Tag Archives: Review

Media Mentions

2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt Review: McQueen Fan or Not, This ‘Stang Is Worth the Upcharge

Courtesy of The Drive:  As the Matchbox toys of the automotive world, American muscle cars are ripe for experimentation—or exploitation—in the form of special editions. Get it right, and you end up with a Plymouth Superbird, a future collectible and classic. Get it wrong, and you end up with a 1998 Corvette Indy Pace Car, a purple-and-yellow poseur with as much class as a Franklin Mint collector plate.

The 2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt is no Superbird in terms of investment potential; not least because Ford will build many more over a two-year run than the mere 135 Hemi Superbirds produced in 1970. But kudos to Ford for offering the Bullitt exclusively as a fastback coupe (no convertible) with a six-speed manual transmission, a vote for authenticity over incremental sales.

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Media Mentions

Ortiz wins Global Mazda MX-5 Cup Sunday on last-lap pass

Courtesy of Racer: Bryan Ortiz didn’t let an early exit in Saturday’s Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich race get him down, instead he made it his mission to get the win on Sunday, which he did with a last-lap pass. For the second time in as many races, the Global Mazda MX-5 Cup race came down to a last lap pass for victory, with polesitter Nathanial Sparks finishing second and Joey Bickers completing the podium in third.

Ortiz, in the No. 4 Copeland Motorsports entry, said he had the ‘yo no me quito’ spirit of Puerto Rico, which means ‘I don’t give up.’ Indeed, he never wavered in the 45-minute race with zero full-course cautions. Though he and Sparks attempted to work together to pull away from the rest of the field, the top 15 cars stayed glued together for the first 30 minutes of the race.

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Media Mentions

Glickenhaus’s 003S Is an Absurd Road-Legal Racecar

Courtesy of Road and Track: Glickenhaus might not roll off the tongue like Pagani. It might not sound as exotic as Koenigsegg. But Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, or SCG for short, Jim Glickenhaus’s plucky, New York-based race team and supercar company, is easily in the same league as these boutique hypercar makers.

“You go to Koenigsegg for wild engineering, Pagani for works of art,” Glickenhaus tells me. “You come to us for race cars you can drive on the road.”

SCG has been running its 003 race car at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring since 2015. Last year, we rode in the 003CS—for “Competizione Stradale”—Glickenhaus’s first road-legal car. Glickenhaus designed it to be a car that you could drive to the track, swap in a homologated race engine, race it, swap back, and drive home. It’s more of a race car you can drive on the road, not a road car you can drive on the track.

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Media Mentions

Getting Muddy in the Chevy Colorado ZR2

Courtesy of The Drive: Back in April, Ford announced it was essentially giving up on everything in its lineup that wasn’t a truck or SUV. Amurica, am I right? General Motors may still be sticking with sedans, but it’s massively invested in the truck market as well. Just four years ago, GM started rolling out a refreshed offering in a segment that had been all but abandoned in the states—the midsize pickup truck—in the form of the Chevrolet Colorado. Not long after (in model year 2017), customers gained the option of the high-performance, off-road ZR2 trim level. Think “Honey, I Shrunk the Ford Raptor”.

I got the chance to spend an afternoon in the capable little ZR2 beasts, on the muddy trails at Monticello Motor Club, with the woman responsible for making them what they are. Anita Burke, GM Vehicle Chief Engineer, is responsible for all (read: global) midsize trucks at General Motors. And after roughing up the ZR2 myself, I hitched a ride with her, determined to hear all the nerdy goodness that went into creating these pickups.

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Media Mentions

Ford Upgrades Mustang Shelby GT350 for 2019

Courtesy of Automobile: PONTIAC, Michigan — Ford has changes in store for the Mustang Shelby GT350 designed to upgrade its uber-pony/sports car with handling improvements for the 2019 model year. The mid-cycle upgrade features new suspension calibrations, a new wheel design, new tires, and improved aerodynamics, according to Mustang engineering chief Carl Widmann.

The new tires are Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 measuring 295/35 front and 305/35 rear. These complementing new springs, anti-roll bars, and MagneRide suspension tuning, Widmann says, “for faster lap times.” The rear wing comes with an optional Gurney flap and the “blanking” in the grille—the blocked-out openings—has been optimized for better aero with sufficient cooling.

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Media Mentions

2018 FORD MUSTANG GT PERFORMANCE PACK 2 REVIEW

Courtesy of MotorTrend:  3.3 seconds.

When we paired this dynamic pony-car duo earlier this year, the performance gap between the newly refreshed 2018 Ford Mustang with Performance Package and the Camaro SS 1LE (a fourth-place finisher in our 2016 Best Driver’s Car competition) was 3.3 seconds on our local Streets of Willow Springs handling circuit. The more powerful Mustang’s best lap was an impressive 1:23.97, but the torquier Camaro’s superior chassis delivered a blistering 1:20.67 lap, ranking it the sixth quickest production car on that circuit. As we noted, that yawning performance gap means these two cars probably wouldn’t be allowed to compete in the same class.

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Media Mentions, Onsite Events

Subaru WRX STI at MMC [video]

Courtesy of The Drive: Winter sucks. There, I said it.

Sure, there are some positive aspects to the coldest of seasons. The holidays are always nice. It gives us a chance to drink hot cocoa, and an excuse to stay inside and binge-watch TV or binge-read books. But in terms of activities, the only thing winter is good for is sliding around. Pretty much every winter sport revolves around this in some way: skiing, snowboarding, skating, sledding. We at The Drive, however, are more partial to motorized pursuits. Winter may not be ideal for most forms of driving, but it does throw one major bone to the automotive enthusiast set: By lowering the amount of available grip, snow- and ice-covered roads lower a car’s limits to a point where they can be explored at significantly lower speeds.

Which is to say: Winter makes it really, really easy to drift.

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Media Mentions

2018 Trackhawk Review at MMC [video]

Courtesy of FoxNews: The Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is a real time-saver. If you don’t mind pushing your luck with the law.

That’s because the latest version of the cargo-hauling, trailer-towing, family-friendly all-weather SUV is the most powerful and one of the quickest utility vehicles in the world.

It has the same 707 hp 6.2-liter supercharged V8 found in the Dodge Challenger and Charger Hellcat muscle cars under its vented hood. The engine is a gloriously ridiculous novelty in all three applications, but the Trackhawk makes the most out of it.

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Media Mentions, Onsite Events

Fiat 124 Spider Abarth vs. Mazda Miata RF at MMC

Courtesy of Torque News: A long time Miata fan and owner weighs on the debate over which is the better track car, the Miata or the 124 Spider. The reason for the win is the biggest surprise.

This past week, Torque News had the opportunity to run the 2018 Fiat 124 Spider Abarth and the Mazda Miata RF back to back on the track at the beautiful Monticello Motor Club in New York State. MMC is one of the finest road courses in the Eastern United States and perfect for a comparison between these fun and capable track-worthy roadsters. Both were stick shifts and they even had similar paint. It was a fair fight and we aren’t going to be wishy-washy about which was more fun to drive on that given day.

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Media Mentions, Onsite Events

3 Big Surprises on MMC’s Track

Courtesy of Torque News: We take the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk around a track and come away surprised by three things.

Torque News was fortunate enough to have a chance to lap the incredible Monticello Motor Club in the new 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk this week. The good folks at FCA America and Dodge have made the Hellcats available to us in the past, so the amazing 707 hp engine in the Grand Cherokee Trackhawk didn’t surprise us. It always shocks us, but we knew it was going to be there and be special. During our lap, three things really stood out.

Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk – Transmission
The first and most impressive surprise was the automatic transmission in the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. Although our own Patrick Rall is the leading authority on all things Hellcat in the American motor press, my seat time in prior Hellcats was always with the manual transmission. The TorqueFlite 8HP95 8-speed automatic in the Grand Cherokee was so intuitive we never needed to reach for a paddle. Braking into turns in Sport Mode, the Trackhawk would fire off rev-matched downshifts aggressively and put us the perfect gear for the turn’s exit.

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Media Mentions

I drove the fastest Jaguar sports car in the world

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Courtesy of Business Insider: The Jaguar F-Type is one of my favorite cars.

I like the F-Type so much that I nearly swayed my colleague Matt DeBord into handing the Jag Business Insider’s Car of the Year award in 2014 instead of the game-changing Corvette Stingray.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of spending hundreds of miles behind the wheel of roughly half a dozen versions of the British sports car — including V6-engine coupes with an old-school stick shift and V8 powered convertibles.

My F-Type experiences have been flawless — except one.

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