Martin Padgett, Editorial Director
Articles
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We stop at the top of a ridge in the French Alps, after a round of hide-and-seek played with a low scud of clouds, and I’m shaking in disbelief.
I’m shaking because it’s 42.8...
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I work the line: What it’s like to assemble a 2019 Volvo S60
Volvo takes us behind the curtain at its new assembly plant in South Carolina, and lets Motor Authority install the windshield on your next S60 luxury sedan—with a lot of help.
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First drive review: The 2020 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque adds more gray with its own Grecian formula
“Sweaters and lunch,” my co-pilot points ahead. The flock of sheep being herded across the road ahead can’t tell the difference between our Range Rover Evoque and the grass they crop. Their herder smiles at our SUV, waves, and keeps his charges off the broken pavement while we...
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First drive review: The 2019 BMW X7 has grit, grille, and grandeur
Somewhere on the interstate between Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, it finally clicks, like the incessant drops of rain on the glass. We’re not getting any decent weather on this first drive of the 2019 BMW X7. No useful turns, either. The descent into Low Country evaporates all hope...
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First drive review: The 2019 Subaru WRX STI S209 has zero chill
In the shadow of an active volcano, a pop-up city rises up and shouts in unison. The noise bounces off the tarmac and visibly shakes the delicious vapors that rise from nearby food trucks. The young women in long ponytails and short blue satin shorts who cheerlead from a low stage have to be...
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First drive review: The 2019 BMW Z4 sDrive30i revives the roadster
Coachella is a town, not a thing. For the 356 days a year when Boy Pablo and Childish Gambino aren’t in residence, it’s a prosaic farm community, where highlighter-pink and yellow signs hawk Medjool dates, shaken fresh from the trees that tower over checkerboards of agri-business green...
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North Georgia roads bustle in the spring but crowds thin when browned leaves and cool north winds arrive. It’s just warm enough to keep the windows down and the tires warm.
In other words,...
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2019 BMW 3-Series first drive review: Benchmark or bookmark?
The BMW 3-Series has made bank for decades off its undeniable clout. With its mastery of nimble steering feel and brilliant balanced handling, it’s oozed something from its pores that seeps into brains of enthusiasts like sugar, or mercury. When we talk about “sport sedans”...
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2019 Ford Edge ST first drive review: Down payment on the future
Ford’s ST badge hails from Europe, where it’s adorned a couple of decades’ worth of Cougars, Pumas, Mondeos, Focuses and Fiestas. In the U.S. we’ve danced with the Focus ST and Fiesta ST—but as of next year, those Ford cars won’t be sold anymore, as the company...
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2019 Rolls-Royce Cullinan first drive review: Tetonic shift
In Jackson, Wyoming, things get a little weird. More than a half a million people live in the entire state, most of them in modest small towns never far from staggeringly beautiful wilds. Jackson’s the same, just different. It's filthy rich, overrun by Cheneys and Gateses and their ilk. The...
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2019 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera first drive review: Dead serious, dead sexy
Twelve-cylinder engines are an endangered automotive species. Only a handful are left: Mercedes and Maybach share one, and so do BMW and Rolls-Royce. Ferrari has its holdout—and it’s impossible to leave out Bentley’s W-12, though its offbeat cylinder layout makes it an outlier...
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2019 Mercedes-Benz C300 and C43 first drive review: Subtle upgrades, big safety
A web of country roads casts a romantic net between the alpha world cities of Paris and Frankfurt. Where maps pare down to two-lane roads, the Moselle Valley unfurls vast expanses of lush green carpet, sun-spotted by a yellow haze of wildflowers, lidded by a cobalt-blue sky. Lucky steers and...
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There’s one place where you can get great fried chicken livers on a Sunday morning in Georgia, before church is out. It’s a low-ceiling kind of place, tacked on to a gas station, the...
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2019 Mercedes-Benz G550 and AMG G63 first drive review: flying bricks and off-road tricks
We’re far off charted roads, somewhere in France’s L’Occitanie region, on some family estate where wine and off-roading are baronial hobbies, when I first take a peek in the rearview mirror. As I crash a 2019 Mercedes-AMG G63 through trashcan-sized holes and muddy slip-n-slides...
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2018 Porsche Panamera first drive review: baser instincts
What’s the biggest sacrifice you’ve ever had to make? Drip coffee at home instead of a drive-thru latte? The middle seat in back, in coach? Okay, breathe. The base 2018 Porsche Panamera won’t trigger any gasps like those commonplace horrors. We’ve driven all kinds of...
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2019 Kia K900 video first look: 2018 New York auto show
Kia plunged into old-school luxury a few years ago with the big K900. Then it had a better idea: it sidetracked into BMW territory and came out with the terrific Stinger. Now it’s applied those lessons learned, as it revamps its most expensive model, the 2019 Kia K900. The new K900 strips...
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New Mercedes CLA/GLA due late this year, with Apple-like MBUX and plug-in electric power
The new compact family of Mercedes-Benz cars due late this year will introduce a new architecture and eventually, more body styles than today’s CLA/GLA cars. Ola Källenius, Daimler AG’s head of research and product development, said on Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show that Mercedes...
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2019 Bentley Bentayga V8 first drive review: 8 is enough
Burnt coffee, unlined trousers, post-Achtung Baby U2. Life is rife with mild disappointments. With four fewer cylinders under its hood than its W-12 cousin, does the V-8 Bentley Bentayga deliver another? Math with us here for a moment. A W-12 Bentayga with 600 horsepower lashes out at 60-mph runs...
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The next Toyota Supra will revive its signature inline-6 engine because the car’s fans demand it.
Even so, it’ll have a lower center of gravity than the flat-4-powered Toyota 86,...
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2018 Buick Regal GS first drive review: six appeal
The 2018 Buick Regal GS wears lots of letters and words on its flanks and in its cabin. Two you won’t find? “Gran Sport.” That moniker’s a relic of an era when rear-drive Buicks prowled the roads, leaded fuel their Muscle Milk. Today’s Buicks lean heavily on recently...
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2019 Porsche Cayenne first drive review: an epoch-ending SUV
Back in the 1980s, Porsche knew it could build an SUV. And it knew a Porsche SUV would sell well. It finally got around to building that first Cayenne in 2002. Instincts: correct. Since then, it’s sold more than 770,000 of them. It’s so successful, Porsche now sells a smaller Macan SUV...
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Acura ARX-05 prototype race car bows at The Quail
Acura will field this new prototype race car, the ARX-05, in the 2018 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the automaker announced Friday. The fifth-generation endurance racer takes the ORECA 07 chassis and powers it with a distant relative of the V-6 engine Acura fits to its sedans and SUVs...
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Here's how the 2019 Audi A8 will become the first Level 3 self-driving car*
*Rules and restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. With the launch of its 2019 A8 in Barcelona on July 11, Audi is marketing itself as the first company to sell a Level 3 self-driving car. The technology isn't legal yet in many markets, but Audi says the new A8 will have the hardware and...
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Hyundai N performance brand aims for America: will it be Veloster first?
The air’s thick around the Hyundai R&D facility in Namyang, South Korea. It’s summer. It’s humid. Dust from beyond Beijing blows in from the west and turns the sky to cement. The air’s thick with excitement, too. It’s the first time a slew of global journalists get...
Martin Padgett