2001 Porsche Boxster, Rebuilt Engine on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Best and worst car brands of 2022 according to Consumer Reports

It's that time again, Consumer Reports this morning lifting the curtain on its 2022 Annual Car Brand rankings and its 10 Top Picks in the car, crossover, and truck category. Drumroll, please: This year, Subaru climbs two spots to claim the winner's circle, having come third the last two years. Last year, Mazda climbed three spots from 2020 to take the crown. This year, Mazda slipped to second, BMW taking the last spot on the podium, also a one-spot drop from 2021. Six automakers in the top 10 hailed from Japan, which is one more than last year, and five luxury makers occupied the top 10, which is two more than last year. And South Korean representation didn't crack the top this year, after Hyundai managed tenth last year. The seven makes after BMW are: Honda, Lexus, Audi, Porsche, Mini, Toyota, and Infiniti.  The magazine and testing concern says its Brand Report Card "[reveals] which automakers are producing the most well-performing, safe, and reliable vehicles based on CR’s independent testing and member surveys," and that "Brands that rise to the top tend to have the most consistent performance across their model lineups." The domestics also took steps back among the 32 OEMs ranked on the 2022 card. Chrysler and Buick were the domestic carmakers who made last year's top 10 in eighth and ninth, respectively. This year, Buick dropped to eleventh, Chrysler to thirteenth. Dodge went from fourteenth to sixteenth. CR continues to ding Tesla's yoke steerer, the not-exactly-natural handhold responsible for the electric carmaker going from sixteenth last year to twenty-third this year.

1964 Porsche 356 Cabriolet Emory Outlaw First Drive

The black lacquer badge affixed to this 1964 Porsche 356 Cabriolet has two words on it: "356 Outlaws." When it was first produced by a jeweler in the 1980s for the Emory family, the word "Outlaw" was a term of pride only meaningful to the father-and-son team that were building these custom Porsches. Outside of their Orange County garage, the Outlaws attracted less respect than outlaw humans. In the past few years, Magnus Walker has helped Outlaws blow up outside nontraditional Porsche circles. Collector car brokers now happily promote Outlaw builds, and online how-to guides will teach you to create your own. Despite their newfound recognition, Outlaws began with Gary and Rod Emory and continue with Emory Motorsports. We didn't drive the black 1958 Porsche 356 Emory Special and silver 1959 356 Outlaw in the gallery – completed cars move through the shop so quickly that we couldn't organize a shoot and a drive on the same day. We drove a 1964 356C Outlaw that gets by with leather hood straps, deleted bumper guards, Raydot fender mirrors, and a drilled fuel filler cap poking through the hood. The interior is dressed in red leather in sanguine contrast to the beige German square weave carpet along the bulkheads. The three gauges are taken from a 904, the racer Porsche developed to succeed the 718. Emory's tuning lineage is as old as the cars he restores. Emory's tuning lineage is as old as the cars he restores. His grandfather Neil ran Valley Custom Shop in Burbank from 1948 to 1962, channeling and sectioning the slab-sided bodywork of '40s and '50s domestic sedans in ways that OEM designers would later adopt. Neil's tenure also included building the body for the SoCal Streamliner in 1950, the first hot rod to hit 200 miles per hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats. When Chick Iverson opened a Porsche dealership in Newport Beach he asked Neil to run the body shop. Neil's son Gary would become the parts manager. When he saw inventory being thrown out for lack of space, Gary then opened his own Porsche parts operation. Gary's son Rod started playing in the warehouse from the age of six, mixing and matching pieces to make go-karts and help build the Porsches Gary would sketch. Rod began his first restoration, a 1953 Porsche 356, at 14 years old. He spent two years on it, then went vintage racing. This wasn't a concours build – growing up in a parts shop, Rod had no qualms about using whatever suited his purpose and vision.

2014 Porsche Panamera arrives with new E-Hybrid, long-wheelbase models

Porsche will officially unveil the refreshed 2014 Panamera at the Shanghai Motor Show later this month, and there's a whole lot in store for the updated model, far beyond the minimal styling tweaks you see here. Sure, there's a new fascia with more prominent LED lighting (including full LED headlamps) and the rump has been tweaked ever so slightly, but the big news for 2014 concerns what's underneath that rakish skin.
First up, Porsche will now offer a Panamera S E-Hybrid model - a plug-in hybrid that builds on the technology first introduced in the Panamera S Hybrid that we tested in 2011. For this new application, a more powerful electric motor and higher-performance battery have been fitted (official specs have not been released just yet), and Porsche says the battery can be recharged in just two and a half hours when the car is plugged in to a 240-volt outlet, and the charging (as well as other vehicle data) can be monitored via a new Porsche Car Connect app available for Android and iOS devices.
The E-Hybrid will have an all-electric driving range of "greater than 20 miles" and will be able to travel at speeds up to 84 miles per hour solely on electric power.