RADwood Laguna Seca 2022: The Hottest '80s and '90s Rides at Monterey Car Week

Pebble Beach Car Week has come and gone. This year's festivities marked my 12th in a row, and the world's biggest automobile bash/gala/jubilee felt more lively and comprehensive than ever. I went as a guest of Cadillac, which was celebrating the brand's 120th birthday. Caddy showed off its Project GTP Hypercar, a stealth-fighter-esque concept that previews the upcoming third-generation prototype race car that will eventually contest the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours. But the belle of Cadillac's current ball remains the Celestiq, the upcoming hand-built electric supersedan. How big a deal is this thing? GM CEO Mary Barra was at the Celestiq reveal party; I saw her with my own two eyes as I stuffed my maw with caviar-covered tater tots (fat and salt plus fat and salt is delicious—who knew?). Before the beef wellington and lobster were served, I got a long, hard look at the Celestiq and asked a whole mess of questions. Not to be one who bites the hand that feeds me foie gras, but I have some concerns.Can Cadillac Really Sell $300K Cars?First, though, it's important to consider whether the Cadillac brand is strong enough to support a $300,000 car. My take: Absolutely, yes. Even more so than Maybach, I feel Cadillac could compete on equal footing with Bentley and Rolls-Royce should GM ever choose to fully embrace that route. Yes, the Celestiq is being built to go toe to toe against both British brands' upcoming EV entrants. And in more ways than either Bentley or Rolls will ever publicly admit, the Escalade is a true competitor to both the Bentayga and Cullinan. I'll always remember former head of Rolls-Royce design Giles Taylor telling me the Cullinan had to be made much larger after American Rolls-Royce owners were shown a proposal and said something to the effect of, "You call that an SUV? I have an Escalade at the ranch that's three times as big!"Obviously, the Celestiq's success is not a fait accompli. Everything can still go wrong. But for whatever reason, and aside from all the "Standard of the World" sloganeering, Americans simply have a soft spot in our hearts for great Cadillacs. But the XT4? Uh, no. It's a bad little thing our Buyer's Guide has ranked fifteenth in its segment. Fifteenth! Cadillac needs to make sure this sort of product is dead and buried by the time the Celestiq (pronounced "sell-EHS-tick," not "sell-ess-TEEK") shows up in 2024. And, hey, as a sign of good faith to those you're asking to plonk down three big bills, why not kill the XT4 now? "But they sell," I can hear someone all the way in Michigan saying back to me. As Dan Ammann, GM's former CFO, said when Cadillac briefly moved to New York City, "It's easy to look out your window in Detroit and think Cadillac's a success." A rising tide lifts all ships, while anchors do the opposite. If Cadillac wants the Celestiq to succeed, it has shed the dead weight.It Needs to Be Truly Special and BespokeI raised the following several times at the Celestiq party: "I've been to Crewe. I've met the woman who takes 13 hours to hand-stitch every single Bentley steering wheel. And if a Bentley owner hasn't also been to Crewe and met her, they've seen the video. I've also met the guy at Goodwood who hand-paints every single pinstripe on every single Rolls-Royce. Do you have them? Have you hired these people?" I was not thrilled with the answers. I heard that, no, there's no one in-house right now to do those things on the production vehicle, but members of the design team are capable. Narrator's voice: No one on the design team will be doing anything like that on production Celestiqs. I kept pressing and heard a worse answer: The plan is to let items like this be handled by suppliers. Who, Johnson Controls? That's simply not an acceptable answer.I'm not being snobbish for the sake of being snobbish. People who spent $300,000 on an automobile do so because they want to. It's an unneeded, wholly unnecessary luxury. You can't outsource the little things. You have to sweat 'em, which is why Bentley has a guy named Clive (or something similarly British) and his chisel handling the wood. To be fair to Cadillac, and seeing as how I received several different, uncoordinated answers, I don't think the brand has all the answers just yet. The car is still two years away from production. Everyone I spoke with did explain how the level of customization and individual personification will be tops in the industry. Have a guitar string that means something to you? Cadillac will incorporate it into the interior. Same goes for the guitar itself or Granny's dentures—whatever you desire. As one of those Americans with a soft spot in my heart for great Cadillacs, I want nothing more than for GM to get the Celestiq right. But you must at least rise to the level of the competition before you can beat them.What About the Car?I still can't figure out the design. The size is right—read: massive—but I neither love it nor hate it. I think that means I haven't gotten a great look at it yet. Yeah, there were the mediocre press photos, and I saw the car at night in a crowded party, but I still don't feel like I've really seen the thing. The front end is imposing but eyeless, like a blind shark. The hard side is different to the point that I'm not sure what to make of it. I see an Audi concept car mixed with SUX 6000 from Robocop. The rear glass needs a tint, and I'd love to see a Celestiq in a color other than gray. The rear end is the most successful part of the design to my eyes, but still there are angles—much like the new Nissan Z—that make me suddenly go, "Hmmm." I think the actual production version needs to be a grand slam knockout. Nothing should be able to be questioned.The interior is commodious, a true four-throne luxury villa. Although, boy, it would have been cool to have seen a themed interior, one showing off the customization Cadillac kept bragging about. Caddy, I have one of Billie Joe Armstrong's guitar strings from a Green Day show in 1992 (before they sold out!) in a box somewhere if you need it. Speaking of cool, the interior felt a bit frore, like sitting in a robot's lap. Cadillac's design team kept stressing that, "Everything that looks like metal is metal." Indeed, but how about some leather and/or wood?The most troubling thing about the interior is the massive screen that spans from one A-pillar to the other. Why's that a problem? Well, unless Cadillac has the software engineers on hand to make sure the screen is constantly filled with car-appropriate stuff, you're instead going to have a big, empty screen. That ain't world-class luxury. I asked if there's a way for the screen to go away, pointing out that in both Bentleys and Rolls-Royces there are ways to hit a switch and the screen is suddenly replaced or covered by wood. Cadillac's answer was no. But what if a customer doesn't want to see the screen? The key to cars like this is being able to answer yes, almost no matter the request.PostscriptThere was much sarcastic chatter about Cadillac's plan to fly customers to GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, when it's time to begin customizing the car. 'Thank you for your $300K, here's your ticket to Detroit.' And, 'where is Cadillac going to hotel these well-heeled customers, downtown at the Book Cadillac?' Mind you, these were dudes from Detroit making these cracks. I've always admired the Tech Center from afar—it's a mid-century architectural masterpiece—though I've never visited. I have been to Crewe and Goodwood, Maranello and Sant'Agata Bolognese, and Porsche's Exclusive Manufaktur showroom in Zuffenhausen, all places where people visit in order to customize cars at this price point. Making this sort of visit a positive one is vital. I think Cadillac's on the right track here.The night after the Cadillac Celestiq party, I attended the annual Bentley Signature Party where Bentley's CEO Adrian Hallmark took the wraps off the brand's not very good-looking Batur. (It looks like it could be the 2028 Infiniti Q60.) Once inside the fabulous house on Pebble Beach's 17th fairway that Bentley rents year after year, I noticed the whole team from Crewe was dressed like dandies. Rule Britannia and all that, but my word, did the Bentley team look well tailored. Classy, high end, like the sort of people who might know a thing or two about selling you a $300,000 car. Team Cadillac? Far too many white T-shirts from multipacks worn under dress shirts. It's a Midwest thing, I get it, but come on.But let's back up, all the way to the night before the Celestiq party. That evening, I attended the Land Rover party where we were shown the Range Rover Carmel Edition. It's going to be the rarest Range Rover ever built, limited to just 17 units (one for each mile of 17-Mile Drive), has a pretty nifty interior, and stickers for $345,000. Yes, I spit my champagne out when the price was revealed. However, Joe Eberhardt, the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, did mention that the only people being invited to purchase a Carmel Edition were standing right there. I heard the car sold out later that weekend. Perhaps that means $345,000 ain't what it used to be. Maybe Cadillac knows exactly what it's doing. Check back here in 2024.

ram 1500-trx Full OverviewTime slowed to a standstill by the point our long-term 2021 Ram 1500 TRX was about 50 yards into what I can only describe as a small lake. The initial forward momentum I'd enjoyed at the beginning of the mud bog dwindled into a crawl. The front end of the TRX slowly drifting towards the deep, mucky waters in the middle of the flooded field. Surrounded by the desolate flatlands west of Moab, Utah, and only on my third day of our 43-day epic electric trip across the Trans-America Trail, now was not the time nor place to get stuck. Or worse."No, no, please no, not that way!" I screamed into the empty cabin. In this frozen moment, my mind started to whirl with worst case scenarios. "If you're sinking in water, you're supposed to roll down the windows so you can swim out right?" "I'd better close my mouth if I need to swim out—who knows what kind of brain-eating amoeba lives in this cesspool?" "How are they going to get the truck out? A bulldozer? A crane?" "Should I bring my camera? My luggage? Whose fault is this? How did I eff this up?"As time froze, my mind went to how I got myself into this predicament.I've been a photographer with MotorTrend since 2008, and in my mind the Ram 1500 TRX represents the high water mark for gasoline powered truck. Powerful, capable, great to drive on-and off-road, and just an all-around badass of a vehicle. All of that being said, during the early stages of planning our Trans-America Trail Rivian R1T adventure, I was the most outspoken critic when it came to the idea of using our long-term TRX as our photography and video support vehicle.The Trans-America Trail was originally explored by Sam Correro on a motorcycle, and having done my fair share of off-roading, I can tell you that most trails are just not that wide. The TRX might be one of the best trucks ever made, but with a width of 88 inches, it's also one of the widest. I honestly thought that it just wouldn't fit on most trails— that'd we'd litter the trail with TRX mirrors, fender flares, and paint flecks as we made our way off-road from North Carolina to Oregon.At the time that we were planning the trip, the TRX was also new to the market. Sure, it might be based on a standard Ram 1500, but if we ended up breaking something on the trail, would a random dealership in rural America have the parts to get us back on the road? Would the technicians be trained to work on it? For me, questions like this sowed the seeds of doubt about bringing the TRX along.On top of that, there's the simple fact that photographers like myself prefer to use SUVs as our support vehicles. When photographers and videographers do action shots, it requires us to ride and shoot out of the back of a vehicle, and we like the open hatch of an SUV because it provides more shelter from the elements than the bed of a truck. Trucks also tend to have stiffer rear-suspensions than SUVs, which makes shooting out of the bed very uncomfortable.As the weeks rolled by and the plan congealed, it became more apparent that a truck was needed to support the two Rivian R1Ts. Other than hauling the photographer, videographer, and our accompanying gear, we would also need to bring luggage, and camping and off-road recovery gear. There is just nothing quite as useful as a pickup truck, and so the decision was made to bring our long-term TRX.It turns out, that was the right decision. My initial concerns about the TRX not fitting on some trails was proven correct with a couple of tight squeezes, but it ended up being a non-issue. It may have been the widest vehicle to ever tackle the perilous Black Bear Pass in Colorado, but it made it just the same. While early legs applied a layer of paint protection in the form of a hardened "candy shell" of mud that kept small branches at bay, before the third leg of the trip started, we applied a roll-on paint protector product to help minimize scratches. As you'll read in a future update, our Ram TRX didn't come through unscathed, but considering the terrain we encountered, and the abuse it weathered, the TRX took it like a champ.It also turns out that the same compliant suspension that makes the TRX such a monster off-road, provides a cushy ride for the photographer and videographer riding in the bed. Did it rain? Of course it rained. It also snowed, hailed, and the truck basically endured two months in a dust storm, courtesy of our position at the rear of the convoy, but we would've suffered those indignities no matter what vehicle we were in.Speaking of, that's how I found myself piloting the TRX towards our two R1Ts on the other side of the flood plain.Back in the truck, the seconds seemed to last minutes, my mind filled with images of disaster. In that moment of hopelessness, as the truck was sucked towards the mucky deep, the front wheels of the Ram grabbed a submerged but solid patch of ground. As the front-end bit, the TRX started to right itself. Reanimated by a spark of hope and adrenaline, I rolled into the throttle and the engine exploded to life with a bellicose roar. As the tires found traction, a rooster tail of mud shot skyward, and I started to make some headway. I wasn't out of the woods—err, water—yet, but as I slowly clawed forward, time restored itself to a normal speed.I floored the gas pedal, and I gripped tight on the steering wheel as the TRX's 702 horsepower uncorked. I won't say that I resorted to chanting, "I think I can, I think I can" like Thomas the Tank Engine, but every fiber of my soul was willing the TRX to dry land and the trail on the other side. As the water gave way to slick mud and grass, I started to breathe easier. I was wrong to doubt the TRX. In fact, I have never been happier to be so wrong. The TRX was the right vehicle to bring, and I will always be thankful that I didn't have to go for a swim.Looks good! More details?More on Our Yearlong 2021 Ram 1500 TRXAn Unusual Start For Our Ram 1500 TRXWhat's Faster: SRT Charger or the TRX That Towed It to the Track?If a Car Journalist Cuts Down a Tree in the Forest … ?Ram 1500 TRX vs Rivian R1T: The Impromptu Drag Race

There is a legitimate debate to be had over whether Autopilot, Tesla's lane-centering and adaptive cruise control driver assists isn't as safe or capable as it claims. But as with many things Tesla, things can easily get muddy, and not just because the pioneering automotive automaker evaporated its PR team years ago. Take, for example, The Dawn Project founded by Dan O'Dowd, who also owns Green Hills Software, which technically competes with Tesla's software. O'Dowd himself has kicked off a congressional bid vowing to rid the world of the "scourge" that is Autopilot, and recently released a video showing a Tesla running Autopilot running over a child mannequin to "prove" the system's failings.Of course this gambit went viral, not least because it inspired Tesla's cult-like owners to use their own children—or try and borrow other children, and we're not joking—to disprove The Dawn Project's claims. Now, Tesla is declaring the original video is defamatory and demanding that the clip be removed, since it "misrepresents" the safety and capabilities of Autopilot and FSD (the step-above, still-not-yet-in-production Full Self Driving feature Tesla is real-world testing using its customers). As regular followers of Tesla's ups and downs are surely aware, there is mounting evidence that the Autopilot software isn't as perfect as Tesla and CEO Elon Musk claim it is. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is currently investigating the feature after several instances of Teslas crashing into stationary vehicles or objects roadside, namely emergency vehicles.The Video In QuestionOne video shows a Tesla Model 3 with FSD Beta 10.12.2 running over a child-sized mannequin in a crosswalk; the Tesla never slows down, even once it hits it. Another clip has better production value and is taken at Willow Springs International Raceway using a similar child-like mannequin, which is summarily mowed down by a Tesla in the same manner as in the other video.Initially, the response from Tesla's overzealous fans with small children of their own was to march those kids in front of their moving cars to "prove" that FSD and Autopilot work as intended. Fortunately, no children were sacrificed at the altar of Tesla's public relations, but YouTube did step in to remove many of those videos, leaving for the originals made by The Dawn Project.Now Tesla, according to a letter attained by the Washington Post, is demanding that The Dawn Project and Dan O'Dowd remove those videos because of their defamatory nature that have disparaged "Tesla's commercial interests" of Tesla's Full Self Driving technology. Dinna Eskin, senior director and deputy general counsel at Tesla, also demands in the letter that O'Dowd and The Dawn Project "immediately cease and desist further dissemination of all defamatory information, issue a formal public retraction within 24 hours and provide Tesla with the below demanded documentation."Many of the complaints or concerns aired by O'Dowd and his project are seemingly legitimate or possible to make in good faith, though it seems best to leave such investigation to the unbiased experts at NHTSA, which, again, has begun investigating other safety issues surrounding Tesla's Autopilot. While not every bad messenger needs to have a squeaky clean background, it's tough to paper over the obvious conflicts of interest between O'Dowd and software related to driver assistance features and, well, Tesla.Who is Dan O'Dowd?Dan O'Dowd is a software engineer who graduated from the California Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1976. He then went on to work on embedded development tools for early microprocessors used in Mattel's handheld electronic games of the late 1970s. O'Dowd also worked with National Semiconductor (who is now owned by Texas Instruments) to design the NS32000 32-bit microprocessor used in 1980s personal computers such as the IBM RT PC, the BBC Micro, and others. His company, Green Hills Software, was founded in 1982 and its claim to fame was being the "first and only" software company to develop an operating system (OS) that meet the NSA's certification for EAL 6+ High Robustness, meaning that it's incredibly difficult to attack this OS no matter how well funded and "hostile" your hacker is.Green Hills also states that it developed the OS for the Boeing 787, the Lockheed Martin F-35 multirole fighters, Boeing B1-B bomber, and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle manufactured by Lockheed Martin and operated by NASA (which, coincidentally, has a glass cockpit derived from the 787's). Green Hills is also the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) software supplier for the 2022 BMW iX EV crossover, which raises yet another, if slightly tangential conflict of interest here.O'Dowd also had a brief run as a Democratic primary candidate for California's Senator Seat (eventually won by Alex Padilla) and his campaign message was all about cybersecurity and Tesla's FSD and Autopilot safety. It was roughly around this time that The Dawn Project launched but it was a full-page New York Times ad back in January 2022 that got the attention of the general public. In that paid ad, The Dawn Project led with "Don't Be A Tesla Crash Test Dummy" and then laid out a case for why Autopilot and FSD were "unsafe at any speed." It and O'Dowd then began several video campaigns demonstrating the failures of Autopilot and FSD with child mannequins as was demonstrated above.Again, while Tesla may have a case against O'Dowd and O'Dowd might be merely asking fair safety related questions, the situation here is, frankly, a bit of a mess. To answer the obvious question here, which is whether or not a Tesla will indiscriminately flatten children should it meet them in a roadway while its Autopilot or FSD features are active, a lot more investigation needs to take place. We'll need more scientific endeavors than possibly biased social media clips of mannequins (or real children) being aimed at by moving Teslas. So, while it might seem like Tesla has a brewing problem here, so far, there isn't much to go on. That could change should anything come from the separate investigation being conducted by NHTSA and any corrective actions it recommends. But for now, can we think of the poor mannequins? Oh, and while Tesla has no PR team to reach out to, we assume (based on its cease and desist letter to O'Dowd) the automaker would prefer you not try and replicate The Dawn Project's, uh, project.