Car Throttle

Ford's Shelby GT500 Mustang derivative has always been sort of polar. As in, people either love it or hate it.  There's a lot to love about the GT500, mainly under the hood: a huge 5.4L 32v V8 that's topped with a big old supercharger, cranking out loads of weapons-grade horsepower: 540bhp and enough torque to unseat an entire trailer park.  It'll burn the tires down to cords faster than you can say "clutch dump," it sounds like a NASCAR on crack, and it's as American as... well, as a Ford Mustang. On the other hand, the GT500 was a big step back technically from it's predecessor in a lot of ways.  The '03-'04 SVT Cobra was  not long on posh refinement, but it was capable in

Soon, you will once again be able to non-ironically blast Vanilla Ice from a Mustang. OK, perhaps not - but come 2011, the faux-rapper's words (in case you're confused, they're "'Rollin' in my 5.0, with my ragtop down so my hair can blow..."  now do you remember?) will once again ring true. That's right, as you've probably heard, the Five-Point-Oh will once again reside under the hood of the Mustang.  Only this time around, if you do the math properly, it actually is a 5.0!  The initial details of the new motor leaked out last week; the basic goods were a 5.0L V8 with 412bhp and 390lb-ft of torque.  Today, Ford released the full monty press release on the 5.0, and at least on paper it sounds

As far as top-end luxury sedans go, I've always preferred Audi's A8 over pretty much anything else. I figured I'd get this out of the way first, because I've got a bit of a bias on this topic.  I find Merc's S-class too gaudy, BMW's 7-series too new-money new-edge, Jag's XJ too feline, and the VW Phaeton too out-of-production. The Audi A8 has always blended what I consider to be the best attributes of a super-luxury car the best.  It was always expensive looking, but not in a loud, annoying Chris Bangle sort of way.  It was relatively restrained; it relied on good proportions and clean detailing to be attractive, rather than the latest stupid styling trend.  The interior was heavenly yet fairly simple, the engine choices

GM has always had it's ups and downs, but to be honest, small economy cars have never been it's forte. Kia jokes aside, almost all of GM's compact cars have been pretty dismal in some way.  Even going back to the sixties, the Corvair was an admittedly sweet car, but became a drastic PR disaster thanks to "Unsafe at Any Speed," which centered around the fact that the Corvair was a rear-engined car with swing axles, which usually means instant death. Then there was the Vega, which was a turd that couldn't keep it's head (gasket) screwed on for long, never met a fluid it didn't like to leak, and had terminal rust problems.  Which was followed by the Chevette, which you could get with a 4-speed

Infiniti's range-topping model, the M, has been in production since 2006. We've been hearing rumors and speculation about the M's (Nissan Fuga in Japan) replacement for a while now, and we finally have pictures and details to shed some light on this upcoming luxury-sports sedan. I personally am a big fan of the current M, and my road test of a well-equipped M45 Sport can be found here.  The M has always been a good middle ground in the mid-size luxury market - competing with cars like the Mercedes E-Class and BMW 5-series, among others.  I found it to balance performance, comfort, refinement and gee-whiz technology quite well, with a feel of athleticism that's absent from many of it's competitors - and all for a (class-reasonable)