Car Throttle

The Boxster's been around for 15 years now.  It's funny that it still feels new, but I suppose a Porsche with the engine in the right place is still a fresh concept - relatively speaking.  Porsche unveiled the third generation of the mid-engined sportscar today ahead of it's debut at Geneva, and in typical Porsche fashion they've made everything slightly better. While the new Boxster looks similar to the old one - why mess with a good recipe? - the chassis is all new.  Like the 991, the new Boxster has a longer wheelbase, wider track width, and shorter overhangs.  The biggest change is a switch to an aluminum body - so even though it's larger than the outgoing model, it's lighter as well.  The

Before the much anticipated '991' 911 coupe has even touched British tarmac, Porsche have announced the new 911 Carrera convertible which starts from £79,947 and is on the road from March 2012. Usually new convertibles in this day and age have very fancy and complicated folding metal roofs but supercar manufactures tend to stick to fabric roofs. Old fashioned I know but fabric roofs save weight and space compared to folded metal roofs which pretty much fill the boot and weigh more than a dining room table. In this case there's an engine in the boot so a fabric roof is pretty much the only choice Porsche have. Speaking of engines there's a couple of flat 6 petrols to choose from for the Carrera Cabriolet. A 3.4L

I'll get straight to the point, this is the fastest and most powerful convertible Jaguar have ever made. If you happen to be near or in Los Angeles you can go and see it in the flesh with your own eyes at the LA Motor Show this week! The XKR-S cabriolet is fitted with the same 5.0L Supercharged V8 that you find in the coupe which produces 542bhp and 502 lb ft of torque. That means 0-60mph in 4.2 seconds and going up to 100mph only takes 4.5 seconds longer. This all adds up to a limited top speed of 186mph. To make all these figures possible, the supercharged V8 has had changes to the fuel mapping system and an active exhaust

Well, for one thing, it's a tongue twister.  Mini Cooper S Coupe.  Koop.  Sha-doop.  Not quite a Touareg-level mockery of the English language, sure, but still not something that rolls off the tongue.  But there's more to the odd case of the Cooper Coupe than just the name. If you can't readily tell, what we have here is a Cooper Hardtop with only two seats, a chopped-off windshield, a greenhouse shaped like a backwards baseball hat, a pair of spoilers (one fixed), and not a whole excess of headroom.  If you love Minis for their faux-British charm, you'll love the Coupe.  If you hate them for how purposefully "styled" they are, you'll probably have an aneurysm.  Then get back in your Grand National and mumble about "cars

For those who love the idea of the Mini Coupe but don't want a roof that looks like a baseball cap, I bring great news. Mini has released images of a new convertible version of the coupe called the Roadster. The new Roadster has a fabric roof, just like in the bigger Mini Convertible, but unlike it's bigger brother, the fabric roof folds away into its own storage compartment instead of lying on the back end. The roof is semi-automatic meaning that to put it down you would unlock a latch yourself and then the roof will fold away by itself. There are other differences with its bigger convertible sibling. The Roadster sits 20mm closer to the ground, the

What do you call a big Mini?  A Maxi? It's really more like a mediumini - although the Countryman is far and away the biggest car to ever wear a Mini badge, it's still not that big of a car.  In fact, by American standards it's still smaller than a lot of the stuff we buy in bulk.  We consider a Ford Escape a "small" SUV, but it still dwarfs the Countryman by a wide margin - although the Escape's wheelbase is only about an inch longer, overall size is about 11" longer than the Countryman, it's about an inch wider, and it's almost 7" taller. So if a Mini isn't small, what's the point?  Isn't that their USP?  Isn't that why they're Minis?  I suppose

We've known Mini was coming out with 2-seater derivatives of the Cooper for a while. We saw concept cars - the Coupe and Roadster - at the Frankfurt show in 2009, and we've been seeing spy photos of lightly disguised prototypes pretty constantly since then.  Mini debuted production images and technical details of the Cooper Coupe yesterday, and now we know what it'll look like and how fast it'll be. The Cooper Coupe is the first car under the revived Mini brand with room for only two passengers - so Mini is expanding their lineup both ways, with the (relatively speaking) huge Countryman 5-door pseudo-SUV on the top, and the diminuitive Coupe (and presumably, the soon-to-come Roadster) on the other end of the spectrum. The Cooper

Sports cars come in all shapes and sizes. The question of "what constitutes a sports car?" is not one with an easy answer.  Some people would say "Well, it's got to have two seats, and a folding roof."  So, the Mitsubishi Evo isn't a sports car?  "Well, it's got to be really fast."  So the Mazda Miata isn't a sports car?  "Well, it has to be rear-wheel-drive."  So the Honda CRX isn't a sports car? The definition of a sports car is an ethereal, ever-changing thing.  30 years ago, there were no such things as sports sedans.  Sedans for were for boring people, sports cars were for exciting people with rockstar lives.  The original BMW M5 punched a solid hole through that theory, and today we've

Continuing along with the rest of the new stuff at NYIAS this year, welcome to Part 2 of our "best of the rest" coverage, a sort of all-at-once splurt of information to keep you up to date on the latest developments, without boring you to death with new paint colors for the Kia Optima.  Here we go. 2012 Subaru Impreza Sedan/Hatchback Subaru has finally come to their senses with the Impreza.  While it's always been a relatively fun-to-drive car even in non-turbocharged form, it hasn't really experienced great sales in the economy-car market compared to more conventional rivals.  The biggest reason would be the big-car fuel economy in a small, unrefined package.  The current Impreza 2.5i makes a fairly impressive 173bhp from it's single-cam 2.5L horizontally

Hybrids.  Blech.  Sick of hearin' about em. I don't know if you are too.  Electric motors, like CVT's, don't do a whole lot for me.  I like gasoline engines, the sound of a working valvetrain, the ticking of injectors, the blare of quad exhaust pipes on the back of a Carrera S as it pulls off of a stoplight.  I doubt Porsche really likes hybrids either, which is why it's been doing them it's own way.  In the past few days, details have snuck out regarding two Porsches with electric motors, and both are interesting from an enthusiast perspective. First up is the Boxster E.  Oh, lord - an Electric Boxster?  That's just what we need.  Take the flat six out of the world's most