MotorTrend

2025 MOTORTREND POWER LIST The auto industry has been in a state of flux considering electric, self-driving, and software-defined vehicles against a backdrop of geopolitical tension and changing consumer appetites. For automakers undertaking decisions for cars that will launch years from now, reading that crystal ball has always been incredibly difficult. Doing so is even trickier in 2025. 2024 had no shortage of drama. Henrik Fisker’s second automotive startup filed for bankruptcy. Stellantis imploded, culminating in the resignation of CEO Carlos Tavares and an executive shuffe to win back the trust of dealers, suppliers, employees, and customers. The UAW organized the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee but failed at the Mercedes plant in Alabama. A cyberattack virtually shuttered dealerships across the U.S. for weeks. GM folded Cruise, its self-driving division. Automakers’…

Fast, curvaceous cars and British Racing Green? The warm glow of wood, the rich tang of leather, the bright splashes of chrome? Grace, pace, and space? Forget everything you know about Jaguar. The storied British carmaker is undergoing the most profound transformation in its 89-year history. The new Jaguar is nothing like the old. Everything, including the creation of a new typeface for the company logo, is different. Necessary Upheaval Jaguar Land Rover already shocked Jaguar enthusiasts and dealers when it announced it would end the production of all gas-powered Jaguars in 2024 and stop selling them worldwide until the first of the brand’s all-new electric models, a car described as a four-door GT, launches in 2026. Halting production of today’s Jaguar lineup and effectively withdrawing the brand from the…

Well, that worked, didn’t it? From the moment Jaguar revealed its colorful brandscape video, the social media landscape went ablaze with commentary and conjecture. Even Twitterer (Xer?)-in-chief Elon Musk took time out from shipping Cybertrucks and catching rockets and schmoozing Donald Trump to ask, “Do you sell cars?” Yes, everyone was talking about a faintly fusty British automaker that a few months prior seemed destined to slip into quiet oblivion. And here’s what all the fuss is really all about: the Jaguar Type 00. The most important concept car in Jaguar’s 90-year history, the brave and uncompromisingly provocative Type 00 kicks off Jaguar’s bold new strategy designed to reinvent itself as a 21st-century modernist, relatively exclusive, and pricey luxury brand. “It is our first physical manifestation and the foundation stone…

Aston Martins have often been a triumph of style over substance. Yes, they’ve been fast and charismatic, but rarely did an Aston represent the cutting edge of performance technology. Until now. The 2026 Valhalla is a state-of-the-moment mid-engine supercar that will have folks at Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren checking their rearview mirrors. The Chevy guys, too, because the all-wheel-drive Valhalla has the same power as the bonkers new Corvette ZR1 but will be about 150 pounds lighter. This is a substantially different car to the AM-RB 003 concept that portended it back in 2019. The AM-RB 003, developed with the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team and its now-ex design genius, Adrian Newey (now the managing technical partner of the Aston Martin F1 team), was intended to be powered by…

50 MARCH/APRIL/MAY 1975 PRICE: $1.00 The automotive industry was in the throes of change, and our pages reflected a diverse and evolving industry landscape. We looked at a prime group of American “supercars,” the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, and Malcolm Bricklin’s new gullwing SV-1, as well as a quartet of cars rated for 35 mpg or better, including the Datsun B210 (41 mpg), Honda Civic (44), VW Scirocco (45), and Lotus Elite (35—we gotta have some fun, right?). We tested the 10 bestselling American cars (top three: full-size Chevrolet, full-size Ford, Chevy Chevelle), plus newcomers like the Triumph TR7, Volvo 240, and Rolls-Royce’s opulent but ugly Camargue. Features included a postmortem on GM’s Wankel rotary engine, a gamble the corporation lost, and an in-depth look at the radical…

Nineteenth-century EVs were as likely to use inboard motors as they were wheel-hub motors. OG car guy Ferdinand Porsche raced a wheel-hub-motored EV in Vienna in 1897, and Lohner and others built production versions from 1900 to 1920. Porsche’s direct drive eliminated the friction of a geared or chain drive but also lacked their torque multiplication. So the copper and iron required to generate sufficient torque to accelerate his heavy batteries resulted in 320-pound motors. Such unsprung weight kills ride and handling, and hub motors suffer more shock, vibration, and risk of contamination. Hence few EVs have used hub motors since. (Lightyear and Lordstown Motors each produced a few.) Might the concept be ripe for a renaissance? In 2018, Orbis Wheels demonstrated a hub-mounted motor that solved the torque-multiplication problem…