Lowriders, those pavement-scraping works of Latino automotive art, have been an integral part of the car culture in Southern California since the days before World War II. As it marks its 30th anniversary as another regional must-see for car enthusiasts, the Petersen Automotive Museum is marking Mexican Independence Day next weekend with a parade of lowrider cars and their fans on a stretch of the Miracle Mile along Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which the museum calls home.

Besides the sensationally decorated automobiles, the museum’s car show will conclude with a presentation of folklorico dancers and family oriented carnival activities. The parade will depart the museum at 10 a.m. PDT, with show car tickets priced at $25.00.

When it comes to pleasing its buyers, Subaru of America has decidedly been drilling some dingers. The latest survey in buyer satisfaction from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index gave Subaru an industry-leading 83 points out of 100, representing an overall tie for first place in the mass-market segment with one other automaker and a further tie with two others in the luxury segment.

The ASCI rankings are based on surveyed customers’ opinions of their own vehicles on a 100-point scale. Vehicles were judged based upon Vehicle Safety, Product Quality, overall Service Experience, Perceived Value, Dependability and Driving Performance. Subaru, which sells its vehicles through 640 dealers nationally, has enjoyed top numbers in safety and quality for five and four straight years now, respectively, with two-year runs in overall product and service quality.

Porsche has tweaked its accessory lineup for the 2025 edition of its highly successful Cayenne line of SUVs, which will grow during the model year with the addition of new Cayenne GTS and Cayenne GTS Coupe offerings. The Cayenne will continue to get its power from a twin-turbocharged V-8 that thumps out all of 493 horsepower. A revised suspension with dual-chamber, air-filled shock absorbers and two-valve active suspension management will become part of the Cayenne package for 2025.

New standard items coming for the Cayenne include ambient interior lighting, soft-close doors and surround view with active parking support, all previously Porsche options. An improved filter for cabin air will also be part of the package. An optional Premium Package Plus will further add HD-Matrix Design LED headlamps. When deliveries begin this fall, Cayenne pricing will start out at $84,700.

The United States Auto Club has been sanctioning American open-wheel racing since 1956, and is best known for non-wing competition with its Silver Crown, national Sprint car and national Midget divisions. Until last night, no woman had ever either secured a number-one qualifying spot or a feature event victory in any one of USAC’s national touring divisions. That all ended last night at the historic Belleville High Banks in Kansas, where Kaylee Bryson outlasted a furious charge by C.J. Leary to capture the 50-lap Silver Crown feature.

This Rich Forman image captures the Muskogee, Oklahoma, driver’s triumph in victory lane at Belleville. The victory was another milestone for the team run by Indiana-based Sam Pierce Chevrolet. Belleville was the team’s first win since family scion Aaron Pierce tasted victory in a Silver Crown feature at NASCAR’s Darlington Raceway some 17 years ago. Definitely a night for the record books.

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.