There’s a critical lack of cheap new cars that are proud to be inexpensive these days. Everything’s aspirational, soft-touch, and as a result, expensive. However, as subcompact cars continue to disappear in America, they’re having a resurgence in Europe. Some 36 years after the original completed its illustrious 42-year lifespan, the Citroën 2CV is coming back.
Even though the original Citroën 2CV only made about 29 horsepower at most and was known for seemingly infinite body roll, it holds a special place in my heart. Designed with the brief of serving as an umbrella on four wheels and with a mission of cheap running costs and excellent ride comfort, it survived war and rationing and a near-decade-long delay to become a legend of post-war motoring. With its flip-up windows, canvas roof, and garden furniture seats, the 2CV was a tremendous expression of utilitarianism. This cheap, originally corrugated machine did exactly what it said on the tin, helped put France on wheels, and became a style icon in its own right.
Perhaps best of all, despite being bathed in austerity, the 2CV was still weird. It had an air-cooled engine at the front, a shifter that came out of the dashboard, and just three nuts holding on each wheel. Its interlinked suspension was genius, with horizontal coil springs connecting the leading and trailing arms on each side to offer a sort of fore-and-aft anti-pitch function. The van variant looked like it had reversed into a shed, the four-wheel-drive variant simply bunged another engine in the back, it was all so much charm in an affordable package. Jason owns one and I totally see why.
Photo credit: Jason Torchinsky
Today, Citroën isn’t as weird as it used to be. The marque hasn’t produced a grand hydropneumatically-suspended sedan in more than 13 years, and the funky door ding-mitigating air bumps on older models like the C4 Cactus have disappeared from the range. The Ami quadricycle still flies the flag, but for those who want more than eight horsepower or a top speed above 25 MPH, Citroën doesn’t make anything else that lets its freak flag fly. That’s about to change with the new 2CV.
Photo credit: Citroën
Although all we have is a dim teaser photo, the resemblance is undeniable. From the proud round headlamps to the silhouette to the fenders, this is a modern interpretation of a 2CV and it seems to be doing things right. I mean, just look at the giant Citroën emblem on the nose, an unmistakable nod to early 2CV models. However, while the original 2CV featured an air-cooled flat-twin, the new 2CV is going electric.
[Editor’s Note: I’m so excited about this. I think what makes me most excited is that, unlike other recent rebirths of iconic old cars, like Volkswagen’s ID.Buzz, this new 2CV is keeping to the original mission of the car: cheap, basic, usable transportation. It’s hard to see what’s going on in this teaser, but I like generally what I see. It does look like that rear wheel is no longer skirted? You’d think in an EV you’d want that. I can’t wait to learn more. – JT]
Understandably, you can expect modest specifications from the new 2CV. While Citroën hasn’t said what range, maximum DC fast charging kW, or horsepower will be, it’s given the world the most important figure: The expected price. We’re talking an electric car built in Europe with a target price under €15,000. That’s under $17,500 at current conversion rates, and that’s including value added tax. Best of all, we won’t have to wait long to see what the new 2CV looks like. If everything goes according to plan, expect a reveal this October at the Paris Motor Show. Oh yeah, this is looking good.
Sometimes, AI helps you fine-tune weather forecasts or improve the lives of people with disabilities. Other times, well, it loses a fight with a bottle of peppermint syrup. That's the situation Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol finds himself in after the coffee chain reportedly told staff that it's scrapping an AI inventory program after only nine months.
Starbucks rolled out the "Automated Counting" software to its North American stores in September 2025. Developed in partnership with NomadGo, the AI-powered tool was supposed to speed up inventory tracking. Employees (likely fearing that they were holding their replacements) would use mobile devices to scan items on shelves.
The idea was simple: Automate the tedious task of counting milks and syrups, increase accuracy, and optimize the supply chain. Welcome to the AI revolution, baby.
A since-deleted September blog post by CTO Deb Hall Lefevre laid on the hype as thick as the whipped cream on a mocha Frappuccino: "With a quick scan using a handheld tablet, partners can instantly see what's in stock — ensuring cold foam, oat milk, or caramel drizzle are always available," it read. "Customers can enjoy beverages their way, every time — and partners spend less time in the backroom and more time crafting and connecting." ("Partners" is Starbucks' term for its employees.)
Well, things didn't quite turn out that way. Reuters reports that the tool frequently mislabeled and miscounted items. It was known to mix up similar milk types or skip them altogether.
The video above, embedded in Starbucks' September blog post, foreshadowed the tool's struggles. The clip inadvertently showed the system missing a bottle of peppermint syrup as a worker scanned the shelf. (Did Starbucks deploy a half-baked AI video editor, too?)
So, Starbucks "partners" will now go back to the good ol' days of manually counting inventory. "Beverage components and milk will now be counted the same way you count other inventory categories in your coffeehouse," an internal company newsletter, viewed by Reuters, said. Apparently, workers won't miss it much. "Thanks for discontinuing Automatic Counting!" one employee reportedly wrote in response to the change. "The thought behind it was great, but the execution was proving difficult."
An updated analysis comparing healthcare systems across 20 countries finds once again that the US system is an outstandingly poor performer, summarized as being a "persistent failure" for its high costs, poor health outcomes, and premature deaths.
"Americans pay more for health care, get less in return, and remain far more exposed to illness, debt, and insecurity than their peers," the report concludes.
The report comes from The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on healthcare system performance, which periodically conducts such comparative analyses. The new report is based on 2024 data and compares the US to 19 countries, including many in Europe, as well as Australia, Canada, Chile, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
As has long been the case, the US spends far more on healthcare than any other of the 19 countries. In 2024, the US spent 18 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, nearly twice the average of all the countries, which was 9.3 percent. The second-highest spender after the US was Germany, with 12.3 percent.
Drilling down, the US spends far more on care per person than other countries and spends more on prescription medications. Americans are, by far, the most likely to skip medications, treatments, tests, and consultations due to costs.
US life expectancy at birth ranked third lowest, at 79 years, while the average was 81.2 years. Only Turkey and Mexico had lower life expectancies, which were 77.3 and 75.5, respectively. The highest life expectancies were in Spain (84 years), Japan (84.1 years), and Switzerland (84.3 years).
Uniquely bad
The US had the second-highest avoidable mortality rate—deaths caused by conditions that can be prevented with primary care or treated with timely medical intervention. Only Mexico had higher avoidable mortality. Similarly, the US also had the second-highest rating on years of potential life lost, a measure used to estimate premature death. Again, only Mexico had a higher rating.
The report highlighted critical weaknesses in the US healthcare system, including having the fewest primary care providers of all countries in the analysis. The US has 0.3 primary care providers per 1,000 people, while the overall average is 1.1 providers per 1,000, and the highest-ranking countries, Australia and the Netherlands, have 1.8. The US produces new physicians at one of the lowest rates and also has among the lowest hospital bed capacity levels.
The poor outcomes from America's failing health system are not evenly distributed, of course. While the US has a higher maternal death rate than any other country in the study, at nearly 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, maternal mortality for Black women in the US is 50 deaths per 100,000. The average of all the countries was 9.5, with 11 countries having maternal death rates at less than 5 per 100,000 live births. And, while the US had the third-highest suicide rate of the countries assessed, suicide rates in the rural US are significantly higher and rising. Rural Americans are less likely to have access to doctors and mental health services, the study notes.
The report notes that the US uniquely lacks universal health coverage among high-income peer countries. Mexico was the only other country in the study without universal coverage but has plans in place for universal care starting in 2027.
Overall, other countries have already come up with strategies to address the failings seen in the US health system, including reducing healthcare costs, strengthening primary care, and addressing inequities.
"What’s remarkable is not that alternatives exist, but that the United States has failed to pursue them," the study concludes.
It's not an ideal time to be buying a new PC or doing a major upgrade. Price crunches for RAM and storage chips are making all kinds of components more expensive, and the shift to DDR5 in modern Intel and AMD CPUs means that a lot of people would need to pay money to replace their current DDR4 kits if they wanted to step up to a significantly newer, faster CPU and motherboard.
AMD may have something on the horizon for people who are looking to stretch their current PC (and its DDR4 RAM kit) just a little further. Leaks spotted by Tom's Hardware point to the existence of an "AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition," a re-release of a 4-year-old out-of-circulation CPU that might nevertheless be an upgrade for people with older Ryzen CPUs in Socket AM4 motherboards.
The "X3D" in the chip's name signifies that it comes with 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die, bringing the total amount of L3 cache to 96MB. Workloads that benefit from extra cache—including most games—will perform much better on the 5800X3D than they do on the vanilla Ryzen 7 5800X.
The "10th Anniversary" being celebrated isn't for the 5800X3D itself, but the AM4 processor socket, which first launched in September 2016. The socket was succeeded by AM5 nearly four years ago, but AMD kept the AM4 socket around to continue to address the budget market. Higher prices for DDR5 RAM kits and AM5 motherboards themselves have helped keep the AM4 socket around since then, and while AMD hasn't released any new architectures for AM4 boards since late 2020, it has been remarkably persistent in releasing and re-releasing remixed Ryzen 5000-series CPUs for the socket.
The 5800X3D was the first of AMD's X3D releases, and it comes with the most compromises compared to standard Ryzen chips. It doesn't support most forms of overclocking, and its base and boosted clock speeds are each a few hundred MHz lower than the regular Ryzen 5800X. If you're not planning to pair the chip with a fairly fast, recent GPU from Nvidia's GeForce RTX 40- or 50-series or AMD's Radeon 9070 XT, a regular eight-core Ryzen 7 chip from the 5700 or 5800 series may get you better value for your money.
But for people with a high-end GPU who don't want to pay today's inflated prices for a good kit of DDR5 memory, a re-release of the 5800X3D could help stretch that old Socket AM4 system for just a few more years.
AMD hasn't officially announced pricing or availability for this chip yet, but the apparent existence of retail packaging suggests its launch may be imminent. An Indian retailer listed the chip for about $310, though we'd take this with a grain of salt given ongoing disruption from tariffs, fuel costs, chip shortages, and other factors. Used versions of the 5800X3D start between $450 and $500 on eBay as of this writing, so anything lower would be a relative bargain, provided AMD can keep the chip stocked.
As you’re drifting off to sleep, there are things you want to envision and things you definitely don’t want stuck in your head. A mental image of fluffy sheep nimbly hopping a fence is welcome, but something that looks like a creature from the depths? Absolute nightmare fuel. When the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe debuted late last night, I thought it looked like a catfish raised entirely on a diet of bong water. Now that I’ve had a few hours to come to grips with the design, guess what? It’s somehow worse than it first appeared.
Right, before we dig into what makes this car so hideous, it’s time for some context. In 2014, Mercedes-Benz revealed a front-mid-engined coupe called the AMG GT and it was glorious. Seeking to cash in on that brand equity with the shamelessness of a comic book film, 2019 saw Mercedes-AMG rework the E-Class platform into a five-door liftback called the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, which essentially became the de facto replacement for the CLS. With a choice of straight-six or V8 power, it had some muscle behind the posturing and looked handsome enough.
However, for the second-generation AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, Mercedes-AMG is going electric – just as the sort of people who buy six-figure luxury performance cars are expressing a thirst for the internal combustion engine. It’s definitely a bold move, one that probably would’ve been more successful five years ago, but it’s hard to deny that the specifications are impressive.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
Specs like 1,153 horsepower. Yep, a one, then a comma, then another one, followed by a five and a three. A three-piece array of axial flux motors imbues the top-spec Mercedes-AMG GT 63 4-Door Coupe with output to rival the 1,234-horsepower Lucid Air Sapphire and the 1,019-horsepower Porsche Taycan Turbo GT. Granted, there is a caveat here: Full power is only unlocked during launch control at 80 percent state of charge. Still, when the stars align, Mercedes-AMG claims it can sprint from zero to 60 mph in two seconds flat, which is quicker than you can say the name of the vehicle, and it’ll allegedly run from a dead stop to 124 MPH in a mere 6.4 seconds. Oh, and the motors themselves are tiny, with the front motor measuring 3.5 inches wide and the rear motors each measuring 3.2 inches wide.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
If that’s far too much, there is a lesser Mercedes-AMG GT 53 4-Door Coupe on offer with a mere 805 horsepower. You know, sensible grocery-getter stuff. Beyond shock-and-awe output, this EV features serious cooling capacity, rides on triple-adjustable air springs, steers all four wheels, offers multi-stage traction control, and can be optioned with interlinked hydraulic dampers for active roll stabilization. The battery pack boasts 106 kWh of usable capacity, and there’s silly 600 kW DC fast charging capability that will be a struggle to exploit in the real world due to most fast chargers tapping out at or below 350 kW. There’s even a drive mode with fake shifts and a simulated V8 soundtrack, a bit like what you get in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N.
It’s certainly a monumental technological showcase for Mercedes-AMG, but there’s one big problem: This car redefines the word ‘gopping’ because in just about every way, it’s the most hideous thing to ever feature an AMG badge. Let’s start at the front, where a number of sins are committed.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
For the past eight years or so, the so-called Panamericana grille with its vertical slats has been a Mercedes-AMG trademark. At face value, that’s fine, but the integration here leaves a lot to be desired. It seems extruded from the bumper, which introduces a whole lot of strange surfacing. If you look at other upper grille-less cars like the Porsche 911 or the Xiaomi SU7, you’ll notice that where the hood tapers down at the front, the upper edge of the bumper continues the same curvature before increasing its severity as it transitions to a vertical plane.
This AMG GT 4-Door Coupe does the opposite of that, like it’s got a permanent Kylie Jenner lip kit on. To sort of cheat this transition, Mercedes-AMG has gone with the most loathed visual element of the moment, a light bar spanning both headlights that looks like something you could buy off of AliExpress. Oh, and of course, the headlights have three-pointed stars in them, as if the dinner plate-sized emblem in the grille wasn’t enough. The end result isn’t simply a catfish mouth. If you cover either the headlights or the lower bumper, this thing looks like two different cars. That’s not attractive, full-stop.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
In contrast to the front, perhaps the profile of the new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe being a bit generic isn’t a terrible thing. It has the same sort of modest dash-to-axle, upward lower flank crease, strong haunches, and sloping roofline we’ve seen from a litany of other electric sedans, although again, the devil is in the details. Each extreme of the greenhouse features a slab of plastic, and while the modestly sized triangle simulating a quarter window is relatively inoffensive, a small quarter-light would’ve been more tasteful than the triangle of plastic in the front door window aperture.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
Right, brief break from visual whiplash over, onto the rear, which is about as minging as the nose. That taillight configuration is truly something else. Six round elements, one three-piece arc over the top, smoked horizontal elements presumably for indicators and reversing lights, all set into a giant sea of shiny black plastic. So much shiny plastic, the round elements with their garish inlaid three-pointed stars look lost in a void. It looks like the back of the car is wearing ski goggles, and that’s not even the bit that really annoys me.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
The Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe is going to be an expensive car. Pricing hasn’t been released yet, but the old combustion-powered model tops out north of $200,000. Given the inclusion of a panoramic moonroof, why couldn’t Mercedes-AMG paint the strip of trim between the moonroof and the rear window black for a cohesive look? It’s been done before on the W213 E-Class, Volkswagen offers a more extensive and expensive painted treatment on the current Golf R’s roof to match the tinted moonroof, so why couldn’t Mercedes-AMG finish this detail off properly on its five-door flagship?
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
In case you were expecting this thing’s gurning mouth and unresolved arse to give way to a gorgeous interior, you may want to temper your expectations, because everything is computer. Quite literally, there’s not one physical control on the entire face of the dashboard, with a three-screen array dominating everything like dropping an entire bottle of the sort of hot sauce you’d find at Ace Hardware into a bowl of oatmeal. You do get some drive mode selectors and a small bank of controls for stuff like hazard warning lamps and stereo volume in the console, but the sheer reliance on screens really cheapens the cabin of the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe. The metal speaker grilles, quilted leather door card inserts, and exposed carbon console are utterly lost in the digital assault.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
Now granted, there have been cars with stars on the front unveiled to a dearth of applause. Stories from the debut of the R231 SL recount an awkward silence after the sheet was lifted, and the Dodge Intrepid-shaped EQS didn’t exactly set the world alight. However, being mocked on debut is a new one. I posted two photos of the new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe to my own Instagram story, and as you’d expect, it was viewed by many colleagues. Perhaps the most suitable reaction came from a very respected auto writer via private DMs, which have been anonymized to protect the guilty:
“Wait, this is real?”
Unfortunately.
“Holy shit.”
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG
Indeed, the overarching reaction to this engineering marvel is one of incredulity that Mercedes-AMG would release something this visually unresolved, this garish, this bewilderingly fish-faced. From a marque that’s staked over a century of reputation on elegance, letting a car like this out of the studio is embarrassing. Mind you, this was always going to be a low-volume car, and Mercedes-AMG only needs a few dissenting opinions for the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe to be a modest success. As Autopian editor-in-chief David Tracy wrote in Slack, “I think it looks fantastic.”
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