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Lacey Sinclair via Facebook

Off-roaders everywhere were given a cautionary tale this week when news broke about a Ford Bronco stuck underwater near Bar Harbor, Maine. The fan-favorite SUV wandered a bit too far off a sandbar during low tide, only to be swallowed by the sea when the tides returned later in the day. After two full days living among the fishes, the folks at Island Towing were finally able to extricate the off-roader Monday evening.

The extrication process was led by Island Towing’s Les Foss, who had previously spent 16 hours attempting to free the Bronco before successfully getting the truck ashore, according to The Drive. Ahead of the third and final rescue attempt, Foss was approached by a diver working with the Department of Environmental Protection. Since the truck would not roll on its own and it was stuck far from the shore, the two agreed that the SUV would best be recovered with the help of large float bags. These pieces of equipment are often used to retrieve large objects from below the surface, including chunks of historic wreckages. Timing became a crucial element of the plan, as the float bags would need the assistance of the high tide to push the truck toward safety.
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After Foss and his associates were able to secure 10,000 pounds’ worth of float bags, the Bronco was carefully moved within range of an awaiting wrecker. Foss told The Drive that he couldn’t position a truck within 1500 feet of the drowned SUV before the successful float, likening the rescue to pulling a boulder from the ocean. The whole process took an additional 12 hours, bringing the total rescue effort up to 28 hours. Had the floating method failed, the next step would have involved a barge-mounted crane. While this incident ultimately comes down to driver error, it is hard not to feel a little bad for the owner of this particular Bronco, which has now been identified as an Outer Banks model. These SUVs have been difficult to come by since it made its debut, and I’m sure this mistake was born out of a desire to test the truck’s lauded capabilities. Perhaps the Sasquatch package and its larger mud-terrain tires could have been a benefit here.
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The Lincoln Star concept is intended to showcase the brand’s design philosophy, which involves calming, spaces with a focus on design, and connected technology. Using scent, sound, transparent materials, and complex light shows, Lincoln aims to showcase a multi-sensory approach to the driving experience.This one’s just a concept, but Lincoln promises three new electric vehicles by 2025.Like pretty much every car company by this point, Lincoln has centered its crosshairs on an electrified portfolio. Just before Ford’s luxury brand revealed its electric concept, Lincoln’s famous hood star emblem glowed visibly under the sheer silk covering. As a presentation, it wasn’t subtle, but it was certainly in keeping with the theme of the presentation: light, transparency, and electricity. Lincoln president Joy Falotico says that by 2025 the brand will offer three new electric vehicles, with a goal of half its global volume being EVs before 2030. The Lincoln Star concept—again, not so much with the subtlety on that name, but we appreciate the point—was created to showcase Lincoln’s approach to design and experience on an electric platform.

Before pulling back the sheet, Falotico spoke about Lincoln’s 100-year history, and how looking to the past offers inspiration to the future. She specifically mentioned the designer label Continentals of the late 1970s, saying that the current Black Badge series cars reflect that same level of personalized luxury—although, sadly, they’re not available with Givenchy green velour. Even without velour interiors, Lincoln has reported its best sales in 21 years, up 7 percent globally in 2021 versus 2020, and is reaching a younger audience with an average buyer age in the early 50s. With its internal-combustion vehicles, Lincoln has focused on interior comfort, aiming for airy spaces with architectural details and unexpected high-end materials along with a customer service experience based around its Black Label trim and boutique dealership experiences. It aims to build on that with the upcoming EVs, creating a “third space,” outside an office or home, in which customers want to spend their time. With that, the sheet came off.
The Star is a good concept, in that it’s startling. It doesn’t look like a mildly decorated production car; it looks unreasonable, abnormal, conceptual. Our first thought was of an Apple wireless mouse, dramatically sloped and edged in light. It’s almost shockingly unadorned on the sides, with a wide expanse of door between the wheels. This was a conscious design choice, says Earl Lucas, Lincoln’s chief exterior designer. “You can put too much into a design,” says Lucas. “Overdo the detail, more convex shapes on it. But it starts to be fussy and it loses the elegance. And that’s the number-one thing that I have to convey with our brand, because the brand has to be noble, regal. “You know, exotics, when they have all the scoops and all that, it communicates a certain amount of testosterone. But when you go more elegant and more simplistic, it says this is a luxury, premium brand and I’m gonna stand the test of time.” Lincoln, says Lucas, is confident enough not to need wings and scoops, but it does lean heavily on lighting. Electric vehicles sit lower, and without the big grilles Lincoln has used to imposing effect on its gas-powered SUVs, it aims to capture attention by literally shining a spotlight on itself. The grille star glows, the headlights move and run up the see-through hood, illuminating a latticework beneath, and the lights change to greet the owner both inside and outside the car.
Light shows are not new, but we were impressed by Lincoln’s use of transparent materials. The frunk lid up front is electrochromatic glass, allowing light in during driving or going dark to hide the contents while parked. The A- and D-pillars are also transparent, with a structure created from a 3D-printed carbon honeycomb. Visibility and a sense of free space were priorities in the twining inside-outside design. Things like the conveyor-belt opening of the frunk or the honeycomb pillars might not be feasible in immediate production, but they show a willingness to think of unusual amenities, which we think will be crucial in the EV market as options for electric vehicles continue to increase. Connectivity is another popular buzzword, here shown in the form of Lincoln Attaché, a compartment in the rear door that acts as a “digital briefcase,” housing tablets or laptops while charging and connecting to Wi-Fi. You will never escape your Slack messages in the future, but at least you can sit somewhere comfortable to read them.

Inside, the Star makes use of the big space with the somewhat expected swiveling front-seat to rear-seat living room arrangement—we blame Syd Mead for making designers think we want to have tea parties in parking spaces—but also offers reclining lounge chairs, a refrigerator, and extending leg rests. The front half of the cabin lights up from floor to door, and a curved screen sweeps across the dash. Were this a working vehicle rather than an exercise in imagination, the screens would play different animations depending on your mood or time of day, and connect you to a digital assistant who could arrange carwashes, make dinner reservations, or just find and park for you, so you could swivel your seats and break out whatever was in the glass refrigerator. Because this is only a concept, we have no details as to its propulsion. For all we know, there’s a two-stroke gas engine in the back to move it on and off stage, but Lincoln has a flexible battery architecture with options for one- or two-motor configurations, so the production EVs should come with the ability to move themselves and respectable power and range numbers. Our favorite detail on the Star is the rear cargo area, which opens in an explosion of panels and hatches like some sort of double-jawed alien, only with the goal of providing a cozy tailgating spot, not eating your face. It looks like a perfect drive-in-movie machine. The Star won’t make production, but hopefully the tailgating hatch does.
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• This 1972 Jensen Interceptor Mk III, a mix of European design and American horsepower, is up for auction on Bring a Trailer.• Jensen combined Italian design, British touring-car ride, and American V-8s for a unique grand tourer.• Bidding is open until Saturday, April 23, with the current bid sitting at $1972 with four days to go.It’s worth buying a Jensen for the name alone. “Jensen Interceptor Mark III.” It sounds like a fighter jet, not a grand touring car from the ’70s. If that’s not enough appeal for you, how about the conversation starter of pulling up in a car that’s got Italian style, a herd’s worth of English leather, and power from an American muscle-car mill? This 1972 Jensen Interceptor Mark III is currently up for sale on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—in an auction ending this weekend.

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If you aren’t familiar with Jensen, the Interceptor belongs to the same club as the De Tomaso Pantera, or the Iso Grifo, one of those quirky small-volume car builders that combined European styling with American powerplants in the mid 20th century. Jensen started using American V-8s in the 1930s, but is best known for its ’60s and ’70s cars. The Interceptor Mk I came out in 1966, with a body designed by Carrozzeria Touring in Milan—the same styling house that did the Aston Martin DB5—and was built by another Italian coachbuilder, Vignale. The earlier cars used a Chrysler 383 V-8, but this later 1972 Mk III gets the biggest Mopar big-block, 440 cubic inches. Just as it would be in a Dodge Charger or Chrysler New Yorker, the V-8 is backed by a 727 three-speed automatic transmission. Jensen uses its own chassis and suspension, but we noticed the shift knob in the burlwood console looks awfully similar to one you’d find in a 1970 Challenger, so Mopar fans can assume they’ll find themselves right at home inside.

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The Mark III came out in 1971, with only a few changes from the previous design. The headlight bezels are more detailed, it got a wheel redesign, and it unfortunately lost the more attractive earlier three-spoke steering wheel. Not a problem, you can buy this car and replace the steering wheel. You’ll have to do a fair amount of interior work on this Jensen if you want it to be show quality. The wood is peeling, the leather is cracked, power antenna, air horns, and radio are inoperative, and the power windows work only intermittently. Some of those things are easier repairs than others. The seller says the window motors are Chrysler units which would make sourcing easy, but the Jensen famously required the hides of seven unlucky cows to make its luxurious seats and door panels, so unless you own a tannery, plan on shelling out for the interior resto.

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The exterior of an Interceptor is like a bubble-backed Barracuda and an Aston Martin had a baby. It’s a car with a great stance, elegant enough to roll up at a snooty hotel, but intimidating if it’s coming up fast in your rear view—and with a 440 under the hood, it could be. The Jensen 440s were not as high horsepower as their American siblings, but reviews of the Jensen praised its torque and—something the American muscle cars rarely heard—its handling. The powertrain in this car could use some tuning up. The sellers replaced the carburetor, as the car had been sitting since 2007, but the plug wires look elderly, the yellow Accel coil is definitely retro, the seller warns that the aftermarket cooling fans have not been hooked up, and everything leaks. None of the mechanical issues would be insurmountable to anyone with prior Chrysler experience, which is one of the pluses of these Euro/U.S. mashups.

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The biggest downers on this example of Interceptor are the rust and the aftermarket sunroof. There’s a fair amount of surface rust on the body, although it’s hard to know how far it goes, and underneath the exhaust is completely eaten through. The good parts are, the wasp nest in the back—free wasps!—no, kidding, those are bad. The good bits are the mostly complete interior, the original alloy wheels, and an overall good-running car. We say this based on the video of the seller doing donuts in it. This is a rare machine. Jensen made fewer than 2245 Mark IIIs, and that’s the most of any Jensen model. If this was our buy, we’d replace the aftermarket side mirrors with the cool original chrome ones, fix the mechanical issues, respray the car in burgundy, and then throw a blanket over the bad seat and drive around feeling fancy and picking on unsuspecting small-block muscle cars.

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BMW has revealed the new 2023 7-series sedan.It will be offered in six-cylinder 740i and V-8 760i models, with a plug-in-hybrid 750e model coming. There’s also the electric i7.The 740i starts at $94,925 and the 760i starts at $114,595, and both go on sale in the U.S. in November.The BMW 7-series has never quite enjoyed the same clout as the Mercedes S-class, but the latest G70 generation is here to make sure that the world doesn’t forget that it still serves as the Roundel’s flagship model. The 2023 7-series introduces a new design language for the brand with a distinctive front end and is chock full of new features including a movie-theater-style screen and a hands-free highway driver-assistance feature. It is also part of BMW’s expanding lineup of electric models, as the lineup now includes an EV version called the i7 that shares its body and interior with the gas-powered sedan but swaps in a large battery pack and electric motors.

BMW says it is simplifying the sedan’s powertrain combinations to reduce ordering complexity, but U.S. customers will still have several choices. There are inline-six and V-8 gas engines, plus the electric i7, covered separately, and a plug-in hybrid called the 750e. The base model is the 740i, which has a 375-hp turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six and rear-wheel drive, while the V-8 7-series is now called the 760i and comes only with xDrive all-wheel drive. Its twin-turbocharged V-8 engine has the same 4.4-liter displacement as the previous 750i (the model designation numbers haven’t meant anything real for a while now) but the engine comes with other upgrades to produce 536 horsepower, 13 hp more than before.
Both gas engines have 48-volt hybrid systems. BMW hasn’t released details about the 750e plug-in hybrid other than the fact that it will make 483 horsepower. BMW also says there will be an M-badged 7-series coming later, though not a full-fledged M7, with over 600 horsepower. The twin-turbo V-12, previously available in the M760i, is gone.The interior takes a major step forward in design, adopting a similar look as the iX electric SUV and using plenty of exotic materials including open-pore wood and available cashmere. The 7-series’ cabin also integrates an absurd amount of technology features within its numerous display screens and tablet control interfaces for both front- and rear-seat passengers. It’s also available with power-opening doors—a Rolls-Royce level of creature comfort. A hedonistic rear-seat package, as is de rigueur in this segment, includes a recliner-style chair on the passenger’s side with an extendable footrest. The optional BMW Theater Screen measures a massive 31.0 inches and extends down from the roof to offer rear passengers a more immersive viewing experience.
It’s no surprise that BMW is talking up the 7-series driving dynamics and highlighting chassis features including air springs and rear-wheel steering, but our earlier prototype drive didn’t reveal it to be significantly more athletic than its cushy predecessor. Of course, that’s no demerit in the flagship luxury sedan segment, as buyers in this arena likely appreciate plush ride quality and quietness above all and would look elsewhere if they desired more of a corner-carver. Plus, you won’t have to steer the 7-series at all if you opt for the Driving Assistance Professional package that includes a hands-free function that now works at up to 80 mph, provided you’re on a highway and keep your eyes on the road.The 7-series will go on sale in the U.S. in November, with prices starting at $94,295 for the 740i and $114,595 for the 760i xDrive. The i7 is more expensive than both, starting at $120,295. But it is worth noting that BMW significantly undercuts Mercedes’ pricing, as the six-cylinder S-class has a base price of $112,150 and the V-8 starts at $118,750. We look forward to finding out if you get what you pay for, or if the new 7-series can stick it to its chief rival this time around.
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