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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.

40+ cars that barely avoid the gas guzzler tax

The Gas Guzzler schedule, with mpg ratings and charges that haven't changed since 1991, lays out which fuel-swillers owe what to Uncle Sam.
I started thinking about the "Gas Guzzler Tax" - considerably less well known as The Energy Tax Act of 1978 - when I was driving Dodge's new Challenger SRT Hellcat last week. Unsurprisingly for a car that can burn 1.5 gallons of gas per minute at max tilt, theoretically able to empty a full tank of premium in about 13 minutes, the Hellcat will be subject to the Gas Guzzler Tax schedule when it goes on sale.

Maserati to celebrate 100th anniversary at Monterey Motorsports Reunion

The Pebble Beach weekend is without a doubt one of the preeminent classic car gatherings on the calendar. But while most of the events that make up the weekend are essentially static displays, our favorite may be the Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. That's where you can actually see classic racing cars doing what they were made for in the first place. And every year, organizers of the event select a featured marque.
Last year it was the Chevrolet Corvette. The year before it was Shelby, preceded by Jaguar the year before that. But next year, the classic racing event will feature Maserati, which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary. And to make the occasion extra special for the Modenese marque, next year also marks the 60th anniversary of the most celebrated racing cars ever made by Maserati (or any other constructor, for that matter): the Maserati 250F (No. 4 above) famously piloted by the likes of Fangio and Moss in 1954.
Fittingly, the Trident marque got its start in racing back in 1914 with the debut of the Tipo 26 that put Maserati on the map with a debut victory in the 1926 Targa Florio. Although you don't much see it competing at top levels these days, Maserati went on to win the Indianapolis 500, the Formula One World Championship and, more recently, the FIA GT1 World Championship.