Auto Shows Car guides

Nowadays, hybrid supercars are as common as a VW Jetta. Well, not quite, but you get the idea. Pretty much anyone into cars can name at least a few hybrid supercars off the top of his head – Ferrari SF90 Stradale, Lamborghini Sian, McLaren Speedtail, Aston Martin Valkyrie, Koenigsegg Regera, and others. What you may not know is that back when hybrid supercars were even considered, Toyota beat everyone to it. They did so with the Toyota Alessandro Volta, and this is everything we know about it.

The 2021 Chicago Auto Show is underway right now. It is being held between July 15-19 at McCormick Place south of Downtown, Chicago. Pretty much all of the mainstream auto manufacturers will be present at the venue. Considering how the EV trend has really taken off, there will also be a slew of electric vehicles on display, from legacy and EV manufacturers alike. The Chicago Auto Show is the first major auto show to return since the pandemic began, and these are the cars to watch out for!

I just finished watching the Duke of Richmond, the founder of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, take to the wheel of the brand new Lotus Emira, which just launched earlier this week, up the legendary hill climb. I am glad to report that the Festival of Speed is back for 2021 after a gap of nearly 18 months.

The Festival of Speed or FOS is a 4-day event that takes place around about the same time as the British Formula 1 Grand Prix every summer. It is a hill climb event and is touted by many as the celebration of motorsport. Every kind of car and motorcycle imaginable takes part in the event from all over the world. Be it vintage cars, old F1 cars, Rally Cars to the latest Electric Hypercars, Goodwood has you covered. 

The Goodwood Festival is also famed for bringing out rare and distinctive cars from private garages to race on the legendary course. There’s also a retro fairground, a revival auto show with scores of vintage cars, a revival cinema, and a Bonhams exclusive auction.

Here are some of the most anticipated cars to watch out for at this year’s event.

Aston Martin is known as a maker of exquisite and refined grand tourers, long-legged cars that offer enough panache to satisfy Ian Fleming’s James Bond on many an occasion. You could say Aston Martin knows every trick there is to know when it comes to building a front-engined GT car and that’s why they’re now looking to build more and more cars with the engine behind the seats. But the Valkyrie, the new Vanquish, and the AM-RB 003 aren’t the first of their kind in Aston Martin’s history.

When you think of any DB model from Aston Martin, you imagine an elegant two-door tourer ready for long journeys with a sumptuous and well-appointed interior and a feisty engine in front of the windshield. The company’s one and only Le Mans winner, the DBR1, was also front-engined as was the futuristic brick-like Lagonda luxury sedan from the ’70s. But, then, in the ’80s, when Aston Martin returned to sports car racing, it did so with a mid-engined car. This effectively heralded a new breed of Aston Martins, one that has stayed away from the public highways up until now but one that’s interesting to look into nonetheless.

Aston Martin just unveiled a new, limited-edition, and very expensive supercar. It features a V-12 engine with almost 700 horsepower and boasts a speedster design with no windshield, but with two sexy flying buttresses behind the seats. It’s freaking awesome and it’s a cool tribute to the company’s early race cars, but it’s also ridiculous and pointless. Here’s why.

Toyota’s usual lineup for the SEMA Show is centered mostly around SUVs and trucks, but the 2019 edition brings the fifth-generation Supra into the spotlight. The Japanese carmaker took the 2019 SEMA Show by storm with a handful of modified Supras, either built by aftermarket tuners or developed by Toyota itself to preview upcoming parts and accessories. Here’s the four most interesting coupes you’ll find on the show floor.

I am in love with the new Land Rover Defender. But at first, I was not. I was disappointed with its move towards an unibody chassis, and I have resented all the "soft-touches" Land Rover prepped for it. But I have changed my mind.

True, it is a mommy automobile, and a kids-to-school mover, but it is the best mommy automobile and kids transportation device I have ever seen. It’s tough, robust, well-engineered, rugged, and seriously capable. Plus, Land Rover offers it with 170 accessories, like roof racks, tow hitches, steel wheels, a rinse system, an armrest cooler, and a front bench-style seat. Find me another car that offers all of that. There’s no way you can. But!

There is a big "but" here. The 2020 Land Rover Defender is seriously expensive. It starts at $50,925 (plus destination charges) in the U.S. That’s huge. That is the price of the base BMW X4 xDrive30i. Take a deep dive in the configurator and you can spec it out at more than 100 grand. That is absurd.

In 2012, the Land Rover Defender started at $22,000 in Australia. Then again, the only thing that’s left from the old Defender on the new one is the name. Nothing else. This is a wholly new car. I only hope that Land Rover invested heavily in quality control. If it manages to ace reliability and dependability surveys with the new Defender, I’d say that the price may even be justified.

Here are several cool quirks and features that set this Defender apart from any other car in the world.

Land Rover finally revealed the new Defender at the 2019 Frankfurt Auto Show. The Defender was one of the most hardcore off-roaders before people started perceiving it as a premium SUV and not as a pure off-roader. It disappeared into oblivion in 2016 only to return three years later, reinvigorated. The new Defender is a lot more tough and back on track to being a true off-roader once again.

However, Land Rover has introduced it with all bells and whistles one can ask for and a lot of accessories to customize it as per you need. In fact, the accessories on offer have created a lot of buzz and they will be available right from the launch of the SUV. Just to be clear, there are 170 accessories and theme packs available for the Defender. We’ve chosen our pick and here are 10 accessories we found super cool and useful that you must consider if you plan on buying a Defender when it launches. Also note that we’re not going to mention the four default theme packs that Land Rover already has on offer.

What’s really great about the Goodwood Festival of Speed, especially in recent years, is that it not only assembles cars from all eras of motoring but that it also plays host to several debuts. More and more automakers have chosen the Festival as the venue of choice to reveal (usually sporty) new cars in order to gauge the opinion of the public.

The crowd at Goodwood is arguably more discerning too, since probably more people who attend this event are connoisseurs and/or enthusiasts than those who attend traditional motor shows. And, if a manufacturer chooses to present a new model here, it needs to be aware that its new metal will probably be in the very close proximity to priceless classics or flashy modern exotics.

With that being said, I’ve gathered a list of the top six most important new cars shown to the public for the first time at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The list contains three hot hatches and three supercars, one of which is actually a track-only special that attracted quite a bit of attention at the event.

This year we saw a celebration of motoring, the automotive industry, and pure driving bliss at the Lord March’s Goodwood Estate. With hundreds of thousands of attendees, Lord March’s Estate hosted a mandatory hill climb event, rally-stage event, several motoring venues, and other exhibition events. However, 39.9 seconds of the show will remain the most important part of the whole game. That was the time electric ID R racecar needed to cover 1.16 miles of the Goodwood estate Hillclimb, thus dethroning a 20-year-old record set by Nick Heidfeld and a Formula 1 car. Apart from that, the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed hosted so many incredible vehicles that it would just be impossible to note them all. I give you here 16 coolest cars that appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year.

Revealed as a sort of a swan song for the latest generation of the Ford GT family, the newest Ford GT Mk II track edition is the most extreme representation of the ethos created out of sheer necessity for speed. Revealed at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed Hillclimb where it won the Supercar Shootout class by running up the hill in 52.04 seconds, the Ford GT Mk II brings several specific track virtues unknown to its road-going brother.

This Ford GT does not adhere to any rule; it does not look to compete with any established competitors, but it will be faster than any of them. Developed in conjunction with Ford’s race partner Multimatic, the Ford GT Mk II Track Edition is probably the most extreme evolution of this very car we will ever see. This is what you need to know about it.

Auto Shanghai 2019 brought out all kinds of attractive new four-wheeled creations, with the best of the best compiled in our traditional Best In Show list right here. Unfortunately, there were a few debuts that definitely left us unimpressed, so we’re calling them out with a follow-up Worst In Show list. Regular readers will no doubt recognize some of these entries from our Best In Show list - as it turns out, we here at TopSpeed can’t always agree when it comes to matters of automotive opinion. As such, it’s up to you to post your thoughts in the comments section so we can hash this out…

With all the big debuts from the 2019 New York Auto Show now written into the history books, it’s time to take stock of what went down. We’ve already covered the best wins right here, but what about the big misses? What about the lamest special editions and the weakest model updates? Welp, we’ve got ‘em compiled right here in the following Worst In Show list.

Although the Chinese car market is currently undergoing a sales slump, it’s still the biggest car market in the world. No surprise then that the recent Auto Shanghai show brought out oodles of attractive new debuts, many of which provide clues as to what’ll arrive on these shores in the near future. As such, we’ve got the best of the best lined up right here in the following list.

Last week, the world’s biggest automakers swarmed the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to show off their latest and greatest models, delivering a host of fresh sedans, crossovers, and concepts to an auto-hungry public. As such, we’ve compiled all the hottest reveals right here for your perusal and enjoyment.

Initially introduced in 1995, the Subaru Outback brought an idea of a raised wagon with clear off-road proves to fruition. Many successful generations later, we are on a look for the introduction of an all-new 2020 Subaru Outback. For the first time created on the pillars of the Subaru’s so-called global platform (SGP), the 2020 Subaru Outback shares almost everything with the recently introduced 2020 Subaru Legacy that showed its face at the 2019 Chicago Motor Show. This is what we know about the 2020 Subaru Outback.

Mid-Size, seven-seat SUVs are taking over our roads, our car parks, and our highways. There’s nothing we can do about the invasion of cars like the Palisade, the Telluride, the Explorer, and now the Toyota Highlander. What we can do, however, is ask manufacturers to make them as good as possible. That is why the scheduled introduction of the new 2020 Toyota Highlander at the 2019 New York Motor Show is such a big deal. The new Toyota Highlander should be the best Highlander to date and this is what we know about it.

Representing one of the newest additions to Cadillac’s lineup, GM has introduced the 2020 CT5. The 2020 Cadillac CT5 presents an unusual frame considerably different compared to any previous generation of Cadillac cars. Using angular shapes formed to capture the spirit and function of the Cadillac brand and its move into modernity, the CT5 features a dominant front section, coupe-styled roof, and unique rear lights that follow the philosophy of individuality. That is something Cadillac is so keen to introduce and promote with its new breed of its vehicles. Although we are still far from the full unveiling that will happen at the 2019 New York Auto Show, I am giving you all the available critical facts about Cadillac’s latest and greatest.

As always, the Geneva Motor Show brought out some truly awesome debuts this year, the best of which we have right here in our Best In Show list. However, for all the good stuff that dropped in Switzerland, there was plenty of, well, not-quite-as-good stuff too. As such, we put together our picks for Worst In Show from the 2019 Geneva Motor Show right here.