Car Throttle

I always make it out to Raleigh's Cars & Coffee event the first Saturday of every month. It's always worth it, even though I abhor waking up early, because there's always awesome stuff to see.  A lot of the same cars show up, so I won't show pictures of stuff you've already seen - for those you can check previous Cars & Coffee coverage here, here, and here. For starters, here is one of 337 Porsche 959's ever built, which was Porsche's rolling technical showcase that blew everything else out of the water in the 1980's, and set the standard for supercar performance.  None were ever imported to the US; it's likely this one has been fitted with the Canepa Design engine

This is another question that came to me randomly in traffic. A lot of them come this way in bumper to bumper 5 o'clock traffic.  I was waiting at a red light behind a dark green Toyota MR2 Spyder, and I realized that they don't make anything funky any more.  The MR2 was an anomoly on Toyota's map, though - they've got their business model these days (Hybrids + Appliances + Quality = Profits) and they're doing it quite well. The MR2 was really cool.  It used really basic mechanical components (actually the engine and transaxle from the Corolla turned around the other way) in a delicately balanced mid-engine rear drive package.  It was quite a handler: with 50/50 weight distribution, a 96.5" wheelbase, a 2195lb

You know, it's hard to imagine, but once upon a time it wasn't just Mitsubishi and Subaru. The Rally special used to be a requirement for competition, not a marketing package.  The Evo has a rally "heritage," but Mitsubishi doesn't even run a works rally team any more.  The newest WRX is an awesome street car, but it's hardly the hardcore homologation special it started life as.  Most people tend to think that Subaru or Mitsu started the whole Japanese Rally-Rep category, as they're the two brands most closely associated with that market.  It was Toyota, in fact, that kicked off the whole segment - as the first Japanese manufacturer to really take rally racing head on.  Hard to imagine now, while they're taking the

Not much time has passed since the introductions at the Tokyo Motor Show. Toyota was no doubt the winner of the show, debuting two performance models, the Toyota FT-86 Concept and the Lexus LFA. The former probably of the most interest to performance enthusiasts (unless you have $375,000.....and even then). So we know the FT-86 concept is a lock for production and now speculation is turning to what it will be named. FT-86 is obviously not the final production name, with the moniker chosen to pay homage to the Toyota Corolla AE-86 GT. The names under consideration, as reported by Autocar and The Detroit Bureau are Celica and surprisingly - Scion tC?  In producing the FT-86, Toyota's goal is to make a vehicle

I am entirely aware of the fact that "realistic" and "fantasy" are antonyms. A "Fantasy" garage is packed with the best of the best, picked for possessing an all-star list of attributes.  Like a Fantasy Football team, I suppose.  A realistic fantasy garage can't exist, because in the real world circumstances are never ideal for average people.  Still, we can all dream - even if we're dreaming small.  I've never had a problem deriving the basic joy of driving from any automobile (possible exceptions include a Prius and a Cavalier) and thus I've never had trouble dreaming small. For me, this is simply a list of cars that I plan to own at some point in the future.  There aren't any Pagani Zonda's or Ford GT's or

In a continuation of my previous post on the cool cars Toyota's forgotten how to build, today we'll be discussing some larger concepts - as well as some larger cars.  First, we'll talk about a broad overall concept Toyota's forgotten. Well, it's not really a concept so much as a specific device.  It's the... Turbocharger! If there's one word that typifies Toyota's technological halo today, it's "Hybrid."  Regardless of my position on Hypebrids, it didn't always used to be this way.  There once was a time when Toyota would sell you pretty much anything with an exhaust-driven hairdryer hanging from it's manifold.  Want proof? That's right, you could get a mid-eighties TOYOTA PICKUP TRUCK with a turbocharged engine.  Not a measly turbodiesel; no, it was a turbocharger stuck on

Hard to fathom now, but there was a time when Toyota bothered to cater to the enthusiast. They've all but forgotten how to do this these days, what with being way too damn busy making boring hybrids and Camrys for Joe Dullard, but Toyota really used to know how to make dependable, exciting, unique vehicles. In fact, they used to have a whole slew of vehicles across different markets targeted at people who actually liked to drive!   Most of these cars have been forgotten in the pantheons of automotive history, but they become more interesting in retrospect, when you see that Toyota is completely failing to do this now.  Even in this depressed market, (some) people still want to enjoy driving what they're driving. This guide basically highlights