2013 Volkswagen Jetta Se on 2040-cars

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Sunday Drive: Variety is the spice of life

If there's any one new vehicle the entire world is anxiously waiting for, it's the Jeep Wrangler. Yes, of course the iconic off-roader has a loyal following here in America, but you could plop a Wrangler pretty much anywhere on the globe and everybody will know what it is. Put simply, the redesigned 2018 Jeep Wrangler JL has big, muddy shoes to fill, and the readers of Autoblog are just as interested in the Wrangler's rebirth as anyone else. Moving along, we were fortunate enough last week to spend a bit of time in nearly every version of the venerable Volkswagen Golf all in one day. There isn't a Golf we don't like, but there's one, easily identifiable by its three-digit name, that stands above all the rest: GTI. We think it's the best Golf you can buy, even if there's an R-badged variant that slots above the GTI in VW hierarchy. Rounding out our recap are three vehicles that could hardly be more different. The 2019 GMC Sierra, which was seen wearing pretty light camouflage, is a truck. The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio – which isn't going to go on sale, ever, at any price – is a conceptual supercar. And the Honda CB1000R is a retro-themed naked standard motorcycle. Variety really is the spice of life. 2018 Jeep Wrangler spy shot mega gallery Driving nearly every VW Golf: Base, GTI, R, Alltrack — here's what we learned 2019 GMC Sierra spied sporting just a thin wrapping The Lamborghini Terzo Millennio is a brutally fantastic EV supercar concept Honda unveils 2 new motorcycles, including retro-flavored CB1000R Image Credit: Brian Williams GMC Honda Jeep Lamborghini Volkswagen Technology Truck Convertible Crossover Hatchback SUV Performance sunday drive vw golf gti lamborghini terzo millennio

YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]

After Sunday's big game, YouTube will be the place to watch every commercial that you missed when you left your seat for an emergency guac refill or, as we say in Cleveland, took the Browns to the Super Bowl. That makes YouTube the nation's water cooler on Monday, and it's got some preliminary stats to share in the lead up to kickoff.
As you know, Super Bowl advertisers, particularly automakers, like to endlessly tease their big budget commercials in the weeks before the game, many times revealing them outright days in advance. Because of this, YouTube can tell us which commercials have been viewed the most so far, and their top five list is all automakers.
Kaley Cuoco appears to have been a good investment for Toyota, as her ad for the RAV4 has garnered the most YouTube views - six million and counting - among Super Bowl commercials so far. Second place goes to Mercedes-Benz, though not its actual Super Bowl commercial, but rather the teaser for it. You know, the one with Kate Upton and the car washing, which is up to 5.6 million views. Third place is Audi's Prom commercial (3.3M views), fourth goes to Volkswagen's slightly controversial Get In, Get Happy ad (3.3M views), and the fifth and final spot is bookended by the teaser video for Kaley Cuoco's commercial (3.2M views). You can watch all five in order below.

Are more diesel scandals about to erupt?

More automakers may soon be embroiled, like Volkswagen, in diesel emissions scandals. According to the Daily Kanban, either the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) or the Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) will soon announce from 10 to 15 more cases of automakers cheating national diesel emissions rules. The outlet says three of the incidents are attributed to Opel. Studies conducted by the DUH, the University of Applied Sciences in Bern, Switzerland, and the UK's Leeds University found that Opel's diesel Zafira, Corsa, and Vectra models emit more NOx than European regulations allow when tested in ways that go beyond the European testing protocol, such as when done on a four-wheel rolling road instead of a two-wheel rolling road. Opel said the accusations had no merit. Specifically on the Zafira, the DUH asked Opel about the emissions findings, and Opel said that no General Motors software contains any measures to enable cheating. Opel then tested a Zafira of its own "both on a two- and a four-wheel roller dynamometer," finding that "The emission behavior determined in each case does not differ from one another." That makes this a case of he-said-she-said for the moment. The Daily Kanban's sources say the cheating methods "range from the crude to the highly sophisticated," with those at the latter end complex enough to render Volkswagen's methods "pedestrian." As for any automakers who might be named, the matter of real-world emissions exceeding a legal limit doesn't mean a carmaker has designed systems that cheat, it might mean the company designed the car to pass a test. Related Video: News Source: Daily KanbanImage Credit: PATRICK PLEUL/AFP/Getty Images Government/Legal Green Volkswagen Opel Emissions Diesel Vehicles vw diesel scandal icct