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New Audi Sport Quattro Laserlight geeks out with mad lumens

It's safe to say that, at least as far as automotive companies go, Audi's Sport Quattro Laserlight concept car is stealing the show here at CES in Las Vegas. The car's 700-horsepower hybrid powertrain and carbon-fiber bodywork mean that it would go like stink if it were ever allowed to turn a wheel, and the shapely coupe stance looks every inch the part of a modern-day super coupe, too. Better yet, the laser-powered headlamps that are the crowning glory of the concept car are actually slated for production at some point in the not-distant future.
We're talking about lasers here, folks. I don't know about you, but if you had told the 10-year-old, Real Genius-watching version of me that there'd one day be a car with lasers for headlights, well, I'd have wanted one of those things, pretty bad.
Anyway, Audi's lasers may not be able to ignite a giant pack of Jiffy Pop from space, but they are set to be the new standard for illumination on the road. The laser lights are nearly three times as bright and beam twice as far as current, top-notch LED high beams and were called "safer, sharper and more efficient" compared with existing technologies. That "safer" part works on two levels: the brighter beams offer far better visibility, naturally, but Audi also tells us that they won't dazzle oncoming drivers like traditional high beams will. That means you can drive with the maximum illumination at all times. Cool stuff, here at CES.

Audi tops Consumer Reports' brand rankings while Tesla leads domestics at eighth

Tesla supplanted General Motors' Buick division as the top-ranked US automaker in Consumer Reports annual brand rankings, though the electric-vehicle maker finished eighth among global automakers. Buick had finished atop CR's domestic car-brand list for three years before Tesla leapfrogged it. Scores were calculated from a combination of performance, owner satisfaction, and reliability. CR noted that Buick scored big on reliability but not so high on performance, while Tesla appeared to present the opposite case. Volkswagen's Audi division repeated as the best overall brand for the second straight year, beating out VW's Porsche unit, BMW, Toyota's Lexus division, and Subaru. Kia and Mazda followed those brands, while Honda finished ninth, between Tesla and Buick. Consumer Reports took results from 31 brands. Reliability issues related to the Toyota Tacoma helped drop that Japanese automaker out of the top 10. Take a look at CR's results for its Annual Brand Report Card here. That Tesla, Audi, and Porsche placed so high is topical, given some of the issues plaguing those automakers. Audi, Porsche, and their parent VW have been coping with the effects of the diesel-emissions scandal that broke back in 2015. The scandal has cost Europe's largest automaker billions of dollars, and forced VW to put a stop-sale on diesel-powered cars in the US in late 2015. And while the Tesla Model S improved from the "worse-than-average" label CR gave it in its 2015 Annual Auto Reliability Survey, the problematic falcon-wing doors on the Tesla Model X SUV pulled that model's reliability scores lower last year. Additionally, the Model X's climate-control system and door locks have also caused issues. Toyota and Lexus finished atop CR's reliability rankings last year. Related Video:

Highlights from the Goodwood Festival of Speed, including the McLaren P1 and a Ford Transit running the hill

The sole purpose of this post is as a time-waster, and since you shouldn't have to work to waste time, we've done it for you. In the numerous videos below you'll find cars that have lately been in the news tramping all over the grounds of Lord March's estate in Goodwood, England.
There's the McLaren P1 heading up the hill, the Jaguar Project 7, then a casually-driven Porsche 917 followed by an even-more-casually-driven Porsche 956, topped off by a Porsche 936 that is anything but casually driven. The next round is the flame-spitting Peugeot 405 T16 Pikes Peak from Climb Dance, a camera mounted on the Peugeot RCZ R after it showing you what the whole, uninterrupted run up the hill looks like. For a real head-turner, we couldn't embed it but there's Andy Reid blasting up the hill in a Ford Transit Supervan with a Cosworth 3000 V6 engine.
The modern racing contingent has Allan McNish doing the hill in the Audi R18 e-tron quattro he used to win Le Mans and Lewis Hamilton making lots of tire smoke in the Mercedes-AMG Petronas MGP-W02. For comparison, that's followed by Nick Heidfeld's record-setting run up the hill in 1999 in the McLaren MP4/14 . The classic racing contingent is headlined by 71-year-old Giacomo Agostini on an MV Agusta.