Ralph Nader’s durable complaint about Detroit was not simply that cars could be dangerous. It was that the industry had a recurring habit of selling theater while treating engineering discipline as negotiable. Unsafe at Any Speed fixed public attention on the Corvair, but the larger accusation was that styling, marketing, and cost-cutting were too often…

America cannot get enough of zombies. From The Last of Us to The Walking Dead, the culture loves a body that keeps moving after the vital signs flatline. It was probably inevitable, then, that the country also kept one of its oldest car companies shambling along long after the metabolism stopped. Chrysler, and to a…

Cadillac’s 4.2-liter Blackwing V8 was the sort of engine companies build when they want to announce that they still remember who they are. First shown in 2018 in the facelifted CT6 V-Sport, and later sold in production form as the CT6-V and CT6 Platinum 4.2, the hand-built, twin-turbocharged DOHC V8 was a clean-sheet Cadillac engine,…

Pictured from its most controversial angle, the Celestiq makes a bold statement that Cadillac must carry throughout its model line to survive (Extremely Rachel Maddow voice): To understand why, we need to look at the 1957 Eldorado Brougham—and a man named Antoine. At $340,000, the Celestiq isn’t competing with Tesla or Mercedes. It isn’t even…

What’s automotive kryptonite for enthusiasts? A brown manual diesel wagon, of course. In the U.S., this has been hard to find, but it’s getting harder still to find any combination of those words as every month in 2025 passes. As of August, 2025, the Volvo V60 is gone from U.S. showrooms, and the wagon’s time…

The Lexus LC500 is the last of a breed it epitomized. Lexus would say the LC has no predecessor, yet its lineage can be traced to the superlative Lexus SC and Japanese-market Toyota Soarer (Z30) produced from 1992–2000. The SC defined proportion and restraint while the LFA (2010–2012) proved Lexus could marry precision with passion.…

It’s often implied the Supra was developed first. In truth, the Lexus SC and Z30 Toyota Soarer preceded it by nearly two years, and they were so well realized that Toyota’s sports-car team later lifted their subframes, suspension, and driveline for the Mark IV Supra. The SC400 in particular became an unlikely equalizer, chosen by…

Welcome to the place where logic breaks down, not with a bang but with $500 bottles of brake fluid (Rolls SZ) and the vague smell of an overheated AMEX Centurion. The below cars are not “bad cars” in the normal sense; they’re proof that the right combination of hubris, panic, and corporate disarray can move…

The late Bruno Sacco and what many consider to be his magnum opus I. Defending the Throne By the late 1980s, Mercedes-Benz seemed untouchable. The W126 S-Class had set the standard for presence, durability, and sales. Stuttgart was not supposed to be surprised. Then BMW launched the E32. Subtle German piece on the E32 vs…

A recent article by Hagerty titled “The Tech Driving Today’s Vehicles Could Turn Them into Tomorrow’s Junk” landed without resistance because the premise is already visible in the cars themselves. Modern vehicles are no longer machines with software layered on top. They are software systems with hardware attached. When the software ages out, the car…

BMW’s V12 flagship did not just shock the establishment. It rewrote the rules. Bookends: the final (G12 M760Li) the first generation (E32 750iL) BMW V12 flagships I. Speak Softly and Carry More Cylinders BMW had built its name on sports sedans. Then it launched the 750i and 750iL, and the luxury hierarchy broke. Mercedes delayed…