Tested: 2021 Ford Bronco Black Diamond With a Manual!

It goes without saying, though it's often mentioned, that it takes enormous courage to full throttle your way up Pikes Peak with its 156 turns surrounded by unforgiving borders. Even with a laundry list of safety equipment, capable tires, and almost cartoonish aero, pushing a high-powered vehicle to its limits while maintaining control is a big ask, but it's the sort of challenge that PZ Tuning's William Au-Yeung seems to relish in.We've been here before, unfortunately. In 2019, after having earned multiple wins and track records in the U.S., Australia, Japan, and perhaps his most prized win - the overall course record at Global Time Attack, besting RWD and AWD competition, William's 9th gen. Civic coupe was unstoppable. That is, until it threw a rod while traveling over 170mph at Road America. His tires would make contact with the rush of oil from the newfound window in the block and the car then made contact with the wall multiple times. Fortunately, William walked away, the car however, was done.On their way home from that fiery wreck, William's wife was already scouring the web for a new chassis to build and just a few years later, version 2.0 was completed, and a comeback established. The new build was performing well at Pikes Peak last year and getting comfortable behind the wheel, William and his team were on pace to capture the FWD record, but weather conditions demanded an early stop to the entire competition and that goal was cut short. Returning to Pikes Peak for the 100th running, William was fully prepared to pick up right where things left off the year prior. Conditions weren't ideal with low visibility and a wet surface to contend with, but competition continued and the PZ Tuning Civic was on a tear during the event, focused on grabbing that FWD record that seemed almost inevitable based on its pace.Blazing an impressive effort throughout sections 1-3, this was it - William was on his way to earn that record even with freakishly thick fog offering very little visibility. He was pushing the turbo K-series and gobbling up turns but in section 4, he went off course, sending the car into the air and flipping end-over-end. It's not the worst-case scenario, given the massive drops that surround the road, but it's right up there. Once again, William was uninjured and able to unbuckle himself and climb out of the car to survey the damage. Take a look at the video footage below, provided by our friends at Acuity Instruments.Pushing the car to its limits in heavy fog and on a slippery surface in search of a record might not make sense to some, but it's what makes William such a fierce competitor. "I was giving it my all racing up the mountain and it decided to humble me," William says. "Honestly, I don't think I could do it any other way. If I went 'half fast' in racing, then I shouldn't be on that starting line." He also noted that yes, his wife has already located a few potential 9th gen. Civic coupes, a chassis that he says is truly the fastest in his opinion, and yes, he will return with version 3.Based on his experience with the first chassis as compared to the second, I asked if there would be any major changes in store. "No, this car was almost perfect, it was dialed in. The biggest shame out of all of this is we could've just kept racing it forever just as it was. Not to say there won't be improvements in the new build, but definitely not a whole other level in it. I mean, the speeds we had this car at are simply unbelievable. To qualify between a V8 Hayabusa Wolf and an LMP3 would be unthinkable in a normal world."In terms of a timeline for PZ Tuning's return, William says, "There's no timeline honestly. We're one of the smallest race teams out there and our normal business is just a small auto shop comprised of my wife, one employee, and myself…that also comprises the bulk of our race team! I do almost all of my own fab work from the cage to the carbon fiber, and all of my mechanical work like the engine, gearbox, electrical, harness, etc."Photos Courtesy of Acuity Instruments and Larry ChenOne thing is for certain, the small team at PZ Tuning knows how to put a competitive car together and they don't skimp on safety details. Two serious crashes both resulted in its pilot walking away virtually unharmed. Will says, "There are parts of this chassis that were designed specifically for Pikes Peak and there was more weight to be saved if it was only for Time Attack. I'm a true believer that you can never build it safe enough, whether Pikes Peak or circuit. You always want to have the right scenario for all safety to work as intended."

Koenigsegg is celebrating 20 years of making the wildest (and most Scandinavian) supercars in the world with a hell of a birthday present to itself: the CC850, essentially a remaster of its first car, albeit with a wildly clever manual/automatic transmission. That first car would be the CC8S, which founder Christian von Koenigsegg spent nearly a decade creating, starting with a very rough prototype and progressing, finally, to the company's first production model. The road from there to here has been fast and wild—it's hard to believe it's been two decades, in fact, a testament to how fresh and how bold the company's cars were when new. Read on for a guided tour through the marque's 20-year history, a quick way to understand how Koenigsegg became the inventive outfit it is today.

The mighty rose and fell in the auto industry in 2021. A critical shortage of microchips helped determine winners and losers in U.S. sales for the year more than any other factor. Aberration or not, the surprises are worth noting when companies deemed too-big-to-fail fall off their long-held perches and underdogs ascend to new heights.Business publications have splashed plenty of ink in the annual presentation of final U.S. auto sales as another year came to a close. We won't go all corporate and financial here at MotorTrend but there were some unexpected plot twists that deserve to be pointed out—regardless of any asterisks due to chip shortages.Toyota Topples GM For the First TimeThe biggie: after decades of U.S. sale supremacy, Toyota beat General Motors in 2021. GM sold 2.2 million vehicles, but Toyota had about 114,000 more for a total of 2.3 million.Toyota executives were quick to say the lead is not sustainable. GM will be back on top as chip supplies normalize. The semiconductor shortage hurt all automakers, but some were hit harder than others. GM and Ford were among the more heavily pummeled. Toyota was the poster child for how to—almost—survive the chip crisis.Toyota is no stranger to pinchpoints from key parts shortages. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, Toyota put an early warning system in place to monitor its supply chain. The result is that the inventor of the concept of lean manufacturing and just-in-time delivery became a hoarder. Once warned, the Japanese automaker stockpiled chips and was able to keep building and selling vehicles full steam while the competition was playing whack-a-mole in determining which vehicles took priority in receiving chip rations and which plants faced temporary downtime on any given week.As the shortage stretched out and was exacerbated by a fire at the Renesas Electronics chipmaking plant in Japan, and then COVID-19 outbreaks that forced closure of facilities in southeast Asia that test and package chips, Toyota was finally forced to idle some plants. But in the end, Toyota saw 10 percent sales growth in the U.S. in 2021 while GM saw a 13 percent drop because it lost hundreds of thousands of units of production.Hyundai-Kia Leapfrogs Over HondaHyundai-Kia outsold Honda for the first time, moving up to the fifth spot with almost 1.5 million vehicles sold. That was about 22,500 more than Honda. The two brands under the Hyundai Motor Company umbrella continue to be a juggernaut. This one will be interesting to watch in 2022 because the Korean brands show no signs of slowing down and have impressive vehicles hitting the market.The Hyundai group still has work to do to catch Stellantis at just shy of 1.8 million, or Ford at almost 1.9 million.Ford EVs Coming for TeslaFord, which was considered a bit of an EV laggard until fairly recently, ended 2021 in second place when it comes to U.S. sales of electric vehicles. Credit goes to the new Mustang Mach-E; Ford sold more than 27,000 of the electric crossovers.King of the EV castle continued to be Tesla which had a banner year. How banner we don't know exactly as it the automaker does not break out U.S. sales.General Motors was out of the running in 2021, not because of the chip shortage, but because the Chevrolet Bolt was all but sidelined for much of the year by a recall due to risks of fire from bad cells in its batteries and a recommendation to park outside.Ford Mustang vs. Dodge Challenger vs. Chevy CamaroThe muscle car sales wars are legendary, and we never tire of the jostling, even though their makers don't always give them the love they once received.We have a cool toppling this year. The Dodge Challenger actually stole the title in 2021. The coupe is no spring chicken, and this wasn't a chip shortage win. Credit energetic execs behind the Dodge brand who never say die. Efforts to keep the Challenger fresh led to a 3 percent increase in sales, bringing the total to 54,314 muscle cars sold and the highest full-year share ever at 21 percent of the albeit-small segment. (Dodge Charger also grew market share to a career-best 30 percent, more testament to pixie dust being sprinkled liberally over at Dodge).That pushed the Ford Mustang to second place. A 14 percent drop resulted in a final sales tally of 52,414. For the bronze: the Chevy Camaro saw sales plummet almost 27 percent, netting 21,893 sales. The once-mighty Camaro must be missing its long-time engineer: Al "Mr. Camaro" Oppenheiser, who was reassigned to the GMC Hummer EVs and is busy crabwalking and hurtling 9,000 pounds of SUV from 0-60 in 3.0 seconds. It probably doesn't help that today's Camaro doesn't look all that different from the last one, or the one before that...Big Truck WarsNo surprises here: Ford took the title for best-selling truck in the U.S. for the 45th straight year, selling more than 726,000 F-Series. Ram came second at just under 570,000. The Chevrolet Silverado could get a needed boost from the electric version coming—the Chevy came third in 2021 with almost 520,000 U.S. sales.Who said following auto sales isn't fun?