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Bronco Scout, Ford and Rivian, and next-gen Land Cruiser | Autoblog Podcast #578

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Road Test Editor Reese Counts and Assistant Editor Zac Palmer. First, they dicuss recent news, including the upcoming next-gen Toyota Land Cruiser, Ford's trademarking of "Scout" and "Bronco Scout," and Ford's $500 million investment in EV startup Rivian. After that, they talk about the cars they've been driving, including the Jeep Wrangler, Cadillac XT4 and Buick Regal GS. Last but not least, they help a listener choose a new car in our "Spend My Money" segment. Autoblog Podcast #578 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown Toyota promises a next-generation Land Cruiser Ford trademarks "Scout" and "Bronco Scout" Ford invests $500 million in Rivian Cars we're driving: 2019 Jeep Wrangler 2019 Cadillac XT4 2019 Buick Regal GS Spend My Money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video:

Buick Envision CUV displays full-frontal nudity

Earlier this month, Shanghai GM gave us a glimpse of the production version of the Buick Envision concept revealed at the Shanghai Motor Show back in 2011. And now it's released the first unveiled shot and initial details of the crossover to slot in the considerable gap between the Encore and Enclave.
The new Envision is set later this year to reach Chinese showrooms, where it will be called the Ang Ke Wei, after which we're expecting it to arrive Stateside. The production-ready Envision is about the size of the Chevrolet Equinox or GMC Terrain, but is differentiated by a more upscale treatment and Buick's signature waterfall grille, flanked by Xenon headlamps and LED running lights and riding on 19-inch wheels.
Power comes from GM's familiar 2.0-liter turbo four with direct injection and stop/start ignition, driving 256 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque through a six-speed automatic transmission to all four wheels. That's about all that GM's Chinese operation has announced at this point - it's not even clear what platform the vehicle is on - but you can check out the press release for yourself below.

Junkyard Gem: 1962 Buick LeSabre 2-Door Sport Coupe

American car shoppers looking for a full-sized hardtop coupe in 1962 couldn't go wrong with the offerings from The General. Chevrolet would sell you a snazzy new Bel Air sport coupe for just $2,561 (about $23,800 today), but those Joneses next door wouldn't have felt properly shamed if you put a new proletariat-grade Chevy in your driveway. No, to really stand tall during the era of Alfred Sloan's Ladder of Success, you had to go higher up on the GM food chain. For the B-platform full-sized cars of 1962, that meant the Pontiac Catalina/Bonneville beat the Chevy, the Oldsmobile 88 was the next step up the ladder, and at the very top was the Buick: the hot-rod Invicta and its swanky LeSabre sibling. To go beyond that, you had to move up to a C-platform Buick Electra or Cadillac. Today's Junkyard Gem is a once-luxurious '62 LeSabre, now much-faded in a northeastern Colorado boneyard. The reason GM shoppers got so bent out of shape about the "Chevymobile" episodes of the late 1970s, in which some GM cars received engines made by "lesser" GM divisions, was that each division had its own family of V8 engines during the 1950s and 1960s and they weren't supposed to be mingled. The '62 LeSabre got a 401-cubic-inch (6.5-liter) Nailhead engine (so called because the valves were unusually small), rated at 265, 280, or 325 (depending on what kind of compression ratio and carburetion you wanted). That's not crazy horses for a big-displacement, two-ton luxury coupe of its era, but the small valves allowed for combustion chambers optimized for one thing: low-rpm torque. This 401 has the two-barrel carburetor, so it made either 412 or 425 pound-feet of torque. That's just a bit less than the mighty Cadillac's engine that year, and definitely sufficient to get this car moving very quickly. You had to pay a fat premium on the Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile B-bodies to get an automatic transmission (a three-speed column-shift manual was base equipment in those cars), but a Turbine-Drive (formerly known as the Dyna-Flow) automatic was standard issue on the 1962 LeSabre. This was an interesting transmission design that traced its origins back to the 1942 M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer and used torque-converter multiplication to provide a CVT-like experience with no perceptible shifts (the driver could select a separate low gearset manually, so the shifter looks just like the one on the true two-speed Powerglide transmission).