2.5i Convertible 2.5l Cd Rear Wheel Drive on 2040-cars

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Jalopnik and Consumer Reports see who can pull off the best snow drift

The weather throughout much of the United States is pretty awful at the moment with some combination of extremely low temperatures, inches of snow and maybe some ice underneath it all. The folks at Jalopnik and Consumer Reports are making the absolute best out of a difficult situation by heading to CR's snow-covered test track and attempting to make the longest drift in a quartet of very different performance vehicles. Jalopnik brought along a Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG S Wagon, a Subaru WRX STI, a BMW 228i and a 1973 Volkswagen Baja Bug (heck yeah!) for the challenge. Also, the track was perfect for this group, with a mix of packed snow in places and still a few inches of unsullied powder in spots too. Ostensibly the goal was to get the tail to step out through a particular corner, but in reality this was more about having hilarious fun in the snow with fast cars. The result just looks like the best time humanly possible in this weather.

2011 BMW 1 Series M Coupe now more expensive than when new

At the end of the day, your friendly Autoblog editors are car guys, just like you. So, while we might have more of an opportunity to test some of the most interesting vehicles on the new car scene than does your average gear head, we can still be found whiling away those long afternoon hours looking at used cars and thinking about what could be.
Just the other day, we had a vivid reminder about one of our dream cars from the very recent past, the 2011 BMW 1 Series M Coupe. If you didn't catch it, Michael Harley had a great time testing and reviewing the new Dinan S3-R version of the car, which throws an impressively engineered turbo and suspension tune on a BMW that was damn near perfect out of the box.
In the Comments section of that review, a few savvy Autoblog readers pointed out that our estimated price for a used donor car, set at $50,000, was low. Odd, we thought, as the car retailed for less than $50k ($46,135) when it was new in 2011. So we started checking around.

Toyota GT86 engineers explored shooting brake and sedan variants, are they still in the cards?

According to the Toyota UK blog, engineers for the automaker were so excited developing the GT86 coupe that they investigated producing a whole family of models based on the rear-wheel drive sports car. And at least one engineer - product chief Tetsuya Tada - still hopes it can happen, even if not everyone at Toyota is onboard. Tada: "Actually we tried to do this secretly but the executives found us out. They said: 'What are you doing? Will you please focus on the coupe.'"
Those mooted variants included both a four-door sedan and a shooting brake. Why? Aside from the pure excellence of a lightweight, brilliantly handling hatchback, Toyota was keenly aware of the fact that it may need to spread the cost of development out across several models. Tada says that's part of the reason why it was so easy to create the convertible. The company knew from the outset that a softtop version was in the cards, and built the machine's structure to accommodate having the roof sliced off.
Tada also made mention of the already-announced collaboration between Toyota and BMW. The engineer said that the GT86 was particularly helpful because it demonstrated just how successful a product conceived and designed by two different companies can be. While he didn't say exactly what Toyota and BMW are up to, it's clear the two are looking into a number of possibilities. It's an interesting read with a lot of