on 2040-cars

Auto blog

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

2016 Chevy Volt will not need premium gas

Buried in the new technical details of the 2016 Chevy Volt released yesterday was a throwaway line about a small but important change that's due to the new 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine. The first-gen Volt has always required premium gas but the new powerplant will be happy burning plain old regular. The Volt's chief engineer, Andrew Farah, told AutoblogGreen that the change was due to today's Volt owners explaining they were not happy paying for top-shelf petroleum. "The ability to use regular unleaded was based directly on customer feedback," he said. "Since the range extender is an all-new engine, it was optimized to use regular unleaded at the outset. Using regular fuel will not have effect on vehicle acceleration or other performance factors." As Larry Nitz, GM's executive director of vehicle electrification, told AutoblogGreen yesterday, the new engine is more powerful and quieter than the outgoing 1.4-liter engine that's used in the current Volt. Fuel economy and EV range specs for the next-gen Volt are not expected until the full car is revealed at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

2022 Chevy Silverado ZR2 vs Ford F-150 Raptor and Ram 1500 TRX Spec Comparison

The 2022 Chevy Silverado refresh brings a new top dog off-road Chevy, the Silverado ZR2. It has the biggest V8 available, flashy looks, trick suspension and other off-road goodies. And naturally, that means people will be comparing it with the other top-rung off-road trucks, the Ford F-150 Raptor and the Ram 1500 TRX. As such, we've assembled the specifications available so far to see how the three super trucks compare. Having just been revealed, there are a few things we don't know about the ZR2, such as fuel economy and some other suspension details, but we know quite a lot. And from what we know, the ZR2 has some interesting positives and negatives compared to the other trucks. First, it's pretty clear that the ZR2 isn't as extreme as the Raptor and TRX. We wouldn't be surprised if Chevrolet insists they aren't direct competitors. Specifically it has the least power and torque by a fair margin, the smallest tires and the least ground clearance. Still, it's not completely fighting with an arm tied behind its back. It's the narrowest by a significant margin, which is good for tighter trails. It also has the best towing and payload capacity, and the approach, break-over and departure angles are quite competitive despite the "little" tires. It's also the only one to boast a locking front differential in addition to a rear locker. The Raptor can be had with a limited-slip front differential, and the TRX only gets an open front differential. Check out all the specific numbers in the chart below, as well as additional stories on the trucks featured below. Other reviews and deep dives about the new Silverado, F-150 Raptor and Ram 1500 TRX 2022 Chevy Silverado 1500 Reveal In addition to the new ZR2, the Silverado line also gets new interiors, an upgraded four-cylinder and other updates.   2021 Ram 1500 TRX First Drive Review Our review of the Raptor's chief competitor, the mighty TRX. That just sounds like we're talking about Jurassic Park.   2021 Ram TRX Suspension Deep Dive and RTI ramp test Follow along with engineer Dan Edmunds as he takes you under the TRX and explains everything there is to know about its suspension -- and how it's able to do what it does.