2010 Chevrolet Corvette 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.

2014 Corvette Stingray meets Tesla Model S in drag strip showdown

They come from two different worlds and have little in common. The Tesla Model S P85 is the sportiest version of this paradigm-punching sedan from California, while the 2014 Corvette Stingray Z51 is a performance-enhanced version of Michigan's recently-updated sports car stalwart. The West Coast car seats five adults and eats electrons like Popeye eats spinach, the Easterner has two passenger places and, surprisingly, sips gasoline like one might bourbon. An attribute they do happen to share is extreme quickness. This similarity is all the excuse Drag Times needed to set the vehicles beside each other at the Palm Beach International Raceway for a bit of mano-a-mano quarter-mile combat. Fortunately enough, cameras were rolling for each of two bouts down the blacktop and the results recorded for our edification and enlightenment. The winner? We won't spoil it for you, but let's just say it's really, really close. How close? Scroll below and watch the video for yourself. Just be warned, the results may surprise you. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Man surprises girlfriend with C7 Corvette

How would you react if someone just showed up at your place of work with a new, 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, complete with all the trimmings? While a lot of us would likely be flipping out over the still rare sports car, it's a fair bet many more of us would be responding like Pattie here, whose boyfriend stopped by her work to show her her new C7.
Speechless and shocked as she seems, she does end up taking it out for a drive, despite claiming she wasn't really outfitted to handle the car's seven-speed manual transmission at the time. From the sound of the video, we got the impression that she knew the car was coming, just not that it was anywhere near ready for delivery. It also, as Pattie says, seems like her boyfriend is more excited about the car than she (which, can we blame him?). Take a look down below for the full video of this C7 Stingray delivery.