Awesome Rides

The Polestar 3 EV comes with dual-motor AWD, making up to 517 hp and 671 lb-ft. of torque. The 489 hp model gets 300 miles of range while the performance model goes 270 miles. It has air suspension and Brembo brakes, while its minimalist interior boasts sustainable materials and a 14.5″ screen with NVIDIA and Android tech.

If you had told us ten years ago that a Hyundai Elantra would make a great sports car, we would called you crazy. But here we are in 2022, and the Elantra N is one our favorite cars of the year. The compact sedan has a great, energetic drivetrain, crisp handling, an awesome exhaust note, and an available manual transmission.

Totally Handy walks us through the process of building a custom electric bicycle from scratch. In addition to its low-rider style, it has an extra-fat car tire on its rear wheel for added stability. The second part of the video shows off a totally different build – a custom made branding iron made from a melted-down engine.

Last year, we had a chance to drive the new Toyota GR86 on a racetrack. Now, we’ve had a full week to live with the agile and accessibly-priced sports car as our daily driver for a full week. The good news: The GR86 is nearly as much fun on the street as it is on a race circuit. Here’s what we love about it.

This unique, 4-wheeled electric scooter features an engaging lean-to-steer mechanism and can hit speeds up to 25 mph. Unlike other scooters, your feet never need to touch the ground when stopping. Its battery pack sends power to dual 550-watt motors with a 50-mile range. It also can be outfitted for off-roading.

This crazy grass skiing attraction at China’s Wulan Mountain lets riders zoom down a smooth, grass-covered hill on a single-person cart that rides on narrow-gauge rails. The video shows just 11 seconds of the 40-second ride, but it looks like a blast. Apparently, it’s quite the climb back to the top of the hill if you want to ride again.

Esperanto is Teton Gravity Research’s latest mountain biking action film. During filming, rider Hannah Bergemann showed off her skills in the rough and treacherous terrain of Southern Utah, which was captured for us to enjoy in this short bonus reel. She kicks things off with an absolutely insane downhill run.

The Halfgrid is an environmentally-friendly design for a fully-autonomous urban transportation system. It runs on static overhead cables, decreasing traffic and emissions. Each independently-powered transportation pod is just the right size for a single person. The pods could also be used to move cargo.

Genesis continues to impress us with every one of its vehicles. The 2022 GV70 knocked our socks off with its deft balance of luxury, performance, vehicle dynamics, and technology. Even with the smaller of two engines, the GV70 is smooth, quick, and more than capable of keeping up with European luxury cars.

If there’s one thing you can rely on action movies and TV shows for, it’s car crashes. While some filmmakers have moved on to using CGI for crash effects, practical vehicle stunt work is still the most convincing. Insider got together with J.E.M. FX to explain the tricks required to create controlled vehicular mayhem on screen.

Most cars sold these days have an automatic transmission. But it’s hard to beat a manual gearbox and its three-pedal setup when it comes to driver engagement. Jake O’Neill from Animagraphs created this 3D animation that shows us how the clutch, gears, and shifter work in concert to send power to the drivetrain.

Here in the US, SUVs and pickup trucks are wildly popular. But in the UK and much of Europe, small cars are the norm. Mat from carwow took to the streets of the UK with a Hennessey Mammoth – an upgraded Ram TRX – to see how hard it is to fit the beast down narrow streets, keep it fueled up, and order food from a drive-thru.

Fans of Knight Rider will immediately recognize this murdered-out 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am as K.I.T.T. Playmobil’s version plays original voice clips and activates its scanner light when you touch its hood. The set includes poseable figures of Michael Knight, Bonnie Barstow, and Devon Miles.

Cardboard seems like a bad material to build a vehicle out of, but if you laminate together enough of the corrugated paper, it’s quite strong. Engineer James Bruton fabricated a working electric bicycle with wheels and frame parts made out of the stuff. Though he did cheat with 3D-printed plastic parts to hold everything together.

Based on the race-winning KTM X-BOW GT2, the X-BOW GT-XR is designed for the street. It’s powered by Audi’s legendary 2.5L 5-cylinder engine, tuned to produce 493 bhp and 428 lb-ft. of torque. Its jet fighter-inspired canopy, wedge shape, and large rear wing are optimized for downforce and low drag.

Mountain biker Sam Pilgrim took the five-wheeled Street Surfer for a ride on a variety of urban freeriding locations, including skateparks, stairs, and a pump track. The unusual bike has four small wheels in place of a single front wheel and both front and rear suspension. It’s all about the lean.

Volcon’s electric pedal-assisted bicycle is ready for just about any terrain. It has four drive modes, ranging from urban cruising to high-speed off-roading. Its high torque motor offers up to 750 watts of power with a top speed of 28 mph. It has a full front and rear suspension setup and hydraulic disc brakes.

We recently spent some time driving the new Lexus RX. Now, we’ve been behind the wheel of its smaller sibling, the Lexus NX – specifically, the NX 350h hybrid AWD. It’s not the quickest of the NX family, but it is the most fuel-efficient, offering a combined 39 mpg while enjoying an engaging drive in the lap of Lexus luxury.

Woodcarving Art has created some pretty amazing wooden models of vehicles, but this 22-wheeler is his most impressive yet. He started out with a big, heavy piece of timber, then gradually cut and carved it into a miniature of the imposing International Lonestar semi truck, pulling a 12-wheeled trailer behind it.

When there’s caked-on dirt and grime on the underside of a car, it can be difficult to get it all off. I Am Detailing shows off an awesome cleaning technology that blasts surfaces with dry ice pellets to remove dirt instantly without the abrasiveness of other cleaning methods. Their subject: a gorgeous green 1971 Porsche 911T.

The 7th-gen Ford Mustang has sleek new front and rear designs and is powered by a 4th-gen Coyote 5.0L V8 or a new 2.3L EcoBoost 4-cylinder. A redesigned interior features dual digital displays, while an Electronic Drift Brake handle makes drifting easy. And you can even rev its engine from the key fob.

Italian automaker Pagani’s latest vehicle is a work of art on wheels with a smooth, aerodynamic shape. It has a carbon fiber and titanium chassis with steel subframes and is driven by a Mercedes-AMG bi-turbo V12 that makes 864 hp. A purist’s dream, it can even be equipped with a 7-speed manual transmission with a gated shifter.

Luke Skywalker’s X-34 Landspeeder is one of the most iconic Star Wars vehicles. Inspired by the one in the movies, Joel Creates added a real turbojet engine to a pint-sized Landspeeder for kids. It needed additional mods to make it roll smoothly and bypass the safety systems. Fingers crossed he makes a 3-jet version.