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Driving 50 years of Porsche 911 history

Raiding The Porsche Museum For A Fun Track Day
It seems everyone is celebrating anniversaries this year: it's Aston's hundredth, Lamborghini's fiftieth, Ford Mustang's fiftieth, Chevy Corvette's sixtieth - and Tesla just turned ten or something. It's been a little out of hand, frankly, all these forced marketing festivities, but if we had to pick one milestone to really celebrate hard and party all night, the Porsche 911 would be at the top of our list.
Get ready for a major 911 blowout bash at next week's Frankfurt Motor Show. It was on September 12 back in 1963 at this very show where Porsche unveiled its "901" painted in a rather boring shade of beige. Though drably finished, the car caused a worldwide frenzy in the budding German sports car sphere.

Sunday Drive: Performance comes in many shapes and sizes

The Chevrolet Corvette has always stood out as a bastion of reasonably priced performance, and the latest 'Vette has that in spades. And while its expected starting price of around $120,000 certainly isn't cheap, it's an undeniable deal in the supercar world – remember, this thing'll do 210 miles per hour thanks to its 755-horsepower supercharged V8 engine. And did you get a load of that massive rear wing? Team Corvette's longtime foe, the Porsche 911, is similarly hellbent on ultimate performance. And as a reminder of how long the Corvette/911 rivalry has been melting tires we present the 1990 Porsche 911 as reimagined by Singer you see below. It's beautiful, it's green, and it's packing 500 air-cooled horsepower. You don't have to burn gasoline to go fast, as proven by the second-generation Tesla Roadster, which was revealed as a surprise late last week. Elon Musk says it'll be the quickest car in the world with a 0-60 time of just 1.9 seconds. And while you may not think of a semi truck when you think speed, the Tesla Semi can do 0-60 in 5 seconds flat unloaded, or in 20 seconds with a load of 80,000 pounds. Compared to today's crop of diesel semis, that's amazing. Continuing the truck theme, we present an artists rendering of what the next-generation Ram 1500 pickup may look like. Spoiler alert: Ram's mini-semi look is giving way to something much more modern. There may even be a first-of-its-kind split tailgate at the rear. And if you don't think the Ram 1500 has anything to do with performance, we should remind you that it's one of the cheapest ways to get a tire-shredding Hemi V8 engine in America. 2019 Chevy Corvette ZR1: All hail the 755-horsepower C7 king This is the first Porsche 911 to get Singer and Williams' 500-horsepower engine Tesla Roadster surprise reveal | 'Quickest car in the world' Tesla Semi Truck revealed: Here are the key details This could be the next-generation 2019 Ram 1500 2019 Ram 1500 spotted with split tailgate

Kia leads J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study for 2022

For the first year ever, Kia leads J.D. Power's annual Vehicle Dependability Study with a score of 145 problems per 100 vehicles. Buick (147) and Hyundai (148) round out the top three. The highest premium brand on the list is Genesis, with a score of 148. It's common for so-called "mass market" brands to lead this particular study, according to J.D. Power, as "premium" brands "typically incorporate more technology in their vehicles, which increases the likelihood for problems to occur" and aren't necessarily built to a higher standard that less-expensive brands. The highest-rated single nameplate is the Porsche 911. It's the third time out of the past four years and the second year in a row that Porsche's quintessential sports car has taken top honors. Porsche as a brand sits in seventh place (162) just behind Lexus (159) and ahead of Dodge (166). At the very bottom of the list is Land Rover with a dismal score of 284; the SUV specialist held the same unfortunate distinction on last year's list. Ram (266), Volvo (256), Alfa Romeo (245) and Acura (244) also performed poorly. The overall industry average score sits at 192 — mass market brands average a score of 190 while premium brands sit 14 points lower at 204. While Tesla is unofficially included in some of J.D. Power's results, the agency says the sample size it has access to for this study is too small to include. As has been the case for the past several years, infotainment systems dominate the list of problems reported by owners. Popular (or unpopular, depending on your point of view) complaints include built-in voice recognition (8.3 PP100), Android Auto/Apple CarPlay connectivity (5.4 PP100), built-in Bluetooth system (4.5 PP100), not enough power plugs/USB ports (4.2 PP100), navigation systems difficult to understand/use (3.7 PP100), touchscreen/display screen (3.6 PP100), and navigation system inaccurate/outdated map (3.6 PP100). While problems with the car's infotainment and technology packages are indeed bothersome, it's important to remember that such issues aren't usually leaving owners stranded with an immovable vehicle like a broken transmission or blown engine would. Culling infotainment complaints from the results would reduce the average problem-per-100-vehicle score by a staggering 51.9 points. The vehicles included in this study are from the 2019 model year. That means owners have had three years to get to know their cars and trucks. It's the 33rd year that J.D.