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 [...]

Canon, Cantons and Continentals

Sunday, 12:24pm | A hundred miles. It doesn’t sound like that much. Maybe a long round-trip commute or a weekend ride up to the grandparents. But take that same distance, move it 3,800 miles, and my, how things can change. If you’ve ever looked into great driving roads than you’ve undoubtedly heard that Europe is [...]

High Karate

It’s not often you see a car this rare and iconic go up on the auction block, especially considering its Japanese origin. The first of its kind, this 1967 Shelby/Toyota 2000GT was brought to life by none other than Mr. Carroll Shelby, himself, for the 1968 C-Production SCCA racing circuit. This was also significant, as [...]

Et Two, Brutus

Motorcycles are already far more efficient than their automotive petrol-hog brethren. Now that electric varieties have popped on the scene, you’ll start to see manufacturers emerge with new exhaust-free bikes and eventually go mainstream. The new and beefy Brutus 2.0 certainly doesn’t look like an electric bike hippies would fawn over, thanks to its sinister [...]

Call it a comeback

In America, the hatchback has long fought an uphill battle — garnering the scorn and disdain of image conscious buyers who prefer the look of a sedan or coupe. The thing is, regardless of mass public opinion, we think hatchbacks are great, especially on smaller vehicles where the proportions, engineering and design seem to jive [...]

Perfecting perfection

Another Porsche 911? Really? What else can they change with this automotive icon? Prepare yourself. No miniscule aesthetic changes such as little headlight and taillight tweaks. That’s for sure. This new version — known inside Porsche as the 991 — is different beyond expectations. 90% of the new car is reworked. With a stretched wheelbase [...]

Flight by light

It may look like a mechanical dragonfly but Metin Kaplan’s “Sunrise” is not a Da Vinci helicopter. By harnessing the power of the sun, Kalpan’s project aims to make thermal-powered flight a reality for a wider audience — and if you’re wondering who needs slower, solar-powered aviation just think about its applications in filming, patrolling, [...]

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 [...]

All cylinders firing

Good news: we were on the ground at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show (aka North American International Auto Show). Bad news: our luggage wasn’t. Trying to put together any editorial on an auto show without photography can be, well, a challenge and the last time we checked, our court-room sketching skills weren’t really up to [...]

Spice Kube

Beware, Porsche Cayenne. Your exotic SUV market share might dip a bit when the Maserati Kubang bows in 2014. The concept strutted its stuff in Detroit this past week, and it’s got some interesting background. First of all, it will be built in America (what??). It will be based on a Jeep Grand Cherokee platform [...]

NSXexy

The automotive gods have smiled upon us. Acura just pulled the curtains back on their NSX Concept and it is glorious. As a proper, modern follow-up to their iconic original from two decades ago, the NSX Concept makes all the right design moves. Centered around the prominent trademark “power plenum” grille (this time, done right), [...]

Lightning Bug

The latest VW Beetle is a winner in our book, so we were pumped to see the ultra-cool Volkswagen E-Bugster Concept in Detroit this week. Designed as a tantalizing package for their Blue-e-motion engine, the E-Bugster should be good for 100 miles thanks to its lithium-ion battery and can take a quick 80% charge in [...]

Bulls-Eye

We can all readily admit that neither the Dodge Neon nor the Dodge Caliber were remotely design hits. There really was no mourning period, frankly. But all that has changed with the release of the 2013 Dodge Dart ($15,995) in Detroit, largely because of the hard work of Chrysler designers and the benefit of the [...]

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 [...]

Fusion reaction

Let’s get it out of the way. There’s an undeniably Aston Martin aura about the all-new 2013 Ford Fusion. And rights (or rites) of design or not, we reckon it’s been a while since anyone’s spoken that highly about a mid-size Ford sedan. At least not here in the U.S. and perhaps going all the [...]