Next gen Nissan Z coming; could be called 400Z: Motor Trend spoke with Nissan’s VP of global and Japan product planning Ivan Espinoza and he said that the company hasn’t forgotten about the Z. A new car is coming and apparently the final design is close to being done but hasn’t been locked in. They also point to the dropping of the roadster for the 2020 model year as a change with the next gen car only being a coupe, pointing to a shrinking (sadly) drop top market. While they did say that the engine would increase in size, they were tight lipped on specifics of power and exact size, as well as if the car would get a hybrid version.
The Toyota Supra placed last in Motor Trends Best Drivers Car Competition: Yea you read that right. Out of 12 entries, the new GR Supra placed dead last. They had this to say about it: We can only review the vehicle we drive. And this early fifth-gen Supra still needs some development work. Rear-end oscillations, nervous steering, and overactive stability control. On a velvet-smooth road, the Supra has great power and predictability, but the rigors of Highway 198 sussed out this car’s flaws. Still needs work. They then wrote an article breaking down whats going on with the car.It pretty much didn’t perform well on a stretch of well known driving roads here in California, with them saying that the chassis and suspension need more calibration. The vehicle that placed before it? The Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye. Could this last place finish be attributed to an early dev car? Or does Toyota and BMW need to go back to the drawing board?
Speaking of Nissan, a new Frontier is coming as well: Motor Trend also spoke with executives about the new Frontier that’s coming. Stating that its a priority for them, the new truck is expected to make its debut sometime next year. The truck will have have better powertrains, though they wouldn’t elaborate on which ones. The truck will also ride on the same platform but updated so it can be competitive.
GM’s Electric and Autonomous future is going to alienate and possibly eliminate some of its workers: Bloomberg did a good piece on 2 GM workers who both joined the company at the same time over 15 years ago. One is a factory worker at GM’s Oshawa Ontario Plant; the other is an Engineer at GM’s nearby tech center doing work on EV’s. Simply put: the article paints a picture that GM’s visions for an electric autonomous future are going to leave thousands of factory workers in the dust.
Motor1 calls bullshit on Motor Trends dyno test of the new C8: Motor1 did an article, backed up by science, that pretty much says Motor Trends dyno numbers of the C8 putting out a real world 656 hp and 606 lb-ft of torque as bull. They say that who ever did the dyno made a mistake, and that MT was lazy enough to believe the mistake. It delves into and provides data proving that the engine cant possibly make over 650 horses.
Car & Driver’s long term Range Rover Velar was crap: Car & Driver updated its long term 40 thousand mile RR Velar and they pretty much had the typical problems with it we’ve come to expect with JLR vehicles. It had so many problems that log book entries for the vehicle stopped because no one wanted to deal with it anymore. Some of its problems included a leaking fuel line on the 2.0 turbo 4, a broken control unit wire that caused it not to start in one of the editors drive ways, and a myriad number of electrical glitches and gremlins, many of which happened so often they didn’t bother to tell the dealer about them. When will JLR vehicles stop having these annoying issues?