Awesome Rides

Celebrating 50 years, Toyota’s Calty Design Research has helped design some of the company’s most popular vehicles, including Camry, Corolla, Supra, Tacoma, and Tundra. But their Baby Lunar Cruiser is a flight of fancy. Inspired by the classic FJ40 Land Cruiser, it has in-wheel motors, airless tires, joystick controls, and an augmented reality dashboard.

The Prancing Horse shows off its sexy side with a droptop version of its sleek Roma 2+2. The front-engine, rear-wheel drive Ferrari Roma Spider has a 3.9 L twin-turbo V8 that makes 612 hp and lets you enjoy its ear candy even more than its coupé brother. With the wind blowing in your hair, it’ll gallop from 0-to-60 mph in 3.1 seconds towards a top speed of 199 mph.

Launching cars quickly on a drag strip depends on horsepower, grip, and driver reaction time. That’s not quite the case in this video from WhistlinDiesel. For his latest bit of automotive jackassery, the car-destroying YouTuber purchased 7000 feet of industrial-strength rubber tubing and used it to see how much boost the slingshot could add.

No matter how many weird bicycles that The Q comes up with, he never seems to run out of ideas. This time, he created a bike that rolls on slip-on shoes instead of tires. He made each wheel from 16 metal fins, then fitted them with Jake the Dog slippers. It makes an appropriately goofy sound rolling down the road.

Battery-electric vehicles come in all shapes and sizes, from well-priced daily drivers to extravagant performance vehicles. The Volkswagen ID.4 has a starting price under $39,000, fast charging, and good driving range. We spent a week living with the premium grade ID.4 Pro S AWD and were delighted with its styling, power, and utility.

To celebrate the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix, drivers from Oracle Red Bull Racing battled Scuderia Alpha Tauri competed in this Japanese game show. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez took on Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson in a series of silly driving and cargo-hauling challenges in tiny Kei trucks. Mini-truck bowling looks like a blast.

To follow up on his bicycle that runs on diagonally-mounted tracks instead of wheels, The Q is showing off another unusual bike design. This one rolls along the ground on tracks that lie flat on the surface. It looks more stable than the first design – but there’s more rolling resistance, so it needed a huge center gear to provide enough torque to move it.

Small vehicles, known as tuk-tuks, are popular in many places around the world. Atom Things takes us on a tour of Tez Raftar, a factory that builds these auto rickshaws. The production process includes welding together a steel frame, fitting and painting body panels, and installing a drivetrain, electrical system, windshield, cargo bed, and seats.

Pizza restaurants strive to deliver your pizza while it’s hot, but that’s not always possible. Colin Furze came up with an overengineered solution to the problem. Rather than insulating already-cooked pizzas, his Suzuki pizza delivery motorcycle has a built-in oven to cook pizzas while in transit. He built the oven from scratch using sheet metal and hydroforming.

Is Hyundai making the best EV on the market? After a week behind the wheel of the 2023 IONIQ 6, they jumped to the top of our list. We drove the IONIQ 6 Limited AWD model with a long-range battery pack. This configuration provides the best combination of performance, range, and features. Long live the sedan!

While so-called hoverboards don’t hover how we want them to, they’re still fun to ride. James Bruton thought he could make something more interesting than an off-the-shelf balance board. So he got to work making a hoverboard with 3D-printed omni-wheels. His chunky machine is built for a seated rider, and he plans to upgrade it to make it more agile.

Ford’s electric crossover gets ready to hit the trails with the Mustang Mach-E Rally. It has a two-motor drivetrain that makes 480 hp and 650 lb-ft. of torque. It rolls on 19″ alloy rally wheels with Michelin CrossClimate2 tires and has a 20mm suspension lift, MagneRide dampers, a rear spoiler, and underbody shielding. Expect a 250-mile range and a $65K MSRP.

The team at Hacksmith Industries specializes in over-the-top builds. In this video, mechanical engineer Jeff got his hands on an off-road capable electric skateboard and upgraded its motors, battery pack, and circuitry to produce way more power than most people would feel comfortable with beneath their feet.

Make It Extreme has a thing for building unique single-passenger vehicles. Their latest creation is a motorized bike that rolls on a single tread. It’s powered by what appears to be a moped engine. The motor is rigged up to spin a custom-milled drive wheel that pulls the tread extracted from a car tire along a set of rollers. It’s even equipped with a full suspension.

Italian automaker Alfa Romeo blew our minds when they revealed the 33 Stradale, a limited-edition supercar with a sleek design that honors the classic Tipo 33 while still being modern. It will come in a conventionally-fueled model with a twin-turbo V6 with 620 hp, and an electric version with 750 hp. Each will be handcrafted at Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera.

Michael Mann of Heat and Miami Vice fame directed this biopic about automotive icon Enzo Ferrari. A grey-haired Adam Driver stars as Ferrari during a tumultuous period in his life. As his factory is on the verge of bankruptcy, his marriage to Laura (Penélope Cruz) falters, he struggles to accept his son, and he pushes his drivers to win the Mille Miglia.

While a full-scale version of the Hyperloop is a long way off, engineering teams have created costly scaled-down prototypes of Elon Musk’s envisioned high-speed railway. James from ProjectAir did things on an smaller scale, using off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts with a shop vac to pull a model train along the outside and inside of an acrylic tube.

When WhistlinDiesel isn’t accidentally lighting his Ferrari on fire, he’s torture-testing cars or modifying them in stupid ways. This video definitely falls into the latter category. For this build, Cody and his pals took a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, strapped it to a pontoon boat, and attached paddles to its rear axle. It seems to be better at splashing water than going fast.

Transferring technology and expertise from the road to the water, BMW is the driving force behind The Icon, the first maritime luxury electric vehicle. BMW teamed up with boat builder TYDE to create a visionary experience that progressively blends the ideals of luxury and sustainable mobility. In other words, it’s a glass-encased plaything for the one-percenters.

The current-generation Nissan GT-R (R35) has been around for quite some time now, but it’s still a fantastic sports car. The 2023 GT-R is as fun to drive and attention-grabbing as ever. Other vehicles may have surpassed the GT-R’s specs and tech, but Godzilla can still hold its own in a straight line or a curve and makes anyone look like a pro driver.

A limited edition of Ford’s electric truck, the F-150 Lightning Platinum Black comes factory-wrapped in matte black. It rolls on matte black 22″ wheels, with black badging, power running boards, a black tonneau cover, a smoked light bar, a gloss black roof, and a black leather interior. The fully-loaded truck has dual motors and a 300-mile driving range.

The second-gen Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe is as powerful and quick as its predecessor, but it’s now a proper grand tourer, adding 7″ to its overall length and stretching its wheelbase by 3″. That improves luggage capacity and makes a 2+2 config possible so the kids can ride along. 4MATIC+ all-wheel drive and rear-wheel steering are now standard as well.

Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. But that didn’t stop Cullen and the crew from Up North Outdoors from building the dumbest 3-wheel ATV ever. They started with a Honda 200M all-terrain cycle, chopped it up, and added a tall metal frame to get its rider over 12 feet off the ground. Naw, this thing doesn’t look sketchy at all.