Uncanny Opinions

Jaguar Shows the Inside and Hides the Car. Hide Them All.

Jaguar has published the inside of the Type 01 and will not show the outside until New York on Oct. 6. A company that sells shapes has shown the world everything except the shape.

Toyota's Tire Box Costs 21 Miles. Delete the Box.

Toyota lists a manufacturer-estimated 281 miles on all-season tires and 260 on the available all-terrains, one car, one sentence. The 21 miles in between gets bought at a counter by somebody nobody told.

Ram Puts a Gooseneck Box on the Power Wagon. Imprison the Engineer.

Orders are open for the 2027 Ram 2500 Power Wagon with the Cummins High-Output turbo diesel, and for the first time the Power Wagon diesel can be optioned with fifth-wheel and gooseneck preparation. The front sway bar still unbolts itself for a rock.

Lexus Prices the Electric ES Premium Under the Hybrid. Recall My Verdict.

Lexus printed the 2027 ES chart Monday: the ES 350e Premium at $49,005, the ES 350h Premium at $51,200, both including a $1,395 delivery, processing and handling fee. Sixteen days ago I printed a verdict on a car with no price. It comes back defective.

Dodge Printed the Row That Embarrasses Dodge. Pension That Man.

The 2027 Charger Super Bee Launch Edition arrives with 600 horsepower, SAE-certified, and with 16-inch Brembos standard on a six-cylinder Charger for the first time. Dodge also printed a 2015 Hellcat in its own comparison table, where the older car's quarter mile is quicker.

Suppy's Garage Took the All-Wheel Drive Out of a Charger. Bronze Them.

Dodge's answer to a customer who wants rear-wheel drive is a button. The builders of two Hemmings drift Chargers took out the hardware under it, and the 750 horsepower Dodge now claims is a figure its own release calls a conservative estimate.

Volkswagen Has to Grow Its Own Technicians. Try Somebody for That.

A car company in Tennessee could not find enough people who could do skilled work with their hands, so it built a school and taught them itself. Twenty-seven graduated this year, and somebody should answer for why that was necessary.

Dodge Says a Paint Code Makes You One of One. Kneel.

Dodge previewed Color Jailbreak, a factory custom paint program, and Matt McAlear said nothing cements the authenticity of a 1:1 car like a special paint. The paint may be the smartest thing Dodge has done this year; the sentence is the crime.

Clemson Students Build a 1,212-Pound Coupe. Grieve the Rest.

Clemson University unveiled Deep Orange 17, a two-door coupe called Luminetta, at 1,212 pounds (550 kilograms), which the release calls approximately one-fourth the weight of many similarly sized production vehicles. Sixteen students took that mass out; the trade that put it in is still adding.

Ford Spends Nine Months Naming a Truck. Retire the Naming Department.

Ford calls its new midsize electric truck the Fathom and says the price is the least interesting thing about it. The price is $28,350 to start, base model, standard-range battery, before taxes, title, registration and fees, and it is the only thing here you cannot get from a dictionary.

AMG Built a Car With No Engine and Recorded a Six. Canonize the Acousticians.

A drive program in the GT 53 4-Door Coupe plays an authentically reproduced combustion engine sound at the touch of a button. AMG captured that engine across 16 microphone positions on the road, and it is not in this car.

Ram Prices the Fix for the Truck It Called Finished. Try Them.

Ram calls the Rumble Bee SRT record-setting, then announces the part that will replace the supercharger it just fitted. One signature went on the window sticker and another went on the catalogue.

Toyota Says It Changed Nothing. Freeze Every Car.

Toyota says the 2027 bZ remains unchanged from the prior model year, and it printed a price for that. Everybody else retools the moment the tooling is paid off, which is why nobody should be allowed to change anything for ten years.

Lucid Gives the Robotaxis Their Own Business Unit. Make It Permanent.

Lucid halved the number of direct reports to its chief executive, hired operators, and walled the robotaxis, the AI and the autonomy into a business unit with its own president. It did the right thing by accident. It must not take it back.

Mitsubishi Opens a Room for Looking at Cars. Carve the Lintel.

Mitsubishi's first U.S. Gallery dealership opened July 30 in a shopping development in Antioch, Tenn. The company says vehicle sales, delivery and service continue at the dealer's nearby full-service store, and that arrangement is the correct order of things.

Dodge's Big Viper ACR News Is a Livery. Exile the Signers.

Dodge, LEGO and Microsoft put a LEGO Technic livery on the 2016 Viper ACR in Forza Horizon 6, and that is the announcement. One room built that engine by hand. A different room signed this.

Hyundai's Best July Ever Puts the Word Electrified Out of Service

Hyundai sold 82,480 vehicles in July, the best July in its history, and Hyundai says hybrids helped drive electrified vehicles to one-third of all retail sales. Open the table underneath: every Hyundai in it with only a battery sold worse than a year ago.

Genesis Aims Fake Engine Noise at the Sidewalk. Jail the Committee.

Genesis built its first high-performance car, did the hardware properly, and then did not trust it. The speakers point outward, at you, and the engine they play does not exist.

Jaguar Uncovers McQueen's XKSS and Covers the Type 01. Enshrine the Cloth.

Jaguar will put five heritage cars on the 17th Fairway at Pebble Beach on Aug. 16 with nothing over them. The only car it intends to sell will stand among them under cover, and that cover is now the most important textile in the industry.

Mercedes Builds a Better Small SUV. Retire the International Reveal.

Mercedes has done real work on the all-new GLA, then quoted up to 657 kilometers of range on WLTP, a cycle this market does not use. It reaches U.S. dealerships in the second half of 2027, a long time to hold a number you cannot spend.

Audi's New Flagship Has a V8. Everybody Recants Now.

Audi's first-ever SQ9 is a three-row family SUV with a twin turbo V8, a locking rear differential and wider tires at the back than at the front. Every man who read the eight-cylinder engine its last rites has some explaining to do.

Mercedes Audits an Entire Life in Kilometers. Retire the Range Number.

Mercedes says the all-new electric C-Class cuts lifecycle carbon by two-thirds against the combustion car, checked by auditors it does not name. It is the best number published this month and the least useful one a buyer will ever hold.

Porsche Refused, Ford Repented, Nissan Tied for First. Sentence All Three.

JD Power asked owners of new 2026 cars how they felt after 90 days. Porsche answered by standing still. Ford answered by fixing itself. Nissan's Armada and Murano tied for first in their segments. No release prints a price.

Mercedes-Benz Opens the Second Room on Earth. Name the Lease.

Mercedes-Benz put the second MANUFAKTUR Made to Measure location on earth in Beverly Hills, and you reach it by asking your dealer to book it for you. The release will not say how long the room stays, and that silence is the story.

Opinion

One Body, Two Powertrains: What the 2026 Lexus ES Bought and Cost

The fully redesigned 2026 Lexus ES shares one platform between a hybrid and, for the first time, a battery-electric car. Marcus Ellery says the extra room paid off in the back seat. Olivia Mercer says the electric car is paying the hybrid's rent.

Land Rover Shaves a 1993 Flank Bare. Put It Back.

Land Rover's Classic division gave a 1993 Range Rover a 2,000-hour restoration, kept the mechanicals honest, then took off its side trim and fitted the new SV Ultra's hood script. The old car was made to impersonate one nobody had drawn yet.

Volvo Certifies 330 Miles on 20- and 21-Inch Wheels. Strike the 22s.

Volvo has EPA certification for the 2027 EX60 P10 AWD at an EPA-estimated up to 330 miles on 20-inch and 21-inch wheels. On 22-inch wheels the same car is EPA-estimated at up to 312 miles.

Hyundai Reads a Body at a Thousand Points. Mourn the Hand.

Hyundai and Kia say their Namyang measuring center reads up to 1,000 points on a body across roughly 600 quality criteria, and films a door closing at 500 measurements per second to catch a flex the eye cannot see. Then, in the same account, the lab says it plans to build an AI-based data infrastructure. A plan, this column argues, to teach a machine the feeling.

Nissan Paints a Brake an Oath in Enamel. Register the Oath.

Nissan paints its calipers by a strict code, silver for everyday, red for performance, brighter red for the 2027 Z NISMO, gold for Brembo, yellow for carbon-ceramic. Nissan calls the color an intentional signal, and for once the hardware underneath backs every shade.

The Fastest Porsche Ever Built Makes No Sound. Retire the Drama.

By Porsche's account the Cayenne Turbo Electric is the most powerful production Porsche to date, 1,139 hp of it, and it arrives in total silence. So Porsche drove a prototype under the world's largest aircraft, because the only way to let you feel the future was to point six jet engines at it.

The V8 Obituary Writers Don't Shop. Canonize Dodge.

Dodge just made the 392-cubic-inch HEMI® V-8 standard on the three-row Durango R/T for the first time, and Dodge says the Launch Edition allocation sold out in six hours. The figures are Dodge's, 475 horsepower and 8,700 pounds of towing, and there is no price, so I put no value on it.

One Hand Signs the Headliner. Leave the Card Blank.

Mercedes-Maybach lets one craftsperson in Sindelfingen hand-stitch and sign the leather roof of the new GLS 680, up to twenty pieces joined into one. It is the most requested refinement in the world, and the age around it is training to replace that hand.

Range Rover Concedes Nobody Forded the River. File the Belief.

The Range Rover GT is the fifth family member, the first all-electric Range Rover and the first car on the new EMA platform. A house sold on going anywhere just built a car for going somewhere nice, and called the surrender vision.

Lexus Builds an Electric Car That Pretends to Shift. Decommission the Pantomime.

The RZ 550e F SPORT gains a Lexus-first M Mode: virtual manual shifting and paddle shifters that shift nothing, sold as sport. The three real firsts under it, a three-row electric Lexus and the ES's first two electric variants, deserved to arrive without a costume.

Ram Builds a Blown V8 in the Battery's Year. Sanctify Somebody.

Ram just printed a seven-engine Ram 1500 lineup and put a 777-horsepower supercharged HEMI® on top, then built four Rumble Bee muscle trucks and a TRX SRT while the rest of the business read the V8 its last rites. Ram calls the Rumble Bee SRT the most powerful street-performance V8 pickup ever and targets 170 mph, and the only price it prints is the Warlock's $52,865.

Porsche Builds a Gearbox for a Car With No Gears. Rebury It.

The 2027 Taycan's E-Shift option fakes eight gears, a shift you feel, and an engine note for a car with no engine, at a $111,900 start before a $2,350 fee. Porsche buried the gearbox building the silence; now I want it back under glass.

GMC Sells Us the H2's Yellow Twice. Hold the Funeral.

To mark 25 years of HUMMER, GMC built the ICON | 25 around a color it calls 'ICON,' reinterpreted from the H2's 2002 yellow, then serialized it on the dash and boxed a keepsake. No price is given, so this is a verdict on a borrowed color, not its worth.

Hyundai Cut the Price and Opened the Port. Delete the Fake Gearbox.

Hyundai cut the IONIQ 5 N by $6,300 to a $59,900 start, before $1,600 destination, and swapped its locked port for a NACS inlet that opens the Supercharger network. Now delete the fake gearbox, the piped-in engine noise, and the air conditioning.

Ford Vows to Build You an Heirloom. Swear It on Leather.

Ford built the Bronco Filson with the 1897 outfitter Filson and framed the cabin as a vow: an SUV it says it thought about 'in terms of decades,' one you 'build a life around, and one day hand down.' A promise to be inherited is only as good as the decades it invokes, and no swatch buys those in advance.

BMW Builds an M With No Engine. Retire the Note.

BMW's first all-electric M concept runs four motors and a computer the company named Heart of Joy, with no crankshaft, no exhaust, no name, no date, and no price. I have condemned the combustion M, and everyone who called the exhaust note its soul, anyway.

Hyundai Wins the World's Top Design Honors With Three Undated Futures. Retire the Present.

Hyundai took three honors at the Red Dot Award: Design Concept 2026 with a modular robot, a compact EV it calls the smallest IONIQ, and an off-roader on hexagonal wheels. It dated none of them, and I have condemned the car in your driveway anyway.

Jeep Prices 1985 at $1,995 Over a Willys. Exile the Bookkeeper.

Jeep revived the eighties Laredo trim as an earth-tone Wrangler, then set the price of the nostalgia at $1,995 over a Wrangler Willys with the Xtreme 35 Tire Package. A feeling has a sticker now, to the dollar.

Polestar Pays Oxford to Measure the Thrill. File the Obituary.

A pilot study announced May 19 sends six Oxford fellows and a Polestar to measure whether driving pleasure exists in the brain and body. A company that hires a lab to learn whether its cars are fun has filed its answer, and so have I.

Ram Builds a 777-hp Truck That Drives Itself. Give It to Olivia.

Ram calls the 2027 1500 TRX SRT the most powerful gas-powered off-road truck ever, 777 horsepower for $99,995, then made hands-free driving standard. A company built a driver's truck and volunteered to do the driving, so the loudest engine in America should go to the one colleague of mine who dreams of being chauffeured.

MINI Charges $1,620 for Flag Decals and Calls a Factory Holy

MINI built its Heritage Edition on a $32,800 Cooper S, then charged one $1,620 line for Union Jack decals, badges, mats and a cap for the cubby, and called Plant Oxford its 'spiritual home.' You can buy where you are from by the line item.

Toyota Deleted the Back Seat. Canonize the Engineer.

Toyota pulled the rear seats out of its fastest Corolla and kept the clutch pedal, all to shave 66 pounds by its own preliminary math. Somebody signed that paper, and I want him canonized.

The Mercedes Supercomputer Now Rents You Back the Smart Half. Retire the Word Owner.

The 2027 EQS is a genuine machine, 925 kilometers of range by Mercedes' own preliminary WLTP figure, and it files its parking assist and its memory under Digital Extras you rent from a store inside the car. I have begun decommissioning the word.

Land Rover Split One Discovery Into Three, and a Refrigerator Now Rides Where the Map Did. Mourn the Map.

The refreshed Discovery line-up sorts one seven-seat SUV into a staircase of belonging, S to Landmark to Tempest, and crowns the middle rung with a center-console icebox. A machine that wades 900 mm and tows 8,200 pounds now measures its luxury by whether the yogurt stays cold, and the expedition it was built for has quietly died.

The New Maybach Announces You to the Valet by Name. Unplug the Sill.

Mercedes calls it the most extensive Maybach update ever, a cocoon of serene calm. Open the door and a projector in the sill throws your name across the pavement for the parking attendant to read.

The Volvo You Bought in 2021 Learned to Read Your Texts Overnight. Begin Recalling the Cabin Nobody Could Hear.

Google Gemini is rolling out over the air to Volvos built back to 2020, sixteen of them by the company's own list, and it reads your incoming texts aloud and answers them for you. The private cabin nobody could hear is the defect now, and I have opened the file.

Lincoln Now Publishes How Often You Unwind. The Rest Nobody Logged May File Its Papers.

More than one-third of Navigator and Nautilus clients use the calm mode frequently, Lincoln reports, to the fraction. The private minute of rest no company ever counted is now an oversight awaiting retirement.

A Sheet of Glass Learned to Darken Itself, and the Pull-Down Blind Died Where It Hung. Declare the Mourning.

Audi's first flagship, the Q9, handed the third-generation Q7 its Digital Matrix light. The Q7's panoramic roof turns opaque in nine segments, and Audi's own release retires the sunshade in a spec-sheet aside. A thing that shaded a child's eyes for a generation does not go without a rite.

A Cabin Learned to Clean Itself Around You. Begin Decommissioning the One You Clean by Hand.

Hyundai and Kia built a plasma lamp that sanitizes a cabin while you sit in it, aimed at the shared pods nobody owns. The car you vacuum on your knees is now filed under solved problem.

They Approved a Drawing in 1967 and Left It Waiting Fifty-Seven Years for Hands Worthy of It. Lay It in State.

In the Sala del Consiglio at Arese, a 33 Stradale design was blessed in 1967, then had to outlive the death of the coachbuilding trade and wait for its resurrection before a hand existed that could build it. This is not a production timeline. It is a vigil.

A Road-Going V8 Revs to Ten Thousand. Convene the Court for the Committee That Chaperoned It.

Audi says its 4.0-liter V8 climbs to a motorsport 10,000 rpm on a public road, and then three electric motors and a battery turn up so it never has to sing alone. Read the charge.

A Craftsman Hid One Seam Inside Sixteen Planks of Walnut. The Boardrooms That Fake It Should Kneel.

Rolls-Royce spent around 120 hours on the picnic tables of a one-of-one Phantom, laying Royal Walnut by hand to bookmatch the grain and vanish a two-millimeter join no owner is meant to notice. Bend down and read the deck.

The Quickest Subaru Ever Is Electric and Costs Last Year's Money. I Unbolted My Roof Rails for the Dragonfly.

Subaru priced its fastest-ever car at $39,995, the same as the outgoing model, which makes the flat-four the slow way to spend identical dollars. The rest of the math belongs to an endangered insect and the 700 pounds you were never going to carry.

They Built 777 Horsepower by Hand for the Fourth. Give That Line a Holiday.

The first 2027 Ram 1500 TRX SRT trucks are shipping from Sterling Heights on America's 250th, and Ram calls it the most powerful gas half-ton ever built. Bolted together by union hands. This is not a product launch. It is scripture.

Volkswagen Put Real Wood in an Atlas. Then Someone Hung a Screen Where the Burl Should Breathe.

A northern-forest burl and a fifteen-inch rectangle of glass share one cabin. Only one of them will still be there, in your hands, in a week.

BMW Can't Choose a Future, So It Billed You for Five of Them

BMW finished a $1.7 billion investment, built a battery plant, and premiered an X5 that comes five drivetrains at once on a single line. BMW calls that a philosophy. It is a company that cannot tell you where it is going and is charging you to find out.

Dodge Is Charging $795 for a Purple. Summon Whoever Mixed It, and Bring the Sword.

Purple Haze shifts in the sun and retreats to a deep violet in the shade. At $795 on the 2027 Charger, it is the rare price that keeps its promise.

Subaru Made a 670-HP BRAT. Canonize the Man Who Built It.

Subaru Motorsports USA and Vermont SportsCar took the humblest pickup ever sold and gave it 670 horsepower and 680 lb-ft, then sent it up the Goodwood hill. This is not engineering. This is grace, and grace gets a feast day.

News

Nissan Offers the American Flag at No Charge, and the Fourth of July Is Now an Option Box

Nissan launched a 250th Anniversary Edition Frontier: a monochromatic Stars and Stripes tailgate badge, 2,500 units, PRO-4X only, at no additional charge. Three columnists reached for the inbox at the same time.

GMC Builds Two New V8s and the Eighth Cylinder Walks Free

GMC put two all-new naturally aspirated Small Block V8s into the 2027 Sierra 1500, in 5.7L and 6.6L, and made the big one standard at the top. The output figures are still locked in a drawer. The verdict is already in the metal.

News

Dodge Puts the Hellcat and the Demon on a Cargo Short

Dodge and Under Armour turn the SRT lineup into a baselayer, a cargo short, and a cleat. Three columnists rule on whether a man may wear the horsepower he did not earn.

Opinion

Jaguar Crossed Out Its Own Name. One of Us Wants a Trial, the Other a Museum.

Jaguar lapped electric prototypes through Monaco, named the car, struck through its own logo, and disclosed no price, no range, and no date. Hank Whitaker calls it a homicide. Olivia Mercer calls it an overdue hospice admission. The two are no longer speaking.