Nissan’s biggest-selling passenger car in North America is the compact Sentra sedan, which is offered across three levels for 2022: basic S, upward SV and maximum SR, the last of which receives a new Midnight Edition for the Sentra SR and what’s arguably more significant from this observation post, a new All-Weather Package that can be optioned into the SV trim levels. That spoons some ingredients that are especially attractive into an affordable compact, namely dual-zone automatic climate control, heated seats, remote start and a heated steering wheel, the sort of thing that used to be confined to things like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Not a bad fillip for what’s already a decently equipped sedan whose base MSRP barely clears 20 grand.

That, in turn, brings us to the Midnight Package, which enhances the Sentra SR via a blacked-out grille, rear spoiler/diffuser, black-themed alloy wheels and black badging. The opening MSRP for a 2022 Sentra SR is set at $22,100. Like every Sentra, the SR isn’t deprived in the motivation department, with all models boasting Nissan’s 2.0-liter engine with 149 horsepower, a solid number in this class. The Sentra leads its market in the length of its standard safety-feature list.

First off, the truck is an adaptation of a 1978 Ford F-100, something that sold to the tune of a couple of million units. Only this time, it’s not a beater used pickup, but instead, a concept vehicle presented at the SEMA show in Las Vegas by the high-flying minds of product planning at the Ford Motor Company. Officially, it’s called the F-100 Eliminator and it’s the way Ford is introducing something you’re likely going to be hearing a lot more about in coming years, the plug-in – literally – crate motor for electric vehicles. Yes indeed, this is a classic F-Series converted to EV operation.

The truck is a collaboration between Ford Performance, MLe Racecars and the Roadster Shop, but the bigger news is the crate powertrain, which Ford is calling the Eliminator. The package is based around all-wheel drive via two powerful electric motors shared with the 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition. Two electric traction motors drive the front and rear wheels, packing a powerful 480 horsepower and 634 lb.-ft. of torque. This is a first, certainly for Ford and to our knowledge, the first time the U.S. industry has offered a drop-in aftermarket power option for, yes, performance vehicles that indeed is all electric. We’ll say this right here: The automotive aftermarket is worth billions annually, and sooner rather than later, you’re going to see both traditional and startup component suppliers taking a direct stab at it, without the current manufacturer partnership. Believe it, this is going to be big, maybe the most transformative development in the American automotive aftermarket since overhead-valve engines first became available in big numbers, shoving the Ford flathead aside. It’s potentially that significant.

Right now, in Germany, Volkswagen has just livestreamed the introduction of its first all-electric SUV crossover, effectively introducing the European giant’s first specialty vehicle with electric power following the earlier rollout of its basis, the ID.4. Volkswagen has unveiled two new EVs, the ID.5 and its sporting stablemate, the ID.5 GTX, the latter being the first truly sporting EV in Wolfsburg’s portfolio. Both will be loaded with Volkswagen’s 3.0 edition of its ID. software, which adds voice control and improves charging performance.

Slated for assembly in Zwickau, both new vehicles are built on the EV-specific MEB platform, the ID.5 will have three power options, depending on model: The ID.5 will have a single electric motor driving the rear wheels, while the ID.5 GTX, the red one on the right, will use dual motors to provide all-wheel-drive capability. The vehicle’s drag coefficient will be as low as 0.26. All such vehicles will be fully carbon neutral upon delivery to the buyer.

The automotive world’s biggest combined toy and candy store is about to commence with the SEMA show’s imminent and jaw-droppingly massive weeklong run in Las Vegas. SEMA is heaven on Earth when it comes to the welter of concept vehicles that manufacturers commission, many built by specialty shops such as Ida Automotive in Morganville, New Jersey, just for this all-important celebration of the billion-buck automotive aftermarket. One of the prototypes that Nissan is planning to display include the Nissan Project Overland Pathfinder and Project Overland Frontier, both high-stance, lifted-suspension specialty pieces that obviously could easily make it to volume production, given the immediate availability of what goes into them, which is what SEMA’s all about.

Project Overland Frontier is essentially a 2022 Frontier midsize pickup that stands as an out-the-door study of an adventure pickup, improved by addition of a NISMO Off Road Performance Suspension Kit that incorporates a two-inch lift. A NISMO cat-back exhaust system is another part of the package, along with a NISMO heavy-duty bumper that incorporates auxiliary lighting, a roof rack and jack mount, plus fitted storage cases. A rooftop tent and onboard air compressor are also parts of the Overland mystique. It’s not a big leap in terms of either concept or execution for Nissan to sell something like this, or its Overland Pathfinder stablemate, as a one-stop package right out of its showrooms. A very nice effort typifying the endless welter of cool stuff that every edition of SEMA positively oozes. Full disclosure: As an author for PRI Magazine, I now work for one of SEMA’s operating units.

In the tight, proud community of land speed racing, Team Vesco of Rockville, Utah, is one of the sport’s grandest, most accomplished and most historic names. The act of going blindingly fast across not-so-smooth salt at Bonneville is at once arcane and uplifting, and the Vesco boys are royalty. Team patriarch Don Vesco, now enshrined in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America here in Daytona Beach, was the first guy to run faster than 300 MPH on the salt aboard a motorcycle, and later set an absolute FIA record for wheel-driven vehicles of 458 MPH in his Turbinator that still stands today, nearly 20 years after the elder Vesco died of cancer. Team Vesco has changed with times and technology, and now owns a completely different sort of Bonneville record.

The Little Giant, as the team calls it, is an all-electric car running in the Streamliner class that now owns the National E3 Electric land speed record. New York City native Eric Ritter squeezed himself inside the roll cage and fired off a two-way average of 353 MPH, erasing the previous mark by no less that 12 MPH. The powertrain, designed by reVolt Systems of Oceanside, California, mates a pack of 1,152 prismatic lithium-ion batteries with a pair of heavily modified Tesla propulsion motors. Under FIA rules, passes in each way over the measured mile at the Bonneville Salt Flats have to be completed within a 60-minute window for the record to be official. Team Vesco is shooting for 400 MPH with electric power, the technology and team history strongly suggesting that 400 is an attainable target.

The lineup of vehicles that do the rescuing at emergency scene is familiar to those who see the big rigs idling, lights ablaze, when something goes sideways: E-One, Pierce, Seagrave, Spartan. The more immediate issue is what’s causing the rescue in the first place. The nation’s force of firefighters and EMTs spends a lot of time extricating injured persons from wrecked vehicles with restraint systems, deployed airbags, and now, onboard batteries that may be engulfed in flames if the vehicle catches fire. Volkswagen of America is doing something meaningful to keep America’s bravest ready when the tones start going off, by donating vehicles that will be used for training first responders in extrication and safety skills at accident scenes.

The image shows three hydraulic rescue tools that firefighters commonly use as cutters and spreaders when trying to reach trapped or incapacitated motorists. In the rear, we can see a Volkswagen Atlas, one of the vehicles being donated for training purposes, starting last week with the Berwyn Heights Volunteer Fire Department & Rescue Squad, which protects parts of the Chicago suburbs. The first round of donated Volkswagens will have internal-combustion engines and conventional fueling systems to be augmented – presumably, when buyer demand manages to cool slightly – with EVs equipped with high-voltage battery systems for energy storage. Part of that training will teach firefighters and EMTs how to handle submersion, towing and powertrain deactivation in EV-involved accidents.

There’s a hometown sponsor, so to speak, watching over things as the National Hot Rod Association’s season winds down to the final two events, as a pair of Mopar-backed teammates scramble for NHRA points going into this weekend’s Dodge/SRT Nationals, being held at The Drag Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Just a single point separates Funny Car point leader Ron Capps from his Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan as the series rolls into Lost Wages. Capps is taking a serious look at his second world Funny Car crown after taking the point lead by winning the most recent NHRA go, the Texas FallNationals in Dallas. Hagan, the defending and three-time Funny Car champion, had a setback when a positive COVID test forced him to miss the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis over Labor Day.

There’s more to the story, because two-time Funny Car champion Cruz Pedregon, one of the nation’s most accomplished Latino athletes and another Dodge-mounted competitor, lies fourth in the season standings. Always known as a consistent driver who’s uncommonly good at the light, Pedregon has reached at least the Funny Car semifinals in five of the last seven NHRA national events, collecting a Wally along the way with a win at the Bader family’s historic strip in Norwalk, Ohio.

For 25 years, the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance in southern Connecticut has presented some of motoring’s most glorious works of innovation and preservation on a show field near the place where the Long Island Sound first touches New England. At it closed out its first quarter century of recognizing glory, the judges at Greenwich picked an intriguing, highly unusual piece of history from Germany to receive the event’s Best in Show award. That distinction went to the car in this Hagerty/Matt Tierney photo, the 1927 Mercedes-Benz Model K, a short-wheelbase speedster with Fleetwood custom coachwork, presented by Michael and Joannie Rich.

The “K” is essentially German shorthand for “short,” referring to the fact that it rode on a 130-inch wheelbase yet in true muscle car fashion, was stuffed with a large-supercharger straight-six normally installed in the larger Mercedes-Benz S models, giving this Model K a top end around 90 MPH, which was a substantial number in the late 1920s. The Model K, as built, was one of the fastest production cars of that era. The car was originally built for William Sloan of Rochester, New York, who specified Fleetwood coachwork – Fleetwood was purchased by Fisher Body in 1925, and would become an operating unit of General Motors in 1931 – after ogling the Fleetwood-bodied roadster that Isotta Fraschini of Milan built for the silent screen sheik Rudolph Valentino in 1926, which was displayed at that year’s New York Auto Salon. The Greenwich concours returned to live action following a two-year pandemic hiatus with a first for any such event, a judged class for vintage SUVs, won by the 1942 Dodge WC53 of Brian Cook.

Going way back to when guys like Dr. Dick Thompson and the very young Roger Penske first campaigned them, the suffix Z06 was all you needed to hear, and to have, when it came to Corvette performance aimed very squarely at the race course. Head for a major collectible-vehicle auction today, encounter an authenticated Z06 from the past, and once the bidding starts, you’ll understand at once how much these track-oriented Corvettes are still venerated by the faithful. It’s been two years since the mid-engine, eighth-generation Corvette screamed into existence, but right now, Chevrolet has rolled out its Z06 variant, loaded with the highest-horsepower normally aspirated engine every installed in any production automobile, anywhere, anytime.

Mounted behind the occupants is the hottest small-block Chevrolet V-8 in the engine’s history, which dates to its debut in late 1954. Displacing 5.5 liters and dubbed the LT6, it’s a hand-assembled knockoff of the racing Corvette engine, sharing its 4.4-inch bore spacings. With double overhead camshafts, a lightweight flat-plane crankshaft, honest dry-sump lubrication and an equally realistic 8,600 RPM redline, the LT6 has been factory tested to a stunning 670 horsepower, with 460-lbs.ft. of torque, linked to an eight-speed, dual-clutch transaxle with launch control and a 5.56:1 final-drive ratio. The numbers add up to some extreme performance capabilities, augmented by massive 345-series tires that widen the Z06’s stance by more than 3.5 inches over a standard C8 Corvette’s. An available Z07 performance group combining Brembo carbon brakes with Michelin Sport Cup tires boosts skidpad performance to a gum-on-the-sidewalk 1.22 g.

Trucks, of all sizes and interpretations, are making big news right now. The Hyundai Santa Cruz, part of the emerging universe of really compact pickups, has been awarded the distinction of Best Pickup Truck by the community of journalists that make up the membership of the Washington Automotive Press Association, including yours truly. The recognition followed a wring-out of more than 20 new vehicles by the WAPA force at their annual October Fall Rally in North Beach, Maryland, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Hyundai doesn’t officially refer to the newly introduced Santa Cruz as a pickup, instead calling it a Sport Adventure Vehicle. But in announcing the award, WAPA specifically noted the Santa Cruz’s sport sedan-like driving manners along with a reasonable level of hauling capacity. Hyundai will be able to accept the accolade in January at the Washington D.C. Auto Show. This is a potential boom market, and the Santa Cruz is expected to notch significant sales numbers now that deliveries to buyers are getting underway in earnest.