By Chris Perkens The idea of an all-wheel drive M3 and M4 seemed like another sign of BMW losing its touch. It’s something we, and others, have accused the brand of for some time, and somehow, the combination of the M3/M4’s, erm, controversial styling with a driven front axle was yet more evidence. The only problem is that the M4 Competition xDrive is a fabulous car, and all the better for having four driven wheels.
By Richard Williams Revving up for a fresh ride? You’ve visited the right lifestyle site. We here at stupidDOPE crave the road’s grip just like the rest of you speed freaks. We couldn’t have been more hyped to touch down in upstate New York to kick it with Toyota to rip up the track at Monticello Motor Club in the all new 2022 GR86 Premium. Speeding off the track for 2022, the cult classic 86 proudly adorns the
Hitting the road and track with Cadillac’s roaring Blackwings, a Porsche 911 GTS and the rare BMW M2 CS. By Lawrence Ulrich For speed demons — or demons wedded to hellacious fossil-fuel power — the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing checks off quite a list. A supercharged, 668-horsepower V-8. A top speed above 200 miles an hour. All-day track thrills that would leave any E.V. depleted and gasping, as demonstrated on my endorphin-rushing test laps at Virginia
GR 86 is a track tested and pro-driver-approved sports car, allowing the 2022 GR 86 to earn Toyota’s Gazoo Racing badge. The 2.4-liter flat-four boxer engine is tuned to hit peak torque at lower RPMs, giving the feel of more linear acceleration. Continue reading
By Larry Printz MONTICELLO, N.Y. — Having just taken the top two spots at the 24 Hours of Le Mans last month, Toyota’s Gazoo Racing team has much to be proud of. It’s taken years to achieve, and it’s a testament to Toyota’s engineering and manufacturing acumen. Knowing that, it’s quite remarkable that the company doesn’t design or manufacture its own sports cars. Mazda, a car company a fraction of Toyota’s size, can afford to
By Gary Gastelu The Toyota GR 86 is an unlikely survivor of a dying breed and all the better for it. It’s the latest version of a model that was first launched in 2013 as the Scion FR-S and became the Toyota 86 in 2017 when the Scion brand was discontinued. It’s never been a big seller, but has persevered in part because Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda is a performance car fanatic who understands the value of having cars like
This evolution of the GT86 keeps what customers enjoyed but improves on its weak points. By Matt Crisara The Takeaway Toyota’s new GR86 is a reminder that low-powered sports cars are incredibly fun to drive. Its slightly bigger 2.4-liter four-cylinder boxer engine provides excellent mid-range torque where the previous GT86’s 2.0-liter engine would bog down. Still, it has the versatility to be a daily driver during the week when it’s not barnstorming the track on
The latest Toyota sports coupe doubles down on a winning formula. By Wesley Wren The Toyota GR 86 has had many names over its first-generation but now will push forward under the Gazoo Racing banner to further cement Toyota’s interest in bringing its sporting spirit to the street. This new 86 is an evolution of the previous generation car and builds on what worked—and fixes what didn’t. The biggest complaint of the outgoing model: power. Continue reading
While it’s not entirely new, the GR 86’s larger engine and revised chassis are more than enough to keep us happy. By David Beard A car like the Toyota GR 86 isn’t supposed to happen in this age of SUVs and electrification. Small and affordable coupes like the rear-drive GR 86 are pretty much dead. And yet Toyota has just refreshed its almost one-of-a-kind sports car, and it isn’t just good, it’s great. We adore high-powered coupes
With a bigger engine, more power, and a welcome dab of refinement, the Toyobaru’s second round is a victory lap. BY PATRICK GEORGE “Designed by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.” That’s how Toyota’s marketing people talk about the 2022 Toyota GR 86, and I can’t think of a more apt description. It takes a lot—or at least a CEO who really, really thinks cars should be fun to drive—to drop a brand-new, affordable, naturally aspirated, manual-equipped, rear-wheel-drive sports car
A garage turned coffee shop and a restaurant fixing up Mustangs in the basement: The car scene is expanding beyond a high-end racetrack country club. By Brett Berk The driving season in the Catskills is quite short, abbreviated by snow and salt in the long winters and a spring rainy season that can sometimes feel endless. But now that it’s the heart of summer, and people can mingle again, Jared Lamanna wants to provide a
By Brett Berk The car—chassis number 906-134—is owned by the co-founder of the Monticello Motor Club, where the 906 and the four-by-six foot portrait now live. Heidi Mraz‘s automotive portraits are complex, collages of hundreds of pieces of ephemera specific to the car, so her artistic process is arduous. “Fifty percent of my time is just spent gathering information—talking to past drivers, restorers, owners; finding magazine articles and engineering notes in dusty boxes—to fill the
Mother Nature had better get some ear muffs. The 2021 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 is the first V8 Wrangler ever and the most powerful. Needless to say, it’s a rowdy one. It borrows its 392 cubic-inch engine from the Dodge Challenger RT Scat Pack, Grand Cherokee SRT, etc., and sends 470 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque to all four of the Wrangler’s wheels through an 8-speed automatic transmission as it screams through a dual-mode exhaust that allows drivers to crank
In retrospect, the Subaru Outback Wilderness seems like the sort of idea that we should have all thought up a long time ago. After all, the basic idea behind the Outback that proved so revolutionary a couple decades ago — take an all-wheel-drive station wagon and add ground clearance so it can go off-road — clearly proved a mighty success; that basic idea transformed Subaru from a second-tier Japanese carmaker in America to a near-omnipresent feature of the country’s
Spoiler alert: We’re not talking about golf. During this unprecedented time, travel’s been limited. We’re itching to get out of town, get behind the wheel, and set our sights on the open road. Better yet, we’re looking at the closed roads. Track clubs have become the new country clubs—more high-octane, to be sure, and way more fun. No speed limits, no construction zones, and although we can’t guarantee you won’t hit some light traffic—things like
By Patrick George In the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence, Audi will sell approximately 246 Q5 crossovers to American buyers. Okay, fine, it may be closer to 244. Math has never been my strong suit. But any way you want to look at it, the Q5 is a bonafide hit for Audi. Even four years into the current model’s life, it remains the brand’s top-selling model by a wide margin. And the
By Nico DeMattia The B5 Audi RS4 Avant has a loyal following among Audi enthusiasts. As the original RS4 Avant, it gets a ton of love for being the car that made the segment famous. Which is why heavily modifying B5 RS4s can upset its fanbase. However, this modified “Safari” B5 Audi RS4 Avant should instead be celebrated. In the latest episode of Modified, from Hagerty, we get to see an owner’s lifted, wrapped, and, well, modified RS4.
Fast as lightning, stable when wet By Lawrence Ulrich Among modern sports cars, there’s fast, and then there’s the Porsche 911 Turbo. I’ve driven many generations of this Autobahn brawler, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for what Porsche could do with 477 kilowatts—640 horsepower. I tested the all-new 911 Turbo S at my “neighborhood” track, the Monticello Motor Club in the Catskills region of New York. On Monticello’s 4.1-mile tangle of curves, the Porsche showed how 46
By Chris Perkins Confidence can be a dangerous thing. I was feeling pretty good about myself out on the snow-covered road course of the Monticello Motor Club road course, pulling big yaw angles with the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, making it look nice for the camera just as the snow was giving way to ice. You see where this is going: carrying too much speed down a particularly slick part of the track and into a snowbank, pushing
By Roger Garbow aunching off the top of the hill, there’s a brief sensation of weightlessness. A flashback to those youthful days of hitting jumps on a light, two-stroke dirt bike, floating through the air and then landing with a blast of dirt from the rear wheel. In a blink, that memory was replaced with a harsh reality: I’m no longer 17, and this is going to hurt. 5,500 pounds of steel falling through space tends
