This is a story of unlikely scenarios. The first concerns the Subaru BRZ, a rear-wheel-drive sports car from the company famous for making all-wheel-drive station wagons pretending to be SUVs. It’s equally unlikely that this Japanese car finds itself on southern France’s Route Napoléon, one of ?Europe’s best driving roads and the main link between swanky Cannes and the base of ?the French Alps in Grenoble. (more…)

As we spent January and February preparing for a winter that never quite did arrive, our 300C continued to consume miles at a steady pace. In the seven months since the sparkly gray Chrysler arrived on our doorstep, we’ve managed to push the odometer a few ticks beyond the 20,000-mile mark, largely via trips close to home. One staffer did test the 300C’s reputation as a capable highway cruiser with a 2600-plus-mile trek to Florida and back, the car’s longest journey to date. (more…)

While LeMons organizers make no secret of the fact that their hearts are with the cars that never belonged in the same time zone as a race track and machines that aren’t even cars at all, there’s still a contingent of hard-core racers bent on getting the most laps in the race and spraying $1.99 bottles of “champagne” on their teammates in the winners’ circle. As any driver who has competed in a LeMons race will tell you, taking the overall win is tough as hell; make even one small mistake in a typical race and you’ll lose the lead forever. I’d say that we have perhaps a dozen teams across the country that have the requisite combination of professional-grade drivers, reliable car, and crew discipline to contend in every race they enter. Here’s a selection of some teams to watch this year. Read full story ?

Volkswagen is showing a factory-apprentice-tuned GTI at the annual Wörthersee festival in Austria, an annual celebration of the GTI and all things VW. The GTI Black Dynamic is mostly SEMA-esque fare, so don’t expect to see any of its mods on a factory-built production car.

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Toyota’s Gazoo Racing is entering a pair of race-prepped GT 86s (the Toyota-badged sibling of the Scion FR-S) in the 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance race, in addition to its successful LFA race car. Read full story ?

We already knew that Chevrolet is working on a civilian vehicle using the Zeta bones of the rear-drive Caprice PPV cop car, and that it will be called the SS. It also will serve as the basis for company’s 2013 NASCAR entry. Today, Chevy made the news official and released some details on both the “limited-production” SS and the Sprint Cup race car. (We also already know that the next-gen SS sedan will move to Zeta II architecture; for more details, read our story here.) Read full story ?

Our diminutive long-term Mazda 2, the least-powerful, least-expensive car in our fleet for quite some time, has completed its 40,000-mile stay. Few tears were choked back as, after 16 months in our care, it pulled away from our office for the last time. Sure, the minimalist Mazda was fun to toss around, but it illustrated the difficulty some manufacturers have faced in coercing Americans out of large cars and crossovers and into pint-sized hatchbacks. (more…)

On Monday we presented this week’s shifter and asked you to identify the make and model of the vehicle from whence it came. The shifter apparently was quite easy to identify, and the first person to comment figured out it belongs to the 1987 Dodge Charger Shelby GLHS. As a reward, Lh415cd will receive a Save the Manuals button and sticker.

The GLHS pictured here is from our February 1987 issue. The Charger GLHS is not the finest creation to have ever worn Carroll Shelby’s name, but it was quick. The car’s 175-hp, turbocharged 2.2-liter four could propel it from 0 to 60 mph in just 6.7 seconds. On the other hand, refinement wasn’t the Charger’s strong suit. In our 1987 review, we describe the turbo engine as “so rough and noisy that everything that isn’t welded into place is shaking, rattling, or squeaking.”

See our retrospective collection of classic Shelby reviews for coverage of the man’s more-interesting and historically significant cars from our archives.

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When you hear about a “barn find” car, you imagine it being removed from the barn. In the case of the Sensory Assault Mazda RX-2, the barn was removed from the car. Read full story ?

With its EcoBoost-branded engines, Ford feels it really has a substitute for cubic inches, and it’s taking the turbocharged, direct-injected concept to extremes. If you think that the naturally aspirated 1.6-liter engine in the subcompact Fiesta is, like the car, a touch on the small side, you will be amazed—maybe horrified—to learn that its replacement has just three cylinders and a displacement of less than one liter: 999 cc, to be precise. (This new EcoBoost engine also will soon find its way into the U.S.-market 2014 Fiesta.) (more…)