Tag: jalopnik.com

Restomods are tough to execute tastefully, but what seems even tougher is taking a modern car and reskinning it to look like an old one, like Mitsuokas that are ornately restyled economy cars. Modern safety and emissions regulations can make it difficult to accurately recreate or evoke vintage proportions and aesthetics, and I fear that may…

Before we jump into how they handle punctures, it’s important to understand what low-profile tires are. Let’s take a Michelin 225/40 R18 tire, for example. The “40” denotes the sidewall measurement, which, as you may know, is defined as a percentage. For those unaware, a 40-series sidewall means the distance from the rim to the…

Acura celebrated securing its first IMSA victory of the season in Long Beach last weekend and then, almost immediately, followed it up with the news on Wednesday that its factory-backed two-car ARX-06 IMSA GTP program with Meyer-Shank Racing would be terminated at the close of the 2026 season. The US arm of Honda Racing Corporation controls…

Motorcycle manufacturers have been trying to kill the carburetor for decades. Münch was the first to introduce fuel injection in the terrifyingly huge 1973 Mammoth TTS-E 1200, but that was a highly-limited bike, with only 130 ever produced. It took seven years for mainstream brands to catch up, with Kawasaki introducing the Z1000 Classic – the…

Rivian’s ethos has always been about taking on the great outdoors and being one with nature. Well, nature decided it wanted to be one with Rivian, and that’s why it sent an EF-1 tornado into Rivian’s Normal, Illinois, factory over the weekend. That didn’t stop Rivian from coming out on top, though, because the first…

Automobiles were still in their relative infancy in 1905, but they had been growing more popular for years. There was a problem, though: they were extremely noisy. One cause of the noise were the poppet valve caps and springs that would open and close access to the intake and exhaust valves. Charles Knight, an American inventor,…

The Smart brand is best known for its diminutive Fortwo city car that was so small that people would tip them on their hind-end as a prank, and despite Smart leaving the U.S. market in 2019, it still is a thriving car company with multiple different models in many countries outside the United States. The…

Remember that one time you got a traffic ticket and had the intrusive thought of, “What would actually happen if I just… never paid this?” Well, if you’re an Audi driver in Washington, D.C., apparently the answer is “not a whole lot for quite a long time.” DC police finally impounded a black, second-gen Q5…

Spirit Airlines was teetering on the verge of liquidation last week. Some sources said the low-cost carrier had only a week to live. President Donald Trump is now close to handing a $500 million loan to Spirit. However, this bailout would come with a catch. The federal government could be granted the power to potentially…

Naming cars after animals is a long and storied tradition, around since the dawn of the automobile. Everything from rare forgotten classics, like the art deco proto-minivan Stout Scarab, to the perennial sales favorite, the Ford Mustang, have bore titles reminiscent of the nature their very existence demoralizes. Usually, but not always, a powerful animals stands…