The Autopian has existed as a website for only four and a half months, with great growth resulting from the work of some incredibly talented writers, all of whom work virtually, and many of whom have never met one another in person. So this weekend was special; it was a chance to build a bit of camaraderie between the folks who have been grinding together day in and day out to make you, our beloved readers, happy....

So what makes the RN22e tick? Well, there’s a 160 kW motor at the front, a 270 kW motor a the back, and mechanical torque vectoring to put power down. However, power isn’t the only goal here. Hyundai’s N division has been really concentrating on cooling, braking, and suspension to get this heavy electric performance car around the track lap after lap. It looks a bit greasy out on the circuit, but the Hyundai RN22e seems to be coping admirably....

The Celestiq is built on a very elongated (it’s longer than an Escalade) variant of GM’s Ultium EV car platform, which sits underneath cars as varied as the upcoming Honda Prologue and the new GMC Hummer EV. While the specifics of the Celestiq’s drivetrain haven’t been fully revealed, it’s likely the motors and power electronics will be similar to the Cadillac Lyriq’s, at least in some way. The Drivetrain And Charging Cadillac did provide some basic specs about the drivetrain, performance, and range: Like the legendary Cadillac’s of old, it seems the Celestiq is focused on a specific sort of ride comfort, the kind that feels like you’re being whisked along on a mattress made of marshmallows and optimism, the kind that let you go over a speed bump at 51 mph in your Sedan DeVille in 1967 and not spill a drop of the old fashioned you had in your hand, next to your cigarette....

The toilet in question, also known as a tōsu to the Zen monks that would have used it in the temple, dates back to somewhere in Japan’s early Muromachi period, from 1333 to 1568. This toilet is estimated to have been built between 1333 and 1392. It looks like the crash happened in October, but, you know, my ancient toilet sources are slow. Just calling it a “toilet” implies singular, but it’s really not – this is really a communal toilet, with rows of evenly spaced holes, ready to accept healthy, loamy monk turds or torrents of monkly urine....

David’s already covered the prototype with more near-term importance, so I’m here to talk about the really exciting one – the Hyundai N Vision 74. See, back in the ‘70s, Giorgetto Giugiaro whipped up a nifty coupe version of the Hyundai Pony that never made production. Americans might not be familiar with the Hyundai Pony unless they watched the Red Green Show, but here in Canada we did more than just duct tape old Hyundais together – we actually drove them....

Behold, the AE86 H2 Concept and the AE86 BEV Concept. You can probably guess which is which from the graphics you see below: I feel like these cars should need no introduction around here, but just in case: the AE86 was the early-mid 1980s iteration of the Corolla, and the last of the rear-wheel-drive Corollas. Their punchy twin-cam engines, low weight, superb weight balance, RWD setup and low sticker prices made them iconic as cheap drift cars....

The video was first published on Reddit’s r/flying subreddit, where the jet with the distinctive-looking V-shaped tail was identified as a Cirrus Vision SF50, which sells for around $2 million and has been compared to a flying Tesla, ironically. The video also showed up on Twitter: — waffle party planner (@Phylan) April 22, 2022 The incident seems to have happened at a Cirrus trade show, though that hasn’t been confirmed....

First, you should probably watch the video itself, because it’s absolutely bonkers for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the odd calmness of the Kiwis watching it happen. If you’re impatient, the part where the bus actually starts up and drives on its own happens at about 3:25 as you can see and hear the bus attempting to start, and then actually getting rolling along there, where it crosses the street, hops the curb, and sets some trees aflame by the tennis courts that are on that side of the road....

On November 19, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California held a celebration to commemorate an impressive exhibit. Located in the museum is Inside Tesla: Supercharging the Electric Revolution. The new display is a massive collection of much of Tesla’s history all in one place. Weirdly, the exhibition largely skips over the company’s original founders and jumps right to Elon’s initial investment. But it does cover so much, including Tesla’s lesser known ventures, such as providing batteries for the first American phase of the Smart Electric Drive program....

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. When A Ferrari Is More Stable Than Your Currency The U.S. dollar is strong and the Japanese yen is, well, not strong. What is a wealthy Japanese person to do?...

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday. One (Point Two) Trillion Dollars! Reuters put out an analysis this weekend that says automakers are going to spend $1.2 trillion dollars by 2030 on electric vehicles, which makes sense when you consider all the plants they’re building....

While the previous Kona started with a conventional subcompact crossover and converted it to electric power, Hyundai claims that the new Kona was designed to be electric first. What exactly that means, we don’t know right now, but we do know that the new Kona is much bigger than the old one. Length is up by 5.9 inches, 2.3 of which are in the wheelbase, while the new car is an inch wider than the old one....

Honestly, I feel like this one could have gone either way, and if pressed, I’d have a hard time choosing between them myself. But that 300ZX is too nice to ruin, and I know and love the VG30E, having owned a 365,000-mile Pathfinder with one in it. I think you all made the right choice. A few commenters wanted to manual-swap it, but if it were me, I’d leave it as an automatic....

The floating glove was used as a way to show where and how to grab things, like, in this case, luggage or the shifter. Sometimes you’d see versions of it grabbing knobs on dashboards or tracing out shift patterns. It was sort of an alternative to an arrow for things that required direct hand manipulation. The fact it’s a glove was a workaround from having to draw an actual severed human hand, which likely may have creeped out people who enjoy choosing a car without seeing dismemberments....

I say this because the adorable off-road champ that is the Suzuki Jimny just got a five-door version. All of us at the Autopian are in love with it. Well, maybe not our professional designer Adrian, who put this new version on his “how the fuck does that move?” list. I think 103 horsepower from a 1.5-liter four is just fine! Just, never leave the right lane. Perhaps David said it best when he drove the two-door version: “The 2018 Suzuki Jimny Is the Off-Road Bargain of Your Dreams, and the Highway Cruiser of Your Nightmares” Adding two doors can’t help that....

The saga of the suitcase car dates back to the early ‘90s, when everything looked as sunny as a July day. The economy was doing alright, Japanese carmakers were pushing technology to the limit, and Mazda was throwing an internal competition called Fantasyard, an exhibition of fantastic mobility innovation where teams would throw their wacky ideas at the wall just to see what sticks. Images from Mazda and Road Race Engineering It’s always been Man’s dream to drive around in things that aren’t cars....

If you’re somehow unaware of the original Morris/Austin Mini and its legacy, you’re lucky that I like talking about it, so prepare yourself for a vigorous synopsizing: After WWII, there was a real need in Britain for a good, cheap, fuel-efficient people’s car, pretty much the exact same motivation that birthed the Volkswagen Beetle in Germany, the Citroën 2CV in France, and the Fiat 500 in Italy. The Suez oil crisis of 1956 hit Europe hard, and this really emphasized the need for small, fuel-efficient cars in the UK....

So I bought one. Kind of. And maybe a bit accidentally. But now I think I need to get comfortable because I’ll be waiting for a while. I walked onto the showroom to take a gander at a Maverick Hybrid, only for the salesman to tell me that they don’t have a demo to drive, only a lone customer car that can’t be driven on the road due to the fact that if I wrecked it, it would be months to replace this already sold unit....

Ooh boy. These past couple of weeks out here representing The Autopian at the LA Auto Show have been great, but a bit weird. I haven’t wrenched in weeks, so my hands are clean. I’m wearing stain-free clothes. I’ve even gotten a haircut. Now I’m looking for apartments that don’t allow me to fix cars in their garages. I’m driving a rental car that doesn’t leak a drop of oil!...

It’s reasonably close, but the Civic takes it. What did I expect? Reliable curiosity beats run-of-the-mill any day of the week. Today, we’re talking about cars meant to replace the Fox body Mustang. There was a time when Ford considered killing its darling, but thankfully that didn’t happen. Still, we’ve lined up an eventual replacement against an intended replacement to settle a score. 2000 Ford Mustang – $2,595 Engine/drivetrain: 3....