"On the exterior, [the challenge] was probably this cab-forward proportion. The car has a relatively long wheelbase and the cabin is stretched out much farther than other cars in that class. As a result, you end up with a fairly short hood and you end up with a very short tru

First things first, Ryan made a right turn out of the garage, then quickly made an immediate and illegal U-turn. And then, he floored it. I wasn't at all ready, still musing at the car's interior design details, and my head snapped back into the seat—good thing it's nice and soft or whiplash would be ruining my week. At about 60 miles per hour, Ryan let off, grinning like a supervillain. As the regenerative braking slowed us down (without Ryan even touching the brake pedal), he looked around, presumably checking for c

Once upon a time, Jenkins had grown accustomed to working on sketches, then clay models, then going back to the drawing board, saying, "Often in the past, with clay modeling, you’d work something out in clay by hand, then you’d start on the B-side of the car and you’d have two themes going—A-side, B-side—and the digital model, all at once. You’d work like that for three, four weeks and review. And you’d realize the car looks worse than last ti

One cool tidbit Jenkins shared with me about the Air’s actual design process involved the use of virtual-reality headsets. VR helped Jenkins overcome what he saw as a major challenge with the Air’s overall concept

The Mazda MX-5 Miata has consistently been one of the best driving and most popular sports cars to ever hit production. It's small, light weight, perfect 50/50 weight distribution and high level of feedback make it an absolute dream to drive. For those who want a bit Read More In this article out of their Miata, the aftermarket industry follows their popularity. With anything from various suspension upgrades to turbo LS engine swaps , the sky is the limit for the little roadster. One company, however, has decided to do something different and turn the popular sports car into the perfect driver's

Ryan currently leases a Volkswagen GTI and his three years will be up come December. He's also got a two-year-old son and another due in a few weeks, plus a big, energetic dog who travels with the fam—safe to say, his priorities are in the midst of a serious reshuffling and a car the size of a GTI just won't do the trick anym

In order to retain the Miata's 50/50 weight distribution, Zero EV fit the Hper9 motor along with a prototype 1.8:1 reduction gearbox in the car's original transmission tunnel. The EV inverter, controllers, and 26kWh battery pack are all neatly tucked away up front in the engine

After driving the prototype Miata, Jonny mentions just how much the EV still feels just like a regular automatic Miata. He mentions how it is just as agile and joyful to drive as the original, saying it's just like driving an automatic NB without the terribleness of realizing you made the mistake of buying an automatic Mi

Volvo spinoff Polestar sure has its newest product making the rounds these days. Last month, Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire got a chance to drive a Polestar 2 around Malibu —where he was passed by another tester doing the very same thing in an identical car. Now, the Polestar 2 has made its way northward to Canada, where the YouTube channel Throttle House has pitted it in a compare-and-contrast against its main competitor, the established Tesla Model 3. Farah came away from his Polestar test drive incredibly impressed, thinking the car was a significant improvement over the Model 3, but he's only one data point. Now, we've got a pair of testers putting the two (relatively) affordable EVs head to h

Speaking of people who might root against an electric vehicle's design, Lucid’s majority shareholder is PIF, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia . How, I asked Jenkins, did Lucid get hitched up with a modern-day monarchy established and sustained by the monopolization of the very fossil fuels that Lucid wants to render obsol

Aside from changing the shifter out for a dial shifter and gauges for ones more EV specific, the interior remains relatively unchanged. Also unlike what you would expect with an EV swap, the trunk space of this Miata remains untouched, all 4.4 cubic feet of it. It even still has room for the factory spare t

Clearly, my descriptive adjectives were failing me as I reveled in the thrill of acceleration. I spent about ten minutes putting the Model 3 through its paces, Ryan fiddling with some settings and scoping out the interior as it might apply to his l

In West Los Angeles, Elon Musk has truly accomplished a remarkable feat. No, not launching rockets to space and catching their boosters. Instead, Musk has managed to replace the formerly ubiquitous Prius with his Tesla electric vehic

The NB Miata they used for the project started its life out weighing in at roughly 980kg (2,160lbs) and had a 115hp 1.6L DOHC inline-4. Doing away with that, the car now has a 120hp Hyper9 electric motor out of a Tesla and weighs in at 1,017kg (2,242lbs). Unlike this crazy 2jz swapped Miata , the EV Miata definitely doesn't get much of a boost in power, but also doesn't gain much in weight, meaning it still has all that old Miata ch