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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.

Recharge Wrap-up: Tesla Model X towing drag race, Porsche 918 salvage auction

Watch an Alfa Romeo 4C drag race against a Tesla Model X towing an Alfa Romeo 4C. The ridiculous (or, perhaps more appropriately, ludicrous) race appeared in MotorTrend's Instagram, which was then shared on Facebook by Tesla Motors Autopilot Program Director Sterling Anderson, along with the comment, "Fun fact: many high-performance cars cross the quarter mile line faster when towed by a Model X than they do on their own four wheels." While we can't quite see the actual results of the drag race in the video, it appears to be a close one. Check it out in the video above, and read more from Electrek. A Porsche 918 Spyder has gone up for auction. Unfortunately, it's a salvage auction, and said performance plug-in hybrid is totally mangled. The gut-wrenching photos reveal an even sadder detail, as the car's odometer shows it only logged 92 miles before being involved in what appears to have been a terrible wreck (though the listing describes the miles as "not actual"). The current bid on the Copart auction site is up to $106,000, and the listing shows a $600,000 repair estimate. The very expensive hunk of metal and carbon fiber is located in Long Island. Check out the listing for yourself, or read more at MotorAuthority. GKN Driveline says that German drivers are more interested in plug-in hybrids (especially with all-wheel drive) than conventional hybrid cars. In a poll of more than 1,000 drivers commissioned by GKN, 75 percent preferred PHEVs to standard hybrids, while 61.2 percent said that 50 kilometers (31 miles) of electric range is enough for their daily driving duties. About 81 percent are "wary of hybrids," most believing them to be a poor value. 52 percent said their ideal car would combine a plug and all-wheel drive. "We believe that plug-in hybrids with all-wheel drive make sense," says GKN Automotive President of Engineering Peter Moelgg, "and the public's positive response to vehicle programmes that offer this combination – like the Volvo XC90 T8 Twin Engine, BMW i8, and Porsche 918 Spyder – can only continue to grow." Read more in the press release below. NEW RESEARCH REVEALS GERMAN DRIVERS PREFER PLUG-IN HYBRIDS Lohmar, Germany, 22 March 2016: Drivers now consider plug-in hybrid vehicles to be more attractive and practical than conventional hybrids, a survey commissioned by GKN Driveline has revealed.

Porsche's Tesla-fighter could have 600 hp and 300-mile range

Will this be the Ragin' Pajun? Some details on the all-electric "Tesla fighter" from Porsche have been revealed by UK's Car magazine, and, to put it bluntly, the model that has preliminarily been dubbed the 717 will be an absolute beast when it hits the road as early as 2019. With some technological help from parent company Volkswagen, Porsche is planning a model that will have about a 300-mile single-charge range, and a version that may deliver as much as 600 horsepower. The four-door will also be four-wheel-drive, with one electric motor per axle, and four-wheel steering, all for the sake of consistency, Car says. Additionally, unlike the Tesla Model S, with its battery packs running flat along the floor of the vehicle, the 717's battery layout will be far more complex, complete with bulkhead walls and 108 separate battery pouches. Last month, German publication Auto Motor und Sport reported that the Panamera's junior variant, aka the Pajun, was indeed going to be an all-electric affair. Still, beyond a few digital renderings and an estimated single-charge range of 250 miles, few details were revealed.