Smart and Sustainable Electric Mobility
Filed under: Green,Marketing/Advertising,Motorsports,Porsche,Truck,Wagon,Electric,Off-Road Vehicles,Racing Vehicles
Continue reading Porsche's Taycan Cross Turismo two-steps with a monster truck
Porsche's Taycan Cross Turismo two-steps with a monster truck originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsFiled under: Green,Volkswagen,Wagon,Electric,Sedan,5g Connectivity
Continue reading Volkswagen allegedly begins working on a more upscale Passat replacement
Volkswagen allegedly begins working on a more upscale Passat replacement originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 13:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsVolkswagen's European-spec Passat wagon came up short in the world-renowned "moose test," swinging its long tail out wide in the infamous maneuverability test designed to evaluate a vehicle's ability to spare a hypothetical moose (not to mention the vehicle's occupants) in the event that he wanders into the travel lane.
In this case, the evaluation performed by Km77.com (spotted by Motor1) produced results that might raise a few eyebrows, especially among those who covet the wagon variant of VW's midsize car.
The Passat initially fails the test at 48 mph, with its tail snapping loose as the driver completes the initial lane change. It then swings wide in the opposite direction as the driver attempts to correct for the oversteer.
Over the course of the test, the Passat manages to tag cones on both ends of the maneuver. If this were a real road — especially a narrow two-lane in Europe — those would be curbs or perhaps even soft shoulders.
Km77.com repeated the test multiple times, finally getting the Passat to behave at 45 mph (73 kph), which the outlet described as "quite slow" as evaluation speeds go.
While "moose test" may be the catchy term for it, the evaluation is simply an emergency lane-change maneuver. It is far more likely to be relevant for drivers who may encounter children or reversing cars encroaching on the road than the four-legged beast that inspired its name.
It's notorious for punishing vehicles engineered with a high center of gravity, with American-market crossovers and SUVs often getting called out for their poor performance in one of the most notorious evasive maneuver tests in the world.
Sedan-based station wagons simply aren't supposed to suffer from the same shortcomings. VW's Euro-spec Passat wagon is the rare exception. It's not only a low-slung wagon, but one engineered in Europe — where expectations for vehicle dynamics are ostensibly higher. We don't get the Passat wagon here in the United States. But we do get the sedan.
Related Video:
Video ID:
1bad6cc6-7a52-35d8-9491-5137e4950539
Playlist ID:
Autoplay:
false
Mute:
false
Continuous:
false
Ad Key:
Ad Value:
Following the women-led "Ghostbusters" reboot in 2016, a completely new chapter in the franchise will be born in 2020. "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" will feature a fresh cast, a modern story and cutting-edge cinematics. Yet, one thing will remain the same: the famous Ecto-1. The first trailer for the upcoming film shows the classic movie car — a highly modified 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Futura Duplex — still has a little gas in the tank, even after sitting in a barn for more than 30 years.
"Afterlife" follows a character played by Finn Wolfhard (Mike from "Stranger Things") as he, his sister and his mom are evicted and move to an inherited farmhouse in Summerville, Oklahoma. The property, previously owned by the kids' grandfather, turns out to be a secret storage facility for all of the old Ghostbusters gear. Grandpa was Dr. Egon Spengler.
The research, the uniforms, the ghost traps and the Ecto-1 are all tucked away and out of sight. Trevor, Wolfhard's character, finds the automotive relic and is able to start the old box of bolts. He and his sister Phoebe are then seen careening the Ecto-1 through a field and testing out the car's gunner seat in town.
Paul Rudd enters the picture as Mr. Grooberson, a teacher at the kids' school who shows an interest in Phoebe's ghost trap. As somebody who remembers the Manhattan Crossrip well, Grooberson schools the kids on the past and, with them, explores their connection to it all.
The trailer closes with a Bill Murray quote from the original film: "Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma ... I believe that everything happens for a reason." He, along with Dan Aykroyd and Sigourney Weaver, are expected to have some sort of involvement in the new movie, though it's unclear what that will be. We'll find out more next year when "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" opens summer 2020.
P.S. How about that Ford Ranchero GT?
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.
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.
