News
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Spike Strips Meant for a Stolen Jeep Killed a Mom on I-64. Now It’s a Federal Lawsuit.
Here’s a question nobody wants to be the test case for: how fast does a stolen Jeep need to be going, and through how much traffic, before deploying spike strips on an interstate becomes a worse idea than just letting the thing run? A West Virginia family says they already know the answer, and they’re…
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The Wire Rundown: Corvette Heist, Honda Recall, and Porsche Kills the Electric 911
The Auto Wire’s morning roundup of the stories actually worth your time, recapped fast, with links to the full reports when you want to go deeper. Here’s your bulletin for Tuesday, June 16, 2026. A pair of thieves walked onto a Michigan Chevy lot and drove off in two C7 Corvettes while the dealership cameras…
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The Viral ‘Gas Pump Screw Scam’ Has One Big Problem: No One Can Find a Real Case
A scary little warning has been making the rounds: thieves are supposedly jamming a screw into the gas pump nozzle cradle so the pump keeps running after you drive away, letting them fill their own tanks on your card. It sounds like exactly the kind of low-tech, high-payoff trick that would spread fast. The problem…
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The Sub-$25,000 New Car Has Nearly Vanished. Here’s the Math Behind It.
There was a time, not that long ago, when a first-time buyer with a modest budget could walk onto a dealer lot and have real choices. Roughly three dozen of them, in fact. In 2017, the American market offered about 36 different new vehicle models with a starting price under $25,000. By 2026, that list…
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Two Corvettes Were Stolen From a Dealer Lot in Seconds, No Keys Needed
The unsettling part of the Les Stanford Chevrolet theft isn’t how much force it took. It’s how little. Two people walked onto the West Dearborn dealership’s lot, singled out a pair of C7 Corvettes, and drove them onto Michigan Avenue under the cars’ own power, no broken glass, no pried doors, no fumbling under the…
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A Planned Crew Stole Two Corvettes and a Camaro During the Hot Rod Power Tour
There are few gut-punches in this hobby quite like watching someone peel out of a parking lot in a car you spent years building with your own two hands. That’s exactly the nightmare a handful of enthusiasts woke up to at the kickoff of the 2026 Hot Rod Power Tour, when an organized crew slipped…
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The Viral Mustang ‘Fleeing’ Case Isn’t About Lights and Sirens at All
When the arrest of 19-year-old Tara Ashley Palmieri spread across social media late last year, the conversation quickly split into two camps. One side saw a reckless driver who blew past an officer in a white Ford Mustang. The other insisted it “wasn’t really fleeing” because there was no marked cruiser chasing her down with…
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Did North Carolina Actually Fix Its Trucker Licensing Problem?
When the U.S. Department of Transportation announced in January that a federal audit had found serious problems in how North Carolina issues commercial driver’s licenses to certain foreign nationals, one number dominated the coverage: 54 percent. Months later, the more useful question is whether the state actually fixed the underlying system, and the answer involves…
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Kosmera’s Star Razer Claims 3,112 HP and a 342 MPH Top Speed
A fresh name is muscling its way into the hypercar conversation, and it’s coming out swinging. Kosmera, a luxury performance marque backed by Chinese technology giant Dreame, has pulled the covers off the ambitious plans for its forthcoming Star Razer. If the brand can turn its spec sheet into reality, this electric grand tourer could…
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Bugatti’s Latest Creation Has No Engine, Just a Giant Folding TV
Bugatti has spent decades convincing us its hypercars are rolling sculpture. Now it’s built one that doesn’t roll at all. Meet the BUGATTI N1, an absurdly fancy television cooked up with Austrian display wizards C SEED, aimed at exactly the kind of person who parks a Tourbillon wristwatch next to the actual Tourbillon hypercar. A…
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The Classic Car Fraudster Sentenced to 60 Years Just Filed an Appeal
The Galveston County classic-car restorer who was handed a 60-year prison sentence earlier this year is not going quietly. Court records show Richard Thomas Finley has appealed his felony theft conviction, and the case is now working its way through a Texas appellate court, a development that has gone largely unreported amid the headlines about…
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A Milwaukee Cop Ran Her Plate 179 Times. It’s Part of a Bigger Pattern.
A Milwaukee police officer resigned after investigators found he had used automated license plate reader technology to track a woman he was dating nearly 180 times in the span of two months. What looked at first like a single ugly misconduct case is now pulling back the curtain on a much larger problem with how…
