Two years ago, Lexus debuted an anyone-can-buy-it RC F Track Edition that cut 122 pounds from the standard RC F with upgrades like a raw carbon fiber hood, carbon fiber rear wing, Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes, and a titanium exhaust. Our First Drive of that car praised its promise, but chided Lexus for giving up halfway to the goal of making a truly special sporting machine. A year later, Lexus rolled most of the Track Edition changes into the RC F Fuji Speedway Edition, dropping the price from the $98,750 Track Edition by exactly one Ulysses S. Grant to $98,700, but limiting availability to 60 units. The Fuji Speedway Edition returns for the 2022 model year, and while Lexus hasn't divulged pricing, availability's been constricted further, to 50 units. 

The only two changes between the 2021 model and next year's version start with the exterior color. Instead of having the choice of Arctic Blast Satin White or Cloudburst Gray, the only sheetmetal hue on offer will be Electric Surge. The rich blue tone has a semi-matte finish, delivering a muted luster that won't be destroyed by an automatic car wash. The other changes is also about color, this time on the inside. The Circuit Red Alcantara and red carbon fiber trim retire to make way for a black cockpit with seats trimmed in Blue Alcantara and blue carbon fiber accents.

There are a lot of good, well-documented reasons not to buy a used Mazda RX-8. We'll briefly mention a couple of them before moving on to why those real problems might not mean Mazda's last rotary sports car is a bad used-vehicle purchase. First, due to the Wankel engine's design, all RX-8s are designed to burn a small amount of oil while running, which isn't something many owners have been trained to expect. Second, in part due to an effort to reduce emissions as much as possible, the RX-8 earned a reputation of hard starting, flooding, premature engine wear and ultimately expensive repairs. Put simply, if not maintained by a well-informed previous owner, a used RX-8 could be an unreliable headache of a moneypit.

So, why would you ever want to buy one? Let's discuss.

With the popularity of Jeep and Bronco models, plus the expansion of Subaru's off-road offerings with the Wilderness trim, it's not surprising that Honda is getting in on the action, too. The company officially announced the introduction of the TrailSport trim level, which appears to be coming first to the Honda Passport, followed by other models.

Toyota's already shared most of the goodie bag it poured on the 2022 4Runner. In June we found out about the new, on-road focused TRD Sport, which put on rugged TRD outside features like the hood scoop, front spoiler and black roof rails, and the X-REAS suspension from the Limited trim. Otherwise known as the Cross-Lined Relative Absorber System, the suspension uses adaptive dampers at the corners and a center damper to reduce pitch and yaw. The TRD Sport goes for urban cred with design tweaks like color-matched accents on the front grille, rocker panels, and body molding, as well as 20-inch wheels with gray accents.

Across the entire lineup, the 2022 4Runner picks up LED high beams, and the base trims get LED fog lights and low beams, obviating the need to step up a couple of trims for that latter tech. Rear occupancy alert joins the safety suite on all models, and blind spot monitoring with rear cross traffic alert come standard on the SR5 Premium, TRD Off-Road Premium, TRD Pro, and Limited trims. 

TOKYO — Toyota said Tuesday it expected to spend more than $13.5 billion by 2030 to develop batteries and its battery supply system, in a bid to take a lead in the key automotive technology over the next decade.

The world's largest automaker by volume, which pioneered hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with the popular Prius, is moving rapidly to deliver its first all-electric lineup next year.

Nissan and Mitsubishi have announced plans to build an electric kei car together. The yet-unnamed car would mark a major step towards electrification of Japan's popular supercompact segment.

The car will be powered by a 20 kWh battery and will be engineered to cover daily driving duties in a Japanese driving cycle. The car can also double as a mobile power source or power a home in emergency situations. Nissan says the car will measure 134 inches long, 58 inches wide, and 65 inches tall, in order to comply with laws limiting kei car size.

Just as Honda is set to pull out of Formula 1 again at the end of this season, a new collection of officially licensed clothing celebrating their 1983 return to the sport has been released.

Early last month at a sprawling factory on the highway connecting Hanoi to the port city of Haiphong, a single worker tested positive for Covid-19. The Delta variant was spreading swiftly through the Southeast Asian nation at the time, and on Aug. 4, provincial officials suspended work at the auto-parts manufacturer.

An ocean away, Toyota Motor Corp. Chief Purchasing Group Officer Kazunari Kumakura was watching intently. The plant is operated by a key Toyota supplier and is one of Vietnam's biggest assemblers of wire harnesses -- a basic but essential yoke for cables that holds the inner workings of an automobile together. As the infection at the facility disrupted operations, Toyota's inventories grew thin. Since July, the Japanese automaker had been examining its suppliers in the region, which has become a Covid hotspot, on a daily basis to assess how dire things were getting.

Even as many American car shoppers sought to stretch their gasoline budgets by purchasing the primitive-but-reliable rear-wheel-drive Datsun B210 during the middle 1970s, Nissan brought over the more sophisticated front-wheel-drive Datsun F-10. Because the Cherry-based F-10 (known as the F-11 in its homeland, just to confuse everybody) was such an awkward-looking little machine, it found few takers on this side of the Pacific. Refusing to give up, Nissan took the F-11's successor (the first-generation Pulsar) and gave it 310 badges for the North American market. Here's a snazzy 310 GX Coupe, found in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

There seems to be a holiday for just about everything and that includes World EV Day.

In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by News Editor Joel Stocksdale. It's mostly about pickup trucks starting with the 2022 Nissan Frontier and the Hyundai Santa Cruz. We even talk about the now cancelled Ford Bronco truck variant. But as a little change of pace, we end with the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance hybrid with more than 800 horsepower.

Send us your questions for the Mailbag and Spend My Money at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Mazda is offering a new service in Japan that unlocks some untapped potential from your 3 or CX-30. Called Mazda Spirit Upgrade, it makes software updates to the car's ECU, or engine control unit, the computer that governs the motor's functions, to add power and improve the car's accelerative abilities.

The upgrade isn't some nominal amount, either. The first release, called Spirit Upgrade D1.1 for Japan-market turbocharged 1.8-liter SkyActiv-D diesel engines, bumps output from 114 to 128 horsepower, a 14-horse improvement. The reflash also modifies the exhaust gas recirculator programming to reduce turbo lag.

Good morning and welcome to our daily digest of automotive news from around the globe, starting with…

Subaru just issued a recall for the 2021 Impreza (both the sedan and hatchback), and with it comes a warning not to drive the vehicle. Your Impreza may or may not be a part of the recall population, which is quite low at just 802 cars total. However, the problem is a serious one.

According to the recall documents, these Imprezas "may be fitted with a left front lower control arm with an improper weld near a connection joint between the lower control arm and the crossmember." This poor weld could cause the control arm to separate from the crossmember while driving, which is something you certainly don't want to happen.