Tow No! The Ford F-150 Lightning Struggled in Our Towing Test

Speculation can be simple, a few folks gathered at a bar and wondering about the future. Creating a physical manifestation of that future and bringing it to life is anything but. Our process began with Garrett DeBry, an ArtCenter College of Design grad, concept artist for BMW and Toyota, and the man who developed our first Apple Car concept in 2016.DeBry is a proper futurist, spending hours poring over Syd Mead designs and listening to the Interstellar and Blade Runner 2049 soundtracks while working on sketches. From our side, we looked further into the future this time around, which afforded DeBry the freedom to design a vehicle that would fit into an Apple Car ecosystem, rather than imagining a comparatively simple autonomous Uber competitor.His inspirations range from the wraparound corner windows of Apple's flagship Chicago store to Amazon warehouse robots to the natural materials and organic shapes of the iconic midcentury modern Charles Eames lounge chair. On this project, DeBry worked to minimize automotive design to its core elements. This thought process is how we ended up with the ultra-slick suspended teardrop you see here, but that was only the start.Once DeBry submitted final sketches, we called on teams from around the world to lift his design off the page. Our second take on the Apple Car was painstakingly modeled in CAD so we could provide the files to a local 3-D print shop. After multiple days printing the 16-piece scale model you see here and bringing DeBry's design into the material world, it received countless coats of paint and finishing touches.Once we reached that point, Mumbai, India-based automotive photographer Kunaal Kelkar came to town to employ his own wizardry. Kelkar's work first came to our attention in 2020 when he published a shockingly realistic photo set that was in reality a scale Lamborghini Huracán posed on a wet treadmill. For the Apple Car, he spent four days building a future city almost entirely out of Apple products found around our offices. The results speak for themselves.

Greg Cope of Holiday, Texas, has always been a big fan of classic American muscle, and he loves trying to find forgotten gems hidden around the state. Yeah, you would think all the really cool (code for: popular) cars have already been found and scooped up, but the truth is that there are still quite a few classics hidden in barns, buried in garages, or just languishing in fields. These "barn finds" are always cool and we love seeing the cars rescued so they can be put back on the road.Cope already had a 1968 Camaro he had bought off of the original owner back in 1992, but when he heard about this hidden-away 1967 Camaro he didn't hesitate to go check it out. The 1967 Camaro had been parked outside from 1974 to 2004, when it was acquired by the second owner in a trade for a diesel Mercedes then stuffed into a barn.At first, the '67 appeared to be a big-block car, as it came with a properly date-coded 375 hp 396ci engine said to have been removed from the car, as well as a four-speed trans that was still installed. But Cope knows the drill, so he ran the VIN tag and found the Camaro came from the factory with a straight-six and a three-on-the-tree. It was still a good find, and the price was right, so he rescued the Camaro from barn jail and hauled it home to keep his 1968 Camaro company. As it turns out, the '68 and the '67 were both sold new from the same Texas Chevy dealership.Cope's original plan was to clean up the '67 and flip it for a quick profit, but his 13-year-old daughter Kendall said she would love it as her first car—nice to see he's raising her right. Given that the Camaro isn't anything rare, the plan is to keep it stock-looking but give it an LS-swap and overdrive trans, along with a Vintage Air kit to tame the Texas heat.Photos By Greg CopeWatch! See a 1969 Camaro Built From Start to FinishLove Camaros and want to see more? Watch as the HOT ROD team builds a complete supercharged and LS-swapped 1969 Camaro in just one week—and finish it off with huge burnouts! For more on the build, here's the full story.