1973 Dodge Dart Swinger on 2040-cars

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The best cars we drove this year

Six hundred and fifty. That's roughly how many cars pass through the hands of Autoblog editors every year, from the vehicles we test here at home, to the cars we drive on new product launches, testing roundups, long-term cars, and so on. Of course, our individual numbers vary due to several reasons, but at the end of the day, our team's repertoire of automotive experience is indeed vast. But let's be honest, some cars certainly stand out more than others. So as the year's about to turn, and as we're readying brand-new daily cat calendars for our cubicles, our editors are all taking time to reflect on the machinery that made this year so special, with one simple, open-ended question as the guide – a question that we're asked quite frequently, from friends, family, colleagues, and more. "What's the best car you drove this year?" Lamborghini Huracan When I review the list of everything I drove in 2014, picking an absolute favorite becomes almost impossible. I mean, how does one delineate between the joy offered by cars as different as the Alfa Romeo 4C, Volkswagen Golf R, Mercedes-AMG GT S and even the humble-yet-wonderful Chevy Colorado? Okay fine, I'll just pick the Lamborghini. I drove the Lamborghini Huracan LP 610-4 on a racetrack, in the mountains, and along southern coast of Spain. It felt like the king of the car jungle in all of those places, sucking the eyeballs of observers nearly out of their heads as it drove by, and almost melting my brain with its cocktail of speed and grip and intense communication. It feels a little easy to say that the one new supercar I drove this year was also my favorite, but the fact is that the Huracan is one of the finest cars I've driven during my career, let alone 2014. Judge me if you must. – Seyth Miersma Senior Editor Rolls-Royce Wraith There are a couple of ways to look at the question, "What's the best car you drove this year?" In terms of what was so good I'd go out and buy one tomorrow, that'd be my all-time sweetheart, the Volkswagen GTI. Or if I'm just talking about sheer cool-factor, maybe something like the Galpin GTR1, BMW i8, or Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG. But instead, I'm going to write about the sheer opulence of being the best of the best. The hand-crafted, holier-than-thou, shut-your-mouth-when-I'm-talking-to-you supremacy. I'm picking the Rolls-Royce Wraith. I drove the Wraith for a week in April, and was really, really impressed. This car does everything, perfectly.

Cold start comparison: 2020 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio vs. 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT8

The 2020 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio is a five-seat, compact luxury sport sedan packing 505 horsepower thanks to a 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V6. My personal 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 is ... well ... not. It's a full-sized muscle coupe whose iron-block 6.4-liter V8 makes 470 hp in the very traditional way: it's freakin' huge, like everything else about the car.  On paper, these two have nothing in common beyond the fact that they were built by the same multi-national manufacturing entity.  But if paper were the be-all and end-all of automotive rankings, everybody would buy the same car. And we don't, especially as enthusiasts. Whether it's looks or tuning or vague "intangibles" or something as simple as the way a car sounds, we often put a priority on the things that trigger our emotions rather than setting out to simply buy whatever the "best" car is at that particular moment.  So, what do these two have in common? They both sound really, really good. Like looks, sounds are subjective. While a rubric most assuredly exists in the world of marketing (attraction is as much a science as any other human response), we have no way of objectively scoring the beauty of either of these cars, and the same applies to the qualities of the sound waves being emitted through their tail pipes.  But we can measure how loud they are. In fact, there's even an app for that. Dozens, as it turns out. So, I picked one at random that recorded peak loudness levels, and set off to conduct an entirely pointless and only vaguely scientific experiment with the two cars that happened to be in my garage at the same time.  For the test, I opened up a window and cracked the garage door (so as not to inflict carbon monoxide poisoning upon myself in the name of discovery), and then placed my phone on a tripod behind the center of each car's trunk lid. I fired each one up and let the app do the rest. I then placed my GoPro on top of the trunk for each test so that I could review the video afterward for any anomalies.  I started with the Challenger. The 6.4-liter Hemi under the hood of this big coupe is essentially the same lump found under the hood of quite a few Ram pickups, and it has the accessories to prove it. Its starter is loud and distinctive. Almost as loud, it turns out, as the exhaust itself. As its loud pew-pew faded behind the V8's barking cold start, we recorded a peak of 83.7 decibels. In the app's judgment, that's roughly the equivalent of a busy street.

Stellantis and LG launch joint venture for North American battery plant

Stellantis has struck a preliminary deal with battery maker LG Energy Solution (LGES) to produce battery cells and modules for North America, as the world's No. 4 automaker rolls out its 30 billion euro ($35 billion) electrification plan. Global automakers are investing billions of euros to accelerate a transition to low-emission mobility and prepare for a progressive phase-out of internal combustion engines. Stellantis and LGES's joint venture will produce battery cells and modules at a new facility with an annual capacity of 40 gigawatt hours (GWh), the two firms said on Monday. No financial details of the deal were provided. The plant is scheduled to start production by the first quarter of 2024, with groundbreaking expected in the second quarter of 2022, the companies said in their statement. Its location is under review and will be announced later. Stellantis, formed in January from the merger of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler and France's PSA, has said it wants to secure more than 130 GWh of global battery capacity by 2025 and more than 260 GWh by 2030. The batteries produced under the deal will supply Stellantis' U.S., Canadian and Mexican assembly plants for installation in hybrid and fully electric vehicles, supporting its goal of e-vehicles making up more than 40% of its U.S. sales by 2030. The company, whose brands include Peugeot, Fiat, Opel and U.S. best-sellers Jeep and Ram, earlier this year announced it would invest more than 30 billion euros through 2025 on electrifying its vehicle lineup. Stellantis has said it would build three battery plants in Europe and two in North America, including at least one in the United States. Intesa Sanpaolo analyst Monica Bosio said the deal was positive, and a further step ahead in Stellantis' electrification process. It comes weeks after Stellantis and its partner TotalEnergies agreed to open up their battery cell joint venture ACC to Daimler, to expand their European sourcing of battery cells. Stellantis is also targeting more than 70% of sales in Europe to be of low-emission vehicles by 2030, and aims to make the total cost of owning an EV equal to that of a gasoline-powered model by 2026. Related video: Green Plants/Manufacturing Alfa Romeo Chrysler Dodge Ferrari Fiat Jeep Maserati RAM Citroen Lancia Opel Peugeot Vauxhall Electric Hybrid EV batteries LG