Car Throttle

Welcome back to News Bites, Car Throttle's one-stop-shop for the this-and-that of all that's auto news.  What's on the plate for today?  Track times, the President's old whip, Volvos, wrecking Datsuns, and some other fun stuff. Car and Driver is one of the few automotive print publications people still like, because they still produce some unique content.  Best example: the annual Lightning Lap challenge.  They take road-going cars, divided up into classes by price, for hot laps around Virginia International Raceway - street tires, pump gas, license plates and full interiors, to see what's fastest.  This year they didn't run any LL5 cars ($250,000+) or LLU (non-street-legal, like the Ariel Atom and KTM X-Box), but they did add a new class: LLT, for trucks.  There's a

In terms of insane sports sedans, Audi's RS6 sedan would have to rank around the top of the list. Unfortunately, those of us in the United States aren't able to experience it. Instead, we get the more sedate S6 model that packs 435 horsepower from its V-10 versus 580 (!) hp for the RS6. As if it weren't exclusive enough, Audi has announced two new, limited-edition packages for the RS6. The packages are dubbed Sport (now seriously Audi, a sport RS6?!) and Audi exclusive. They are restricted to just 500 examples of each. The models have a top speed of 188 mph and feature a Carbon design package for the engine compartment, 20-inch wheels, and sports suspension plus (again, as if they weren't already!)  Each will have

Top Ten is another new featurette I will be producing on a weekly basis.  It's a very simple concept: the 10 best of SOME genre, in order.  You are encouraged to leave comments either praising my choices, or yelling at me for what I missed, at the bottom.  Game on! The public stigma of a station wagon (estate to Europe) is frankly pretty negative these days.  I can't say I understand it; in many ways, wagons are the most useful cars on the road.  They offer car-like handling (since they're normal cars) and loads of cargo space.  I generally think the two-box shape of wagons is a positive thing stylistically speaking, too.  So why are they so universally loathed? Maybe it's this generation's childhood memories of getting sick