Motor News

Honda has just released a faraway photo of the 2023 Pilot TrailSport shown clustered among large boulders, marking the first news we’re getting of the next-gen Pilot.We don’t have any clear details yet, but we expect the TrailSport to start around $47,000 and to get a full reveal later this fall.Sales are expected to start in early 2023.Honda provided the first teaser image of the 2023 Pilot TrailSport this morning (above) with a faraway shot of the three-row SUV clustered among a backdrop of boulders. The release and photo were light on specifics but we expect a full reveal later this fall, with the car going on sale early next year. We expect the base Pilot to start around $40,000 with the TrailSport coming in closer to the $47,000 mark, though official pricing figures have not been released yet. No interior photos were offered, though it is likely the new Pilot will feature the same design cues offered in other new Hondas.
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We’re fully in speculation territory here, with no official details announced, but we hope the new TrailSport comes with added performance rather than as a styling package. The Pilot is already available with all-wheel drive and an elevated seating position. We think giving it a few inches of lift, while adding skid plates for protection, will likely add to the price over the 2022 version, but added performance could be worth it. The 2022 model produces 280 horsepower from its V-6, and the new version could get a detuned version of the turbo V-6 currently available in the MDX, but we may just be getting our hopes up.
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If you were an automotive enthusiast during the mid-2000s, you are certainly familiar with the crew at West Coast Customs. The shop was the home of MTV’s iconic TV show Pimp My Ride, which ran for 73 episodes here in the States. The show proved so popular that a number of international versions quickly hit global airways. After more than a decade since it last aired, the United Kingdom is finally about to get another crack at the Pimp My Ride universe thanks to a little help from a team at eBay. Pimp My Ride UK initially debuted in June 2005 and ran for just three seasons before ultimately being pulled. English DJ Tim Westwood was the original host, while the modification and restoration work was completed by the team at Carisma Automotive. Now, though, British rapper Lady Leshurr, who is best known for her Queen’s Speech series of freestyles, is going to take a crack at reviving the project. Hosted on the MTV YouTube channel and bankrolled by eBay, the show will return as an internet property on August 19.

One of the first vehicles the team is slated to work on is a Mitsubishi GT, which Top Gear reports will wear some Fast and Furious–inspired tweaks. That’s only fitting considering the two franchises have similar career timelines. The work is slated to take place at the Wrench Studios, which is a high-performance tuning shop located in Ashford, England. Based on the high-horsepower builds that have been featured on the shop’s own YouTube page, the pairing seems perfect for this sort of endeavor.

eBay

Pimp My Ride has had an interesting cultural history. The show took a lot of flak for the sheer amount of “TV magic” taking place during production, but it has managed to cement itself as a genuine part of car culture from its era. And while there may not be a ton of tribute vehicles running around, it will be interesting to see what this British crew is able to come up with. Hopefully we get to see some builds that you wouldn’t see come out of the oh-so-American West Coast Customs.
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The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has released its car theft data from 2021, showing that the rate of stolen cars was up 8 percent from 2020.Full-size pickup trucks were the most commonly stolen vehicles, with Chevrolet ousting Ford for the top spot in thefts for 2021, while economy sedans like Honda’s Civic and Toyota’s Camry trailed close behind.Recovering stolen cars can be a difficult process, but thefts reported within the first 24 hours have a 34 percent chance of recovery.With record demand and strained supply chains, the automotive market is in a period of severe fluctuation. Manufacturers can’t produce enough cars to meet the demand from dealerships, with cars being sold before they even reach the dealer. With new cars sparsely produced and often sold above sticker prices, consumers fled to the used-vehicle market, where things haven’t been much better in terms of options or price. This has led to a scarcity of choices for car buyers, but not necessarily for car thieves.Thanks to data collected by the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), we can see how this lack of supply has affected the world of automotive thieving. The results were a modest increase in theft, rising 8 percent year over year for 2021. However, the theft trends from 2021 included a major change to the cast of usual targets. Ranking at the top of the list were Chevrolet full-size pickup trucks, with 48,206 trucks stolen last year. Ford came in number two, a major change from two years of being on top, with 47,999 full-size trucks stolen in 2021. Trucks are particularly popular with thieves, in part because of their roadgoing ubiquity. NICB data notes that the most commonly stolen year of Chevrolet and Ford trucks were 2004 and 2007, respectively.

National Insurance Crime Bureau

Model year seems to play a big role in the kinds of cars stolen. Honda products from the late 1990s and early 2000s were notorious for being stolen, and the trend continues two decades later. Honda’s Civic and Accord took third and fourth places on the list, with the most commonly stolen Civic being from the 2000 model year. The Accord falls even further behind, with 1997 being the most common model year stolen. Around 61,000 of these family sedans were stolen in total last year.

Other predictable models were included in the list, including the Toyota Camry and Corolla as well as the Nissan Altima and Honda CR-V. Beyond the usual suspects, there is a new addition to the list, an SUV that was stolen at high rates in 2021: Jeep’s Cherokee and Grand Cherokee models. The rugged SUV was stolen 13,210 times across the nation.

Jeep

A deeper dive into the NICB database of common vehicle thefts by state reveals some telling trends. True to home, the top 10 most stolen vehicles in Michigan were all domestically made, with the Dodge Charger topping the list at 1148 units sold. Oregon stayed true to its granola roots, with the average year of the most stolen vehicles being 1998 and three of the 10 most stolen cars listed as aging Subarus. Smaller, less populous states like Vermont and New Hampshire had significantly fewer grand theft autos, with the most stolen vehicles being 16 Subaru Foresters and 44 Ford trucks, respectively.The NICB does have some recommendations to help rightful car owners keep their vehicles. Reporting the vehicle as stolen right away is the most important part, and even then your chances are somewhat slim. Data from 2021 shows a 34% recovery rate if the stolen vehicle was reported in the first 24 hours. Other common-sense recommendations include parking in well-lit areas and removing valuables from plain sight.If you own one of the cars listed, don’t panic. It’s not a coincidence that the most commonly stolen vehicles are also the most sold. Ford sold 726,004 F-series pickup trucks last year, while Honda sold 263,787 Civics. More than 10.5 million Honda Accords have been produced since the model’s inception. All of that is to say common sense practices and an extra layer of protection (steering wheel club, immobilizer, etc.) for the more susceptible models should keep your car wherever you park it.

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• They don’t make them like this anymore, but I remember driving one of these back when they did, sometime in the mid-’90s.• The one shown here shows only 1200 miles on the odometer and is up for online auction with Bring a Trailer.• With the auction scheduled to end on Friday, August 12, bidding is just over $14,000.Sometime around the mid-’90s, when I was rolling around in my 1985 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z, I stopped by a local car dealer to ogle the then-new Impala SS. I asked if I could take it for a test drive, and a sales guy who looked like a Sopranos extra glanced up from his folding chair near the front door and said, “If everybody drives it, nobody buys it.” He threw me the keys to a Monte Carlo SS, though. One much like this one, our Bring a Trailer Pick of the Day.

Bring a Trailer

With the IROC lending me some form of credibility, or at least collateral, I motored off down Route 1 to see what this Monte Carlo was all about. Because honestly, I didn’t get it: It looked fast, it had that NASCAR connection, but Chevy clearly hamstrung it on performance. Probably this was a GM internal thing, protecting the supremacy of the Buick Grand National, but it resulted in the curious machine you see here: all rakish go-fast attitude, but packing a carbureted 181-hp 5.0-liter V-8 under the hood. The same engine in my IROC, same year, with tuned-port fuel injection, made 215 horsepower. With a lot less car wrapped around it.

Bring a Trailer

But as I got a few miles behind me on my test drive, I started to understand the deal with the Monte Carlo SS. This isn’t a car about winning pink slips at the drag strip or shredding corners on some mountain road. It’s about rolling around and feeling badass in a big American coupe, V-8 burbling through dual exhaust, surrounded by burgundy velour. This car was on the tail end of the rear-drive GM coupe’s run of dominance, soon to be supplanted by the front-drive V-6 cars that never recaptured this brand of confidence, even if they eclipsed its performance. It’s not just that there aren’t cars like this anymore—there haven’t been cars like this for at least three decades. This one, with 1200 miles, is about the closest thing to new you’ll likely ever find. It looks better than the one I drove circa 1994, for sure. And while some people might describe the color as plum, I’d say it’s mighty cherry.

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Lucid is adding a new option to the Air, an appearance package called the Stealth Look.It will cost $6000 extra and includes dark exterior trim and either 20- or 21-inch black wheels.Lucid says it will be available starting in the first quarter of 2023.The Lucid Air is hardly a cheap proposition to start with, but $6000 still strikes us as a lot for its new appearance package. Called the Stealth Look, this new option is effectively the same as the blacked-out trim packages offered on so many vehicles these days.

The option essentially swaps out all of the standard car’s platinum-colored exterior trim for darker trim pieces. That means the roof, C-pillar, mirror caps, headlight surrounds, lower-door trim, are all finished in either gloss black or satin graphite. The wheels are also black and feature a different design, with either 20-inch or 21-inch sizes available. Lucid doesn’t mention any design changes for the interior.

Lucid

The Stealth Look will be offered with any of the Air’s five exterior color options, which include Stellar White, Infinite Black, Cosmos Silver, Quantum Grey, and Zenith Red.The Stealth Look will be offered on all models except for the base Air Pure, meaning you can spec it for the 1050-hp Grand Touring Performance, the 819-hp Grand Touring, or the 620-hp Touring. But Lucid says that vehicles equipped with the Stealth Look won’t be available until the first quarter of 2023.
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Toyota announced a recall for the bZ4X electric vehicle in June, acknowledging that wheels might detach from the car because of malfunctioning hub bolts and asking customers to stop driving the vehicle.The automaker had been offering free loaners to affected bZ4X owners, but the deal has now been increased with more sweeteners as well as a new offer: Toyota will buy back the bZ4X outright.Only 258 bZ4X EVs were sold before the recall was announced, but the vehicle has an outsize role to play in Toyota’s slow embrace of all-electric vehicles.When Toyota first announced a recall for its new, electric bZ4X SUV, it said that the hub bolts used on the wheels might loosen “to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle.” That was a noticeable black eye for one of the world’s largest automakers launching a crucial new model.The bZ4X is Toyota’s first all-electric vehicle since the company worked with Tesla on the RAV4 EV around a decade ago. The RAV4 EV was discontinued in 2014, and Toyota has been on the outside looking in when it comes to EV sales ever since. The bZ4X is expected to change things.The recall was announced after Toyota sold 258 units. Toyota’s first offer for buyers was to have local dealers give them a loaner vehicle free of charge until a remedy could be found for keeping the hub bolts connected. “The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation,” Toyota said in June. After a few months of research, Toyota has now sent a letter to bZ4X owners (and then posted it to Reddit) expanding the benefits it is offering, including a complete buyback. For starters, bZ4X owners can continue to drive a loaner vehicle while the dealer stores their EV at no cost to the driver. Toyota will pay for the fuel used in these loaner vehicles and will also offer buyers $5000 toward their lease payments or as a check if the EV was purchased outright. Toyota is also extending the time frame for bZ4X drivers to get complimentary charging at EVgo stations and is extending the warranty period.If all of that’s not enough for you, then Toyota will buy back your bZ4X, although the details might vary depending on the situation. Toyota has not said how it will handle any dealer markups originally applied to the purchase price, for example, but the fact that it’s offering to completely take back a brand-new EV over something as seemingly routine as hub bolts is notable. Toyota has also issued a recall for the 2022 Tundra because of a problem with the nuts on the rear axle assembly that can loosen over time.The bZ4X recall also includes 403 units of the 2023 Subaru Solterra, which shares the Toyota’s platform, although documents filled with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) state that none of those have gone out to dealers or customers yet.Problems with selling new units of the bZ4X could hit Toyota extra hard because any EVs purchased from the automaker after September 30 are not eligible for the full federal tax credits under current law. While the rules are likely to change under the Inflation Reduction Act, as it stands now, Toyota is running out of time to offer its buyers a $7500 credit if they can’t buy a new bZ4X any time soon.In the meantime, owners of this EV who want to keep abreast of the situation can check the NHTSA recalls website for updates.

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• This 1971 Fiat 500F Jolly clone on Bring a Trailer looks like an ideal vacation vehicle.• It has wicker furniture for seats, basically a big beach towel for a roof, and no doors, but also—sadly—no cupholders.• With six days left until the auction ends on Thursday, August 11, time is running out to move to a tropical locale by the time you buy it.If I had two tickets to paradise—hell, if I even had one—I’d want something cool to cruise around in. While cool might suggest something exotic like the red Ferrari 308GTS that Tom Selleck used to race around Hawaii in Magnum P.I., I’m actually thinking of something equally Italian, albeit infinitely more leisurely. Enter this 1971 Fiat 500F Jolly conversion that’s currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos.

If you’ve never heard of a Fiat 500 Jolly before, join the club. I’ve probably seen the quirky cruiser in some movie or another, but the first time I realized what I was looking at was today when I scrolled upon this example on the BaT website. I was instantly struck by its tan-tasseled canopy, tiny whitewall tires, and jolly orange paint that perfectly encapsulates its namesake. A quick Wikipedia read-through taught me that the original Jolly versions of the Fiat 500 were custom-built by the Ghia design house. History!

Bring a Trailer

The one that’s up for auction in these photos isn’t a real Jolly, though, it’s a clone based on what was once an ordinary ’71 500F. While collectors will obviously care about that, I couldn’t care less. I just want to buy it and have the seller ship it from its current home in Italy to someplace warm and tropical where I can immediately retire and spend the rest of my days putzing around paradise.Sure, this Jolly won’t get me anywhere in a hurry, not with its half-liter two-pot engine that likely has fewer horses than most farm stables, but that’s fine because I’d have nothing but time. I could also keep my left leg in shape by exercising its third pedal, but I can’t imagine going so fast that I’d ever need to reach top gear with its four-speed. Although it’d be interesting to see what would happen if it did go 120 km/h (about 75 mph), the peak indicated by its speedo. With its super light curb weight and big cloth top, could this Jolly Fiat turn into a flying Fiat? It’s probably best if no one finds out.

Bring a Trailer

My biggest complaint is that I don’t see any beverage holders inside the buggy. Where am I supposed to secure my piña colada (non-alcoholic, obviously)? I guess I’ll just have to hold the glass between my legs while I sit on the Jolly’s wicker furniture that replaces traditional seats. I won’t lie, they’re my favorite feature. However, I’d be fibbing if I said they look comfortable. Chalk up another reason to keep this thing at a golf-cart-safe pace. With six days left to go before the auction ends on Thursday, August 11, this jolly-looking Fiat 500F currently has a high bid of $15,000. I would love one for myself, but that love is mostly dependent on the location I get to drive it in. A wonderful vacation vehicle? Definitely. As primary transportation in southeastern Michigan? Not so much.
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One month before the royal couple married in the summer of 1981, Prince Charles gave Lady Diana Spencer a silver engagement present. No, not jewelry; it was a Ford Escort Ghia sedan, with the 1.6-liter engine. The car had four doors and 79 horsepower and was in all respects quite ordinary and even deeply boring. In an era of austerity for many British commoners, Charles’s gift broadcast a message of respectability: the newest addition to the royal household would upset no teacups. But as we now know, a coming tempest was brewing, and just four years later, Princess Di was coming on boost.

Silverstone Auctions

Specifically, Her Royal Highness was spooling up the boost on this little rocket, her 1985 Ford Escort RS Turbo, which coming up for sale at auction this month. It was never sold on this side of the pond, but any fan of performance-oriented Fords will have clocked the RS designation and correctly deduced that the princess’s tastes extended to a pretty serious hot hatch. Perhaps even to some royal hoonery?

Silverstone Auctions

Diana’s Escorts were third -eneration cars, and she had three of them. After the rear-wheel-drive Mark I and Mark II Escorts—both still popular with collectors and vintage rally racers—Ford’s European small family car now came with front-wheel drive. It was a modern choice for a modern British family. It took the Escort just two years to be crowned the bestselling car in Britain.

Seeking to stir up a little excitement to fend off the likes of the Volkswagen GTI, Ford developed a tuned version of the two-door Escort hatchback called the XR3 (later XR3i, as fuel injection arrived). The XR3 was scrappy enough for its day, but the relatively new technology of turbocharging promised performance dividends.The Escort RS Turbo was the fastest the third-generation Escort got. Thanks to an aluminum head, an uprated camshaft, and factory turbocharging, output was 132 horsepower at 6000 rpm, with a boot of 133 pound-feet of torque at 3000 rpm. Not huge figures by today’s standards, but pitted against a curb weight that was barely over 2000 pounds, the RS Turbo was plenty quick.Initially, Diana replaced her meekly humdrum Ghia with a bright-red convertible Escort, but the move upset her security detail. The droptop was simply too high-profile. Messages passed back and forth between the Royalty Protection Command and Ford’s PR division, and a compromise was reached. Diana would get the Escort RS Turbo she wanted, painted black on the production line, the better to fly below the radar.While almost all other Escort RS Turbos were white, the three black cars were built for Diana and her protection detail. She drove hers often between 1985 and 1988 and was often spotted driving around London, usually with the young princes William and Harry in the back seat. A plainclothes detective rode shotgun.One of the three, the car Diana herself drove, crosses the block at Silverstone Auctions on August 27. The car is offered at no reserve and is expected to fetch at least six figures, owing to its connection to a still beloved public figure.In a time when fractures were appearing in her fairy-tale marriage, this unlikely hot hatch represented one more facet of Princess Diana’s independence. The expectation was that she would be modern but dutiful, a four-doored People’s Princess. What emerged was a freer spirit, one determined to keep her own hands firmly on the wheel.In her hot little turbocharged Escort, out running around town, Diana did just that. Revs climbing, turbo spooling torque, bodyguard nervously reaching for the grab-handle on the roof as the next sharp corner approaches. She lived her life like a cambelt in the wind.

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