BMW's Concept Touring Coupe Rumored for Limited Run

BMW introduced the Concept Touring Coupe at the 2023 Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza in Italy. Clearly intended to be a throwback to the convertible M Coupes of the past, the design has metamorphosed the current-generation Z into a shooting brake.

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Rare Rides: A Trio of 1965 Aston Martin DB5s, a Complete Collection

We’ve featured several Aston Martins on Rare Rides previously, but have never covered its most recognizable car: the DB5. Designed in Italy, the DB5 was an instant collector’s item when it starred as James Bond’s ride in Goldfinger.

Today’s collection includes all three different DB5 body styles, each rarer than the last.

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Rare Rides: The 1975 Jensen GT, Stylish Performance in Shooting Brake Format

Rare Rides has featured exactly one Jensen vehicle previously, in a fairly fancy and exclusive Interceptor convertible made in left-hand drive for the US market.

Today’s GT was made the very same year as the Interceptor, just before Jensen went bust.

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Rare Rides: It's a 1977 Reliant Scimitar GTE, You Know

Today’s Rare Ride is a sporty shooting brake from the days when there were still many British manufacturers building cars like it across England.

Let’s travel back to the Seventies when everything was brown, excepting this particular Reliant.

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Rare Rides: A 2019 Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake, Questionable Bespoke Luxury

Today’s Rare Ride started out in life as an already very expensive Aston Martin Vanquish. Then it was reworked in a significant way by that Italian house of all things coupe, Zagato. Surprisingly, the Italians resisted painting it Rosso Corso Collezione or whatever, as its owner demanded a nice BRG-adjacent matte color.

Let’s check out this sports wagon shaped Aston Martin.

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Rare Rides: A 1977 Datsun F-10 - It's Sporty Beige Wagon Time

The Rare Rides series has featured just two magnificent Datsuns in prior entries. The first was a 720 King Cab pickup truck, followed recently by the unfortunate looking 200SX coupe. Today’s entry is arguably rarer than either of those, as even local Datsun enthusiast and TTAC contributor Chris Tonn was surprised to see it.

Say hello to the F-10 wagon from 1977.

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Rare Rides: A Custom Aston Martin V8 Shooting Brake From 1998

Ever wondered what a bespoke shooting brake might look like if its donor vehicle were a long-wheelbase convertible? Wonder no more, for today’s Rare Ride is just such a vehicle, and is also an Aston Martin.

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Electrification's Silver Lining: Audi CEO Announces PB 18 E-tron Production Plans [Updated]

Audi unveiled the PB 18 e-tron Concept at the 2018 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance with absolutely no assurance that it would ever be more than a fun idea. In fact, the company outright said it had no plans to put the vehicle into production. Miraculously, Audi flip-flopped, and the electrified hypercar is now slated for assembly.

You might hate it, but this is one of the few concept vehicles to ever make this author cream the proverbial jeans during office hours. Maybe it’s because I normally wait until the darkest point of the evening to unfurl my shame over a bottle of homemade wine and revisit vintage photo rolls of the Honda Unibox and Suzuki Regina — the latter of which was too good for this world.

However, whether or not Audi can successfully capture the magic of the PB 18 Concept remains to be seen.

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Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake Ready for Its Closeup

Last year, Aston Martin revealed that its Zagato line would receive a shooting brake variant of the Vanquish, issuing a teaser photo of the model in red. Then the company went silent, leaving many wondering what happened. Apparently there was no reason to worry, as Aston Martin just released a pretty robust series of images highlighting the vehicle’s bold styling.

With this much fanfare, it must be getting close to launch.

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The 2019 Kia ProCeed: You're Never Gonna Get It

When an automaker decides to launch a new station wagon in Europe, it’s usually a pretty safe assumption that we won’t see it in North America. Kia’s new ProCeed, scheduled for a public debut at the Paris Motor Show next month, is the latest example of this relentless phenomenon.

Still, while we’re annoyed we have to go without yet another Eurowagon, maybe this wasn’t the one for us.

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Electrified in Monterey: Audi's PB 18 E-tron Concept Is Phenomenal

Concept vehicles have been a bit of a snoozefest for enthusiasts lately. Despite the fact that automakers are still plenty capable of bringing out gorgeous designs, the autonomous angle has become so pervasive that it’s overridden the idea of having fun.

Then, during this week’s Monterey Car Week festivities, Audi dropped the PB 18 e-tron concept at Laguna Seca and fun slapped us across the face. This is the kind of car you have on your bedroom wall as a child and work your entire life to put into a garage as an adult.

With three electric motors (one driving the front axle and two out back) providing a combined output of 671 horsepower and 612 lb-ft of torque, the PB 18 should already be a menace. However, it can also temporarily bump itself up to 764 hp using stored energy via a kinetic energy recovery system. As a result, Audi claims the car is capable of a 0-to-62 mph rush in just over 2 seconds.

Combine that with an ultra-modern design that’s within the boundaries of what’s currently possible and several scoops of driver-focused tech, and you have one of best concept vehicles we’ve seen in years. The PB 18 expertly rides the line between fanciful and plausible.

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Rare Rides: Get Elite With Lotus and the Shooting Brake From 1974

Today’s Rare Ride is the inaugural post for Lotus in this series. We did have a brief British brush with the brand in the Isuzu I-Mark RS, which featured a suspension tuned by the then GM-owned Lotus engineering experts.

Let’s see the sort of car Lotus produced when it wasn’t under the influence of The General.

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Rare Rides: The Volvo 480 of 1993, Which Doesn't Look Like a Volvo

Occasionally on the vast and wondrous expanse of the Internet of Cars, I’ll run across one of these uniquely shaped little Volvos. In past instances they were either not for sale, were lacking in condition, or had few available photos.

All that changed the other day, when I sought out a photo of the 480 to make a point on Twitter. Let’s check out this charcoal-colored box, shall we?

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Overwhelming Majority of Porsche Panamera Buyers Won't Choose the Sport Turismo Shooting Brake

In most cases, it’s a foregone conclusion. When there are multiple bodystyles available, the fewest number of buyers exist for the wagon.

The Porsche Panamera’s case is unique, however. There is no Porsche Panamera sedan. This is a battle between the regular second-generation Porsche Panamera — a hatchback or liftback or fastback or backbackbackgone or whatever you want to call it — and the new Sport Turismo, a shooting brake five years in the making.

Yet with limited practical benefit, “It’s a question of taste; some people like the Sport Turismo more, some people like the sports sedan more,” Porsche’s sales and marketing director told Stefan Utsch, told Motoring.

80 percent of taste buds apparently prefer the regular Panamera.

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Callaway is Now Converting C7 Corvettes Into Station Wagons

Callaway Cars has been tuning and tweaking Corvettes for decades and, in 2013 the company announced it might consider producing a “shooting-brake” C7 and cash in on the returning trend. Since then, it has been developing the design while evaluating market appeal.

On Friday, Callaway officially announced its Corvette C21 AeroWagen package and the vehicle’s debut at the Michelin NCM Bash at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. An interesting idea, perhaps, but I am not in love with the execution. Callaway’s close ties to General Motors makes you trust the fit and finish will be factory quality, but fifteen grand is still a lot of money for owners to spend on potentially ruining the back half of a Corvette.

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  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?