We have a recurring segment called Concepts We Forgot, in which we revisit cool concept cars from days gone by. This big, bold Pontiac G8 concept would be a perfect candidate if it wasn’t for one tiny detail: Nobody outside of a select few designers knew it existed.
That changed on June 24, 2024—roughly 16 years after it was built. General Motors Design shared images on Instagram, where we learned this was the last concept Pontiac built before GM killed the brand in 2009. It was born in the company’s Advanced Studio in California, and according to the Instagram post, it was a fully functional “vision of the future design” for Pontiac.
Of course, that future never came to pass. Facing declining sales, GM axed Oldsmobile in 2004, then later dumped Hummer, Saturn, and Pontiac amid its bankruptcy saga. Had Pontiac endured, it likely would’ve become a niche performance brand in GM’s hierarchy, not unlike what Dodge became at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. And now, we have a hint of what niche-performance Pontiac may have looked like.
Unfortunately, there’s little information available beyond this being a functional vehicle with G8 badging. It bears some resemblance to the production G8 sedan, a vehicle brought over from GM’s Holden group in Australia where it was known as the Commodore. There were also plans to sell the two-door Commodore ute version as the G8 ST, effectively bringing back the El Camino. But that didn’t come to pass, either.
We’ll never know if this G8 concept was a near-production idea, but its overall design is certainly … something. The headlights have a vertical orientation resembling Cadillacs of the era, and one might say the big grille was ahead of its time. As for what’s under the hood, a continuation of the LS V-8 makes sense. But it doesn’t matter, because Pontiac is long dead.
We aren’t even sure if this concept still exists somewhere, but we have some feelers out to GM to find out. If we hear something we’ll jump in with an update. Until then, pour one out for the last Pontiac concept car.
Mate Rimac understands people. His new robotaxi company, Verne, launching in 2026, gives riders great control over their experience inside the autonomous vehicle in hopes that the more customers develop a “deeper the comfort and sense of ownership.”
The Verne robotaxi will do robotaxi things, getting you from A to B with the Mobileye Drive platform and Level 4 driving. But the company is building the experience around a ride-hailing app that’ll let riders set the vehicle’s temperature, sound, lighting, comfort level, and scent before it even arrives, making every ride with Verne the same every time, “even though the customer will never own the vehicle,” the company said in the announcement.
Verne’s unique shape comes from its cabin-first design. The company styled the car from the inside out, maximizing legroom, which the company claims is more than a Rolls-Royce. It only seats two because the company discovered that 90 percent of taxi rides consisted of just one or two people. It also has a trunk to carry even more stuff.
Passengers will sit in front of a 43-inch display that can play various entertainment or provide info about the ride. The vehicle lacks a steering wheel and pedals, but there is a physical switch between the seats that people can use to start and stop the ride. There’s also a touchscreen to control the in-vehicle systems.
A vital part of the company’s efforts will be its “Mothership,” a place that’ll service the vehicles daily where they’ll be recharged, inspected, and cleaned, giving riders comfort that they’re in a safe car. They will be built with materials designed for daily use and misuse.
Verne’s unique exterior hides the deeply integrated cameras, radars, LIDAR systems, and cleaning mechanisms. It also lacks things a driver would typically need in a vehicle, like windshield wipers and side-view mirrors, which makes cleaning it easier.
Verne will first hit the streets of Zagreb in 2026, Croatia, before expanding to the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Middle East. There are plans to expand worldwide, and the company is already building its first production facility in Croatia. The company is named after Jules Verne, author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in 80 Days. Soon, he’ll be taking you to the grocery store.
Building a car that must meet increasingly stringent legislation is hard. Automakers must take into account not only emissions and safety regulations but also specific criteria pertaining to noise levels. Making sure cars are not too loud is particularly tricky for companies specialized in performance vehicles. These tend to have louder exhausts as well as wider tires, which are typically noisier.
In the late 1980s, Porsche had to build this contraption to make sure its sports cars wouldn’t be too loud. Based on the 928, this one-off prototype started its job in 1989, right when Back to the Future Part II hit the big screen. In an alternate universe, Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown would’ve driven this instead of the DeLorean DMC-12. We reckon the odd machine from Zuffenhausen would’ve also blended perfectly in a dystopian action film such as Mad Max.
Porsche 928 noise test car / Götz von Sternenfels
While Doc’s time machine used a stainless steel body like the Cybertruck, Porsche wrapped the vehicle’s body in cotton wool. Doing so helped the engineers isolate and minimize the noise sources of the engine, intake, and exhaust. The idea behind this 928 was to evaluate the noise levels of different tire compounds. That’s why some of the car’s guts were repositioned outside of the body.
Indeed, the radiator was placed ahead of the front bumper while those two ungainly hood scoops hosted a pair of fans to cool down the engine. The large barrel slapped onto the hood is where the intake process took place, with cables connected to the perfectly enclosed engine bay. Let’s just say that outward visibility was not a priority.
The view through the rear window was even worse since the custom exhaust featured a huge muffler stuck onto the glass. The dual curved exhaust pipes were hand-welded and extended to the highest point of the car, pointing toward the rear. As for the bulging wheel arches, those were added so that the 928 could accommodate different types of wheel and tire combinations. In its current form, the low-profile rubber wraps an alloy wheel from a previous-generation 911.
But why did Porsche choose a 928 in the first place? Because an air-cooled 911 was simply too loud for the job. The 924 was also ruled out because the engineers wanted a car that had plenty of power in the lower rpm range. The 944 was not fit for the task either due to its “gearbox rattle at low loads,” according to Porsche mechanic Harald Mann. He’s been with the company for 40 years, most of which were spent on the test benches to evaluate noise levels.
Porsche 928 noise test car / Götz von Sternenfels
Initially, Porsche tested the car on the existing skidpad but its surfaced changed in time and the company had to improvise. An “external noise measuring track” was built using standardized asphalt to exclude variables and obtain more accurate results. The 928 was fitted with slick tires and its noise levels were measured at a low 63 dB during the standardized flyby test at 31 mph. When the test was done, the legal limit was much higher, at 74 dB.
This 928 may be an ugly duckling but it perfectly illustrates the form follows function principle. The rolling test bench helped Porsche make its cars quieter, which may seem counterintuitive, but it had to be done to pass noise level regulations. After more than three decades of service, it now rests at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart.
Toyota has something extra special planned for this year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas. The company is building a one-off GR86 that’ll use the turbocharged three-cylinder engine and all-wheel drive powertrain from its rally-inspired hot hatch, the GR Corolla. As in, the turbo, AWD BRZ STI that Subaru refuses to build.
Pro photographer and YouTuber Larry Chen managed to get a sneak peek at the build in progress, publishing a lengthy video examining all the work going into this very special SEMA car.
Chen spoke with Mike Chang of Evasive Motorsports, who said Toyota approached his tuner shop to build the car. According to Chang, Toyota wanted to pay homage to its rally cars of the past, such as its Celica GT4 of the 1990s. Specifically, Toyota asked Evasive Motorsports to build a modern interpretation of that car.
And what better way to turn the GR86 into a rally homage than with the GR Corolla’s powertrain? Chang says the new build will retain the Corolla’s G16-GTS three-cylinder, six-speed manual gearbox, and the rest of the drivetrain. Put into a car that weighs about 400 pounds less, and you have a recipe for fun.
Because the GR86 was never meant to be all-wheel drive, this swap isn’t exactly straightforward. Chang’s enlisted the help of Eimer Engineering to help modify the chassis with things like new engine, transmission, and differential mounts to accept the GR Corolla’s drivetrain. There are modifications to the frame to make sure the front driveshafts will clear. And don’t forget the suspension, which needs modified hubs and custom parts to fit up nicely with the GR Corolla’s four half-shafts and GR86’s geometry.
As far as one-off rally specials go, this one sounds like it’ll be pretty cool. We can’t wait to see the finished product at SEMA in November.
Cien, Elmiraj, Escala, Ciel–need I go on? I’m afraid that I have to because Cadillac has unearthed yet another stunning concept left on the proverbial cutting room floor. It doesn’t have a name but we do know this “expressive coupe” was an internal design exercise. A comprehensive one we might add because the designers also drew up an interior.
If it looks a bit familiar, there are a couple of reasons for that. The achingly beautiful coupe takes after the Escala. Back in July 2018, a mysterious patent filing from General Motors showed this very same concept on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. At that point, we noticed design similarities between the trademark design shown on the USPTO site and one of the Escala sketches.
Cadillac claims the unnamed coupe served as the design foundation for current products such as the CT5 and its hot CT5-V Blackwing sibling. It’s easy to imagine a production version going up against the BMW M8 Coupe, but it sadly never happened. The concept is brought into the limelight via social media on GM Design’s Instagram account. This reveal is the latest installment in the “From the Vault” series.
After ending production of the ATS Coupe about five years ago, Cadillac doesn’t have a two-door model in its lineup. If the stars align, there might be a hypercar down the road. Earlier this month, GM’s design boss Michael Simcoe hinted at the prospects of a flagship performance vehicle:
“Could we build a hypercar? Yes. Would we like to build one? Yes. Are we building one? That would be giving too much away.”
Even a lower-tier coupe would suffice in a sea of SUVs sprinkled with a couple of sedans. A new ELR-styled car or something to that effect would provide a nice change of pace. If GM has no issues with selling a Buick luxury minivan in China, we deserve a low-slung coupe with a Cadillac crest.
However, the harsh reality is coupes are not a lucrative segment, which is why more and more automakers are giving up on selling two-door cars. It’s easy for us to ask Cadillac to build this car, but there’s a big risk it won’t sell enough to make financial sense.
Something critical I’ve learned in all my years of ruini—sorry, modifying cars is to lean on common sense. It’s an easy lesson to forget, especially when forum bros will tell you that wheels, tires, brakes, and a tune are day-one mods. But the simplest mods make the biggest difference, and one often overlooked mod can simply fix a car without doing almost anything else: Installing a proper aftermarket bucket seat.
I strive not to ruin my brand-new 2023 Subaru BRZ, but rather modify it to reach the extent of its out-of-the-box capabilities. Luckily, as the BRZ is such a relatively affordable car, there’s low-hanging fruit aplenty, like the aforementioned wheel, tire, and brake mods. One out-of-the-box bother I didn’t fully anticipate: the stock seating position is terrible. Same with the stock seats.
My old Type R going maximum attack at Buttonwillow Raceway with stock seats.
This might be because I came from an FK8 Honda Civic Type R, which has some of the best performance seats fitted to any car at any price. Even running a modded CTR, at a track pace five seconds faster than stock, I found those seats supportive enough, low enough, and comfortable enough to keep my wallet away from the aftermarket.
My BRZ does not benefit from good factory seats, especially for track use. While they were adequate for canyon driving, they were not comfortable. My lower back and bottom screamed after long trips, and the seating position was too tall for a sports car. I needed more support all around.
In my experience, most aftermarket seats are too extreme. Almost every seat maker has a different philosophy for the correct amount of seatback recline, the hip angle between your legs and torso, the amount of thigh support, and shoulder width. Not to mention the ever-critical lumbar support and seat padding. You have two choices down this path: Reclining seats and fixed-back seats.
Without getting into the weeds, I knew that reclining seats would not suit my needs. A reclining bucket seat would be an improvement over the stock seats, but only a fixed-back seat would offer enough support. Either way, I knew who to call: Recaro.
I chose the Recaro Pole Position for a few reasons, but one stands out: It is easily the most comfortable fixed-back seat I’ve sat in. A few seats come close in comfort, but the Pole Position is perfectly judged for a combination of track and street duty. My other choice would’ve been a Bride Zeta IV, which is reasonably comfortable for long trips but has aggressive leg side supports that make it impossible to stretch out and lounge. The Pole Position relies mostly on hip, midriff, and shoulder support to allow your arms and legs more mobility.
Finally, the Recaro offers the best padding and shaping, bar none. It’s a soft seat, with zero pressure points on my body, with good in-built lumbar support that is also adjustable with padding.
Oh, and the Pole Position has dummy swag. That’s another unfortunate truth of aftermarket seats. There are many makers, but the coolest of them all are Recaro and Bride, with Sparco trailing that group. Like my wheel discussion in my previous project post, swag is important for me with the BRZ, and the Pole Position has undisputable clout.
Recaro sent me a black Pole Position N.G., which is the narrower FIA-certified version. The wider, road-going ABE offers a bit more room at the hip–something I considered but didn’t need for my 33” waist. I also wanted to be sure that I could use the seat in competition events.
Then, there was the issue of mounting the seat to the car, which was surprisingly fraught. A dizzying array of mounts cloud your decision, all without clear guidance on measurements, mounting styles, or even the parts included. Recaro doesn’t make car-specific mounts, which slightly complicates the issue. I’ve also used seat mounts in the past that failed miserably in terms of construction and fitment.
After some research, I found the perfect solution from a company called Pro Car Innovations, better known as PCI. They’re a small outfit based in Los Angeles that makes specialized fabricated car parts, with seat mounts being one of their bread-and-butter commodities. It’s all designed and made in-house, and they tossed me their updated BRZ/GR86 sliding seat mount that made the install ridiculously easy.
Installation was simply a matter of removing the crap stock seat and installing the Recaro in its place. There are two things to be aware of, however: the seat belt buckle and airbag sensor. With the Recaro install, I understood I’d give up the extra safety of the factory airbag, but I didn’t want a light on my dash.
A 3.3 ohm 1-watt resistor inserted into the airbag plug solves the problem, just make sure to wrap it in electrical tape to seal it from the elements. Once the seat is installed, make sure to route the wire from the buckle underneath without pinching it and plug it in.
I then solved the seat belt buckle issue by getting a small extender because it was too short and angled toward the seat too aggressively. Not my favorite solution but I’m going to try to slightly bend the buckle or find a different buckle with a compatible plug in the future to avoid the extender. After a few tries I set my recline and height with the adjustable mounts, and found that the innermost of three positions for the seat rails worked best for the BRZ with a Pole Position.
Voila. I sat at least two inches lower than stock, finally my body at a height appropriate for a sports car. With the proper recline dialed in, I was more comfortable than in the stock seat by a considerable margin. I could do four-hour road trip stints whereas the stock seats had me looking for a snack stop within an hour. The new assembly also weighed in at 36.4 pounds, almost a full 10 pounds lighter than the stock seat, with a lower center of gravity to boot.
Most importantly, I was completely hooked into the car around corners on the track, and found backroad drives to be infinitely more enjoyable now that I wasn’t subconsciously bracing myself against the steering wheel. As a bonus, it isn’t all that difficult to get in and out of the seats with the slider mount.
Driving it with the new seat, I found almost zero downsides, save for the loss of the side airbag. And it had a distinct bonus: The seat also made the car feel different and better by virtue of stabilizing my body and cutting down the material between my backside and the car’s floor pan–I could feel the minute movements of the rear suspension and steer using my fingertips and palms rather than with my entire grip. And just seeing the seat in the car produces instant street cred.
It goes to show just how important comfort and seating position are to a sports car. They can make or break a driving experience. While my BRZ was already extremely good to drive, I now actively pine to drive it because it feels like a more special environment. Yet, as ever, there is more to do, and up next is taking a look at better brakes.
Lexus gave the GX a major update for 2024. The all-new SUV wears appropriately chunky styling that exudes ruggedness and versatility with all the luxury fixin’s you’d expect to get for $65,000. But a new concept in collaboration with the luxury appliance brand Monogram proves you can add just about anything to a car.
Lexus decked out the GX with Monogram’s 30-inch electric oven for baking a pizza, fancy artisanal bread, or whatever else you can fit. It’s accessible through a split liftgate. It also has chilling compartments for your drinks in the center console and rear and all the necessary cutlery, hardware, and storage space for the gear.
External storage cubbies are built into the rear-most windows with cutouts for bottles of wine and bourbon, a bottle opener, and glasses needed for the bar. The GX also has, according to Lexus, “the first and only heated ice press in the US” that creates spherical ice cubes. It sits between the rear seats.
Two-tone camel leather with a custom pattern adorns the seats and door panel trim, with brass and titanium metal and Dekton slate stone accents. The leather also frames the rear oven, the side cubby, and the rear storage bins, which secures the pizza peel. The SUV wears custom rims and unique exterior trim.
The full list of upgrades includes:
Monogram 30” Smart Flush Hearth Oven Monogram Forge Heated Ice Press Exterior Wine and Bourbon Storage Chilling compartments Plating Station Wine and Spirits Bar
The concept makes its public debut this weekend at Aspen, Colorado’s, Food and Wine Classic.
December 2023 was a sad month for muscle car enthusiasts. That’s when Dodge built the last Camaro and the final Challenger. Ford’s pony car is still going strong, and the Blue Oval isn’t missing an opportunity to take a jab at its defunct rivals. In a new video for the Mustang GT3 ahead of Le Mans this weekend, we see the race car flanked by its fallen adversaries.
The animation, which looks like A-ha’s “Take on Me” music video but with cars, mentions how the Mustang has “forged on” while “others fell by the wayside.” The cheeky clip also references past race cars from Dearborn. The ‘Stang originally raced at Le Mans back in 1967 and once again in 1997. However, Ford mentions this is the first time the beloved sports car “races with specific intent in the World Endurance Championship circuit.”
At the start of the 92nd edition of the famous 24-hour endurance race on Circuit de la Sarthe, the Proton Competition team will field three Mustang GT3s. The #77 car will be raced by Ryan Hardwick, Ben Baker, and Zacharie Robichon. The #88 vehicle will be piloted by Giorgio Roda, Dennis Olsen, and Mikkel O. Pedersen. In the #44 racing machine, Christopher Mies, John Hartshorne, and Ben Tuck will take turns behind the wheel.
This year’s Le Mans is scheduled for June 15-16. The Mustang GT3’s road-legal counterpart will also be there as Ford will publicly display the GTD at an adjacent fan zone for the model’s European debut. The ultimate Mustang with a license plate costs $325,000 in the United States where the preorder process has stopped. The company already has enough orders to keep busy for the entirety of the 2025 and 2026 model years.
Applications for buyers in Europe are about to begin. To draw interest, Ford also intends to showcase the Mustang GTD at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (July 11-14).
The Yamaha brand means different things to different people. Some think of motorcycles while others see the company as one of the most important musical instrument and audio equipment manufacturers. From golf karts and ATVs to generators and swimming pools, Yamaha has a diverse product lineup. Its involvement in the automotive segment is known to a lesser extent.
However, it did help Toyota develop the 2000GT in the 1960s. In addition, it engineered and built Ford’s V-6 SHO and V-8 SHO. Not only that, but it also collaborated with Lexus for the V-10 of its high-revving LFA supercar. It worked on a V-8 that went into a couple of Volvo models. There were also four-bangers that powered the Celica and MR2 as well as the Lotus Elise.
2015 Yamaha Sports Ride concept
Yamaha also toyed around with the idea of making its very own car. The 1992 OX99-11 was supposed to go into production in 1994 with a V-12. However, the early 1990s recession killed what would’ve been an F1 car for the road. The Japanese company revisited the idea of a building a car in 2013 with the pint-sized Motiv. That one didn’t make the cut either. A couple of years later, the Sports Ride was presented at the Tokyo Motor Show as a potential Mazda Miata fighter.
The diminutive two-seater coupe built around Gordon Murray Design’s iStream chassis weighed a remarkably low 1,653 pounds. That made it considerably lighter than the ND-generation MX-5 that was just coming out back in 2015. The rear-wheel-drive sports car was only 153.5 inches long, 67.7 inches wide, and 46 inches tall, so roughly similar proportions compared to a Miata.
The concept’s presentation at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show wasn’t the end of the story. Subsequent patent images of a different design, presumably a closer-to-production version, emerged as part of a IP filing in 2018. It had a toned-down, Lotus-esque design and the exhaust tips were gone. That lead people to believe the Sports Ride had morphed into an EV.
2018 Yamaha sports car design trademark
2018 Yamaha sports car design trademark
The trademark application listed on the European Union Intellectual Property Office shows Gordon Murray as one of the designers. Interestingly, we found a video published by Yamaha with the updated car undergoing testing in 2017, at which point it had become the T40. It clearly still had a combustion engine, even though the patent images had hinted at an all-electric setup.
Yamaha never disclosed the engine’s identity but it did say the headlights took after those of the YZF-R1. The sports bike had a 1.0-liter four-cylinder that produced 200 horsepower and revved to 14,000 rpm. Just imagine that engine in a coupe that weighed practically nothing. It would’ve given the Miata a run for its money.
Seeing the car undergoing testing with a production-like design suggests Yamaha was serious about selling it. Unfortunately, it abandoned all of its car development plans in 2019, so the Subaru BRZ/Toyota GR86 competitor never came to fruition. Affordable sports cars compete in a rarified segment and it’s a shame the T40 was left on the cutting room floor.
The original Dodge Viper is not an off-roader. Low-slung, sporty, and stiff, its main purpose is to deliver joy via twisty tarmac and big, open, smooth-paved highways. Apparently nobody mentioned that to the builder of this Viper, which has gone through extensive modifications to make it a competent desert runner. Somehow, the looks rad as hell.
The SuperFastMatt YouTube channel has spent the past year disassembling, cutting, and reassembling this bright-red first-generation Viper from the 1990s. The project has gotten to a point where the host, Matt, felt comfortable enough to take the car to the desert for a thorough round of tests that included donuts, jumps, and rock-crawling.
In addition to the cut fenders and giant all-terrain tires, Matt designed custom uprights for the front suspension to work with aftermarket long-travel shocks and springs. Out back, the factory Viper suspension has been totally thrown out in favor of a solid axle taken from a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, complete with a locking differential. The 8.0-liter naturally aspirated V-10 and six-speed Tremec T-56 transmission have, thankfully, been left alone.
Surprisingly, Matt’s testing reveals just a few small issues with the safari Viper. The locking diff means donuts are easy, but even with an upgraded radiator, coolant temperatures climbed higher than he would’ve liked. And while slow-speed rock-crawling was a success, the lack of a low-speed transfer case made torque modulation difficult.
Matt was brave enough to take the Viper off several jumps, made possible by the balloon-like tires and big-travel dampers. Though the car handled the landings fairly well, some of the interior trim fell off, and a couple of the custom suspension pieces were beginning to separate from each other. Nothing a few extra welds can’t fix.
