Motor News

Buyers of Big Horn or Lone Star trims of the 2022 Ram 1500 will now be able to add the BackCountry Edition package to add an off-road look to their truck.The package includes an off-road suspension system, all-terrain tires, skid plates, an electronic rear differential, and hill-descent control. The BackCountry Edition also includes useful utility features such as a bed extender, a spray-in bedliner, and adjustable bed tie-down hooks.As if the Ram 1500 wasn’t rugged enough, a new BackCountry Edition package will soon be available for buyers of the value-oriented Big Horn and Lone Star models. Intended to go up against rivals such as the Chevrolet Silverado Trailboss and FX4 versions of the Ford F-150, the Ram 1500 BackCountry Edition adds basic equipment one might need for wilderness adventures.
The package includes front skid plates, an electronic locking rear differential, off-road shock absorbers, all-terrain tires, and a hill-descent control feature. Going with the BackCountry Edition also adds several upgrades to the truck’s bed, including adjustable tie-down hooks, a deployable bed step, a spray-in bed liner, and a bed extender.

Buyers can choose from an extended-cab or crew-cab body style and the BackCountry is powered by the 5.7-liter V-8 engine, but can be equipped with or without Ram’s eTorque hybrid system. Black interior upholstery is the only option but it combines faux leather with cloth for a handsome look; all-season floor mats are also standard.
It might not have as much off-road capability as the more expensive Rebel model, but with a starting price of $41,780, the BackCountry Edition strikes us as a fairly good deal. The 2022 Ram 1500, including the new BackCountry Edition, is expected to arrive at dealerships later this summer.
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This is the new 2022 BMW X5 Black Vermilion Edition, and it’s limited to just 350 units in the United States. They’re all finished in black with red accents on the grille, brakes, and interior, and powered by a 335-hp turbo inline-six. Those interested can place orders at dealers starting at $83,295, and they’ll arrive in the fallBMW is offering just 350 of these X5 Black Vermilion Edition models in the United States, and the limited-edition package gives the luxury SUV a blacked out appearance with bright red accents. They’re scheduled to start arriving in September.
Each X5 Black Vermilion Edition is finished in Frozen Black Metallic paint. Their kidney grilles have red vertical slats, and the adaptive LED headlights are darkened to match the blacked-out look. The M Sport package is standard, a $5400 option, and includes the Shadowline black trim along with more aggressive front and rear bumpers. The limited-edition SUVs are equipped with Orbit Grey 22-inch wheels and red M Sport brake calipers.

It’s based on the X5’s xDrive40i model, meaning it has a 335-hp turbocharged inline-six under the hood paired with an eight-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive. In our test, a 2019 model reached 60 mph in 4.8 seconds. The Black Vermillion Edition comes with an M Sport exhaust system.
Red flows into the black interior as well with piping and stitching on the front and rear seats and binding on the floor mats. And there’s a special edition logo on the lid for the cupholders. The glass controls for the gear selector, start/stop button, and drive mode selector, typically a $650 option, come equipped along with carbon fiber trim and an Alcantara headliner. The 2022 BMW X5 Black Vermilion Edition is available to order now starting at $83,295, which is $20,600 more than the xDrive40i model on which it’s based, but it’s nearly fully loaded. And it’s only $500 cheaper than the 523-hp twin-turbo V-8–powered X5 M50i model, but much more exclusive.
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Electric-vehicle concepts are common enough these days that you need more than a zero-emission powertrain to stand out. So why not work on a negative-emission EV?That’s what Heatherwick Studio did with its Airo concept, which uses a HEPA filter under the car to filter out pollution from other cars on the road. The Airo has been on display at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this week.Hyundai has similar air-filtering technology on its Nexo hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, but there the filter does double duty by cleaning the air that the fuel-cell stack needs to operate.A motor vehicle with negative carbon emissions has, until recently, been basically impossible. Sure, electric vehicles have no local tailpipe emissions, but to actually reduce the amount of carbon in the air as you drive is no small feat. Hyundai says its Nexo hydrogen fuel-cell CUV actually cleans the air it moves through, since the car’s fuel-cell stack needs purified air. The car accomplishes this by using a special filter that removes microparticulates from the incoming air, and that means the exhaust (such as it is) is cleaner than what was taken in. The car can even display the amount of CO2 removed.

This filtering strategy is similar to the one used by the Airo, a new concept vehicle designed by Heatherwick Studio in England. The electric vehicle has a “state-of-the-art HEPA filtering system” that cleans the air that moves through the vehicle’s undercarriage. No precise specifics were given about how many pollutants the Airo traps, but Heatherwick told the BBC that the concept can “collect a tennis ball worth of particulate matter per year.” Heatherwick, which also designed London’s new Routemaster bus and buildings including Google’s headquarters in California and London, is displaying the Airo at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this week.

Heatherwick Studio

The Airo’s interior tries to be as different as the air filter on the exterior. Heatherwick said that it’s not supposed to be simply a place to sit while moving around, but to act like a “moving room or a space for your life.” Like other EV concepts, the front seats can swivel around to face the vehicle’s center, where there’s also a four-leaf table that can fold away when you don’t want to dine or play a tabletop game, and use the Airo more like a lounge. You can also unfold a screen for projected video images – Heatherwick said the Airo can become “a perfect gaming-pod” in this configuration and the seats can even fold down into a “spacious” double bed. The glass roof can turn opaque for more private moments.

Heatherwick Studio

“Designed to simultaneously address the global space shortage, Airo is also a multi-functional room with extra space for dining, working, gaming or even sleeping,” said Heatherwick Studio founder Thomas Heatherwick in a statement. “As a new room for our lives, with a changing view, Airo is a car intended to transport us to a cleaner and better future.”

Ning Li/Heatherwick

Heatherwick isn’t planning on building the Airo itself. Instead, the studio designed the EV for IM Motors which said in April, when the Airo debuted at the Shanghai auto show, that it plans to start building the EV in 2023. The BBC said IM Motors plans to make “a million of them.” The Airo is supposedly capable of both autonomous and human-controlled driving but details about the self-driving features and exactly how the air purifier will work in the real world when it comes to production remain, well, up in the cleaner air.
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Hercules Electric Vehicles

The Detroit-based EV startup Hercules has signed Pininfarina to design its upcoming battery-electric pickup.Hercules Electric Vehicles says the Alpha pickup will be available in 2022. The company also says that the four-motor-equipped Alpha pickup will make up to 1000 horsepower. There is a lot of buzz around electric pickups following Ford’s F-150 Lightning reveal, and the tumultuous news coming out of the Lordstown Motors camp. That means there’s even more attention on the EV space and the younger EV startups like Hercules Electric Vehicles. Well, this young, Detroit-based prospective EV maker has penned a deal with the Italian design powerhouse Pininfarina to design an electric pickup truck.

The details of the deal are about as murky as the details of Hercules’s Alpha pickup truck. However, what we do know is this: Pininfarina will design the upcoming pickup truck and other future products for Hercules. Considering that Hercules claims the battery-electric pickup will be available near the end of 2022, it makes that seem like an ambitious timeline.

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That said, the top brass at Hercules seems to have a good understanding of the automotive manufacturing space. The founder, James Breyer, has bounced around different automakers and worked as the lead propulsion development engineer for the Chevrolet Spark and lead powertrain development engineer for the Chevrolet Volt. That doesn’t curb the aggressive timeline for the truck’s availability, but it does give some confidence that the trucks should be well engineered when they make it to the road.As is the case with any startup, though, there’s no telling if this truck will see the light of day. If it does, we’re sure Pininfarina will pen another fantastic design that will put the truck on EV buyers’ maps.

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There’s no rational decision flowchart that lands you here. No one, least of all Daniel Warner, thinks putting a 27-liter tank engine in a Ford Crown Victoria makes a lick of sense. Petty details like logic and reason won’t stop him, though.”It’s not an intelligent choice of engine if you want to have 2500 hp and race. This is more just, I wanted to do this out of pure passion,” Werner told Road & Track in June 2020. Back then it was just a goal. The car was far from operational. A year later, it’s still got some distance to close, but a new YouTube video shows that the engine is now running. The so-called Meteor Interceptor lives. There’s still some distance to close, of course. The Meteor Interceptor has no interior, an incomplete body, and no transmission. The turbochargers are not hooked up to the mighty tank engine, meaning it’s nowhere near its target power output of 2500hp. Given the idle issues, too, the team likely hasn’t sorted the engine programming. But the progress is astounding. The engine design—penned in 1941—featured magneto ignition. Now it’ll have a custom computer-controlled set of injectors capable of supplying it with 24 liters of fuel per minute. Fuel will be exhausted in four minutes at full throttle. Not to worry, though: It will boil its coolant long before that happens.
If he can solve that, big plans lie in wait. Werner told Road & Track that he intends to bring the Meteor Interceptor to the Nürburgring for a lap at the hands of ‘Ring master Misha Charoudin. Asked about the coolant issue, Werner told us the following in an email:”Well it is only at full throttle that we expect this problem, at normal operations it will work fine. And I don’t think that we will be able to have full throttle for so long on the ring anyway :-D”The plan is ridiculous. But nobody pretended it would make any sense in the first place.

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LiveWire, the newly-formed electric subbrand of Harley-Davidson, has just pulled the cover off of the new LiveWire One. An evolution of the previous LiveWire electric motorcycle, this new bike offers up more usability while also carrying an MSRP much friendlier than before. The LiveWire One is slated to start at $21,999, although a federal tax of $2500 will drop the effective purchase price below $20,000 for customers. That is significantly cheaper than Harley’s first LiveWire product, which carried a base price of $29,799. Despite being a more affordable offering, the LiveWire One will provide customers with some advantages over the company’s early effort. Range is now expected to fall around 146 city miles, a marked improvement over the 110 city miles the previous iteration was able to achieve. No highway range estimates were provided, but expect that figure to fall below that 146 mile figure. LiveWire hasn’t shared many technical details about the bike yet, though the range increase is likely the result of an upgraded battery.

Harley-Davidson

Speaking of the battery, charging the LiveWire One from empty to fully juiced will only take 60 minutes with a DC fast-charger. Should you be short on time, LiveWire says a zero-to-80-percent charge can happen in just 45 minutes on the same DC charger. Aside from fast-charging, other key features include a six-axis inertial measurement unit to aid traction control and ABS.

Ordering for the LiveWire One is officially open, although the new brand is taking a bit of an interesting approach. Only 12 dealerships are authorized to sell the new electric bike, all of which are located in California, Texas, or New York. More dealerships are slated to get access to the LiveWire in the future, though no word yet as to where those dealerships will be located. If you simply can’t wait to peek around the LiveWire One, Harley Davidson will unveil the bike in person at the Northern California International Motorcycle Show on July 18. We expect more information about the bike to come available at time, including performance figures and battery specifications.

Harley-Davidson

The LiveWire One is just the first of several electric motorcycles Harley-Davidson is developing at the moment. While still pricey, the company hopes the new electric bike will spearhead its green efforts. There is no need for the V-twin faithful to worry, however, as Harley-Davidson has shown no interest in fully ditching gasoline quite yet. At least for now.

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The Volvo V90, which had been only available by special order, will not be sold in the United States for the 2022 model year.The base variants of the V60, which featured the T5 powertrain, will no longer be available in the U.S. next year.Cross Country versions of both, with body cladding and raised ride height, will stick around, as does the performance plug-in-hybrid version of the V60, the Recharge T8 Polestar.Many of the greatest Volvos have been station wagons, from the dependable 240 to the athletic 850 T-5R estate and its British Touring Car Championship race-car counterpart. Sadly, for 2022, American car buyers will have fewer options when it comes to Volvo’s beautiful wagons—on Thursday, Motor Trend reported that the V90 was getting the axe and then on Friday Roadshow by CNET discovered that base versions of the V60 were being killed off as well.

Volvo

The V90 had been available on a special-order basis, but with dealers not stocking them in showrooms it’s unsurprising to see the wagon fall by the wayside. The handsome V90 was offered in two configurations: the front-wheel-drive T5 was powered by a turbocharged four-cylinder while the more expensive T6 featured both a turbocharger and supercharger, as well as all-wheel drive. The unique T6 powertrain does live on in the V90 Cross Country, a lifted version of the wagon that masquerades as an SUV for added marketability, which Volvo confirmed to CNET will continue to be sold in the United States.

The V60 is also not entirely gone—only the T5 powertrain, which was exclusively front-wheel-drive on the V60, is being discontinued. This means that the V60 Recharged T8 Polestar, a 415-hp plug-in hybrid with the turbocharged and supercharged inline-four, will live on, as will the AWD Cross Country variants, which use the T5 setup. The V90 and base versions of the V60 will be missed, but at least Volvo’s wagon duo will live on in some form.
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Automakers spend fortunes making car commercials to run on the 364 days of the year that the Super Bowl does not. This week, the Window Shop crew answered the challenge of choosing the best commercial and finding a car for sale to match.Road & Track staffer John Pearley Huffman channeled both Joey Capparella’s normcore energy and Tony Quiroga’s love of cream of mushroom soup (gray-on-gray) cars. Starting with Honda’s 2005 “Cog” commercial, he sourced a 2005 Acura TSX. Yes, Honda used its award-winning two-minute spot to advertise the European Accord wagon that never came to the U.S. But Pearley’s TSX, the sedan version of that Euro offering, remains a Window Shop favorite even though it’s an automatic. The 10Best winner with the 2.4-liter four cylinder even earns thoroughly questionable associations with Porsche and Alfa Romeo.

Deputy testing director K.C. Colwell drove back to the 20th century for Lincoln’s 1994 “Raising the Bar” commercial that hawked the Lincoln Mark VIII. The ad probably should have been named “Lowering the Car,” but Colwell found a surprisingly creamy 1995 example—literally—with just 11,500 miles that hadn’t fallen either on hard times or on its air suspension. What the commercial failed to note is that the car that raised the bar helped prematurely end the Lincoln Continental lineup. Senior editor Joey Capparella brought Fargo and The Big Lebowski to Window Shop with his Volkswagen GTI “Unpimp Your Auto” advert from 2006, the ad fronted by a Swedish actor, Peter Stormare, who portrays anything but Swedish characters. Capparella’s four-door 2008 GTI—a slightly racy option for him—has just 15,000 miles, asks $15,000, and begs questions about reliability, German engineering, engine codes, and Window Shop fairness.Contributor Jonathon Ramsey, as usual, took a meandering and international trip before settling on a 2005 Mercedes-Benz E-class commercial about a woman ordering a burger in a library. Because this challenge had no budget, he took the opportunity to indulge in another high-dollar option, this time a 2016 Mercedes-AMG E63 wagon with all its badges in the right places for $69,000 in cash or crypto. The commercial predates the “This is an Arby’s” and “This is a Wendy’s” memes by more than six years, which did nothing to help him sell his pick.Deputy editor Tony Quiroga went back to an ad that time forgot from the Decade of Greed to create the most aggressively American combination of commercial. GM’s “Mine’s Bigger” spot for the 1987 Cadillac Brougham sees two gentlemen arguing over size, one of them taking victory with an extra two inches. Quiroga, who found that very year and model, had a long list of arguments to support his pick. Alas, two inches were worth a lot more in 1987 than they are today, but it seems not everyone got that memo when it came time to vote.

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