Aurelia Butler

Designed in California, the Toyota FJ Cruiser is a fun and capable SUV.The FJ Cruiser successfully picked up the styling thread of the early Land Cruiser.This example, up for auction on Bring a Trailer until October 18, has 96,000 miles on the odometer.With Toyota’s Calty design studio in California celebrating its 50th anniversary, what better time to go poking through the Calty back catalog to find some modern collectibles? The studio’s aim was to marry sunny SoCal car culture with pragmatic Toyota underpinnings, and sometimes it got the recipe exactly right. So it was with the FJ Cruiser, a retro-themed mid-size SUV that was basically a 4Runner with more fun baked in.Car and DriverThis FJ Cruiser, up for auction on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is from the last model year available in North America, 2014. With 94,000 miles on the odometer, it’s just broken in by Toyota standards, and the Quicksand beige paint contrasts nicely with the white roof. A shorter wheelbase than the related 4Runner gives the 17-inch wheels an even chunkier look, and the friendly round-headlight face captures the spirit of the original FJ40 perfectly.Bring a TrailerWhen it first debuted for the 2007 model year, the FJ Cruiser gave Toyota’s image a much-needed shot in the arm. The brand’s reputation for reliability and pragmatism was well established, but the FJ Cruiser helped put the fun back in functional. Look! Three windshield wipers! Weird rear-opening half doors! Retro side mirrors!Bring a TrailerAnd underneath, the FJ Cruiser was basically just a shortened 4Runner, which made it great off-road. On the road, however, the combination of a thirsty 260-hp 4.0-liter V-6 and ponderous handling drew some complaints from the critics. In a review of a 2009 model, we summed things up by writing, “Driving the FJ is like piloting a boat.”Related StoriesHowever, the FJ Cruiser was at least a far better-behaved on-road companion than the contemporary Jeep Wrangler with its twin live axles. And besides, a trucklike driving feel is part of the Tonka Toy charm. If you want a RAV4, buy a RAV4. The FJ Cruiser is built to turn everyday chores into expeditions.Bring a TrailerThis example is claimed to have an accident-free history and has lived in New Mexico, Nevada, and now Washington—all natural habitats for Toyota’s off-road species. The charcoal cloth interior looks well preserved and should stand up to plenty of camping-related abuse. The mileage is also in the sweet spot of being low for a Toyota but not so low that you won’t want to get out and drive.With 67 cubic feet of cargo space when the back seat is folded down, and a roof rack and optional tow hitch for any extras, this FJ Cruiser is ready for outdoor activities. Even better, since the discontinuation of these trucks, demand has remained high. Toyota could easily sell a new FJ Cruiser if it wanted to, but until then, the FJ Cruiser remains sought after. It’s a modern collectible, one that’s ready for adventure.This auction ends on October 18.Contributing EditorBrendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. More

This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Welcome back, Window Shop viewers. It’s been a while since we gathered the Window Shop crew and we have missed making this ridiculous “show.” But after several months of trying to align the team’s schedule and many cancelations, we all gathered together on Zoom and recorded a new episode.The challenge this week is to find the best car of the ’80s. Since “best” is open to interpretation, the panel was instructed to define best as, “significant and awesome.” That direction didn’t really clear much else as some leaned heavily on “awesome” and others went for “significance.” The budget? A generous $100,000.This week we’re joined by senior editor Elana Scherr, executive editor K.C. Colwell, contributor Jonathon Ramsey, editor-in-chief Tony Quiroga, and no Window Shop would be complete without R&T senior editor John Pearley Huffman. As usual, the choices and arguments are all over the place and one editor even tries to sneak in a ’90s car into the mix.Let us know who you think won and what you would have picked in the comments. And, look out for a new episode next week.More Window ShoppingEditor-in-ChiefTony Quiroga is an 18-year-veteran Car and Driver editor, writer, and car reviewer and the 19th editor-in-chief for the magazine since its founding in 1955. He has subscribed to Car and Driver since age six. “Growing up, I read every issue of Car and Driver cover to cover, sometimes three or more times. It’s the place I wanted to work since I could read,” Quiroga says. He moved from Automobile Magazine to an associate editor position at Car and Driver in 2004. Over the years, he has held nearly every editorial position in print and digital, edited several special issues, and also helped produce C/D’s early YouTube efforts. He is also the longest-tenured test driver for Lightning Lap, having lapped Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course more than 2000 times over 12 years. More

The 2024 Chevy Corvette is now more expensive following mid-year price hikes across the lineup. New Corvette orders now cost an extra $2100, including a higher destination fee.The base Stingray now starts at $69,995—$10K more than when the C8 Corvette debuted in 2020.The price of goods is going up—thanks a lot, inflation. That also means the price of (really) good sports cars is going up too, with the 2024 Chevy Corvette getting a mid-year price adjustment that makes every new model ordered more expensive by $2100.Costlier CorvettesAlong with adding $2K to the cars’ MSRP, Chevy has raised the destination charge by $100 from $1595 to $1695, as first reported by GM Authority. Today, Car and Driver reached out to a company spokesperson to find out the reason behind the mid-year increase, but we’ve yet to hear back.It’s normal for automakers to up their suggested asking prices at the start of new model years, and when the 2024 Corvette lineup went on sale, it cost more than the previous year. However, with the latest increase, ’24 models cost thousands more than that. For example, the Z06 now starts at $114,395—$5100 more than it did in 2023. The new hybrid all-wheel-drive E-Ray debuted earlier this year with a $104,495 price; now it starts at $106,595.Tacking on 10 GrandWhen the 2020 C8 Corvette first hit Chevrolet showrooms, the entry-level Stingray had a starting price of $59,995. Each year from there the base price rose by $1000, $2300, and $5900, respectively. Flash forward four model years and the least expensive Vette has seen its base price jump by $10K.One of the C8’s greatest virtues is its incredible value compared with the competition. For those who are always looking at price differences, America’s sports car has had a higher starting price than the excellent Porsche 718 Cayman (currently $69,950) since its arrival. Of course, there’s no replacement for displacement, and the four-cylinder Cayman has a lot fewer horses.C8 Corvettes Tested!This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorEric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual ’97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a ’90 Honda CRX Si. More

Ford is building a special “Gamer Van” version of the Transit Trail Van.It will be outfitted with a couch, a desk, and a host of gaming equipment. The automaker teamed up with the video game organization Full Squad Gaming to help with the build. Sure, most van outfitters design their vans for off-roading or camping designations, but Ford had different plans with its newest special-edition Transit Trail van. Rather than build things like a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchenette–who needs those anyways?–Ford decided to build what it describes as the ultimate “Gamer Van.”FordInside, the Gamer Van has a gaming desk, a custom-built couch, a reactive cloud ceiling (don’t ask us what that means, we’re not quite sure), external gaming stations, and according to Ford, “all of the gaming and streaming equipment you could ever need.” From what we can tell, that means a gaming PC up front by the desk as well as a Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S at the back, along with a multiple sets of headphones and controllers. FordLike outdoor-inspired Transit Trail builds, the Gamer Van is really just a lifted Transit van underneath. That means a widened track, lifted suspension, all-terrain tires, and standard all-wheel drive. All Trail vans come with Ford’s turbocharged 3.5-liter V-6 engine, which churns out 310 horsepower and 410 pound-feet of torque. A Transit with the turbocharged V-6 that we tested a few years back made it to 60 mph in 6.8 seconds, but throw in all the extra weight from the upfit, and that acceleration time is expected to be slower. More on the Transit TrailThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Associate News EditorJack Fitzgerald’s love for cars stems from his as yet unshakable addiction to Formula 1. After a brief stint as a detailer for a local dealership group in college, he knew he needed a more permanent way to drive all the new cars he couldn’t afford and decided to pursue a career in auto writing. By hounding his college professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he was able to travel Wisconsin seeking out stories in the auto world before landing his dream job at Car and Driver. His new goal is to delay the inevitable demise of his 2010 Volkswagen Golf. More

Mercedes-Benz staged what it’s calling the first public crash test of two electric vehicles, and you can watch it in the video below.The test featured Mercedes’s heaviest EV, the EQS SUV, versus its lightest, the Europe-market EQA.Mercedes emphasized that the point of the test was to show that the battery and electrical components are protected as well as the occupants in the event of a crash.We’re standing in the upstairs gallery in the cavernous Mercedes-Benz crash-test center in Stuttgart, wearing earplugs as suggested. The safety-yellow EQS SUV and the similarly painted Europe-market EQA face each other at the far opposite ends of a long corridor, roughly 140 yards apart, ready to meet their fate. Each of these two EVs is connected to a cable set into a groove in the floor. It will pull them toward each other at 35 mph, the EQS half into the EQA’s lane. Ultra-bright lights (100,000 lumens) flick on, illuminating the impact zone, which has a glass floor below which cameras stand ready to record the carnage. “Don’t follow either car or you’ll miss the crash,” we’re advised. The house lights go down, and as the engineers make their final checks, a gasoline engine fires up. What? These are both EVs. The engine is that of the giant-size forklift that stands ready. Should either car catch fire, it will swoop in, scoop it up, and carry it out of the building, and dump it into a pool of water. (An occasion that’s never happened, we’re told.) This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.There’s a warning signal, and then the cars are in motion. Under the bright lights, they meet with a tremendous bang that spins both cars sideways and rocks the smaller one backward. It’s the first public crash test between two EVs.Mercedes-Benz AG – Communications & MarketingImmediately, there’s an electrical smell, and firefighters approach the vehicles to measure for heat development. Shattered pieces of both cars litter the floor. Given the all-clear, other workers drop mats to absorb pink battery coolant leaking from both cars. Post-crash, the hazard lights illuminate, the door handles pop out, and the doors unlock. (The automatic emergency call system has been reprogrammed ahead of time to dial a different number so that emergency crews don’t respond.) Engineers check to see that the high-voltage battery system has automatically disconnected, and they begin to collect their data.Mercedes-Benz AG – Communications & MarketingThe EQS SUV is the largest Mercedes-Benz EV, and the EQA the smallest, and their weight difference is some 1700 pounds. The 35-mph impact speed is greater than that of any government-mandated crash test (the next-closest being the Euro NCAP offset frontal crash at 31 mph).The cars are largely destroyed: Besides the obvious deformation, the EQA’s windshield has been shattered by the rear edge of the hood, and its left front wheel has broken off.In both cars, the crash-test dummy in the driver’s seat is a fifth-percentile female (106 pounds, four feet 10 inches). The EQA has a similar dummy riding shotgun; in the EQS, the front passenger dummy is a 50th-percentile male (172 pounds, five feet 10 inches). According to the 150 measuring devices on each dummy, none has suffered major injuries.Related StoriesThe Battery Needs ProtectingProtecting the integrity of the passenger compartment has long been a goal of safety engineers. With EVs comes a second goal. “We need another survival space, for the high-voltage battery,” says Marcel Brodbeck, passive safety engineer at Mercedes-Benz. The batteries are located below the floor between the axles, an area that is least likely to be deformed, and a stout doorsill structure of extruded aluminum protects the pack from side impacts. In the event of a crash, “the high-voltage system will shut down and disconnect from the battery,” explains Julia Hinners, another passive-safety engineer. “We also build in a manual shutdown”—a cable on the driver’s side below the A-pillar that serves as a manual deactivation option for emergency response personnel.By making this EV-versus-EV crash test public, Mercedes-Benz surely is wanting to deliver a message about the crash safety of its electric vehicles. But watching the violence of that impact in real life also drove home a second message: You really don’t want to be in a car crash. Deputy Editor, Reviews and FeaturesJoe Lorio has been obsessed with cars since his Matchbox days, and he got his first subscription to Car and Driver at age 11. Joe started his career at Automobile Magazine under David E. Davis Jr., and his work has also appeared on websites including Amazon Autos, Autoblog, AutoTrader, Hagerty, Hemmings, KBB, and TrueCar. More

EPA ratings are out for the 2024 Kia EV9 three-row electric SUV.We also tested an EV9 GT-Line on our real-world 75-mph highway range test.The EV9 achieved a real-world result of 240 miles, just shy of its 270 mile EPA rating.The EPA has just released official range numbers for the new 2024 Kia EV9, and we also have our own test results to provide more context for how far you can expect to go on a charge in the new three-row electric SUV in the real world. The government says that the EV9 can travel between 230 miles and 304 miles, depending on the configuration, and our result for the dual-motor GT-Line trim level with the larger battery pack compares pretty favorably to the EPA rating for that model.We achieved a result of 240 miles in our loaded GT-Line test car, which comes with a dual-motor setup providing 379 horsepower and a 99.8-kWh battery pack. The EPA rating for this model is 270 miles—keep in mind that this is a combined figure, while our test is for highway driving at 75 mph—meaning that the EV9 achieved 88 percent of its EPA estimate.More Range TestingThat’s a better percentage than the real-world results for several other EV SUVs we’ve tested, such as the Rivian R1S and Cadillac Lyriq (both 72 percent of EPA estimate) and Nissan Ariya (82 percent of EPA estimate). However, some EVs—mostly from German brands—have outperformed their EPA ratings in our testing, so the EV9 isn’t quite on that level. Still, it’s an impressive result given how big and boxy the EV9 is, as it would be reasonable to assume that such a large vehicle would do worse relative to EPA figures at higher speeds.If you want more range from your EV9, opt for the rear-wheel-drive Light model with the bigger battery pack, which is EPA-rated to deliver 304 miles. The AWD Wind and Land trims are rated at 280 miles, while the base RWD Light model with the smaller, 76.1-kWh battery pack is rated at 230 miles. We look forward to testing these other versions and seeing what kind of real-world range results they deliver.More on Kia EVsSenior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More

The 2024 Rolls-Royce Ghost Ékleipsis celebrates the natural majesty of the solar eclipse with special copper paint and Mandarin orange accents. The cabin is decked out with an elaborate dashboard artwork and a bejeweled timepiece, as well as a unique Starlight headliner that mimics the sequence of an eclipse. Only 25 examples are being built, and they are all already sold.On Saturday, October 14, large swaths of the Western Hemisphere will experience a partial solar eclipse, with the moon expected to block up to 80 percent of the sun in places like Dallas, Texas, during the natural phenomenon. To honor the event, Rolls-Royce created a special version of the Ghost, a Black Badge model called the Ékleipsis Private Collection. Just 25 examples are being crafted, and they are all already spoken for. Rolls-RoyceThe Ékleipsis is painted in Lyrical Copper, lending the Ghost a moody aura in dark settings but sparkling under brighter lighting. A bright orange hue called Mandarin appears on the front bumper and brake calipers, “recalling the intense pulses of sunlight witnessed as the eclipse progresses,” Rolls-Royce says. A delicate, hand-painted Mandarin coachline also runs along the Ghost’s shoulder line, with a dotted motif meant to represent the “transition from sunlight to darkness.”Rolls-RoyceRolls-Royce is well-known for its Starlight headliner, with hundreds of tiny lights embedded into the car’s ceiling to emulate the night sky. The Ékleipsis has a unique setup, with an animation that plays when the doors close and engine is started that displays a circle of 940 “stars” representing the corona of light that peeks around the moon during the eclipse, surrounded by 192 other LEDs that act as the stars that suddenly become visible during daytime when a total eclipse occurs. The animation lasts seven minutes and 31 seconds, the maximum duration of a total solar eclipse, after which all of the LED stars illuminate. Rolls-Royce says this animation took a full year to develop. Rolls-RoyceOn the dashboard sits an intricate artwork consisting of 1846 laser-etched “stars,” with the dazzling display taking a singular technician 100 hours to create. To the left sits a unique timepiece with a 0.5-carat diamond integrated into the clock’s bezel, inspired by the “diamond ring” effect that sees a single point of light become visible right before and after the moon moves in front of the sun. The two-tone seats have over 200,000 perforations in a unique pattern, exposing Mandarin accents under the black leather. Rolls-RoyceRolls-Royce fitted a few other neat touches: the door sill plates are illuminated and the umbrella hidden in the doors—a Rolls-Royce staple—wears Mandarin piping. The Ghost Ékleipsis also comes with a unique indoor car cover. Rolls-Royce says all 25 examples have been claimed, and while no price was revealed, we bet those customers paid a pretty penny more than the Ghost’s $351,000 starting price.More on Rolls-RoyceThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More