Auto Moto

The Mitsuoka Rock Star is one of the company's better creations. It shrinks down the body of a C2 Corvette and places it on the chassis of an ND Mazda Miata. Actually, we should say Roadster, because for the most part, all Rock Stars are built on the Japanese-spec Mazdas. All, that is, except for the Rock Star Only1. It is indeed based on a Canadian-spec MX-5 Miata complete with left-hand drive, and like the name implies, there's only one in existence.

The "regular" right-hand-drive Rock Star starts at approximately $42,000, and if you're dropping that kind of coin for your faux Mid-Year 'Vette, why settle for right-hand-drive? To get the full Stingray experience, you need to have the steering wheel on the left. That's why Mitsuoka has built a single Rock Star out of a Miata imported from North America.

Of the six Heritage Editions Ford has released to celebrate the newest Ford GT, two have commemorated original GT40s from 1966. Here is the third, the Alan Mann Heritage Edition. It recalls the lightweight Ford GT40 experimental prototypes that Alan Mann Racing (AMR) created in England in 1966, referred to at the time as AM GT-1 and AM GT-2. Mann's team reskinned the GT40 in aluminum and made a small number of mechanical changes to the MkI GT40 powered by the 289-cubic-inch V8, aiming at Le Mans that year. Of the five his crew ordered, he received just two before Ford shifted its attention to the GT40 MkII that used the 427-ci V8. AMR campaigned his two cars in Europe anyway. Although the pair never won a major race, Ford learned important lessons from what Mann had done, hence this carbon-fiber-bodied tip of the hat.

In December, the automaker teased a few lustrous red angles of the new GT accented with gold and Frozen White stripes, AMR's signature colors. The revealed coupe is just as pretty as we suspected, those dual gold stripes running from tip to extendable tail. AM 1 raced with the number 16 in its roundel, reproduced here on the doors and hood as with the original, and again on the underside of the rear wing instead of on the top corner of the rear fender. Glistening black accents come in the exposed carbon fiber front splitter, mirrors, side sills, engine louvers and rear diffuser, and 20-inch wheels hiding lacquered black Brembo brake calipers.  

The 2022 Subaru WRX was one of 2021’s most eagerly awaited releases and reviews have been showing it has promise. But is it good enough to overcome its questionable looks and lackluster performance on paper? And is it different enough from the previous generation? According to Throttle House, the answer is yes.

Many of the most historically celebrated entry-level performance cars all share one big limiting factor, front-wheel drive. While those limitations can be mitigated, the truth is that front-wheel-drive isn’t as potent for driving performance as its alternatives. And that’s why this epic turbocharged AWD Acura RSX now exists.

According to a report coming out of Japan, Nissan is putting a stop to almost all new gasoline engine development in its major markets. It's making one exception, the report says, and that's for pickup trucks sold in the U.S.

The reason, the Nikkei reports, is that governments around the world are making it increasingly difficult to sell cars running solely on internal combustion engines. Emissions rules instituted in Europe, in an effort to phase out gasoline cars in favor of electric vehicles, are making the development of new petrol engines financially untenable for Nissan.

Mazda will continue filling every conceivable gap in its lineup of crossovers when it unveils a new model called CX-60. Positioned above the CX-50 launched in 2021, the CX-60 will help the Japanese firm move upmarket with a rear-wheel-drive platform and an upscale design.

The next addition to the Mazda range will inaugurate the rear-wheel-drive architecture that we've heard about for years. Official details are few and far between, but we know that one of the CX-60's available powertrains will be a gasoline-electric plug-in hybrid system built around a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and tuned to develop over 300 horsepower. We're guessing that Mazda's upcoming straight-six engine will be offered in some markets as well. Rear-wheel-drive will come standard, and all-wheel-drive will presumably be offered at an extra cost.

Mazda published a teaser for the brand-new CX-60, a five-seater plug-in hybrid SUV for the European market that is set to debut on March 8. The new model will be the first Mazda with a PHEV powertrain and one of the four new SUVs from the automaker’s Large Product Group that will be introduced in 2022 and 2023.

The specifications say that the 2022 Subaru Forester has 28.9 cubic-feet of cargo space behind the back seat or 26.9 cubic-feet with the giant sunroof found on most trim levels. Those figures are about 10 cubic-feet less than the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4 and Hyundai Tucson, the segment leaders. It's even behind one of the segment's smallest members, the Mazda CX-5. 

Something's fishy, though. When this Forester generation was launched for 2019, Subaru's published cargo capacity numbers were 35.4 cu.ft and 33.0 cu.ft (no sunroof). Although still slightly less than the big boys, those figures are quite obviously far more competitive. They're also far closer to reality.

You buy a Subaru WRX for its performance, or its handling, or maybe both, but not because you can travel so far between gas stops that you need a stint on a dialysis machine at the end of every journey after holding in your pee so long.

The beautiful Toyota 2000GT of the 1960s is as central to Japanese sport car history as the Shelby Cobra is to America's. Now imagine the two teaming up to take on the best from Porsche and Lotus.

In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder and Road Test Editor Zac Palmer. The car chat begins this week with a review of the 2022 Kia EV6, followed by Zac's drive of the 2022 Acura NSX Type-S. Then they discuss Autoblog's new long-term loan, a 2022 BMW 330e xDrive. They've also been driving the Ford Explorer Timberline and Kia Sorento Hybrid.

In the news, they discuss the soon-to-be-revealed Alfa Romeo Tonale, as well as the recently unveiled Aston Martin DBX707. Finally, Greg talks about a historical Detroit landmark, the old American Motors Company headquarters, which is set to be demolished.

Carroll Shelby's touch still lingers to grace the auction fates of vintage racers rarely spoken of in conjunction with his name. Last August, it was RM Sotheby's offering a Ruddspeed Ace, the English roadster that served as archetype for Shelby's Cobra. Next month, at the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, Gooding & Co will put a 1967 Toyota 2000GT on the block, chassis number MF10-100001. This was the first production model with a serial number to leave the Toyota line in Japan, destined for Carroll Shelby's California shop for development to race in the 1968 SCCA Championship in the C/Production class for imports. Toyota was making its name on dealer lots with economy cars, but wanted to win on Sunday against competitors like Alfa Romeo, Datsun, Lotus, Nissan, Porsche and Triumph. 

This is one of three cars Shelby's development team prepped for the series, helping to spend the $500,000 Toyota invested in the race program. Driver Davey Jordan piloted MF10-100001 to fourth in the championship that year, teammate Scooter Patrick finishing third behind the two Porsche 911s run by the Vasek Polak dealer team. That would usually be considered an outstanding result for a first-time campaign of a brand new car in an automaker's first effort at a country's national series. But Toyota didn't want outstanding, it wanted the gold cup. Retail customer 2000GTs cost $7,150, which was about $2,000 more than a Porsche 911 or a Jaguar XKE at the time, almost $3,000 more than a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette. The Toyota's slow sales were probably already helped by fantastic reviews and its appearance in the 1967 James Bond film "You Only Live Twice," but would likely have been aided by even more by headlines about beating Porsches. Jordan later said, "Toyota lost a little bit of face and discontinued their racing efforts. There was no talk of going racing at all (in 1969)." Toyota quit the series at the end of 1968, and quit producing the 2000GT in 1970 after 351 had been built.     

For many enthusiasts, autonomous driving represents the antithesis of everything we love about cars. However, Toyota says that autonomous driving technology isn't necessarily out to turn your car into a living room on wheels. Instead, the carmaker sees it as a way to augment the driver — and so it has developed the world's first autonomously drifting car.

Developed by the Toyota Research Institute, the modified Supra is modified with a GReddy wide-body kit and some very quick software. Engineers say the programming can "calculate a whole new trajectory every 20th of a second." It was developed with the help of professional drift driver Ken Gushi.

We're fairly familiar with stories about customers suing dealers or carmakers but now one New York Nissan dealer is taking the automotive giant to court for allowing a rival outlet to open too close to his own store.