News

JCB, the British digger maker, has set a US speed record with its Hydromax streamliner, hitting 368.347 mph, roughly 593 km/h, at Bonneville. The twist is the powertrain: not a battery or a fuel cell, but an 800 hp piston engine burning hydrogen, the first hydrogen-engine car to set a US record. It is really a proof-of-concept for JCB's hydrogen combustion engines for construction machinery, and an FIA world-record attempt is next.

Porsche heads into the Formula E season finale in London on 15 and 16 August having already won the manufacturers' title, but the trophies with its name on them are still open. A Porsche-powered driver, Jake Dennis, leads the drivers' race, yet he races for customer team Andretti, while works driver Pascal Wehrlein is third and the factory team trails Jaguar. The Porsche 99X Electric also retires this weekend.

Bentley's first EV, the Torcal, debuts the Curation Engine, a system that orchestrates cabin light, sound, scent, climate and displays around how you want to feel, grounded in sensory neuroscience with four modes. Because the Torcal shares Volkswagen Group's electric platform with Porsche and Audi, Bentley can no longer sell emotion through a bespoke drivetrain, so it engineers the feeling in the cabin instead. It is clever, and quietly revealing about where luxury is heading.

Close to 30 million vehicles have been recalled across recent quarters, and one of the fastest-growing causes is software, especially the screens it runs on. The clearest example is the rearview camera, a legally required safety feature that now runs as an app and can freeze or blank out, prompting recalls of over a million cars each from Ford and from Toyota, Lexus and Subaru. It is the safety bill for a decade of touchscreen-first design.

Eccentrica has revealed the V12 Roadster, an open-top version of its acclaimed Lamborghini Diablo restomod, limited to the same 19 examples as the coupe, with a public debut on 14 August at The Quail during Monterey Car Week.

The London Metropolitan Police seized 90 vehicles worth more than £8 million in a three-day London crackdown, headlined by a £3.7 million Ferrari Monza SP2 an officer drove away himself, sunglasses on.

Gordon Murray Automotive will reveal a new limited-run supercar this Friday at The Quail, and a teaser image suggests it pays tribute to the road-going McLaren F1 rather than the track-focused F1 GTR.

The Rezvani Beast X is a Chevrolet Corvette C8 E-Ray buried under wild, concept-car bodywork with scissor doors and a roof snorkel. Rezvani claims a combined 1,560 hp and will build only five, with pricing yet to be announced. It is the purest example of Rezvani's real business: selling drama, rarity and disguise rather than genuine re-engineering.

Nissan has set a Guinness World Record by driving a Qashqai e-Power 1,980 km on a single tank, without refuelling or recharging, from Bogota to Colombia's Caribbean coast. That works out to about 2.8 litres per 100 km, though real-world economy is nearer 5. The bigger story is the irony: the company that launched the modern EV with the Leaf is now flexing a car whose whole appeal is never needing to charge.