Category: News

Autoblog video week in review | Nov. 17-23

The video roundup post is your weekly landing spot for all things Autoblog video. This week the Ford Mustang Mach-E and Tesla Cybertruck were revealed. And at our Detroit office, we got the new 2020 Toyota GR Supra to play with. There's also a new Podcast episode where the main topic of discussion is the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show. 

On Sunday the Ford Mustang Mach-E was revealed.

Ford Mustang Mach-E playlist:

We had a 2020 Toyota GR Supra in our Detroit fleet so we had to feature it on episode 3 of our new video series Behind The Wheel that launches every Monday. Editor Zac Palmer also highlights some of the more interesting/quirky tidbits about the much anticipated Japanese sports car in several Short Cuts.

Toyota Supra playlist:

If you're a gamer you probably already know that we stream live to our Twitch channel every Tuesday. This week host Erik Maier played some Need For Speed: Heat and was joined by Green Editor John Snyder. 

Make sure to check out our new video offering, POV Drives. They're much different than any of our other videos but while experimental in nature they're an undeniably unique way to experience a vehicle. We upload a new one every Wednesday:

Cyberpunk Thursday? No, Cybertruck Thursday. Elon revealed the Tesla Cybertruck. Here's a playlist with Autoblog's Vehicle Reveal video with all the insights from Tesla's Live reveal event. Also in this playlist, all the videos from Tesla's press site. Spoiler alert, there are only five and they're all very short and none too revealing. 

Tesla Cybertruck playlist:

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Fridays are for the Podcast! On Autoblog Podcast Episode #605 Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder and Associate Editor Zac Palmer. the main topic of discussion is the 2019 Los Angeles Auto Show. Of course, they've gotta talk about the Ford Mustang Mach-E — and its questionable naming scheme. They also run down some other L.A. show highlights including the Toyota RAV4 Prime, Kia Seltos, Lexus LC 500 Convertible, and Audi RS Q8. Then they talk about the cars they've been driving: the 2020 Chevy Silverado with the Duramax diesel engine and the 2020 Subaru Legacy Touring XT.

This Toyota Supra sounds really good | Behind the Wheel S01 // E03

Behind the Wheel is a new video series that shows you a bit of what it’s like to work at Autoblog. The editors and video producers will show you the cars passing through our fleet, and you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the personalities who help make the site run. 

Episode 3 features the 2020 Toyota GR Supra and Autoblog Editor Zac Palmer. We were so excited to hear how it sounded, we couldn't help but rev the motor in our parking lot under the building. Apparently, the exhaust note of this BMW-Toyota collab was so loud it could be heard from inside our second-floor office.

Do you like this video? Disagree with our take on the Supra? What cars do you want to see in our fleet? We’d love to hear from you so please comment below!

Gear the Video team used to make this: 

Panasonic GH5s

Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm F2.8

Rode VidMic Pro

JOBY GorillaPod 3K Stand

Tiffen 58mm Variable ND Filter

GoPro Hero 7 Black

Adobe Premiere

Autoblog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. These deals are available through our affiliate partnership with Amazon.com. Deals are subject to Amazon's schedule and availability.

Watch Bloodhound close out high-speed testing with a 628 mph run

When we last caught up with Bloodhound, the jet engine-powered earth rocket that has been conducting tests in the desert in South Africa, the team had reached 501 miles per hour and become one of the world’s 10 fastest cars. Now they’ve added another milestone, smashing their most recent target of 600 mph and then some, reaching an astonishing 628 mph.

Video footage captured during the test run on Saturday shows the Bloodhound screaming across the table-flat salt pan, kicking up an awesome fin of Kalahari Desert dust in its wake. The sound as it passes by the camera is jaw-dropping. An analysis showed that the airflow beneath the car went supersonic and stripped paint from an area three meters back from the front wheels.

It took driver Andy Green 50 seconds and just over five miles to reach maximum velocity. He launched the vehicle in “max dry” mode, with no flames visible out of the massive exhaust nozzle, up to 50 mph, then put the pedal down to push the Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine into afterburn mode. Green actually let up on the gas, so to speak, at 615 mph to stabilize the vehicle and deploy the twin parachute to begin slowing down. It came to halt around the 11 kilometer mark — a little shy of seven miles.

With the latest feat, Bloodhound have declared an end to the high-speed test program, which took place over the last few weeks on a 12-mile-long course in a dry lake bed.

The team hopes to break the world land speed record of 763 mph, set by Green driving the Thrust SSC in 1997, within 12 to 18 months on the same course on Hakskeen Pan. The ultimate goal is to determine the size of the rocket needed to go to 1,000 mph.

This transforming drone can take on the sky, the ocean, or the open road

Transcript: A transforming drone. Airblock by Makeblock is a modular drone. Designed to teach kids the fundamentals of programming, design, aerodynamics, and logic and critical thinking. The single core master module comes with 6 magnetically-attachable power modules. It comes as a flying drone out of the box that you control with your smartphone. But you can build several crafts with the components like a car, hovercraft, and much more. Airblock is crash-friendly making it a good starter drone. The programmable drone from Airblock can be purchased right here for $79.99. 

Autoblog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. These deals are available through our affiliate partnership with Amazon.com. Deals are subject to Amazon's schedule and availability.

Porsche launches online car sales pilot program in U.S.

Porsche is launching a pilot program to offer online sales of new and used cars for the first time in the U.S., reflecting changing consumer preferences and taking digital retailing about as far as it can go under current dealer franchise laws.

Porsche says it has already launched the program as a joint pilot with 25 of its 191 U.S. Porsche dealers, with a wider rollout possible if all goes well. It will allow customers to move beyond using the web merely for researching vehicle specs and prices and let them view inventories, calculate payments and trade-in value, get approved for credit and sign up for financing and insurance options through Porsche Financial Services. They can also upload photos of their personal documents for ID verification and of their car for trade-in valuation. Dealers will then prepare final paperwork for customers to come in and sign before taking delivery.

The program means buyers need visit the dealer only once to collect their Porsche, with the ability to do all the other paperwork from their computer or mobile device. “For our dealerships, who are at the core of our strategic initiatives, we think this blend of digital and physical interaction with customers will only strengthen their business,” Klaus Zellmer, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America, said in a statement.

A Porsche spokesperson said the participating dealers have installed and launched the service on their dealership websites over the past month, so the program is already live. Porsche is also launching a similar program in Germany.

Automakers have been exploring new ways to overhaul the car-buying experience as customers express dissatisfaction with the traditional automotive dealership model. Tesla most notably employs a direct retail model, bypassing dealer franchises altogether in favor of company-owned stores and online retailing, but that leaves it unable to sell its vehicles in many states with strict franchise laws. Porsche also offers a subscription service called Porsche Passport in select markets that starts at $2,000 a month and includes unlimited ability to switch models.

“We do not benchmark but instead develop new programs based on how we can best exceed customer expectations,” a Porsche spokesperson told Autoblog.

The new pilot covers all new and pre-owned vehicles in a dealership’s inventory.

Michigan dealer turns a Jeep Gladiator into a Scrambler tribute

Motor1 discovered this gem buried on YouTube, a Jeep Gladiator made over into a tribute to the Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler. Built by Preferred Jeep in Grand Haven, Michigan — and still for sale at the time of writing — the Scrambler look-back just about nails one of the iconic Scrambler liveries from 1982. The only things missing are the brown hardtop and brown wheel cover for the bed-mounted spare tire.

The truck's based on a Gladiator S with the eight-speed auto. We'd prefer the six-speed manual, but the transmission isn't a misstep — the original offered a three-speed automatic. White wagon-wheel rims wear 35-inch tires under a two-inch Mopar lift, the custom roll bar is lined with enough lights to spook everything in the hills, and the spare tire gets a period-correct Y-shaped retaining bar. There's a basic infotainment system inside, and plenty of other features the Scrambler never offered like climate control, heated front seats, and Bluetooth.

Anyone who wants to take the dealer version home will start the negotiating at $52,270 before incentives. Sure, that's not far off Gladiator Rubicon asking prices, but frankly, it's also not far off some original Scrambler asking prices. In 2010 you could find OG Jeep pickups in the fancier Laredo trim under $10K. Dealers and private sellers are now asking anywhere from the mid-$20,000s to more than $40,000 for good examples of the one-time ugly duckling. Models with LS engine swaps have gone for close to $50,000 at auction this year.

Jeep created a Scrambler concept for this year's Easter Jeep Safari and "didn't rule [it] out ... for production one day." Until one day comes, Grand Haven's work might do the trick.  

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The Subaru Outback is pretty much the entire wagon market

Last year in the United States, Subaru dealers sold a new Outback wagon every 2.94 minutes. Sales were brisker the year before, when dealers sold a new Outback every 2.78 minutes. It cracked the 50,000-units-per-year barrier every year but one starting in 1997, and has shifted more than 100,000 units annually in the United States every year since 2011. From 2013-2015, Kelley Blue Book said the Outback sat on dealer lots for less time than any other car on sale. Here's a starker set of numbers: J.D. Power, as quoted in a CNBC video, put the U.S. station wagon market at 1.4% of the total U.S. car market in 2018. However, the Outback alone was 1.2%, meaning the sales of every other wagon amounted to a minuscule 0.2% of the total car market. Or, as Road & Track put it, "Out of every 20 wagons sold here, 17 are Subaru Outbacks. Damn."

Without taking anything away from Subaru, we need to thank Audi again for bringing the RS 6 Avant and A6 Allroad here, even if the best the Ingolstadt brand can do is bleed marketing dollars to scrap it out with every other automaker for, well, scraps.

The CNBC vid doesn't get into how the Outback became the wagon heavyweight save for a mention about it being "part wagon, part crossover" and saying it has "evolved to incorporate more attributes of SUVs and crossovers" like all-wheel drive. That take overlooks the fact that Subaru debuted the jacked-up, bold-faced Legacy Outback at the end of 1994 as a 1995-model-year offering. Subaru designed the Legacy Outback to be a wagon/SUV tweener, well after Subaru was already known for its AWD chops, and before anyone had coined the word "crossover." The Toyota RAV4, now credited as being the first crossover, didn't show until early 1996. A Subaru exec said in 2014, "We could see the sales explode in SUVs and nobody else really produced a car-based SUV." That quote, by the way, came in a nifty article about the death of the station wagon, shortly after the author wrote, "The real culprit behind the disappearance of the middle class wagon in America (besides the entire American car-buying public) is, in my opinion, the Subaru Outback."   

It helped that Subaru knew its niche and built just the car its customers wanted, which is why Car and Driver named the Outback the best wagon for an active, outdoor lifestyle, why Autotrader calls it "the best of a few different worlds," and why CarMax has averaged more than two used Outbacks sold every day for 13 years.

But the marketing campaigns sealed it. Practically picking up where Subaru left off with irreverent DL wagon marketing in the 1970s - that was the wagon that "climbed like a goat, worked like a horse and ate like a bird" - Subaru has put Crocodile Dundee, Lance Armstrong, shaming the Germans, animals who want Ricky, honeymooners, and the "Love" of oh so many dogs to work in the wild, mountainous, rainy outdoors flogging its wares. Any CMOs looking for a case study in ROI, the Outback is that, too. Anyone looking for another sad story about the dim future for wagons, check out the video above.

Build your own robot on wheels with this awesome kit

Transcript: Build your own robot on wheels. The mBot kit from Makeblock teaches how to build and program robots. This educational kit uses block-based programing. It aims to make learning about robotics and programming simple and fun. mBot has 4 expansion ports with more than 100 electronic modules, and a large variety of add-ons. mBot has 3 modes: obstacle avoidance, line-follow, and manual control. Makeblock’s mBot is currently 40% off at $60.00.

You can check it out here.

Autoblog is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. These deals are available through our affiliate partnership with Amazon.com. Deals are subject to Amazon's schedule and availability.

World’s first esports racing arena could find a home in Miami

Miami is experiencing a sort of sports venue boom right now. Just a few years ago, the Miami Dolphins unveiled a renovated Hard Rock Stadium, David Beckham is in the process of bringing a new MLS soccer arena to the city (supposedly), and now Millennial Esports says it's building what it claims to be the world's first dedicated esports racing arena in South Beach.

Esports have been exploding in popularity over the past 10 years, but any time there's been a massive event like the Fortnite World Cup or the FIA Gran Turismo Championship, it takes place in a preexisting event space or sports venue. The 2019 League of Legends World Championship, for example, takes place at at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris, France. Millennial Esports wants to shift that trend.

In partnership with Florida-based racing simulator company Allinsports, Millennial Esports Corporation will build a 12,000-square-foot arena in the Wynwood entertainment district in Miami. For reference, a football field is roughly 57,000 square feet, so it's not huge. Based on the photos, it sort of looks like a live set for a TV show with massive screens up front.

The company plans to use the space for local and global esports racing leagues and competitions as well as general esports events. Furthermore, the building will also serve as a training academy facility for digital drivers. The space will feature 30 racing simulators, and professional drivers will have the option to install full-size simulators. 

Millennial Esports has plans to build numerous dedicated facilities around the globe as the sport and industry continues to expand. The Miami facility is scheduled to open in 2020.

Custom cabinetry gives this Subaru Outback camper cred

Where there's space, there's wood to make it more functional. At least, that seems to be the ethos at customization shop Solid Wood Worx. The Huntington Beach, Calif.-based company has turned vehicles such as the Ram ProMaster, Nissan XTerra, Toyota 4Runner, and Ford F-250 into small, livable mobile homes. The most recent project is a Subaru Outback, which uses a unique series of cabinets to meet a fairly complex checklist of asks. 

Noticed by Motor1, the Outback belongs to an adventurer named Sean who is setting out on a six-month climbing trip. She reached out to Brian, a woodworker and former cabinet builder, at Solid Wood Worx with her vision of the Outback as a sleep-in camper. She wanted a flat place where she and her 80-pound dog could sleep, a slide-out kitchen with stove and fridge, storage for climbing gear, storage for clothes, and a designated space for a water supply. Possibly the biggest ask was an integrated solar panel with a battery and inverter for off-the-grid living. Brian made it all work. 

With the solar panel and spare tire hitched to the Thule roof rack and out of the way, Brian built an interior platform that stretched from the rear hatch to the back of the front seats. Since this eliminated any use of the rear seats, they were taken out. The platform itself has built-in drawers, and the upper portion is split into two functional spaces. The right side has just enough room to fit a small mattress, but Sean looks small, so it should work perfectly. Beneath the bed is the sliding drawer that stows the camp stove. On the left side is a massive amount of storage that doubles as secondary kitchen prep space. On top of that is a small fridge that opens on top like a cooler. 

With the kitchen area in its "out" position, a secondary panel opens up to the space where the spare tire used to be. Inside that, Brian's team fitted the wiring, fuses and equipment for the solar panel's battery storage. For this project, Brian used a 100 amp-hour battery and a 100-watt solar kit from Renogy. That power feeds an inverter, a few USB plugs, and the small fridge.

Looking through the rear passenger door, there are even more storage spaces for things such as clothes, bedding, shoes, and a laptop. The water tank slides in behind the front seat. 

In most of his builds, Brian uses three-quarter-inch nine-ply pine plywood that he gets from Home Depot. It costs roughly $35 for a 4x8 sheet, and each piece weighs about 60 pounds. He says he uses it because it is almost always readily available and because it generally has less marks, a nicer finish, and is more often a straight piece of wood. Other plywoods are also more likely to chip or cut poorly, which is an obvious issue for quality control. For lighter builds or saving space, he occasionally uses five-ply boards.

In some of his videos, Brian even lays out some plans and instructions on how to build your own drawers or start a van build of your own. For more information on this and other cool projects, check out Solid Wood Worx on Instagram or YouTube.

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