Motor News

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.

2022 Nissan Rogue Sport Previewed by Global Model

2022 MDX Is More Expensive and Bigger Inside

2021 Nissan Armada Gets a New Look, Updated Tech

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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EV startup Bollinger unveiled production-intent images of its electric pickup and SUV.
The largest design changes are the movement of the B-pillar, the switch from two radiators to a single radiator behind the bumper, and more headroom.
The B1 and B2 are slated to start production in late 2021.

Bollinger Patents Clever Truck, SUV Pass-Through

Bollinger Shows Concept for Deliver-E Van

Bollinger Unveils All-Electric Commercial Truck

Years before the Cybertruck and Hummer EV appeared, Bollinger was showing off its own vision of electric pickup truck and SUV models. Since then, the automotive startup’s B1 SUV and B2 truck have been making the rounds at auto shows clad in black and generally looking like Lego versions of the electrified future.
Today Bollinger revealed renderings of the production-intent versions of the two EVs. The changes between these and the earlier prototypes are typical for show cars transitioning to production models. And of course, the vehicles in the renderings are white instead of the intimidating black we’ve come to expect from the company.
When asked about the design changes, CEO Robert Bollinger told C/D, “the largest difference is that the entire body has been re-engineered for production. It’s all truly body-on-frame now and optimized for manufacturing.”

The most noticeable changes are to the front fascia and headlights. On the initial prototype, the headlight area also served as an air intake for the dual radiators. Bollinger says due to improved thermal management, it has now placed a single radiator behind the bumper. The result is that the headlights look slightly smaller and less intimidating.
On the side, the B-pillar has been moved forward to make it easier for passengers to enter the vehicles. The vehicles are now two inches taller, resulting in more headroom, and the sliding glass windows have been replaced with regular windows operated with a manual crank. On the B2 truck, the bed is now independent of the cab, which Bollinger says will make commercial chassis cab applications, repairs, and replacement easier. Oh, and the three wipers on the windshield have been replaced with the less awesome but more traditional two-wiper setup.
Bollinger may have made some changes to the design of the vehicles, but the claimed specs remain the same. Both vehicles are targeting 200 miles of range and a powertrain capable of delivering 614 hp and 668 foot-pounds of torque. The starting price for the B1 and B2 is $125,000 and both are said to go into production near the end of 2021.
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Porsche’s performance SUV was initially quite controversial, but it’s now solidly established and in its third generation. We take a look back. More

Chevrolet won’t be able to sell the Camaro SS, 1LE, and ZL1 in California and Washington beginning next year due to the copper content of the brake pads.
California and Washington both enacted laws in 2010 saying that by 2021, brake pads had to have less than 5 percent copper content due to the toxicity of copper when it reaches waterways.
Those Camaros will return to the California and Washington markets in 2022, but it’s unclear why Chevy didn’t change the brakes prior to the 2021 model year.
Back in 2010, California and Washington enacted laws declaring that beginning in 2021, the brake pads sold in their respective states couldn’t have more than 5 percent copper by weight. By 2025, the brakes had to have less than 0.5 percent copper by weight. It’s because of this rule that starting on January 1, Chevrolet won’t be able to sell the 2021 Camaro SS, 1LE, and ZL1 in those states due to the copper content of the Brembo brakes, which exceeds 5 percent.

Tested: New Brake Rotors Help Keep Wheels Clean

The Ultimate Mustang vs. the Ultimate Camaro

Sales for those versions of the Camaro will resume in California and Washington for the 2022 model year once the brakes are replaced, a Chevrolet spokesperson told C/D. And, since the law goes into effect beginning on January 1 of next year, 2021 models that are currently in dealer inventory can still be sold in the new year.
The Chevy spokesperson wouldn’t clarify why the brakes weren’t replaced in advance for the 2021 model year, rather than the 2022 model year. The states gave automakers and other brake pad manufacturers ten years to find new technologies and replace the brake pads with high levels of copper content.
The copper from the brake pads, it was found, turns to dust and finds its way into waterways. Once it’s there, it becomes toxic to many water-dwelling creatures, including fish, plants, and amphibians. The copper is used in the brake pads because it’s able to quickly and effectively dissipate heat and allow for smooth braking.

When to Replace Your Car’s Brake Pads

Although the rule was put in place in only two states, California and Washington, trade groups representing the auto industry and automakers signed an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2015 to phase out the use of copper in brake pads. The groups signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU)—and a non-binding agreement—saying that the auto industry would implement the “Copper-Free Brake Initiative.” At the time of the signing, General Motors was a member of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group which has since merged with others but signed the MOU.
A spokesperson for Brembo, the supplier of the brakes on the affected 2021 Camaros, told C/D in an email that although Brembo has copper-free brake pads, it does still make pads with copper and it’s up to the automakers to comply with regulations. “Brembo has accordingly been developing copper-free materials for its brake systems supplied to our customers worldwide who have been preparing for enactment of this legislation,” the spokesperson said.
General Motors doesn’t have any other vehicles that are affected by the legislation going into place, according to the Chevrolet spokesperson, and it’s unclear whether there are vehicles from manufacturers besides GM which can’t be sold beginning next year due to their brakes.
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Cadillac has shown the manual shift knob for the upcoming V-series Blackwing models.
The 2022 CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing will be higher-performance versions of these sports sedans.
Cadillac says these models will be on sale in the summer of 2021.
Cadillac confirmed months ago that the upcoming CT4-V Blackwing and CT5-V Blackwing would offer a six-speed manual transmission, and now we have the visual proof. A photo of the shift knob shows the new 3D-printed medallion on top with a shift pattern and checkered design. The manual transmission will come standard on both the CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing models, with a ten-speed automatic available as an option.

Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing: 650 HP and a Manual

Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing Is a True ATS-V Successor

The CT4-V Blackwing is expected to be powered by a turbocharged V-6 engine, either the twin-turbo 3.6-liter unit from the previous ATS-V or the twin-turbo 3.0-liter engine currently in the standard CT5-V. The CT5-V Blackwing will be a different beast altogether, as we’re pretty sure it has a supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 with around 650 horsepower. Combined with the standard stick-shift, it promises to be a riot. The only other high-performance luxury sedan to offer a manual in the U.S. is the 2021 BMW M3.
While we’ve been enticed by teasers like this and of the steering wheel and magnesium wheels, we look forward to hearing all the details about the 2022 Cadillac V-series Blackwing models soon. These performance models should debut in the spring of 2021 before going on sale in the summer.
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It’ll be Ken Block vs. Michigander Rob Dahm on December 14, battling for dominance with a pair of 1400-hp custom cars.
Block’s is the famous Hoonicorn, based on a 1965 Ford Mustang.
Dahm is bringing a quad-rotor Mazda RX-7 to this race, which will take place on social media next week.
If you haven’t been paying attention recently, the guys at Hoonigan have been running a series called Hoonicorn vs. the World where—you guessed it—they find potential high-power cars for Ken Block to race against that have a chance of bringing down his infamous 1400-hp Hoonicorn. So far only one competitor—an 1100-hp Audi RS3—has given a good fight.
Since the first 845-hp Hoonicorn debuted in Gymkhana 7, the custom-built all-wheel-drive 1965 Ford Mustang has become a household name in the automotive community. And how could it not be, what with its red, white, and blue funnels on the turbocharger compressor inlets proudly popping through the hood for the world to see?

Ken Block’s Gymkhana 10 Is Now Viewable on YouTube

All about the 1400-HP Hoonicorn

The current Hoonicorn V2—made specifically for climbkhana—is powered by a Roush Yates 6.7-liter V-8 that is fed air by two massive Garrett turbos and fueled by methanol. The resulting combination is 1400 horsepower and 1250 pound-feet of torque, plenty sufficient when fed through its six-speed sequential gearbox to simultaneously light up all four tires at will. However, in a race where your opponent is nearly identical to you on paper, it’s hard to say how things will turn out. Best of luck, Mr. Block.
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Less known than Block and the Hoonicorn, but still wildly popular in the enthusiast community, is Rob Dahm. Dahm is a Michigan native who has amassed an impressive social media following behind all of his car escapades. Though it’s not his sole claim to fame, Dahm’s greatest project has probably brought him the most followers. In his quest to build the most powerful rotary engine in the world, Dahm has brought hundreds of thousands of viewers along for the experience, showing all facets of the process—including building his own parts—and lending an air of transparency that can be hard to find when it comes to high-end builds like these.
Dahm’s Mazda RX-7 is named Ahura, which is short for Ahura Mazda, a Persian mythological god who was said to have no equals. That’s a pretty fair name considering that the only thing remaining from the original car is the body. Everything underneath is all custom—just like the Hoonicorn: a tube-frame chassis, billet four-rotor engine, sequential gearbox, all-wheel drive, and a massive Garrett turbo.
Having a one-off car can be a pain at times though, If you regularly watch Dahm’s channel, you know all too well that building something like this is trial and error, and there are as many catastrophic failures as there are exciting successes. We just hope that Ahura holds together for a couple of solid shots at the champ.
If you want to find out who wins the race, we will be updating with video on December 14, when the post goes live on the Hoonigan and Rob Dahm pages. We aren’t sure who the winner will be, but one thing’s for certain: one car will emerge victorious, social media arguments will be had, and feelings will be hurt.
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Audi is one of many automakers offering advanced headlamp and lighting technology in cars.
Among the tech on the horion is pedestrian and obstacle detection, OLED taillamps, and the use of lighting to send traffic-safety information to other drivers.
Unfortunately, these advances aren’t available on cars in the U.S. because of our regulations.
You drive into a tunnel and your car’s headlights flicker to life. Just on the edge of the horizon you can see a set of taillights glowing back at you. You floor it, trying to catch up. It doesn’t matter. The faster you drive, the farther out of reach that red glow becomes. Worse, it seems this bleak, sunless tube stretches on forever—much like 2020.

These Headlights Have 8092 Pixels

Why Is America Stuck with Bad Headlights?

Testing the Evolution of Headlights: 1916 to 2018

This dark tunnel is the U.S. regulatory environment when it comes to lighting, and the rest of the world is that car ahead of us in the tunnel: China, the EU, even Canada. At issue, as we pointed out earlier, is a 53-year-old regulation that mandates that all cars sold in the U.S. meet a law that says low- and high-beam headlights cannot operate simultaneously.
We’re bringing this up in the wake of yet more advanced lighting technology that vehicles including Audi’s e-tron (and some Q5 models), Cadillac’s XT6, the Lexus RX, and cars from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche have already activated elsewhere, but, because of our antiquated regulatory environment, not here.
And the situation is getting more dire, because what’s already been sold overseas and now in Canada is a merely fantastically stupendous technology called adaptive driving beam (ADB) headlights. This is the start, not the end, of what’s possible.
Smart-TV-Style Brightness
ADB works by shadowing your car’s lights from blinding the oncoming driver, while still illuminating the driver’s side to a normal high-beam’s throw. (In the EU, some luxury brands pair the LEDs with a laser high-beam that can stretch slightly more than a third of a mile.) But the point here isn’t reach—it’s accuracy. We recently checked out Audi’s technology and learned that its ADB digital-matrix LEDs work a lot more like the pixels of a smart TV than actual lights, individually funneling the LED’s photons to 1.3 million micromirrors, each of which can adjust up to 5000 times per second, constantly adapting to only brighten parts of the field of view while shading others.
So while U.S. law futzes around with how to regulate two individual headlights, Audi’s got 1,299,998 others.
And actually, there’s even more advanced tech on the horizon.

Audi

Connected Lights Will Be Safer
What’s coming dramatically clarifies what the rest of the world’s drivers will be getting—and why slow-walking on ADB puts American drivers dangerously far behind when it comes to safer lighting.
This past week Audi showcased futuristic tech that can display patterns on the road within the “light carpet” the LEDs illuminate. This includes visible markings, to augment where the car is positioned on the road, so that it’s easier for the driver to stay in their lane, which is especially useful in lousy weather.
Audi’s tech, and competing systems offered by other brands, also foreshortens the reach of the “low” beam on multilane highways, so as you bear down on a truck you’re about to overtake the LEDs shadow out that 18-wheeler and effectively wrap around it, stretching into the passing lane you’re about to occupy right as you signal. Audi’s system, like Lexus’s Bladescan, is also able to detect pedestrians with digital matrix LED lighting, and in the future will use the tech to display signage to drivers and likely include that information in HUD displays, too.

Digital matrix LED headlight in Audi e-tron Sportback.
Audi

Where this is getting really fancy is in creating visuals well beyond the front of the car.

Audi’s developed OLED taillamps that are starting to mirror what matrix LEDs allow. Again, think display, not lightbulbs. Audi was quick to explain that this will allow more creative design interpretation by the owner. (If you thought spinners were dumb, just wait.) But the bigger deal is using the display system for safety.

Audi

Imagine an Esperanto of signals that cars could deploy based on roadway conditions changing or an accident a mile ahead. Imagine being able to avoid any such collision because your e-tron detects worsening grip on a rainy interstate, and your rig’s OLEDs would switch to displaying a slippery-when-wet street sign signal on its hatch. This, in turn, could be detectable by a following car’s sensors.
Or, since Audi (also, Ford, Volvo, and almost every brand you can think of) is exploring car-to-X and 5G integration, such detection could also be transmitted from vehicle to vehicle, so the first car through the snow squall could act as sentry, sending both a transmission and a literal OLED billboard to other drivers.
Audi is already experimenting with the transmission part of this formula, with cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) pilot programs in Virginia in which construction crews wear vests with 5.9G transmitters that twig drivers of equipped Q8s that they’re about to enter a work zone. A similar program in Georgia equips school buses with transmitters that then tells equipped e-trons when they are approaching kids being dropped off or fetched. It’s an obvious extension of what’s possible to proliferate this through light technology as well. Since states are bound to continue to be cash strapped, enabling vehicles to essentially become “rolling infrastructure” leapfrogs the problem of embedding millions of transmitters.
This kind of thinking also becomes yet another necessary tool in the slog toward autonomy; vehicles that communicate with each other with visible signals as well as C-V2X will have to be part of the sauce.
Unfortunately the outlook for all of this is still murky. Audi’s above experiments are done not through NHTSA, but by working with temporary FCC-licensed partners, like Qualcomm. And you probably already know that laser headlights have come in limited and expensive fashion to American roads not through NHTSA, but through the FDA—which handles lasers because they can emit radiation.
NHTSA has been dancing around ways to regulate advancements in lighting since 2001, when Congress directed the DOT to study HID glare. Ever since, including in 2013 when Toyota asked for permission to begin experimenting with adaptive headlights, the agency hasn’t budged.
The Automotive Alliance cautioned both in 2018 and this past July that NHTSA’s rules for more advanced lighting were “overly stringent and not based on modern headlight systems.” That last bit is the key: NHTSA has been looking backward, at mitigating glare from headlight technology that was invented in the last century. But modern ADB systems were developed precisely to do just that: to shield oncoming drivers. And, in fact, they can do way more than we ever thought possible. They don’t just illuminate anymore. Now they also allow both drivers and pedestrians to see, and they augment what we see with better information. We just hope that these are advances that don’t happen all over the rest of the globe, while forever leaving American drivers in the dark.
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Nissan has issued teasers for the Europe-market Qashqai that give us an indication of what the next Rogue Sport will look like.
The Rogue Sport is a subcompact crossover slotting in between the Kicks and the Rogue.
The new Rogue Sport will likely arrive in the U.S. for the 2022 model year.
The Nissan Rogue Sport is set to follow in the footsteps of its bigger sibling’s redesign, with a new version likely to arrive for the 2022 model year. We’ve now gotten our first glimpse at the new Rogue Sport thanks to Nissan’s European arm, which has begun teasing the exterior and interior of the closely related Qashqai SUV.

Nissan

The camouflaged Qashqai prototype seen here looks like a 2021 Rogue with the seams taken in a bit, as its front end has a similar headlight arrangement and its rear end features a more tapered greenhouse. The new Rogue Sport will likely continue to reside on the larger end of the subcompact SUV segment, fitting in above the entry-level Kicks and below the compact Rogue.

Tested: 2021 Rogue Ratchets Up Its Visual Appeal

2021 Nissan Kicks Arrives with More Standard Tech

Nissan is talking about the Qashqai’s e-Power and 12-volt hybrid drivetrains for the European market, but we anticipate the Rogue Sport will continue on with a more conventional gasoline engine in the U.S. Naturally aspirated 2.0-liter or 2.5-liter inline-four engines are the most likely choices, paired with a continuously variable automatic transmission (CVT) and either front- or all-wheel drive—nothing revolutionary under the skin here.

Nissan

The interior is likely to be a big step up, though, at least according to images that show a modern-looking dashboard with a digital instrument cluster and a large tablet-style touchscreen infotainment system. We were impressed with the nicer interior materials in the latest Rogue, too, so we’d expect a similar improvement for the Rogue Sport.
Nissan Europe seems nearly ready to reveal the full thing, but we have yet to hear from Nissan USA about the new Rogue Sport’s arrival on our shores. Look for more information to come on the new crossover sometime in the first half of 2021.
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