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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Watch this Lamborghini Aventador shoot flames and light itself on fire

The stationary revving of high-horsepower, high-cylinder-count Italian engines may be an adolescent pleasure among the world's wealthy, but it's a mechanical display of machismo we're usually prepared to indulge simply because it sounds so great. And it's a spectacle made all the better when one's exhaust spits flames, right? Well, most of the time. Check out this Lamborghini driver, who gets a bit exuberant with his right foot only to have disaster strike.
The driver's Aventador has no problem shooting long flames, and apparently they're hot enough to catch portions of the supercar's body alight. However, the driver's reaction might be even more unbelievable. Watch the video to see what happens - his response certainly isn't how many people would react to their supercar being on fire, perhaps because he isn't completely comprehending what's going on.
One final note; while the video's title claims that the fire is the result of a design flaw, there's not really enough information here to know if that's actually the case. The Lambo could be running an unsuitably modified exhaust or ECU to help it shoot big flames, or the issue could be as simple as debris caught in the rear vents lighting up.

The 2019 Lamborghini Urus, fastest SUV in the world, has landed

A Lamborghini has got to stand out from the crowd. In the supercar world, that means things like scissor-doors, massive wings, and almost impossibly wedge-shaped profiles. In the SUV world, standing out apparently means a dramatically descending roofline, a fascia with more cuts, contours, and creases than a bright yellow origami Pikachu. You certainly won't mistake the Lamborghini Urus for anything else on the road. That flavescent bodywork hides a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 sending a stout 641 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque through an 8-speed automatic transmission to all four wheels. It hits 62 mph in 3.6 seconds, and we anxiously await the first YouTube video showing an Urus lined up against a Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk for ultimate SUV-acceleration bragging rights. With a top speed of 189.5 mph, Rambo Lambo Part Deux seemingly makes good use of all those aero bits to outrun the Trackhawk by a solid 10 mph, and the Bentley Bentayga by a razor-slim troika. The hi-po engine is backed up with standard carbon ceramic brakes, active roll control, and a torque vectoring rear differential. With all of these performance goodies employed, Lamborghini expects it to have a Nurburgring lap time that will break the Alfa Stelvio Quadrifoglio's outstanding 7:15 time. 2019 Lamborghini Urus View 11 Photos We can't imagine many owners taking an Urus off road, but Lamborghini cites the low-down torque of the turbocharged V8 as an off-pavement benefit. And, in addition to the expected modes of Strada, Sport, Corsa and Neve (a typically Italian stand-in for Snow), there are Terra (off-road) and Sabbia (sand) modes. Each sportier road mode lowers the air suspension, and the off-road modes raise the suspension for ground clearance. Rear-wheel steering based on the system from the Aventador S can change steering angle between positive and negative 3 degrees, and it is likely to come in handy no matter what kind of terrain you're traveling. Lamborghini has expanded its factory in Sant'Agata in order to ramp up production on the Urus, which, when it goes on sale in 2018 as a 2019 model with a pricetag of about $200,000, is expected to be the marque's bestseller. In fact, the Group are hoping that it will eventually double annual global sales, from 3500 to 7000. The SUV market is currently booming, and Lambo plans other variants of this model, including its first plug-in hybrid, so this seems within the realm of possible.