*42 Mpg!* Loaded! Free 5-yr Warranty / Shipping! Turbodiesel Leather Sunroof on 2040-cars

Auto blog

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.

VW to announce $1B investment in Mexico plant

Big news south of the border could be slated for later this week, as Automotive News is reporting that the Volkswagen Group will announce a $1-billion investment in the company's Puebla factory. The company officially declined to comment, but AN is claiming the investment in the Puebla facility, which has been operating for over five decades, will add 1,900 jobs to the nearly 16,000-strong workforce. According to AN, a person familiar with the situation in Puebla claims the investment will support production of the next-generation Tiguan, slated to arrive in 2017. The Puebla factory currently produces Golf, while total output last year nearly hit half a million vehicles, or about 15 percent of Mexico's total automotive output. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Susana Gonzalez / Newsmakers/ Getty Plants/Manufacturing Volkswagen Mexico vw tiguan puebla

Piech is back (kinda) at VW

Before the company was rocked by the diesel emissions scandal, you would've thought that the ouster of Ferdinand Piech as chairman of the Volkswagen Supervisory Board in April was the biggest corporate news from the automaker all year. After all, the longtime exec was a towering figure in the German auto industry. He wasn't gone for long, though. In a fascinating article, The Wall Street Journal breaks down how Piech is now wielding influence within the giant corporation yet again. Piech's continued sway has come in part because two people close to him have started running the company. His resignation reportedly came because Piech was supporting Matthias Muller as next group CEO, rather than Martin Winterkorn. Now, Muller has achieved exactly that role. In addition, Hans Dieter Potsch has taken over as supervisory board chairman. He's also the chief financial officer at Porsche SE, the family holding company that controls a vast swath of VW stock. "The Porsche-Piech family will exert more influence over the company in the future," an anonymous person close to the board said to The Wall Street Journal. Piech appears fully aware of his changing fortunes within the company, too. According to the WSJ, he and his wife Ursula arrived at the VW factory's main gates in a red Bentley the day after WInterkorn's resignation. If you find all of these corporate machinations fascinating, then the piece is well worth a read.