• 2023 LDV Mifa 9 Is Australia’s Newest Electric Luxury Minivan, Priced From AU$106,000

    Australian consumers have a new people-mover to choose from and this one is all-electric. We’re of course talking about the LDV Mifa 9, a vehicle that has been in the works for quite some time.

    Found at the heart of the LDV Mifa 9 is a 90 kWh lithium-ion battery pack sourced from CATL. This battery can be charged through an 11 kW charger in approximately 8.5 hours or can be charged from 30 to 80 per cent in 36 minutes when hooked up to a DC fast charger.

    The battery provides juice to a single electric motor at the front wheels with 241 hp (180 kW) and 258 lb-ft (350 Nm) of torque. LDV says the Mifa 9 has a maximum range of up to 440 km (273 miles) and on average, uses roughly 21.3 kWh – 21.8 kWh per 100 km.

    The LDV Mifa 9 has been positioned towards the upper echelons of the people-mover market and as such, has a keen focus on luxury. The automaker will offer it in Mode, Executive, and Luxe trim levels, all of which can be finished in either Blanc White, Dynasty Red, Metal Black, Pearl White, Mica Blue, Concrete Grey, and Snow Cyan, the latter two of which can be accented by a black roof.

    Read: SAIC’s Maxus Mifa 9 Is A Luxury Electric Van With Six Power Seats And 10 Displays

    Buyers that opt for either the Executive or Luxe model receive power-sliding side doors. The flagship Luxe variant also features captain’s chairs equipped with heating, cooling, massage, and reclining functions. Other key highlights of the Mifa 9 include multi-zone climate control, 7 USB ports, a 220V power outlet, a sliding third-row of seating, and the options of either 6, 8, or 12-speaker sound systems.

    LDV has also equipped the Mifa 9 with a sleek and minimalist dashboard that houses a 12.3-inch infotainment display with wired Apple CarPlay, a 7-inch digital gauge cluster, and a multi-function leather and heated steering wheel. Options include a digital rear-view mirror and wireless mobile charging pad.

    A raft of safety features come standard on all Mifa 9 variants. These include blind spot detection, autonomous emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and lane change assist, fatigue reminder and attention assist, full LED adaptive headlights with auto beam assist, rear collision warning, speed assist system, and ABS, ESP and emergency braking assist.

    Local pricing for the LDV Mifa 9 kicks off from $106,000 ($70,010) for the Mode and rises to $117,000 ($77,275) for the Executive and $131,000 ($86,522) for the Luxe. All models come with a 5-year/200,000 km warranty and an 8-year/200,000 km battery warranty.

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  • Check Out This Flexible Rack System Ford Made For The New Ranger In Australia

    Ford proudly claims that the new Ranger is the most versatile ever and to help make it appeal to as many people as possible, Ford Australia has developed a new roof rack for it.

    Dubbed the Flexible Rack System (FRS), it slides within a C-shaped channel positioned at the top of the load box sidewalls and can be locked in five different positions, meaning it can secure items of varying lengths.

    Ford Australia says it spoke with pickup owners during the development of the latest-generation Ranger to determine how they used their trucks. The Flexible Rack System was the solution it came up with.

    Read: Ford Performance Is Taking The New Ranger Raptor To The Baja 1000

    “We learned from our customers that they would load things like canoes into the load box and then lean them up against the sports hoop before tying them down. This was awkward and meant the load box couldn’t really be used for storing anything else a customer might want to take with them,” Ford Ranger application specialist Danny Trentin described. “We also learned of their frustrations when it came to carrying items of longer lengths. With an 80-kilogram dynamic load limit, the Flexible Rack System eliminates those frustrations.”

    Forming part of the FRS is the Sliding Load Rack. It was designed to be operated quickly and easily by one person. The hoop slides into the rails and sports a system of four roller bearings angled at 37-degrees, retractable stabilizers and locks to ensure the rack won’t move when locked in position.

    Ford torture-tested the system at its local testing facility, ensuring that the FRS could support 80 kg (176 lbs) regardless of whether it was being driven on the tarmac or off-road.

    “Part of our durability test involves our infamous Silver Creek Road test track which is so torturous we use autonomous driving robots to complete this phase of the testing,” said Special Vehicle Engineering senior engineer Kin Tribhuvan. “The FRS was tested at full load and completed 77 runs on the track, passing with flying colors. It completed 400 runs with no load.”

    While pricing details for the Flexible Rack System are not yet known, Ford has confirmed it will be available on select 2023 Ranger models.

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  • Mercedes Slashes EV Prices By Up To $33,000 In China To Combat Slowing Sales

    In a quest to boost the disappointing sales of its EQ range in China, Mercedes announced price cuts for the EQE and EQS sedans. Foreign automakers are having a hard time competing with Chinese companies which dominate the local EV market.

    The Mercedes-Benz EQE is now priced at ¥478,000 ($67,432) after receiving a discount of ¥50,000 ($7,054). The automaker was even more generous with the Mercedes-Benz EQS flagship sedan which now costs ¥956,000 ($134,864), or a full ¥234,000 ($33,011) less than before, dropping below the ¥1-million mark. In order to be fair to its customer base, Mercedes announced it will provide subsidies to those who recently bought one of its electric sedans. Prices for the rest of the EQ range including the smaller EQA, EQB, and EQC SUVs remain unaltered.

    Read: Tesla Cuts Vehicle Prices In China Prompting Shares To Slide By As Much As 7%

    Bloomberg reports that the price cuts follow a period of slow sales. Specifically for the EQS, the numbers in China are surprisingly low, dropping to as few as 100 deliveries per month in some cases. Part of the problem has to do with the limited headroom for the rear passengers due to the sloping roofline. This is an important factor for Chinese buyers in the premium segment who prefer to be seated at the back.

    A Mercedes representative said that the company “continually observes and analyzes dynamic market developments, including the current positioning of other manufacturers in the luxury segment. Based on that, Mercedes-Benz is repositioning certain EQ models in China”.

    According to data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, Mercedes sold around 8,800 EVs in China between January and July this year. Compared to that, Chinese company BYD sold 220,000 EVs in October alone, although its models are more mainstream than the premium EQ range by Mercedes.

    Besides Mercedes-Benz, Tesla also recently announced price cuts in China in order to increase sales and become more competitive against the growing number of local rivals. The numbers suggest that this is getting harder, as 80% of the new EV sales in China during the seven months of 2022 came from domestic automakers.

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  • The 2024 Porsche Macan Electric Will Offer Big Range and (Finally!) a Frunk


    A 2024 Porsche Macan Electric prototype photographed inside a demonstration hall. the vehicle is painted black with vinyl appliques to obscure its design

    Photo: Tim Stevens

    It took four years for Porsche to go from the Mission E concept to the production version of the Taycan electric sport sedan. Now, three years after that car’s release, Porsche is giving us a peek at its next EV. It’ll be an SUV this time, the Macan Electric, and it’s less than two years away from full production. We got a sneak peek.

    (Full disclosure: Porsche wanted me to learn about the platform that underpins the new Macan Electric so badly, the company flew me to Italy, put me up in a Doubletree, and made me sit through 12 hours of product briefings, most of them in German.)

    two prototypes of the porsche macan electric drive in single file through a toll booth at a test track in Germany. both vehicles are painted black and wear vinyl wrapping to disguise their design.

    Photo: Porsche

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    The Macan Electric (yes, that’s the official name) will be built on a new platform that Porsche is calling PPE: Premium Platform Electric. This setup, though broadly similar to the Taycan’s J1 platform, offers a number of minor but significant improvements. According to Porsche, these tweaks will mean more power, better handling, and greater range. And yes, just like with the Taycan, this new EV platform will be shared with Porsche’s corporate cousin Audi.

    It all starts with a new battery pack, roughly 100 kWh worth, split over 12 modules. Porsche’s not confirming the exact pack size yet, but it’ll be slightly larger than the Taycan’s biggest, 93.4-kWh pack. Porsche says this size was chosen as it’s the right balance of range vs. performance. Interestingly, this pack lacks the so-called “foot garages” that allow the Taycan’s body to sit so low on its skateboard battery platform.

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    A computer rendering of the electric vehicle platform that will underpin the future Porsche Macan Electric. Visible is the battery making up the floor of the vehicle, plus four wheels and a steering column.

    The PPE electric platform underpinning the new Macan Electric.
    Illustration: Porsche

    The PPE’s pack will be bolstered by the same 800-volt architecture found in the Taycan, enabling charging from 5 percent battery to 80 percent in just 25 minutes. When the electrons are flowing the other way, they’ll power a dual-motor setup with somewhere north of 600 horsepower and 740 lb-ft of torque. Under normal conditions, most of that power will be delivered through the rear wheels, so the Macan will roll on a staggered tire setup, wider at the back, with wheels measuring up to 22 inches in diameter.

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    That said, thanks to the duo of motors, torque will be infinitely variable front to rear, meaning the new Macan will put the power where it can best be used. At the rear, the Macan will be capable of side-to-side torque vectoring, at least on high-end performance trims of the Macan Electric. A clutch-type rear differential will handle duties there, while the front-axle will get a simpler open differential, using braking to contain wheelspin.

    an action photo of a 2024 porsche macan electric prototype. we see the rear of the vehicle as it power-slides across a dirt road, kicking up dust. the vehicle is painted black and wearing vinyl wrapping to disguise its design.

    Photo: Porsche

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    All that, plus rear-steering, means the new Macan Electric should feel nimble and agile, even accounting for what will presumably be a considerably hefty curb weight. Two-valve air suspension will allow for both dynamic ride height adjustment plus a wider range of damping settings, while a rear subframe mounted via bushings is said to both improve handling dynamics and reduce noise, vibration, and harshness.

    Interestingly, Porsche has mounted the rear electric motor “particularly far back” on that rear subframe, resulting in a slightly rearward weight bias of 48:52 percent. Rear-motored electric 911 platform confirmed? Don’t get your hopes up, but it is an interesting engineering choice.

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    And what about the all-important range question? Porsche’s not quoting a figure yet, but I was told it will be “a lot more” than the Taycan, which tops out at just under 250 miles on the EPA test cycle. Again, no specific numbers, but when I asked whether it might match the range of the Mercedes-Benz EQS, after a bit of pondering I was given an answer in the affirmative. That could mean something north of 300 miles on the EPA test cycle.

    Beyond that, the Macan Electric will address another, rather more minor quibble with the Taycan: unlike the sedan, the new SUV will have a usable frunk. It won’t, however, offer additional regenerative braking or anything close to one-pedal driving. Porsche continues to insist this is part of their “philosophy” of EV design, which continues to be a terrible excuse for leaving off a simple feature that a considerable percentage of EV buyers really want.

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    a prototype of the 2024 porsche macan electric photographed inside a convention center. we see the vehicle from the left-rear quarter view. it's painted black with vinyl wrapping to obscure some design details.

    Photo: Tim Stevens

    Journalists were given a quick look at a camouflaged prototype of the Macan Electric, nicknamed “Ludmilla,” at an event in Italy this past week. With all the gaffer tape hiding details, and the fake exhaust tips stuck on the rear bumper, it’s a little hard to know exactly what the final product will look like. That said, the narrow headlights hiding under the fake ones definitely seem to be in keeping with the template set forth by the Taycan, while the aggressively scalloped front facia looks quite similar to that found on the current Macan.

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    The PPE platform will underpin the new Macan Electric as well as a number of other vehicles to come, though Porsche representatives were coy about providing any details on that front. The platform does support multiple wheelbases, so larger or smaller products are a possibility. Whether this chassis could be applied to something low and sporty, like an eventual Taycan successor, remains to be seen.

    At least we won’t have to wait long to see just what the Macan Electric will look like without all that camouflage. Porsche promises the crossover will see its first deliveries to customers by early 2024, with an unveiling sometime in 2023. In other words: right around the corner.

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  • Watch Thieves Steal A Bentley Continental GT And Smash Through A Security Gate

    Security camera footage has captured the moment that thieves stole a Bentley Continental GT from the South Florida home of famous sports agent Drew Rosenhaus.

    The video shows the thieves breaking into Rosenhaus’s property. One thief then proceeded to get into the Continental GT and start it up as it was left unlocked and the keys were left inside. The car was then reversed straight through the property’s security gate.

    “You can clearly look at the video of them breaking in and stealing the car,” Rosenhaus said. “Three people, there’s a Mercedes-Benz that’s driving behind my car on the video, they went through the security gate. I’m glad that I’m a person of notoriety who can bring attention to this. I’ve been told by Miami Beach Police that there’s a rash of these robberies, burglaries taking place.”

    Read: Bentley Continental GT Convertible Mulliner Riviera Collection Is Designed For The Yacht Club Crowd

    Rosenhaus revealed that he was sleeping at home with his wife and kids at the time his Bentley was stolen. Local police forces responded to a similar crime on the same night but in that case, the thieves left the car running and unattended.

    “I was not aware this was happening until the police came into my home, but if I had any inkling that they were breaking into my car, I would’ve gone out there with my firearm, and I don’t know what would’ve happened at that point,” Rosenhaus said. “I’m gonna protect my family at all cost.”

    Speaking with 7 News, the sports agent hit out directly at the thieves, stating: “I’m gonna do everything within my power to get you. You mess with the wrong person, wrong family, the wrong neighborhood, we’re gonna put you behind bars.”

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  • Lucid Slaps Texas With Lawsuit Over Dealership Laws

    Lucid has filed a federal lawsuit in Texas claiming that the state’s rules on automotive dealerships hurt its ability to sell vehicles in the state.

    Like some other U.S. states, Texas requires car manufacturers to sell vehicles through established dealerships. However, Lucid markets its vehicles online and sells them through a network of so-called Studios. It asserts that its direct sales and in-house after-sales service are closely tied and that using an independent franchised dealer network doesn’t make economic sense.

    Read: Entry-Level Lucid Air Pure Starts At $89,050, A Whole Lot More Than The $69,900 Promised In 2020

    In the lawsuit, Lucid has accused Texas of “economic protectionism.” Auto News notes that its legal strategy is similar to one pursued by Tesla in Michigan that, after three years of litigation, saw the electric car leader granted the ability to buy and sell vehicles in Michigan. Like Lucid, Tesla is currently unable to sell vehicles in Texas.

    “While many states have welcomed Lucid, the State of Texas has barred Lucid from obtaining a license to operate a dealership in the state,” the lawsuit reads. “Its position is that a Texas law intended to protect traditional dealers against competition by the manufacturers whose vehicles they sell also prohibits manufacturers without independent dealers from operating their own dealerships. As applied to Lucid, this prohibition is irrational in the extreme: it hurts competition, reduces consumer choice, and drives up costs and inconvenience, with no countervailing benefit whatsoever.”

    Lucid adds that reducing competition will hurt Texas consumers and that forcing the car manufacturer to conduct sales outside of Texas borders “makes it more difficult, or even impossible, for Texas regulators to protect Texas consumers.”

    News of this lawsuit comes just a few days after Lucid revealed that new Touring and Pure variants of the electric Air sedan will be presented next week. The Pure will sit at the base of the Lucid range and start at $89,050 while the Touring will be available from $109,050.


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  • Wild Shelby Mustang Super Snake Widebody Concept Heads To Auction

    If a used Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 or a new seventh-generation Mustang Dark Horse doesn’t quite do it for you, then this insane Shelby Super Snake Widebody Concept from 2017 could do the trick.

    The team at Shelby American built this very car on the chassis of a 2015 Mustang with the intention of seeing how far they could push the performance of the sixth-generation pony car. While Shelby’s products are best known for their immense levels of power and straight-line performance, the company made an effort to dramatically improve the handling of this particular car.

    Immediately making the Shelby Super Snake Widebody Concept stand out from a standard Mustang and other Shelby products are the flared wheel arches that are 2.5-inches wider at the front and 4-inches wider at the rear. Slotted beneath these arches are 20-inch Super Snake wheels wrapped in Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires measuring 305 mm wide up front and 345 mm wide at the rear.

    Read: 1,300 HP Shelby GT500 “Code Red” Promises Code Brown Performance

    Elsewhere, the performance car specialists at Shelby installed fully adjustable coilover suspension from Cortex, Shelby American/Rogue Engineering tubular rear control arms, enlarged Brembo brakes with red-painted calipers and grooved and vented rotors, hardened wheel studs, and stronger spindles and hubs.

    Adorning the exterior of muscle car is a Lightning Blue paint finish with black racing stripes. The Mustang also features carbon fiber front and rear spoilers, as well as carbon fiber wing mirror caps.

    In terms of power, the standard 5.0-liter Coyote V8 has been fitted with a Shelby-Whipple supercharger and churns out no less than 750 hp. A cat-back dual exhaust from Borla was also installed alongside a six-speed manual transmission driving the rear wheels.

    Mecum Auctions will sell the car at its Kissimmee sales event running from January 4-15, 2023. It has had just one owner since new and will be sold with 1,350 miles (2,172 km) on the clock.

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  • The Final Ford Escort RS Cosworth Ever Built Is Up For Auction

    The Ford Escort RS Cosworth is one of the most iconic rally-derived homologation specials ever conceived and the final example built is currently up for sale in the UK.

    Production of the Escort RS Cosworth officially ended in January 1996 at the Karmann factory in Rheine, Germany. However, the car manufacturer still had parts left for two more vehicles so it decided to build two extra. This particular car is the second of those two extra models and was built for Wilheim Karmann Jr., who was chairman of the company at the time.

    Read: Whale-Tail 1996 Ford Escort RS Cosworth With 217 Miles Sold For $186,000

    The car was driven for the first two years by a Karmann project manager as a company vehicle and in 1998, was acquired by the head of Ford’s Special Vehicle Engineering department. This was none other than Dieter Hahne, the man who spearheaded the development of the car. Hahne has owned the Escort RS Cosworth for the last 24 years and is now parting ways with it in a Collecting Cars auction.

    Underpinning the Escort RS Cosworth is a shortened chassis and mechanicals from the Sierra Cosworth. Drive is provided by a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder Cosworth engine pumping out 224 hp to all four wheels and coupled to a five-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip differential.

    Adorning the exterior of the Ford is a shade of Auralis Blue and the original set of 16-inch five-spoke alloy wheels with Continental SportContact2 tires. Found in the cabin is black leather, air conditioning, a replacement stereo and CD player, electrically operated windows, sunroof, and door mirrors.

    The car is in great condition with no known bodywork damage. There are some minor signs of wear on the Recaro seats, a minor oil leak on the engine sump gasket, and the CD player is faulty but apart from that, the Escort RS Cosworth is virtually perfect.

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  • 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R First Drive Review: The ‘Big Raptor’ gets the big V8

    Up until very recently, there was only one Ford Raptor — no Ranger, no Bronco, just the F-150, or as its engineering team likes to call it, “Big Raptor.” The OG. The king. In Big Raptor’s little corner of the Ford Performance world, bringing the V8 back was always a matter of when, not if. But the realities of the market held sway and other projects took priority — including an overhaul of the truck’s suspension. Then TRX happened.

    For quite a while, Raptor effectively had no competitors. We need look no further than the Stellantis lineup to see what being alone in the market does to innovation: the Bronco has clearly awoken Jeep from a similar torpor. As the old saying goes, competition betters the breed. In plain terms, we now have an alternative to the 702-horsepower supercharged Ram in the form of a 700-horsepower, also-supercharged F-150. What a world.

    Unlike TRX, though, the 2023 Ford Raptor R had the benefit of an existing framework. Oftentimes it’s dismissive to describe a performance variant as merely the base vehicle with a bigger engine, but in this case it’s the literal truth. Apart from some visual details and swapping a few suspension components to account for the weight of the V8, the Raptor R really is just a more powerful Raptor with the 37-inch tire option made standard. Specifically, adding the GT500’s 5.2-liter supercharged V8 pumps things up to 700 hp and 640 pound-feet of torque from 450 hp and 510 lb-ft with the 3.5-liter turbo V6.

    The stiffer springs keep the ground clearance identical to a V6 Raptor with 37s (13.1 inches), and the same goes for all the other vital off-road specs. Approach, breakover and departure angles remain at 33.1, 24.9 and 24.4 degrees, respectively, and the R offers the same amount of suspension travel (13 inches up front and 14.1 in the rear).

    The Raptor’s engineers tinkered with the drive modes a bit for R, changing the default Sport Mode powertrain setup to be the automatic 4WD setting (it’s 2WD in the standard Raptor) in order to put all that power to good use.  The standard 37s on the Raptor R don’t do the truck any favors off the line, and in fact may keep a drag race between the R and the TRX perilously close, but the V8 can still rip that off-road rubber to shreds if that’s what you’re going for. We were only given the opportunity to practice acceleration runs on sand — useless for data gathering, but immensely fun.

    The differentiation is minimal in practice, too. Setting aside the Raptor R’s dramatic acceleration, the drive is virtually identical. That’s a good thing, and due at least in part to the fact that minimal alterations translate to minimal weight gain. The R weighs roughly 5,950 pounds — about 100 pounds more than a V6 Raptor with the 37s (or 200 pounds more than without). Yeah, that’s a hefty curb weight, but remember that the iron-block Hellcat V8 in the TRX helps push that all-steel truck north of 6,350 pounds. The Raptor’s comparatively lightweight aluminum body gives it a pretty serious edge.

    The Raptor never truly feels small, but Ford’s efforts to control the R’s diet bore fruit. Plodding around town, the R doesn’t really feel that different from a Coyote-equipped F-150 unless you start exploring the lower 2/3 of the throttle’s travel, which results in wonderful noises and rapid fuel consumption. The official EPA estimate stands at 15 mpg combined, which may smoke the TRX’s 12 mpg combined, but a couple hours spent shuttling to and from Michigan’s Silver Lake Sand Dunes resulted in averages between 10 and 12 mpg for our caravan of a dozen trucks. Maybe the TRX would’ve performed better versus its estimates in the same driving, maybe it would’ve been in the single digits, but either way, our experience with the Raptor R in the sand was even more petroleum-dependent. 

    Not that we really paid attention to fuel consumption while blasting around Silver Lake. The park’s enormous dunes and generous (read: barely there) restrictions make it a perfect four-wheel playground. With the exception of its heavily trafficked transit roads, it has no speed limits. Instead, it’s arranged in a giant, one-way loop designed to keep everybody pointed in roughly the same direction, limiting the potential for catastrophic encounters over blind crests — of which there are a great many.

    And Ford let us do it all, from dune climbs to drag racing and everything else in between. It was easy to lose track of how many times the trucks visibly caught air long before most of America was done making morning coffee. “It’ll do that all day long” was the constant refrain from Ford’s engineers and test drivers. And they were proven right. Neither the supercharged V8 nor the brakes showed any signs of giving up, despite the fish market funk of hot friction surfaces that wafted along in our wake. That traction control system has its hands full on a surface like this, but man, the brakes grab those 37s hard even on loose sand. This thing is no joke.

    The secret to a truly great supertruck is in the suspension. For off-roading, a delicate balance must be struck between travel, comfort and control — not your ability to point the truck where you want it to go, mind you, but control over the truck’s body motions, especially the vertical jacking that comes with traveling fast over rutted and washboarded surfaces.

    If your shocks are too firm, they’ll yank the truck down after every bump, resulting in a paint shaker sort of ride. Too soft and it won’t settle, leaving you in a constant state of slow undulation that robs you of grip and invites you to spend a lot of time riding around on the suspension’s bump stops. That’s how shocks get blown out and control arms get bent and broken, or worse, you land the truck’s soft belly on a not-so-soft rock and puncture something critical, like the 5.2-liter’s oil pan, for instance.

    Ford’s five-link, coil-sprung rear suspension works absolute wonders both on- and off-road. As hard-nosed as the Raptor is, it’s an absolute kitten to cruise around in, even on crappy surfaces. The rear suspension is a dream, making the Raptor feel more SUV-like than truck-like on asphalt. But while it drives small, it’s inescapably large — and by that I mean wide. And that’s exacerbated by the fact that the R drives so tight in spite of its size and substance. It doesn’t feel like a car you need to thread carefully through construction zones, but its width will catch you out if you’re not careful. I got more hits from the R’s lane-departure warning than I ever have driving a Super Duty. Keeping it between the lines is more challenging than sticking the landing after yeeting it off a sand dune, I kid you not.

    And then there’s the cabin. Like the exterior, it’s mostly carry-over. Unless you can guarantee an allocation and special-order a Raptor R, chances are the only way you’ll ever see one is loaded, because Ford says that’s how the dealers are requesting them. Despite this, it’s still a half-step behind the Ram in terms of materials and design. The upgraded seats are nothing like the sculpted buckets found in a Mustang Mach 1 or GT500, but they’re supportive and comfortable enough for the things you’d expect an F-150 to do — even this one.

    The Raptor occupies a lonely corner of the pickup landscape. For a long time, it was the only full-size pickup trying to play in the Baja enthusiast space. It’s a niche Ford carved out for itself more than a decade ago. While Ram was the first to escalate the supertruck wars to their contemporary levels of absurdity, this really feels like Ford’s fight to lose. It has the tighter, lighter, more-focused truck, but it also has the most likely alternative purchase in the standard Raptor. Both are very good at what they do. In fact, I can’t help but think of Cadillac’s Blackwings; the best argument against purchasing either is that the other one exists.

    The Raptor R is everything it appears to be. It’s big, boisterous and willing — every bit the equal (at minimum) of Ram’s Hellcat-powered TRX. The V8 is straight-up nasty, with an off-road exhaust mode that will liquefy children’s ear drums. It’ll do everything the V6 Raptor does just a little bit quicker and with a whole lot more fanfare. If that’s ticking your boxes, then you’re in business. Hopefully business is good, because you’ll be forking over a six-figure sum to get one — $109,145 to be precise, at least before any dealer shenanigans.

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  • SEMA-bound Acura Integra highlight tuning potential

    The 2022 SEMA show is just around the corner and Acura on Wednesday previewed a trio of tuned 2023 Integras bound for the annual tuning fest in Las Vegas.

    Previous Integra generations have been, and still are popular, among tuners, and Acura has sought to highlight the potential of the new 2023 model by partnering with top tuning talent to complete the builds. Those talents include Daijiro “Dai” Yoshihara, Sara Choi, and Coco Zurita.

    2023 acura integra, SEMA-bound Acura Integra highlight tuning potential, ClassicCars.com Journal
    2023 Acura Integra modified for 2022 SEMA show

    Dai Yoshihara is professional racing driver and has competed in events such as Formula Drift and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. His Integra build was handled by California’s Evasive Motorsports and features a design inspired by modified Integras from the 1980s and ’90s.

    Key modifications include an aero kit from EVS Tuning, 18-inch BBS REV7 forged alloys, a Whiteline adjustable suspension, Spoon intake and exhaust upgrades, Sparco seats with a harness, and an EVS Tuning carbon-fiber center console.

    2023 acura integra, SEMA-bound Acura Integra highlight tuning potential, ClassicCars.com Journal
    2023 Acura Integra modified for 2022 SEMA show

    Sara Choi is a tuner from Hawaii, having started her career at just 15 years of age at a tuning company by the name of Sonic Motorsports. She worked with California’s Tony Star Performance on her build, which features a custom wide-body kit.

    The wide body was designed by Choi and Walter Kim. It’s joined on Choi’s Integra by GReddy cooling systems under the hood, 19-inch Advan RSDF wheels, a Tein Suspension Flex Z coil-over suspension, and a Dogfight Race Pro steering wheel.

    2023 acura integra, SEMA-bound Acura Integra highlight tuning potential, ClassicCars.com Journal
    2023 Acura Integra modified for 2022 SEMA show

    Coco Zurita is a BMX rider from Chile, and he looked to action sports for inspiration for his build, which was handled by California’s Autotuned. It features a coil-over suspension, carbon-fiber body panels, and a custom wrap designed by artist Andreas Wennevold.

    Other modifications include an A’PEXi exhaust, a GReddy intercooler, 18-inch Kansei KNP wheels, Wilwood brakes, an Auto Tuned aero kit, and plenty of MOMO interior goodies.

    This year’s SEMA show is scheduled for Nov. 1-4.

    This article was originally published by Motor Authority, an editorial partner of ClassicCars.com.

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