Martin Padgett, Editorial Director
Articles
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The Porsche 911 adds the next logical member of its family to the fold this fall, when the 911 Turbo Cabriolet and Turbo S Cabriolet lose their hardtops at the 2013 Los Angeles Auto Show.
The new...
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BMW Recalls M5, 5-Series For Bad Rear LightingBMW will repair about 134,100 of its 5-Series and M5 cars for a problem with their rear lighting. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and its recall Web site, the cars affected were 2008-2010 models, built between March 1, 2007, and December 31, 2009. The recall...
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Brazilian Man Plays Pharoah, Buries His Bentley For A Beautiful AfterlifeThe old maxims were wrong: you can take it with you, provided you have a big yard, a backhoe, and a dream. AutoExpress reports the odd case of a Brazilian man who fancies himself a rival for the Egyptian pharaohs--in the afterlife, at least. In this novel take on a pyramid scheme, Conde Chiquinho...
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Gold Lambos, M3 and C-Class Spied, One Smoking-Hot Furai: Motor Authority's Most Popular Stories This Week$7.5 Million Solid Gold Lamborghini: In Dubai, Of Course When you have, quite literally, everything--or at least the capacity to buy everything--what do you want? Solid gold models of $400,000 cars, apparently.That's our take-away from this $7.5 million solid gold Lamborghini Aventador model...
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15 Car Color Names That Are Just Keeping It Real (Or Are Maybe A Little Too Honest)Sliding Down The Socioeconomic Scale Orange Grimace Red Mist Patina Fey Whiter Shade of Sarah Palin Burt Sienna (buy this car!) Self Whiteousness Conscientious Objector Green Kind Of Blew Red Herring Brick Shithouse Canary In a Coalmine Salmon P. Chase Seepia Amber Alert
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Volvo Concept Coupe: A New P1800 Plug-In Hybrid For The Frankfurt Auto ShowThe Volvo Concept Coupe is here--online at least, more than a week before the 2013 Frankfurt Auto Show opens its doors to the media. Hinted at last week in a video released by Volvo, the new Concept Coupe is billed as the first taste of Volvo's new styling direction--a direction that's taken a...
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We know what you love. You love to see guys warp by in Aventadors and Corvette Stingrays and SRT Vipers because...Aventador, Stingray, Viper. It can make your day to know someone's ripping off a...
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At The Pebble Beach Concours, The Super-Wealthy Get Up Super-Early To Detail Cars And Sit On Lawn ChairsJewelry-rattlers and journosaurs aren't the reason to attend the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance, or to fight off sleeporexia to be there by 4 a.m. for Dawn Patrol, when the field of entrants rolls on to the wet grass before any real light is shed on the possible winners and the also-rans. It's...
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Orange Lambo Countach, Meet Jaguar XK120: Of Course It's The Quail 2013Each year the Monterey Bay area explodes with the sounds and sights of an army of classic cars. One signature event, The Quail, came home to roost this year with an unforgettable gathering of vintage beauty, including first Lamborghini ever built. See more classic-car coverage here at Motor...
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The Nine Cars You'll Drive In HellMaybe you take two spots up front near the Best Buy. Or refuse to cede the left lane. Or tailgate, then slow down when we get out of your way. You, sir, are a terrible driver. And for that, you're going straight to Hell. We're not guessing here, we're just taking the word of every driver in a...
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2014 Audi RS 7 First DriveI'm no Breeder, but Kim Deal and I have at least one thing in common. I've been looking for one divine hammer. Nailed it. What you see here, is what a series of Dutch tourists in lightweight RVs saw through a real-world Adobe echo effect. It's the RS 7, the most outrageous roadgoing Audi of the...
Martin Padgett -
2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class first drive reviewOne of the more confusing questions car reviewers get--other than, "why so much bacon?"--is innocent enough, on the surface. "What's the best car?" Hm. Can I get a metric? Some vague parameters or constraints? Are we talking about the most value you can extract from a $20,000 bill--or the most...
Martin Padgett -
Military intelligence and jumbo shrimp are the classic oxymorons that keep garden-variety morons like me awake at night. Toss in a third mindbender--"sporty SUV"--and the WTF factor does a damn fine...
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2014 BMW M6 Gran Coupe: First DriveTexas loves its mythology, but it's not always supported by cold facts. "Everything's bigger here" fits on a bumper sticker. Austin's a hub for Smart cars. DFW could fit snugly inside Beijing's Capital Airport with room to spare. Bubble burst. Texas does have one of the biggest new race tracks in...
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2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA 45 AMG first drive reviewMainstream success gets a bad rap. Most of the time it's richly deserved, emphasis on the "rich." Bieber, Budweiser, Burger King--they're all huge, and hugely profitable. But even at their very best, they're baseline goods, zero hashmarks on the pop-culture barometer. When it's done correctly, with...
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2014 Audi R8: Joy RideI may be missing something, but the last I heard, I was completely normal for ditching work for a weekend fling with an Audi R8. Maybe you'll understand, after some evidence, why it took about a millisecond to take Audi up on its offer to wing it to Malibu and toss the R8 lineup around some of the...
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2014 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series first drive reviewHave we driven the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG enough? You tell us. We've flogged it in its debut form as a gullwing, as a roadster, as the new SLS AMG GT, and as a GT Roadster in a weekend joy ride. We've even driven the Tomorrowland edition, also known as the SLS AMG Electric Drive. We've chunked the...
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2014 Bentley Flying Spur first drive reviewIt's hard to pick out the landmarks through the dusty permahaze, but even just before dawn it's clear. Beijing does not play around with scale. Second to none is the general theme, and it holds true as you pan from one side of the hotel window to the other. The Olympic Torch towers off stage left...
Martin Padgett -
The Bentley Flying Spur is officially fair game. We brought you live photos from the Geneva Motor Show and from the New York auto show--and now, we're just back from a first drive from Beijing to...
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2013 VW Beetle, Jetta GLI Uprated, UpgradedThe latest version of VW's turbocharged 2.0-liter four makes its way into the Beetle and Jetta lineups midway through the 2013 model year. Volkswagen says for cars on sale this month, the running changes to those models will include its new TSI engine, the one it's building at a new factory in...
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2013 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT Roadster: Joy RideWe've spent a lot of time behind the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG--back when it was a new gullwing, then as a roadster, when it underwent its mid-cycle refresh as the SLS AMG GT, and even for a spin in the battery-powered, half-a-million-dollar-pricetagged SLS AMG GT Electric Drive. So what...
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2014 Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG Video Preview: New York Auto ShowWith a pricetag of $48,375, total output of 355 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque, and a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds, the Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG is, how you say, interesting. It's safe to assume no car this year has occupied so many pixels of conversation among our staff Skypers--and will...
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2014 Bentley Flying Spur Video Preview: New York Auto ShowIt's still quite continental, but the 2014 Bentley Flying Spur is missing that tag from its name. To find out why, we stopped by the Bentley stand at the 2013 New York Auto Show, and talked to Paul Jones, who knows precisely why--since he's the one in charge of the new ultra-luxury sedan. The...
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2014 Cadillac CTS Video Preview: New York Auto ShowBy now, you've seen our 2013 New York auto show coverage--and maybe you're ready to crown the 2014 Cadillac CTS as the king of all things formerly Art & Science. We understand the rush to judgement, given the goodness on display in this year's 2013 Cadillac ATS. But before you make any brash...
Martin Padgett