Performance

Today being my last day at CNET, I was clearing out my desk and came across a stack of window stickers for all the cars I have reviewed and driven in the line of duty as an editor on the Car Tech channel. Rather than indulge in dewy-eyed reminiscence on my own, I thought I'd share a few of the highlights with you, the readers who have endured--and hopefully occasionally enjoyed--my automotive observations over the past two-and-a-bit years.

Starting with my review of the 2006 Buick Lucerne, I have been in and out of the driver's seats of … Read more

The stuff of calendars and posters, exotics are cars you will rarely see in real life. Lucky indeed is the individual who gets to see a Bentley Continental GT Speed or a Spyker C8 Aileron drive by on the street. We've gone through our auto show photographs to select rare new production cars.

Click here for photos of exotic cars from recent auto shows.

Today and tomorrow, some lucky people are driving a set of supercars, including a Ferrari F430, a Lamborghini Gallardo, and a Porsche Turbo 997, around the Auto Club Speedway track in Fontana, Calif. To get this lucky, all you have to do is pony up $4,990 to Supercar Life, a company with a fleet of very fast cars that it uses to host track events. The company provides professional instruction to the drivers, taking the morning of the event day to show them how to drive on the track. During the afternoon, the clients take the wheel.

For people … Read more

When we tested the 2008 BMW M3 Coupe recently, we were so impressed with it that we gave it an Editors' Choice award. But now we've driven the M3 equipped with BMW's new double-clutch gearbox, and found that perfection could be improved upon. We got our first sense of the brilliance of this gearbox on a public road, where we shifted up through the gears until the indicator in the instrument cluster showed a seven. Yes, seven speeds. One critique we had of the six-speed manual M3 Coupe we reviewed was that its fuel economy was low, sticking … Read more

On the second day of the 2008 Western Automotive Journalists Media Days, we drove a variety of different cars at Laguna Seca. This famous track employs a number of technical turns, not to mention a quarter-mile straightaway, for testing handling and acceleration.

Click here for photos of production cars tested on the track at Laguna Seca.

You'd never hear us complaining about our job here at CNET Car Tech, but there are times during the course of our reviews that we find ourselves wishing we could drive our test cars a bit more, well, illegally (all in the interests of thorough automotive journalism, you understand). Yesterday, our prayers were answered at an event hosted by the Western Automotive Journalist association at Laguna Seca raceway in California. One of the first things we sought to find out was whether Audi's Quattro system worked as well on the track as it had on the roads. We … Read more

In the world of robotic cars, human relations can be tricky.

The organizer of an upcoming "Robotic Grand Prix" in Long Beach, Calif., has retracted the title of its event after representatives from the Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University robotic racing teams took issue with how the event was being marketed. On Monday, the Toyota Grand Prix issued a press release that said autonomous cars from Stanford, CMU, and Lehigh University--finishers of last year's DARPA Urban Grand Challenge--would race against each other again later this month.

Jim Michaelian, CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long … Read more

A "green," petroleum-free brand of motor oil is due to appear on store shelves soon.

Green Earth Technologies said it's shipping its line of green motor oils to national retailers starting within the next month. Waste fats from cattle instead of fossil fuels are the key ingredients.

"We turn that into liquid form and use nanotechnology to have it perform in lubricant format," explained company CEO Jeff Marshall.

Because the slaughter of each cow leaves behind 200 pounds of waste tallow, the company is making use of a renewable resource, he said.

"We're … Read more

SOMS Technologies says that its engine filter will extend the life of engine oil by 30,000 miles, enabling drivers to use 75 percent less oil and save hundreds of dollars in maintenance per car.

"You could say this would be terrible news for Jiffy Lube, but we don't look at it that way," said company CEO Miles Flamenbaum, who presented at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday. "It would allow them to charge a little bit more, take more of a margin from oil change costs, and do it less often."

The … Read more