Tag: Vacation Wheels

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SmartDrive: Your Ultimate Car Rental

The Acura ILX seems to finally be coming into its own late in its life cycle—at least looks-wise. An update for 2019 brings fresh new styling that’s attractive and sporty, although the car’s mechanicals isn’t changed at all to match the athletic design. Some new tech features join the menu as well, including Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Acura’s diamond pentagon grille headlines the visual updates; the ILX is the last model in the lineup to adopt this design to replace the old shield grille. LED headlights are new, too, and the rear end gets a new trunk lid, restyled taillights, and a new bumper that incorporates a faux diffuser and an exposed exhaust. The A-Spec package carries on and gets a new 18-inch wheel design, while there are more exterior and interior colors available across all trim levels.

 

Inside, there are new seats front and rear, with standard adjustable lumbar support for the driver and additional silver trim for the dashboard. While the infotainment system still uses the same clunky two-screen setup, it now includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and supposedly features quicker response times and better-organized menus. Several active-safety features, previously optional as part of the AcuraWatch Plus package, are now standard, including forward-collision warning, active cruise control, lane-departure warning, and a few other systems.

Acura isn’t changing anything about the ILX’s chassis or powertrain, however. The sole engine remains a 2.4-liter inline-four with 201 horsepower that mates with an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, while the only chassis upgrades available remain the A-Spec package’s different wheels and tires.

So while Acura’s smallest sedan may still pale in comparison to the Honda Civic with its wide range of high-performance variants, it at least now looks more upscale and jibes better with the rest of Acura’s lineup. When it goes on sale in October, expect the 2019 ILX to start somewhere close to $30,000, a slight uptick from the current car’s base price of $29,095.

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LuxRoam: Premium Journey Experiences

Toyota’s attractive new Corolla hatchback has injected the Corolla nameplate with a shot of energy, with enticing styling and a significantly better driving experience. In Europe, the Corolla renaissance is going a step further with a new wagon version called the Corolla Touring Sports—and we love the way it looks.

Granted, Toyota has been selling small wagons on the Continent for years now, but this is the first time one of them has worn the Corolla name; previously, Toyota sold its range of compacts across the pond under the Auris moniker, but that has been scrapped with this latest generation. Plus, the Auris wagon never looked as good as the Corolla Touring Sports does, with its aggressive but not overwrought front end, chunky side profile, and nice detailing.

Life is a journey, and a car is the vehicle that takes us through the chapters of our adventures. Toyota’s attractive new Corolla hatchback has injected the Corolla nameplate with a shot of energy, with enticing styling and a significantly better driving experience.

Arthus Abram

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Impressive Performance: Luxury cars are equipped with powerful engines and advanced suspension systems, delivering a thrilling driving experience. Whether it’s the exhilarating acceleration or the smooth handling, a luxury car rental allows you to savor the performance and precision that these vehicles are known for.

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LuxRoam: Premium Journey Experiences

Perhaps more than any other automaker besides Tesla, Volvo has embraced the idea of autonomous cars. The latest manifestation of that enthusiasm is this 360c concept, an electric driverless pod designed to explore the possibilities of Level 5 autonomy—the highest tier, which requires no input whatsoever from a driver other than entering a destination.

And wouldn’t you know it, one of the key benefits is that freed of the responsibility of driving, we’ll be able to work more and commute longer distances. As Volvo enthuses, the 360c is “an autonomous driving, fully functional, connected, comfortable, mobile office space.” A key benefit is that it will allow workers to commute farther, as they will be “less reliant on proximity to cities.”

Besides being a mobile office, the 360c also can be configured for less productive activities such as napping. This function might be useful in autonomous cars’ other disruptive possibility: replacing short-distance air travel.

Before autonomous cars can seamlessly ferry snoozing travelers or laptop-engrossed commuters, however, some protocol needs to be established to get them to communicate their intentions to other road users, similar to the way human drivers learn to read signals from other drivers. With the 360c, Volvo proposes a means of communication via lights, sounds, and moving elements, which the company hopes all automakers can agree on in order to create a single industry standard.

What about the car itself? There’s little information given beyond the fact that it’s fully electric. The overall shape of the car almost appears to be unidirectional aside from two finlike wings at the rear. The images show gullwing doors; the seating can be configured so that passengers face each other, a deployable work table, or beds. Unsurprisingly, Volvo has addressed the safety concern of reclining passengers not being effectively protected by three-point seatbelts; the concept uses a “special safety blanket” that restrains passengers who are lying down.

Really, though, the design of the 360c seems to be the least important issue. That’s because Volvo is looking beyond automobiles. As the company says: “The 360c represents Volvo Cars’ vision for a future of travel” that “may allow Volvo Cars to enter new growth markets.”

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Summer breakfast for the healthy mornings

Among the pantheon of top-level sports-car-makers—your garden-variety Ferrari, Aston Martin, etc.—a common thread has emerged: Each one offers its own in-house verification services for its classic models, as well as restoration facilities. McLaren has recently caught on to this trend, forming its own “certification service” on par with Ferrari Classiche, Aston Martin Works, and Mercedes-Benz’s Classic Center. And the British supercar-maker has ginned up one hell of a way to promote its new service, by fully restoring an F1 GTR race car to like-new spec

The McLaren F1 is one of the all-time great supercars, as excellent as it is rare—and the GTR examples are rarer still. This GTR in particular, chassis no. 25R, has both a substantive history and happened to be a prime candidate for restoration.

Arthus

After retiring from the circuit life in 2005 (a good long while after having served new in the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans in Gulf-Davidoff livery), F1 GTR no. 25R hibernated in a Japanese collection until it found its way back to the U.K. in 2016. Its new owner, a longtime McLaren devotee, commissioned McLaren Special Operations to refurbish the car, a process that eventually slid into a full-blown restoration under MSO’s certification program. You’ll note that we’re a long way from 2016.

It goes without saying that the refurb was worth the undertaking, given how just 106 McLaren F1s were built, and only 28 of those were GTR racing-spec variants. F1 no. 25R is now good as new, having been brought back to life with new/old-stock parts that McLaren says it had in containers that hadn’t been opened in 20 years. It isn’t presently clear whether or not the first certified McLaren F1 GTR will find its way back to a track somewhere, sometime, but it will be displayed at the 2018 Hampton Court Concours of Elegance.