Aaron Robinson
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Articles by Aaron Robinson
Clothes and Cars: Why Dress the Part?
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. It makes me smile to recall my first overseas press launch as a reporter for the trade tabloid Automotive News. On that first night in Stuttgart, a gaggle of jet-lagged journalists assembled for a briefing on the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the sleek and slippery W220.
2027 Corvette Grand Sport and Grand Sport X Review: Best for Last
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. The eighth generation of the Corvette is entering its eighth model year, and like any baseball game that is winding down, it’s time to send in the closer.
2027 Corvette Grand Sport and Grand Sport X review: Best for last
The eighth generation of the Corvette is entering its eighth model year, and like any baseball game that is winding down, it's time to send in the closer. Welcome the Grand Sport, a Corvette model with a historical reputation as a crack relief pitcher, arriving mid-to-late-game with a list of substantial styling, power, and performance upgrades to keep the pot boiling through the last few innings. Now that we've driven it, we can say that the pot is properly frothing.
The McL 6GT does something McLaren never does: look backwards
Until now, McLaren has been an exclusively forward-looking company that brings the latest Formula One hypertech to the road with cars known for sporting lots of computers and wind-shaping airfoils behind their atomic-insect faces. But McLaren has real heritage, and the new McL 6GT concept is its first drivable attempt to directly mine its past for gold. For one thing, it will have a feature not seen on a McLaren road car in three decades: a manual transmission.
Singer/Louis Vuitton tie-up produces the craziest modified Porsches yet
Gaudy expressions of wealth are nothing new at Monterey's Car Week, starting with the teardrop-shaped Figoni-bodied French bolides that annually glide onto the concours lawn to vie for the top prize. No doubt some tongues were clicked disapprovingly back in the 1930s when those cars were built, and any owner would have had to be a committed show-off to drive one around, especially back then in the depths of the Great Depression.
The McL 6GT Does Something McLaren Never Does: Look Backwards
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. Until now, McLaren has been an exclusively forward-looking company that brings the latest Formula One hypertech to the road with cars known for sporting lots of computers and wind-shaping airfoils behind their atomic-insect faces. But McLaren has real heritage, and the new McL 6GT concept is its first drivable attempt to directly mine its past for gold.
Singer/Louis Vuitton Tie-up Produces the Craziest Modified Porsches Yet
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. Gaudy expressions of wealth are nothing new at Monterey’s Car Week, starting with the teardrop-shaped Figoni-bodied French bolides that annually glide onto the concours lawn to vie for the top prize.
Sun, Snakes, Cattle, and Ford Trucks Have Been Part of King Ranch for Decades
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. It took Robert Silguero a few minutes to find a video on his phone. It shows Silguero, a fifth-generation Kineño as the local cowboys are called, astride his horse out on the range. Suddenly, with a lightning flick of the wrist, he whips his lasso at a movement in the brush and the just-visible tail of a rattler goes limp. “A 7-footer,” he says proudly.
Why Packard Is Still Relevant
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. On a hill just behind The Lodge at Pebble Beach on California’s Monterey Peninsula, the world’s most exclusive traffic jam starts before sunrise every third Sunday in August. A queue of some 200 meticulously fettled machines sit bumper to bumper, waiting to roll onto a golf fairway and bask in the boundary where commerce and technology intersect with art.
The SP40 Replica Edsel Roadster Parties like It’s 1935
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. Driving the Argentine-built SP40 Restomod Speedster, you realize it’s the perfect automotive encapsulation of the old Henry Ford quote, “History is bunk.” Well, actually, Mr. Ford’s full quote, which is as follows: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition.
What Makes a Car an American Car?
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. Bar bets from Pawtucket to Pismo Beach can be won with this simple question: What is the most American of vehicles in model-year 2026, as determined by the national origin of the parts and, by extension, of the taxpaying, grocery buying, family raising, mortgage-shouldering labor?
Fun Takes Some Work
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. A ‘30 Duesenberg Phaeton, practically a rail car’s worth of waxed red lacquer and taut canvas and mirror-finish nickel, waited patiently in the morning mist as my Hagerty colleague Logan Calkins swung around to line up his golf cart. Next to him, I was acting as first officer (née: ballast) in the right seat.
Meet Mike Pierce, the Weber Whisperer
Pierce rules over his kingdom of Weber carburetors. More than five decades after fabricating his first Weber conversion manifold, he’s still making the fuel-delivery machines from Italy sing. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. The phone rings often at Mike Pierce’s carburetor hospital, and sometimes he answers it and sometimes he doesn’t. “Everyone who calls either wants to tell me they’re a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist.
In Which the Author Hooks a 114-Year-Old Great White
Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox. The Southern California chapter board of the Horseless Carriage Club of America had just completed its monthly meeting and devolved into kibbitzing when club veteran Pete Eastwood said, “Hey, is anyone in the market for a seven-seater?” My hand shot up. For months, I had been combing the ads for a pre-1917 touring car, and I was locked and loaded.
Unboxing Day: The auto industry is rethinking the way it assembles EVs
Fords Announcement last August that its sinking $2 billion into its Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant to produce a new compact electric pickup through a revolutionary unboxed assembly process undoubtedly had some scratching their heads. Unboxed? Like, building cars outdoors? TikTok influencers flamboyantly unboxing parcels from Amazon is, to be sure, a current social media fad, but does that have anything to do with making trucks?
Memories That Stick
The clinical name for it is a “flashbulb memory,” or a memory of a moment that has an unusual amount of detail, often tied to some intense or traumatic event. Most people who were alive can recall what they were doing on 9/11, for example, and a lot of readers of this publication also remember with equal clarity learning to drive stick. Not that I’m comparing the two, but the brain doesn’t necessarily differentiate by scale what memories it decides to record vividly.
Norton Is Back. Again.
It’s long been a rule that British brands never die; they just go dormant between revivals. It’s famously scrappy Norton Motorcycles’ turn to be revived, joining Triumph, Ariel, Royal Enfield, MG, and Mini among other famed British marques that have been brought back from the dead via massive infusions of cash and enthusiasm, often from overseas. Later this year, the new Norton Motorcycle Company plans to begin U.S. deliveries of a futuristic sport bike called the Manx R.
New Engines Are Failing. Is Piston Power Reaching a Breaking Point? - Hagerty Media
The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long; we all know that. However, some of the newest engine designs are proving to be more like firecrackers than candles, judging from the number of engine failures and sweeping recalls issued in the past few years by major automakers. As reported last week by my colleague Richard Truett in the trade rag Automotive News, Toyota is replacing more than 100,000 twin-turbo V-6 units due to machining contamination.
A Writer, His Dog, and a Chinook Follow Steinbeck's Trail
I shall take my dog and that is another reassurance that I am neither dangerous nor insane. John Steinbeck Those of us horsewhipped by our high school English teachers into reading John Steinbeck may recall novels such as The Red Pony and Cannery Row as poetic and poignant tales of country life in a bygone rural California.
View Photos of the 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera vs. 2009 BMW M3
2009 BMW M3 and 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera David Dewhurst|Car and Driver Advertisement - Continue Reading Below David Dewhurst|Car and Driver David Dewhurst|Car and Driver Advertisement - Continue Reading Below David Dewhurst|Car and Driver 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera instrument panel and steering wheel David Dewhurst|Car and Driver The direct-injection Carrera engine now displaces 3614cc, up 18cc.
Return of the Dirty Cruiser: Toyota's Land Cruiser Reboots Amidst the Red Rocks of Utah
Moab, Utah and Toyota Land Cruisers were both prominent features of my youth. I went to Moab for the first time when I was 14. To a Michigan boy who hadn’t been much out of the mitt, what Edward Abbey called “the red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky” was from another world, and it was the beginning of a life-long love affair. A couple years later I got my first car, a 1978 Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser that was already mortally rusted despite being only ten years old.
2026 Nissan Leaf First Drive: Third Draft, First Crossover
Though it’s suffered its share of financial problems and is yet again embarking on a desperately needed turnaround, Nissan is one of the founding fathers of the electric vehicle market, having launched its pioneering Leaf electric hatchback way back in 2011. At the time, Tesla was still dusting the cobwebs out of its newly acquired Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and mass-market EVs were the stuff of Green Party dreams.
I've Done Fast Cars, and I'm Over Them
Somewhere between Furnace Creek and the Devil’s Cornfield, I saw my future.
Driving the Bugatti Veyron of 1915, the Stutz Bearcat
Besides old cars, Craig Ekberg’s abiding passion is airplanes, so it’s no surprise that he has a lengthy startup checklist for his 1915 Stutz Bearcat. At least, all in his head. Step one, disconnect the battery tender from the battery that lives in a box on the running board. Step two, turn the fuel tap to allow the gasoline to gravity-feed to the carburetor. Oh wait, actually, step two is to check the fuel tank for fuel (Ekberg really should write these down).
Battle of the Winter Beaters
From the May 2003 issue of Car and Driver. Okay, so it has been five years since our last "First Annual Olympics of Rust." As you can see, our devotion to regularity basically ends with your subscription renewal notice. Meanwhile, your many letters of complaint have been scrupulously filed in the bottom of a parakeet's cage. Before subsiding deeper into this story, note that this new and hardly improved battle of the beaters has a different format, if you can call it that.
Whither the American Automobile
Our current national obsession with what it means to be an American has inevitably spun off a side conversation about what it means to be an American car. After all, we are the nation that married the automobile till death do us part. We have paved an estimated 61,000 square miles of roads and parking lots, a share of our continental landmass greater than the state of Georgia. Our households annually spend around $700 billion on cars and parts and another $400 billion on fuel and oil.
Whither the American Automobile | Opinion
This story was originally published June 7, 2025 at 2:45 AM.
Dinah Shore Told Us to See America in a Chevy, So We Did
The arrival of mass television in the 1950s spawned the golden age of the advertising jingle. Detroit was all-in, from “It’s Delightful, it’s De-lovely, it’s De Soto,” to “What a Thrill to Take the Wheel of a Rocket Oldsmobile.” But it was two jingle composers named Leo Corday and Leon Carr, working for Chevrolet’s longtime ad agency Campbell Ewald, who wrote what became the magnum opus of all car ditties.
Painful Lessons in Fire Safety and Proper Attire
People who study airplane crashes talk a lot about the failure chain. It’s never one thing that causes an accident but a sequence of small missteps, or a failure chain, that eventually combines to produce a really bad outcome. Such was the case when I drained the fuel tank of the 1933 Wolseley Hornet Special that I recently bought with my friend Rick Shaw.
Painful Lessons in Fire Safety and Proper Attire
18 hours ago Battery-operated vehicles were a mainstay more than a hundred years ago, but only a few still exist — one happens to be in Jay Leno’s garage. More than a century before Tesla rolled out its first cars, the Baker Electric Coupe and the Riker Electric Roadster rumbled down American streets. …
2025 Cadillac Celestiq: A Reach in Every Way Imaginable
People often complain that those gorgeous and slippery concept cars that automakers create to tout their brand vision and design prowess get watered down to weak sauce by the time they reach production. Trust us, there is a good reason for this. As well as a good reason for why designers never get promoted to the CEO job at car companies.
The Color of Monotony
As I sat waiting to turn left at a busy intersection, I noticed the five late-model cars across from me only because all of them were white. I looked around; every car waiting or whizzing through the intersection for a full minute was white, black, gray, or silver. Suddenly, a red Toyota Highlander appeared, and it stood out like Jessica Rabbit in a nunnery. The 1973 Land Rover in which I was trundling to the local cars and coffee is painted a yellowish tan known as Limestone.
Factory vs. Franchise: Scout EV Direct Sales to Skirt VW Dealer Network
This story first appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. No disrespect to the proud International Scout and its admirers, who must be thrilled that the long-dead nameplate is being excavated from the grave after 45 years, but Volkswagen picking it to be the name of its new electric brand is a head-scratcher.
2025 BMW M5: So Fast You Won’t Have Time to Have Fun
If you drop almost 150 grand to buy a hot car, you’re entitled to ask what you’re getting for your money. What exactly is the deliverable? Is it speed alone, or can you also demand some emotion, some drama, some spine-tingling va-va-voom? The new 717-hp BMW M5 has us thinking, because while it is surely all ate up with speed, and it can do things no 5350-pound car ought to in a universe governed by Newtonian physics, it is something of an ersatz experience.
Our Two Cents: Why Automakers Kill Their Performance Brands
Performance brands create products we love to own, mostly because they are designed to outperform their competition. Who doesn’t want a piece of that winning formula? Some folks do not, and they pull at the purse strings of the companies behind these products. Chevrolet had the Super Sport (SS) for a long time, but applying it to vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu MAXX might not have been the smartest long-term move.
Up from the Ashes: A 1940s One-off Streamliner Is Reborn. Again.
More than 5000 car companies have existed in the United States alone, from Abbott-Detroit to the Zip Cyclecar Company. Yet some folks just can’t seem to find the perfect vehicle to buy, so instead, they build their own. This is the story of one of those people and one of those cars, a very special machine that sprang from the mind not of a shade-tree tinkerer or a reckless dreamer but from a talented engineer.
Lyn's Rescued Porsche 912 Survives the 1000 Miglia Warm Up USA
This story first appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. Almost every bit of a car has a workaround in case you can’t fix it or find a replacement, even the engine (there’s always electrification). But you can’t drive anywhere without tires, and you can’t 3D-print a set at home.
Tested: 2010 Toyota 4Runner V-6 Plays It Safe
Remember the previous Toyota 4Runner? Yeah, neither do we. Toyota's compact, pickup-based, do-it-all four-by-four helped ignite the SUV craze when it launched in 1984. But in the years that followed, the 4Runner became increasingly marginalized as Toyota flooded its dealers with trucks and crossovers intended to plug every conceivable niche.
1983 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer 4x4 Is a Scale Model with Big Aspirations
From the October 1982 issue of Car and Driver. The Blazer, everyman's pickup truck in station-wagon clothing, has been with us basically unchanged since 1969. The old workhorse is back again for 1983, but the lineup has been trimmed to four-wheel-drive editions in anticipation of the biggest shake-up ever seen in these ranks: an all-new scale model of the big Blazer, built on the 6.0-inch-shorter, 100.5-inch wheelbase of the new-for-1982 S-10 pickup.
Our Two Cents: Memorable Vehicle Names
There are so many things that go into what makes a given car memorable. Sure, performance and looks are front and center, but there’s more to it than that. Sometimes I wonder if all these alphanumeric car names currently pervading the market will be lost to time. How many people will remember a 2009 Lincoln MKS at a car show 30 years from now, relative to the name recognition of the Lincoln Town Car?
80 Years After D-Day, We Drove a Dodge Through Normandy
This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. We at Hagerty Media would like to take this moment on Veterans Day to recognize those who have served our country.
80 Years After D-Day, We Drove a Dodge Through Normandy
This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. We at Hagerty Media would like to take this moment on Veterans Day to recognize those who have served our country.
Our Two Cents: Favorite Physical Controls In A Car
It’s once again time to ask the staff of Hagerty Media a question, one that will provide Our Two Cents for you, dear reader. In the last year or two we’ve seen more articles covering the rampant spread of touchscreens in automobiles in a worrisome tone. Change is coming for our dashboards, and pressure by will almost certainly affect new vehicle designs for the EU. And thanks to all the component sharing in our globalized society, this will likely trickle down to vehicles in the U.S. by 2026.
9 of Our Favorite Toy Vehicles
Determining your favorite toy vehicle is no small feat, as there were so many and many were so affordable. But that’s what we tried to do with six of the staffers here at Hagerty Media, and their answers are just as diverse as the genre itself. These toys came in all shapes and sizes, from Micro Machines made of detailed plastic to die casts set in a massive scale.
Volkswagen ID.Buzz First Drive: This Jumbo, Retro EV Could Make Vans Cool Again
Hey, Jude, look what’s rocketing out of the purple haze on an interstellar trip! It’s the coolest magic carpet ride since Haight met Ashbury, baby! This bus is so…bussy that it’ll haul all your little green apples to Woodstock, and everyone’s welcome to take a free ride.
You Talk, We Listen: Explaining Your Role in Hagerty’s Story Selection
This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. I owe some of you thanks for doing my job and choosing this issue’s cover. We pitched this benefit to HDC members during the first-ever Hagerty Drivers Club Days in June. They chose from three options.
The Day Horsepower Died
This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more. It was 51 years ago on a busy Saturday in September that the pumps went dry at Barker’s Texaco on East Independence Boulevard in Charlotte, North Carolina. Owner Aaron Barker scrawled a sign that read “Out of Gas,” hung it in the window, and sat down at the counter.
Our Two Cents: CUVs That Will Become Collectible
This week’s Our Two Cents comes from a conversation I had at a local cars and coffee style show. I tend to be a condescending jerk thought-provoking conversationist in these settings, so a gentlemen who knows my style put me on the spot: What crossover utility will become collectible in the future? -Guy at a car show who I forgot to ask permission to use his name. The answer I gave him is posted below, but later that day my mind went to Nicholas Lintzenich.
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