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Rolls-Royce has revealed the second limited-production Droptail, after unveiling the first unit, called La Rose Noire, at Monterey Car Week.This Droptail, called Amethyst, draws inspiration from the purple gemstone with an ethereal paint job and real amethyst in the gauge cluster.It also features swaths of open-pore wood and purple-tinted carbon fiber.This month at Monterey Car Week, Rolls-Royce pulled the covers off of an exclusive new convertible, the Droptail. Only four units of the V-12–powered two-door will be built, each with its own unique theme. The first example, called La Rose Noire, was painted a deep, seductive shade of red while the cabin featured 1063 pieces of wood trim in a geometric pattern. Now Rolls-Royce has revealed the second Droptail, named after the gemstone amethyst, that exhibits an exquisite purple paint job, acres of open-pore wood, and actual amethyst gems.Rolls-Royce hasn’t published a price for the Droptail, but a previous bespoke project, the Boat Tail, cost north of $20 million. According to Rolls-Royce, the unnamed client ran a gemstone boutique before expanding into a multinational corporation. The customer collects jewels (along with cars and artwork) in their own private museum, so we imagine the multi-million-dollar price tag wasn’t a problem for this privileged individual. Amethyst is their son’s birthstone, serving as inspiration for the purple tones throughout the car.The elegant paint job, however, draws upon the globe amaranth wildflower, which Rolls-Royce says “blooms in the desert near one of the client’s homes.” The light purple body features flecks of powdered aluminum to create a glistening finish while the hood is a darker hue, the contrast meant to represent different stages of the flower’s bloom. The polished aluminum 22-inch wheels also include a touch of purple paint, and the carbon fiber lower section of the body is finished in a unique chevron pattern with an amethyst tint.Rolls-Royce broke from tradition with the Droptail’s grille, angling the vertical vanes inward for the first time. The Amethyst Droptail’s vanes are partially hand-brushed and partially hand-polished, with a dividing line separating the two finishes. The unusual process allegedly took 50 hours and was inspired by the brushed hands on a timepiece in the watch collection of the owner’s son. As on La Rose Noire, the lower air intake features an ornate, complex design with 202 hand-polished stainless steel rectangles, painted in the globe amaranth hue.Perched atop the expansive hood, the Spirit of Ecstasy ornament sprouts out of amethyst cabochons, a term for when a gem is polished into a rounded form instead of faceted like the gems on many wedding rings. The Droptail comes with a removable hardtop roof and electrochromic glass that can switch between opaque with a purple tint to translucent with a hint of the Sand Dunes color.The cabin is full of wood, with the client selecting a Calamander Light open-pore strain, which is meant to match the Sand Dunes leather accents. Rolls-Royce claims that sourcing wood that perfectly paired with the leather was a six-month undertaking. The tan leather appears on the seats and dashboard, contrasting with the main purple leather upholstery. The wood extends from the dashboard down the door panels and to what Rolls-Royce calls the “aft deck,” clearly meant to emulate luxurious yachts, where the grain creates a dramatic V-shape. The wood was apparently tested for 8000 hours in temperatures ranging from 176 degrees to negative 22 degrees Fahrenheit, as well as extreme sunlight and rain exposure. Rolls-Royce says the deck also serves an aerodynamic role, claiming its the “world’s only ‘raw’ wooden surface that produces downforce on a new roadgoing motor car.”More Opulent Rolls-RoycesThe gauges echo the hood-mounted Spirit of Ecstasy, decorated with cabochon-style amethyst gems. The interior also includes woven leather floor mats, a reference, Rolls-Royce says, to the traditional weaving found in the souks, or Arab marketplaces, of the owner’s original home. Like La Rose Noire, the dashboard has a space for a unique watch, which the client commission from Vacheron Constantin, a Swiss manufacturer. The watch can be removed from its dashboard housing and worn.This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More

There’s a new documentary series about the rise and fall of disgraced former Nissan-Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn.The documentary is based on an investigative book published in 2022.Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn launches August 25 on Apple TV+.Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lived large during the late 1700s, while willfully ignoring the grumblings outside the gate of the palace at Versailles. For this, they lost their heads. Carlos Ghosn, whose turnaround skills rescued first Renault and then Nissan, threw not one but two lavish and ethically suspect celebrations in the former digs of King Louis, but he managed to escape his troubles with his head attached, famously getting smuggled out of Japan in a box to permanent exile in Lebanon.Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn, a new four-part documentary series on Apple TV+, explores Ghosn’s rise and fall. The flashes of Versailles parties illuminate a man enamored with his own glory. Ghosn made his name for being “brilliant but also relentless with a ruthless focus on efficiency and a superhuman work ethic,” says director James Jones, but, “People say that over time, he lost his focus and felt like he had earned the right to enjoy the trappings of his success.”From the C/D ArchiveThe first Versailles party was allegedly for the anniversary of the Nissan-Renault alliance (which later added Mitsubishi), but coincidentally fell on Ghosn’s 60th birthday and was filled with more family and friends than executives. “When Louis Schweitzer heard about the party, he thought, ‘This guy has completely lost touch with reality,'” Jones says, referring to the Renault CEO who had brought Ghosn on board and then founded the alliance with Nissan, but who was not invited to the event, which reportedly cost $700,000 of the company’s money. The second party, which featured hired actors in 18th-century costume, feted Ghosn’s wedding and his wife Carole’s 50th birthday, and questions soon arose over who paid for the affair.This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Victim, Villain, or Both? Wanted recounts Ghosn’s precipitous fall from the high life to solitary confinement in prison. It seeks to paint him as both victim and villain, though it occasionally feels like it’s going easy on a man who doesn’t deserve it, simply because he was wealthy and successful for so long. (It also relies a bit too heavily on re-enactment shots that border on cheesy.)Jones strives to be as even-handed as possible in his directing, acknowledging that he felt “privileged” to talk to the people he’d been researching. Ghosn, he says, is “a stimulating person to talk to” and during editing Jones says he took care “not to undermine them in a way that feels you were disingenuous in your relationship.” He lets the competing narratives unspool for the viewers to decide. “Hopefully the viewer is pushed and pulled both ways over the course of the series,” he says.The series depicts Nissan executives, opposed to the full-fledged merger Ghosn wanted, as staging a coup. Ghosn was arrested on fairly flimsy charges and landed in solitary confinement, as did his underling Greg Kelly, who was held there despite needing spinal surgery in the hope of pressuring a confession out of him. The series makes much of Japan’s cruel “hostage justice” system without acknowledging that around the world, including in America, there are poor people suffering in the criminal justice system as well who don’t get documentaries made about them. As you’d both hope and expect, plenty is made of Ghosn’s headline-grabbing action-film-style escape in 2019. His abettors, Michael and Peter Taylor, were subsequently imprisoned themselves, although Japan allowed them to serve out their time in the United States. Ghosn’s escape was followed by revelations of potentially serious crimes, including funneling $50 million of company money to himself. “The first allegations are pretty minor, but the later ones are much more serious, and he does have a case to answer to but he won’t go to France to stand trial,” Jones says.”A Sense of Entitlement”The evidence appears strong against Ghosn. But even if his actions prove not to have been illegal, “doing it without telling the company speaks volumes about a sense of entitlement,” says Sean McLain, who, with fellow Wall Street Journal reporter Nick Kostov, wrote the investigative book on which the documentary was based, Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn.Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos GhosnBoundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos GhosnNow 40% OffThe in-depth interviews with Ghosn and his wife—both of whom come off as arrogant, self-righteous, and lacking in self-awareness—as well as Kelly and the Taylors are riveting but may leave viewers feeling like they’re revisiting Succession. It’s hard to turn away from or wholeheartedly root for the fabulously wealthy and morally bankrupt or the unquestioningly loyal underlings who enable them. While Ghosn may seem like Logan Roy, he’s also haunted by his own father’s shadow; when Carlos was six, Georges Ghosn was convicted in the killing of a priest-cum-smuggler in Lebanon. The priest was supposedly delivering diamonds for the elder Ghosn but owed him money. Despite Ghosn’s claims that he’d only ordered him threatened, he was given the death sentence. Despite two unsuccessful prison escapes, the senior Ghosn’s death sentence was commuted to 15 years. “It must have been formative, but he shuts down any discussion,” Jones says and McLain adds that while it’s impossible to determine how it shaped him, “I believe it had a deep impact on his psyche.”An American Business SenseThere are more definitive answers about Carlos Ghosn’s career. After rising through the ranks at Michelin, he made his name as a cost-cutting turnaround specialist, reviving Renault and saving Nissan. “He had an ability to identify problems, find solutions, and inspire great confidence,” Jones says, but as an outsider he also made enemies in both places with his hard-driving approach that challenged longstanding workplace culture (especially with layoffs upon layoffs).”He has much more of an American business sense, and so the work culture at Nissan and Renault—where there are company lifers and it’s more like a civil service job—struck him as unnecessary and unproductive.” But bullying your way to success while refusing to play up to the old guard leaves you vulnerable. “When things did go wrong there was no one there in his corner, and when there was a chance to take him down some people jumped at it,” Jones says.Jones adds that Ghosn’s grandiose view of himself means that he doesn’t like thinking of himself as merely a turnaround specialist, a gunslinger in the Wild West who would clean up a town and then move on. McLain says that after he rescued Nissan, it appeared his vision for the company’s future was limited, creating “increasing discomfort and criticism in the company.” Ghosn’s One RegretThe documentary examines Ghosn’s lucrative offer in 2009 to rescue General Motors; but McLain says Ghosn instead tried unsuccessfully to bring GM into his alliance. “He says that not taking the GM job is his one regret,” McLain notes. “He wanted to build the biggest car empire, but he should have taken that job, earned five times as much money, and retired,” Jones says.Instead, he took a 50 percent pay cut from his $20 million Nissan salary during the Great Recession for public relations purposes. Wanted argues that his subsequent loss of focus at work and the misappropriating of $50 million came because he was frustrated by the pay cut. “He changed then,” Jones says. Ghosn with the Nissan Leaf at the 2009 Tokyo auto show.YOSHIKAZU TSUNO|Getty ImagesMcLain sees Wanted as a Shakespearean tragedy, with Ghosn undone by a tragic flaw: “He is a deeply talented person, but he has a massive chip on his shoulder and he views pay as an objective measure of his self-worth.” The documentary recounts how Ghosn’s notes on his phone indicated that a merger would make him a billionaire. “That’s an insight into his motivation,” Jones says.Fifty million dollars is, of course, a lot of money, but taking it still strikes McLain as a mind-bogglingly bad decision. “He tied himself in knots to compensate himself appropriately and ended up burning down everything he built.” Jones hopes ultimately viewers will see those tragic dimensions of his tale. “He will no longer be in the hall of fame of the great businesspeople of the 21st century,” he says. “Instead, he’ll only be remembered as the man who escaped in a box. That is devastating for someone like him.”Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn is out August 25 on Apple TV+. More

Toyota is reportedly considering adding a new small pickup truck to its lineup that would be based on the Corolla.This new vehicle would compete with the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz.Rumors suggest it could arrive in 2027 and that it would be built at Toyota’s plant in Mississippi that currently builds the Corolla.Toyota already has the mid-size and full-size segments covered with the Tacoma and Tundra pickups, but there could be room beneath these trucks for a new smaller, crossover-based pickup. As reported by Automotive News, Toyota is considering adding a Corolla-based compact pickup truck that would compete with the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz. As for the name, your guess is as good as ours, but we wouldn’t be shocked if Toyota brought back a name from its history such as Stout—a moniker it first applied to a small pickup sold in the U.S. in the 1960s.Much like the relationship between the Maverick and the Bronco Sport and the Santa Cruz and the Tucson, the Corolla-based pickup would likely share components with the Corolla Cross subcompact SUV. As shown in our illustration, it could combine a five-seat crew-cab configuration with a short cargo bed to replace the crossover’s hatch.ILLUSTRATION BY BEN SUMMERELL-YOUDE/FOX SYNDICATION|Car and DriverHybrid power is almost a certainty, given that it’s Toyota we’re talking about. We’d guess that the Corolla Cross’ 196-hp, all-wheel-drive hybrid setup with an EPA combined rating of 42 mpg would be the standard powertrain in the pickup. It may be beefed up a bit to help with towing and payload capacity. The Maverick’s optional hybrid drivetrain, for reference, produces 191 horsepower and is rated at 37 mpg combined, but it currently comes only with front-wheel drive. If You Can’t Wait Until 2027The supposed arrival of this new pickup is still a few years away, so it stands to reason that it would be based on a facelifted or redesigned Corolla Cross rather than the version on sale today that arrived for the 2022 model year. While the Corolla Cross is built at Toyota’s joint factory with Mazda in Alabama, AN’s report says that the pickup would be built alongside the Corolla sedan in Mississippi.This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More

Kia has revealed the new EV5 electric SUV.The production version looks quite similar to the concept car revealed earlier this year, and its interior is nifty.It will go on sale in China later this year, and we expect it to arrive in the U.S. for the 2025 model year.Kia appears to be fast-tracking the latest addition to its EV lineup, as it has already revealed the production version of the EV5 concept car from this spring. The real thing looks remarkably similar to the concept on the outside, and its interior features interesting design touches and looks to offer plenty of space thanks to the electric SUV’s tall, boxy silhouette.KiaWith hard edges on the bodysides and angular lighting elements, the family resemblance between the two-row EV5 and the three-row Kia EV9 is clear. Kia says that it’s a compact SUV, meaning it will likely compete against vehicles such as the Toyota bZ4X and Volkswagen ID.4. While the wheels are a bit smaller and the trim pieces are toned down, the EV5 otherwise hasn’t changed much compared with the concept car; the highly modern headlights and taillights with LED accent strips, for instance, are pretty much identical.KiaKiaThe interior of the production EV5 has changed a fair amount compared with the concept’s lounge-like cabin with swiveling seats, but still appears to incorporate some distinctive design touches. The steering-wheel shape looks fresh, the dashboard looks wide and expansive, and two large screens serve as the digital gauge cluster and the central infotainment display. The front seats incorporate a bench-like layout, although we don’t see a third seatbelt on the cushion in between the driver and passenger’s perches, so it’s not likely to offer six-passenger capacity.KiaKia has yet to release any specifications for the EV5, but we expect it to offer similar powertrain setups as the EV6. That model, which is based on Hyundai-Kia’s E-GMP platform, offers single- and dual-motor configurations ranging from 225 hp up to 577 hp, with a 77.4-kWh battery pack.Look for more information to come about the EV5 later this year, as it’s scheduled to go on sale in China within the next few months. Kia says it will reveal more about its plans for this new model—and likely other future electric models—in October at an EV Day event.Kia EV FamilyThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More