In the world of more traditional, full-size pickups, GMC is making clear that’s it’s swinging for the fences when it comes to both buyer options and technical capability. The 2022 Sierra line of trucks’ biggest news is the offering of trailering-capable Super Cruise, which is the name General Motors applies to its autonomous-driving programming. Two new trim levels for 2022 are the aptly named Sierrra Denali Ultimate, which is the GMC on the right in the photo; along with the also-new Sierra AT4X, which is the other depicted rig, which is factory-accessorized for off-road action.

You want luxury? The cab interior of the Sierra Denali Ultimate has so much leather inside that it even wraps the dashboard, beyond the microsuede headliner. The standard front seats have power massaging and 16-way adjustment. A 12-speaker Bose audio system is also standard. So is a power glass sunroof. A 6.2-liter, 420-horsepower V-8 mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission is the base powertrain. To the same driveline, the Sierra AT4X adds unique springs, Multimatic DSSV spool-valve dampers and a two-speed transfer case. Both GMC pickups will also share Google built-in and a new, larger 13.4-inch diagonal touchscreen.

With a proper shout-out to the great Jackie Robinson, who played his first professional baseball right here in Daytona Beach on Orange Avenue, the number 42 now represents a measure of accomplishment in the automotive world, too. That’s because the newly introduced 2022 Ford Maverick Hybrid – the first pickup offered for sale in North America with a standard all-hybrid powertrain – has been awarded an EPA-certified city fuel economy rating of 42 MPG. With a combined-driving rating of 37 MPG, the Maverick thus has a potential fuel range of more than 500 miles on a single tankful, something that was inconceivable for any pickup until very recently. As you can see, the Maverick may be compact but it’s still definitely a truck, with a cargo bed and a for-real crew cab.

Shown in its available Lariat trim level, the non-hybrid Maverick has just begun reaching customers, with a 2.0-liter EcoBoost turbocharged engine for power. The Maverick Hybrid comes next, fitted with Ford’s generation hybrid powertrain, built around an entirely new 2.5-liter Atkinson-cycle engine mated to a continuously variable automatic transmission, with its lithium-ion battery case mounted in a briefcase-size housing under the rear seat to avoid intrusion into the bed. Ford is already boasting that the Maverick Hybrid will pull better EPA numbers than the baseline 1.5-liter CVT version of the Honda Civic. Ford is so confident about the Maverick Hybrid’s prospects in the marketplace that it expects the entire 2022 production allotment to be reserved by next month.

There’s no vehicle in the Ford Motor Company photo that accompanies this news, which is too bad, because this is all about a vital, and portable, health service that yours truly could seriously utilize right about now. It’s long been a regrettable reality that people living in some urban areas often lack easy access to important areas of health care, especially dentistry. For a long time, if a community dentist wasn’t in your neighborhood, you were probably condemned to poor hygiene and likely tooth loss unless you joined the armed forces or something. That’s still true in too many locations today but some people, some of them working for Ford, are doing something about it now.

Hygiene on Wheels Inc. and My Community Dental Centers are the co-recipients of new Ford Transit vans converted into mobile dental clinics under the Motor City Kares Initiative, a collaboration between Ford, Michigan-based Delta Dental and Kare Mobile, with support from the Lightship Foundation. The minority-led dental providers will use the Ford vans under a $500,000 agreement to provide high-quality dental care to historically Black areas of southwest Detroit, including the Corktown and Mexicantown neighborhoods. The two-year pact will require the providers to spend at least half their time treating patients in southwest Detroit. The Transit vans will be outfitted by Motor City Kares to incorporate digital x-rays, intraoral cameras and teledentistry capabilities, among other services. This is all good, because poor oral health is substantively linked to broader medical issues, including cardiovascular disease.

It’s official: The powerplant selection for Toyota’s full-size line of Tundra pickups just grew by two, and both power teams are being produced at Toyota’s U.S. engine facility in Huntsville, Alabama, the result of a recent $288 million investment in the facility. The new Tundra engines are both V-6 configurations with turbocharging: One of them is an EV hybrid, and the other generates power through gasoline combustion only. Both engines represent the V-6 selections for the 2022 Tundra, both being built on the physically longest engine-assembly production line in North America, with the capacity to turn out a new, ready-to-fire V-6 every 58 seconds, which works out to 18,000 per month, with total engine capacity at Toyota Alabama now elevated to 900,000 annual units.

Toyota Alabama is now the sole provider of engines for the 2022 Tundra, which will be introduced later this year. The standard i-FORCE 3.5L twin-turbo produces up to 389 horsepower and 479 lbs.-ft. of torque. The i-FORCE MAX powertrain boasts 437 horsepower and 583 lbs.-ft. of torque, making it the most powerful engine in the Toyota lineup. The upgrades at Huntsville, long better known for its role in the U.S. space program, represent a total recent investment in the plant in excess of $1.2 billion, keeping a Toyota workforce of more than 1,800 Alabamians consistently busy.

If you spent any time watching British TV dramas, you know that Land Rover models depicted therein tend to be a) decidedly old and used-up, and b) largely confined to rural settings, a la Midsomer Murders or more pointedly, Death in Paradise. It’s probably not the reason Land Rover is taking its latest marketing step, but it does, perhaps, help to explain the reasoning behind a new limited variant that’s going to be part of the Land Rover Discovery’s 2023 model year, the new Metropolitan Edition.

The Metropolitan Edition, which elliptically sounds like it could be on patrol in London, will be the top of the Discovery lineup, evolved from the R-Dynamic HSE model. The Metropoliltan look is themed in the form of Hakuba Silver lower bumper inserts, 22-inch Diamond Turned alloy wheels with Gloss Grey detailing, and Black Land Rover brake calipers. Standard accoutrements will include among their number a heads-up data display, heated steering wheel, powered and heated third row seating, a front cooler compartment and four-zone climate control. Advanced Tow Assist technology brings the rig’s rated capacity to 8,200 pounds. Discovery pricing will get out of the gate at $75,300 for 2023 models.

Traveling to Los Angeles, or thereabouts? Everyone into cars likely already knows about the Petersen Automotive Museum or the Nethercutt Collection, but there’s another delightful clutch of classic cars in the neighborhood that’s well worth knowing about. The Mullin Automotive Museum is located a short distance up the coast from Los Angeles in Oxnard, Ventura County, occupying the building that once housed the Otis Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife, founded by the former Los Angeles Times publisher. Two of the charms of its collections, which include several horse-drawn conveyances and a Panhard et Levassor that dates to 1902, has been on a roll lately, scoring notable triumphs in two closely watched automotive salons.

The Mullin collection’s 1937 Delage D8-120 cabriolet received the People’s Choice Award at this month’s Montecito Motor Classic near Santa Barbara, which attracted 217 invited automobiles. That distinction came just weeks after another stunning French-built rarity from Mullin, the collection’s 1951 Delahaye Model 235 cabriolet received the Chairman’s Award at the Audrain Newport Concours & Motor Week held in Rhode Island. The Delage from 1937 is a star in its own right, having appeared in the 1951 Hollywood musical An American in Paris, which starred Gene Kelly.

Here’s tangible proof that in this business, you get to report good news every so often, too. More than 30 years ago, now, ESPN revolutionized the televised coverage of American auto racing by presenting live USAC open-wheel programs, often from what today is Lucas Oil Raceway outside Indianapolis, the broadcasts known as Thursday Night Thunder. Among other things, the cablecasts helped turn a very young Jeff Gordon into a household name long before he headed south to NASCAR-land. They firmly stamped open-cockpit American racing into the consciousness of the audience like few promotional ideas had previously. Most of the races were called by the team of Gary Lee and Larry Rice, becoming known as the broadcast side of USAC’s Gary and Larry Show, named for the historic Sprint car rivalry of Gary Bettenhausen and Larry Dickson during the 1970s. Besides being a good TV personality, Larry Rice was an acclaimed race driver, winning USAC Silver Crown championships in 1977 and 1981, preceding them with a 1973 title in the USAC Midget series during a run that also included victory in the Hut Hundred at Terre Haute, along with two starts in the Indianapolis 500.

Regrettably, Larry Rice passed away in 2009 but the family’s legacy in USAC racing is still brightly lit, here in the form of Larry’s son, Robbie Rice, who just became the entrant champion of the Silver Crown series for 2022 as the boss of Rice Motorsports, this Rich Forman show depicts Robbie – the guy in the black hat and sunglasses – with his family and championship chauffeur Logan Seavey of California, who made the younger Rice one half of the only father-son duo of entrant champions in USAC Silver Crown history. A key assist came from crew member Ronnie Gardner, who owns five USAC Western States Midget championships as a driver. Most definitely, this is a feel-good tale of the first rank.

Kokomo, Indiana, is the seat of Howard County, located about an hour north of Indianapolis along U.S. 31 about halfway to South Bend. It’s been a landmark in the automotive world going back more than a century to when Elwood Haynes built his first internal-combustion carriage there in 1894, the first year that the first pneumatic tire produced in the United States was tested nearby. Haynes’ carriage eventually became the pioneering Haynes-Apperson automobile. Delco, as the General Motors electronic subsidiary was then known, had a major factory in Kokomo. More recently, Kokomo is home to a terrific eponymous speedway that sells a really good grilled pork chop sandwich while also serving up non-wing 410 Sprint cars. The city has long been a Chrysler stronghold. Today, its parent company, Stellantis, operates three major powertrain plants in Kokomo that employ more than 7,000 workers.

That pentastar presence – sorry, couldn’t resist – got a significant boost last week when Stellantis announced a $229 investment in all three of its existing Kokomo plants, where a fourth-generation version of its eight-speed automatic transmission will be produced for Dodge- and Ram-badged Stellantis vehicles with mild or plug-in hybrid powertrains. The electrified eight-speed will be directly adaptable to existing Stellantis internal-combustion engines as part of the firm’s goal to have low-emissions vehicles account for 40 percent of its U.S. sales by 2030. The guy on the left of the Stellantis photo is Eric J. Holcomb, the governor of Indiana, who joined with Stellantis powertrain chief Brad Clark is autographing another Kokomo automotive benchmark, the 5 millionth eight-speed automatic, which the Kokomo Transmission Plant assembled last week.

Driving a Ford Expedition, one of whose claimed attributes when it first arrived was its greater overall length than the Chevrolet Suburban, is all about making your footprint plain to the world. Coming up with an activity-modified version of the Expedition was an obvious natural, given the ample room for accessories that its sheer size makes feasible. That’s why the newly unveiled Expedition Timberline Off-Grid concept vehicle, which Ford rolled out last week at the Overland Expo East trade show in Arrington, Virginia, is entirely intelligent. It features a whole raft of back-country lifestyle accessories from all the right providers as part of the concept package. But it’s still only one vehicle, and to Ford, at least, that looked a little inadequate.

Looking at the Expedition’s accessorization by aftermarket biggies such as Rigid, FOX Performance, DeeZee and Thule, Ford opted to take the next step by adding a trailer, specifically a Turtleback Expedition Series custom unit, the largest such tag-along in Turtleback’s catalog. It matches the Expedition’s Method wheel and General Grabber tire package, while adding a propane two-burner stove, a sink, two drop-down tables and a 42-gallon water tank with heater, with an external shower hookup and optional 100-watt solar panel. It’s still not the Hampton Inn but it definitely beats sleeping on the bare ground, and a lot of this should eventually land in Ford showrooms in some form.

Next time somebody carps to you about how electric vehicles are a gigantic government conspiracy to steal your freedom to spew hydrocarbons, or that climate change is a made-up lie to enslave the masses, or something equally stupid, here’s a factoid you can toss back at the accuser. Volkswagen’s all-electric ID.3 is just completing its first full year in the marketplace, having been placed on sale here earlier this year, a bit later after it went on sale in the EU. Since then, ID.4s have been delivered for fleet use in the United Kingdom, and the first deliveries to retail customers have begun in China. So people are buying these cars.

Volkswagen has just disclosed its first market research into ID.4 sales in conjunction with the EV’s appearance at the Chengdu Motor Show in China. Globally, more than 144,000 orders have been placed for the ID.4 – fully half of them from new customers who have never owned a Volkswagen in the past. The research shows buyers are attracted for three reasons: climate-friendly, innovative, strong dealer network. In August, the ID.4 was the top-selling EV in markets including Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria and Switzerland. The ID.4-dedicated assembly line at the Volkswagen plant in Zwickau, Germany, is now running three shifts to keep up with demand.