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It's a V8 party! Lexus IS 500, Cadillac Escalade and more | Autoblog Podcast #667

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Road Test Editor Zac Palmer. It's all V8s all the time this week, starting with the Land Rover Defender V8 unveiling, Lexus IS 500 F Sport Performance debut and pricing announcement on the Jeep Wrangler 392. Next, they move on to what they've been driving. Spoiler alert: That means more V8 talk. Zac has been driving the Cadillac Escalade with the 6.2-liter V8 and BMW M550i with its 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8. Greg and Zac take a pause from the V8 theme by discussing their shared time in our long-term Acura TLX. From this, they segue into a "Spend My Money" feature about garage lifts to finish the show. Autoblog Podcast #667 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown News 2021 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 priced at nearly $75,000 2022 Land Rover Defender bulks up with a 518-hp V8 2022 Lexus IS 500 F Sport Performance brings back the V8 What we're driving BMW M550i Cadillac Escalade Acura TLX Spend my money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Autoblog is now live on your smart speakers and voice assistants with the audio Autoblog Daily Digest. Say “Hey Google, play the news from Autoblog” or "Alexa, open Autoblog" to get your favorite car website in audio form every day. A narrator will take you through the biggest stories or break down one of our comprehensive test drives. Related Video:

Six luxury-car features I'm ashamed to admit I love

A hot compress felt wonderful on my sore back. The methodical kneading of my shoulder blades loosened the knots that formed over several hours of driving. The Swedish-style pulses firing into my lumbar region released more tension.
I wasn't getting a much-needed massage following a recent road trip. I was getting it during the road trip.
I grew up riding in the back seat of a 1976 Chevy Nova. But once you use these lux features, it's easy to go soft.

Weekly Recap: Toyota wants cars to be your 'close friends' around 2020

Toyota confirmed plans this week to launch autonomous technology in its production cars around 2020. The automaker's version is called Highway Teammate, and it's one element of a broader mobility strategy that includes vehicles communicating with each other and the grid. "Toyota believes that interactions between drivers and cars should mirror those between close friends who share a common purpose, sometimes watching over each other and sometimes helping each other out," the company said in a statement. That sounds utopian, and perhaps a bit cheesy, but it's an acknowledgment that autonomous driving requires more than technology developed in a vacuum. Toyota is looking at its research in a broader context, and dubs its overall strategy the Mobility Teammate Concept. Highway Teammate is the first step. Its test vehicle is a modified Lexus GS, which uses road-mapping data and external sensors to merge or exit highways, change lanes, and maintain safe distances during driving. It's operated on the Shuto Expressway in Tokyo. Toyota has been working on autonomous tech since the 1990s, with the goal of providing mobility for older people and the disabled, as well as lowering the frequency of traffic accidents. Toyota's push comes as an early adopter, Nissan, is hedging on its own deadline to implement the autonomous tech by 2020 due to a lack of firm laws governing self-driving cars around the world. Conversely, Volvo took the landmark step of being the first automaker to accept liability for when its cars will operate in autonomous mode, and urged the US government to set federal guidelines to regulate the technology. OTHER NEWS & NOTES 2016 BMW M4 GTS: Your water-injected, turbo-boosted demon BMW is unleashing its most powerful M4 ever, a 493-horsepower special edition that's road legal yet bred for the track. The company is making 700 copies for sale around the world, and 300 of them will come to the United States. The twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder revs to 7,600 rpm and uses a water-injection technology to cool the intake air and lower the compression temperature. BMW says this allows it to wring more power out of the inline six. The car also uses carbon-fiber reinforced plastic for the roof, hood, engine compartment strut brace, drive shaft, and rear spoiler to reduce weight. The M4 features BMW's organic light-emitting diode taillights, which are said to be an industry first.