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The new high-performance Speed version of the Bentley Continental GT is here, and as of April 13, it comes in a convertible version as well.It has a twin-turbo 6.0-liter W-12 engine with 650 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque.Bentley says it will go from zero to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds (3.6 seconds for the convertible) and has a top speed of 208 mph.UPDATE 4/13/21: Bentley released details on the convertible version of the Continental GT Speed, which comes with a choice of seven roof coolors—including tweed—and eight interior roof liner finishes. The roof system, which opens or closes in 19 seconds at speeds up to 30 mph, uses a Z-fold structure for better noise reduction, and the seats have an integrated neck warmer.

Continental GT Speed convertible.
Bentley

No Bentley is short of speed, but the British luxury maker reserves use of its Speed branding to its highest performance derivatives. The Continental GT Coupe has now been granted membership to this club, and the new 2022 GT Speed certainly looks suitably fast and imposing in these first official pictures.

Despite its name, the Continental GT Speed is not substantially quicker than the car it is based on—at least not in a straight line. Power comes from Bentley’s long-serving twin-turbo 6.0-liter W-12, tuned to deliver 650 horsepower in this application. That’s 24 hp more than the regular Conti GT W-12, but both cars share the same torque figure of 664 pound-feet. Bentley claims a zero-to-6o-mph time of just 3.5 seconds, one-tenth quicker than the corresponding figure for the standard W-12. The Speed’s top speed is 208 mph, a 1-mph improvement.
Yet the Speed is about more than just raw speed, with Bentley promising it will be considerably more agile than the existing car. It is the first Continental coupe to get rear-wheel steering. This is a development of the system fitted to the longer Flying Spur sedan, and it’s said to both improve maneuverability and sharpen the car’s reactions. The Speed also gets a new electronically controlled torque-vectoring differential at the rear. A rearward power bias from the all-wheel-drive system and more permissive stability control will enable drivers to experience the Speed’s more playful side, and with ESC deactivated the company says it will even be possible to persuade it into oversteer.The Speed gets air springs, adaptive dampers, and Bentley’s Dynamic Ride system, which utilizes active anti-roll bars. Buyers will be able to choose the option of carbon-ceramic brakes for the first time on this generation of Continental, which are said to save 72 pounds of weight compared to the regular cast-iron discs. Twenty-two-inch wheels will be standard. Bentley has also sharpened the responses of the Speed’s eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, which is able to change gear up to 100 percent faster, as the overlap time between the clutches disengaging and engaging has been reduced to zero. The difference varies depending on mode and the ratios involved, but as an example Bentley says that the shift from third to fourth in the Speed’s Sport mode takes between 150 and 170 milliseconds, compared to 300 to 320 milliseconds in the regular GT.
The Speed’s design has also been turned up to indicate its presence at the top of the Continental range. It gets a dark-tinted grille and lower front bumper intake as standard, heavily scalloped finishers for the side sills, and discreet “Speed” badging in addition to the “12” logos on the front fender vents that indicate the presence of the W-12 engine. The cabin gets more microfiber, optional carbon-fiber dashboard finishers, and a standard diamond-quilted seat pattern.We don’t have pricing details yet, but can safely predict the Speed will carry a sizable supplement over the $224,225 Continental GT coupe. Bentley says deliveries will begin in the third quarter of the year.
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Spotify has released the Car Thing, a compact smart player that acts as a remote for streaming Spotify content from a smartphone while in the car.The Car Thing is intended to be a streaming solution for cars that lack robust infotainment systems and can be operated with knobs, touchscreen, or voice controls.The Car Thing is becoming available in limited release; Spotify premium users will be invited to receive. Those who do will only pay for shipping.Spotify today introduced the Car Thing, giving the streaming service its own hardware for the first time. The Car Thing—which, in essence, aptly describes what it is—acts as a sort of remote for the Spotify app while your phone streams Spotify content to your car. Cars with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto capability don’t need this, but people whose vehicles don’t have a robust infotainment system will appreciate it.

In order to use the Car Thing, you need two things: a connection from your phone to your car’s audio system, such as with a Bluetooth or an auxiliary cord, and a data connection for your phone. Once your phone is connected to the audio system, the Car Thing takes it from there, controlling what Spotify content you stream to your car from your phone. While using Spotify, the Car Thing displays what you’re listening to and lets you choose other content available on the platform through a streamlined interface intended to be used in a car.The Car Thing is fairly simple: an oversize knob allows a user to scroll through content and select songs, while a single button below it acts as a back button. Four buttons sit on the top of the Car Thing, which are shortcuts to pre-saved favorites for easy access to playlists, podcasts, or other content available on Spotify. It can also be controlled via your voice: a simply “Hey Spotify” lets users skip songs, go to new playlists, search podcasts, and so on.

Spotify

Spotify sends users multiple car mounts for the Car Thing, including one which can just stick onto a dashboard, or others that use vents or a CD slot, to make the screen viewable to the driver. A phone with a mobile data connection is needed in order to operate the Car Thing, but the interface allows users to see which content has been downloaded, in case users want to conserve data use. It is intended as an alternative to a phone as the Car Thing’s interface is “more optimized for the car,” Andreas Cedborg, the head of hardware products at Spotify, said in a call with media. And while at launch the Car Thing is only enabled to control Spotify, Cedborg did say that it will be regularly updated, and in response to whether functionality like Waze will be added, he said the company is “pretty aware of what people want to have in a car, so let’s see what the future gives us.”The Car Thing will start with a limited release, which means that only a select Spotify premium users will be invited to receive one. Users can add themselves to a waitlist, and if selected, they’ll only be charged for shipping. Later, if Spotify determines that it wants to fully release the Car Thing, the streaming service indicated it will charge about $80 for it.

Spotify

Spotify sent advance copies of the Car Thing to members of media. After a few days of use, it proved to be more convenient than a smartphone to use for music streaming while driving. In particular, the large knob and accessibility of the unit, when compared with a smartphone, were much less distracting. It was also a nice change of pace to continuously see which song was being played.Yes, a phone does everything the Car Thing does, but as Cedborg noted, is certainly less streamlined. Integrating other apps such as Waze into the Car Thing would allow it to nearly replace the need for using one’s phone while driving and could make it a significantly cheaper alternative to the traditional after-market infotainment units available now.

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The 2021 Jeep Gladiator lineup has added a new trim level called the Texas Trail that’s only sold in Texas.Along with unique exterior decals and special interior accents, the Texas Trail features gloss-black 17-inch wheels and 32-inch mud-terrain tires.The Gladiator Texas Trail is currently on sale at Texas Jeep dealerships.Texas now has its own version of the 2021 Jeep Gladiator pickup truck: the new Texas Trail model, which will be exclusively sold in the Lone Star State with a starting price of $41,930.For anyone wondering why the Gladiator lineup doesn’t offer a Delaware or Idaho special edition, Jeep says the Texas Trail model was created to celebrate the largest truck market in America, and that happens to be in the country’s second-largest state.

Based on the Sport S trim, the Texas Trail is equipped with gloss-black 17-inch rims shod with 32-inch mud-terrain tires and the Trailer Tow package, which includes Class IV trailer hitch, enhanced engine cooling, and other amenities. Other standout standard equipment on the special model are side steps, a black hard top, a 7.0-inch Uconnect 4 touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capability, and black leather upholstery with a Texas Trail graphic embossed on the seats.

Stellantis

The exterior of the Texas-exclusive Gladiator is distinguished by unique Texas Trail decals on the hood. Jeep also attemps to give onlookers a history lesson by incorporating the year 1836 into the badging because—as any self-respecting Texan should know—that’s the year the state declared itself the free and indepependent Republic of Texas. Every 2021 Jeep Gladiator comes with three years of free maintenance and other benefits as part of the automaker’s Wave Customer Care program. Jeep’s Badge of Honor program, which is accessed through a mobile app that details trail information and allows owners to earn badges for tackling them, also introduces two new Texas trails: the Black Gap 4×4 trail in Big Bend National Park and the Northwest OHV Park in Bridgeport, Texas.The 2021 Gladiator Texas Trail is available with either the 285-hp 3.6-liter V-6 or the 260-hp (with 442 pound-feet of torque) diesel 3.0-liter V-6. Four-wheel drive is, of course, standard, and this rugged pickup is approved for off-road horseplay with Jeep’s Trail Rated badge. It’s also currently on sale at Jeep dealerships in Texas.
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Toyota has released a teaser image of a new electric crossover, which will make its debut next Sunday at the Shanghai auto show and is intended for Europe.The new EV will fall under one of the BZ names Toyota recently trademarked. We should hear about the U.S. version later this year, which will go up against electric crossovers such as the Tesla Model Y, Ford Mustang Mach-E, and Volkswagen ID.4. Toyota has a lineup of electric vehicles coming under the BZ name, for Beyond Zero. The first will be an electric crossover, which will debut for Europe at the Shanghai auto show next Sunday, April 18, at 9:20 p.m., to compete with other EV crossovers from Tesla, Ford, and VW. The U.S. version should make its debut later this year.

Toyota BZ concept.
Toyota

This electric crossover, which will be built on an electric platform co-developed by Toyota and Subaru, has similar styling to one of the six concept vehicles Toyota showed in 2019. It’ll have thin, jagged headlights, possibly stretching down over the front wheel arches (as seen on a similar concept), and it sports a blue Toyota badge. Toyota trademarked a blue BZ logo in Europe, which we expect will be saved for other exterior badging.
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The Beyond Zero models’ names will all start with BZ and be followed by a number. In that way it’s similar to the naming scheme for Kia’s coming electric vehicles, which use “EV” followed by a number. Toyota recently filed trademarks in the U.S. for the names BZ1, BZ2, BZ2X, BZ3, BZ4, BZ4X, and BZ5. We suspect that the “X” is reserved for dual-motor, all-wheel-drive models, and this crossover could definitely be one of the models to offer that setup. We’ll know more about Toyota’s first electric BZ model next week, when it debuts for the Europe market, and we should hear more about the U.S.-bound version later this year. Sedans, and even vans, will join the Beyond Zero lineup as well.

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Hyundai has created a one-off design concept based on a model from the 1970s.The first-generation Pony was never sold in the States but was a significant car in Hyundai’s history.This restomod creation has an electric powertrain and modern design touches.Here’s something cool that appeared inconspicuously on Instagram and in a release celebrating Hyundai’s new customer center in Busan, Korea: A restomod variation of a first-generation Hyundai Pony fitted with an unspecified electric powertrain and ultra-modern head- and taillights. It also has camera-based, fender-mounted exterior mirrors and nixie-tube instrumentation that’s both retro and futuristic and epitomizes the height of 1970s style.The project was led byHyundai’s interior chief designer Hak Soo Ha. It is not simply a retro design “inspired” by the 1970s, but the real thing: Hyundai took an actual first-generation car, disassembled it, and added the artistic touches and the EV powertrain.

The Hyundai Pony Heritage EV is not just a testament to the creative spirit at Hyundai Design under the leadership of Luc Donckerwolke, it is also an homage to Giorgio Giugiaro. Almost 47 years after its debut at the 1974 Turin auto show, it took just a few modifications to make the Pony look cooler and more contemporary than ever. Hyundai has also cited the original Pony as an inspiration for the Ioniq 5 EV’s design.The Pony was Hyundai’s first standalone car. It was a compact model built on a relatively conventional rear-wheel-drive platform. The two-door hatchback, which Hyundai used for this project, came a few years later, preserving the look of the four-door model. It was never sold in North America. The second-generation Pony, a reskin of the original model, came to Canada, while Hyundai did not appear in the U.S. market until the third generation came along, which was called the Excel on our shores.

Hyundai

Hyundai

What are we to make of the Heritage Pony? “Don’t read too much into it,” we are told by an insider: “It came out of nowhere, like a work of art.” That may be the case, but now we want one.
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Automotive News is reporting that a new voluntary program will encourage Ford dealers to create stand-alone Bronco stores that have room for at least three vehicles inside, a display wall for accessories, and a fire pit.By building out Bronco stores, dealers will get more vehicles to sell from Ford and greater access to Bronco accessories, which drive up profits. With Bronco sales about to start, we can look to the 23,356 Bronco Sport SUVs sold in the first quarter—and the fact that Ford said 60 percent of these were conquests from non-Ford brands—to see that this is likely a way to print money.We don’t need to tell you that Ford’s new Jeep fighter, the revived Bronco, has garnered a fair bit of attention. There’s the official, company-sponsored “fan” website, Bronco Nation, as well as many actual fan-run pages. The First Edition model with a VIN ending in 001 sold for over a million dollars at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction last month. And now Ford dealers are gearing up to launch stand-alone Bronco stores to encourage buyers to check out the new SUVs as well as get more vehicles to sell from Ford.

Automotive News is reporting that around 100 U.S. Ford dealers will be building separate Bronco stores, basically creating a third brand for the automaker, alongside Ford and Lincoln. While the publication said this idea came from the dealers themselves, who worked with Ford to come up with ideas for what these stores might look like, Ford has been pushing its dealers to spend money promoting the Bronco brand.In January, Ford Authority reported that dealers who invested cold, hard cash into their Bronco showrooms would be allocated more Broncos to sell. The website said that an investment of at least $12,500 would get a dealer one more Bronco to sell and there was a sliding scale up to six more vehicles for investments over $75,000. Automotive News says that Ford now expects around 100 dealers across the country will build one of these Bronco-specific stores.Aside from more vehicles allotted, a separate Bronco store would also allow the dealers to display and sell more Bronco accessories, which are a prime way to increase profits. The automaker’s renderings that it shared with dealers last fall show a modern showroom with room for three vehicles, a display wall for the accessories, and an outdoor fire pit.”It looks so cool, and that type of owner is an enthusiast,” Jim Moshier, general manager at Ricart Ford in Groveport, Ohio, told Automotive News. “Jeep people are in love with their Jeeps. Ford thinks they’ll breed that same enthusiasm with the Bronco. And if you have that facility, they think people will want to go there to see all the accessories.”

Example of a stand-alone Jeep showroom.
Stellantis Facilities

Of course, other branded sub-model stores have been tried and shuttered over the years, ranging from GMC’s Hummer to Ford’s own—and now retired—Mercury. But by pushing accessories, Ford’s stand-alone Bronco stores are taking a page from Stellantis’s encouragement of stand-alone Jeep stores. Last year, a dealer told Automotive News that the feeling in the Jeep-only store just seemed different than when the brand was mixed in with other Stellantis models. “This Jeep lifestyle is different,” he said. “In the stand-alone store, these people are fun, they wear blue jeans, they wear T-shirts, they are definitely in the upper-income model. It is amazing what people will do and what they spend personalizing these vehicles. You would almost say it’s insane.”There have been rumors of an expansion of the Bronco family to include a pickup, but for now, Ford offers two Bronco models, the Bronco and the smaller Bronco Sport. The Bronco won’t start deliveries until May, but the Bronco Sport sold 23,356 units in the first quarter and Ford said these sales are bringing new people into the Ford family. “Based on preliminary data, Bronco Sport is conquesting over 60 percent of its sales from outside of Ford,” the company said in a statement, and the strong Bronco Sport sales “helped power Ford Brand SUVs to their best start in 20 years,” according to a statement from Andrew Frick, vice-president of Ford Sales U.S. and Canada.
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Lexus modified an NX SUV so that the windshield could suddenly blank out without any warning to the driver, making it impossible to see.The company didn’t do this just to torture people who thought they were going to be simply test driving a new car; it did it to point out how dangerous it is to check your phone messages while driving.People think it only takes a second or two, but the average is closer to five seconds. And more than 3000 people died in crashes that involved distracted drivers in 2019, so it’s not a harmless issue.Too many of us check our phones while we’re driving. Full stop. But simply knowing that we do this isn’t enough to get us to change our habits, apparently. This is where dramatic consumer education videos can come in handy, like the new “Driving Disrupted” clip (shown above) that Lexus released this week just in time for the start of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Lexus wanted to highlight two truths about distracted driving with the video. First, most people think checking a text message while driving takes just a second or two. Also, the actual average time this takes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), is 4.6 seconds. In consumer-facing parts of its website, NHTSA rounds that up to five seconds, or “the length of an entire football field” if you’re driving 55 mph, but however long it actually takes you to check your phone, the point here is that you’re not as fast as you think you are.To set up the video, Lexus took a new Lexus NX—for this purpose, renamed the NX 4.6—and turned it into a not-for-sale SUV that was modified with special electrochromic film on the windshield and windows so they can instantly turn opaque and then stay that way for 4.6 seconds. Lexus then recruited people to take a test drive, conveniently omitting any mention about how the windows might blank out. This, as you might suspect, created some dramatic moments when these unwarned young people suddenly found themselves unable to see the road ahead. You can also probably guess that the many styrofoam pedestrian and bicyclist obstacles Lexus conveniently placed near the track did not survive.9 PercentWhich is the whole point of this experiment, of course. People—including you—might think they can handle checking a text message while driving, but official statistics prove we really can’t. In 2019, for example, a total of 3142 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers, according to NHTSA. The approximate cumulative death toll in the U.S. from 2012 and through 2019 is over 26,000 people. NHTSA also said that 9 percent of all fatal crashes in the U.S. in 2019 involved distracted drivers.In Lexus’s trickster’s test drive, the subjects all said they’re now for real finished with checking their phones from behind the wheel. It’s a powerful message, but it’s also one we’ve heard before in other, at times way more dramatic, video messages. We won’t be surprised if there will be many more before everyone thinks twice before grabbing their phone while driving.
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The Window Shop crew went to work this week searching for used cars we’d be willing to commit to until 2026. For some of us, five years is a long time to hold on to the same car—even hypothetically. So we set the budget a little higher than usual, at $50,000, to allow for more choice. First up, contributor John Pearley Huffman presents the last body-on-frame car from GM: a 1996 Chevy Impala SS. The rest of us don’t understand why he has a soft spot for this whale of a car. Pearley claims it’ll hold its value and that he’d happily drive it every morning to Handlebar Coffee Roasters in downtown Santa Barbara, but we doubt he could ever part with his beloved Toyota Tundra. Senior editor Joey Capparella shows his true normcore colors in this challenge. He selects a third-generation Lexus LS that’s so beige and under budget that we all come around to the idea, especially after he reveals that the LS430 is a comparison-test winner. While Capparella’s choice might be a bit boring, there’d never be a dull moment in contributor Jonathon Ramsey’s 90K-mile Bentley Continental GT. The car packs a sleek 551-hp twin-turbo W-12 and comes in under budget. Ramsey assures us that the leftover $15K could be used to maintain and repair his Bentley in the coming years. (Watch our eyes roll when he claims that nothing really ever goes wrong on Continental GTs.)Deputy testing director K.C. Colwell makes a wise choice: a one-owner 15K-mile 2005 Porsche 911 (997) with a six-speed manual. His Porsche might be only $5 shy of $50,000, but it appears its owner took meticulous care of it. In the wake of that excellent Porsche, host Tony Quiroga seems less enthusiastic about his 464-hp sports sedan. Nevertheless, he manages to sell the merits of his five-year plan and rebut complaints about the engine having roots in a Chevy Impala V-6.

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