#FutureModels

“Lear-ick” or “lear-eek”? That’s the first question the Cadillac Lyriq brings to mind, the second being who, exactly, was behind the naming of this future electric crossover. Names matter, and if they don’t roll off the tongue easily, that’s a problem. At least for non-Italian brands…

But this writer digresses. On Thursday, which proved quite eventful in terms of product news, Cadillac decided to seek a little limelight of its own.

BMW’s approach to the next frontier of driving propulsion has been an incremental one. First, electrification in a couple of oddball niche cars; then, plug-in hybrid versions of more conventional models. The fully electric vehicles coming down the pipe share their versatile architecture with existing models containing more conventional powerplants.

It’s cautious, and it’s certainly the approach most American automakers would probably prefer to take themselves. Alas, Germany is not America. EU regulators regularly crack the whip, startling execs who built their careers on dishing out gas and diesel offerings. Go green in a big way, now, or be slowly asphyxiated by a blanket of regulation that penalizes builders of emissions-heavy fleets.

It’s no wonder BMW’s works council wants top brass to stop dipping their toe in the deep end and just jump in, already.

A report earlier this year may have been what many longtime Mazda fans yearned to hear: that the company stands prepared to dump extra horses on its compact 3 sedan and hatch. Floundering since its launch, the little 3 could use a boost — in a number of ways.

Model codes ripped from a dealer’s computer system seemed to indicate a greater level of performance was on the way, and on Thursday Mazda confirmed just that.

Oh, it’s really official now. The supercharged, off-road-ready sport truck previewed by a concept vehicle four years ago is almost here, and Ram now has a landing page for it.

Appearing for the 2021 model year, the Ram Rebel TRX is a full-size 1500 with a heart transplant from a Dodge Hellcat donor. Squarely in its sights is the Ford F-150 Raptor, a model that’s dominated the niche it carved out for itself for too long.

To Travis County, Texas, wherein lies the city of Austin, it probably sounds great.

Tesla, which has been on the hunt for a second U.S. production site for months, plans to pitch just such an offer to county officials on Tuesday, Bloomberg reports. In it, the automaker calls the jobs “middle-skill,” which has assembly plant worker written all over it.

Fielding a full range of passenger cars is soooo yesterday, man. Almost no one does it anymore. Certainly, no American automaker, anyway.

Across the pond, Jaguar finds itself at a fork in the road. The sedan market is drying up, and along with it, sales of its compact XE and midsize XF models. The XJ is going electric, so that’s a decision already made.

But what to do at the bottom end of the market?

At this point, if Ford wants to keep the upcoming Bronco and Bronco Sport under wraps until their respective unveilings, it had best invest in surplus anti-aircraft batteries — or just never leave the confines of company-owned production facilities. Even those walls have proven a porous barrier, however.

As the weekend dawned, drone-provided aerial spy photos appeared of the two dissimilar Broncos congregating with a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 out in the desert, far — at least, one would assume — from prying eyes.

Even before the pandemic and subsequent economic crash, much talk was being made about living in your car. Specifically, the vehicle of choice would be a spacious yet efficient van. It continues to this day in many corners of the Internet.

Ford apparently took this discourse to heart, reportedly adding a new feature to the upcoming 2021 F-150 pickup that makes home ownership unnecessary.

What a year 2020’s turned out to be! Sure, there’s stuff happening in the background, but look at all the minivan news. Chrysler’s coming out with an all-wheel-drive Pacifica, Toyota’s turning the Sienna into a dedicated hybrid, and Kia — well, Kia’s not giving up.

As the least popular minivan in a shrinking segment, Kia’s Sedona will not fade from the U.S. market. Not when there’s a fourth-generation model about to debut in Kia’s South Korean home base.

Are your ready for Air?

It’s been a long time coming, but funding and an actual assembly plant have a way of making things happen. And such is the case at Lucid Motors, which plans to reveal its production Air sedan on September 9th.

Hey, look — it’s Volkswagen’s upcoming electric crossover! Leaked on the vwidtalk.com forum and spied by Jalopnik on Wednesday, the MEB-platform EV, which will one day roll out of Chattanooga Assembly, apparently used a Coke bottle for a muse.

Shunning straight lines as well as gasoline, the ID.4 has been spotted disguised as both an Opel and a Kia, but these photos bare all.

Well, this week’s debut of the new Lexus IS didn’t go as planned, what with company execs opting to wait until things cooled down in the streets and Twitter feeds of America.

Turns out we didn’t have long to wait. The 2021 IS, already teased in a shadowy image released by Lexus earlier this month, will make an online appearance on Monday, June 15th. Lexus offered up a few new views of the thing, too. Your day is made!

Those of you living in North America can kiss any chance of buying a Volkswagen ID.3 goodbye, as the automaker’s first-of-many, MEB-platform electric will not make it across the pond. Larger, more U.S.-friendly models will follow.

For Brits, however, orders open next month, with deliveries beginning in September. To say the ID.3 compact electric hatchback is an important product for VW would be an understatement. VW’s staked much of its future on an electric shift heralded by this vehicle, the first of its MEB-underpinned models. An ongoing software issue already plagues this little car.

Autocar recently got its hands on a production-ready ID.3. What did they discover?

For its last model year before swapping to an all-new platform, Ford plans to offer the much-loved Mustang in a hot new shade of orange. Tangerine now pairs with the orange-adjacent, almost peach-like Chamois.

Apparently, customers can have their ‘Stang — downsized severely just in time for those recent OPEC shenanigans — in whatever flavor they desire ahead of Dearborn’s new Fox-bodied successor. T-tops, which appeared last year, can be had by any hatchback buyer, while the King Cobra joins the roster for those who find the Cobra II package too tepid.

Read on for more details.

It’s been a rough go for Ford Bronco fans. Just when they thought they’d get to feast their eyes on a real, physical, reborn Bronco, the pandemic arrived and pushed everything back. No glitzy premiere at the now nonexistent Detroit auto show, just tears.

The returning model’s debut is now set for sometime in July, likely early in the month, but photos of a manual-transmission model leaked to the web are better than nothing.