Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Drivers have their day

We approach track time like a fluffy white cat to Fancy Feast. That is, we lick our chops… which is exactly what happened in sunny Las Vegas on Superbowl weekend in the all-new 2013 Lexus GS and LFA supercar. With a bevy of Lexus staff and race car driver extraordinaire, Scott Pruett, we availed ourselves [...]

Makes going topless classy

The Porsche Boxster is surely here to stay as evidenced by its success, critics’ raves and the fact that Porsche has done it up even better than before with an early taste of their all-new 2013 Porsche Boxster. Though the reworking is nothing earth-shattering, the sheetmetal is clearly an upgrade. It’s downright gorgeous in our [...]

Where its ATS

The 2013 Cadillac ATS is the much anticipated sports sedan from GM, about to make its world debut in Detroit. In development since the early 2000′s, the ATS project had the BMW 3-Series in its crosshairs. But will it be the 3-Series killer it’s intended to be? Cadillac thinks so, and the numbers seem right [...]

All Right

If the resident car nuts here at Gear Patrol can agree on one thing (which doesn’t happen very often) it’s that we consider ourselves “wagon-ites”, for lack of a better term. Practically no one does it better than Audi, or Subaru, and specifically the all new 2013 Audi allroad Quattro. First introduced in 1999 in [...]

Super Natural

We have a big soft spot for pick-up trucks. Not just because they represent so much of what America is and how we get work done, but the fact that when it comes to two-axle haulers, no one does a full-size pickup like the U S of A. Even as fuel prices have rocketed and [...]

Not so nano

Yeah, we know. Another day, another iPod Dock. But unlike the one sitting in your bedroom, the 8-foot by 4-foot Behringer iNuke Boom ($30,000) probably won’t fit on your nightstand. Then again, it won’t win any awards for classy product names either. Inside the 700 pound stereo beast, the iNuke has been endowed with 10,000 [...]

Old school American muscle? We'll take it.

3-Series, 6-Deep

The BMW 3-Series stands as one of the all-time greats. At the top of every automobile magazine’s list of best cars for the past three decades and the performance benchmark by which all other sport sedans are measured, the 3-Series is a modern icon of automobilia. Outdoing the last one is tantamount to making the [...]

Design Within Reach

Volvo has long been seen as the safe car. But no one wants to date the “safe” guy. And only billion dollar corporations afraid of lawsuits give out awards for completing something safely. Needless to say, “safe” isn’t a buzz word that lights up headlines. Armed with this cultural realization Volvo’s designers and engineers decided [...]

Lock 'n' Load

Armageddon is just around the corner. Okay, maybe not. But just in case, there are some niche vehicles out there that are up to the task (you know, traversing washed out roads, bludgeoning snowbanks and mowing down zombies). American Expedition Vehicles knows. They just built one such vehicle by outfitting a standard Jeep Rubicon 4×4 [...]

Envy Green

The Mazda Miata (or MX-5 in current form) has clearly put its automotive stamp on the world. It truly is a purist’s car with great balance, a precise shifter and envied lightness and handling. A classic roadster for the modern world, indeed. Now, the Japanese automaker has come out with a special version for the [...]

Beetle, Juiced

Are we done with black yet? Don’t hold your breath, as VW is following Porsche and BMW’s latest dark act, providing a limited edition of cloaked vehicles with special paint, trim and tires. Now far from emasculating and upped in the masculinity quotient, the 2012 Volkswagen Beetle Black Turbo Edition ($25,720) aims to draw 600 [...]

Yes. This is Real.

Every once in a while something comes along so crazy, so unearthly cool, we have to shout it from the rooftops. Today just happens to be that once in a while, so feast your eyes on the BMW boxer engine powered Hoverbike. Framed around an 1,170cc 4-stroke BMW boxer engine that powers the twin rotors, [...]

X Marks the M.D.

Suburban monster truck

In Chrysler’s protracted rise from the dead, we’re glad to see that the marque is finally churning out a stream of vehicles worthy of a man’s coveted garage space. The new Grand Cherokee, the completely redesigned 300 sedan and now the all new decadently inappropriate 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8. Sporting the clean lines from [...]