scout is expected to start around $50,000, before any government subsidies are applied. The plant, we were told, should be able to crank out 200,000 vehicles a year. Battery sourcing has not yet been determined.

The aftermarket possibilities should be huge, and Keogh said he and his staff are working on that. “The opportunities are massive. Some of the stuff we’re designing ourselves, some we’re finding good partners for, but I feel confident we’ll nail that.”

Yes, we were told, you can add lift kits if desired. Personalization, a massive source of income for the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco, will be available at launch. So far, Scout has only released line drawings and a darkened profile shot of what the first production vehicle will look like. The company will unveil the Scout SUV this summer and the Scout pickup soon after. Production is expected to start by the end of 2026, with the Scout slated to go on sale in 2027.

Since Scout is owned by Volkswagen Group, the company faces no need to source financing for an electric start-up, as, say, Rivian and Lucid have had to do. That’s one reason there has been enormous interest in working there, as resumes (we are told) continue to pour in from engineers and designers. For the near term, Scout has sourced its top executives from VW: Keogh was, most recently, president and CEO of Volkswagen of America. Dr. Jan Spies is the head of production for Scout; previously he was head of planning and production technology for Volkswagen AG.

Right now, Scout Motors has 350 employees. At full production it is expected to have 4000. Getting the plant was a big win for the state of South Carolina: It is already a major auto production state, with the world’s largest BMW production facility located in Spartanburg, as well as Volvo and Mercedes-Benz assembly plants. Even before Scout, the automotive industry had an economic impact of $27 billion in the state, with $13.9 billion in capital investments from 2017 to 2023, according to the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

Scout considered 70 different sites for the plant before settling on this one: 1600 acres total, with the plant taking up 1100 acres. The land, just off Interstate 77, and 20 miles north of Columbia, was actually owned by Richland County. The county bought it from the owners, two farming families, and then began shopping it to various industries. South Carolina offered $1.3 billion in incentives to attract the Scout plant.

Finally, it’s no secret that the market for all-electric vehicles is sagging at the moment, and several manufacturers have dialed back their product planning. (Mercedes-Benz, for instance, recently scaled back plans for a global, fully electric lineup by 2030.) I asked Keogh if the company is considering a gasoline-powered version of the Scout, or at least a hybrid. “No,” he said. “We are a startup, which gives us the ability to pivot and move fast, which is a beautiful thing, right? We’re not married to legacy X or legacy Y. But as we look at the world, we think there is enough opportunity for a pure play, and that’s where we are right now.

“But look. We’re not naïve to the press headlines, we’re not naïve to the noise out there, and we’ll react accordingly,” Keogh said. “But I don’t think salvation comes from going back. I’m an optimist on technology, and an optimist on American technology.”

***

And finally, the groundbreaking. It was mostly ceremonial and obvious that the ground was actually broken on the site months ago. The earth had been cleared and leveled, and multiple pieces of construction equipment were working, beep-beeping in the distance as the speeches rolled on. There would be “no shiny shovels,” Keogh told the audience, no officials in suits and hardhats turning dirt.

A single red brick, part of the original International Harvester production facility—our classic Scout caravan brought it from Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a special clear-plastic carrying case—was front and center for the groundbreaking ceremony, inserted into the front of the lectern.

“What we’re doing here, “Keogh said, “is relaunching an American icon, and we’re doing it here in South Carolina. And frankly, we couldn’t be prouder to be doing it here in this beloved place.”

It all sounds good, but the product will ultimately need to do the talking. Scout loyalist Sean Barber hopes the new Scout is everything it’s promised to be. “It’s really cool that Scout Motors values the legacy. I feel like they are really honoring the heritage, honoring the past. They speak loudly to the community and the enthusiasts who have kept the brand alive for the past 40 years.”

***

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In yesterday’s installment, we drove our vintage SUVs from the birthplace of the International Harvester Scout in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Super Scout Specialists in Enon, Ohio. In this article, we go off-roading in Kentucky and head to the night’s stop in North Carolina, en route to the groundbreaking of the new Scout Motors plant in South Carolina. -Ed.

We left Enon on a Monday afternoon in our five vintage International Harvester Scouts, headed south towards our overnight stop in Lexington, Kentucky. We had probably spent too much time at the original, closed-down International Harvester plant in Fort Wayne that morning, and even more at Super Scout Specialists, and we needed to make ground.

That’s difficult when your vehicles can barely top 50 mph. So slow was our entourage that we didn’t pass a vehicle—a struggling old Mitsubishi on Interstate 40—until Tuesday afternoon. We sped by at maybe 55 mph, but we were going downhill. Much of this leg of the trip was spent just trying to stay out of the way and hoping that our Scouts—the oldest from 1967, the newest from 1979—would make it to Tuesday night’s hotel, in Asheville, North Carolina. (One of them did not.)

First, we had to get to Lexington.

I had started the day in the Siam Yellow Scout, a 1978 model with a 345-cubic-inch V-8 and a Borg-Warner T19 four-speed manual transmission. It belonged to Sean Barber, who owns Anything Scout, a parts and restoration shop in Iowa. Barber also owned the red 1967 Scout and the Glacier Blue 1979 model.

The jacked-up white 1975 Chevrolet-powered Scout II restomod is owned by Scout Motors and was built by Riptide 4×4. It had a massaged 6.0-liter V-8 with headers, a General Motors automatic transmission, a four-inch lift, and 33-inch tires. It was very loud, but in a good way.

We took mostly two-lane roads until we reached Interstate 75. From there, it would be a pretty direct trip to Kentucky. The yellow Scout was a pleasure to drive, well-sorted but still original. The long-throw transmission was truckish, which is OK because the T19 is a truck transmission, but easy to drive. With just one paint job in its life, the yellow Scout was everyone’s favorite.

I later transitioned to the 1979 Tamarak Bronze Rallye edition Scout II—the Rallye equipment consisted mostly of big, white Rallye decals and white spoked wheels. This Scout belongs to Navistar, the company that was left when International Harvester went out of business. Volkswagen bought Navistar in 2021 in a deal worth $3.7 billion, which, incidentally, is how it acquired the Scout name and is able to use it for Scout Motors, the startup that will build the electric model at the new plant in South Carolina.

This Scout had been sitting for years, possibly decades, having begun life as a test mule for the IH Scout prototype program in Fort Wayne, and had never been sold. It had the deluxe (plaid) interior, air conditioning, and an AM/FM radio that wouldn’t hold a station. There was a seat belt but no shoulder harness.

The gas gauge didn’t work—didn’t work in any of the Scouts I drove, for that matter—and the speedometer was off by at least 40 mph. There was also a lot of play in the steering, which made staying in one lane a challenge. But the 345-cubic-inch V-8 and Chrysler Torqueflite 727 three-speed automatic transmission seemed to operate in harmony. Everything else that worked, which admittedly wasn’t much, was gravy.

Because of the faulty gas gauges, none of us knew what mileage we were getting, only that it wasn’t very good. We stopped for gas a lot. As we neared Cincinnati, the skies began to darken—it was getting dark anyway—and about the time we crossed into Kentucky it started to rain. Scouts were not known for their windshield wipers, so I held off as long as I could before turning them on. Finally, I had to, and the results were pretty streaky. It was pouring by the time we reached our hotel in Lexington.

***

Tuesday morning was crisp but clear, with last night’s rain completely gone. I got into the Glacier Blue 1979 Scout II, which also had a 345-cubic-inch V-8 and a 727 Torqueflite automatic. It also had a working AM/FM radio, and listening to the stations I was able to pick up, I was seriously missing Sirius/XM satellite radio.

It was time for some off-roading, so we left Lexington and headed southeast for Beattyville, Kentucky. It did not go exactly as planned. We turned right, down a narrow paved road that soon became dirt, and were just getting underway when we came to what looked like a river. It was a small creek when the Scout Motors team mapped out the route, but with last night’s two-inch rainfall, there wasn’t any way we could continue—we had no clue where the trail was under the water. The lifted white restomod Scout dipped in a toe and promptly withdrew it.

We backtracked and tried to go in from a different angle. No luck—that way was rained out, too. The third time was the charm. We headed toward the Daniel Boone National Forest, near McKee, and found a trail that was wet but not flooded. We locked in the Scouts’ front hubs, shifted into four-wheel-drive, and proceeded.

It was there that the Scouts shook off their 40-plus years of obsolescence. No, they didn’t have electronic traction control, automatic descent control, or even antilock brakes, but they had what was needed to get the job done: Good tires, V-8 power, and low-range gearing that would pull out a tree stump.

We made a couple of water crossings, the second one pretty deep, thanks to the rain. All the Scouts took the creek in stride; a newer white Chevrolet Silverado apparently didn’t. The pickup had made it through and another 50 feet up the narrow trail, where it appeared to have died. It sat exactly in the center of the trail, hood up, no one around. We barely had room to drive around the Chevy, but we were feeling pretty smug when we did.

We continued on, eventually reaching a campground with a rustic but unlocked bathroom. After that, the trail ended with a fence and a locked gate; we decided we were hungry and headed to a restaurant. As Robert Frost would say if he were on the trip, we’d have miles to go before we sleep.

***

If Tuesday morning was fun—and it was—the afternoon and evening were all about getting to Asheville, North Carolina, about 238 miles away, according to Mapquest. We headed southwest through the Appalachian Mountains, eventually picking up Interstate 40 in Tennessee, then Interstate 81.

It was a slog on the Interstates—we’d pass 18-wheelers going uphill, and they’d pass us back going down. As it turned dark, it became harder to stay in formation. Were those Scout headlights behind me, or something else?

Well after dark, each set of headlights belonged to something else. The last two Scouts in our caravan—the white, Chevy-powered restomod and the 1967 red Scout—weren’t keeping up. Turned out that one of them had stopped, and the other one stayed behind to help.

Surely, I thought, it was the 57-year-old, red SUV that had broken down—the hilly Interstates had to be tough on it, even though it had a small V-8. But I was wrong. Sean Barber and his wife Heather were in the red Scout, and they stopped when the white one pulled over.

The Scout Motors driver and passenger in the white Scout had slowed when they smelled smoke, and then there was no power. The culprit was a fried electronic control unit. And as good a mechanic as Barber is, without a spare ECU, nobody could fix it. I had not driven it yet, and frankly, I was OK with that: The modern transformation really didn’t speak to me the way the original Scouts did.

They called for a tow truck and waited. Two hours later, it showed up, loaded the Scout, and headed for Charlotte, North Carolina, where Scout Motors stores the restomod Riptide Scout. Towing fee: $1500. Looking at our inventory, it would likely have been voted The Scout Least Likely to Break.

But it did. We would not see the white Scout again.

Tomorrow, join us as we set off to the groundbreaking for the Scout Motors plant in South Carolina.

***

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The International Harvester Scout was ahead of its time. But that time ended in 1980, after 20 years of IH building the Jeep-like vehicle. So, what happened then, to cause the death of the Scout? What’s happening now, to the Scouts that remain? And finally, what will happen in the future, now that Volkswagen has acquired the Scout name, and is building a $2 billion factory to make electric Scouts?

We had the opportunity to visit Fort Wayne, Indiana, the home of the Scout, and to drive five vintage Scouts more than 800 miles to the groundbreaking of the new factory in South Carolina. Following is the first of three stories outlining the past, present, and future of this automotive icon. -Ed.

In January of 2020, Hagerty announced that the International Harvester Scout, model years 1971 through 1980, had been named to our annual Bull Market List of 10 vehicles likely to soon appreciate in value.

From that article: “The Scout is the last of the affordable classic sport-utes. American rivals such as the Ford Bronco and Chevy Blazer have out-appreciated the Scout, but its values are on a steady climb, the result of enthusiasts realizing they can have the same amount of fun and curb appeal for a fraction of the Bronco price. Low buy-in, high ceiling. To steal from a slogan from an old Scout advertisement: ‘There are times you just don’t compromise.’ This could be one of them.”

So where did the Scout go wrong?

The story begins in Fort Wayne, Indiana—since 1923 decidedly an International Harvester company town. IH, best known for farm equipment and heavy-duty vehicles, was formed in 1902 amid the merger of several companies. Five years later, IH built the first “Auto Wagon,” essentially an early pickup truck. In 1916, a truck built by International Harvester became the first vehicle to climb Pikes Peak.

In 1953, IH began building the Travelall, a big four-door sport utility vehicle, decades before that term was coined. It was based on the IH pickup chassis. It was an early competitor for the Chevrolet Suburban and the Jeep Wagoneer, though that model wouldn’t start production until nine years later.

In the late 1950s, IH decided to put a smaller vehicle into production. It wanted to call the small truck the Scout, but a manufacturer of tank-like vehicles used in the frozen tundra had trademarked the name. International Harvester paid the owner $25,000, and on March 1, 1960, the trademark became the property of IH. Nine months later, the first IH Scout rolled off the assembly line.

On October 21, 1980, some 532,673 Scouts later, the final Scout, a Tahitian Red, diesel-powered, four-speed Traveltop, ended the 20-year history of the International Harvester Scout. The plant went silent.

There were multiple reasons why—a slowing economy, a downturn in IH’s core farm equipment sales—but most agree that the final nail in the Scout’s coffin was a brutal six-month United Auto Workers strike that started in November of 1979, reportedly costing the company nearly $600 million. Afterwards, International Harvester tried to sell the Scout division but there were no takers. Had IH hung on for a few more years, the Scout would likely have been swept up in the SUV craze that has yet to abate.

But the Scout was dead. It appears, though, that there may be life after death, and that’s what the rest of this series is about.

***

I flew into Fort Wayne International Airport on a Sunday afternoon in a puddle-jumper jet from Charlotte. Volkswagen Group, now the owner of the Scout name acquired when VW bought Navistar, which is what was left after International Harvester splintered into several companies in 1985, had arranged the trip. VW rounded up five original Scouts, model years 1967 to 1979, and mapped out an ambitious route of more than 800 miles that would take us to a few Scout landmarks and down some muddy trails en route to Blythewood, South Carolina. There, we would join some dignitaries, including the state’s governor, for the groundbreaking of the 1100-acre factory slated to build the future electric-powered Scouts trailblazing the brand’s rebirth.

Three journalists took up this opportunity, and we were joined by a half-dozen employees of Scout Motors, which is what the new company is called. Also making the trip: Sean and Heather Barber, owners of Anything Scout—an Ames, Iowa business catering to Scout owners with parts and custom builds. Sean owned three of the five Scouts we’d be driving. If anything went wrong, he’d help keep us out of trouble.

We left Monday morning, and the first stop was the old IH plant. We departed The Bradley, our hotel for the night in downtown Fort Wayne, and headed southeast toward Meyer Road, once a bustling urban area. When International Harvester was operating at full song, it employed 10,600 people.

Now, a chain-smoking guard for Allied Security appears to be the only one who still works there. He watches the maze of mostly empty red-brick buildings, abandoned since 2012 when what was left of the jobs moved to Chicago. The last International Harvester truck was built there on July 15, 1983. Since the factory opened more than 100 years ago, 1,527,299 trucks were built in Fort Wayne. The plant even had its own test track.

We drove into the rear of the buildings and headed through a maze until we were led down a wide aisle. Suddenly we were flanked by vintage Harvester products. This is the Fort Wayne Truck Works & Industry Museum, and its co-founder, Ryan DuVall, greeted us.

DuVall lived elsewhere when he became a Scout fan. A rusty, passed-down 1974 Scout II that his father drove became DuVall’s first vehicle at age 16. Years later, he acquired another, less-rusty Scout. He moved to Fort Wayne in 1999 and mentioned to his father, via phone, that he was seeing a surprising number of well-kept Scouts on the road.

“’You dummy!’ his father told him. ‘That’s where they were made!’” DuVall had no idea. He began researching the history of IH in Fort Wayne and found the plant where Scouts were built, just across the street from the main complex. It’s another red-brick building, now occupied by American Hydroformers, maker of high-pressure tubing. That building once held engineering offices for Studebaker’s aircraft engine works. Indiana-based Studebaker built some pretty formidable engines, including those powering the World War II B-17 Flying Fortress bomber—four 1200-horsepower, nine-cylinder radial engines per airplane.

In 2018, DuVall wrote a column for The Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne’s newspaper. He expressed surprise that Harvester’s impact on the city isn’t celebrated: “Given their place in history as basically the first SUVs and the fact that they remain very popular among the classic truck and off-road crowd,” DuVall wrote, “I have always been disappointed and kind of puzzled as to why the city hasn’t marked Harvester’s imprint better. The old empty factory is about all there is here. There is no Scout museum and no significant memorial to the company here.”

That’s possibly because bitterness remained over so many lost jobs, and Scout production ended shortly after that devastating UAW strike. Nonetheless, DuVall’s story struck a chord. He was contacted by multiple residents who agreed with his perspective and suggested he was the man who should lead an effort to recognize Harvester’s history. Multiple volunteers offered to help, and the city government, local philanthropists, and businesses financed it. Thus was born the Harvester Homecoming, an annual celebration held on the first weekend in August.

The first Harvester Homecoming was held at the old IH plant on Meyer Road in 2019. “We had 12,000 people, and we stopped counting trucks at 438, at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. And they kept coming all day long,” DuVall recalled. The next step was creating the museum. Navistar, the Volkswagen-owned offshoot of IH, had a collection of vehicles warehoused in Chicago, intending to perhaps open a museum someday. They moved most of them to Fort Wayne, and that’s the collection that surrounded us. It ranges from a 1907 Auto Buggy (which was followed in 1908 by the Auto Wagon, IH’s first truck) to a tractor made to tow an 18-wheeler, powered by a Cummins Signature 600 15-liter diesel.

As appropriate as this place is for the museum, DuVall said the location’s time is unlikely to be permanent. The buildings are now owned by the county, which is trying to build a jail on the property. DuVall said he’d prefer the museum stay, but that the building is 74 years old, high-maintenance, and it costs $10,000 a month to heat in the winter. Plus, “We’ve been presented with an opportunity that may make it not matter.” Translation: A new potential site for the collection.

He made it clear, though, that Harvester Homecoming, an event so potent for IH fans that an owner once drove his Scout from Alaska to attend, will continue. The community has become a family. “That’s the kind of thing this brand does,” he said. “It brings people closer together. Especially the Scouts. You can’t get away from it.”

Before we left, the Scout Motors executives accompanying us were gifted a dark red brick from the original plant, presented by Jim Poiry, who managed the Scout plant, as well as the Fort Wayne Truck Works. His grandfather sold his farm to International Harvester in 1920, and that’s where the Truck Works plant was built prior to its opening in 1923. Apparently, Scout Motors was expecting the brick: The executives placed it gently in a hard plastic carrying case which appeared to be designed to hold exactly one brick, with a clear plastic lid so you could see it inside.

We took turns hauling the brick all the way to Blythewood, South Carolina, where it would slide into a lectern that stood on the stage for the Scout Motors plant groundbreaking ceremony—a lectern built with a brick carrying-case slot in front. It was ceremonial but apparently important that a small piece of the original International Harvester plant take up residence in the new Scout Motors factory. I, owner of two vintage Scouts, was the first to carry the brick; I kind of just sat it on the floor of the passenger side of the old Scout I was driving and forgot about it.

After we left the museum, we drove across the street to American Hydroformers and parked our Scouts in front of a white sliding door at the end of the building. After they were built, all of the Scouts in our care drove out that door.

***

On mostly two-lane country roads, we headed 105 miles southeast towards Enon, Ohio, population 2500. It’s a location well known among those restoring or maintaining International Harvester Scouts, pickups, or Travelalls. Enon is home to Super Scout Specialists, a parts house and restoration shop for vintage IH vehicles that opened in 1990. The outfit has since grown to 46,000 square feet and includes its own museum.

That’s where we met Super Scout Specialist owner John Glancy and freelance author Jim Allen. Together they wrote The International Scout Encyclopedia: The Authorized Guide to IH’s Legendary 4×4, published by Octane Books. The buildings are modest on the outside, but on the inside—and behind the buildings, in what is essentially an IH boneyard of picked-over vehicles—we found a real time capsule.

The museum’s centerpiece is the first production Scout ever made—a little blue and white pickup powered by a four-cylinder engine. Surrounding it are shelves stocked with new, reproduced parts for Scouts, and in the cavernous back room there are original parts in boxes or stacked on racks. We saw a big rack of old hoods, a shelf with dusty instrument panels, and a wall where salvaged grilles were hung.

As old Scouts grow in popularity, the demand for Glancy’s services is growing. Still, “It’s getting tougher, day by day,” he said. “But we’re still here. The interest has increased, but it’s more of a challenge. A lot of our suppliers are wanting us to buy larger quantities than we can afford. If we can’t, they disappear, and we have to go find new suppliers.”

He agreed that Scouts are worth more than ever. “The value has gone up. When our book came out, I knew that would happen. It educated people about all the special models. I really think it helped.”

He was unsure, he said, about any impact the new Scout Motors electric vehicles will have on the old Scouts. “It’s bringing attention to the original models, what they are calling legacy Scouts. But I don’t know if it’s going to do anything for the value, any more than what the new Bronco did for the old Broncos. I will give Scout Motors credit—they seem to be genuinely interested in the history.”

Co-author Allen, who has been writing about four-wheel-drive vehicles for decades, said interest in Scouts has decidedly increased. “I started out as a four-wheel-drive historian. I knew a lot about it, and Scouts were part of that. I had wanted to do a Scout book back in the early ‘90s, but I couldn’t get a publisher interested in it.” Now, the International Scout Encyclopedia has become the bible for enthusiasts.

Value has also risen. “Oh, big time. In the last 10 years, the last five especially, Scouts have just gone berserk. The prices they are getting for Scouts now—here I am, the guy who wrote the book about Scouts, and I can’t afford to buy one. It’s insane what they’re getting for them.”

Hagerty valuation data reflects these reports, but our data experts note that the Scout still lags behind the early Bronco. Making the most progress is the Scout II, which was built from 1971 through the end of the Scout run in 1980, and accounts for four of the five Scouts we were driving. Based on the average Hagerty Price Guide value, all variants of 1961-72 Scouts have increased by 57 percent (from $17,702 to $27,879) in the past five years, while all variants of 1972-80 Scout IIs have increased by 62 percent (from $20,943 to $33,890).

Scout fans, Allen said, tend to fall into one of two categories: “There’s the restoration crowd, and the build-up crowd. And I think the build-up crowd is getting bigger than it used to be,” with seriously lifted vehicles and motor and transmission transplants. “A 302- or a 345-cubic-inch V-8 isn’t good enough, it has to have a Chevrolet LS engine in it. I’m not sure I get it: Why go back to the thrilling days of yesteryear, if you’re not really going back to the thrilling days of yesteryear?”

The restoration crowd “is narrow-focused. Interested in the details. Very much perfectionists in how they deal with their restorations. That’s what keeps John in beans and cornbread, the people who buy parts from him.”

Scout fans “were always the other guy,” Allen said. “There was a time, before the Ford Bronco came out in 1966, that Scout owned a big chunk of the SUV market, though of course they weren’t called SUVs then. But that market segment did exist. That’s what got the Scout going. It was more of a daily driver than the main rival, Jeep. Then, Jeeps were bare-bones in the extreme. The Scout was a step beyond that.”

How will fans of the original Scout take to an electric-powered one? “Most of the old guard has a problem with it,” Allen said. “But they appreciate the fact that the company has a legitimate interest in preserving the history, and they want it represented honestly.”

Tomorrow, we’ll find out how well the original Scouts adapt to interstate travel, on- and off-road.

***

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The creative team responsible for the annual Porsche event, Luftgekühlt, led by former Porsche factory sports car racer Patrick Long, has announced the 2024 venue for its new annual event, called Air|Water. It will be held April 27 in Costa Mesa, California, at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Luftgekühlt, which is Porsche vernacular for “air-cooled,” is limited to the air-cooled Porsches produced up through 1998. But Long and his team saw a need for an event that was open to all Porsches, hence Air|Water. The concept was tested last year in a smaller way, scheduled near San Francisco adjacent to Luftgekühlt. It was a success, hence this first dedicated Air|Water show.

“We quickly noted that there was a desire from attendees to expand this to some of the newer water-cooled cars, as well as the entirety of the model line,” Long said last month. “What we found is that there is an audience out there who might be newer to the brand than the existing Porschefiles.” Unlike Luftgekühlt, which changes venues each year, Long said Air|Water is expected to make its home in Costa Mesa.

Air|Water 2024 will also feature a Broad Arrow Auction of collector Porsche models. Front and center will be the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans class winner, a 1969 Porsche 908/02 Langheck Flunder Spyder, currently valued at an estimated $4.75 to $5.57 million. Its drivers included Vic Elford, Richard Attwood, Dr. Helmut Marko, Gérard Larrousse and Rudy Lins. It also appeared in actor Steve McQueen’s epic 1971 film, Le Mans.

Enthusiast car entries are now sold out but general admission tickets are still available at air-water.com.

***

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The date my road test was published in the Orlando Sentinel—April 19, 2008—confirms that it has been nearly 16 years since I first drove a 2009 Nissan GT-R, the introductory model for the R35-generation of this momentous supercar. Having just spent a week in a 2023 GT-R, one thing is clear: The Nissan has aged better than I.

The 2023 GT-R makes the same mildly disconcerting click, pop, and clunk noises as always, especially at low speeds. But over the years the noises have gotten quieter, more muffled. When I get out of bed in the morning, my bones go click, pop, and clunk, but I’m pretty sure they are getting louder.

Despite multiple updates over the years, it really is astounding how much the GT-R hasn’t changed. The basics are still there: a 3.8-liter, twin-turbocharged V-6; a six-speed, dual-clutch transmission; all-wheel-drive. And the “Godzilla” nickname beloved by the GT-R faithful endures.

The R35 even retains its hydraulic power steering and a center-console-mounted, mechanical parking brake. That piece of anachronism is sort of endearing, but I don’t miss the old steering wheel; the 2023 setup feels better than ever. Nissan has teased us periodically with rumors of an upcoming R36-generation GT-R, but we’re not holding our breath just yet. Nissan likes to hang onto its sports car platforms for a long time; the 370Z, for instance, debuted as a 2009 model and stuck around until 2020. (You can read our review of the 2024 Z Nismo here.)

The 2009 GT-R I drove, as well as the 2023 model, was fitted in Premium trim, which has accounted for the vast majority of sales for the car over the years. In 2009, the GT-R Premium wore a $71,900 MSRP (about $103,000 today), assuming you could get one at sticker price, a problem then and now. Its value has held up pretty well: In #3, or “Good” condition, Hagerty values the car today at $52,700. That’s a little less than the value of a 2009 Porsche Carrera 4S, which Hagerty says is $59,000. But the 2009 Carrera 4S had a base price of $92,300.

GT-R prices have gone up since 2009 (what prices haven’t?) The test car I had for a 2013 drive cost $96,820, and for a 2018 test, $110,400. This 2023 Premium started at $116,040. As it was in 2018, shipping for the new model is still $1895—pricey then but closer to the norm now.

The 2023 GT-R I drove had three options: $1000 for the paint (a lovely Bayside Blue), $490 for floor mats, a first-aid kit, and USB charging cables; and $4280 for “hand-stitched, semi-aniline” leather upholstery, which was nice but not that nice. Base seats are “leather-appointed with synthetic suede inserts,” which I’d wager are fine.

Specs: 2023 Nissan GT-R Premium

• Price: $116,040 / $123,705 (base/as-tested)
• Powertrain: 3.8-liter twin-turbocharged V-6; 6-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission
• Horsepower: 565 @ 6800 rpm
• Torque: 467 lb-ft @ 3300 rpm
• Layout: Front-engine, all-wheel-drive, two-door, four-passenger coupe
• Weight: 3935 lbs.
• EPA-Rated Fuel Economy: 16/22/18 mpg (city/hwy/combined)
• 0–60 mph: 3.1 seconds

Those front seats, which have cutouts in the back for a racing harness, were very comfortable, even for a 275-mile day. I’m six feet tall, and moving the front seat back to where it felt comfortable left zero space for legroom in the rear seat. Yes, it’s theoretically a four-passenger car, but rear-seat passengers had best hope for a brief trip.

Instruments and controls were updated with the 2017 freshening, eliminating 16 buttons and switches, and they are basically the same as they were then. The smallish (by today’s standards) eight-inch center display calls up the various performance pages, of which there are many, some a bit redundant. There has always been a computer-game feel to the GT-R: After all, knowledge of this Skyline-based model essentially debuted to America as part of the groundbreaking Gran Turismo video game in 1997, four years before the Fast and Furious craze made the GT-R even more famous. (Or to some, infamous.) The GT-R is still profoundly digital, but Nissan has toned it down. And most cars today—EVs especially—are even more digital in both essence and user experience.

Despite the use of lightweight materials—the hood, trunk lid, and doors are aluminum—and some carbon fiber, this remains a very heavy car at 3935 pounds. A base Chevrolet Corvette weighs 3366 pounds, and even the Corvette E-Ray weighs just 3774 pounds. The sticky Dunlop tires, 255/40ZRF20 up front, 285/35ZRF20 in the rear, work in concert with the Bilstein DampTronic shocks and the rest of the taut suspension, along with excellent Brembo brakes (they say “Nissan,” but they are Brembos) to help make you forget that the GT-R weighs two tons. And fill up the 19.5-gallon gas tank—with 93-octane premium, please—and you add about 120 pounds to the weight of the car.

Speaking of those sticky Dunlop Sports Maxx GT600 run-flat tires, there is a stifling amount of road noise, especially on concrete pavement, even with the active noise cancellation and added soundproofing, plus the acoustic-glass windshield, all of which have been around since the 2017 refresh. The noise is taxing on longer drives, likely causing you to crank up the 11-speaker Bose sound system to help drown it out.

The powertrain—that 565-horsepower V-6 and six-speed automatic transaxle—are fundamentally what we got for 2009, except then with 480 advertised horsepower. Most of us who drove the GT-R at that first press event, held at the modest Reno-Fernley Raceway in Nevada, were convinced that Nissan was under-reporting the horsepower then, by maybe 25 or 30, and independent tests since then have confirmed it.

The engine is a masterpiece, each hand-built by a single craftsman in Japan, complete with a nameplate. Tsunemi Oyama built the engine in this 2023 GT-R; a veteran of over four decades at Nissan, he and the other four GT-R engine builders have become celebrities among the car’s substantial fan base. The quick-shifting transmission is also built by a handful of craftsmen: There are steering wheel-mounted paddles, but the computer-directed shifts are faster. Engine sound is piped through a titanium exhaust system.

Then and now, the GT-R is a guided missile, a point-and-shoot car that works very hard to make you look good. Recall that the GT-R was introduced at about the same time as the second-generation, 450-horsepower Dodge Viper. As much as I loved the Viper, you had to work twice as hard to go not quite as fast as the GT-R on a racetrack, which appealed to me but not to a lot of my colleagues at the time, who insisted that all the computer aids on the GT-R made driving on a racetrack too easy. Somehow that was less valiant. The GT-R hasn’t changed much but other modern sports cars sure have, and most come with as many (or more) technological aids as the GT-R.

The 2024 Nissan GT-R should be arriving at dealerships in the next few weeks. It shows off a mild makeover, including restyled front and rear fascias, a new rear-wing design, plus the usual smaller enhancements, such as using a thinner mesh in the grille to reduce drag. The T-Spec model returns, with carbon-ceramic brake rotors from the 600-horsepower NISMO model, gold-painted Rays wheels, and two colors from the past: Millenium Jade and Midnight Purple, from the R34 GT-R era. The powertrain is a holdover from the 2023 driven here, which is kind of a holdover from 2009.

Starting price on the 2024 GT-R Premium is $121,090; for the T-Spec, $141,090; and for the NISMO, a whopping $221,090. The 600-horsepower 2015 GT-R NISMO I drove at Homestead-Miami Speedway listed for about $151,000, so that’s a lot of inflation.

Nissan only sold 390 GT-Rs in all of 2023. I’m not sure how they continue to justify its existence. But the GT-R is a wonderful throwback with a historically significant story. I’m glad Nissan has kept the car around to tell it.

2023 Nissan GT-R Premium

Highs: Still very fast, especially from a standing start; incredible brakes, reasonably comfortable ride given what this car is; sort of invisible except to those in the know… and they all want to talk about it.

Lows: Rear seats are virtually unusable; thirsty, even when driven conservatively; road noise is truly intrusive.

Takeaway: Like driving a brand-new, 15-year-old supercar. For better and worse (but mostly better).

***

 
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As we told you just two weeks ago, values for the long-discontinued Volkswagen Sciroccos are on the rise, especially the Mk II model, which debuted in America in 1982. Though the Scirocco hasn’t been offered in the U.S. since 1988, “The last five years have treated Mk II Sciroccos exceptionally well. Values for the best cars have exploded from just under $13,000 in 2019 to a full 60 grand in the latest edition of the Hagerty Price Guide,” noted senior editor Eddy Eckart.

It seems every few years we get wind of a new Scirocco model (the name, by the way, means a strong wind from the Sahara), but so far, nothing. Until now, perhaps: Autocar suggests that the Volkswagen Scirocco may be “primed for comeback as [an] EV sports coupe.”

The publication claims that a “high-ranking insider” revealed that the VW Scirocco could be part of a plan that would include the electric Porsche Boxster and Cayman, a new version of the Audi TT, and a production version of the Cupra Dark Rebel, which has been shown as a concept. Cupra is a Spanish brand.

The four-passenger, all-electric Scirocco would be built, Autocar speculates, on a stretched version of the PPE platform which is being developed for the new Boxster and Cayman. It could be rear-wheel-drive and powered by a single motor, or all-wheel-drive with a motor at each end, or likely both. The higher-powered version could be marketed as a Scirocco R.

Assuming it’s true, when might we see a new Scirocco? As early as 2028, “if ultimately granted production approval by Volkswagen brand CEO Thomas Schäfer,” says Autocar.

We’ve reached out to VW about the rumor, and expectedly got back: “No comment.”

***

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NASCAR Cup driver William Byron’s victory in Monday’s Daytona 500 was a welcome anniversary present for his team owner, Rick Hendrick, who formed Hendrick Motorsports 40 years ago to the day.

Hendrick, 74, is now one of the nation’s largest automotive dealers. In 1984, he was struggling to pay the bills for his fledgling one-car NASCAR team, then called All-Star Racing. He had hired driver Geoff Bodine after a deal to have Richard Petty drive for the team fell through.

Let's throw it back to our first win @MartinsvilleSwy in 1984! Geoff Bodine led 55 laps during the race to bring home a big victory for Hendrick Motorsports. #TBT pic.twitter.com/dYvD64Vz8A

— Hendrick Motorsports (@TeamHendrick) April 8, 2021

“I think about the day when we came down here [to Daytona International Speedway],” Hendrick said last week. “Geoff Bodine and I were talking about it. I think we had six full-time people and a bunch of volunteers. We finished eighth in that race.

“When I walked down pit road and I saw the Wood brothers and Richard Petty and Junior Johnson, I thought we shouldn’t even be here. It brings back a lot of memories. Daytona is a special place.”

It was made more special when Byron crossed the finish line in the number 24 Chevrolet Camaro Monday night, with Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman a close second.

It was the ninth Daytona 500 victory for Hendrick Motorsports, tying it with Petty Enterprises for the most wins. It had been 10 years, though, since a Hendrick car won the Daytona 500, with Dale Earnhardt, Jr., taking the checkered flag in 2014.

“You couldn’t write the script any better, 24 in ’24,” Hendrick said after the race. “We win this on our 40th to the day. And we tied a record now, so that’s awesome.”

Hendrick is the honoree at the 29th Amelia Concours d’Elegance, held February 29 through March 3 at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida. Many notable Hendrick Motorsports cars will be on display, including the Garage 56 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 that ran in the 24 Hours of Le Mans last year.

On Saturday, March 2, Hendrick will take part in a seminar titled “40 Years of Hendrick Motorsports,” moderated by former Hendrick crew chief Ray Evernham, and featuring past Hendrick Motorsports drivers Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Terry Labonte, and Kenny Schrader. It will be livestreamed on Facebook, courtesy of Chevrolet.

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So here’s the headline news from the NASCAR Daytona 500, held Monday due to storms that dumped three inches of rain on the track on Saturday and Sunday. As you are likely aware, the season-opening Daytona 500 was postponed by one day, to be followed by Saturday’s rained-out the Xfinity series United Rentals 300, essentially creating the Daytona 800 for the fans willing to sit there from 4 p.m. to almost midnight, whether their seats were in the grandstand or at home in front of the television.

With temperatures dropping to 49 degrees by the end of the evening’s races, the grandstands were pretty empty by the last few laps. We’ll have to wait for the TV ratings to see if fans at home made it through all 800 miles of racing.

William Byron, the 26-year-old, under-the-radar driver of the #24 Chevrolet owned by Hendrick Motorsports, won his first Daytona 500. With six victories in 2023, he was the winningest driver of the season, but a major victory had eluded him until now.

Byron didn’t start racing until he was 15, perhaps 10 years later than other NASCAR drivers his age, who typically start out in karts shortly after they can walk. Byron began his racing career at the computer, on the iRacing game that allows you to compete against drivers all over the country who use the platform.

“I’m just a kid from racing on computers and winning the Daytona 500,” Byron said after the race. “I can’t believe it.” Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman was second, Christopher Bell was third. The complete results are here.

You’ll notice a lot of big names are far down that list, such as polesitter Joey Logano, finishing 32nd in the 40-car field, and 2023 Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., who finished 31st, or 2023 NASCAR Cup champion Ryan Blaney, who came in 30th. Those drivers, and plenty more, were caught up in multiple crashes, including a 23-car pileup with nine laps to go. Victims of that one included three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, who finished 19th.

As soon as Byron’s victory celebration was completed, NASCAR pivoted to the Xfinity race, scheduled for 9 p.m. It took the green flag at 9:04. It was arguably a better race than the Daytona 500, and certainly wilder; it was also a crashfest, with Richard Childress Racing driver Austin Hill winning in his Chevrolet for the third straight year.

Hill, 29, will be running the full Xfinity season for Childress, who plans to put him in some select Cup races this year, and likely full-time in Cup in 2025. “I don’t even know what time it is,” a jubilant Hill said in Victory Lane. “I know it’s past my bedtime, but we’re about to party tonight.” Sheldon Creed came in second, Parker Retzlaff was third. The complete results are here. As with the Daytona 500, plenty of contenders fell out of the running due to wrecks, causing nine caution periods.

Five drivers raced in both the Daytona 500 and the United Rentals 300, with John Hunter Nemechek having the most to show for his long day: A seventh-place finish in the 500, and a matching seventh in the Xfinity race. Also (maybe) worth noting for fans of the Malcolm in the Middle television series: Star Frankie Muniz, in his first NASCAR Xfinity race, finished 35th after being caught up in a crash not of his making.

In all, it was an interesting if disjointed weekend. NASCAR controls virtually everything that goes on at its track, except the weather, and it has caused more shuffling of races so far in this very early season than typically happens in a full year. First the NASCAR Busch Light exhibition race, scheduled to be run Sunday, February 4, in the Los Angeles Coliseum, was moved to Saturday with very little notice because of storms that were headed to California. Not surprisingly, TV ratings were far worse than they were in 2022 and 2023 because a lot of fans didn’t get word of the move.

This year, only one of the weekend’s four races ran when it was originally scheduled to: the Daytona NASCAR Craftsman Truck race on Friday night. Saturday’s ARCA race was moved to Friday after the truck race due to the gloomy forecast. As predicted, Saturday was a washout, except for Xfinity qualifying. NASCAR gave up and called the Xfinity race when the rain resumed after qualifying. Sunday’s weather was even worse, with the Daytona 500 called at 9:30 Sunday morning.

Once the final TV ratings are in for this year’s two main Daytona races, they are expected to be a disappointment for NASCAR. (The least-watched Daytona 500 on record, according to Sportico.com, was in 2021, when the race was also delayed by rain.) Ratings are especially important to NASCAR given its new seven-year TV deal with Fox, NBC, TNT, and Amazon Prime, reportedly worth $7.75 billion, signed last November and due to start with the 2025 NASCAR season. Both NASCAR and the TV partners rely on advertising, which appears to be reasonably strong.

A racing website, Cawsnjaws.com, has tracked NASCAR broadcasts since 2018 and logged the television coverage for Monday’s Daytona 500. In 195 minutes, which is how long the actual race broadcast took, not including the opening ceremonies, there were 129 commercials, for a total time of 57 minutes. Fortunately for NASCAR, there were plenty of wrecks, plus the two made-for-TV “stages” that interrupt the races at set intervals, to get all the advertisers in.

Exactly how the revenue from the new TV deal will be split among the teams has yet to be decided, and the lack of resolution resulted in a story by the Associated Press on Sunday that added another cloud over the weekend. The story said that NASCAR teams have hired Jeffrey Kessler, one of the country’s top anti-trust lawyers, to advise them “in their ongoing dispute with the family-owned stock car series over a new revenue-sharing model.”

“We want to make a deal, we are just looking for a fair deal,” Curtis Polk, a part owner of 23XI Racing and member of the teams’ negotiating committee, told the Associated Press. “There is no give and take. We’ve been told, ‘This is all there is; there is no flexibility.’ That’s not a negotiation.”

Kessler, according to AP, “most recently successfully represented Division I college football and basketball players in a landmark antitrust case that led to financial stipends for athletes. He also led the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team in its successful fight for equal pay as well as litigations for current free agency rules in the NBA and the NFL.”

NASCAR’s 15 chartered teams represent 36 cars and drivers in a typical race lineup of 40 cars. There was a meeting on Saturday, the AP reported, attended by high-powered team owners Rick Hendrick, Joe Gibbs, Michael Jordan, and Roger Penske, to discuss revenue sharing and the charter system, which is set to expire at the end of this season.

The charter system is hard to explain, but here goes: At one time, the field for a NASCAR race was set purely by qualifying. If you weren’t fast enough, you didn’t race. But this meant that if top drivers like Dale Earnhardt or Jeff Gordon had a bad qualifying day, a great many fans of those drivers would be profoundly disappointed. So in 2016, NASCAR handed out charters to the teams that, over the previous three seasons, had participated in the most races. The charters guaranteed that their cars would be in the race regardless of qualifying. That meant fans would always see the stars race, and teams could court sponsors more easily, because the sponsored cars would never miss a race.

Here’s where it gets complicated: NASCAR allowed the teams to sell charters to other teams. A team with four cars, and four charters, might cut down to three cars and sell the fourth charter. Each year, it seemed, the value of a charter grew; one charter reportedly sold for $40 million late last year.

With charters set to expire at the end of 2024, teams are scrambling for answers from NASCAR on what sort of arrangements will be made for the future. So far, it appears that the sanctioning body has not been forthcoming. Add that to the TV revenue-sharing dispute, and it seems likely lawyers may be involved.

Stay tuned. This could get interesting as the season progresses. Which it does this weekend, with NASCAR Cup, Xfinity, and Craftsman Truck races scheduled at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

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I was raised on the sound and the (inconsistent) fury of the V-8. Make no mistake: I appreciate the exhaust note of a well-tuned three-, four-, six-, 10- or 12-cylinder engine, as I do the near-silent power of electric cars. But there’s something about a V-8 under load that speaks to me. Usually loudly.

Even if most are now in pickup trucks or big SUVs, I’m grateful they are still out there. The imminent death of the Dodge Hemi-powered cars and the Chevrolet Camaro at the end of the 2024 model year is saddening. I nonetheless find hope in Ford President and CEO Jim Farley’s recent statement: “If we’re the only one on the planet making a V-8 affordable sports car for everyone in the world, so be it.”

A couple of accomplished V-8-powered cars recently cycled through my press-car custody, and I think it’s worth discussing them together: a 2023 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Swinger and a 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.

Apples and oranges? Perhaps, but not as much as you’d think. They are comparable in horsepower (485 for the Challenger, 500 for the Mustang), sticker price ($66,815 for the Challenger, $63,920 for the Mustang, though both may have dealer markups on top of those prices). Both have six-speed manual transmissions, and they are just a tenth of a second apart in 0-to-60 mph times. They’re both EPA-rated at a combined average of 17 mpg, and both prefer to drink premium fuel. The Challenger has a $1000 gas guzzler tax; the Mustang’s is $1300.

I don’t think I’m giving away the ending of the story to say this: Both cars are such a blast to drive.

Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Swinger

The final Dodge Challenger rolled off the assembly line at the Stellantis plant in Brampton, Ontario on December 22 of last year. There are no 2024-model Challengers; all the new ones are leftover 2023s.

We’ve told you all about Dodge’s “Last Call” promotions, designed to send the aging Challenger and Charger off with a series of seven special editions. Special edition number three was the $5580 Swinger package, harking back to a Swinger model of the 1969 Dodge Dart, which was not necessarily a performance car unless you ordered it with the 340-cubic-inch V-8.

The Challenger Swinger wasn’t the most powerful of the Last Call cars, but it had a more-than-adequate 6.4-liter Hemi V-8. Dodge built 1000 Challenger Swingers, all of them widebody models.

Some of the Last Call Challengers were legitimate fire-breathers, including the very last one built: It was an SRT Demon 170 with 1025 horsepower. When the Swinger was announced in September, 2022, Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis said it had a “unique, fun character” with no real claims of immense performance.

So, essentially, it’s a cruiser. Albeit one with a healthy 4.3-second 0-to-60 mph time, reached in second gear. While it may not have monster horsepower, the big engine’s 475 lb-ft of torque helps it launch off the line with authority. The Swinger also has a “shaker” hood, meaning you can watch the exposed hood scoop shake under acceleration. We must note that it barely moves, unlike the shakers on the original Challengers.

The Swinger’s sturdy Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual has been around since 2008, and it has proven itself to be durable in high-horsepower applications, but it’s a little truckish and stiff-shifting.

Specs: 2023 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Swinger

• Price: $47,265 / $66,815 (base/as-tested)
• Powertrain: 6.4-liter V-8; 6-speed manual transmission
• Horsepower: 485 @ 6100 rpm
• Torque: 475 lb-ft @ 4100 rpm
• Layout: Rear-wheel-drive, two-door, five-passenger coupe
• Weight: 4298 lbs.
• EPA-Rated Fuel Economy: 14/23/17 mpg (city/hwy/combined)
• 0–60 mph: 4.3 seconds

Perhaps the Swinger’s biggest surprise is its ergonomics. Front seats are excellent. Rear seats are passable for two but awfully small for three, despite that the Challenger is a five-passenger car. Controls are a bit dated—after all, this car has been around since 2008 and hasn’t had a real facelift since 2015—but they actually complement the retro theme. Getting to the data-logging and electronic tuning “performance pages” takes a little longer than the Dark Horse’s one-button access, but the pages are useful when you get there.

Handling has never been the Challenger’s long suit, and it still isn’t, though the reasonably stiff adaptive-damping suspension and huge 305/35ZR20 all-season Pirelli tires help the Swinger get around corners quite well, and the Brembo brakes, with six-piston calipers up front, are stout.

Still, there’s no masking the fact that this is a big, heavy car weighing in at nearly 4300 pounds. While Ford and Chevrolet trumpeted the Mustang’s and Camaro’s handling on twisty roads and road courses, Dodge emphasized the V-8 Challenger’s ability on the drag strip, where weight matters a little less. To that end, the Swinger boasts line lock and launch control features.

While the 2023 Challenger has been out of production for nearly two months, at this writing, there are more than 23,000 still on dealer lots, according to Dodge.com.

We plugged three filters into the “new inventory” search engine—Challengers with the 6.4-liter V-8, R/T Scat Packs, the wide body kit, and the manual transmission—and found 314 still available, including a Last Call Swinger painted Sublime Green (a $395 option) with the exact same equipment and list price as our test car, located just 150 miles away. Your search results may vary.

You could do much worse than any of the Challengers with the same specifications as our Swinger. A big car, big engine, big personality. And the styling remains classic.

2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse

Ford calls the 2024 Mustang the car’s seventh generation (S650), which some may consider a stretch since it’s basically built on the (S550) sixth generation’s platform, which debuted as a 2015 model. But unlike the Challenger, the Mustang Dark Horse feels entirely fresh. At first, I wasn’t convinced the Mustang’s exterior update was an improvement, but it’s growing on me, especially the Dark Horse’s surprisingly anonymous yet slightly sinister looks.

Our Dark Horse was lightly optioned, but the car comes with a long list of impressive standard equipment, including Brembo brakes, transmission and differential coolers, selectable drive modes, the excellent MagneRide suspension damping system, a Torsen limited-slip differential, and a 12-speaker B&O premium sound system.

One option I do suggest is the leather-trimmed Recaro front seats—pricey at $1650 but better (and better-looking) than the standard cloth and vinyl seats that came in our test car. If you plan to frequently track your Dark Horse, by all means, opt for the $4995 Handling Package; it includes a more aggressive rear spoiler, stiffer chassis tuning, and adjustable strut top mounts, which helps dial in a track-focused alignment.

Mostly, though, the package gets you bigger and better wheels and tires: 305/30R19 up front and 315/30R19 out back, compared with the base 255/19/40R front and 275/40R/19 rears that our Dark Horse wore.

Specs: 2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse Premium

• Price: $59,485 / $63,920 (base/as-tested)
• Powertrain: 5.0-liter V-8; 6-speed manual transmission
• Horsepower: 500 @ 7250 rpm
• Torque: 418 lb-ft @ 4900 rpm
• Layout: Rear-wheel-drive, two-door, four-passenger coupe
• Weight: 3949 lbs.
• EPA-Rated Fuel Economy: 14/22/17 mpg (city/hwy/combined)
• 0–60 mph: 4.2 seconds

Both sets are made by Pirelli, but the Handling Package version features P Zero Trofeo RS tires that are superior for cornering braking. Buyer beware: The best price we could find on a replacement set of those tires was $2317.

If you don’t plan to take your Dark Horse to the track, the standard (summer) tires and suspension are just fine. The base Dark Horse corners amazingly well, and the ride, especially on the “normal” setting, is more comfortable than you’d think. (The six drive modes are Normal, Sport, Slippery, Track, Drag Strip, and Custom.)

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the Dark Horse’s rev-matching Tremec TR-3160 six-speed manual transmission. It’s decidedly better than the Getrag MT-82 in the Mustang GT—the gear shift lever throw is short and sure, and the clutch feels just right. There’s nothing wrong with Ford’s 10-speed automatic, a $1595 option, and there are several cars where I prefer the automatic over the manual. The Dark Horse is not one of them.

Inside, the front seats lack some lateral support, and I had trouble getting comfortable in longer drives. I’ve driven a Dark Horse with the Recaros, and they are worth the money. The instrumentation and electronic controls take some getting used to; there’s a 12.4-inch horizontal digital instrument cluster, and just to the right is a matching 13.2-inch center display. As you’d suspect, it’s all configurable.

The biggest decision you’d have to consider with a V-8 Mustang purchase is whether or not the Dark Horse is worth the extra money over, say, a Mustang GT Premium, which starts at $46,015 and has just 14 fewer horsepower if you get the active exhaust. The Dark Horse starts at $57,970, and I’d be perfectly happy with one that had zero options. My guess is that if you plan to keep the car, that $12,000 gap between the two would narrow rather quickly due to the perceived higher resale value for the Dark Horse.

As for which I’d take, it’s a matter of personal preference rather than outright merit. I’d be delighted to own the Challenger, but I suppose I’d prefer the Dark Horse, for that transmission and suspension. And for that 5.0-liter V-8 engine sound, which speaks to me at just the right volume—louder than loud.

2024 Ford Mustang Dark Horse

Highs: Sweet engine, excellent transmission, under-the-radar looks, if indeed that’s what you want.

Lows: Standard front seats need work. Somehow gets worse fuel mileage than the Challenger.

Takeaway: Get one while you can.

2023 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Swinger

Highs: Supple ride and handling, great front seats, wonderful exhaust note under acceleration, look-at-me styling and color, if indeed that’s what you want.

Lows: Rear seats supposedly good for three… but woe is that middle person.

Takeaway: Get one while you (barely) can.

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The PRO Superstar Shootout, held last Saturday at Bradenton Motorsports Park south of Tampa, Florida, was the richest drag race in history, with $250,000 payouts to the Top Fuel and Funny Car winners and $125,000 to the Pro Stock winner.

A beyond-capacity crowd, drawn by big names and perfect weather, saw current NHRA Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta take down Clay Millican in the final with a healthy 3.70-second pass at 325.14 mph. Millican had problems and slowed to 4.22 seconds at 196.39 mph.

“We’ve never really seen this kind of money, and the whole deal was it was pretty cool,” Kalitta said. “I know a lot of people worked real hard to make this happen.”

The biggest surprise was the Funny Car victory by Austin Prock, driving the John Force–owned car usually piloted by Robert Hight. Hight is having health problems and stepped away from driving for the 2024 season, leaving Prock, who has been racing Top Fuel, to take over Hight’s ride. This was his first race in a Funny Car, and he not only won the $250,000, but he qualified first. In the final round, Prock made a pass of 3.845 seconds at 332.42 mph to defeat defending NHRA world champion Matt Hagan, who ran a 3.872 at 329.75.

“I don’t even know what to say, I’m stunned. We just won the biggest payout in drag racing history,” Prock said.

In Pro Stock, the $125,000 check went to six-time NHRA season champion Erica Enders, who beat Dave Connolly in the final round with her run of 6.531 seconds at 210.05 mph to Connolly’s pass of 6.577 seconds at 208.81 mph.

“Dave Connolly and I have a lot of history and in that final round, I’d be lying if I told you my heart rate wasn’t a little bit higher than normal,” said Enders.

Still another surprise was Funny Car driver Bob Tasca III, who in Friday qualifying made a pass of 341.68 mph. It was the first time in history that a wheel-driven dragster (as opposed to a jet car) has ever topped 340 mph. That also makes the little Bradenton track, which has never hosted an event of this size before, the fastest drag strip in the county.

The PRO Superstar Shootout, organized jointly by PRO, which is the Professional Racers Organization, and the staff of Drag Illustrated magazine, was by almost any measure a success. It is the first genuinely major drag racing event in decades that wasn’t sanctioned by the NHRA.

The NHRA gets its season going at the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida. It’s set for March 7–10.

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Tony Stewart is a three-time NASCAR Cup champion, an IndyCar champion, an IROC champion, and a USAC Silver Crown sprint car and midget champion.

At 52, he’d like to add one more: The National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel championship.

Beginning with the NHRA season opener, the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway on March 7–10, Stewart will take over the driving duties for his wife, Leah Pruett, in the Tony Stewart Racing 11,000-horsepower, 330-mph Top Fuel car. In 2023, Stewart made his drag racing season debut in a Top Alcohol Dragster, finishing the year second in the standings. But while a Top Alcohol car is fast, a Top Fuel dragster is fast.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous about it,” Stewart told Hagerty Media. “But I was a little bit nervous when I went to Daytona for my first Daytona 500, I was nervous before my first Indianapolis 500, I was nervous the first time I got in a full-sized sprint car. I would say it’d be more disturbing if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous.”

This weekend, Stewart is at the big-money SCAG Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park, just south of Tampa. It’s the first major drag race in decades that isn’t sanctioned by the NHRA—it’s sanctioned by PRO, the Professional Racers Organization, whose members are a who’s who in drag racing. Last year, Stewart was elected to the board.

But Stewart won’t be driving this weekend—it’ll be Pruett’s last race before she steps aside, as she and Stewart are trying to start a family (nothing yet to report on that front, he said). The total purse for the PRO Shootout, the richest drag race in history, is $1.3 million, with $250,000 going to the winner of Top Fuel and Funny Car, and $125,000 to the winner of the Pro Stock class. Pruett, 35, has nine NHRA wins and finished a close third in the 2023 championship.

Stewart and Pruett met at an outing hosted in Utah by the late Ken Block in 2020, and were married a year later. Stewart started a drag racing team with a Top Fuel car driven by Pruett, and a Funny Car driven by Matt Hagan, the current NHRA champion. Stewart still plays a large role in NASCAR, as he and partner Gene Haas own Stewart-Haas Racing, a four-car NASCAR Cup team with drivers Josh Berry, Ryan Preece, Noah Gragson, and Chase Briscoe. Stewart also owns the dirt sprint car driven by Donnie Schatz, a 10-time World of Outlaws champion.

But it’s at drag races where you can usually find Stewart on weekends. “I enjoy it. I enjoy the people, I enjoy the atmosphere, the camaraderie—nothing against the other series, but it has an old-school feel that I haven’t seen in a long time. When I say that I don’t mean that it’s primitive at all, but the amount of fun that I’ve had there, even before I started driving, is considerable. On Friday and Saturday evenings, when the fans have all gone home and the crews are finishing up on their cars, we’re visiting with other teams and socializing and doing things we used to do way back in the day.

“That’s almost non-existent in motorsports. Some of the short-track guys will still hang out with each other when they’re traveling down the road in between races, but aside from that, you really don’t see it anymore.”

Some fans have speculated that the PRO race may be causing some friction with the NHRA, but Stewart disagrees. “There was a lot of animosity at the beginning from the NHRA, but we’re trying some different things that, if they work, maybe the NHRA can adapt down the road and keep growing the sport. This is not the proverbial pissing contest. Teams go south and do pre-season testing, and this event includes two-and-a-half days of testing that teams want to do anyway, with two-and-a-half days of an event attached to it. So to be able to race for the money offered up, and to have a unique format—I mean, I’ve never seen a Top Fuel dragster race a Funny Car. To be able to see that with the cars that don’t make the field—that’s going to be unique. I know it’s been done before, but I’ve never seen it.”

Bradenton Motorsports Park has been open since 1974, but has never hosted an event this size. “The group at Bradenton has done an amazing job to accommodate what needed to happen to make this event possible,” Stewart said. “I don’t think there would have been too many venues outside Bradenton that would have had the balls to make changes that we needed for this event—they haven’t blinked, they haven’t flinched, and that’s one of the reasons why we think this event will be a success.”

Stewart also addressed the challenges that face Stewart-Haas Racing, the NASCAR team. The past two seasons have been “miserable,” Stewart said, and its two most experienced drivers, Kevin Harvick and Aric Almirola, left at the end of 2023. Stewart has taken a lot of criticism, especially on social media, about the lack of competitiveness of Stewart-Haas, with many of the comments centered around the fact that Stewart is spending more time at NHRA races than NASCAR races, and he isn’t happy about it.

During the off-season, “I’ve spent more time in the NASCAR shop than I ever have, in all honesty. I can’t tell you what the results are going to be, but I can tell you that whatever they are, it’s not going to be for lack of effort on anybody’s part.

“I’m tired of hearing race fans complain that I’m not at the racetrack enough—somebody has to have the common sense to remind these fans that I’m not the crew chief, I’m not the engineer, I don’t make the pit strategy calls, I’m not the spotter—my job is to put the people in place to do those jobs. Whatever it is we’re missing is not because we don’t have good people.

“It’s frustrating on my side. It shows me how uneducated some of these fans are, and how they start talking before they think about what they’re saying. You can’t be in every place every time, and I’m not going to go to every NASCAR race. Even if I wasn’t racing in the NHRA, I wouldn’t go to every NASCAR event. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about our race teams, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about our drivers, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care about the results.

“For 20-plus years, NASCAR dominated my life. Now, I’m going to get some of my life back, and do some of the things I want to do, but it doesn’t mean that if we don’t have the results, I’m not putting effort into it. I don’t understand why people would say, after two seasons that went rough, that it’s because I’m not there. I’m confused and baffled by some of the stuff that you read, and the stuff you hear. Just baffled.”

Stewart admitted that he spent more time reading social media comments than he should have. “I had shoulder surgery the day before Thanksgiving, and I literally couldn’t do anything the first two weeks. So I went on the computer, and there was so much on social media—these people have no clue as to what’s going on. They just turn the TV on every Sunday and think they know everything. And they don’t know anything. It’s amusing to read some of it.

“It was a good reminder to just go do your thing. We don’t do all this for them, we do it for ourselves.”

For information about the PRO Shootout, which starts today and runs through Saturday, go to SuperstarShootout.com. For information about the NHRA Gatornationals, log onto NHRA.com.

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Immediately following its blockbuster Kissimmee, Florida event (now the largest collector car auction in the world), Mecum Auctions held its 33rd Annual Vintage and Antique Motorcycle Auction at the South Point Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

This has become the largest motorcycle auction in the world, with the 2024 event featuring some 2000 motorcycles.

One of them, a 1974 Kawasaki Z2 750RS, was among the auction’s modern-era stars, with a Mecum-estimated price of $75,000 to $95,000. That estimate was spot on, with the Kawasaki selling for a gavel price of $85,000.

Though Mecum is scrupulous about vetting the vehicles it sells, shortly after the Kawasaki was sold, questions were raised about the motorcycle’s authenticity.

But first, why did this bike sell for so much? Because the Z2 was a Japanese-only motorcycle, sort of the little brother for the 900cc Z1 widely sold in America beginning in 1972. Japanese law prohibited bikes with larger than 750cc engines, so Kawasaki built the Z2 for its domestic customers. It went on the market in March of 1973.

According to a 2017 story in Motorcycle Classics magazine, many American military servicemen stationed in Japan during the 1970s bought motorcycles there for fun and for transportation, and some brought their bikes home after their tour of duty ended. A Kawasaki collector quoted in the story suggested that as many as 25 to 50 of the 69-horsepower Kawasaki Z2s made it back to the States. Fewer than that have survived, making the Mecum-sold Z2 a legitimate collector’s item.

But the same day the Z2 sold, questions arose. The story broke with a YouTube video posted by CycleDrag.com, titled “Inauthentic Vintage Motorcycle Sold for $85k at Auction?” The description said, “Following the auction it was discovered that the VIN was ground down and was not legible, something that would drastically impact the value of the motorcycle and its proof of authenticity.”

The video showed the Vehicle Identification Number, or at least where the VIN ought to be, on the left side of the headstock of the Kawasaki. It showed a bumpy black surface, with the only part of the VIN legible being the number 75, which looked as though it might have been struck recently. Mecum listed the full VIN, and the last two numbers were indeed 75. The video’s host, CycleDrag’s Jack Korpela, said the Z2 was “one of the most acclaimed bikes here at Mecum, and now there are some serious questions about it.”

According to YouTube, the CycleDrag channel has 580,000 subscribers. It wasn’t so much the video, which is reasonably balanced, but the 500-plus comments posted about the video that are, by and large, profoundly critical of both Mecum and the seller, identified in a CycleDrag.com story and photos as Marcus Swan.

Said one comment: “This is on Mecum. For the fees they charge, they should be on the hook. They should be validating everything. This isn’t eBay.”

Another: “I can’t believe Mecum didn’t verify the frame/number before the sale.”

Still another: “This is not some backyard auction, how could someone show up with that bike and not think the grinding of the numbers wouldn’t be noticed?”

The same day of the sale, Mecum refunded the $85,000 to the buyer, and shipped the Z2, at Mecum’s expense, back to the seller, who had left the auction following the sale.

We reached out to Director of Mecum Motorcycles Greg Arnold for comment, and it was enlightening. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we’re not happy having the story out there that we sold a motorcycle with the VIN ground off. It’s just not true.”

The explanation: “The frame had been powder-coated and that had obscured the frame VIN,” Arnold told Hagerty Insider. “So we asked the seller, before the auction, to remove the powder coating either by grinding or sanding to expose the frame number. He did that at our request and sent us a photograph of it. It’s not great, because of the process he had to go through to get the powder coat off. But there is a frame VIN. So we looked at it and decided that it was passable, and we ran it in the auction.

“We have the photograph of the bare-metal frame VIN, and it corresponds to what the title was. After he did that, he spray-painted over it again, so it wasn’t bare metal. The pictures we see on YouTube, he just painted over the numbers again. Which is certainly understandable.

“Now, after the sale, the buyer had a representative there, someone who I know from past dealings, and he had been alerted by CycleDrag, though certainly he would have questioned it himself. He said, ‘I’m not sure I like this.’ And we said, ‘You know, we’re not going to make anybody take this bike, on this basis, so you talk to your boss and if he doesn’t like it, we’ll be happy to unwind the deal. We’ll send it back to the seller.’

“That’s the long and the short of it. The report that the serial number was ground off is not accurate,” Arnold said. “I think the seller was acting in good faith.”

The YouTube video also questions whether or not the engine VIN should have a small ridge in front of it, which the 1974 Z2 in question does, suggesting that the ridge first appeared on 1975 models. “I have a guy who is very deep into Kawasaki history,” added Arnold, “and he said, ‘No, that ridge is OK.'”

“Here’s the thing,” Arnold said. “It’s a 50-year-old bike. As we all know, there were running changes constantly. It would be hard for me to say this motorcycle is inauthentic. I’m not a 1974 Kawasaki expert, I freely admit that. But if the owner can raise the VIN on the frame, I think he’s got a legitimate motorcycle,” which is what the seller says he’ll do in the CycleDrag.com story.

The bike, Arnold said, should be a “featured piece in someone’s collection.”

***

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Kyle Larson, the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion, is one step closer to his IndyCar debut at the 108th running of the Indianapolis 500. Following his fifth-place finish at the Clash preseason NASCAR race Saturday at the Los Angeles Coliseum, he traveled to the Phoenix Raceway for an Indy car test on Monday.

Granted, the one-mile Phoenix oval is a far cry from the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but Larson said in a Zoom call today with the media that he learned a lot from the test. “I had a few moments where I was uncomfortable. I thought that was good to feel that at 190 or whatever we’re going—180 maybe in the corner— compared to going 220 [mph] at Indy. Having the moment, being surprised by something, I think that was a benefit.”

He nearly lost the car once: “Got a little bit loose into the corner,” he said. “As I was leaving the bottom, it just started to get sideways. I was able to catch it.

“Honestly, though, nothing about yesterday felt way different than what a Cup car feels like. That was good for me. I think the characteristics of the Indy car versus the Cup car, at least at Phoenix, felt very similar. You’re just going a lot faster in an Indy car.

“The moments happen a lot quicker. The edge of ‘good’ versus ‘not good’ feels a lot sharper. Yeah, it didn’t feel way, way different than what I was used to. Even with those moments of getting sideways, it didn’t feel way different.”

On May 26, Larson is planning to do the “double,” shorthand for running both the Indianapolis 500 IndyCar race and the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Cup race, which are held on the same day. He will compete at both events for his NASCAR team owner, Hendrick Motorsports.

Doing the double is a physically and mentally demanding exercise, requiring the driver to compete in the Indianapolis 500, hurry to the airport, board a private jet for the Concord-Padgett Regional Airport in North Carolina, which is 430 miles away, then board a helicopter that lands at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The late John Andretti was the first driver to attempt the feat, on May 29, 1994. In 2001, Tony Stewart became the first and only driver to successfully complete all 1100 miles of both races, finishing sixth at Indy and third at Charlotte, despite complaining over the radio of an upset stomach. Besides Andretti and Stewart, only Robby Gordon and Kurt Busch have attempted the double. Busch was the last in 2014, where he finished sixth at Indy but dropped out of the Coca-Cola 600 with engine problems. He completed 906 total miles.

Dubbed the “Hendrick 1100” (t-shirts, hats, and model cars are already available at Hendrickmotorsports.com), Larson’s HendrickCars.com–sponsored Indy car, from the Arrow McLaren stable (with full-time drivers Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi, and David Malukas), was unveiled last August. In October, Larson passed his rookie orientation at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His Indy car is powered by Chevrolet, like Larson’s NASCAR Cup car.

He’s unlikely to get another run in the open-wheel, Dallara-Chevrolet race car until open practice in April at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then in the practice sessions leading up to the Indianapolis 500. Besides lapping at Phoenix, when he went through five sets of tires, he practiced pit stops and making in-car adjustments that are possible in an Indy car but not in a NASCAR Cup car.

Night running. pic.twitter.com/kEdn0TBpyI

— No. 5 Team (@Hendrick5Team) February 6, 2024

Larson thinks he got up to speed in the Indy car, but since he was out there by himself, he really isn’t sure. “I have yet to be on track with anybody else, so I don’t know,” Larson said. “I’m not able to compare to anybody else yet. I could have been half a second or more off the pace yesterday. I just have no clue. Once we get to the month of May or the open test in April, that’s when I’ll be able to kind of judge myself based off of the guys who do this for a living.”

Few doubt that Larson, arguably the most versatile driver in the Cup garage, will get up to speed or that he’ll get his share of attention. “I do know there’s a lot of race fans that are excited to see me out there. That makes me excited, as well. I feel like I’m a grassroots type of racer. Even though I race on Sunday in the Cup Series, I still feel like I resonate with the local short-track fans. I think that’s exciting. That’s what gets people liking me.

“I know I’ve got a lot of support on the fan side of things. I’m sure the whole NASCAR garage will be paying attention to how my couple weeks is going there.”

And as for the Daytona 500, on February 18: “Hendrick Motorsports is always really fast there. I know our race car is going to be good. It obviously takes some luck to get to the finish, but you also have to make good decisions and be prepared.

“Although on paper we’re literally like the worst team on superspeedways, I do believe that we are much, much better than what we show on paper. I feel like 90 percent of the time we’re in the top six or eight at the end of the race, the final 10 laps, then we get caught up in a crash, end up finishing 28th or worse.

“Eventually it’s got to work out. We keep putting ourselves in position. I’m confident that we can go out there and win or at least get a good finish and get off to a good start for the year. There’s a lot of factors that come into play at those superspeedway races. You have to cross your fingers that you can be in front of the pack and then you execute at the finish.”

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The 2023 National Hot Rod Association season was a good one for Pro Stock racer Matt Hartford—he won three events, including the prestigious U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis—and he’s looking forward to the 2024 NHRA season, which starts March 7-10 with the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida.

But first, there’s money to be won.

Hartford is one of dozens of drag racers who will be competing at the first-ever Skag Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park, south of Tampa. It’s a big-money invitational sanctioned not by the NHRA, but by PRO, the Professional Racers Organization, which represents most of the professional racers and teams in big-league drag racing.

The PRO Shootout will be the richest event in drag racing history, one reason it’s attracting racers like Hartford. “Obviously, we are looking forward to a race where the payout is almost as much as winning an NHRA season championship,” he said. The Pro Stock winner will pocket $125,000, and the winners of the Top Fuel and Funny Car competition will get $250,000 each. Total payout is a sobering $1.3 million.

Money aside, “Everybody wants to win the first one no matter what the series is, but it would be something you look back on in 20 years and say, ‘That was pretty cool,’” said Hartford.

The event will begin with one qualifying session on Thursday night, February 8, followed by three sessions on Friday. Then, the eight qualified drivers in Top Fuel and Funny Car and the 16 qualified drivers in Pro Stock will draw chips to set the pairings for Saturday eliminations.

With Super Bowl LVIII airing on Sunday, February 11, race organizers Wes Buck, founder and editorial director of Drag Illustrated, and Alan Johnson, president of PRO and crew chief for Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta, wanted to make sure the PRO Shootout didn’t go up against the biggest sporting event in America.

When Buck and Johnson announced the PRO Shootout six months ago, they said the purse would be $1.3 million, but no major sponsors had been signed. Fortunately for them, that’s changed, but you have to give them credit for guts.

“This is an inaugural event so there are bound to be some hiccups, but we felt we had to lead with conviction and put our money where our mouth is,” Buck said. “We knew we had to call our shot on day one, and here we are, $1.3 million later.”

Compared to some other pro motorsports, prize money in drag racing often hasn’t kept pace, Buck said. “We’re talking about changing the economy in drag racing. Our sport has the expense associated with running these cars, specifically Top Fuel and Funny Car, and the math has never made sense, but it’s trending in the wrong direction.

“A lot of these racers don’t expect their race operations to make tons of money, but it needs to be self-sustaining. And in the environment that exists currently, there really isn’t a pathway for drag racers to win enough money and even break even. So it causes a lot of these race teams to be 100 percent beholden to sponsors, with no security—it’s a tough environment to operate in.”

If this sounds as though Buck is criticizing the NHRA, he really isn’t. In fact, he says he’s done all he can not to represent the PRO Shootout as a shot across the bow of the NHRA. “There’s a lot of us versus them, NHRA versus PRO, and that’s never been our agenda. We certainly understand that people are competitive, and it’s easy to get your feathers ruffled, but we really feel that this is complementary to a great time in the sport of drag racing, and I think it’s going to send everybody off into the season with excitement and momentum and enthusiasm for our sport and what we do.

“We’re running well in advance of the NHRA season opener because we didn’t want any decisions to have to be made by fans or vendors—I think we’ve done as good of a job as we can to work with the NHRA and have this event be something inclusive.”

Besides Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock, the PRO Shootout will also run three Sportsman classes—Stock Eliminator, Super Stock Eliminator and Top Sportsman Eliminator. Pay-per-view streaming will be provided by FloRacing.com.

“We’re about to have ourselves a hell of a drag race,” Buck said.

For more information, log onto Superstarshootout.com.

***

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Seven-time Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton is set to move from Mercedes to Ferrari, according to an Instagram post from Scuderia Ferrari.

“Scuderia Ferrari is pleased to announce that Lewis Hamilton will be joining the team in 2025, on a multi-year contract,” the post said.

Mercedes also released a statement announcing the news. “Lewis has activated a release option in the contract announced last August and this season therefore will be his last driving for the Silver Arrows. The news brings to an end what is currently a 17-year relationship in F1 with Mercedes-Benz, and an 11-year partnership with the works team.”

Said Hamilton: “I have had an amazing 11 years with this team and I am so proud of what we accomplished together. Mercedes has been a part of my life since I was 13 years old. It’s a place where I have grown up, so making the decision to leave was one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make. But the time is right for me to take this step, and I am excited to be taking on a new challenge.”

Hamilton, 39, was expected to finish out his career with Mercedes, the team with which he won six of his seven world championships. Mercedes struggled during 2023, leaving Hamilton winless.

Of course, with the outstanding season Max Verstappen had driving for Red Bull Racing Honda, most drivers were winless. Verstappen and his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez, would have swept the season were it not for Carlos Sainz’s September win at Singapore for Ferrari. Media reports say Sainz is the driver that Hamilton would replace. Where this leaves Sainz is unclear; he could possibly replace Hamilton at Mercedes. His Ferrari co-driver Charles Leclerc signed a new contract two weeks ago, but there was no mention then of Sainz. Speculation was that Alex Albon of Williams could replace Sainz, but that was before the Hamilton news was made public.

Ferrari has long courted the services of Hamilton, making him a $50 million offer last year. But Hamilton decided to stick with Mercedes. His current contract includes the 2025 season, but obviously there was some sort of escape clause built in, likely reflecting Mercedes’ competitiveness, or lack of it.

Autosport quoted Hamilton early last season as saying about Mercedes: “I think for this year [2023] they thought the fundamentals were good and we just have to go here and it’s not the case. That’s why I was frustrated in February, because they hadn’t made the changes I’d asked (for).”

Apparently, Hamilton is convinced that as he enters the late stage of his career he has a better chance at a return to glory with Ferrari than Mercedes.

In recent years, the outspoken Hamilton has branched out into other ventures. In October of 2022, he founded Dawn Apollo Films, a production company. Its upcoming projects include an untitled motorsport drama starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski, which spent the last two weeks filming at the Daytona International Speedway and the surrounding area.

***

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At an Automotive Press Association appearance on December 4, 2023, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said GM was considering bringing back hybrids. “We have the technology,” she said. “We’ll continue to look at where the market is, where the regulatory environment is.”

Now, market factors such as customer demand, problems with building electric models, and government pollution standards have caused Barra to admit that GM will begin building plug-in hybrids. Her comments came last Tuesday in a fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts.

She reiterated that GM is still on track to convert its portfolio to all-electric by 2035, as it promised in January 2021, “but in the interim, deploying plug-in technology in strategic segments will deliver some of the environmental benefits of EVs as the nation continues to build its charging infrastructure.”

She declined to say when we’ll see plug-in hybrids, or in which market segments GM will offer them. “We plan to deliver the program in a capital- and cost-efficient way because the technology is already in production in other markets. We’ll have more to share about this down the road.”

It’s lost on no one that GM had a leg up on plug-in hybrids with the Chevrolet Volt, which went on sale in December of 2010. The second-generation Volt, which had an upgraded powertrain and more battery capacity, went on sale in October of 2015. But GM pulled the plug on the slow-selling Volt in 2019 and began doubling down on plans to produce electric vehicles.

GM likely should have further refined a hybrid portfolio, as other manufacturers such as Toyota and Hyundai were doing, rather than dropping the technology altogether. “GM not only had a head-start on hybrids with the Volt but also with the SUVs more than a decade ago,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president for global forecasting for Pennsylvania-based AutoForecast Solutions. “Had they not decided on taking the all-EV route, they could have had a usable, and arguably more popular, hybrid lineup.

“The emissions regulations are going to require something more than the eventuality of electric vehicles,” he continues. “With the slowing transition to EVs, it makes sense to add hybrids to your lineup, especially since many of your products are V-8-powered trucks, and what are traditionally high-polluting models.”

Also in play is a “slowing of the transition to EVs,” Fiorani said. Early adopters jumped on EVs when they first became available, but the balance of customers have been more cautious about entering the EV market when they perceive that range and infrastructure may not be at the levels they require to abandon their ICE vehicles.

“Everybody anticipated that the growth would continue at this sharp angle, and it’s just not happening,” Fiorani said. “As we transition out of the early adopters, it’s been more difficult to move customers out of their ICE vehicles and into an EV.”

Indeed, simply building EVs and getting them to market has been difficult for GM, in part due to issues with weakened demand and with producing the Ultium battery platform. In a February forecast by AutoForecast Solutions, GM said it planned to build 416,300 EVs in 2023. Actual production was 120,900.

Presently, the Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is the only hybrid in GM’s North American lineup. As Barra mentioned, GM builds hybrids in other markets, most notably China.

But Fiorani said that simply bringing the Chinese hardware and software here won’t solve GM’s problems. The Chinese hybrids are mostly smaller vehicles, and one issue will be finding a vehicle small enough in the U.S. fleet to use the same technology. “There’s a potential that they could use it in vehicles the size of the Chevrolet Trax, which is produced in South Korea. But the big meat will be hybrids that compete with Ford and Toyota in full-sized trucks.” Both Ford (as of the 2021 model year) and Toyota (as of 2022 MY) currently offer hybrid versions of their full-size trucks, and hybrid offerings in that segment would go a long way to helping GM meet emissions goals across its portfolio.

So when can we expect to see some new hybrids from GM? “This will not be an overnight thing,” Fiorano said, because GM will have to bring back engineering they haven’t used in a decade and raise it to current levels.

“It’s important to note that GM and the rest of the industry should have seen this coming,” Fiorani said, “and should have been better prepared. Toyota, Ford, Honda—a few of these companies have hybrids in their lineup, and companies like Toyota didn’t expect the transition to EVs to happen anytime soon. Something between those two extremes probably would have been the best course of action.”

***

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When we last left former Formula 1 driver and current multi-series team owner Michael Andretti and his quest to be allowed to enter a two-car team in Formula 1, it was October 2 of last year, and the FIA, the governing body for F1, had approved his application.

Andretti then moved to the final stage of the process, which was handled by Formula 1 management itself.

Today, its decision dropped on Andretti’s head like a ton of bricks. In a 20-point assessment, F1 has blackballed Andretti’s application, though the series managers did say they could reconsider their decision for the 2028 season.

Andretti and his father, 83-year-old Mario Andretti, the 1978 F1 world champion, have been seeking to become the 11th team on a grid that seems happy with 10 teams and 20 cars. All during the process, Michael Andretti’s effort, in conjunction with a partnership with Cadillac, has received minimal support from some team principals, outright hostility from others.

F1 claims its decision had nothing to do with how the other teams felt about Andretti. “Our assessment did not involve any consultation with the current F1 teams,” reads the rejection statement. “However, in considering the best interests of the Championship we took account of the impact of the entry of an 11th team on all commercial stakeholders in the Championship.” In other words, they understand that the F1 pie is presently divided into 10 parts, and those teams did not want to have to cut the pie into 11 slices.

The rejection seems to rely largely on the fact that Andretti F1 does not have a dedicated engine supplier. According to F1’s statement, Andretti’s application “contemplates an association with General Motors that does not initially include a Power Unit [PU] supply, with an ambition for a full partnership with GM as a PU supplier in due course, but this will not be the case for some years.” In other words, while Cadillac is happy to provide development resources such as wind tunnel time, and has registered as a power unit supplier with F1 as of last November, the company is not yet in a position to build a suitable F1 powertrain, a process which could cost upwards of 10 figures. If Cadillac’s situation changes by 2028, Andretti’s application would stand a better chance of approval.

“Having a GM Power Unit supply attached to the Application at the outset would have enhanced its credibility, though a novice constructor in partnership with a new entrant PU supplier would also have a significant challenge to overcome. Most of the attempts to establish a new constructor in the last several decades have not been successful,” the rejection statement said. “GM has the resources and credibility to be more than capable of attempting this challenge, but success is not assured.”

F1 management said that: “Our assessment process has established that the presence of an 11th team would not, in and of itself, provide value to the Championship. Any 11th team should show that its participation and involvement would bring a benefit to the Championship. The most significant way in which a new entrant would bring value is by being competitive, in particular by competing for podiums and race wins. This would materially increase fan engagement and would also increase the value of the Championship in the eyes of key stakeholders and sources of revenue such as broadcasters and race promoters.

“We do not believe that the Applicant would be a competitive participant.” This comment will catch any motorsports aficionado by surprise: Michael Andretti as a driver and team owner has consistently been competitive in a variety of series, including IndyCar, Formula E, and IMSA, proving itself most recently with Jake Dennis’ win in the season-opening Formula E race last week.

But what about the Andretti name, arguably the most famous racing family in North America, which has become a huge market for F1? “While the Andretti name carries some recognition for F1 fans, our research indicates that F1 would bring value to the Andretti brand rather than the other way around.”

The only ray of hope for an Andretti- and Cadillac-backed team was this: “We would look differently on an application for the entry of a team into the 2028 Championship with a GM power unit, either as a GM works team or as a GM customer team designing all allowable components in-house. In this case there would be additional factors to consider in respect of the value that the Applicant would bring to the Championship, in particular in respect of bringing a prestigious new OEM to the sport as a PU supplier.”

This, despite the fact that multiple teams currently in the series use powertrains bought or leased from other manufacturers. And that the only American F1 team, Haas F1, has been a perpetual backmarker since it entered the series in 2016, and has always used a supplier engine, originally from Ferrari. Haas F1 finished 10th out of the 10 teams in 2023, and owner Gene Haas fired team principal Gunther Steiner this month. Steiner had been with the team since it began. Haas has never had an American driver.

Almost certainly, Andretti could do better.

So it appears Andretti’s only real path into F1 is to buy an existing team, but he has said repeatedly that there isn’t one for sale.

Last year, we asked Andretti if he was disappointed with the lack of support he has received from other F1 teams. “I don’t know if ‘disappointed’ is the word,” he said. “I said some things I shouldn’t have. I should have said that every team is going to look out for themselves, that’s just the way it is, especially as big as Formula 1 is. My point was the series—FIA and F1—look at it a different way than the teams do. They are the ones who have to look out for the future of the sport, where the teams have to look out for the future of the teams.

“I think I used the word ‘greed,’” as he described the teams’ negative reaction towards his initiative, “which was the wrong word. I should have said ‘self-interest.’ If I was in their position I’d probably be doing the same thing.”

Well, maybe. The fact that F1 can’t see the value in a solid American team, likely with at least one American driver, and an association with General Motors—we’d say “disappointed” is the right word.

Late today, Andretti issued a statement: “Andretti Cadillac has reviewed the information Formula One Management Limited has shared and strongly disagree with its contents. Andretti and Cadillac are two successful global motorsports organizations committed to placing a genuine American works team in F1, competing alongside the world’s best. We are proud of the significant progress we have already made on developing a highly competitive car and power unit with an experienced team behind it, and our work continues at pace. Andretti Cadillac would also like to acknowledge and thank the fans who have expressed their support.”

A tweet from Mario Andretti perhaps sums it up: “I’m devastated. I won’t say anything else because I can’t find any other words besides devastated.”

***

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The rumors were running rampant in the Daytona garages during the Rolex 24 race last weekend: IMSA and IndyCar team owner Chip Ganassi ran over and killed Lucky, a Golden Retriever puppy owned by IndyCar driver Devlin DeFrancesco—and Ganassi didn’t stop or say he was sorry. The police were called, and there was an investigation.

We now know that only some of this is true. Nevertheless, the motorsports social media blew up with the story. Feeding the flames was a post from Andy DeFrancesco, Devlin’s father: “It’s a crime that anyone has to go through this and Lucky had to suffer the way he did. It’s unconscionable people don’t acknowledge their actions or show any remorse.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Devlin DeFrancesco (@devlindefran)

It all started when Jenna Fryer, the motorsports correspondent for the Associated Press, posted this on X: “Devlin DeFrancesco’s golden retriever puppy was run over and killed in the motorhome lot,” a fenced-off area where drivers and team owners stay. Next post from Fryer, who was getting major criticism on social media for her first post: “I would not have tweeted about Dev’s dog if it wasn’t literally the talk of the pre-race grid. It was in the motorhome lot. Which means someone authorized to be driving a car in the lot was involved. I’ve asked for a statement from the other party involved.”

Multiple reports on social media said it was Ganassi, but like a responsible reporter, Fryer didn’t say so until she heard from him. Which she did late Monday. That post reads: “Chip Ganassi has confirmed to me that he accidentally hit Devlin’s dog, says he did stop his car and is ‘terribly sad about it.’ He says he spoke to four different police officers on site that evening. He said his multiple attempts to call the DeFrancesco’s have gone unanswered.”

Next post from Fryer: “It was imperative for me to speak to Chip before I could responsibly give more details because it is my understanding this was a wildly chaotic scene, and very different versions from both sides about the moments after Lucky was struck.”

Meanwhile, Devlin DeFrancesco, 24, 2022 Daytona winner in the LMP2 class, had to suit up and drive for Forte Racing’s Lamborghini Huracán GT3 in the GTD class. It was not easy. An Instagram post from him, with a picture of Lucky, which he got in September: “I’m going to miss you more than you know. Thank you for being my best friend. I love you more than anything in the world. I’ll see you on the other side, until we meet again.”

His girlfriend Katie posted this: “Words will never describe the pain of losing our baby last night. Thank you for the best five months we could have ever dreamed of. We love you forever, Lucky.”

I want to thank everyone who reached out to @DevlinDeFran Katie & my kids
Thank You

It’s a crime that anyone has to go through this and Lucky had to suffer the way he did

It’s unconscionable people don’t acknowledge their actions or show any remorse#RIPLucky @JennaFryer pic.twitter.com/5MzcL0xtaS

— Andy DeFrancesco (@DeFrancesco_A) January 28, 2024

It turned out to be a long day for Forte Racing. Misha Goikhberg, who co-drove with DeFrancesco in 2022, crashed the Lamborghini into a tire wall 26 minutes into the 24-hour race. The team fixed the car and soldiered on, finishing 40th in the 59-car field and 16th in class.

As for DeFrancesco: His contract to drive in IndyCar for Andretti Autosport ended in 2023, when the team downsized from four cars to three for 2024. He hasn’t announced a new ride for this year. But he will be with Forte Racing for the four remaining IMSA sports car endurance races, including the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

A final post from DeFrancesco: “Thank you to everyone who’s reached out to me over the last couple of days! I’m truly grateful. Thank you to Forte Racing and my awesome teammates, looking forward to getting home and going to Sebring soon!”

RIP, Lucky.

***

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At his first overall victory in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona, car owner Roger Penske confounded the highly-favored factory Porsches by snatching a win in his Chevrolet-powered Lola T70 Mk. 3B driven by Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons. That was in 1969, 55 years ago.

On a cool, sunny Sunday, this time with Penske leading the Porsche factory effort, Porsche Penske Motorsports won a second overall victory at Daytona over the Whelen Engineering Cadillac, which was leading until 45 minutes from the end, when a caution flag flew and the GTP cars peeled off to get enough fuel to finish the race. The #7 Penske Porsche 963 beat the #31 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R back onto the track, and Felipe Nasr, driving the final stint in the Porsche, never looked back.

“I’ll tell you, this goes down as one of the biggest wins we’ve had,” said Penske, who turns 87 in February. “When you think about 1969, when we won here with a Lola, things were a lot different in those days. Just to see the competitiveness now, where six- or seven-tenths of a second was the difference after 24 hours of racing, it’s unbelievable.”

Roger Penske Racing won by 30 laps, something that will never happen again at the Rolex 24, given the current level of competition. Of course, this occurred in an era when a Chevrolet Camaro entered by Randy’s Auto Body could finish 12th overall.

Yesterday, Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti’s Acura ARX-06 finished third, breaking Acura’s three-race winning streak at Daytona. Porsche 963s finished fourth, fifth and sixth. It’s a far cry from 2023, when the top Porsche, also a Penske entry, finished 14th, 34 laps off the pace.

In LMP2, the Era Motorsports Oreca/Gibson took the win—more about that victory in a moment.

In GT Daytona Pro, the Risi Competizione Ferrari 296 GT3 beat out AO Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R for the win. And in GTD (unlike in GTD Pro, the driver lineup of each entry in this class must include amateur drivers), Winward Racing’s Mercedes AMG GT3 won out over AF Corsa’s Ferrari 296 GT3.

In other news from the track:

Takeaway #1: The ending was confusing

Fans and drivers both were confused with the race’s finish, which seemed to come at least a lap early. The NBC broadcast said there were two laps to go, but the white flag flew almost immediately, and it seemed that the GTP cars had already begun their final lap.

Felipe Nasr, who was driving the winning #7 Porsche Penske 963, said, “I was confused, too. I don’t know if there were two white flags. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I was just focused on each corner, each braking and just clearing traffic and making sure there was no mistakes and taking the car to the end.” That’s why Nasr didn’t really begin slowing until it was clear that it was obviously time. “Yeah, you’ve got to keep on the throttle until it’s over.”

We’ve asked IMSA for an explanation, and here it is: “Due to an officiating error in race control, IMSA inadvertently announced and subsequently displayed the white flag with under three minutes remaining in the race. At the end of the lap, the race-leading No. 7 GTP car then received the checkered flag with 1 minute, 35.277 seconds still remaining, ending the race short of the planned 24 hours by effectively one lap.” According to the rules, IMSA said, the race ends when the checkered flag is displayed,  thus completing the Rolex (not quite) 24.

Takeaway #2: We never saw a proper Mustang-Corvette fight

The highly anticipated Ford vs. Chevrolet battle in GTD Pro never really materialized which, in reality, should not be surprising. Even though they have tested extensively, the Ford Mustang GT3 and the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R are brand-new cars, and there is something about the Rolex 24 to make even the most tested vehicles break. Or crash. The highest-finishing Mustang of three in the race came in sixth in class and 31st overall, in a 59-car field. The top Corvette finished fifth in class and 30th overall.

Both models were fast, and ran near the front in the early stages of the race. Both of the Pratt Miller Corvettes led for extended periods, but one suffered a cracked oil tank, and the other a power steering pump. The two AWA Corvettes were sidelined with a power steering issue in one car, an electrical problem in the other. One of the Mustangs was rear-ended by a Corvette, and repairs cost the car six laps.

Takeaway #3: Lexus had bad luck

It was an unlucky outing for the two Vasser Sullivan Lexus RCF GT3 cars, one (#14) running in the GTD Pro class, the other (#12) in GTD. That car sat on the pole and led for multiple stints until it was hit by another car, damaging the rear bumper. But the car persevered and made it to the final pit stop still in contention when, leaving the pits, it burst into flames. Driver Parker Thompson got out and grabbed a fire extinguisher from a corner worker and put the fire out.

As for the #14, which is the IMSA class champion, it was leading in the first hour of the race when an LMP2 car spun and collected the Lexus. The car was repaired by was 36 laps down when it rejoined the race. “We have championship drive and we’re not going to let this race deter us from going on to achieve great things this year,” said driver Ben Barnicoat. “We’re going to get our heads down and get ready for Sebring.”

In happier Lexus news, Toyota Racing Development president David Wilson told Hagerty that Lexus will have a brand-new GT3 car, likely for 2026.

Takeaway #4: The winning LMP2 car was driven by a 17-year-old bound for NASCAR

The Era Motorsports car that won the LMP2 class had some experienced sports car racers, including Ryan Dalziel, who won the race overall in 2010, and in LMP2 in 2021. But making his first start in the Rolex 24 was Connor Zilisch, believed by some to be the Next Big Thing in stock car racing. He becomes the second-youngest driver to score a win at the Rolex 24 at 17 years and 191 days old; he’s just behind Michael de Quesada, who won the GT Daytona class in 2007 at 17 years, 63 days old. Zilisch signed a contract for this season with NASCAR’s Trackhouse Racing, and his schedule includes races in the NASCAR Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series races, along with starts in ARCA, the zMAX CARS Tour, Mazda MX-5 Cup series and the SCCA Trans-Am TA2 series.

“It’s been a wild last few weeks for me, and I’m not going to let my head get big. I’ve still got to put in the work. I’m only 17,” he said. “I can’t even rent a car. Dad has to do that for me.”

Takeaway #5: Brad Pitt got some filming done for his racing movie

The planned filming of the Brad Pitt racing movie, which is possibly called Apex, reportedly went well, with Pitt spending some time behind pit wall of the #120 Chip Hart Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R, which was being raced by Wright Motorsports in the GTD class, finishing seventh in GTD, and 26th overall. The car carried cameras, shooting footage that is expected to be in the movie. That car had a twin in the garage; the actual film stunt car carries the names of the fictional Sonny Hayes (Pitt’s character), C. Kelso, and Patrick Long, who does actually exist.

Long, a former Porsche factory driver, doubled for Pitt in some of the filming during practice sessions, which began more than a week before the Rolex 24 and is expected to conclude on Thursday. Pitt has been spotted around Daytona Beach, and, oddly, at a laundromat in New Smyrna Beach with co-star Javier Bardem.

Takeaway #6: Attendance hit a record high

IMSA, the sanctioning body for the WeatherTech Sports Car Racing Championship, is owned by NASCAR, and they stopped giving attendance figures in 2013. But IMSA president John Doonan said that not only was there a record turnout for the Rolex 24, but also for Friday’s Michelin Pilot Challenge race and the Roar Before the Rolex.

The series is undeniably healthy, with 18 manufacturers participating, compared to two for IndyCar, three for NASCAR, with no additional manufacturers for those two series in sight.

Takeaway #7: The four-hour support race was a nail-biter

Speaking of the Michelin Pilot Challenge race, the four-hour event was held Friday afternoon, with a 45-car field. The race was a nail-biter to the end, as several of the leaders were in danger of running out of fuel before the checkered flag. In the last 10 minutes, leader after leader peeled off the track to get a splash of fuel, and at the end, the Kellymoss with Riley Porsche 718 GT4 RS was the last car standing, winning with a two-second lead over the Winward Racing Mercedes AMG GT4 car. Windward Racing, along with driver Daniel Morad, also won the GTD class in the Rolex 24 in a different Mercedes.

The Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup also squeezed in two races, won by Nate Cicero and Gresham Wagner. The aforementioned Connor Zilisch qualified his Miata on the pole for one of the races.

Takeaway #8: Where to catch the next action

The IMSA WeatherTech series is back in action with the second-longest race in its season, the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring at Sebring International Raceway on March 16. At that race, Lamborghini will debut its new GTP car.

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NASCAR will demonstrate its electric race car at the Busch Light Clash at the LA Memorial Coliseum event on February 4, 2024. 

The concept car was tested over a three-day period at the half-mile Martinsville Speedway oval in Virginia in December. It completed 340 laps with part-time racer David Ragan at the wheel.

Leaked Image of possible NASCAR Crossover EV (via u/crypto6g) https://t.co/p1QDTtIjFh #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/iaROIO6p2B

— r/NASCAR on Reddit (@NASCARonReddit) November 10, 2023

Prior to that, it was tested at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte, North Carolina. Ragan is expected to drive the car in the exhibition on the LA Coliseum’s temporary oval track.

The sanctioning body is expected to develop a hydrogen-powered engine and test that, as well. Several NASCAR officials made a trip to Japan last year to watch hydrogen-powered cars compete in an endurance event. Toyota has been racing hydrogen-powered cars since 2021. Hydrogen may appeal more to NASCAR than battery power, since the engines would still make noise.

A story on Sportsnaut.com quotes NASCAR’s vice president of vehicle design Brandon Thomas as saying that fans should not assume that electricity or hydrogen will replace gasoline-powered cars on the Cup circuit anytime soon.

“The [current] NextGen car does project to have hybrid-style power, but we’ve elected not to implement that to date.” Thomas said. “But it also has the ability to adopt full battery electric, and aspirational down the road, more hydrogen combustion, so that when the time comes, and someone says, ‘This is the car of the future,’ we don’t have to pull out the pencil and design it. We’ll already have it.”

The Busch Light clash is scheduled to air on Fox at 8 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 4.

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California 68 is a highway that begins in the town of Pacific Grove at Asilomar State Beach, winds through the Monterey Peninsula, and ends where the road meets U.S. Highway 101 near Salinas.

Along that 26.5-mile route, you’ll find WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the 2.238-mile, 11-turn road course. Built over just two months for $1.5 million, the track opened in 1957 after the Pebble Beach Road Races. That competition was held on public roads for seven years beginning in 1950, ending in 1956 after driver Ernie McAfee, known more for his land speed exploits in his streamliner at Lake Muroc than for road racing, crashed his Ferrari into one of the many trees that lined the street circuit. McAfee was killed.

For decades, Highway 68 was just a winding, scenic way to get from Monterey to Salinas, with Laguna Seca being one of few notable addresses on the road. In the mid-1960s, California officials made plans for the Highway 68 Expressway, widening parts of the road and essentially serving as a non-stop link between the cities. The idea was popular with travelers but less so with some local residents, who were not pleased with the potential for added traffic.

In 1974, those residents formed the Highway 68 Coalition to oppose the Expressway. Though the membership of the Coalition has rarely been publicized, one aspect has remained constant: It has categorically challenged growth and development along Highway 68, and multiple lawyers have been employed to make sure the Coalition, self-described as “a social welfare organization made up of property owners and tenants living and/or owning property in the Highway 68 corridor of Monterey County,” is heard loud and clear.

In that respect, the organization has been rather successful. The Coalition opposed the expansion of the Monterey Regional Airport, filing suit in 2011 over a $42 million safety improvement plan. The expansion was delayed and then substantially scaled back. The Coalition filed suit against Ferrini Ranch, a planned residential area that was approved by the government in 2014. Ten years later, there’s still no Ferrini Ranch. The Coalition filed suit against the developers of the Corral de Tierra shopping center, which was to be built on 11 acres after county approval in 2012. The shopping center never happened.

While Coalition has complained about Laguna Seca in the past, especially regarding race-day traffic and engine noise of cars and motorcycles, the group’s most cohesive effort is a lawsuit filed December 12, 2023, against the track’s owner, Monterey County; the county’s Board of Supervisors; and the Friends of Laguna Seca, a nonprofit group that considers itself a “steward” of the Laguna Seca Recreational Area, which includes the track. The Friends of Laguna Seca has pledged to raise millions to improve the facility, but the lawsuit asks that the county’s contract with the group be nullified.

“We live here too and share the same concerns as our neighbors about noise and traffic,” said Ross Merrill, president of Friends of Laguna Seca. “Our team of experienced business and community leaders are eager to move forward to revive this staple in our community for decades of future success and revenue generation for Monterey County.”

The Highway 68 Coalition disagrees. The lawsuit claims the track is a “public nuisance,” and wants to bar “motor vehicle racing events, rentals of the racetrack and noise levels at Laguna Seca Raceway in excess of the level of use and noise that existed at the time the legal non-conforming use was established in 1985.”

The county backs its 2.2-mile cash cow. “From the county’s perspective, we are asking to get this cleared up so we can continue operations at Laguna Seca, which is a large operation, and doesn’t need this cloud hanging over it,” Deputy County Counsel Michael Whilden told the Monterey County Weekly.

“It is unfortunate certain individuals have chosen to file a complaint against the county concerning operations at Laguna Seca,” said Nicholas M. Pasculli, county communications director. “The county does not recognize any merit to the allegations and expects a favorable legal conclusion.”

Barry Toepke, Laguna Seca’s director of public relations, declined to comment when contacted for this story. The track had a very good 2023 season, and much-needed improvements were made last year, including a complete repaving and a new $18.5-million pedestrian bridge at the start/finish line.

Indeed, the track contributes considerably to the county coffers, as well as area businesses. A year ago, the track announced that surveys conducted of ticket purchasers “who attended the six major race events in 2022 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca revealed an impressive total direct spend of $246,929,648.” In the words of John Narigi, president and general manager of the track: “Laguna Seca is coming back to life.”

For the Highway 68 Coalition, that is a problem.

WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca’s official calendar lists just nine events, including a Trans-Am race, an IMSA race, an IndyCar race, a MotoAmerica Superbike race, and the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. At the same time, a press release from Laguna Seca mentions “a near-daily track rental program.” In the first 10 days of February, rentals range from the Restless Wheels RV Club to IndyCar NXT series testing, from Pacific Motorcycle Training to a Hooked on Driving high-performance track day.

According to the lawsuit, “These increases include, but are not limited to, more racetrack event days, higher permitted noise levels, additional track rental days with intensified noise in excess of 100 dB, increased traffic, inadequate water supply and water quality, inadequate sewage disposal and expansion of the camping grounds.”

“This stuff is well-documented,” attorney Richard H. Rosenthal, counsel for the Highway 68 Coalition, told the website sfgate.com. “All you have to do is look at what they’re leasing the track out for between 1985 and 2000 and then now, currently. You’ll see a very intensive impact and expanded level of use and noise at Laguna Seca.”

Hagerty.com reached out to Rosenthal for further comment, but we haven’t yet heard back. We wanted to ask if the Highway 68 Coalition’s membership solely consists of one individual, Michael Weaver, who is the only individual plaintiff mentioned in court documents related to the lawsuit. We’ll update the story if we receive a response.

Meanwhile, none of Laguna Seca’s 2024 events are expected to be affected. After that, it’s up to the courts.

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When the 2024 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion celebrates the history of racing August 14–17 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, 12 of the 13 classes of competition will now be associated with legendary drivers.

“This year’s 50th-anniversary salute to historic racing will be a grand celebration unlike any we’ve done in the past,” believes Barry Toepke, director of heritage events for WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. “Every aspect of the 2024 Rolex Reunion is being examined and elevated in a sense. The entire team is abuzz with new ideas and ways to honor the significance of historic racing and the addition of these gentlemen has only fueled that engine.”

They are as follows:

Mario Andretti Trophy (1966–85 Formula 1): Andretti is the only person to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), the Daytona 500 (1967), and the Formula 1 World Championship (1978). The Turn 2 hairpin at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca is named in his honor.

Scott Pruett Legends of Endurance Cup (1991–2011 IMSA ALMS, Grand Am, FIA): California native Pruett began his career in karting at the age of eight. He broke the record for the most IMSA wins in 2016 when he won his 60th race (since eclipsed in 2020 by another Californian, Bill Auberlen). Pruett won at the Rolex 24 at Daytona five times. He has five Grand-Am championships, two IMSA GTO Championships, and a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He continues to win awards with wine produced at Pruett Vineyards.

Parnelli Jones Trans-Am Trophy (1966–72 Trans-Am): Parnelli Jones’ story weaves in significant accomplishments in IndyCar, Trans-Am, off-road racing, and in the history of Laguna Seca. At 90, the oldest living winner of the Indianapolis 500 had one of his most acclaimed wins in 1970 when, at Laguna, he almost lapped the entire Trans-Am field in his Ford Mustang Boss 302. He went on to win the season championship.

Dan Gurney Saloon Car Enduro (1955–69 saloon cars): Dan Gurney was a Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR, Can-Am, and Trans-Am race winner, becoming the first of three drivers to win in each series. He also started the champagne-spraying celebration in 1967 after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans, now an integral post-race ritual. In 1961, in the thick of his F1 career, Gurney rebuilt a Chevrolet Impala and entered it in saloon races in Europe where he made history outrunning the dominant Jaguars.

Ken Miles ’60s GT Trophy (1955–67 SCCA large-displacement production cars): Miles, now widely known from the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari, is a 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring race winner. Along with Carroll Shelby, Miles was deeply involved in the development of the Ford GT40 that he raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He often raced at Laguna Seca in Shelby Cobras, and he also drove Porsches for car dealer Otto Zipper.

Jim Hall USRRC Cup (1963–68 sports racing cars): Hall, 88, is one of the most successful USRRC drivers, including winning back-to-back USRRC championships and the 12 Hours of Sebring. As a race car builder, his products have won in ‘most every series they’ve competed in, which includes USRRC, Can-Am, Trans-Am, Formula 5000, World Sportscar Championship, and the Indianapolis 500. He was a leader in the innovation and design of aerodynamics and ground effects, as seen through his Chaparral cars.

Peter Gregg Trophy (1973–81 IMSA GT, GTX, AAGT, GTU, FIA): Gregg had many important race wins and championships across multiple series. He was the Trans-Am champion in 1971 and 1973, and he had wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1973, ’75, ‘76, and ’78. Gregg also took four IMSA GTO championships and a class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Hurley Haywood Trophy (1981–91 IMSA GTP, GTO, FIA, Group C, Trans-Am): Arguably America’s greatest road-racing endurance driver, Haywood is a five-time winner of the Rolex 24 at Daytona, a three-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, and a two-time 12 Hours of Sebring winner. Haywood’s record also includes a 1988 Trans-Am Series title with Audi and two IMSA GT championships.

Pedro Rodriguez Trophy (1961–75 FIA Manufacturers Championship): Rodriguez was a popular Formula 1 driver between 1963 and 1971, winning the 1967 South African Grand Prix and the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix. With his brother, he won the 1961 Paris 1000km and the 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans. According to the Laguna Seca track, driving for Ferrari between 1957 and 1970, he stood on the podium steps an impressive 40 of 94 races.

Briggs S. Cunningham Trophy (1947–60 front-engine GT, Sports Racers, and American specials): American sportsman Briggs S. Cunningham owned and raced Jaguars, Ferraris, Corvettes, Listers, OSCAs, and Abarths, but he is mostly known for constructing and fielding teams in the ‘50s with Cadillac- and Chrysler Hemi–powered Cunninghams. Third-place finishes at the 1953 and 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans were his highest, but Cunninghams captured impressive wins at Sebring, Elkhart Lake, and Bridgehampton. Adding to his legacy, Briggs successfully skippered America’s entry in the 1958 America’s Cup.

Skip Barber Cup (1967–81 Formula Fords): Barber is a back-to-back-to-back SCCA National Champion and back-to-back Formula Ford National Champion. He also raced in Formula 1 at the Monaco, Dutch, U.S., and Canadian Grands Prix. Upon retiring from racing, he founded the Skip Barber Racing School, the largest racing school in the world that holds programs at 10 different tracks in the U.S., including Laguna Seca. He is often credited by pro racers as laying the foundation for successful careers.

John Morton Trophy (1955–67 SCCA small-displacement production cars): After successfully competing in the SCCA National Championships, Morton’s talent and versatility caught the eye of Carroll Shelby, who teamed John with Ken Miles to drive for Shelby American Racing at Sebring. He catapulted into prominence with Peter Brock’s BRE team. He raced in IndyCar, F5000, Can-Am, and nine times at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where he won in class twice. Morton’s expertise and involvement in racing had an impact on the development and performance of many iconic automotive brands.

Ragtime Racers Exhibition (1920-and-earlier vehicles): It can be argued that this group, known as The Ragtime Racers, celebrates the start of motor racing. Sporting long-ago brands such as Chalmers-Detroit, National, Packard, and Franklin, the owners of these vehicles bring the history of motor racing to life for fans of all ages.

For more information on the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion visit WeatherTechRaceway.com and click on the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion event page.

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Now that this past weekend’s Roar Before the 24 is in the books, the three-day practice session for cars and drivers entering next weekend’s Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona has given the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship staff a better idea of who’s fast—and who isn’t.

That’s important in case the IMSA technical crew makes changes to the Balance of Performance before the race. The Balance of Performance, or BoP, is IMSA’s way of assuring that the variety of cars in each class are approximately running the same speed. Mandated changes in the BoP, which could be applied to engine power, rpm limits, aerodynamics, weight, the amount of fuel the cars can carry, or other adjustments, are designed to maintain parity and create a level playing field.

IMSA has now added Rolex 24 qualifying to the Roar. Prior to that, when it was just practice, many teams declined to show their full hand during the test, for fear that going as fast as they possibly can might result in getting BoP performance limitations for the race itself. Adding qualifying to the Roar likely limits that; granted, where you start may not be that critical for a 24-hour race, but it’s a feather in the cap of the teams and the manufacturers that qualify up front.

So who did? In the top class, GTP, it’s an all-Cadillac front row. Driver Pipo Derani, in the Whelen Cadillac V-LMDh, turned a lap of 1 minute, 32.656 seconds (138.318 mph) on the 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway road course, laying waste to the existing track record set in 2019 by a Mazda DPi. Second was Sebastien Bourdais in another Cadillac, this one from Chip Ganassi Racing, who was just 0.071 seconds behind Derani. In third was a Penske Porsche 963 driven by Felipe Nasr, with a lap of 1:32.816. Acura, looking for its fourth straight overall victory, qualified fifth and sixth.

“Obviously, the Cadillac was flying out there today,” Derani said after earning his 10th career pole position in IMSA competition. “It was just a privilege and a pleasure to drive such a car—really well balanced. There was great teamwork to improve what was needed for qualifying. The car felt on rails, and it was nice to enjoy and feel the full potential of GTP.”

In LMP2, Ben Keating was again the fast qualifier in his new ride, the United Autosports USA Oreca, with a lap of 1:38.501. In GTD Pro, Seb Priaulx put his AO Porsche 911 GT3 on the class pole with a time of 1:44.382. And in GTD, Parker Thompson won the class pole in his Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, with a lap of 1:44.494.

In other news:

—Cars and drivers from Friday’s four-hour Michelin Pilot Challenge race, called the BMW M Endurance Challenge, also participated in the Roar Before the 24. Twenty-seven cars from the GS class were on the entry list, plus 12 cars from the TCR class. Notable are the drivers of the Smooge Racing Toyota Supra: NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace, John Hunter Nemechek, and Corey Heim.

—LMP2-class cars are all powered by a V-8 from British manufacturer Gibson, and of the 11 entries, 10 use the Oreca chassis. The outlier is Sean Creech Motorsports, which is running a Ligier chassis. Said veteran driver Joao Barbosa, who has won the Rolex 24 outright: “It’s been super interesting, working with this car and this team to bring the Ligier back to life,” said Barbosa. “We knew it was going to be a big challenge and we took it head on, and it’s paying off. Looking at all the hard work the crew has put in behind the scenes, to catch up on all these years of non-development, it has been really rewarding to watch the car go. The week has been very successful, and the team is very motivated to continue that progress.”

—The GTD Pro battle between Chevrolet and Ford looks to favor the Corvette GT3 over the Mustang GT3, judging from qualifying. A red flag allowed for just eight minutes of green-flag running, though, so that may not be definitive. The fastest Corvette, from Pratt Miller Motorsports, was driven by Antonio Garcia, qualifying third in GTD Pro. The fastest Mustang was driven by Dirk Mueller and qualified ninth. 

—The Iron Lynx Lamborghini Huracan GT3 caught fire while traveling down pit lane on Saturday, with driver Romain Grosjean quickly exiting the car. It had to be a scary moment of déjà vu for Grosjean, who was injured in a fiery crash while driving in Formula 1 in 2020, but he emerged unscathed at Daytona. The team replaced the engine and continued practicing in the Roar.

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“This has been painful,” says Will Spencer, owner of the Winston Cup Museum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which featured NASCAR-related displays from the 32-year era when NASCAR’s top class was referred to as Winston Cup. On December 16, 2023, almost 20 years after the museum opened, Spencer was forced to close it for good.

It may be unfair to say that the sole reason for the shutdown is lawsuits filed by the current owner of Winston cigarettes, ITG Brands, but there’s little doubt that they were a contributing factor. Most of the contents of Spencer’s museum, including 33 race cars and other memorabilia, went up for auction last weekend at Mecum’s Kissimmee 2024 event in Florida.

“They hate me,” says Spencer of ITG. After reading some of the filings, it’s hard to argue. “ITG heats up personal accusations to Spencer in museum dispute,” ran the headline for a January 10 story in the Winston-Salem Journal.

The NASCAR Winston Cup era began in 1971 when the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, owner of Winston cigarettes, signed a deal with NASCAR to brand its top series as the Winston Cup. It was a brilliant move for both companies—to refer to the NASCAR series, you had to mention its sponsor. NASCAR soared in popularity. The deal lasted until 2003, when Nextel assumed the sponsorship.

That was the period Spencer wanted to honor with the Winston Cup Museum, which opened in 2005. Most of the museum’s displays, especially the retired race cars it featured, were from that era.

Things changed in 2015, when tobacco companies Reynolds and Lorillard merged. The Federal Trade Commission insisted that the company divest itself of four brands. ITG—short for Imperial Tobacco Group, a subsidiary of British conglomerate Imperial Brands—was formed to acquire Winston, Salem, Kool, and Maverick, as well as Blu e-cigarettes. While Spencer’s main business, a sign company, still counts R.J. Reynolds as a regular customer, the relationship with ITG soured.

The lawsuits began three years ago. “Because ITG owns the Winston brand, the company argued that it owned the Winston-branded artifacts the museum possessed. The claims were dismissed twice,” said TobaccoReporter.com. Spencer considered rebranding the museum, “but it would have been like taking Old Yeller and naming it Blue. I knew it would never be the same. It just wouldn’t be in my heart.”

ITG has continued to sue Spencer, with the most recent motions coming after the museum closed. ITG’s law firm, Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphery & Leonard, of Greensboro, North Carolina, where ITG is headquartered, filed an eight-page affidavit four days after Christmas, insisting again that Spencer be held in criminal contempt of court. That affidavit was amended January 8 and expanded to 20 pages with narration from Glen Tibbits, senior vice president of marketing at ITG. It cites a YouTube video hosted by a motorsports historian named Mitchell Stapleton.

That December motion quotes Stapleton in the opening moments of the video, which is one hour and 19 minutes long: “There are some things you got to know about Will Spencer and the Winston Cup Museum before we get going. If you’re a race fan you’ve probably seen the articles about the Winston Cup Museum having to close on December 16th, 2023, and maybe you’ve seen the stuff about the lawsuits surrounding it [that] the questionable-at-best United States judicial system has allowed a large company to bully this guy into closing his museum.”

ITG is complaining not about what Spencer said about the company in the video, but what the YouTube host, who posts as Stapleton42, said. Yet the motion holds Spencer responsible. ITG claims to have been “disparaged and defamed” by the video—a video that fewer people may have seen were it not for the publicity ITG generated by its legal actions.

Spencer and his wife, Christy, argue that the costs of defending the lawsuits in general, and trying to keep the museum going in particular, have been financially taxing. ITG dismisses their argument: “Defendants have claimed in multiple public posts that the financial costs to rebrand is too much—thus they are going to auction all of their Winston Cup related cars and memorabilia… That is objectively false. Just one of the cars, a Dodge Daytona, is estimated to sell for more than $750,000 at auction… Considering that Defendants could sell one car to pay for all of the rebranding, financial constraints are not the issue.”

That 1969 Dodge Daytona, a former Dave Marcis superspeedway car, received a high bid of just $225,000 and did not sell. We aren’t sure who “estimated” for ITG what old race cars are worth, but they need some remedial instruction. It didn’t help that the selection of Spencer’s cars and souvenirs—billed, without any mention of Winston, as “The Rise of NASCAR’s Modern Era Museum Collection”—sold on the afternoon of the final day of the 13-day auction, when presumably a lot of the bidders’ money had been spent. 

In fact, all but a few of the 33 cars that Spencer brought to auction were sold at “no reserve,” and prices for the most part were modest. A 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS, complete with a 700-horsepower V-8 (some of Spencer’s cars had everything but the engine) that was built by Junior Johnson and driven by former Cup champions Darrell Waltrip and Terry Labonte, in full Budweiser livery, went for just $62,700.

A 2008 Toyota Camry raced by Cup champion Dale Jarrett went for $9900. A 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix driven by Kyle Petty sold for $14,300. A 1996 Monte Carlo, raced by Waltrip in 1995 and 1996, sold for $9900. A 1994 Ford Thunderbird raced by Cup champion Bill Elliott went for $27,500. Incredibly, a rare, restored 1957 Ford, driven by Glenn “Fireball” Roberts to eight victories in ’57, drew a high bid of just $40,000 and didn’t sell.

Not surprisingly, the highest bid was on a former Dale Earnhardt 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo in black Goodwrench livery; it went for $348,700. The majority of Spencer’s collection of painted hoods, drivers’ helmets, gloves, and retired uniforms each went for $1500 or less—often much less. (DeWalt fire suit autographed by Cup champion Matt Kenseth: $590. Dave Blaney Amoco fire suit: $236.)

It’s true that Winston and ITG have been disparaged, but more by the media than by Spencer. “Museum closes its doors after years of lawsuits,” was the headline for a story on SpeedwayDigest.com. “NASCAR museum shut following lawsuits,” ran the title of a story on TobaccoReporter.com. “Family-owned NASCAR museum shut down thanks to greedy tobacco company,” wrote Jalopnik.com.

Spencer, 63, went to his first NASCAR race in 1971, the year the Winston sponsorship began. He went with friends, staying in their Winnebago in the infield of Rockingham Speedway. “Sunday, we rode down to between turns 1 and 2 on Honda Mini Trail 50s, and watched Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, and Bobby Allison and everybody go after it. I came home and started building model race cars. I still have my Buddy Baker one.”

He founded JKS Incorporated in 1984, which began as a sign and display company but grew into a full-service firm after adding manufacturing and fabrication services, as well as a marketing department, which develops trade show displays and brand experience events.

Much of the company’s work involved motorsports, and Spencer, since that first race 53 years ago, has never strayed far from NASCAR—he managed the show car fleet for Reynolds and a variety of teams. He often acquired wrecked Cup cars and rebuilt them into show cars. “The joke was that they’d wreck the car on Sunday, and Will would buy it on Monday,” Spencer said. “At one time, I had over a hundred of them.”

Spencer and his wife started the Winston Cup Museum as a gift to the city of Winston-Salem and to NASCAR fans, preserving an era in which NASCAR grew from a regional sport to a major national one. “It was probably the most important 32 years NASCAR ever had,” he said.

“In 2003, I realized that if I didn’t save the stuff I had, and put it together collectively, you would never be able to gather it back up again. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. So I spent a whole year making sure that what we had didn’t end up in a dumpster. The pictures, the trophies, the awards, I saved everything. In December of 2003, I was the last man out.” He literally removed the NASCAR photos from the walls of the R.J. Reynolds offices.

So he took an old Nash dealership, gutted it, and built a museum. “It never made any money, and it never would,” he said, adding that it lost an average of $50,000 a year. 

“I feel like we kept it alive for nearly 20 years, but I’ve been fighting 800-pound gorillas,” he said. “I got myself into a pickle.” What does he guess all this has cost him? “It’s really hard to put a dollar figure on it,” he said, “but in all it’s been a two-million-dollar hit, just to have it taken away.”

The next court date, at which he’ll answer ITG’s charges of criminal contempt, is February 6. “I might go to jail for it, but I’ll keep fighting. It’s unrelenting, and it has been going on for three years. I’m tired.”

ITG may win the battle, and the law firm of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphery & Leonard may continue to compound billable hours, but there’s no argument that they’ve lost the public relations war.

Maybe it’s the difference between doing something for money and doing it for love.

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In the mid-1980s, Porsche was interested in generating some motorsports enthusiasm for its popular 944 sports car. The company created an international series that featured factory-modified 944 Turbo models, which it called “Turbo Cup” cars.

The series was popular in the U.S., drawing 16 entries for the races, sponsored by Escort radar detectors. But in Canada, it was beyond popular, drawing 36 entries. The series there was backed by Rothmans, the British tobacco company that was very active in motorsports, including sponsorship for Formula 1 drivers like Ayrton Senna. Rothmans was in league with Porsche from 1982 on, that year winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a Rothmans-backed Porsche 956.

Though the Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup Championship cars looked very much stock in appearance, the modifications were substantial. They included upgrades like a magnesium intake manifold, magnesium oil sump, a smaller and lighter alternator, a larger high-output turbo for the 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine, a limited-slip differential, and a manual transmission with close-ratio 5th gear.

The suspension used Bilstein components, and the wheels were magnesium versions of the phone-dial design. Inside, there was a steel roll cage with a Recaro racing seat. Typical street-car equipment like air conditioning, a sunroof, and undercoating were deleted to save weight.

In all, 38 Turbo Cup cars of the roughly 200 produced made it to Canada, and one of them is up for auction on Hagerty Marketplace. Recently restored, the current owner is said to have spent over $73,000 from 2022 to 2023, returning the car to its original condition, including a Guards Red paint job in the 1988 Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup Championship livery.

One of the major selling points for the car: It’s currently titled for street driving, rare in Weissach-built Porsche race cars, making it a solid candidate for competing in road rallies.

With fewer than 32,000 miles on the odometer, the car raced in seven out of eight Rothmans races in 1988, all eight in 1989, and a single race in 1990 with owner/driver Reinhold Schill at the wheel. It scored four top-10 finishes in 1989.

After the Rothmans series ended, the car moved on to a successful racing career with the Porsche Club of America’s PCA Club Racing for 10 years, beginning in 1998.

It’s now eligible for the Historic Sportscar Racing events, passing an HSR safety inspection for the 2023 season. On track, with a rookie driver, the car finished fourth in a Sprint race at the HSR Mitty event at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, and sixth in an Enduro.

The seller is including four racing logbooks, an import document scan from 1992, service invoices from 2008 to 2023, and digital copies of period racing photography.

The auction ends on January 24 at 3 p.m. ET. Click here to take a look at this authentic Porsche factory-built race car.

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Ready for the sound of racing engines?

This weekend’s Roar Before the 24 is the annual three-day practice session for teams participating in the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona International Speedway in Florida, which is scheduled for January 27–28, and in the Michelin Pilot Challenge race, which runs on January 26.

The Roar starts on Friday and runs through Sunday, and it’s open to the public. All 59 cars entered for the Rolex 24 (they numbered 60, but one pulled out) are on the entry list for the Roar. That list includes 10 GTP cars, 13 LMP2 cars, 13 GTD Pro cars, and 23 GTD cars. The LMP3 cars, which raced for the past few years with the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, are no longer part of the series, but they will compete in some support races this year. Several of the LMP3 contenders moved up to the LMP2 class during the off-season.

It’s a compelling time for the WeatherTech Championship, which opens its season with the Rolex 24. IMSA president John Doonan said there are multiple reasons for fans to be excited about the upcoming year.

“If you’re looking back to 2023, kicking off a brand-new hybrid platform with the GTP class was important, and it’s still going to be exciting in 2024, especially when Lamborghini comes and joins us at the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in March.

“But for me, the big story of ’24 is a GT battle like none other. There’s no place else in the world where there are this many manufacturers competing against each other. Eleven of our 18 OEMs are racing in GT. That, to me, is really exciting news for the fans,” Doonan said.

“You have the new cars—the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Corvette, and a new Aston Martin. Lexus finally got a championship last year, and they’re back, in both GTD and GTD Pro. Aston Martin is in GTD and Pro. Porsche, the perennial GT champion, is back. Ferrari brought a new car last year, and they’re back.”

As usual, the Roar and the Rolex 24 “are like an all-star team of drivers. You have Formula 1’s Jensen Button and Felipe Massa, you have IndyCar winners, and from NASCAR there’s Bubba Wallace and John Hunter Nemechek in a Toyota Supra in the Michelin Pilot Challenge series. Both the WeatherTech series and the Michelin Pilot Challenge series are just stacked. As a racer at my core, that gets me excited.”

Besides GT, the LMP2 class is showing some growth. “LMP2 is only racing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the [mostly European] World Endurance Championship, and some of those teams have decided to join IMSA,” Doonan said. “LMP2 has a lot of veteran and up-and-coming talent that we look forward to watching.”

If you’re new to IMSA racing, here is a quick primer for the 2024 Roar.

• The top class is GTP, consisting of cars that were introduced just last year. Manufacturer backing comes from Cadillac, Porsche, BMW and Acura. Looking much like the GTP cars is the LMP2 class, which uses a chassis produced by Oreca or Ligier. They all use the same V-8 engines produced by Gibson, a British company. LMP2-class cars are the only ones racing in the IMSA WeatherTech series that aren’t backed by an OEM.

• The GTD class is invariably the largest. The driver lineup consists of some professional racers (rated Platinum, the highest rating, or Gold, which designates a less-experienced pro) but must also include drivers who are rated Silver or Bronze, which suggests amateur status. The cars are fully modified racers but must begin life as a street-going model (ex. a 911, a Mustang, a Corvette).

• The GTD Pro class is just what it sounds like—a group of GTD cars that are allowed to have an all-pro driver lineup. GTD Pro entries typically have a slightly closer relationship to their respective manufacturers than GTD teams.

• Probably the hardest job IMSA has is to write the class rules so each of the cars has a shot at winning its class. This process is called the Balance of Performance, or BoP. It allows IMSA to adjust the rules for each model within a class to either speed up or slow down the car—that can be done by regulating engine power, adding or subtracting weight, adjusting a car’s aerodynamics, or one of several additional changes. This allows, say, for a McLaren 720S or a Lamborghini Huracán to compete in the same class as a Ford Mustang. Or for a V-8 GTP car like Cadillac’s to compete with one powered by a V-6, like Acura’s.

Five WeatherTech test sessions are scheduled for all Roar classes on Friday and Saturday, with a short sixth session for GTP cars on Sunday, just ahead of qualifying for the Rolex 24. In addition to the WeatherTech Championship, the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series will use the weekend for testing, and the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge will begin its second season with a pair of 45-minute races. Those races feature LMP3 cars, plus full-bodied GT4 cars, like the Mustang, Toyota Supra, and BMW M4.

The 59 entries for the Rolex 24 constitute a full house. “There are no more pit boxes, no more garage space. From what I’m told, every camping spot is spoken for, every hospitality suite is spoken for,” Doonan said. “It’s a really good sign for our sport that there’s that much momentum, that much interest, both on the competitor side, and probably more important for us, on the fan side.”

More information is available at IMSA.com.

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The as-yet-untitled Formula 1 movie starring Brad Pitt will be filming at the IMSA Roar Before the 24 this weekend at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida and at the Rolex 24 itself, the following weekend. An Orlando television station reported seeing Pitt on Monday night near the track. Those involved with filming have had to sign confidentiality agreements, so most of the information about the film is hearsay.

Here’s what we know: The movie, which is being co-produced by Sir Lewis Hamilton, the Formula 1 driver, and led by Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, has Pitt, 60, playing a race driver Sonny Hayes. Pitt said in an interview with Sky Sports at the British Grand Prix: “He has a horrible crash, kind of craps out and disappears and is racing in other disciplines … His friend, played by Javier Bardem, is a team owner. They’re a last-place team, 21, 22 on the grid. They’ve never scored a point. They have a young phenom played by Damson Idris. He brings me in as a kind of Hail Mary, and hijinks ensue.”

The movie already has filmed at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and at the Formula 1 race in Las Vegas, using a Carlin Formula 2 car. “I’m a little giddy right now, I’ve got to say,” Pitt told Sky Sports. “It’s great to be here. Having such a laugh, time of my life.”

So what is a team filming a Formula 1 movie doing at a sports car race? Presumably, capturing footage for the “other discipline” that Pitt talked about in the interview. Pitt’s character may be racing at Daytona, possibly alongside the rookie driver played by Idris, whose character’s name is Joshua Pearce. Pitt said in the Sky Sports interview that his character raced at Daytona, as well as in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Jerry Bruckheimer, 80, is the lead producer. He’s responsible for a long line of films including Days of Thunder, Flashdance, Top Gun, The Rock, Crimson Tide, Con Air, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, as well as the Beverly Hills Cop, Bad Boys, Pirates of the Caribbean, and National Treasure franchises.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal confirmed that the movie will be shooting at a surf shop in Daytona Beach and at a restaurant in New Smyrna Beach, in between the Roar and the Rolex 24 weekend, which is January 26–28.

Racer magazine reports that the film has struck an agreement with an actual race-car team competing in the GT Daytona class. Their car will carry the livery, and presumably cameras, for the film crew. The car is expected to mix in with other cars during the practice sessions of the Roar, and possibly even during the race itself. 

In an interview, Lewis Hamilton said the movie, which may or may not be called Apex, is likely to appear in 2025.

“It will be as authentic as we can get it,” Pitt, who has raced motorcycles, told Sky Sports. “As a civilian, I had no idea what it takes to be a driver.”

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After nine annual events, Luftgekühlt (Luft)—that’s Porsche speak for air-cooled engines—has become a major auto show in California. But it excludes a lot of Porsche owners, because the air-cooled era ended 26 years ago, with the Porsche 993 model.

So what about an event that includes all Porsches? It’s about to happen, and it’s called AirWater.

“Luft has been around for a decade and focuses on air-cooled Porsches up to 1998, and the history of the legends and the cars they drove, both on the street and on the track,” said Patrick Long, former factory Porsche racer and two-time class winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “It’s grown into a pretty big event with people from 22 countries and 48 states in attendance.” Luft is centered around a tightly curated list of historically significant or interesting cars, both race and street.

Long, one of the creators of Luft, was looking to grow the concept. “We quickly noted that there was a desire from attendees to expand this to some of the newer water-cooled cars, as well as the entirety of the model line. What we found is that there is an audience out there who might be newer to the brand than the existing Porschefiles. We’re looking to really expand this format and this show into its own living, breathing machine, and we have what we think is a perfect venue to create a festival atmosphere.”

Last year, after Luftgekühlt 9 took place near San Francisco, Long and his crew tried out the idea. They “soft launched” AirWater and the turnout was more than promising. In attendance was everything from the latest 911 GT3 RS to the current IMSA Porsche Penske 963 race car, as well as vintage 356s, survivor 914s, transaxle 944s, overland Cayennes, and much more.

Now, the AirWater show will become a standalone event. It will be held in Costa Mesa, California, on April 27. Luft 10 will be held later in the year; the date and venue haven’t been announced. It will continue to cater to select air-cooled Porsches as it always has.

Long says that AirWater, as the name suggests, is open to any Porsche, from brand-new models to the Porsche-built diesel tractors that were produced from 1956 to 1963. “It’s really a Porsche supershow,” Long says. While Luft changes its venue every year, AirWater will have a permanent home in Costa Mesa.

It’s a popular area for Porsche lovers. “The southern California demographic needs no introduction to the brand—Porsche is a religion around here. We’re excited to expand with our creative and production team that has been together for a decade, and introduce our second act,” Long says.

“To make an analogy, imagine that Luft is a Friday night club where some big stars come and play music acoustically in a vintage atmosphere. Now we’re looking to expand that into an outdoor festival where there’s a little bit for everybody.” Long believes AirWater “can grow into the largest single-brand automotive show anywhere.”

There’s one way AirWater is like the more exclusive Luft: Expect surprises. “We’re just getting started,” Long says. “We have a lot of exciting tricks up our sleeve.”

Tickets go on sale today at air-water.com.

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The made-for-TV summer motorsports series, the Superstar Racing Experience, or SRX, has abruptly “postponed” its fourth season. The summer series, founded by racer Tony Stewart and former NASCAR crew chief Ray Evernham, announced that the series would not run the races it had planned in July and August, due to “market factors that have proven too much to overcome.”

SRX began in 2021, providing identical late-model race cars that could compete both on dirt and paved tracks, driven by racing “superstars” from a variety of series. Founder Stewart won the championship in 2021, IndyCar racer Marco Andretti in 2022, and NASCAR driver Ryan Newman in 2023.

Packaged for television, the series ran on CBS, then moved last year to ESPN. On its website, the series had already announced it would be back on ESPN for 2024, and listed five of the six tracks it would compete at from July 11 to August 15. SRX had sold out most of the tracks at which it had raced. 

The SRX statement in full:

“It is with deep disappointment that we announce the postponement of SRX’s fourth season. We entered the next phase of our racing series with great anticipation and excitement for what was ahead. Our expectations, however, have been tempered by market factors that have proven too much to overcome.

“Time has run out to put forth the kind of events our fans, partners, drivers and tracks deserve. We’re thankful to each for their commitment, their contributions and their support as we brought a new idea to reality.

“The racing industry continues to evolve and we are actively exploring strategic options for the series’ long-term potential. We made this announcement now to allow our partners the time and flexibility to best serve their interests. We will provide updates on future plans for SRX when they’re available.”

In what may be a strange coincidence, Evernham, who helped design and build the SRX cars but had little involvement in the series after its first season, and Rob Kauffman, an investor, car buff, and former racer, announced four days ago that they had bought the IROC name and planned to race at least once in 2024 under that banner.

IROC, short for the International Race of Champions, was similar to SRX: It featured famous drivers from a variety of series competing in identical cars. IROC was launched in 1973, with Mark Donohue winning the first championship. IROC continued through 2006, after which it folded due to lack of sponsorship.

Dale Earnhardt won the IROC championship four times, A.J. Foyt twice, and Tony Stewart was the final IROC champion in 2006.

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Kevin Sergent, who assembled one of the country’s premier collections of Chrysler muscle cars, really had no choice.

“Mopar is all I ever knew from the time I could walk,” the Pennsylvania resident says. “And even as a teenager I wanted a Mopar product.”

Well, he sort of got his wish. “Unfortunately, my first car was a Dodge Omni, which I bought for 800 bucks. I wasn’t in a position to buy high-end anything back then.”

Mopar, of course, refers to Chrysler products. The name was coined in 1937 for the company’s brand of antifreeze.

Though Sergent’s relatives raced Mopars, he couldn’t afford to buy a real race car. “But I could come up with a few hundred bucks to buy myself a Chrysler Newport or Imperial and run it in a demolition derby. It was a hobby I kept at until I was in my early 40s, and I finally quit after breaking a couple of bones and catching on fire a few times. I got pretty good—I actually retired as the track champion.”

Fortunes have changed for Sergent, who grew up riding in the back seat of his father’s 1968 Plymouth Road Runner. He began working in the automotive industry as a car salesman when he was 21, and 18 years later, “I cashed in my retirement account, the kids’ college fund and I triple-mortgaged my house to buy a car dealership.” Now he owns 11 dealerships in Western Pennsylvania that operate under the Tri-Star banner.

Today, 25 of his best Mopars will cross the stage at the Mecum 2024 Kissimmee auction in Florida. Though the collection includes some mint Plymouth Road Runners and Hemi Cudas, it’s the 11 “wing” cars that are getting the most attention.

The wing cars, shorthand for Plymouth Superbirds and Dodge Daytonas that were built in 1969 and 1970, had a purpose: Chrysler had to manufacture some street cars with the pointed, wind-cheating nose and huge rear wing in order to race with the same features in NASCAR, where the cars dominated.

The design was so radical that the cars did not sell well when new. “I had a friend who was a dealer and he had one on the lot, and he said that after two years, ‘I had to take the damn wing off it and the nose off it and put the Road Runner front back on it so I could sell it.’” They sell for a lot now: The 20 wing cars that were offered at Mecum Kissimmee in 2023 ranged from a low of $308,000 to a high of $1.43 million.

Sergent’s wing cars are 10 Plymouth Superbirds, and one Dodge Daytona, which is rarer than the Plymouths. His Mopar collection is being offered at no reserve, so he won’t be taking any of them back home.

“After the kids got through school, I finally had some extra money and, rather than invest it back into stocks or something else I didn’t understand, I started buying classic cars. And the Superbirds—I think if you are a Mopar collector, you should have at least one. I was very fortunate to find that many of them. That’s where all my extra money went—into the wing cars, Hemi cars, Road Runners—it was fun collecting them but it’s time to change course.”

A central reason for that was some life-changing news Sergent got last year. “I was diagnosed with cancer, and I knew my kids didn’t want these cars, and dropping these on them is something I didn’t want to do—honestly, it changed my attitude towards the cars a little bit.

“I went through successful cancer surgery, went through all my radiation treatments, and my first follow-up is February 1, so I’m hoping to get good news there. I’m not looking for sympathy selling these cars—they’ll take care of themselves. But it’s just something I didn’t want my family to deal with in case something happens.

“This is the cream of the crop. When this is done I will have no wing cars, no original Hemi cars. I still have a 90-car collection, but I’m probably going to start paring that down soon.”

As a Chrysler and Dodge dealer, Sergent says he’ll miss the Hemi-powered Dodge Challengers and Chargers, and the Chrysler 300C, all of which went out of production at the end of last year.

“Everybody’s pushing the electric stuff,” he says. “I’m fortunate that Dodge came around with the Demon 170 one more time.” He has one of those 1025-horsepower Challengers coming, possibly replacing his daily driver, which is a Challenger Hellcat convertible. “It should be waiting for me when I get home from Kissimmee. I’m sure one of my kids will love to have that car—they like the modern stuff. But it is sad to see them going away.”

Does he expect to get a little emotional as the auctioneer’s gavel starts falling today? “I hope not. I’ve been preparing for this a long time. It’s time for them to go where they’re really appreciated, hopefully to fulfill a dream that some of the buyers have. I’ve been doing this for 41 years, and these are the best cars I’ve ever had.”

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It’s no secret that Jim Harbaugh likes cars. The University of Michigan football coach, who on Monday led the Wolverines to a College Football Playoff championship with a 34–13 win over the University of Washington, used to own part of Panther Racing, a winning IndyCar team, and he drove the Chevrolet Corvette pace car at the 2013 Indianapolis 500.

And in 2018, he did doughnuts on the Michigan Stadium’s turf field in an 840-horsepower Dodge Challenger Demon. While in college, he even worked as a security guard for a General Motors plant, reportedly checking IDs and lunch boxes.

So what did he drive when he was playing quarterback in 1983–1986 for Coach Bo Schembechler at the University of Michigan? Something cool?

Not so much, judging from a 1986 story in the now-defunct Ann Arbor News.

He drove a faded red 1970 Volkswagen Beetle. In the Ann Arbor District Library archives, there is a photo of Harbaugh sitting on the rear bumper of the VW. The caption says, “Bo Schembechler is high on Harbaugh, but not his fender-flapping VW.” Harbaugh’s car “should not be allowed on the streets,” Schembechler once said.

In the photo, “It looks like I’ve got a cell phone,” Harbaugh said, quoted in a story from 2015 that appeared on a University of Michigan website. “And there’s the old VW. Driving this car was like Fred Flintstone. You could put your feet on the ground. The whole floorboard was rusted out and about to go. In the winter, it got so cold because it had no heater that worked. The frost, I had to scrape from the inside.

“The car got condemned. I paid $400 for the car at a used car lot on Stadium (Boulevard), the muffler fell off. And I did a really funny thing with it. The shifter knob broke, and I drilled a hole through a baseball and put the baseball over the top of it so I could shift it. And the brakes were really bad.”

He spoke about the time he was driving the Beetle from Ann Arbor to his parent’s home in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a 100-mile trip, when the car became stuck in third gear. “So, I just had to keep going 55 (mph). I could brake, but it would go right back up to 55. I drove it that way from Jackson to Kalamazoo and right into the driveway without coming to a stop.”

Sketchy as it may have been, the Beetle helped shepherd Harbaugh around during his time at Michigan, where he cemented a legacy as one of the football program’s most celebrated quarterbacks. Since returning to his alma mater in 2015 to take over as the football team’s head coach, we’d bet he’s been cruising the campus in something a fair bit nicer. That’s probably for the best.

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It’s true: The annual, ongoing Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become, by default, a newsworthy car show, as evidenced by a pair of wild concepts that Honda introduced this afternoon in Nevada.

The two cars signal the introduction of the 0—as in “zero”—Series, which Honda says is a new global EV line that launches in 2026. Unlike the recently unveiled Prologue and Acura ZDX, the 0 Series appears to be an in-house venture, not a collaboration with another major OEM.

The Honda 0 Series concepts are the ultra-sleek Saloon (above) and the Space-Hub, which looks like a minivan with a huge, windowless tail.

“The mobility we dream of is not an extension of the trend of ‘thick, heavy, but smart’ EVs,” said Toshihiro Mibe, global CEO of Honda as of April 2021. “We will create a completely new value from zero based on thin, light and wise as the foundation for our new Honda 0 EV series to further advance the joy and freedom of mobility to the next level.”

“We have gone back to basics and formulated the Honda 0 Series with a design for the new era,” said Shinji Aoyama, Global EVP of Honda. “A bold and pure proportion that from the first glance is overwhelmingly different from other EVs to evoke a new perspective for people.”

The Saloon, Honda says, sits on a dedicated EV platform, and features steer-by-wire and new “motion control management” systems. The instrument panel uses a “human-machine interface” that “enables simple and intuitive operations.” Additionally, the Saloon “features posture control that will assist the driver in a variety of driving situations to realize the ‘joy of driving’ in the EV era.”

Honda says a production vehicle based on the Saloon concept is expected to come to North America in 2026.

The Space-Hub, Honda says, “was developed under the theme of ‘augmenting people’s daily lives.’” The spacious cabin and good visibility offer a “flexible space that immediately accommodates a variety of passengers and becomes a ‘hub’ that connects people to each other.” No word on production plans for the Space-Hub.

The Honda 0 Series vehicles, which will wear a new “H mark” that resembles a set of outstretched hands, are expected to be equipped with next-generation automated driving (AD) that uses “advanced AI, sensing, recognition, and driver monitoring technologies to achieve more human-like, natural and high-precision risk predictions, making it possible to offer AD features people can feel safe and confident using. This advanced AD system will expand the application of some hands-off functions for use on both expressways and surface streets.”

Honda also says the 0 Series vehicles will use a smaller, high-density battery that will charge from 15 percent to 80 percent capacity in “about 10 to 15 minutes.” In the meantime, “by applying battery system control technology, Honda is targeting to minimize the degradation of battery capacity to less than 10 percent after 10 years of use.”

Honda is introducing the electric Prologue SUV, based on a collaboration with GM, early this year.

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Following three rounds of voting by 50 members of the print, TV, and electronic media in the U.S. and Canada, the North American Car, Truck, and Sport Utility of the Year awards have been announced. The NACTOY awards are celebrating their 30th anniversary in 2024.

Winner of the North American Car of the Year is the Toyota Prius/Prius Prime. Truck of the Year is the Ford Super Duty, and the winning SUV is the Kia EV9.

NACTOY jurors (full disclosure: I’m on the jury) narrowed their picks down from 52 eligible vehicles to a preliminary list of 25, announced in September at the Detroit Auto Show. After a ride and drive of the semi-finalists, the list was narrowed to nine vehicles, three in each class, announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

The other finalists in those classes: The Honda Accord and Hyundai Ioniq 6 (car), the Chevrolet Colorado and Chevrolet Silverado EV (truck), and the Genesis Electrified GV70 and Hyundai Kona (SUV).

“Our winners reflect the fact that a modern vehicle must be a combination of style, utility, and technology,” said NACTOY president Jeff Gilbert. “I commend our 50 jurors for coming up with some excellent choices.”

The full list of NACTOY winners, dating back to 1994, can be found here.

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Stellantis’ decision not to attend auto shows in North America, including next month’s Chicago Auto Show, serves as a reminder of how many memorable moments the corporate parent of Dodge, Ram, and Jeep has provided at the once-premier North American International Auto Show, typically called the Detroit show. At its height, the show was arguably the most important one in the world, and it benefited from being the hometown production for Detroit’s Big Three.

Jason Vines, former global vice-president of communications for Stellantis precursor DaimlerChrysler, was the lead architect of several of the company’s top auto show stunts. Now a crisis public relations consultant and author (What Did Jesus Drive? Crisis PR in Cars, Computers and Christianity, available on Amazon), Vines wonders if auto shows will make a comeback.

Manufacturers “don’t like the show business aspect” of auto shows, Vines says. “I get that. So much of the business is online now. I get that, too: I’ve been shopping for cars for my wife and my daughter this last month. But unlike auto shows, online doesn’t let you sit in the car when you’re at home or in your office on your laptop.”

One of Vines’ most famous productions at the Detroit show was “the cattle drive,” where cowboys on horseback, paraded up Detroit’s Washington Boulevard in January of 2008, en route to Cobo Hall, the site of the show. Vines and his colleagues rounded up 120 longhorn cattle and had them shipped up from Oklahoma, where they surrounded several of the then-new 2009 Dodge Ram Crew Cab pickups.

Ford, that same day, introduced its restyled F-150 pickup at the show in a far more conventional setting. “The perennial number-one best-selling vehicle in America, and I know we got double, maybe triple the coverage for the Ram,” Vines recalls. That year, 2008, the Detroit show claimed to host 5500 media members from around the world.

Possibly the company’s best-known product reveal came in 1992, and was arguably the first of multiple major Chrysler auto show stunts. The attending media gathered near the north end of Cobo Hall and watched a brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee slowly creep up the steps. Seconds later, it crashed through the plate glass window, and continued driving inside the building. Bob Lutz, then Chrysler’s vice-chairman, was at the wheel, and his passenger was Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.

The real glass had been replaced with movie-stunt glass, and the moment the Grand Cherokee reached it, a series of small explosives that had been planted around the window were triggered by remote, allowing the Jeep to enter amid thousands of “glass” shards.

“It was designed to be safe, and it was a brilliant demonstration of how you can use a low-cost PR stunt to far more effect at a product introduction than you could ever get from conventional advertising,” Lutz told the Detroit News in 2022. “That stunt was on every TV station, every major news media in the U.S.—and around the world.” According to the News, “There would actually be a sequel in 2006 when Jeep drove another new product—the ’07 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon—off its stand and through Cobo’s glass into the street.”

Some other memorable moments from the Stellantis crew:

In 1993, Dodge slowly dropped the new Ram truck from the Cobo ceiling onto the stage.

In 1994, “Chrysler holds the limelight for the third consecutive year,” said Automotive News. “Peter Graves, of TV’s Mission: Impossible helped Chrysler President Bob Lutz unveil its ‘cloud cars,’ the 1995 Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Cirrus, accompanied by showbiz theatrics. Wall Street is so impressed, it sends Chrysler’s stock soaring the same day.”

In 1995, Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth were introducing redesigned minivans, featuring sliding doors on both sides. As Lutz and Chrysler Chairman Bob Eaton sat on fake rocks, with Eaton wearing a Mister Rogers–style sweater, they read aloud from children’s storybooks as a red Dodge Caravan emerged from the right side of the stage, six feet above ground, driven by Kermit the Frog. It passed over Lutz and Eaton and settled into a patch of fake lily pads, splashing water onto the gathered media. The message: Chrysler was “leapfrogging” the competition.

In 2003, for reasons no one quite understood, the company developed an enormous, sinister-looking three-wheeled motorcycle called the Tomahawk, with a Dodge Viper’s V-10 engine. Riding it onto the stage: A leather-clad Wolfgang Bernhard, the company’s chief operating officer. In 2023 Stellantis recalled the Tomahawk as a “sleek, rolling sculpture that combined styling with extreme engineering.”

In 2006, the Chrysler Aspen, the brand’s first SUV, was introduced in an absolute blizzard of fake snow, as clowns from Slava’s Snowshow, a touring theater production described as “a universal and timeless theatrical poetic spectacle,” joined Chrysler executives on stage.

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Stellantis is pulling out of the Chicago Auto Show, which is barely a month away, meaning there will likely be no presence in the Windy City for Jeep, Dodge, Ram, Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, or Fiat.

The move is part of a cost-savings strategy “to mitigate the impact of a challenging U.S. automotive market,” according to a statement provided to Hagerty by Rick Deneau, Stellantis’ head of North America communications for brand and product.

“Stellantis is working to optimize its marketing strategy as it relates to auto shows,” the statement read. “To be as efficient as possible in our media spend, we are evaluating participation in auto shows on a case-by-case basis, while prioritizing opportunities for consumers to experience our vehicles first-hand.

“Stellantis remains committed to building products customers love, ensuring freedom of mobility for all, and becoming second to none in value creation for its employees and all other stakeholders as outlined in the Dare Forward 2030 strategic plan.”

Stellantis is also pulling out of some regional auto shows, says Automotive News. That includes the Houston Auto Show, which opens January 24, and the North Texas Auto Expo in Dallas, which opens February 22.

It seems likely that, for the immediate future, participation in regional auto shows will be determined by local dealers: for instance, Stellantis brands will be represented at the Toronto Auto Show, which opens February 16, because local dealers are funding the expense.

Stellantis’ decision is a particular blow to the 116-year-old Chicago event, which bills itself as the nation’s largest auto show and is considered a major national show, not a regional one.

“Up until we received the unfortunate news a couple of weeks ago, we’ve approached the brands with different opportunities to make their participation possible,” Mark Bilek, the show’s senior director of product management, told Automotive News. “In fact, we will always have space for them even if they decide to participate at the eleventh hour.” Among those brands confirmed for the Chicago Auto Show: Acura, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen, per the show’s website.

Stellantis, in its various corporate guises, has been a staple of the U.S. auto show scene for decades. Manufacturer participation has been declining at auto shows since the 2008 recession, as companies search for ways to cut costs.

“An Italian friend used to tell me, ‘Our brand doesn’t need auto shows. Auto shows need our brand.’ And that’s a tough truth to argue with,” said Paul Brian, former director of communications for the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, which produces the Chicago Auto Show. “Apparently what we’ve witnessed over the past few years is the ‘trickle down’ applications of that mentality.”

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One thing you can likely expect when you buy a car once owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan: The driver’s seat probably goes way back.

You have an opportunity to bid on two vehicles that once resided in Jordan’s garage, one of them rarer than the other. That car, on Bringatrailer.com, is a 1991 BMW 850i with a six-speed manual transmission. The other vehicle, on Ebay.com, is a 1999 Land Rover Range Rover 4.6 HSE.

First, the Range Rover: It’s a two-owner vehicle, being sold now by an exotic car dealer in Illinois. It has 115,598 miles but received a new dealer-installed 4.6-liter V-8 engine 500 miles ago. The transmission is a four-speed automatic. The exterior is bright red, with a tan leather interior. It appears to have most every feature that was available on a 1999 Range Rover. Jordan, the listing says, was the first owner.

The BMW has a 5.0-liter, 296-horsepower V-12 engine, which breathes through a Magnaflow exhaust. A previous owner added some AC Schnitzer body components, and it also has 17-inch two-piece Schnitzer wheels. It has 30,000 miles on the clock, of which 22,000 were added by the present owner. Paint is Mauritius Blue Metallic. The air conditioner apparently needs work.

“This E31 is offered by the seller on behalf of the owner with documentation bearing Michael Jordan’s signature, manufacturer’s literature, a stamped service booklet, a clean Carfax report, and a clean Illinois title in the owner’s name,” says the listing.

Bidding on the BMW ends on Monday, and on Tuesday for the Range Rover. At this writing, the high bid on the Rover is $25,900, and $60,023 on the BMW.

We all know Jordan is an avid car collector; he recently dropped $3.5 million on a Hennessey Venom F5 roadster. So how potent is the Michael Jordan past-ownership? Pretty potent, if we’re judging from the 1996 Mercedes-Benz S-class S600, which sold through the Beverly Hills Car Club in 2020 for a then-record $202,200. That was more than five times the previously-recorded high bid for an S600.

So you have two chances to own a genuine MJ vehicle, one likely expensive, the other less so. If you want to “Be Like Mike” (a reference to a 1991 Gatorade advertising campaign, for you youngsters), happy bidding.

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They say notable deaths come in threes, but the motorsports community suffered four over the long weekend, including one that rocked the IndyCar world.

Winner of the 2003 Indianapolis 500, Gil de Ferran, 56, died Friday from an apparent massive heart attack while driving with his son Luke at a private event at The Concours Club racetrack near Miami. On-scene medical personnel attempted to revive de Ferran, to no avail.

That 2003 Indy win came for car owner Roger Penske, who said in a statement: “We are terribly saddened to hear about the tragic passing of Gil de Ferran. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Angela, Anna, Luke and the entire de Ferran family. Gil defined class as a driver and as a gentleman. As an IndyCar champion and an Indianapolis 500 winner, Gil accomplished so much during his career, both on and off the track.”

He won the 2000 and 2001 IndyCar championships, also driving for Penske. In 2000, his qualifying speed of 241.428 mph for the race at the California Speedway oval in Fontana, California, set the closed-course record for fastest speed, which still stands.

He retired from IndyCar racing in 2003 but returned to competition as a team owner and driver at de Ferran Motorsports, racing for Acura in the LMP2 class with the American Le Mans Series in 2008. He retired again as a driver in 2009, returning to IndyCar as co-owner of de Ferran Dragon Racing, which folded in 2011.

Born in Brazil but living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, de Ferran was working for McLaren as a consultant when he died.

In NASCAR, three-time Cup champion Cale Yarborough died in a hospice in Florence, South Carolina, on Sunday. He was 84. Yarborough won three straight championships, in 1976, 1977, and 1978, driving for team owner Junior Johnson. He also won the Daytona 500 in 1968, 1977, 1983, and 1984. His final season came in 1988 as an owner-driver. He won 83 races in all.

Yarborough was involved in one of NASCAR’s most famous moments, at the 1979 Daytona 500. Racing for the win with Donnie Allison, the two cars collided on the back straightaway and their cars skidded into the infield. Both drivers left their cars and began fighting, soon joined by Allison’s brother Bobby, as television cameras rolled. It was the first time CBS had carried the entire Daytona 500, and ratings were huge, largely due to a snowstorm that socked in much of the Midwest and Northeast.

Yarborough, who also competed in the Indianapolis 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans, was named to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011. “Cale Yarborough was one of the toughest competitors NASCAR has ever seen,” NASCAR chairman Jim France said in a statement. “His combination of talent, grit, and determination separated Cale from his peers, both on the track and in the record book. He was respected and admired by competitors and fans alike and was as comfortable behind the wheel of a tractor as he was behind the wheel of a stock car.”

In drag racing, Roland Leong, “The Hawaiian,” died Friday. The Honolulu native began his racing career back home in Hawaii as a successful driver, but he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to work for the famed Dragmaster shop building race cars. He built the Top Gas car that fellow Hawaiian Danny Ongais drove to victory in the 1964 NHRA Winternationals.

Leong moved to car ownership soon after, hiring a young Don Prudhomme to drive for him. They won the 1965 U.S. Nationals, launching Prudhomme’s career, and they remained close until Leong’s death. Leong continued to field Top Fuel and Funny Cars with various drivers as a car owner, tuner, and crew chief until the late 1990s. Leong’s cars were among the most popular on the circuit, especially the “Hawaiian Punch” Funny Car.

“I guess I always wanted a little brother,” Prudhomme once said. “He was just like me. All we cared about was drag racing and cars.” Leong was 79.

Finally, sprint car racing lost one of the winningest drivers when Rick Ferkel, “The Ohio Traveler,” passed away. Ferkel was one of the founding drivers in the World of Outlaws series, winning 21 WoO races. He finished second in the standings to Steve Kinser in the WoO’s first full season, in 1978.

 

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Constantly on the road during the height of his career searching for the highest-paying events, the driver of the number 0 sprinter often ran 75 races a year. His best season came in 1978, when he won 38 times. After Ferkel retired as a driver, he continued to field cars for up-and-coming racers. He was named to the Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1995.

Ferkel, 84, died at his home in Michigan on Monday.

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Drag racing legend Don Schumacher died last week after a battle with lung cancer.

Schumacher wore plenty of hats during his drag racing career, which began with his match races in Funny Cars in the 1960s, most notably driving his Stardust Dodge Funny Car, which became so popular he had more than one Stardust car traveling the drag racing circuits with hired drivers.

In 1974, Schumacher walked away from drag racing to devote time to the family business, Schumacher Electric, founded in 1947 and known primarily for its line of battery chargers. Schumacher grew the company considerably, adding plants in China, Mexico, and Belgium.

Schumacher returned to drag racing in 1998 to build a team for his son Tony. Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) made its competition debut at the 1998 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, “and by the time the 1999 season had wrapped, DSR had clinched its first of many championship titles. Soon after, the single-car team exploded into a multicar powerhouse,” according to the NHRA’s National Dragster. At one time, DSR fielded seven cars in a single season. He is the only owner to have victories in all four NHRA pro drag racing classes, with championships in three of them.

DSR has won 19 NHRA world championship titles and a record 367 Wallys—that’s the trophy for a race event win, named for NHRA founder Wally Parks—including the five Don won while behind the wheel of his Funny Car.

Schumacher contributed safety innovations to drag racing, including the Top Fuel dragster canopy, the roof-mounted escape hatch that allowed Funny Car drivers to quickly exit the car in the event of a fire, and he was the first to mount the lever that activated a fire suppression system on his Funny Car’s brake handle, so the driver could apply both while keeping one hand on the steering wheel.

Schumacher earned many accolades; in 2022, he was honored at the NHRA Awards Ceremony, where he was presented with the NHRA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Daytona Beach, Florida, and in May 2013, he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Alabama. He also joined the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2007.

Schumacher used his team’s fleet of race cars to raise money and awareness for various charities. Each year ahead of the U.S. Nationals, DSR hosts a pre-race event at its Brownsburg, Indiana, headquarters to benefit Riley Hospital for Children, and for seven seasons, Schumacher, along with Terry and Doug Chandler, campaigned cars that enabled nonprofits, such as the Infinite Hero Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, to be recognized through a dedicated tribute livery at no cost to the organization.

In addition to Schumacher Electric, he owned DSR Performance, which sells many products for motorsports ranging from hats and tee shirts to a 1300-horsepower, supercharged 426 cubic-inch crate engine.

When not at a race track or leading his teams of employees, Schumacher enjoyed spending time with his children and grandchildren, fishing, and golfing.

Don Schumacher was 79.

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What we know as the NASCAR Cup Series today was—for 33 years, up through the 2003 season—known as the NASCAR Winston Cup series. Naming rights were sold to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which in turn named the series after its top cigarette brand, Winston.

The decision was brilliant, really. By necessity, every mention of NASCAR had to include the name of its sponsor. It was Winston Cup this, Winston Cup that: Even the national news shilled for a cigarette company every time it mentioned NASCAR. Along that line, it seems that someone thought it was a good idea to memorialize the Winston Cup era with a museum. And what better place for it than the heart of tobacco country, Winston-Salem, North Carolina?

Thus was born the Winston Cup Museum: “33 years of Winston Cup, 1035 races, 1,000,000 lifetime memories!”

Those memories ended this month, when the Winston Cup Museum closed down for good. In a message to patrons, the museum said that, “We have decided to close the brick and mortar version of the museum permanently on December 16th, 2023. This is not a decision we have come to lightly, but it is the necessary end of 19 wonderful years preserving racing history.”

“So much happened in those 33 years, and if you look at where NASCAR was in 1971 when the sponsorship started compared to where it was when it ended in 2003, it’s really amazing. I had been thinking about some sort of a museum for some time, but in 2003, when [R.J. Reynolds Tobacco] decided to get out of NASCAR, the museum idea had a purpose,” said museum founder and owner Will Spencer.

Declining attendance and a series of lawsuits finally brought the little museum to its knees, not from R.J. Reynolds, but from ITG brands, which bought Winston. For some reason, ITG thought its purchase of Winston entitled it to ownership of the inventory of the Winston Cup Museum. Spencer and his family battled the giant in court and prevailed, but when the last lawsuit came, the museum was given 90 days to come up with a new name.

That was the last straw. Spencer and his wife Christy locked the doors.

So what happens to the cars and the memorabilia collected by the Spencers? A notice posted on the museum’s website says, “For those of you that are hardcore race fans and collectors you will have your chance to own a part of racing history as we are auctioning off the mass majority of the collection with Mecum Auto Auctions in Kissimmee, Florida—January 2 through January 14, 2024.”

“Everything runs its course, and it’s had its season—two decades—and unfortunately,” Spencer said, holding back tears, “I now have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he told Mecum.

Mecum says that the offering at Kissimmee “will include approximately 30-plus race cars, two motors, arcade games, 40 to 50 helmets, 20 to 25 race suits, 75 to 100 framed race pictures, six to eight race trophies, over 50 authentic race car hoods and more, and all of it boasts unparalleled authenticity as it hails straight from the collection of a man responsible for much of its original creation.”

“These 33 years of NASCAR will never be matched or recreated,” Spencer said, “but I preserved it for almost 20 years, and I’m proud of that, and of my wife helping me make the museum a special place for everyone.”

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Subjective? You bet. Any list of the most important vehicles introduced this past year is definitely open to debate. This has been a banner year for debuts, including sports cars, trucks, luxury EVs, and more. If we got it wrong, there’s a comments section down at the bottom where you can set us straight. Here are 15 vehicles we think moved the needle in 2023, or will soon in 2024. They are organized alphabetically, rather than ranked in any particular order. By the way, if you think we’re leaving out vehicles such as the new BMW M2, Toyota GR Corolla, Kia EV6 and the Toyota Prius, we covered them in our 2022 list. Click here for a refresher.

Acura Integra Type S: What do you know, there’s life at Acura after all. Based on the Honda Civic Type R, Acura injects 320 horsepower into the Integra’s engine bay, gives it an active-damping suspension, and an appropriate interior. Yes, it’s well over $50,000, but probably worth it. Check out our review here.

Buick Envista: This hatchback-looking sedan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. Yes, it’s built on the same platform as the Chevrolet Trax and is powered by a modest three-cylinder engine, but the designers and engineers who worked on the Envista did a remarkable job of creating a handsome, fun-to-drive car that should bring some younger buyers to the brand while satisfying current Buick customers who don’t want an SUV—and yes, stunningly, those people do exist. Nicely done, Buick. Read our review here.

Chevrolet Blazer EV: This was a good year for SUVs, and the fact that the Chevrolet Blazer EV won Motor Trend magazine’s SUV of the Year award speaks well to what Chevy has done to the previously vanilla Blazer. Based on the Ultium platform, the Blazer EV will soon be available with an SS package that makes 557 horsepower for those not content with the 288 horses powering the AWD dual-motor RS. Handsome on the outside, and functional on the inside, the Blazer EV is a solid step forward. Here’s our review.

Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray: The first production all-wheel-drive Corvette did not disappoint, and even traditional Corvette loyalists can’t help but read the performance figures of the hybrid and marvel at the fact that it challenges the mighty Z06 model. Here’s our review of the E-Ray.

Dodge “Last Call” Challengers and Chargers: While the Chevrolet Camaro went out this year with a whimper, the Challenger and the Charger went out with a bang, thanks to a series of “Last Call” special editions that showcased the Hemi V-8, marketed as your last chance to get a true, proven performance car (at least until the electric Dodges come out). Here’s our take on the Dodge Charger Super Bee.

Ferrari Purosangue: With a 715-horsepower naturally-aspirated V-12 under the hood, Ferrari’s inevitable SUV and first-ever four-door has the proper look and feel of a Ferrari, and has a very Ferrari-like $400,000 price tag. Here’s our review of the Purosangue, which is Italian for thoroughbred.

Ford Mustang Dark Horse: Yes, we covered the 2024 Ford Mustang in this list last year, but we hadn’t had a chance to drive the lineup yet. We have now, and they are all worthy of the Mustang name, but there’s something about the 500-horsepower (it feels like more) Dark Horse model that deserves a shoutout here. We’ve lost the Dodge Challenger and the Chevrolet Camaro, making the Mustang Dark Horse the last of the pure-ICE-engine breed. Check out our review here.

Kia EV9: Sit in the EV9 and look around, and you can tell the designers spent a long time making it modern inside, but still familiar enough that someone who has never driven an electric vehicle before will feel immediately comfortable. Our test car was roomy enough for six adults—middle-seat passengers are catered to with a pair of very comfortable captain’s chairs—while rear-seat passengers have ample leg room. It drives well, has decent horsepower (up to 379), and corners with competence. An electric SUV with very few flaws.

Lucid Gravity/Air Sapphire: Lucid operates on the principle that if you build it, they will come. “They” of course meaning customers, who are thus far taking their time discovering the brand. Too bad. Lucid introduced two new electric models: The Gravity SUV, available with up to 800 horsepower, should start at about $80,000, with upscale models that will be priced way into six figures. And there’s the 1234-horsepower Air Sapphire, which starts at over $250,000. We’ve liked every Lucid we’ve driven—check out our review of the Sapphire—and we’re looking forward to the Gravity.

Mercedes-AMG S 63 E Performance: What’s not to like about the most powerful S-Class ever? It retains all the ultra-luxury features you expect, and the hybrid powertrain pumps out a combined 791 horsepower and 1055 lb-ft of torque, delivered to all four wheels. Our test vehicle was priced at an estimated $240,000. Read the review here.

Tesla Cybertruck: The most talked-about vehicle of 2023, the Cybertruck is an absolute love-it-or-hate-it vehicle, and certainly the top candidate to become a complete flop or a major hit. Hagerty.com was among the first to get a test drive of the Cybertruck: Click here for our video review.

Toyota Land Cruiser: Maybe it isn’t the vehicle that dedicated Land Cruiser fans were hoping for, but it’s still worthy of the name. Powered by a 326-horsepower hybrid powertrain made up of a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine and a single electric motor, it will at least be cheaper than the last Cruiser, a 2021 model, which cost about $87,000. Toyota says the new Land Cruiser will start in the mid-$50,000 range.

Toyota Tacoma: Toyota finally replaced its ancient Tacoma with a thoroughly modern if somewhat pricey pickup this year, and so far it seems to be a big success. The Tacoma has long been the gold standard of smaller pickups, routinely the benchmark that other manufacturers weigh their own products against. Toyota will send some of them back to the drawing boards with this new version. Read more about the Tacoma here.

VinFast VF8: Yes, of course, the VinFast VF8 and the other VinFast SUVs were the worst-reviewed vehicles of 2024, with the consensus being that they simply aren’t ready for America. But you have to tip your hat to the bombastic way the seven-year-old Vietnamese company entered the U.S. market, with a surprisingly wide selection of electric models (possibly adding a $20,000 electric SUV to its lineup), plans to build a $2 billion plant in North Carolina, and stock that’s already trading on Nasdaq (and not doing all that bad). Is VinFast’s vehicle lineup why they made the list? No. But this is: You can bet there are a lot of Chinese companies that would love to come to the U.S., and they are watching this VinFast experiment very closely.

Volvo EX30: With a base price of $36,245, including shipping, Volvo’s small electric SUV checks a lot of boxes. It’s pretty, comfortable, quick (268 horsepower for the single-motor base model, 422 for the twin-motor version), and has the advantage of being a premium-branded product. Deliveries have been delayed a bit, so don’t expect to see an EX30 until late spring or summer of 2024. When it finally does show up, the little car could make some big noise. Read our review here.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a 99-page document that serves as an “Advanced notice of proposed rulemaking.”

The topic is “Advanced Impaired Driving Prevention Technology.”

And you know what that means: “This document initiates rulemaking that would gather the information necessary to develop performance requirements and require that new passenger motor vehicles be equipped with advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology through a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.”

In other words, the document is a callout to manufacturers and even aftermarket outlets to engineer software and hardware that would prevent drunk and impaired driving. The notice also covers drowsy driving, “driving while experiencing an incapacitating medical emergency or condition, or any other factor that would diminish driver performance and increase potential crash risk.”

There’s no question, NHTSA says, that alcohol is by far the worst culprit here. The agency cites figures from 2021 that 12,600 traffic fatalities were caused by “alcohol impairment.” Add that to the 13,400 fatalities “involving alcohol,” while “distracted driving” caused 12,400 fatalities and drowsy driving caused 684.

NHTSA itself “is actively involved in cutting-edge research to help develop technology to quickly, accurately, and passively detect a driver’s BAC [blood alcohol content]. Upon completion of this development work, this technology may prevent drivers from shifting their vehicles into gear if they attempt to operate the vehicle at a BAC above the legal limit.”

NHTSA says the technology must be a passive system, so presumably it would not require a driver to blow through a tube into a sensor, which is often used as an alcohol ignition interlock, typically for people who have been convicted of a DUI. “It is worth emphasizing that the current… breath sensor requires a directed puff of breath toward the sensor and would therefore not be considered passive,” and passive is NHTSA’s goal here. It does say that if a sensor is developed that could accurately defect a BAC without that “directed puff of breath,” it “may” be considered passive.

“Impaired” driving, of course, can involve drug use, but that really isn’t addressed at length in NHTSA’s notice. “The technology and testing protocols for drugs other than alcohol, in the driving context, are not mature enough to indicate the degree of impairment and the risk of crash involvement that results from the use of individual drugs. Therefore, drugged driving is beyond the scope of this rulemaking effort but remains important to the Department and agency as it addresses fatal and serious crashes.”

This includes marijuana usage: “Current knowledge about the effects of cannabis on driving is insufficient to allow specification of a simple measure of driving impairment outside of controlled conditions.”

NHTSA addresses the fact that tolerances for alcohol typically grow with heavy use, and that for a novice drinker, impairment can come at a BAC level below the much-adopted legal standard of .08 percent. Measuring the alcohol on the breath of a driver becomes an imperfect science, and NHTSA is interested in alternative technologies to measure BAC and back it up with additional technology, such as camera scanning.

One possible, partial solution: Using “touch- or tissue-based detection of light absorption at pre-selected wavelengths from a beam of light reflected from within the skin tissue after an optical module is touched. In other words, BAC is calculated… after someone touches a sensor and that sensor calculates the BAC level in the person’s blood.” NHTSA cites research dating back to 2007 that purports to detect alcohol in sweat left by a driver on the steering wheel, but that doesn’t seem to have progressed very far.

NHTSA is encouraged by the increasing use of cameras in newer vehicles that can detect, among other things, eye movement or pupil closure, which then usually post a digital message to the driver that he or she might benefit from a break or a cup of coffee. This sometimes dovetails with technology that monitors steering input, for example crossing the line from one lane to the other.

NHTSA recognizes that alcohol often causes drowsiness and inattention, and it is planning further research along those lines. The NHTSA report cites research done by Volvo, General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen and Hyundai. On December 13, 2023, the day after NHTSA published its notice, Automotive News cited a statement made by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a Washington, D.C.-based representative of multiple automakers, that said, “Every single day automakers are working to make vehicles safer and smarter and to help address avoidable tragedies caused by behavior like drunk driving.”

The same story cites a response that GM CEO Mary Barra gave when asked about NHTSA’s notice. “We have technology to do that. I think that’s technology that’s coming that I think is going to be good for everyone,” she said in an interview with Economic Club Chairman David Rubenstein.

The final 30 pages of the report are largely dedicated to questions NHTSA poses regarding anti-impaired driving technology, such as how easy might it be to circumvent an alcohol detection system; how often false positives might occur, and how ready the public is for such systems. The report cites a small Johns Hopkins survey that found that “64.9 percent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, ‘All new cars should have an automatic sensor to prevent the car from being driven by someone who is over the legal alcohol limit.'”

No one is for alcohol-impaired driving, and the report devotes a lot of space outlining drunk driving initiatives that involve laws passed, public awareness campaigns and similar non-hands-on approaches, but with the rising rate of alcohol-related fatalities, they don’t seem to be working. Reliable—and underline “reliable”—in-car detection systems appear to be years away, but at least NHTSA is asking the right questions.

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Last Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m., Scott Wallace and the other founders of ECD Automotive Design stood at a podium in the Nasdaq MarketSite, located in the northwest corner of a 48-level skyscraper in Manhattan. As video advertisements for ECD beamed out from the front of the building across Times Square, Wallace, the CEO of the company, and the others all pressed a big button on a computerized table. Bells rang, signaling the opening of the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The bells also signaled the beginning of trading for ECD (formerly known as E.C.D., but the company has dropped the periods), now listed on the stock exchange as ECDA. “We’re moving into a new era—not just for ECD, but for the classic-car restoration business in general,” Wallace said.

He means that. Just 11 years ago, ECD began life as East Coast Defenders, importing used-up 1983–94 Land Rover Defenders from Great Britain to the United States to rebuild and modernize them. That remains the core business, but the company has added the Land Rover Series IIA, the Range Rover Classic, and the Jaguar E-Type, which starts at $299,995 and has a 450-horsepower GM LT1 V-8 engine.

All this happens in a new, very modern, 100,000-square-foot facility in Kissimmee, Florida, just south of Walt Disney World in Orlando, just up the road from where the original factory once stood. Called the “Rover Dome,” the building contains the new factory, with two assembly lines, soon to become three. It also contains the offices of ECD Automotive Design. Everything’s under one roof.

Wallace gave me a tour of Rover Dome, which is not a dome but a long continuous building, a few weeks before the company went public. “See this employee break room? It’s bigger than all the offices combined in our original location.” Even at 100,000 square feet, Rover Dome will soon need to be expanded.

ECD has delivered nearly 600 vehicles since it was founded, many of them priced at $300,000 or more. In what’s called a “business combination,” EF Hutton Acquisition Corporation, through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) formed by affiliates of EF Hutton, is providing capital that could go toward the needed expansion.

The Hutton-led effort agreed to a $15 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) after ECD was assessed at a pro forma enterprise value of $330 million. Wallace will continue as CEO, alongside fellow founders Tom Humble, Emily Humble, Elliott Humble, and CFO Raymond Cole.

Why Land Rover Defenders? Several of the founders grew up in the Midlands of England, 40 miles from the factory that built Defenders. “They were surrounded by Defenders from an early age, and were mostly driving around on friends’ farms with bales of hay, the family dog, and sometimes the occasional farm animal,” says a brochure for the company. Overseas, the Defender isn’t the trendy vehicle it is in the U.S.—it’s a genuine workhorse.

So ECD imports often-battered Defenders from across the pond. They are literally stripped, and their old engines and transmissions, which are stacked up behind the Rover Dome, are parted out to what is apparently a surprising number of people who are restoring Defenders. Back inside, ECD disassembles the Defenders down to their bare, sandblasted-and-painted frames. Then it rebuilds them with modern components, mostly with new V-8 engines and transmissions from GM, up to and including a supercharged LT4 version.

Will ECD ever run out of Defenders to import? “Never,” Wallace said. “They’re everywhere.” The company has seven employees on the ground at Burton-on-Trent in England who do nothing but source Defenders and load them in containers for the voyage to America. There’s a healthy aftermarket making Defender body panels, but the one thing ECD must source from an original truck is the roof panel, Wallace said. “No matter how hard we try we can’t find roofs that really fit the vehicle.”

The majority of vehicles ECD sells are built to spec, entirely bespoke. At one end of the Rover Dome is a comfortable couch, across from a 72-inch TV screen. It’s next to the office of John Price, director of vehicle design. His assistant sits at a laptop while you sit on the couch and design your perfect vehicle.

Which I did, choosing a longer Defender 110, with room for seven. We started out with the color—I’d seen a lovely seafoam green Defender 90—the smaller truck, with room for five—on the assembly line. Price sorted through several shades until I found the one I liked. (Often, customers know exactly what they want—a woman recently flew to Kissimmee on her private jet to deliver a sample of the color she wanted.)

I opted for a beige leather interior, white and silver trim, including the rollover cage outside the body, and silver wheels. Flooring in the rear was polished wood. For power, being a simple man, I chose a 430-horsepower Chevrolet LS3 with an automatic transmission. I selected a suspension that was firm but not brutal. You can spend an hour designing your Defender—ECD will even select the proper dashboard clock, and show it to you on the big screen. Once satisfied, all I needed to do was come up with about $300,000 (they need $25,000 down). I was $299,975 short.

If you don’t want to wait for a bespoke build, ECD typically has some completed Defenders for sale—17 vehicles at this writing, including three 1995 Range Rovers that have been completely rebuilt, one sporting a supercharged LT4 V-8 for $209,995.

The current selection of ready-to-wear Defenders includes both the 90 and 110 models, topping out with a 1995 110 for $299,995. It and several others have an even 1000 miles on the clock—all the builds are driven that far before they’re sold to make sure nothing is wrong. Even if there is, you get a 24-month transferrable warranty and 24/7 roadside assistance. The least expensive Defender available for purchase is a previously owned 90, powered by a 5.3-liter V-8. It is $149,995.

So what does the average ECD Defender buyer do with their purchase? The majority actually use them for off-roading—often the Defender is kept at a vacation house or ranch. But some customers use their Defenders as daily drivers, just like buyers of brand-new Defenders do. (For comparison’s sake, the little 2024 Defender 90 S starts at $56,400, while the big Defender 130 V-8 with 493 horsepower starts at $116,600, plus $1475 in shipping.)

A walk through the Rover Dome is enlightening. The hundred employees are scattered through various modules, ranging from upholstery to the thoroughly modern paint booth. Most are wearing company-branded tee shirts and jeans or shorts; it’s a very casual environment. The facility is spotless, well-lit, and cooled with Big Ass Fans (that’s the name of the company). There are a lot of British accents, including those of Wallace and the other founders.

At the far end of the building are the dual assembly lines, the one on the left for Defenders, the one on the right currently dedicated to Jaguar E-Types. The cars are acquired the same way the trucks are, usually tired examples that are taken down to bare frames and rebuilt completely, typically with a new powertrain from GM.

That said, a growing part of ECD’s business is in electric conversions. It started out using Tesla motors and batteries acquired through the aftermarket, but found that these are particularly difficult to tune. ECD is now using Ampere units—Ampere is a company based in Dawsonville, Georgia, featuring “simple drop-in electric drivetrains.” One of the available Range Rovers at ECD has electric power—it’s for sale at $279,995.

ECD has built one electric Jaguar E-Type, and there was another one on the assembly line when I visited. The one that is already built has three batteries—two up front, and one in the trunk, for a total of 42 kWh. That’s good for 450 horsepower, just like the LT1 gas engine, and a range of 150 miles.

After the tour, I took a quick drive in the rain in a new Defender 110 with the 6.2-liter LS3 and an automatic transmission. It was remarkably buttoned-down, the air suspension absorbing bumps and potholes like no 1983–94 Land Rover Defender before it. Even for a relatively heavy vehicle, power was more than plentiful. Aside from the looks, the only real holdovers from the original were a startlingly wide turning circle and pedals that were so close together I needed to left-foot brake.

Otherwise, ECD’s truck looked and felt like a brand-new vehicle which, for all intents and purposes, it was.

Scott Wallace and his team are planning to go big, or go home. Will other aftermarket builders follow suit?

We’ll see.

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It’s Corvette Jeopardy! Here are your answers: Riverside Red. Ermine White. Silver Blue. Tuxedo Black. Sebring Silver. Saddle Tan. Daytona Blue.

The question: What are the seven colors Chevrolet painted its 1963 Corvette Split-Window coupes?

We mention this because, at the Corvette-heavy Mecum Kissimmee auction to be held January 2–14 in Florida, one of the most coveted groups of cars among the 4000 to be sold features seven Split-Window coupes, one in each available color. Mecum is calling it the Colorama Spilt-Window Collection, but we hesitate to call it a collection because it’s basically a group of Corvettes assembled by a dealer, ProTeam Corvette Sales, to sell through Mecum as individual lots. But the cars are getting a lot of traction in the Corvette-centric media, and with good reason.

Bill Mitchell’s design team, which included talented designers such as a very young Peter Brock and Larry Shinoda, designed a fastback Corvette that looked—well, marvelous. For the rear window, they decided to use two pieces of glass, split by a few inches of body-colored fiberglass and framed by aluminum strips. That was in 1963. For 1964, the split window was replaced by a solid piece of curved glass, thus making the 1963 Split-Window an immediate collectors’ item. They dubbed it the Sting Ray (two words; it wasn’t one word until 1969).

Some 10,594 Split-Window Corvettes were built, as well as roughly the same number of convertibles. There have been plenty of collectible Corvettes built in the car’s 70-year history, and the Split-Windows are near the top of the list.

So what kind of money are we talking about here?

The most expensive of the seven Split-Windows is likely to be the Daytona Blue one. It has the coveted Z06 performance package, as well as an interesting backstory: It was exported new to Australia, where it was converted to right-hand drive. All the Colorama Corvettes have some version of the 327-cubic-inch V-8 and four-speed manual transmissions; this one has 360 horsepower. (The 327 also came in 300- and 340-horsepower versions, and all are represented in this group.) Mecum is valuing the Australian Z06 at $450,000–$500,000.

The Riverside Red Split-Window carries Mecum’s lowest estimate at $225,000–$275,000. It’s a lovely numbers-matching car, with low-mileage (47,844), and was the subject of a body-on restoration and an engine rebuild. However, it doesn’t have fuel injection (four of the seven cars do), and it doesn’t have the provenance the rest have, such as a Bloomington Gold certification.

The remainder of the cars are valued slightly higher than the Riverside Red representative, and less than the Z06. Perhaps the most interesting of that lot is the Ermine White model ($250,000–$275,000). It was a present from Jesse James (West Coast Choppers, Monster Garage) to actress Sandra Bullock, presumably during their marriage, which lasted from 2005 to 2010. Bullock subsequently donated the Corvette to charity (sigh). As for James, he is currently married to adult film star Bonnie Rotten. Bullock never remarried.

Click here for the Mecum listing of the Colorama Split-Window Collection. You can also click here to look at the spilt-window Corvettes that ProTeam Corvette Sales has in stock, starting at $149,000 for a Riverside Red model.

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Ford has dropped the latest shoe into the controversy that has several manufacturers dialing back production plans for electric vehicles. Automotive News reported on Monday that Ford is cutting its production outlook for the Ford Lightning by half in 2024.

“According to a planning memo obtained by Automotive News, Ford has told suppliers to prepare for average volume of around 1,600 Lightnings a week at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Mich., starting in January. It had planned to assemble an average of 3,200 a week, toward an annual goal of 150,000,” said the publication.

In a statement, Ford didn’t deny the report, saying that it will “continue to match production to customer demand.” Production of gas-powered pickups at factories in Missouri and Michigan is expected to be “essentially unchanged,” Ford told Automotive News, suggesting that it isn’t a downturn in pickup truck demand, only a downturn in demand for electric-powered models.

In July, Ford cut prices on the Lightning by about $6000-$10,000 to accelerate demand. Ford sold fewer than 5000 Lightning pickups in November.

Whether or not this development is related or not is unclear, but this news comes on the heels of Tesla’s electric Cybertruck first-delivery event that occurred at its factory in Texas. General Motors and Ram are also gearing up to sell electric pickups after a relatively slow start; GM, in fact, pushed back the introduction of its Chevrolet and GMC electric trucks until 2025. Ohio-based Lordstown, manufacturer of the Endurance electric pickup, never got mass production off the ground before the company ran out of funds.

While EV sales may be gaining strength slower than predicted, they are indeed increasing. Cox Automotive reported that third-quarter EV sales exceeded 300,000 for the first time in the U.S. market.

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