Motor News

From the return of the Ford Bronco to the 10Best-winning Kia Telluride, these are the cars our readers clicked on the most. More

For customers, it’s best to be prepared to see salespeople or other staff without masks—and be ready to insist that they put them on. More

Mini is launching a new special-edition Countryman called the Boardwalk.
The Countryman is the company’s best U.S. seller. The new-for-2021 version of the Countryman went on sale in July.
U.S. pricing and quantities on the Boardwalk are expected closer to its spring 2021 launch.
Mini is launching a new limited-run, special edition Countryman called the Boardwalk. The company says the name comes from “the promenades of traditional seaside resorts in Britain, home of the Mini brand.” It is available in Cooper and Cooper S versions, starting at the equivalent of around $42,000 in the U.K. (Here in the U.S., the regular 2021 Countryman starts just over $27,000.) Mini plans to offer the car here, but an official told Autoweek the automaker is “a bit of a ways” out for the U.S. model, so details are scarce.

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U.S. production is set for a March time frame, with the first vehicles expected to arrive April/May, the official told us, adding that U.S. pricing and product details are still being worked out. “We’ll do a U.S.-specific announcement sometime in the first quarter closer to market launch that includes such details,” Autoweek was told. The Countryman is the company’s best U.S. seller, and the new-for-2021 version went on sale in July.
For now, we know that the European version of the Boardwalk has sharp-looking Deep Laguna Blue metallic paint, rides on 19-inch alloy wheels and has a contrasting black roof and black roof rails as well as a power hatch and LED front and rear lights.

Inside, the doorsills, the cockpit fascia, and the roof sport unique Boardwalk logos. For the Europe market, Mini is offering more standard equipment including a number of options from regular Countrymans as standard—mood lighting, illuminated handles, and external logo projections from the mirrors are among them. The interior also has piano-black detailing. A digital cockpit is included, too, alongside cruise control with automated emergency braking, automatic climate control, and heated seats. The Navigation package includes an 8.8-inch display, Apple CarPlay capability, and real-time traffic information. There’s also park assist, front parking sensors, and front- and rearview cameras.
Remember, though, that this is the equipment Europe is getting. We’ll know more about our specs next spring.

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Audi added door handles and removed the glowing badge, but design chief Marc Lichte says the car coming in the spring is 99 percent the same as the show car. More

Audi’s head of design, Marc Lichte, says the upcoming autonomous vehicle that will come out of the automaker’s Project Artemis effort will be a “revolution.”
The vehicle, rumored to be code-named Landjet, will be built on the PPE architecture that will underpin high-end electric vehicles from Audi, Porsche, and Bentley.
It is expected to be unveiled in 2024 and is targeting offerings from Tesla with a focus on long-distance traveling.
We asked Audi design chief Marc Lichte in an interview how the company’s future vehicle designs will evolve thanks to electric powertrains. In response, he shared a few more bits of information about the automaker’s Project Artemis, its effort to build an autonomous vehicle. The upcoming car “will be a revolution,” he said.
The vehicle in question is in a super-high-premium segment, according to the designer, and its use case is long-distance traveling. “We will come up with a radical new concept. This car looks completely different,” Lichte said. At its core, it will be an autonomous vehicle that would remove any need for controls, and that gives the designers at Audi the ability to pursue a new approach to how a car should look.

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Rumors have circulated that the vehicle being developed under Project Artemis, which is being helmed by former Porsche race-car engineer Alexander Hitzinger, is code-named Landjet. Whatever the internal name, the vehicle is expected to be unveiled in 2024 and will be based on the modular PPE EV architecture developed by Audi to be used in Audi, Porsche, and Bentley vehicles.
Lichte’s comments line up with what we’ve already learned about Project Artemis, the automaker and VW Group’s future weapon to take on Tesla. Volkswagen wants to address Tesla’s EV market dominance and also to have a self-driving car on the road as a competitor to its Autopilot.
The car is currently in progress in Lichte’s design studio. He tells us that Audi will completely change the layout of the interior, while the exterior will be equally different than what we’re used to seeing from the automaker. We’ll look forward to seeing it.
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The ride-sharing company is asking the feds to consider its drivers as essential workers for purposes of the vaccine. More

Unlike most of the challenges we face as Window Shoppers, this week’s contest has less to do with cars than it does what powers them. We set out to find the most iconic engines, engines that helped define a brand, made a mark in history, or were just spectacular. The car is important, but the engine is king. If you watch, you may wonder why no one chose a Chevy small-block V-8 or a Mopar Hemi. That’s a fair question, and the answer is that each of us incorrectly assumed someone else would pick them.
Instead, we presented slightly less obvious choices. Contributing editor Brett Berk found a sedan with the engine from the 1950s Mercedes-Benz 300SL. Deputy testing director K.C. Colwell also found a transplant job, selecting a four-door with the heart of an Audi R8. Contributor Jonathon Ramsey decided that infamy could make an engine iconic and put up a 2011 Volkswagen diesel for judgement. And we couldn’t argue with that logic, particularly when you consider how far-reaching the media coverage and consequences of Dieselgate were.In addition to engines, we discuss car phones, German chancellors, the ideal buyer for a car with fold-flat front seats, Ford Aerostar crash-test results, and things that can go wrong on the last of Porsche’s air-cooled flat-sixes. We even dig into why Colwell hates sunroofs. Clearly, this episode goes off the rails, but you’re used to that by now, right?
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Here Comes the Sun
As we’re writing this, the FDA seems likely to approve a coronavirus vaccine, and Ford isn’t taking any chances when it comes to distribution. The company announced last month that it had purchased 12 ultra-cold freezers capable of storing Pfizer’s thermophobic vaccine. It’s the first step in a plan to eventually distribute the vaccine to workers (yes, this news is a little old, but we missed it in the Thanksgiving lull ). Conspiracy theorists stand down: the company said the shots would be available on a strictly voluntary basis.
This Week in Sheetmetal

Cadillac

Cadillac gave us the tiniest tease of the 2022 CT5-V and CT4-V Blackwing when it released a single photo of the manual shift knob. We look forward to more meaningful revelations in the lead-up to the cars going on sale in summer 2021.
Leaked photos of a 2022 Mitsubishi Outlander reveal a blockier exterior design that is mostly normal except for a totally unhinged front grille/fog light layout. We suspect the new car will share a platform and powertrain with the Nissan Rogue.
Toyota announced it would show us a Europe-bound electric crossover early next year, with a separate EV headed for the United States later. Perhaps those first EVs will bear some resemblance to the camouflaged Lexuses we got a glimpse of two days after the EVs were first announced?
Honda answered our prayers when it confirmed that the 11th-generation Civic Type R will be available in the United States, that it will still come standard with a manual transmission, and that, based on all current evidence, it will finally look like a car an adult would drive.

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Ford knows we’re waiting impatiently for the next generation of the F-150 Raptor, so they announced an off-road Tremor package for the F-series trucks to tide us over. The package will provide an upgraded suspension, a rear locking differential, and a transfer case borrowed from the current Raptor.
Catastrophic Failure
If you haven’t been keeping up with the news of the capsized Golden Ray cargo ship, don’t deprive yourself any longer. The ship capsized last fall and, after a series of delays, is now being slowly and fascinatingly dismantled off the coast of Georgia. The cargo ship was carrying thousands of vehicles from Mexico to various ports in the US when it rolled over in the St. Simons Sound. Now there’s reason to believe that when a load of compact crossovers was swapped for taller, heavier Kia Tellurides, the balance of the cargo was upset. When the ship made a sharp turn out to sea, disaster struck. Et tu, Kia?

Stephen B. Morton/Associated Press

The Life-Changing Magic of Giving Up
Uber, still suffering a huge ridership loss due to the ongoing pandemic, is moving on from some dreams. On Monday, the company announced that it is handing over its self-driving arm to Aurora Innovation, an autonomous driving start-up. On Tuesday, Uber gave its flying car unit to start-up Joby Aviation. Details on the deals are slim, but reporting suggests that neither company paid Uber, but that the company will work in partnership with each start-up to continue developing the technologies while taking some pressure off a suffering bottom line.
Further Reading
According to a lot of the junk in our inbox, the clock is winding down on Christmas shopping. If you’ve been procrastinating, now is the time to check out our gift guide for car lovers. Or, if you’re the only car lover in your life, consider forwarding the link to your friends and loved ones as a helpful hint.
ExxonMobil has had a tough year. It lost billions in the first three quarters of the year, struggling with the effects of the pandemic and with its refusal to pivot to alternative fuels, as several of its competitors have done. The New York Times has been diligently reporting on the oil giant’s stumbles and the struggles facing the industry. Let this serve as a reminder that the car business is never just about cars.
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