By most objective measures, today is the automobile’s golden age. Cars are more powerful, more efficient, and more capable than ever. The editors of the first issue of MotorTrend would certainly marvel at our world of 800-horsepower performance cars,

As Los Angeles sparkled under cloudless skies that summer of 1949, Robert E. “Pete” Petersen pondered a problem. Hot Rod, the magazine the 22-year-old former Hollywood PR man had founded 18 months earlier with nothing more than a $400 loan—and a hunc

MotorTrend has seen countless models come and go in our 75 years, but one nameplate has been on the automotive scene for the entirety of our existence: the Chevrolet Suburban. Third-party coachbuilders put wagon bodies on Chevrolet truck chassis—with

“When I first discovered car magazines, in the early 1960s as a young teenager, they were the Wikipedia of everything automotive,” recalls Keith Martin, founder and publisher of Sports Car Market. “We all waited for each monthly issue, always chock-f

MotorTrend turns 75 years old this year, and I wanted to mark the occasion by sending every one of you a 24-karat championship ring, studded with diamonds and with the numerals 7 and 5 stamped on the side. My request somehow got lost in our CFO’s inb

Early in its rollout, you may have heard a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric about the Cybertruck, some of which masqueraded as independent opinion. But Tesla has tightly controlled the narrative, restricting access to the truck and the experts responsible

MotorTrend made its debut at a low ebb of public and commercial interest in electric cars. In 1949, many readers would have remembered the prominence of electrics in the 1900s to the ’20s—or might recall a neighbor reviving a quaint old electric bugg

There’s no point in doing a comparison test between a Pinto and a Civic,” MT digital director Erik Johnson said. “The Civic will kick the Pinto’s ass.” The fact he took my suggested comparison even remotely seriously demonstrates how inured my editor

JUNE/JULY/AUGUST 1974 PRICE: $0.75 By the summer of ’74, the OPEC oil embargo was over and fuel prices were stabilizing, though inflation and recession still loomed large. While car companies were thinking small, Americans were cautiously turning bac

Ferrari’s first mid-engine road car and one Enzo didn’t want to make. But Ferrari needed an answer for the Lamborghini Miura, so it built an incredibly beautiful automobile with a (180-degree) V-12 tucked behind the driver. Trouble was, Lamborghini w

The most controversial MotorTrend Car of the Year in the 75-year history of the award? Oh, that’s easy. It was the Chevy Volt, the innovative plug-in hybrid that took the Calipers in 2011. How do I know this? Well, I’m fairly certain that even in the

When MotorTrend began 75 years ago, the first self-driving car(t) concept was 464 years old. Yep, centuries before the first combustion- or electric-propelled vehicles, Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a self-propelled cart powered by gears and sprin

Before AMG built a passenger car, Mercedes took the M100 6.3-liter V-8 out of the gargantuan 600 limo and stuffed it into a 300 SEL, the forerunner to the E-Class. It’s the classic muscle car formula but with Benz’s luxury and solidity. All Q-ships t

Defining “supercar” is more complicated than you might guess. As an automotive journalist, I’d love to believe the myth that the late, legendary automotive scribe L.J.K. Setright coined the term while reviewing the 1967 Lamborghini Miura, but that’s

BASE PRICE $34,950 AS TESTED $35,246 EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 24/34/28 mpg VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, FWD, 5-pass, 4-door hatchback ENGINE 2.0L turbo direct-injected DOHC 16-valve I-4 POWER (SAE NET) 241 hp @ 5,000 rpm TORQUE (SAE NET) 273 lb-ft

From the beginning, MotorTrend started a trend of its own: the Car of the Year award. It quickly became the industry’s biggest honor and would spawn numerous variants recognizing trucks, SUVs, performance vehicles, and, for a time, imported cars. It

Three days and four nights. We couldn’t take it anymore. More than 80 hours of uninterrupted rain made us stir-crazy. Sure, for some of you, that’s no big deal, but we pay the weather tax here in California for a reason. And rain on a weekend? Insult

MotorTrend didn’t invent automotive performance testing as we know it today. We cede credit for that to Autocar (née The Autocar) in Europe and to Tom” McCahill (1907–1975) stateside, for first wielding a handheld stopwatch and clicking off the 0–60

For more than a half century now, automotive manufacturers who have claimed MotorTrend’s Car of the Year honor—and since 1979, 1999, 2016, and 2022, respectively, our Truck, SUV, Person, and Performance Vehicle of the Year awards—have been presented

As a longtime MotorTrend reader, I applaud your selection of the Chevrolet Corvette as the most iconic vehicle ever built (Spring 2024). I’ve owned a 1977 C3 model and now a 2016 C7 Stingray. Both were purchased new. I have greatly enjoyed driving bo

BASE PRICE $51,315 AS TESTED $52,140 EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 35/33/34 mpg (gas); 83/75/79 mpg-e* (gas+elec) VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, 2x front-motor, AWD, 6-pass, 4-door SUV ENGINE 1.6L turbo direct-injected DOHC 16-valve I-4 plus permanent-ma

PROS Futuristic interior and cool theatrical elements • Great handling when towing • Impressive fast-charging capability CONS Needs Extreme Off-Road package for full potential • Some interior materials don’t align with cost • Inefficient The Hummer E

Has there been a bigger democratization of performance than the Ford Mustang? A case can be made for the Japanese tuner cars of the ’90s and 2000s, but if you judge purely by from-the-factory hardware, horsepower, and engine size, the Mustang can’t b

It seems strangely clairvoyant that a year before Ford revealed its transformative 1949 cars—all-new designs from Henry Ford II's revitalized Ford Motor Co.—it introduced the first F-Series pickup. Did the Blue Oval know trucks would rule the America

The downsized Blazer, as its name illustrates, was based on Chevy’s S-10 pickup. For its 1983 debut, it offered cargo space comparable to the legendary full-size Blazer in a significantly smaller package. Like the Pathfinder, the S-10 Blazer initiall

Your choice as the most iconic car of the past 75 years? Of course it’s the Corvette; there really isn’t any other car that comes close. For 71 of the 75 years MotorTrend has been informing and entertaining the world about all things automotive, the