After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the US, and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have… throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the US are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the US has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation, and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining “political violence”

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets, and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the US is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions. The FBI and DHS do not investigate people in the US for constitutionally protected speech, activism, or ideological beliefs.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social, or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as a homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing, and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35 percent of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted US government personnel or facilities—more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75 to 80 percent of US domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include the 2015 Charleston church shooting, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10 to 15 percent of incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The US focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions, and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, US law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the US.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the US is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy, and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures—to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

Art Jipson is associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, and Paul J. Becker is associate professor of sociology at University of Dayton.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I met Tsutomu Matano, the renowned car designer known as one of the fathers of the Mazda MX-5 Miata, in San Francisco just over a year ago. You may know him as Tom. It was June 2024, and I was at a Mazda event with my husband, driving a new Miata from the ND3 generation. My friend Jake Stumph, a Miata enthusiast and Mazda representative who hosted a small group to drive the ND3, invited Tom to have dinner with us. The group was about eight people, and we’d all been around each other for about a day — thus, we had a casual rapport. If someone new gets introduced to a group like that, I plan ways to make sure they’re included in the conversation. When I heard Tom was on the way, I did that for him too.

When Tom arrived, I realized my plans were for nothing. He walked into the restaurant with a huge smile and pencil-straight posture, commanding the table and making everyone laugh. Unlike most people, he didn’t need help in an unfamiliar group. He was a star in every sky.

Tom was born in Japan in October 1947. He spent his life and career all over the world, including large portions in the United States. Among so many other things, Tom is renowned for his design work on the original Miata and the FD-generation Mazda RX-7, both of which remain staples of car culture and the automotive industry. He had both in his garage at home.

The Miata Concept

But Tom’s work on the Miata went far past the design of the car. He studied the American market to create the perfect sports car for it, setting the Miata’s tone and personality to become what it is today: one of the biggest icons in the automotive industry. His pillars of the car included, as quoted from his 1986 “Miata Concept” document:

• “I would like to see that Mazda’s image for the ‘90s, starting from the [Miata], will be recognized as a quality car that has great, fun-to-drive personality and has a cheerful character.”
• “Various activities such as club members’ picnics and sporting events using the [Miata] help form camaraderie. The United States is an individualistic country, but making friends through hobbies is very common and the bond of friendship is tight. It is a fun and affluent society.”
• “One of the important issues for strategies is controlling prices of used [Miatas]. It is necessary to have a substantial number of accessories and repair parts that the second owners are able to use to customize their vehicles.”
• “It is very common to see vehicles 10 to 20 years old in the United States. If you stand on the corner of the street for one hour, you can see Mazda’s history (successive vehicles). Instead of making vehicles change for the sake of change, such as all new or something new, the continuity of Mazda philosophy, Mazda design and Mazda engineering policy has to be seen in all of Mazda’s products. Avoid thoughtless changes, and be patient.”
• “If you can accept vehicles as an object of religion, you will be able to understand and love sports cars.”

One of my favorite Tom quotes, from another document called “Inspired Sensations,” was a blueprint for the Miata’s product strategy. It said: “The customer takes the car home, and, of course, takes the family for a ride, shows it to their neighbors and friends. Just before retiring to bed, you stop for one last look, and say ‘goodnight’ to the car, or maybe even sit in the car one last time.”

Tom will always be known for his career achievements and contributions to the automotive industry, and I’m sure you’ll hear a lot about that in the coming days and weeks. But Tom was so much more than his automotive talents, so I want to tell you some of the beautiful things I learned about him in our year of friendship.

Lasting Impressions

The first night I met Tom, I was wearing a bright-turquoise vintage jacket from Leyton House, a Formula One sponsor and team from the 1980s and ‘90s. The Leyton House racing brand failed spectacularly when its boss, Akira Akagi, got arrested in connection with “questionable loans” from Japan’s Fuji Bank circa 1991.

Tom couldn’t believe I knew what Leyton House was, let alone the details of its failures. We spent the rest of the night sitting at a table on a sidewalk, eating ice cream and bonding over our similarities. Tom told me he liked a specific wristwatch so much, he bought a ton of them in case one broke. I told him I liked my 17-year-old shoes so much, I’ve glued them back together at least 10 times. We bonded over how we go to restaurants and order the same dish again and again, because we know what we like. We laughed all night.

Later that weekend, I saw Tom at a fancy car show, where he wore his usual outfit for those outings: a nice coat and a tie with Miatas all over it. He hugged me with a big grin and even bigger squeeze. That big squeeze was a Tom staple, communicating his love and joy to see people better than words ever could.

We exchanged contact information, as people often do, but I didn’t expect to hear from Tom so often or so quickly. He was a big deal, after all — a famous designer with an assistant and adoring fans. I was one (loud and silly) woman in a sea of people.

But Tom had a fierce desire to connect with people and to love them. That weekend, he sent me an email titled “For your flight home” that contained his original planning documents for the Miata (part of which is quoted above). And from that point forward, he sent me every object, car, or photo he saw with Leyton House turquoise in it, so we could decide if it was “Leyton House” enough. He’d caption the texts:

“Too green, but pretty.”

“A little blue.”

“Very close.”

Tom and I talked about everything. He strongly believed that cars should make you look back at them after you park, due to their design and their sentimentality. A few weeks ago, I sent him a photo of my Miata to tell him I always look back at it.

“Lasting impressions,” he said.

“Always,” I responded.

Knowing Cars Means Knowing People

Tom had an incredible ability to study people and society, then turn those studies into automotive design and product planning. His studies of American culture — how we’re an individualistic society but form friend groups through hobbies, clubs, and shared interests, like car models — were the basis of his strategy for the Miata. His 1986 Miata Concept document planned the Miata’s exact trajectory from debut through the year 1999 (and he sent me the shortened version!). All of Tom’s years-out predictions and plans for the car, including how it would be seen from a market and sentimental perspective, were exactly right. He knew his car and his audience better than most people know themselves.

Tom kept meticulous documentation of his life, digitally scanning and archiving everything from childhood and young-adulthood photos to an old paper letter he received as blackmail from a guy claiming to be the “true designer of the Miata.” Tom once showed me a pre-smartphone photo he took on a digital camera, which was him in a mirror with a plank of wood strapped to his back because he injured it. He loved simple solutions — in this case, forced spinal posture by 2×4 — and he told me: “That was the best night of sleep I ever got.”

Tom was mischievous, always plotting little jokes and harmless pranks. One time, when we were snacking at the bar of a nice hotel with some friends, Tom told us about the time he got personally invited to the White House. He wanted souvenirs for loved ones, and when he went to the bathroom, he noticed the disposable hand towels had fancy presidential seals on them. He grabbed the whole stack and stuffed them in his pocket, then went back later that day when the staff restocked them and did it again.

After Tom told this story, he got up and walked away. I figured it was a bathroom break he forgot to announce. He came back a few minutes later with a giant stack of fancy disposable hand towels from the hotel bathroom, passing them out and putting a final punchline on his story. We all signed a towel, and I took it home.

My Last Visit With Tom

Tom loved plotting things like that. But if you plotted things back — like when I flew to California a few weeks ago to surprise him with gifts and company — he’d point at you and scrunch his face with a little smile, shocked but secretly thrilled you got away with the same mischief he loved to pull.

Tom loved Italian food and bread. He had a better memory of the 1980s than I do of last week. He liked to read the first few chapters of a murder-mystery novel, guess the killer, skip to the end and see if he was right, then finish reading the book to see how the author dropped hints about the guilty party.

He signed everything with “Always Inspired – T. Matano,” and he was, truly, always inspired. He always joked about the quality of his English writing, but I told him there was no need to joke because his writing was beautiful. I meant it. He loved Hallmark movies, no matter how bad they were, because they gave him a nice happy cry at the end. When I told him I was looking at a Leyton House-themed kei truck in Japan once, he told me to call him if I bought it, and he’d park it at his house there until he could connect me with someone to import it. When he would hang up the phone, despite knowing me for such a short time, he’d say: “Okay, love you, bye!” Even if he felt ill or unwell, you couldn’t tell, because he was always so happy and positive. When I visited Tom last, he’d set up his laptop and desk in the garage so he could be with his Miata all day.

Tom loved the Miata, and the Miata was where he wanted to be — so that’s where we spent the day. It meant the world. He showed me photos from the time he grew his hair out in his 20s, and he said that as soon as he saw his grandmother, she couldn’t believe the sight of him and gave him money to get it cut. I told him he looked very California surfer, and I liked it.

Tom meant so much to me. We met when I was 28 and he was 76, and we formed one of the best relationships I will ever have, all because of his fierce pursuit of love and friendship. Tom spent his life and career surrounded by the coolest people in the world, including himself, yet he still put in so much effort to get to know me. He was one of the most special people I will ever know, and I’ll miss him for the rest of my life.

Tom loved life. He loved people. He loved teaching his skills. He loved cars. And he loved his Miata. If I can tell you to do one thing, it’s this: Live your life as if it’s short, because it is. Find peace and joy every day. Call people and tell them you love them, even if you haven’t known them very long. Fiercely pursue happiness and relationships and the things that bring you a sense of purpose. And please, enjoy your cars. Put the top down if you can. One day, whether it’s sooner or later, you won’t have the ability to drive them anymore. That’s sad, but it’s also a reminder of how happy they make you. Do this with everything and everyone you love.

Grief is love, and I loved Tom. I always will. I hope I can love people as well as he loved me.

Thank you for listening, and I hope you remain Always Inspired. Tom would want that.

The post Remembering Tsutomu ‘Tom’ Matano, Father of the Mazda MX-5 Miata appeared first on The Autopian.

Car insurance is a fairly straightforward concept. You pay a monthly premium, and in exchange, the insurance company covers you for things like crashes or theft. That monthly premium depends on a lot of things, including your age, your gender, where you live, how much you drive, and, importantly, your driving record.

The more speeding tickets and car crashes on your record, the more of a liability you are to an insurance company. And if you’re a bigger liability, the insurance company will charge you a higher premium. This leads to people avoiding insurance claims for things like crashes, instead opting to have the damage fixed under the table—that is, without getting insurance companies involved—as to keep their rates down.

According to a new survey from LendingTree, over a third of drivers questioned would rather eat the cost of the damage caused by a crash than have their insurance—which they pay for—cover the bill. And an even greater number of people have admitted to paying out of pocket to keep their rates down. From the survey results:

Insurance is designed to be a peace of mind. For some, it’s a source of fear.

A little over a third (35%) of our insured drivers have avoided filing a claim because they were afraid their premiums would go up. A similar LendingTree survey found that 39% of drivers opted to pay out of pocket for car repairs after an accident. Of those, 42% said they didn’t file to avoid a rate increase.

Interestingly, this number swung wildly depending on the age group surveyed. According to LendingTree, 78 percent of baby boomers said they’ve never avoided filing a claim due to fears of a premium increase. That percentage falls all the way to 44 percent for Gen Z drivers, with Millennials following closely behind at 43 percent.

There are some instances where it’s probably better to avoid calling your insurance company, like if you cause superficial damage to your own vehicle (LendingTree mentions rubbing against a guard rail or bumping a light post as fine examples of this). There’s no reason to add curbing your wheels or bottoming out your front lip to the record if you don’t have to.

It’s also important to note that not all claims will be held against you. If you have comprehensive insurance—the type that covers your car for non-collision incidents like theft, vandalism, hail, flood, or fire—LendingTree says that most companies won’t raise your rates for those types of claims. So make sure to check your policy before swiping your credit card for a huge repair bill. In the long run, the math might not work out.

The survey also asked about the rising costs of insurance, with some fascinating results. Over half the people surveyed (54 percent) said that rising premiums have them considering cutting back insurance coverage. And 48 percent of those surveyed said that financial constraints have them considering the same. And 58 percent say auto insurance “is a financial burden.”

Considering some of the rates I’ve been quoted recently, I’d agree with these people. I remember trying to get my old Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution comprehensive insurance a couple of years ago, only to learn it would be several thousand dollars for six months of coverage (I have no accidents or speeding tickets on my record). So I settled for the basic liability-only stuff required by law in New York, where I live. It’s tough out here.

The most surprising statistic from LendingTree’s survey is the sheer number of people who have driven with no insurance at all—something that’s fully illegal in every State except New Hampshire. An entire 30 percent of the folks surveyed say they’ve driven with zero coverage in the past. Millennials were most likely to pull this off, with 40 percent of those surveyed having admitted to doing it. Weirdly, 43 percent of parents with kids under 18 years old admit to driving without insurance.

Here’s some controversial advice: Don’t do this! Driving without insurance leaves you personally liable for any damages you may cause to your car or someone else’s. You’d also be responsible for covering medical expenses for injuries, which can easily reach tens of thousands of dollars (or more). Insurance might be expensive, but going into generational-level debt because you didn’t want to pay a few hundred bucks for your premium is not the move.

The post Over a Third Of Drivers Are Afraid To Use Their Insurance, Says Survey appeared first on The Autopian.

“They really should have built that.” If you’re a car enthusiast, you’ll remember a bunch of times you’ve been disappointed by car companies that teased you with exciting concept cars and then proceeded to just mothball them. They remain today only in dog-eared images from auto shows with models posed beside them wearing now-dated looking costumes.

No, I’m not talking about those “concepts” that are just next year’s production car thinly disguised with some funky wheels and ground effects. I’m also not referring to some hopelessly unrealistic glass cube on wheels with a flower bed on top as you might see at the Tokyo show. The lamented concepts are the ones that looked good and so close to being production-ready; you just knew that if they hit dealerships in a form close to what was shown on the turntable that they’d change to course of that brand and even automotive trends dramatically. Sadly, that never happened.

Nissan once showed us just such a concept, a now-forgotten design that might have pushed the former Datsun brand into unheard of markets in the same way the 240Z had done for them a decade before.

Show Cars That Became No Cars

While I do have a soft spot for the nuclear-powered Batmobile-looking visions the Big Three pumped out in the fifties, there were two other eras that produced a plethora of  shoulda-coulda-woulda designs. One such time frame was the mid-sixties through the early seventies. The great styling houses of Bertone and Pininfarina displayed many glorious wedge-shaped ideas that, with some necessary tweaks, could and should have been more than just one-offs. I’ve explored how that might have happened with the Bertone Sibilo (which I turned into a next generation Volvo P-1800 sports coupe) or the Stratos (that I inexplicably transformed into a Cybertruck body kit).

The other prime years for so-close-to-showroom concept designs were the mid-nineties to the early 2000s, an era that produced stunners including the Bertone Lancia Kayak and Alfa Sportut (which I made into a Mitsubishi “halo” brand called Ultima).

While many cool concepts emerged from these two “golden ages,” we mustn’t sleep on some of the lesser-known examples from the times in between. One show car that has earned my attention in that mode is the NX-21, unveiled by Nissan at the 1983 Tokyo Show.

Unlike the often over-the-top ideas seen at this show, the NX-21 was rather restrained, and it wasn’t even a vision that came from Japan. Thomas Semple, then-president of Nissan Design America, was reportedly tasked with creating a futuristic concept for the next generation EXA (known as the Pulsar NX in the US).

The NX-21 was mid-engined with a powerplant fancifully described as being a “ceramic gas turbine that could run on gasoline, diesel, alcohol, or kerosene” capable of generating a claimed 100 horsepower. What? It’s far more likely the NX-21 had no engine – and I must say, if you have a nonexistent fabrication of a motor in a show car, why not just say that it has like 1000, 2000 horsepower? Anyway, I do like that the NX-21 was a midship four-seater, something that only the Ferrari Mondial seemed to come close to accomplishing in production.

The four-place layout required a long wheelbase, and the NX-21 stretched 117 inches from wheel to wheel – the same as a Panther-body Lincoln Town Car! The concept Nissan’s overall length was shorter than that overhang-heavy, full-sized American barge, but it’s safe to say that this thing was big. And at only around 50 inches in height, it was win-a-limbo-match low.

Other than the funky angular-slotted taillights and overall shape of the C-pillars, the NX-21 really didn’t preview the style of the new-for-1987 Pulsar NX. That car became a much more compact, modular targa-topped sports coupe/shooting brake that was an ultra-slick and innovative production car in its own right.

What that meant is the concept of a low-slung, long-wheelbase mid-engined Nissan simply withered away and died. Nissan did, however, tempt us with a few midship sports car visions during this decade, such as the MID4 of 1985. Featuring a VG30DE V6, the MID4 would have rivaled Toyota’s own MR2 and Honda’s later NSX. Actually, those cars might have been upstaged by the Nissan since, true to the number in the name, the MID4 had “four wheel everything”. That meant all-wheel drive and four-wheel steering with the HICAS system that would later appear on the Skyline and Z32 300ZX.

Nissan even made a second generation of the MID4 concept that was displayed two years later.

Despite the cars being fully running and driving prototypes that could have been easily green-lit, Nissan chose to not pursue either MID4. Some reports stated that they didn’t drive particularly well, and I have to say I’m not a huge fan of the styling. The first one looks a bit like a Ferrari Boxer body kit on a Fiero, and the second is like the controversial Testarossa put in a blender with the rather bland NSX. The front-engined 1990 Z32 300ZX that carried the torch for Nissan a few years later was a much more distinctive, taut, and original design.

The NX-21 concept was a standout shape that didn’t look like any Japanese, European, or American car on the road. Indeed, the angular style actually appears to be a bit like something that Hyundai would put onto a new car today. Let’s take a look at how this underappreciated show car might have become a real-world-usable exotic, a flagship to push the company formerly known as Datsun into the bright future imagined by the 1980s.

Imagine Datsun Voice Guy Talking About This Thing

Thankfully, the changes I’d propose to “productionize” the NX-21 and make it into the range-topping limited production “Forza 3500X” luxury sport touring coupe would keep the crisp, futuristic essence of the concept while improving upon it. The mid-engine layout would remain, but I’d substitute the odd vaporware non-existent powerplant of the show car with a Z-car V6. I’d want to add twin-turbos like the later 1990 Z32 had, though the addition of intercoolers and maybe bored-out cylinders would give us the 350 or so horsepower I’d want at a minimum. A manual or automatic transaxle could be similar to what was used with a similar motor in the front-wheel-drive ’85 Maxima. To really compete with Italian exotics, a V8 and even all-wheel drive like that of the MID4 would be welcome later additions.

In my alternate reality, the massive gullwing doors would not make it to the Nissan showroom, as the Forza could make do with two long doors. For a mid-engined four-seater, the rear seats are actually rather usable, so it would be a shame to hinder access to them. Nissan could have added flip-out “Dutch doors” behind the main ones in a manner similar to old Saturn coupes or a Honda Element. The clear composite lights would have been legal in America by 1984, but my alternate-universe Nissan’s neo-exotic would have the “sleepy eye” look of the Z31 300ZX, with lift-up covers over sealed beams allowing drivers “flash to pass” with the exposed parts of the lights. Beyond pushing the bumpers out a bit for the US and flaring the rear arches ever so slightly to accommodate steamroller-sized rubber, the Forza 35000X would stay pretty true to the original show car.

In back, the concept’s zig-zag taillights are indeed cool, but somehow I’d rather save them for the second-gen Pulsar. Honestly, a high-powered GT would have looked better with sunken blacked-out full-width taillights in a tail section that could have bumped out to give more trunk space and meet those pesky NHTSA bumper regs. I’m thinking the rear trunk lid would have needed to either include the rear glass or that would have had to lift separately to allow (rather poor) access to the motor. Yes, you’d need to do a lot of work with the thing jacked up, wheels and splash guards off. Slots at the base of the rear window would have been functional air inlets to the motor and intercoolers. I’m wondering if the trunk lid might have hidden a concealed spoiler as well to lift up above 60 miles and hour. Pardon the resolution of the image below; this is all that I could find online of a rear view of the nearly forgotten NX-21.

If this thing had dropped into 1985 America, it would have stopped traffic and made even a Testarossa look a bit dated. Despite being futuristic, it’s still a rather clean and understated design. Better yet, you’d have had something no exotic of the era did: a practical, spacious, and comfortable interior.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Screens

Inside is where the NX-21-turned-Forza would really have excelled as a full four-passenger exotic sports machine. The fuel cell running down the middle of the car would have raised that center console from what you see here, but that’s not a huge detriment.

The NX-21 concept featured some technology that was ahead of its time, including a back-facing camera instead of a rear-view mirror and another monitor in the dash center, which was supposed to be a touchscreen.

Gear selection was by push buttons, and putting the thing into Park involved something that looked a bit like how I imagine an on/off switch at a nuclear power plant is configured:

The touch screen idea sounds like what Buick gave us a few years later with the 1986 Riviera. They can keep it.

The Forza’s interior would have been very similar to the NX-21, but with some simplification. You’ll note that front and rear defrosters could have been controlled by fingertip switches next to the steering wheel, and the travel computer display buttons sat on a little panel that flipped down like a door to reveal a keypad to type in distances or other data (remember, if you were taking a 400 mile trip you needed to actually type that into the system). Forget the weird gear selector on the NX-21; the Forza would have had a standard Z-car style shifter here.

In my alternate reality, when the Nissan interior developers modified the NX-21 to be the production Forza, they decided that the rear-view camera would never pass US laws and that a CRT was a bad idea. “Can you imagine having to cycle through screen after screen to find what you want to control?” Actually, as a person of 2025, you can very well imagine how bad the screen disease could become, but the alternate universe Nissan California designers had a different idea.

SIMTAC To The Rescue

In trying to make a control system that functioned like a screen before the technology really existed for such things, the imaginary Nissan designers landed on something that might actually have functioned better. Called SIMTAC (Switchable Interface Multi Task Automotive Controls), it would use old-school technology to eliminate endless screens or dozens of ant-sized buttons on the dash.

Think about it: how many controls do you really use every day? Not many, right? Imaginary eighties Nissan knew this and designed SIMTAC accordingly. First, there are giant button controls for radio volume and cabin temperature (repeated on the steering wheel) at the top of the center stack. Below that are eight enormous push-with-your-thumb-if-you-want-to buttons and blacked-out clear panels above and below.

In default mode, the eight big buttons are radio presets and tuning. Push the AUDIO button next to the volume controls on top, however, and the SIMTAC lights up a different row of button callouts as the function of those eight buttons changes, now offering additional audio controls like bass and treble. Seriously, how often do you touch these anyway? Like once when you buy the car and turn the bass up until the interior trim vibrates, right? Or is that just me? What did you say? I can’t hear you.

Hit the CLIMATE button once or twice, and the other rows of lighted callouts illuminate, letting you adjust the HVAC system manually with those same eight buttons, but you’d rarely ever do that. Just set it to AUTO and then let it do its thing (other than defog, which is already on the dashboard). I’d need to refine the functions and such, but you get the idea.

Essentially, SIMTAC is half a dozen or so Fisher-Price-sized buttons that perform several dozen tasks (85 percent of which you rarely use, if ever). Why can’t things be this frigging simple?

This Is The Same Company That Gave Us The B210?

We all know that the rather enthusiast-aimed Infiniti brand got off to a bad start in America compared to the Lexus juggernaut. Is it possible that a successful $45,000 high-performance touring machine in the mid-eighties could have let Nissan dip their toe in the waters of world-beating supercars half a decade before the Infiniti launch? Such a move might have made it clear that Nissan was leaving the Cadillac and Mercedes buyers to Toyota and paved the way for greater success in establishing the identity of the aspirational Infiniti brand.

Could Nissan really have pulled off an exotic luxury sports touring coupe in 1985? Well, I doubt that many people back in 1969 thought that Datsun, then a maker of frumpy, cheap little sedans, was capable of building a sports car to rival the likes of a Jaguar XKE for a fraction of the price (and without the antifreeze steam and electrical smoke), but the 240z proved the scrappy Japanese carmaker could. A Datsun Ferrari fighter for the 1980s would have been ambitious, but far from impossible.

Top graphic image: Nissan

The post How A Radical Concept From Forty Years Ago Could Have Drastically Altered The Way We Look At Nissan appeared first on The Autopian.

I was recently told that some folks think The Autopian has it out for General Motors — that we write too many stories about GM failures, and that we therefore have some kind of beef with the company. That couldn’t be any further from the truth; in fact, to combat this silly notion, it’s time for me to write a quick blog about something I’ve been saying for many years: GM is the greatest automotive engineering company on earth. Better than Koenigsegg. Better than Rimac. Better than Tesla. Better than the Germans. The problem is, it’s oftentimes held back by executives and product planners. Here’s what I mean.

It’s really not hard to engineer a great expensive car. Worst case, you can hire out a third party like Lotus or Multimatic or Magna or Continental, and they can put together a sharp-handling product for you. What’s much, much more challenging is engineering a good inexpensive car, which is why it’s hard for me to consider anyone but GM to be the GOAT of the car-engineering world.

The most obvious examples are the various generations of Corvette, especially the latest ones. We’ve probably all read the recent stories about how the $200,000, 1,250 horsepower Corvette ZR1X lapped the Nürburgring in just 6 minutes and 49.275 seconds — nearly 3 seconds quicker than the $320,000 Ford Mustang GTD.

No matter what price class — whether it’s the base $70,000 car or the $200,000 top dog — the Corvette decimates the competition. This has been the story of the Corvette…pretty much since the beginning — go up against a much more expensive competitor (oftentimes from Italy or Germany) and whoop its ass around the race track.

For as long as I can remember, the Corvette has been leaving performance car reviewers with their jaws on the floor. Remember when Top Gear compared the C6 with the Ferrari 575? “This car really is like Robbie Williams. Who could have guessed that behind the ‘Take that’ nonsense, there was a proper musician trying to get out,” Jeremy Clarkson said, referencing the singer Robbie Williams, who broke off from his boy bad to become a true legend. “The Z06 is $60,000 pounds and the Ferrari 575… is 160,000 pounds. And if a martian came to earth, he’d have the devil’s own job explaining why,” he continued.

Then Top Gear gave the car to The Stig, and watched as the American budget-supercar decimated the 575, and even beat out the Ferrari F430, Lamborghini Murcielago, and Pagani Zonda!:

Then, when the C7 came out, Top Gear put it up its base trim, the Stringray, against a Cayman GTS, which put up a time of 1:21.6 on the Top Gear test track, while the Corvette matched the Porsche Carrera GT at 1:19.8.

Yes, you read that right. The base Corvette, which started at around $58,000, put up the same lap time as a $440,000 Porsche with over 150 horsepower more! Sure, the Porsche was 10 years older, but that’s still absurdly impressive.

We can just go down the line with numerous examples of GM dominating far more expensive cars. Perhaps the most mind-blowing, to me, was the Chevy Camaro ZL1.

There’s supposed to be a big gap between a company’s supercar and its muscle car. The supercar, like Dodge’s Viper or Ford’s GT, was the track weapon, while the muscle car, the Challenger or Mustang (respectively), was the straight-line sledgehammer. This was the case with the Camaro and Mustang, too, but then came the ZL1.

I don’t think people realize how mind-blowing the ZL1 was; Road & Track declared it “The Greatest Track Car GM Has Ever Made.” How? That’s a two-ton car! But sure enough; if you look at the the Jalopnik article “Here Is A List Of Cars That The 2017 Camaro ZL1 Beat Around The Nürburgring” from my former colleague Michael Ballaban, you’ll see that 7 minutes 29.6 seconds beats these:

Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera

Koenigsegg CCX

Ford Shelby GT350R

Porsche 911 GT2

Mercedes-AMG GT S

McLaren 650S Spider

Jaguar XJ220

Caterham R500 Superlight

Trabant

(That last one is RICH).

In 2017 the Camaro ZL1 1LE achieved an even quicker time of 7 minutes 16.04 seconds, absolutely crushing the M4 GTS, Ferrari 488GTB, and Nissan GT-R, and ending up neck-and-neck with the Lexus LFA. All from a standard Camaro chassis!

There are tons of examples of engineering marvels, as well as just some cool, soulful cars GM has built over the years that were just awesome. Here are a few:

Chevy Avalanche:

Midgates are becoming more of a “thing” since EVs entered the mainstream marketplace, but it was Chevy that popularized the concept with the Avalanche, a truly absurd truck with a single piece body instead of a separate cab and bed, storage bins in the bedsides, coil springs in the back (!), and of course that foldable second row that joined the midgate in turning the bed into an 8-footer. It’s a fantastic truck, and beautifully engineered.

GM EV1:

The GM EV-1 was, in some ways, the first mainstream modern (ish) electric car. I’ll quote myself here:

Just to give a little context for those of you not familiar with the EV1: It was an unbelievably advanced electric car built by General motors between 1996 and 1999, and leased to about 1,100 folks, many of whom were celebrities on the west coast.

[…]

…You’ll see technologies that were unheard of in the 1990s. The 0.19 drag coefficient still beats that of any Tesla; the cast aluminum strut towers (here’s GM’s patent) were innovative back then, and you could argue might have inspired Tesla’s GigaCastings; low rolling resistance tires were really barely a thing a the time; the heat pump that is so important to modern EVs getting decent range in the winter was super advanced, as well, and wasn’t found in even much more modern electric vehicles like the early Tesla Model 3. Add the aluminum space frame construction, hidden antenna, and optics-headlights and GM had something truly state-of-the-art.

It was truly revolutionary, but GM killed it, and though their reasoning was sound (it was expensive), the way the company did it created a PR disaster.

The vehicle was so beloved that, when GM pulled the plug on the egregiously expensive program that, one could argue, was perhaps a bit early given where battery tech was at the time (“I said, ‘Roger, just keep in mind what we have here. We’ve got about a gallon of gasoline worth of energy in those 870 pounds of batteries, and we effectively re- fuel it with a syringe’” is an amazing quote from former president of energy and engine management, Don Runkle, referencing former GM CEO Roger Smith (via Automotive News)), hundreds of people took to the streets

The Hy-Wire:

Check out that GM’s Hy-Wire; here’s what Jason had to say about it:

While hydrogen fuel cells really haven’t caught on, you know what did? GM’s revolutionary skateboard chassis design for EVs. Replace those hydrogen tanks with batteries and you effectively have the platform that all modern EVs – from Volkswagen to Rivian to Ford to Hyundai to Tesla to whomever – use today. And guess what GM did with it?

Jack. Jack feces.

Still, it was innovative.

Cadillac CTS-V Wagon:

556 Horsepower through a six-speed manual transmission, in wagon form? There was nothing cooler in the early 2010s. ‘Nuff said.

The Entire Saturn Brand:

Admittedly, some of Saturn was marketing/product planning/customer service, though the engineering side of things deserves some credit, too. The plastic exterior panels were brilliant, and the affordable, safe chassis tech made for a great value.

The Silverado:

I currently daily-drive a 1989 Chevy K1500 GMT400, with a 350 V8, four-wheel drive, a five-speed transmission, and a 14-bolt rear axle. It gets 14 MPG, but it’s simply a sensational truck, and so is the current Silverado, which blew me away after having driven the last-gen (whose interior I found uncompetitive).

Chevy’s engineers don’t know know how to build trucks; they know how to build the greatest trucks of all time, like the GMT400.

Chevy Volt:

The Chevy Volt wasn’t commercially successful, but it was a well-engineered vehicle featuring a semi-EREV hybrid system that was, at the time, truly innovative. Here’s my breakdown of how it works:

It was a good car, and it was well engineered. A T-shaped battery pack sitting under the rear bench and along the spine of the car was filled with liquid-cooled prismatic lithium-ion battery cells. A charge-port located on the driver’s side fender filled up those cells:

The battery then sends juice to an inverter to convert electricity from DC to AC to power the 111kw (~150 hp) electric motor, which feeds a planetary gear set that’s part of the “Voltec electric drive system.”

This drive unit is exceptionally complex, and actually features a 74 horsepower (55 kW) generator that acts as a secondary electric motor to propel the vehicle.

Here’s a slightly more translucent one version of the above shot:

Here’s a breakdown of how it all works:

GM’s EV Strategy

The Chevy Bolt is no Tesla Model 3, but it was a highly competitive, low-cost EV that offered good range to the layperson on a budget. It did have some “thermal event” issues, which definitely don’t help prove this article’s point, but with the highs come the lows.

And right now, I’d say GM is seeing a high when it comes to its overall EV strategy. Among “Legacy” automakers, it appears to be doing the best, as Matt wrote late last year:

GM’s stated goal this year was to reach profitability in 2024. When that was announced the assumption was that GM’s EV sales would be way higher than they are now, but it sounds like GM is going to pull it off at some point in Q4.

This is a big deal. General Motors has been making electric cars for years and has invested in a platform, Ultium, that can be produced at a large enough scale that the company can start to squeeze out some sort of profit.

With the exception of Tesla, no large non-Chinese automaker I can think of is truly profitable when it comes to electric cars. The investments are too high, the market too competitive, and the scale just isn’t there yet. By doing everything on one platform GM has gotten a little closer.

[…]

Technology is important, and GM’s Ultium isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but having the most efficient platform in the world in terms of range is less important for a company than having one that’s efficient in terms of production. After a lot of work, GM is getting there, helped in large part by its sub-$30k (after incentives) Chevy Equinox EV.

35 grand for an EV with a range over 300 miles? Not bad. To avoid losing your shorts on EVs like everyone else? That’s more than just not bad; that’s amazing.

There Are Tons Of Other Examples

I don’t know that I’d call the current Chevy Trax an engineering Marvel, but it’s a phenomenal value, as Thomas explained in “The Surprisingly Nice 2024 Chevrolet Trax Is $21,495 Of Fundamental Goodness.” (Like I said: It’s a lot harder to build a good car that’s cheap than it is to build a great car that’s expensive).

Then there’s the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, the world-beating Escalade, the GMC Envoy XUT (convertible SUV!), the weird convertible pickup Chevy SSR, and that’s just in the last few years. Go back in time, and you’ll find innovation after innovation.

I regret having even started this list, because to be truly exhaustive, it would probably add another 1000 words to this article. But you get the idea.

Mercedes’s Take: Oh, but don’t worry, David, because I’ll add more for you!

General Motors was once a transportation powerhouse that Chrysler and Ford simply could not even come close to matching. David has told you why GM’s automotive engineering is some of the greatest on the planet, and that’s true. But rewind your clocks back several decades, and the GM Mark of Excellence could also be found on market-dominating buses, best-selling diesel engines, and the most popular diesel-electric locomotives.

General Motors got into buses through its acquisition of the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company in 1925. Yellow Coach was the bus arm of the Yellow Cab Company, which was run by John D. Hertz, yes, of the Hertz rental car company fame! Yellow Coach would later forge one of the greatest advancements in bus design: the monocoque structure. Until about the 1930s, buses were mostly body-on-frame designs. These buses, which usually rode on existing truck chassis, rode high off of the ground and featured rough rides. The 1936 Model 719 highway bus was a revolution, as it featured a transversely-mounted diesel engine in the rear and an aluminum monocoque. Yellow probably didn’t know it back then, but this would become the blueprint for most coach buses and transit buses ever since.

General Motors believed in Yellow so much that it fully absorbed the company into the GMC Truck and Coach Division. GMC would go on to create history’s greatest and most dominating American buses in the New Look and the RTS-II transit buses, as well as highway icons like the Scenicruiser and the “Buffalo” bus. Just how good were GM’s buses? From the period of 1930 to the 1970s, General Motors was America’s number one seller of buses. America’s cities and bus fleets scooped up GM models by the tens of thousands, effectively forcing competition like Flxible and Eagle to fight for second place at best.

It was a similar story when it came to the might of GM in diesel development and locomotive development. In 1930, General Motors purchased the Electro Motive Corporation and the Winton Engine Company. General Motors had invested tons of resources into perfecting the diesel engine and filled its halls with some of the most brilliant engineers of the era. This division, which would be later called the General Motors Electro-Motive Division (EMD), would build some of the most iconic and most powerful diesel-electric locomotives that the world has ever seen.

By 1953, GM’s EMD held an impressive 73 percent of America’s locomotive market. In a distant second place was the American Locomotive Company (Alco), which held a mere 15 percent of the market. Even when General Electric became a major locomotive competitor and moved into second place in the 1960s, GM EMD still managed to control 70 percent of the market.

Meanwhile, GM’s investment in diesel also paid off in the form of the Detroit Diesel Engine Division. GM’s Detroit Diesel two-cycle diesels dominated America’s highways for decades in everything from fire engines to legendary Class 8 semi-trucks. One of the best-selling Class 8 engines of all time is the Detroit Diesel Series 60, a straight-six known for its good power, repairability, and longevity that could easily pull loads for well over a million miles. GM also used to build big trucks like the innovative ‘Cracker Box’ that I recently wrote about, and the GMC TopKick that formed the base of U-Haul’s largest trucks and the base of countless school buses for decades.

Sadly, General Motors has given up on all of these paths. General Motors sold off its bus operations in 1987, sold off the Electro-Motive Division in 2005, and GM relinquished majority control of Detroit Diesel in 1988 before later pulling entirely out.

Jason’s Take: Despite what people seem to say, I respect the hell out of GM. They’re the only company to build a car that drove beyond Earth!

I know it seems like I’m always picking on some embarrassing GM act of half-assery or absurd penny-pinching, or just general crappiness, but the truth is when they have to, GM can out-engineer almost any entity on the planet. When NASA needed a car, a literal, human-driven automobile that was capable of being driven on the Moon, it was GM that stepped up and designed the first motorized ground vehicle in all of human history ever to drive off the surface of the Earth.

The more you think about it, the more incredible it is: no one had ever done this before, and very little of GM’s previous automotive experience would really apply. Not even things like rubber tires could be used; thermal issues demanded that an entirely new method of making tires had to be found. They had to start from scratch, figuring out how to make a viable, useful vehicle that could operate in incredible temperature extremes, a near vacuum, on rough surfaces, since you really can’t get more off-road than the freaking moon, and had to be able to fold up like origami.

Seriously, look at this:

That folding system is an engineering marvel on its own!

The Lunar Rover GM developed was an absolute triumph, and the three that were built for Apollos 15, 16, and 17 all worked without a hitch. Sure, I may make fun of how Vegas would rust on the showroom floor, but that doesn’t change the fact that GM engineered a car that was shot into space and then drove on the moon the first try.

Oh, and since we’re talking about GM triumphs, I feel like we have to mention turbocharging, right? Especially because it involves my favorite GM car, the Corvair.

The first mass-market turbocharged cars were from GM, way back in 1962, the Oldsmobile Jetfire and the Corvair Monza. Just to put things in perspective, a 1965 Corvair Monza’s turbocharged flat-six air-cooled engine made 180 hp; compare that to another small sporty coupé or convertible that made 180 hp and you’d be looking at a 1998 Audi TT – 33 years later. Sure, maybe GM didn’t explore turbocharging as much as they could, but they were way, way ahead of everyone else.

With That Out Of The Way, We’re Going To Keep Telling Fascinating GM (And Other Automaker) Fail Stories

GM is fully capable of stepping on its own ass by taking shortcuts and starting things that it doesn’t fully see through; in fact, Jason wrote about this in “Here Are Five Times GM Developed Some Pioneering And Important Innovation Only To Fumble It And Have To Catch Up Later Like A Chump.”

This ruffled some feathers, as have a number of our GM Hit or Miss and Unholy Fails articles like these:

The 2004 Chevrolet Malibu Is The Worst Of 2000s GM Distilled Into One Car: GM Hit Or Miss

GM Learned Nothing From The Cimarron By Selling A $76,000 Chevy Volt With A Cadillac Badge: Unholy Fails

Here’s How The Cadillac Catera Got Lost In Translation: GM Hit Or Miss

The truth is that most of our GM stories have been positive, so there’s definitely a bit of hypersensitivity. Just thought I’d write this article to let you all know that, in my mind, GM is the GOAT of automotive engineering. Product planning/bean counting? No, the new Blazer is a huge disappointment and leaving money on the table for the Bronco and Wrangler, the diesel Equinox was the dumbest idea ever, the Buick Cascada was doomed the day it hit our shores, Mary Barra saying she was going to skip hybrids because EVs are inevitable was silly, and I could go on and on the number of foolish moves GM has made throughout the years.

But they weren’t the moves of the engineers. When it comes to engineering, GM is — at least in my view — at the top of the automotive food chain. And has been for some time.

The post General Motors Is The Greatest Automotive Engineering Company In The World. There, I Said It appeared first on The Autopian.

The Testarossa name is making a triumphant return. Ferrari on Tuesday took the wraps off the replacement for its SF90 supercar, opting to revive the legendary nameplate that inspired an entire generation of enthusiasts. Now called the 849 Testarossa, the car uses an updated version of its predecessor’s hybridized, twin-turbo V8 powertrain. There’s more power and more aero, which, according to Ferrari, means lower lap times around a race track.

When you think Testarossa, you probably think of the now-iconic flat-12-powered flagship of the 1980s. But the primary inspiration for the title, Ferrari says, is to pay tribute to the 500 TR, a four-cylinder race car built in 1956 to take on Maserati. The TR stood for Testa Rossa, the color of the camshaft covers used on the car’s engine. Either way, we’re hyped.

The 849 Testarossa’s name is not the coolest thing about it, though. All you have to do is look at it to understand.

It Looks Freakin’ Awesome

Ferrari’s current design scheme has more than a few critics, but I really can’t see why. The 12Cilindri looks amazing, and the F80, the company’s new big-boy flagship, is a box-flare-fender bundle of joy. This car’s fascia very clearly takes design cues from both, albeit with some incredibly cool bumperettes on either corner, similar to that one-off rally-ready Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer. There’s also an extra flick on the splitter, which Ferrari says is responsible for 10 percent of the front end’s downforce alone.

The rear is even more interesting. Ferrari calls those two little winglets a “twin-tail architecture” inspired by the 512 S, a prototype racing car that made its first appearance in the late 1960s. It also reminds me of the FXX K and, more recently, the SF90 XX Stradale, both of which also used similar setups. What you don’t see in the photos is the active rear wing, which sits between the two winglets, and can raise or lower in less than a second, according to Ferrari.

The Italian supercar maker is particularly proud of the 849 Testarossa’s redesigned underfloor. It has three pairs of vortex generators (that’s six total, I used a calculator), responsible for finding a 20-percent increase in downforce compared to the SF90. Another 15 percent comes from a reworking of the air coming from the front of the car, and that new diffuser.

Wait, No 12-Cylinder? Is This Even A Real Testarossa?

The last Ferrari to wear a Testarossa badge had a naturally aspirated flat 12 and a five-speed manual transmission. The 849 Testarossa has neither of those things. But I wouldn’t count it out just yet. Under the skin you’ll find a newly updated version of the three-motor, V8-powered drivetrain in the SF90 Stradale. If you’re keeping track of the latest and greatest Ferraris, that’s two more cylinders than even the F80, which uses a V6.

Ferrari makes it clear this V8 isn’t entirely new, but going by the laundry list of new parts it lists, I kinda have a hard time believing them. There’s a new block, new cylinder heads, new turbochargers, new intake plenums, new exhaust manifolds, and a new valvetrain system. It’s more apt here to point out what’s not new than what is. It makes 818 horsepower all on its own, without help from the hybrid motors. That’s nearly as much as the 12Clindri’s 6.5-liter V12.

Ferrari credits the increased size of the turbos and the bigger-diameter exhaust ducts for the extra power. The company is also quick to point out the engine weighs about the same as it did before, thanks to titanium fasteners and lighter-weight camshafts. Those exhaust manifolds are also now made from Inconel, which is great at containing heat—though Ferrari says it’s employing the material to improve performance and sound.

Then there are the hybrid motors. As before, there are two up front—one for each front wheel—and another sandwiched between the engine and the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. Ferrari claims that, combined, the three motors produce a total of 220 horsepower (total max output for the whole system is 1036 horsepower). The system has been reworked to bring more comfort, better torque vectoring up front, and deliver a better transition between full electric and hybrid power.

Most importantly, the regenerative braking has been recalibrated in the 849 Testarossa to improve pedal feel, which was one of my main complaints when I drove the SF90. The motors are also more efficient than before, though Ferrari’s estimated EV-only range of 15 miles from the 7.45-kWh battery is the same as before.

What Else Has Been Changed Here?

The 849’s interior has been totally redone to give the driver a perceived higher level of importance—something I assume all Ferrari owners desire. The new dash has virtually all of the controls and vents facing towards the driver’s seat, with a new center console that splits the two occupants with a diagonal trim piece, similar to the C8 Corvette (though not nearly as drastic).

Thankfully, the 849 keeps my favorite part about Ferrari interiors, the gated-shifter-themed gear selector. Here it’s positioned high up in a flowing-like state, unlocking the lower console for things like a cupholder and a place to put your phone. Also, there are real buttons on the steering wheel instead of horrific touch-capactive D-pads. Thank goodness.

The rest of the interior is typical Ferrari. Bucket seats, steering wheel-mounted turn signal buttons, gigantic paddle shifters, and a right-side display for your passenger to stare at as you break seven laws at once while merging onto the highway.

Ok, But Will It Drive Better?

Sure sounds like it. Ferrari says it used the SF90 as a starting point, with the goal of improving five specific categories:  lateral and longitudinal acceleration, gear changes, braking, and sound. Here’s how engineers tackled each category:

Lateral acceleration was optimised by working on the suspension geometry and management of the electronic vehicle dynamics controls to provide a faster response to steering wheel inputs and improving the mechanical grip of the rear axle. Longitudinal acceleration benefits from a quicker response to the accelerator pedal and the increase in maximum power available.

The gearshift strategy has been refined to provide a more progressive feel and reduce actuation times. Braking efficiency has been improved, as has pedal feel and travel, thanks to the introduction of the ABS Evo developed for the SF90 XX Stradale. The sound has been calibrated to accurately replicate accelerator response in terms of quality through the rev range.

The company also uses what it calls the Ferrari Integrated Vehicle Estimator (FIVE) digital system, which, among other things, can simulate a ghost of the car it’s mated to in real time.

The FIVE system represents a significant evolution in dynamic controls. It is an estimation system capable of creating a digital twin that replicates the behaviour of the car in real time, based on a simplified mathematical model powered by real measurements (acceleration, 6D sensor).

FIVE accurately estimates performance characteristics that cannot be directly measured, such as speed (with a margin of error of less than 1 km/h) and yaw angle (margin of less than 1°) of the vehicle, improving traction control, electronic differential management and e4WD system delivery. These estimates feed into all vehicle dynamics controls, making the response more precise and repeatable.

Silly name, sure. But also cool as hell.

There’s no telling how much the 849 Testarossa will cost—Ferrari is famous for withholding such information when it launches a car. The outgoing SF90 Spider started at nearly $600,000, so I’d estimate MSRP will be somewhere around there—chump change, as far as the average Ferrari buyer is concerned. I you’re already on the company’s nice list, you can put your order in now.

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