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The cars and trucks of 'Transformers: Rise of the Beasts'

The latest spectacle in the Transformers franchise is about to hit the theaters. The final trailer was released, giving us peeks at what appears to be a pretty boilerplate story about the end of the world. There's some kind of ancient interplanetary war brewing and it's up to some teenagers to sort it out with the help of their robot buddies. But this is Autoblog, so we're not even going to try to suss out a plot so thin it won't hold a spittle globule's worth of water. We'll just go over the cars. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts | Official Final Trailer (2023 Movie) Porsche 911 Carrera RS 3.8: Mirage So far the star of the film, car-wise, looks to be a blue-on-silver 964 Porsche named Mirage that is voiced by Pete Davidson. It's been the most promoted of the movie cars, even more so than formerly central characters like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Except, this isn't just any ordinary 911; it's a Carrera RS 3.8, a European-exclusive model of which Porsche only built 55 units. As the name implies, it came with a bored-out M64 turbo flat-six as opposed to the 964 Turbo's 3.6. It wore the Turbo's wide-body badonk with a bi-level rear wing, but Porsche reportedly stripped out 570 pounds' worth of weight despite embiggening key performance parts like brakes and wheels. Fortunately, no actual RS 3.8s were used in the movie. Producers instead built five cars for different purposes — shooting closeups of actors, jumps, the obligatory driving backwards real fast — out of lesser 911s. However, the sound department did record the engine note of an actual RS 3.8 for accuracy, as the higher crank speeds of the 3.8 have a distinctive sound.  In the original 1984 Transformers lineup Mirage was a Ligier JS11 Formula 1 car, complete with faux Gitanes cigarette branding (on a children's toy!). An F1 racer would raise an eyebrow on the streets, so it made sense to update to a street-legal sports car. If you're wondering why this Porsche isn't the character Jazz, whose original vehicle mode was an ultra-cool Martini-liveried Porsche 935, well, he was remade into a Pontiac Solstice voiced by Darius McCrary during the GM product placement rewrite in 2007's Transformers reboot, then unceremoniously killed. 1977 Chevrolet Camaro: Bumblebee Formerly the franchise star, Bumblebee gets far less screen time in the trailers. He's still a Camaro, but because Transformers: Rise of the Beasts takes place in 1994 he's not a fith-gen.

NHTSA could add 1M cars to GM recall

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may expand a recall campaign for faulty brake lamps. The agency is currently looking into complaints that certain 2004-2011 Chevrolet Malibu models as well as some 2007-2009 Saturn Aura sedans may have brake lights that do not illuminate when the driver presses the pedal. Alternatively, the lamps may also illuminate without input from the driver. General Motors recalled 8,000 Pontiac G6 models from the 2005 model year for the same problem, and NHTSA is currently investigating whether to add 550,000 more G6 models built between 2005 and 2009 to the list for the same issue.
In addition, investigators are currently examining 97 complaints from Malibu and Aura owners with the same trouble. If NHTSA adds those models to the recall campaign, more than one million units could be covered. GM, meanwhile, says there have been no accidents or injuries as a result of the problem.

NHTSA investigating nearly 750,000 GM models over non-deploying airbags

Nearly 750,000 vehicles built by Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac are the subject of a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation due to non-deploying driver-side airbags. While the investigation is ongoing, the agency believes the issue is likely due to rust particles that form on the inflator's connection terminal interface. The list of nameplates included in the investigation includes Chevrolet's Silverado, Tahoe, and Suburban, GMC's Sierra, Yukon, and Yukon XL, plus Cadillac's Escalade, Escalade ESV, CT4, CT5, and XT4. All of the potentially affected vehicles are 2020 or 2021 models, according to a bulletin published on the NHTSA's website. Investigators launched the probe in April 2021 after 15 consumers reported airbag-related issues, including nine who said an airbag malfunction light appeared in the instrument cluster. More alarmingly, the NHTSA is aware of six accidents that caused significant damage to the car's front end yet didn't trigger the driver's airbag. It adds that there are no fatalities linked to the issue, but there are six crashes and eight injuries reportedly blamed on it. No evidence suggests this problem is related to the millions of potentially deadly Takata inflators recalled over the past few years. General Motors is aware of the defect. It sent a technical service bulletin (TSB) to its dealers in March 2021 to address the aforementioned warning light. The note explains the issue is due to "rust particles in the connection terminal interface of the driver's airbag inflator." The company hasn't issued a safety recall yet, however. Whether it will partially depends on the NHTSA's findings. It's currently looking into the scope and the severity of the problem, and it wants to understand its implications on driver safety. Investigators will decide whether General Motors needs to recall the 749,312 cars that are part of the probe when they close their investigation. General Motors has already spent a significant amount of money replacing defective airbag-related parts in its cars. In November 2020, it was ordered by the American government to recall nearly 6 million pickup trucks and SUVs equipped with potentially dangerous Takata airbag inflators. It repeatedly argued that testing proved the inflators were safe, and it petitioned the agency four times starting in 2016 to avoid a recall, which cost an estimated $1.2 billion (about a third of its net income in 2020).