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Nissan GT-R convertible offered in three flavors from NCE

Newport Convertible Engineering, the Southern California company that can't keep its top on, has revealed on its website that it is now producing three different droptop versions of the Nissan GT-R Convertible. It's just another page in its work with high-end offerings like the new Range Rover and the Jaguar XJ. NCE owner Al Zadeh tells Autoblog that the superfast speedster came about during a trip to Abu Dhabi, when clients of his that collectively owned ten GT-Rs said they wanted him to engineer a convertible. They didn't want to see pictures, though, "They wanted to touch it and see it," he said.
So he built a convertible with a traditional, unadorned soft tonneau cover (the white one in our gallery) and another with hard tonneau cover fitted with roll hoops and a low-rise dual cowl (the blue one). When the clients saw it, "They said they wanted something more glamorous," Zadeh said. So he came up with the black version above with a hard tonneau cover and can't-miss-it cowling that, frankly, looks pretty good to us in that color and with those wheels.
Clients satisfied, the order books have opened for other GT-R owners around the world. The most restrained version runs $29,500 to build, the other two retail for $49,000, and all of them require a donor GT-R and eight weeks to finish. With facilities in SoCal, Europe and the Middle East, you won't even have to send your Godzilla too far away if this is the look you've decided it just has to have.

Renault's ambitious EV strategy relies on historic nameplates

PARIS — Renault unveiled a more ambitious strategy for electric vehicles (EVs) on Wednesday, betting on new, affordable versions of its iconic small cars of the past to catch up with Volkswagen in the fast-growing sector. The French carmaker's Chief Executive Luca de Meo said it would launch 10 new EVs by 2025 and that all-electric vehicles would account for up to 90% of its models by 2030, dropping its reliance on hybrids to hit the target under a previous plan. Renault is betting that an electric version of its classic Renault 5 compact car, which was discontinued in the 1990s, will capture the imagination of today's drivers when it goes on sale in the first half of 2024. At a live-streamed presentation on Wednesday, the company also offered a fleeting glimpse of its new electric "4ever." model. Two sources close to the company said it was a revival of the Renault 4 hatchback which went out of production last century. "Today is an historic acceleration of Renault Group's EV strategy," de Meo said in a statement. De Meo said that new, purpose-built electric car platforms and a cluster of production sites in northern France would allow Renault to deliver EVs at a lower cost. The first of its new EVs will be the MeganE hatchback which is due to go on sale in the first half of 2022. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. By 2030, Renault and its alliance partners, Nissan and Mitsubishi, will be producing 1 million EVs globally a year, up from the 200,000 they made in 2020, the French carmaker said. Tesla, the world's most valuable carmaker, is already close to hitting that target, with sales of between 840,000 and 1 million EVs projected for this year. Shrinking share Renault's Zoe model, the biggest-selling battery electric car in its segment in Europe for years, is losing ground to models such as Volkswagen's ID.3 compact electric car. Figures from database EV-Volumes.com showed Volkswagen's share of the EV market in Europe soared to 25% last year from 14% in 2019, overtaking the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, whose share shrank to 19% from 23% in 2019. In the first quarter of 2021, Renault's share fell further to 15%, tying with Tesla for third place behind Volkswagen on 21% and Stellantis on 17%, EV-Volumes.com data showed.

Best gas mileage cars

If you're looking for the cars with the best gas mileage, your best bets are hybrids and EVs, and with the latter, then it's a case of energy efficiency considering the lack of gasoline. But maybe you don't like the idea of an electrified vehicle. Maybe you're concerned about more complicated powertrains or new technologies. Maybe you're put off by the extra up-front cost of those vehicles. So what's the best way to get good fuel economy, without batteries? Well, we've pulled together the 10 most fuel-efficient cars that only run on gasoline. Best Gas Mileage Cars for 2024: 2021 Mitsubishi Mirage and Mirage G4 View 27 Photos Mitsubishi Mirage: 39 mpg combined When you can't be electrified, you need to achieve high efficiency with other strategies. In the case of the Mitsubishi Mirage, those come from low weight (just 2,084 pounds) and low power (just 78 horsepower). That's how the Mirage manages to top the list at 39 mpg combined. In the city it gets 36 mpg, and on the highway it manages 43, both of which are tops in this list, too. That just applies to the hatchback, though. The sedan would technically be second on the list with 37 mpg combined, but we're generally lumping together body styles. The other big draw of the Mirage is that it's incredibly cheap and has a long warranty. The base hatchback starts at $18,110 with destination, making it one of the cheapest cars on the road. And it has a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty. So if you're looking for maximum frugality above literally all else, it's hard to top the Mirage. Honda Civic: 36 mpg combined While the Mirage wins technically, it makes many compromises to achieve its price and fuel economy. The rest of the list provides far better balancing of economy with being quality modern automobiles. And coming in second is the Honda Civic sedan (pictured at the top of this article) in EX trim with the turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder and CVT. This variant manages 33 mpg in the city, 42 on the highway and 36 combined. Going to the Touring trim drops fuel economy to 34 combined, and the 2.0-liter non-turbo engine gets between 33 and 35. The most efficient hatchback gets 35 mpg combined. The hatch is even available with a manual transmission, but it's also the least efficient (31 mpg). Then there's the Si and Type R, but with much more power and handling upgrades, they're basically different models. Regardless, almost every version of the Civic is quite frugal.