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First Drive: The 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS450+ Is A Beautiful Electric Porpoise

I Don’t Know What To Do With All This Tech

My husband used to be a sales associate at a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Montreal, and he’s spent the entire duration of our marriage telling me that no automaker is as luxuriously high-tech as Mercedes. I have never discounted this observation. I’ve just also never felt the need to drive an extremely tech-heavy car. I still have a hard time dealing with a tiny infotainment screen.

So I think it’s probably a little bit of an understatement to say that the EQS’s offerings are a bit overwhelming. After I laughed out loud at the exterior, I also laughed out loud at the absolutely massive Hyperscreen. I wanted to ask it if it was compensating for something. I wanted to ask why such a cute fella needs such a big screen.

Functionally, the Hyperscreen is great. A single piece of curved glass, it’s a gorgeous feat of technological innovation that works with rapid speed due to an eight-core processor and 24 gigabytes of RAM. You tap on anything, and there’s not going to be lag. You’re immediately transported to the place you chose to go in the infotainment system.

The graphics are also gorgeous, but again, it’s a little bit Much. There’s a screen for the driver, one of the passenger, and a tall screen in the center, and in those latter two, you can access everything from radio controls to vehicle settings to satellite maps to photo galleries to video games. I did poke around the Tetris game and found it took a while to load but was otherwise fun. I still can’t imagine myself using an infotainment screen instead of my phone for gaming, though.

Even worse, you still get a lot of glare, despite the fact that Mercedes tried its best to avoid that. There’s not really anything you’re going to be able to do about the reflection of the sun when it’s especially bright.

You can also navigate with conversational commands after saying, “Hey Mercedes.” As in, you can say something like, “Hey Mercedes, I want coffee,” and your car will find you the nearest coffee spots. I used to hate voice commands because it was next to impossible to actually get what you were asking for, but this modern iteration that you see on luxury cars has really changed the game. I don’t have to think up the robotic command I’d need to change the radio station. I can just say it.

The digital dashboard was also one hell of a feature. You can cycle through tons of different displays, most of which are just mind boggling. You can literally have your navigation map displayed on your dashboard — and I don’t mean you get a little box that has navigation. The whole screen turns into a map. I’m sure some folks will enjoy it, but it was massively overwhelming for me.

As was the augmented reality navigation, which feels a little bit more video game-y than anything else. Maybe I’m just too old to appreciate these things.

The Verdict

It’s difficult to offer a verdict for a car that I can’t compare to the other vehicles in its class, I can say that the 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS450+ is a delightful vehicle that transforms much of what makes Mercedes special into a flagship luxury sedan — but it does feel like the German automaker couldn’t decide what it wanted to do. It tried to combine modern austerity with Benz’s traditional elegance, and it works… but it’s probably not going to work for everyone. It didn’t work for me, but it could very well work for you. And you know what? I respect a delightfully polarizing car.

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Best Of 2021: In Epically Nerdy Interview, Elon Musk Discusses Build Quality Problems With Engineer Who Compared Model 3 To ‘A Kia In The ’90s’

Tesla’s CEO then fesses up to his company’s build-related mistakes and dives into why they’ve been happening. When asked about panel gaps, Musk says: “It took [Tesla] a while to…iron out the production process,” going on to discuss how the company struggled to get details right while production was in “vertical climb mode.” Really early production cars, and the cars that come out after production has leveled off, Musk says, are the ones likely to have the best fit and finish.

Munro, having met with a number of Tesla owners during a recent road trip, noticed variations between two vehicles built in the same short time-span. Confused as to how this could happen, he asked Musk. “We actually did improve gap and paint quality quite a bit towards the end of last year,” the California-based engineer-CEO told the Michigan-based engineer-CEO, “Even in the course of December.”

Musk also mentions that while ramping up production, his team rushed cars in a way that didn’t adequately allow paint to dry, causing issues with quality. “Production is hell,” Musk puts it frankly.

What about the rear part of the Model 3’s body, which Munro criticized for consisting of far too many pieces with far too many different fastening methods? (shown below):

Image for article titled Best Of 2021: In Epically Nerdy Interview, Elon Musk Discusses Build Quality Problems With Engineer Who Compared Model 3 To 'A Kia In The '90s'

The image above shows this problem on an early Model 3 build, though Munro’s 2021 model does show some improvement. For example, there are now 17 spot welds on one particular plate instead of 26 on the old car, and there’s one fewer bolt. Oddly, though, even newer Model 3s don’t share the Model Y’s more intuitive “mega-casting” rear wheelhouse — i.e. a single piece instead of various panels fastened together.

Musk discusses this Model 3 design weakness.

“The organizational structure errors, they manifest themselves in the product,” he begins. “We’ve got probably the best material science team in the world at Tesla. Engineers would ask what’s the best material for this purpose…and they got like 50 different answers. And they’re all true individually, but they were not true collectively,” he admits.

“When you try to join all these dissimilar alloys…you’ve got gaps that you’ve got to seal, and you’ve got to join these things, and some of them need to be joined with rivets, some of them need to be joined with spot welds, some of them need to be joined with resin or resin and spot welds,” he continues.

“Frankly, it looks like a bit of a Frankenstein situation when you look at it all together.” Musk then talks about how sealing the gaps between the different pieces in the body is a nightmare. “That might be the most painful job in the factory, is spackling on the sealant,” he describes, mentioning how even a small error can cause leaks and NVH problems.

Munro asks why newer Model 3s still make use of such a multipiece rear body design instead of a single casting like on the Model Y. “It’s hard to change the wheels on the bus when it’s going 80 mph down the highway,” Musk responds, saying the Model 3 represents such a large portion of the automaker’s volume that the company “[needs] an opportunity to redo the factory without blowing up the cashflow.”

He talks about how important going to a single-piece casting was for the Model Y: There are no gaps, there’s no sealant and there’s no risk of galvanic corrosion at the interface of dissimilar metals. That choice alone, Musks says, allowed Tesla to reduce its body shop size by 30 percent. “We got rid of 300 robots just with that rear body casting,” he tells Munro.

Musk then discusses with Munro the plans for Tesla to move to a structural battery pack that leverages the individual cells as structural elements that resist shear forces. “The cells today in every car are carried like a sack of potatoes,” Musk explains. “They actually have negative structural value,” going on to say how today, cells don’t make vehicles any more rigid, and that especially because there is isolation material needed between the cells themselves and the pack housing to help the batteries handle shock loads, batteries are just a liability from a mass standpoint. Musk wants to change that, and get dual use from those batteries.

The rest of the interview remains thoroughly nerdy. There’s discussion about cars’ natural frequencies, about how reducing polar moment of inertia by bringing mass toward the car’s center of mass yields better handling. There’s discussion about tolerance stack-up and how that leads Tesla to almost always err toward fewer pieces and Lego-like parts precision.

Munro mentions his company’s BMW i3 findings, lauding the German automaker’s excellent build quality for the carbon-fiber body. Musk replies that one of his major concerns about use of carbon fiber is that it has a vastly different coefficient of thermal expansion than aluminum or steel, and this can cause fitment issues when the vehicle is subjected to certain thermal environments.

Musk also talks about how Tesla’s casting sizes on the Model S and X were limited because heat treatment led to shape distortion once the part reached a certain size. To facilitate larger castings, Musk states, company’s material scientists had to make a custom alloy that didn’t require an additional treating step after casting.

Musk also mentions that he wants to do away with 12-volt systems on EVs — a holdover from earlier designs and a way to easily integrate already-existing components from prominent auto suppliers. A 48-volt system, Musk and Munro agree, could have lots of benefits including reduced wire size and weight. Musk mentions that the S and X are now getting lithium-ion 12-volt batteries, which add capacity and last longer than traditional lead-acid ones.

The discussion concludes with talk about the future of EVs and the speed with which they will enter the marketplace in coming years. There’s also talk about shortsellers because of course there is.

Throughout the interview, especially in the beginning, Munro compliments Tesla’s excellent seats, with Musk talking about how the key is to reduce pressure peaks on the body. The two enginerds examine the value of making seats in-house versus buying them from suppliers.

It’s all nerdy and fascinating, and in some ways, a truly magical moment between two total math and science geeks. I love it. I also love how, when Munro says he was having issues with Tesla’s Autopilot driver-assistance system because of bad road markings in Texas, Musk straight-up says: “Even if the road is painted completely wrong and a UFO lands in the middle of the road, the car still cannot crash and still needs to do the right thing…It can’t be dependent upon the road markings being correct….It’s just gotta be ‘no matter what, it’s not gonna crash.’”

The whole interview is just gold. I talked with Munro & Associate’s president Cory Steuben, and he told me about how this interview even came to be. Steuben and Munro are in the middle of a road trip right now in a Model 3 that they spontaneously decided to purchase.

The two planned a trip out west to see some EV automakers, and hung out in Fremont to see if Musk would be there. He wasn’t. Serendipitously, Steuben received an email from an individual saying he could set up an interview with Musk. Musk’s assistant, at 11 p.m. on Monday, scheduled an interview in Boca Chica, Texas for Friday, but by that time, Steuben and Munro were in Eugene, Oregon.

So Steuben and Munro had to bee-line it 2,500 miles, 40 hours in the Model 3, planning charging stations and really putting electromobility to the ultimate test in driving from Oregon all the way to Texas to see the king of EVs himself, Elon Musk.

Luckily, Steuben and Munro made their meeting, with the former saying the billionaire came off as “one of the most enjoyable, humble, stoic…people that I’ve met who’s in a position like that.”

Musk, Steuben said, spent three hours with the two engineers from Michigan, and was seen working at 10:30 p.m. on a Friday.

As if the interview weren’t epic enough on its own.

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At $16,500, Is This 1965 Citroën 2CV Beaucoup Cute?

Fairfield, New York, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

H/T to Bert Hoff for the hookup!

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The World’s Wildest Alfa Is A Hillclimbing Legend

The way this thing builds speed is startling. Obviously the car is incredibly well tuned with a flat power delivery curve, not suffering from the big boost lag of old-school hillclimbers. The quickness with which this moves through the gears is another part that makes me sit back and just stare. Those upshifts, particularly from third to sixth come about as quick as you can count. The short ratio box is by design, but it’s still impressive.

I hope this car sticks around the international hillclimb scene for at least a few years, because I’d love the opportunity to see it in action someday. Maybe Signiore Gabrielli will bring the car over to tackle Pikes Peak. That would truly be a sight to see.

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The Most Confusing Turn Signals In The Auto Industry Are Probably Here To Stay

The Mini Cooper’s Confusing Taillights Are Likely Here to Stay

When BMW brought Mini back in the early 2000s, the taillights on Frank Stephenson’s original design were triangular. They later filled out and got a bit more squarish, and have remained so for about a decade — but that looks to change starting next year. The upper and lower inner chunks of the clusters have been chipped away, making sideways trapezoids.

The entire unit has been subdivided into what I could only describe as pixels, but like pixels from an old-school LCD display. If I squint, it seems like the bars that would comprise the Union Jack are a bit lighter than the rest, and I bet those light up in similar fashion as the current Mini’s taillights.

Image for article titled The Most Confusing Turn Signals In The Auto Industry Are Probably Here To Stay

This would be a very smart move for Mini, because it’s getting so much attention over the flag lights from nerds like us. I’m willing to bet every person that directly follows a new Mini has noticed the design, and so long as they’ve ever seen 15 seconds of Austin Powers, they probably get the joke.

I have less to say about the rest of the upcoming Mini’s look. I mean, I’m still reminded of goatees or that one episode of The Powerpuff Girls when I study the front, and the headlights have these crossbars on their upper and lower portions that almost look like eyelids on a Family Guy character. I’m overflowing with cartoon character references.

There’s more to say about the interior, where Mini designers have seemingly ditched the small pill-shaped digital instrument cluster behind the steering wheel in favor of a heads-up display. The dash is entirely clad in what looks to be canvas, with a big old circular panel affixed to the center dash. It’s like the essence of a Mini interior stripped down to its most iconographic parts, and it’s kind of soulless. I don’t love it coming from the current Mini’s fun and lighthearted cabin.

Supposedly this new Mini Cooper will be available in internal combustion and battery electric forms. If the manufacturer can squeeze roughly 50 more miles out of the SE while keeping the price around where it sits today — and the driving dynamics on point — it’ll be a pretty compelling bargain EV.

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Tesla’s Latest FSD Beta Doesn’t Seem Ready For Public Use, Which Raises Big Questions

What I like about this test is that it presents a very good mix of everyday, normal driving situations in an environment with a good mix of traffic density, road complexity, lighting conditions, road markings, and more. In short, reality, the same sort of entropy-heavy reality all of us live in and where we expect our machines to work.

There’s a lot that FSD does that’s impressive when you consider that this is an inert mass of steel and rubber and silicon that’s effectively driving on its own through a crowded city. We’ve come a long way since Stanley the Toureg finished the DARPA Challenge back in 2006, and there’s so much to be impressed by.

At the same time, this FSD beta proves to be a pretty shitty driver, at least in this extensive test session.

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Anyone arguing that FSD in its latest state drives better than a human is either delusional, high from the fumes of their own raw ardor for Elon Musk or needs to find better-driving humans to hang out with.

FSD drives in a confusing, indecisive way, making all kinds of peculiar snap decisions and generally being hard to read and predict to other drivers around them. Which is a real problem.

Drivers expect a certain baseline of behaviors and reactions from the cars around them. That means there’s not much that’s more dangerous to surrounding traffic than an unpredictable driver, which this machine very much is.

And that’s when it’s driving at least somewhat legally; there are several occasions in this video where traffic laws were actually broken, including two instances of the car attempting to drive the wrong way down a street and into oncoming traffic.

Nope, not great.

In the comments, many people have criticized Kyle, the driver/supervisor, for allowing the car to make terrible driving decisions instead of intervening. The reasoning for this ranges from simple Tesla-fan-rage to the need for disengagements to help the system learn, to concern that by not correcting the mistakes, Kyle is potentially putting people in danger.

They’re also noting that the software is very clearly unfinished and in a beta state, which, is pretty clearly true as well.

These are all reasonable points. Well, the people just knee-jerk shielding Elon’s Works from any scrutiny aren’t reasonable, but the other points are, and they bring up bigger issues.

Specifically, there’s the fundamental question about whether or not it makes sense to test an unfinished self-driving system on public roads, surrounded by people, in or out of other vehicles, that did not agree to participate in any sort of beta testing of any kind.

You could argue that a student driver is a human equivalent of beta testing our brain’s driving software, though when this is done in any official capacity, there’s a professional driving instructor in the car, sometimes with an auxiliary brake pedal, and the car is often marked with a big STUDENT DRIVER warning.

Image for article titled Tesla's Latest FSD Beta Doesn't Seem Ready For Public Use, Which Raises Big Questions — Image: JDT/Tesla/YouTUbe

I’ve proposed the idea of some kind of warning lamp for cars under machine control, and I still think that’s not a bad idea, especially during the transition era we find ourselves in.

Of course, in many states, you can teach your kid to drive on your own without any special permits. That context is quite similar to FSD beta drivers since they don’t have any special training beyond a regular driver’s license (and no, Tesla’s silly Safety Score does not count as special training).

In both cases, you’re dealing with an unsure driver who may not make good decisions, and you may need to take over at a moment’s notice. On an FSD-equipped Tesla (or really any L2-equipped car), taking over should be easy, in that your hands and other limbs should be in position on the car’s controls, ready to take over.

In the case of driving with a kid, this is less easy, though still possible. I know because I was once teaching a girlfriend of the time how to drive and had to take control of a manual old Beetle from the passenger seat. You can do it, but I don’t recommend it.

Of course, when you’re teaching an uncertain human, you’re always very, very aware of the situation and nothing about it would give you a sense of false confidence that could allow your attention to waver. This is a huge problem with Level 2 semi-automated systems, though, and one I’ve discussed at length before.

As far as whether or not the FSB beta needs driver intervention to “learn” about all the dumb things it did wrong, I’m not entirely sure this is true. Tesla has mentioned the ability to learn in “shadow mode” which would eliminate the need for FSD to be active to learn driving behaviors by example.

As far as Kyle’s willingness to let FSD beta make its bad decisions, sure, there are safety risks, but it’s also valuable to see what it does to give an accurate sense of just what the system is capable of. He always stepped in before things got too bad, but I absolutely get that this in no way represents safe driving.

At the same time, showing where the system fails helps users of FSD have a better sense of the capabilities of what they’re using so they can attempt to understand how vigilant they must be.

This is all really tricky, and I’m not sure yet of the best practice solution here.

This also brings up the question of whether Tesla’s goals make sense in regard to what’s known as their Operational Design Domain (ODD), which is just a fancy way of saying “where should I use this?”

Tesla has no restrictions on their ODD, as referenced in this tweet:

This raises a really good point: should Tesla define some sort of ODD?

I get that their end goal is Level 5 full, anywhere, anytime autonomy, a goal that I think is kind of absurd. Full Level 5 is decades and decades away. If Tesla freaks are going to accuse me of literally having blood on my hands for allegedly delaying, somehow, the progress of autonomous driving, then you’d think the smartest move would be to restrict the ODD to areas where the system is known to work better (highways, etc) to allow for more automated deployment sooner.

That would make the goal more Level 4 than 5, but the result would be, hopefully, safer automated vehicle operation, and, eventually, safer driving for everyone.

Trying to make an automated vehicle work everywhere in any condition is an absolutely monumental task, and there’s still so so much work to do. Level 5 systems are probably decades away, at best. Restricted ODD systems may be able to be deployed much sooner, and maybe Tesla should be considering doing that, just like many other AV companies (Waymo, Argo, and so on) are doing.

We’re still in a very early transition period on this path to autonomy, however that turns out. Videos like these, that show real-world behavior of such systems, problems and all, are very valuable, even if we’re still not sure on the ethics of making them.

All I know is that now is the time to question everything, so don’t get bullied by anyone.

I Bought The Most Reliable American Car Ever Built. Now I’m Putting It To The Test

The simplicity of the slant six engine design, its relatively modest output, and the quality of the main rotating parts (including a forged crankshaft) as well as the effective cooling and lubrication systems, meant these engines lasted forever. Find any “most reliable engines of all time” list on the internet, and the Chrysler slant six will be on it.

This is why I bought my 1965 Plymouth Valiant. I want a winter car to replace my Lexus LX470, which is a swell car, but worth too much for me to let rust out on Michigan’s salty roads, and a bit boring and thirsty, with its four-speed slushbox and ridiculous curb weight. I want something fun to drive in the winter, and few things are as fun as a three-speed column-shift manual transmission.

Image for article titled I Bought The Most Reliable American Car Ever Built. Now I'm Putting It To The Test — Image: Syd

I spotted the car on upstate New York’s Facebook Marketplace with an asking price of $2,835. Andrew and his wife Sydney drove me over an hour to a Christian bible camp, where the man who runs the place showed me his wasp-infested Valiant, which he swore had only 51,500 original miles (this, I later learned when going through the service records, was false; the notes clearly show the vehicle eclipsing 100,000 miles).

The man was nice (to me, not the wasps; he murdered them viciously — odd behavior for someone who runs a bible camp, but also maybe not), but didn’t know much about his car. He’d only owned it for a few years, and couldn’t tell me whether first gear is synchronized (it is not). Is it a bit alarming that he didn’t know the answer to that? Yes, a bit. I’ll change the transmission fluid as soon as I can to drain out chunks of those first gear teeth.

The test drive went well; motor fired up quickly, and the transmission was quiet. I handed the seller $2,000, he signed his registration, and I was off. Well, after filling the motor with a quart of oil, the radiator with nearly a gallon of coolant, and the single brake fluid reservoir with a splash of DOT 3.

Following Andrew’s Mitsubishi Montero, I drove the Valiant 60 miles from the bible camp to my friend’s house, and fell head-over-heels in love. The three-speed column-shift transmission is sublime; it’s fun to shift, and goes into all three gears (plus reverse) smoothly. The smooth-revving slant-six is just incredible, offering plenty of torque, and never stuttering under acceleration. Sure, there’s some vibration under acceleration; neither the fuel gauge nor the coolant temperature gauge works; and there’s plenty of rust on the floorboards, doors, and quarter panels (the main unibody rails are solid); but I don’t care. This regular old 1960s Plymouth sedan — with its blue interior filled with two three-person bench seats — has my heart.

Well, for now, that is. This machine still has to get me 650 miles from upstate New York to Michigan; only then will I know whether it deserves the title of “Most reliable American car ever.”

At $1,800, Could This 1992 Nissan Sentra ‘Dune Buggy’ Be All The Car You Need?

At $1,800, Could This 92 Nissan Sentra ‘Dune Buggy’ Be A Deal?

Sacramento, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

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Teen Gets Into A Car Then Drives Straight Into A Pool

An Infiniti G37xS gets a nice deep clean at the bottom of a pool.

A teen driver in Colorado likely learned a couple of good driving lessons on Thursday after they reversed an Infiniti G37xS into the deep end of a pool. The car may be a little wet, but the driver and their passenger are reported to be safe.

Police in Lakewood, Colorado, responded to a report of a car getting a deep clean at the bottom of a pool on Thursday.

Its driver, a teenager with a learner’s permit, accidentally put the car into reverse and sent it through a fence and into the pool, reports CBS 4 Denver.

Police cited the driver with careless driving but are happy to say that the teen and their adult occupant escaped the vehicle without injury.

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Of course, the police couldn’t help themselves and dropped a one liner that I feel so bad for giggling at:

Just FYI, the best line for this is “Check out our new Infiniti Pool”. Everyone else is battling for second place.

The responses on Twitter deliver even worse groaners.

Meanwhile, West Metro Fire Rescue posted a video of the extraction process for the car.

In it, the department shows its divers chaining up the Infiniti’s rear wheels to the winch and boom of a nearby wrecker. The car was then yanked out with the help of 2x4s.

It’s easy to roast the driver for the mistake, but we’ve all done a silly thing or two while learning how to drive, sometimes resulting in a crash. Hopefully, this teen isn’t deterred from getting behind the wheel again and now knows to make sure that they’re in the correct gear. They also likely learned the useful skill of how to escape a sinking car.

The Peugeot Hypercar Will Fly Without A Wing At The 24 Hours of Le Mans

Peugeot has finally unveiled its hypercar for the 2022 season of the World Endurance Championship. We’d only seen bits and pieces of it so far, but we can now see the concept car, which Peugeot has dubbed the 9×8.

This is the hybrid hypercar that will take on the French carmaker’s rivals at Le Mans in the upcoming season, and it seems what Peugeot is most proud of about the 9X8 is related to its design. Namely, that the car has no rear wing:

No rear wings are kind of trendy right now, but it makes sense that Peugeot is leaning on design to stand apart from its rivals at this early stage. Remember that the FIA’s regulations dictate very specific rules for the hypercars.

The machines in the Le Mans hypercar class, or LMH, will be capped at 500kW, or 670 horsepower, of total power output from a hybrid drivetrain and they have to weigh at least 1,030kg, or 2,270 pounds. The specs limit what the OEMs can do with their entries into the class, so their design is mostly where the hypercars would differ and I think Peugeot has done a very good job.

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One of the coolest bits are the integrated mirrors, which highlight the attention Peugeot paid to airflow. That’s just part of the bigger picture of the car: It has no rear wing. The company actually says that it figured out how to make the car so aerodynamic it doesn’t need one:

“The new Le Mans Hypercar regulations were drawn up to level out the importance of conventional performance-boosting systems,” explains Olivier JANSONNIE, PEUGEOT Sport’s WEC Programme Technical Director. “Designing the 9X8 has been a passionate experience because we had the freedom to invent, innovate and explore off-the-wall ways to optimise the car’s performance, and more especially its aerodynamics. The regulations stipulate that only one adjustable aerodynamic device is permitted, without specifying the rear wing. Our calculation work and simulations revealed that high performance was effectively possible without one.”

The carmaker also says it’s not going to share exactly how it figured out the aerodynamics, and that it’s going to guard its secret for as long as it possibly can.

Peugeot wouldn’t even be the first to run a no-wing prototype at Le Mans in the modern era. The wonderfully strange Deltawing did without a wing at all at the back. It’s probably worth mentioning that its doomed spiritual successor, the Nissan LMP1 project, did.

The 9X8’s name comes from the carmaker’s history in endurance racing, but also places it among Peugeot’s current lineup, as it describes:

The “9” continues the series employed by the manufacturer for its recent topflight endurance racing cars, namely the PEUGEOT 905 (which raced from 1990 until 1993) and the 908 (2007 until 2011), both of which became icons of the brand.

The “X” refers to the PEUGEOT Hypercar’s all-wheel drive technology and hybrid powertrain which embodies the brand’s electrification strategy in the world of motor racing.

The “8” is the suffix used for all of PEUGEOT’s current model names, from the 208 and 2008, to the 308, 3008, 5008 and, of course, the 508 which very recently passed through the hands of the engineers and designers who crafted the Hypercar to become the first car to sport the Peugeot Sport Engineered label.

The hypercar has adopted many of Peugeot’s current design cues. The carmaker says the 9×8’s light are inspired by the claws of big cats, and I can see how, but their practicality on the track is questionable. We’ll see what stays and what goes as the concept goes through development before hitting the track in 2022.

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