Subaru of America is holding the line on pricing for the 2025 editions of two of its most consistently popular models. The starting price of the 2025 Legacy sedan begins at $24,895, same as the 2024 model’s. As to its all-conquering Outback wagon, 2025 pricing gets underway at $28,895, again representing no change from 2024 levels.

New for the 2025 model year, both Legacy and Outback add popular equipment to their Limited trim levels for buyers’ convenience. Those trim levels will add a power moonroof, DriverFocus Distraction Mitigation System, SUBARU STARLINK® 11.6-in multimedia navigation system, and a 360-degree heated steering wheel. For 2025, the Outback Limited starts at $37,855, and Legacy Limited starts at $34,005. Subaru’s award-winning EyeSight Driver Assist Technology is standard on all Legacy and Outback models. This includes Advanced Adaptive Cruise Control with Lane Centering, LED Steering Responsive Headlights with High Beam Assist, LED fog lights, a Rear-Vision Camera with Adaptive Guidelines, and (on Outback) X-MODE® with Hill Descent Control. On models equipped with Blind-Spot Detection with Lane Change Assist and Rear Cross-Traffic Alert, EyeSight includes Automatic Emergency Steering, which can help drivers avoid obstacles within their lane of travel.

As sales of pure battery electric vehicles slowly find buyers, some of which are still committed to gasoline power or hybrid drivetrains, Ford has launched a new advertising campaign telling customers that at Ford dealers, powertrain choices abound on various models. The campaign is being called Freedom of Choice, declaring that Ford sells vehicles that are capable of meeting any customer’s needs in terms of both utility and cleanliness.

The campaign’s current lead TV spot is a newly released commercial showing the F-150 pickup at work, while making clear that Ford offers the pickup not only with gasoline power, but also with a hybrid EcoBoost powertrain or the all-electric F-150 Lightning. Ford has been adjusting its production schedules as buyer choices currently seem to focus on hybrids more than pure battery EVs. The campaign will eventually focus on nine Ford models that offer similar powertrain options.

SRO Motorsports Group is one of the United States’ rapidly growing sanctioning bodies for marque- and tech-specific road-course competition, largely aimed at drivers aspiring to higher things. SRO enjoys extensive manufacturer support, including BMW-owned MINI USA, which is returning to the Touring Car (TC) and Touring Car A (TCA) categories with a brace of cars from its John Cooper Works Team subsidiary.

Returning to the team this are Cristian Perocarpi driving the number 37 MINI JCW PRO in the TC class, along with P.J. Groenke driving the number 62 MINI JCW in the TCA class. Perocarpi and Groenke will be joined by newcomer Scott Thomson, driving the number 66 MINI JCW PRO in the TC class. SRO rules ensure that all of these are strongly production-based cars. The renewed MINI effort also commemorates the marque’s 60th anniversary of its first win in the Monte Carlo Rally back in 1964.

Every so often, you run into a book that’s perhaps not as well known as it ought to be. That’s underlined when the book in question is a racing history that involves Florida, our third-largest state, and a place where cars have been in competition since the dawn of the 20th century. A lot of that history took place on short ovals, dirt and paved, and involved drivers in that most primitive and exciting of classes, Sprint cars. The Sunshine State has a very rich open-wheel history, and finally, here’s a book that tells the story with remarkable skill.

Racers in the Sun is an intensely detailed, delightfully written tale in a sprawling 569 pages, authored and published by Florida racing historian Richard Golardi, which covers an impressive amount of breadth in terms of the time period and variety of driving stars that are outlined chapter by chapter. The best-known may be Ralph Liguori, who made it all the way to Indy cars, but the lineup of Florida stars also includes Robert Smith and the Hall of Fame drivers Pete Folse and Frank Riddle, the latter of whom was a repeat winner of the prestigious and historic Little 500 for Sprint cars in Indiana. The self-published work retails for $32.00 and can be found at Coastal 181, which sells a whole lot of impressive books on short track competition. Know what’s most enticing about this book? As the cover proclaims, it’s only Volume One.

The gradual move, it’s turning out, to electrified vehicles isn’t just occurring in the United States. An example exists in Canada, where Hyundai has just disclosed pricing – in Canadian dollars – for the IONIQ 5 N, the first all-electric offering under Hyundai’s N performance brand. The IONIQ 5 N’s dual electric motors produce a combined total of 641 horsepower, allowing the vehicle to reach Canada’s national speed limit of 100 km/hr – it translates to 62.5 MPH – in 3.4 seconds.

In Canada, the IONIQ 5 N will be offered as a single, fully equipped model. Base pricing starts at $78,199, which, again, is in Canadian currency.

Nissan’s U.S. operations may be based in Nashville, but the company gets big respect for picking our birthplace of Brooklyn as the venue for unveiling its newly redone Kicks crossover, which took place this week at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn as the 2024 NCAA men’s basketball tournament was beginning. So far, the Kicks looks like a far better bet than most people’s NCAA tournament pools, which were effectively blown out of the water by the first weekend’s upsets.

With one of the sneaker-style “unboxings” set for today’s games, the Kicks will then head to the New York International Auto Show for a more traditional rollout. Besides new 2.0-liter power, the all-new Kicks boasts best-in-class ground clearance and standard cargo space, plus the addition of Intelligent All-Wheel Drive. The Kicks lineup, including the SR model you see here, will be in Nissan showrooms by the end of the summer.

Most people familiar with the marque’s history know about the Bentley Boys and how their enormous, overpowered British cars conquered Le Mans more than 90 years ago. Fewer are likely aware that there was also a contingent of “Bentley Girls” – Mary Petre Bruce, Dorothy Paget and Diana Barnato Walker – who also owned a chunk of Crewe’s performance heritage based on their design work and performance in speed trials generations ago.

Ir’s appropriate, therefore, that Bentley has chosen to mark International Women’s Day by introducing three new versions of its Bentayga wagon, each executed to mark each one of the Bentley Girls’ accomplishments. Each luxury car is uniquely finished to recall, respectively, the Mary Bruce’s 4½ Litre Bentley race car, Dorothy Paget’s supercharged Blower and Diana Barnato Walker’s Spitfire aircraft of World War II. Colors, trim and interior appointments help to set each Bentayga apart.

Ray Evernham went from racing stock cars in New Jersey to winning multiple championships in NASCAR as a crew chief, to spearheading Dodge’s reentry to the sport, to becoming a vivid personality in the world of antique and historic cars, especially race cars. The constant for all this has been Evernham’s preternatural skills at organization, oversight and personal motivation, drawing inspiration from both the NBA coaching legend Pat Riley and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Any racer, or aspiring racer, would benefit greatly from a dose of Evernham management skills. Finally, here’s where you find them all in one place.

The title of this book, Trophies and Scars, is apt, because Evernham makes clear in its 338 hardbound pages, (very liberally illustrated) that motorsport at any level will test you every day, and can leave you deflated if you don’t measure up. Having the fortitude to get back on your feet is essential. Evernham has done this so effectively over the course of his career that he earned enshrinement in the NASCAR Hall of Fame as a crew chief. This wonderfully honest book, published by Octane Press and priced at $34,95, should be required reading for anyone who’s seriously contemplating getting into motorsport.

If you’ve had any significant exposure to American motorsport over the past 60 years or so, you know the name of Ed Pink, whose nickname, The Old Master, is appropriate given Pink’s mastery – and that’s exactly the right word – of engines ranging from Top Fuel Chrysler Hemis to IndyCar Cosworth V8s to IMSA GTPs to the shrieking little USAC Midgets that run today’s Chili Bowl Nationals. Pink’s journey is told wonderfully, and enticingly, in The Old Master, his autobiography penned by our good friend Bones Bourcier, maybe the best pure motorsport journalist in America today,

In Pink’s voice, the 276-page hardcover narrative is a rollicking ride through decades of hard work, innovation, going fast and meeting some unbelievable characters. There’s way too many anecdotes in the book to list them here – they’re sprinkled on literally every page – but the subject’s encounter with the great Mickey Thompson at a casino in Las Vegas immediately sticks out. This is a great read, and as a bonus, it’s printed on heavy paper in a large format, making it easy to read the text if you’re too lazy to put your glasses on. Arguably the best motorsport book we’ve read in the past year, The Old Master is a production of Coastal 181, which retails it for a very reasonable $39.95.

When you win the Daytona 500, as somebody will a week from today, you get your name emblazoned on a plaque on the base of the Harley J. Earl Trophy, named in honor of the longtime General Motors styling wizard. The huge permanent trophy is topped with a replica of the General Motors Firebird I, a famed design study of a gas turbine-powered personal car that Earl designed in 1953, back when Daytona races were still held on the beach, in time for the great GM Motorama shows of the 1950s.

This week, the original Earl design study made a brief return to Daytona Beach, where it’s on respectful display at the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, which is located on the grounds of Daytona International Speedway. This priceless GM artifact will be at the MSHFA through this coming Friday, Feburary 16th. Our good friend Dave Seyse, who’s on staff at the hall of fame, provided us with this image.