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The starting MSRP for the 2021 Infiniti Q60 is just $300 more than last year, which is fair since the base model is nearly identical to 2020.
The mid-level Luxe trim is the one we recommended last year, and the slight changes for 2021 mean that this is still the one to get, but now it comes with heated seats and steering wheel as standard.
Rear-wheel drive is standard for the Q60, and all three trim levels can be upgraded to all-wheel drive for $2000.
After keeping the 2020 Q60 pretty much the same between model years, Infiniti has added a few new features and colors for 2021. There are no major changes here—the new sedan keeps its stylish design—but it now starts at $42,675, a modest $300 increase over last year’s model.
All 2021 Q60 models are powered by a 3.0-liter V-6 engine that produces 300 horsepower (400 hp in the Red Sport 400) and 295 lb-ft of torque (350 lb-ft in the Red Sport 400), paired with a seven-speed automatic transmission.

Infiniti Pares Down Sedan Lineup for 2020

2019 Infiniti Q60 Red Sport 400

Infiniti’s QS Inspiration Previews Future Sedans

The new Q60 comes in three trim levels: Pure, Luxe, and Red Sport 400, with rear- and all-wheel-drive versions of all three. Choosing AWD adds $2000 to the FWD price. The new exterior paint colors are Grand Blue and Slate Gray, with Dynamic Sunstone Red a $900 option on either the Luxe or Red Sport 400 trims. For 2021, the Red Sport 400 trim starts at $59,125 and offers options including a Performance package ($1206) with special exhaust and air intake and a carbon-fiber package ($2280) featuring various trim and a rear spoiler.

Infiniti

The middle-level Luxe trim gets the lion’s share of the changes for 2021. Starting at $51,225, the Luxe upgrades the Pure’s offerings by making a heated steering wheel and heated front seats standard, along with semi-aniline-leather-trimmed seats. The Luxe trim now also offers remote engine start as part of the $2050 Essential package, which also introduces rain-sensing wipers to the Q60.

Infiniti

The Luxe replaces the standard six-speaker audio offering with a 13-speaker Bose Performance Series audio system. It also comes standard with predictive forward-collision warning and automated front emergency braking with pedestrian detection, neither of which are available on the Pure. Blind-spot warning, rear cross-traffic alert, and backup collision intervention are standard on the Red Sport 400 trim and available as part of the Essential package on the Luxe. The Red Sport 400 model can be ordered with the $1700 ProActive package, which comes with adaptive cruise control, lane-departure warning and prevention, active lane control, and other features.
Infiniti is taking orders for the 2021 Q60 now, and deliveries will start before the end of the year.

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If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already familiar with SpeedKore’s highly modified 1970 Dodge Charger. Introduced by the aftermarket company at SEMA in 2018, it has a fully carbon-fiber body and looks menacing. Originally, the car was powered by a 966-hp supercharged 6.2-liter Demon V-8. But it’s since been swapped out for one of Dodge’s 1000-hp Hellephant crate engines. It sounds wonderful on the dyno.

Demon-Powered Dodge Charger from SpeedKore at SEMA

SpeedKore Dodge Challenger SRT Demon for Sale

SpeedKore released video of its 1970 Charger hitting the dyno post-swap, giving us an idea of how that supercharged 7.0-liter Hellephant engine sounds when it’s actually in a car. According to a representative, the shop is still finalizing the engine’s tune, but it’s expecting to achieve somewhere in the realm of 900 horsepower to the rear wheels when finished. Here’s what the engine looks like installed into the car:

Speedkore

Usually, show cars like this Charger are given one moment in the spotlight before they’re tucked away forever. We’re glad SpeedKore is committed to the continued development of this car, even years after its initial debut. It’s too cool to be forgotten.

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Cadillac has revealed that it will offer magnesium wheels on its upcoming Blackwing sports sedans.
The V-series Blackwing models are higher-performance versions of the CT4-V and CT5-V.
These new variants will go on sale in the summer of 2021.
Magnesium wheels have been used for decades in professional auto racing, prized for their light weight. Cadillac claims that magnesium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any commonly available metal. But magnesium wheels are virtually unheard of in current production vehicles, though Chevrolet offered them as an expensive option on some fifth-generation (C5) Corvettes. Now Cadillac is bringing true mag wheels to the street as an option on its 2022 CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing high-performance models.
From the teaser photo GM released, its new mag wheel won’t look very different from the hundreds of aluminum alloy wheel designs currently spinning around on today’s vehicles. Its one distinguishing feature is a small “Mg” logo stamped into the wheel rim, the symbol for the element magnesium.

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Cadillac says that the new forged mag wheels will reduce unsprung weight—we assume this means in comparison to the car’s standard aluminum alloy wheels—though the company hasn’t revealed by how much. Cadillac also claims that the lighter wheels and will improve ride-and-handling. They could improve acceleration as well. The laws of physics agree, but it will take driving and testing the mag-equipped cars back-to-back with those on the standard wheels to see exactly how much the dynamics actually improve.

Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing
Cadillac

Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing
Cadillac

Asked why it chose magnesium wheels rather than carbon-fiber rims like those Ford fitted to the Mustang GT350R, Cadillac responded that “magnesium wheels help reduce mass at the center, allowing for more flexibility with the spoke design and better shock/vibration absorbance. In our testing, magnesium alloy wheels produced a better ride quality due to its vibration dampening.”
This actually isn’t the first time parent company General Motors has offered true magnesium wheels on one of its production cars. Chevrolet sold magnesium wheels for several years as an option for the fifth-generation (C5) Corvette but apparently dropped the expensive and rarely purchased item in 2001.
“Nice mags!” is a phrase you heard often in enthusiast circles if you were around in the 1960s. (Of course you heard it, Ceppos. You were there!—Ed.) It referred to “mag wheels,” a term derived from the exotic-looking, lightweight magnesium wheels prevalent on post-war racing cars. But it was actually a misnomer; magnesium wheels were virtually never installed on production cars back then; they were expensive, prone to corrosion, and thought to be too fragile to handle the hard impacts and bad weather encountered in street use.
Many of the muscle cars prevalent in the sixties were equipped with stylized, stamped-steel wheels that were often chromed and painted. For reasons lost long ago, they were dubbed “mags.” There is one type of car, however, on which magnesium wheels have found wide use: the hot rod. Rodders long ago appropriated magnesium wheels from race cars—Halibrand-style mags used on old sprint cars and Indy roadsters from the fifties and sixties have been long-time favorites—for their cool appearance as well as their light weight. Today, many of those original designs are recreated in aluminum.
We’ll have to wait until these new Cadillacs are revealed, likely in spring 2021, before we know if “nice mags!” is a phrase we’ll be hearing once again.
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It almost never happens, but this week, the Window Shop crew actually took the viewer-submitted challenge seriously. The prompt? Find the most reliable car out there for $5000. This episode features five solid and compelling choices with sterling reputations for reliability and longevity. But even though we like one another’s picks, that doesn’t keep us from bickering about how to properly use a tree air freshener or digressing into a discussion about cars that are like coffins.

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Contributing editor John Pearley Huffman, a devoted lover of the Toyota Tundra, puts his pickup obsession aside and shows off a low-mileage 2007 Ford Crown Victoria police car that may have spend the past 13 years idling. Associate editor Annie White offers up the only German car of the bunch, a 1978 Mercedes-Benz 300D that’s similar to the W123-generation Benz that former EIC Eddie Alterman bought. That diesel Benz may make just 77 horsepower, but it’ll likely still run in 50 years. Deputy testing director K.C. Colwell and yours truly select two ’90s Japanese classics that would be dull if it weren’t for their manual transmissions. Finally, contributing editor Jonathon Ramsey presents what can only be described as peak Buick. He suggests it’s the best car for millennials, but our resident millennial wholeheartedly disagrees. The rest of us fall completely in love with Ramsey’s pick—a pristine Park Avenue Ultra—and begin to understand why the great American road belongs to Buick.
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Ford made sure that when the Bronco’s doors came off, the rearview mirrors stayed. And so Jeep has found a solution to that, because the Wrangler and Gladiator’s mirrors do go with the doors.
A separate Mopar-built doors-off mirror kit can be had for $295.
Jeep has also come out with a Gladiator Willys, a special edition off-road-ready Gladiator which is the first to wear the Willys name.
For all that 2020 has revealed itself to be, it has also turned out to be the year where Ford and FCA truly begin to square off when it comes to their respective dominance in the truck space. Ford’s F-150 Raptor has a new challenger, the Ram 1500 TRX, and the Jeep Wrangler has the new Ford Bronco to test its own dominance. Each company knows its competitors and in some cases makes it explicit.

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Ford had a temporary advantage in that the Bronco’s mirrors don’t come off with the doors, unlike the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator’s. Jeep, keeping up with the tit for tat seen now for months, is not to be outmatched by Ford: Mopar now makes a mirror kit for the Wrangler and Gladiator so that when the doors come off, the mirrors can stay on as they do on the Bronco. The factory-backed mirrors cost $295 and can be installed with a bit wrench, which comes in all Wranglers and Gladiators. The mirrors have a breakaway feature so that when the road or trail gets tight, you don’t risk losing your mirrors.

FCA US LLC

The Gladiator is also adding a Willys edition to its lineup for the 2021 model year, which will be the first time the Willys name will be on the pickup. The Gladiator Willys will come with Willys decals on the hood and rear tailgate and 17-inch black aluminum wheels. It boosts its off-road readiness with a limited-slip rear differential, Rubicon rock rails and shocks, and 32-inch all-terrain tires.
The Gladiator Willys will be offered in eight colors and starts at $36,760. It is already at dealerships.
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Hennessey Performance Engineering has announced its latest engine-swapped car: the 2021 Ford Bronco VelociRaptor V8.
It’s powered by a supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 that produces 750 horsepower, and it’s claimed to hit 60 mph in 4.5 seconds.
Only 24 will be made, and they cost $225,000.
There are higher-performance Ford Bronco models coming. We know because Ford told us, and one of them should be an even more capable Raptor or Warthog model built for high-speed off-roading. However, Ford has also said that there won’t be a V-8-powered Bronco and that the 2.7-liter V-6 will have just enough power to satisfy customers—even though the Jeep Wrangler is getting eight cylinders. Well, if you’re not a typical Ford customer, Hennessey Performance Engineering has the answer: a Bronco with a supercharged V-8 called the VelociRaptor.
Hennessey’s Bronco VelociRaptor is available on either the two- or four-door 2021 models, and it replaces the 2.7-liter EcoBoost engine with a supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 and mates it with Ford’s 10-speed automatic transmission. The result is 750 horsepower, up 440 from the V-6’s 310 ponies, and Hennessey claims it’ll be able to reach 60 mph in 4.5 seconds.

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Hopefully you can order the VelociRaptor V8 Bronco without Hennessey’s custom livery (pictured above), and it’s also distinguished by a bulging hood scoop, custom bumpers, aluminum wheels, and Hennessey badging all over the place. Hennessey says it has an upgraded off-road suspension and tires, but it looks to just have the factory-equipped, off-road-focused Sasquatch package, which adds 35-inch tires and heavy-duty Bilstein shock absorbers.
Hennessey says that it’s only making 24 of these 750-hp V-8-powered Broncos, and they start at $225,000, which includes the cost of a new 2021 Bronco. The package is available on both the two- and four-door Broncos, and it comes with a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty and a lot of clout.
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We don’t usually write about watches around here, but if an exception to the rule exists, it’s this: A Heuer Monaco worn by Steve McQueen during the production of Le Mans is going to auction on December 12. The Monaco rose to fame following the release of Le Mans, where it garnered dozens of minutes of screen time strapped to McQueen’s wrist. The watch and its funky square case featured prominently on advertising material for the film. It became attached to McQueen’s brand of cool and to that golden age of racing.

TAG Heuer

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McQueen gifted this particular watch (one of just six Monacos procured by the film’s production department) to Haig Alltounian at the conclusion of filming Le Mans. Alltounian served as chief mechanic on the film, an important role, given exotic prototype racers like Porsche’s 917 regularly reached triple-digit speeds on set (one stunt driver even crashed and lost a leg during filming). When McQueen handed over the watch, Alltounian recalls him saying, “Thank you for keeping me alive all these months.” Alltounian says he originally turned down the gift, but McQueen had already engraved the watch’s caseback “To Haig Le Mans 1970.”

TAG Heuer

While McQueen’s story is well known, Alltounian’s is similarly fascinating. An acolyte for life, the SoCal native began amateur racing with his own 1959 Porsche RSK Spyder. When his racing funds ran short, he found employment, hired by Shelby American to assemble their 289 Cobra on the factory line. Just two weeks later, Alltounian landed his dream job wrenching in Shelby’s racing division. Years later, Alltounian joined Dan Gurney’s All-American Racers. He worked there from 1965 through 1968.
Alltounian was assigned as Denny Hulme’s race mechanic for the 1968 Indy 500. The pair remained longtime friends, and Alltounian supposedly placed a recommendation that landed Hulme a job on Bruce McLaren’s Formula 1 team.

Bernard Cahier

Later, Alltounian worked for John Von Neumann’s Competition Motors racing team, serving as chief mechanic for drivers including Ken Miles and Richie Ginther. In 1970, McQueen’s production company asked Alltounian if he’d act as chief mechanic on the film and help get McQueen back up to speed in racing beforehand. The pair competed in the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring, securing second place in a Porsche 908/02. Not bad for a warmup.
So, while a wristwatch is just a wristwatch at the end of the day, they do bear witness to some incredible stories. This watch, strapped to McQueen’s wrist on a 200-mph run down Le Mans’s Mulsanne, then given to Alltounian later that same day, tells a better story than most.
Phillips will auction off the watch on December 12, 2020, as part of its Racing Pulse event.

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A self-driving race car made an abrupt turn and crashed into a wall as soon as it started during the first live broadcast of Roborace, an autonomous-vehicle race series.
Four of six teams failed to finish the three-lap time-trial race held in the United Kingdom.
This harmless vehicular faceplant comes as several companies are expanding their testing of self-driving technology on public roads.
Here’s your daily reminder that a future filled with self-driving cars isn’t as imminent as some might like you to believe. In the first live broadcast of the Roborace autonomous-vehicle race series, one self-driving car left the starting grid and immediately veered into the pit-lane wall. For Acronis SIT Autonomous, the Swiss team fielding the car, the race was literally over before it began. Their car never made it across the starting line.
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The vehicular faceplant came during the first event of what Roborace is calling Season Beta, in which six teams compete in three-lap time-trial races with electric cars driving through a mixed-reality “metaverse.” As they lap real-world racetracks, the cars are also supposed to avoid virtual obstacles and drive through virtual collectibles. Some teams, however, chose to plow through the virtual walls and take time penalties in favor of setting a faster lap time. Unfortunately for Acronis SIT Autonomous, the wall its car tried to drive through was very real. The car sustained significant damage to the nose in the impact. Ilya Shimchik, the team principal, told broadcasters that it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the car to crash. Roborace teams all use the same spec cars, known as DevBot 2.0, but develop their own software that controls the vehicle.

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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Roborace had planned to conduct Season Beta events without spectators for the sake of safety, so the crash at the Thruxton Circuit in the United Kingdom only endangered a few egos while providing schadenfreude for those of us who can now watch the video over and over. But this mishap is also a reminder that self-driving technology is still in its infancy, even as several companies expand their testing on American roads with much higher stakes. Waymo is in the process opening its driverless ride-hailing service in suburban Phoenix to more riders. Cruise, the self-driving technology subsidiary of General Motors, recently announced that it plans to begin testing autonomous vehicles without safety drivers by the end of 2020. More disconcerting, Tesla has rolled out its Full Self-Driving feature as unfinished beta software to select owners, who now need to maintain constant vigilance over a technology that’s meant to lull them into inattention. These Tesla drivers will now be doing a job normally reserved for trained professionals on the same roads used by unsuspecting, non-consenting American drivers.

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