Editorial
Selected editorial work as published online by AutoGuide, The Truth About Cars, Motor1, and CarBuzz. Some items have also been printed in the Toronto Star, and syndicated across the Metroland Media network.
News content can be found aggregated here
A day in the life of a Hot Wheels designer
No two days are the same at the Mattel design campus in El Segundo, California. “It’s not all fun; sometimes there are too many meetings,” laughs Bryan Benedict, Key Principal Designer of Die-Cast Vehicles for Hot Wheels and Matchbox. “Definitely a lot of ideation, sketching, and thinking about what’s next. Also, there are a lot of partnerships; so much of what we do involves major collaborations.”
Bryan is now primarily focused on the lucrative Mattel Creations business, which has recently sparked high-profile collaborations with Jay Leno, Sean Wotherspoon, and Daniel Arsham. “We engage in a lot of that kind of stuff. So, I’m always meeting with various artists, celebrities, or major brands that want to collaborate with us. We had a really cool Gucci collaboration a couple of years back that just exploded for us.” Some of the hottest Mattel Creations releases have come under Benedict’s stewardship–including the Hot Wheels x Gucci Seville; the Hot Wheels x Arsham Porsche; the Hot Wheels x Run The Jewels x Volcom ’87 Buick Regal GNX; and the Hot Wheels x Nike x Paul George Circle Tracker.
2019 Mini Cooper: Skinny, Little, Pithy
It's not about the size, it's how you use it.
Are we ready to move past the trite and tired trope that “Minis aren’t really that mini” anymore? Because it’s 2018 and cars aren’t little anymore. If you can get over the fact that the current Mini Cooper isn’t remotely similar to the diminutive, low cost, high fashion, equation that propelled the original to popularity for four decades, you’ll come to realize the modern iteration is packed with personality and just so happens to be a half decent piece of machinery.
2019 Kia K900: Stealth Wealth
Ever since Lehman Brothers collapsed nearly a decade ago, there’s been a rising anti-capitalist, anti-rich sentiment that’s permeated through college campuses and parts of America like some kind of toxic shiver. It’s become vogue to keep your indulgences under the radar, and this concept of stealth wealth is why a brand like Kia has managed to carve out a unique niche in the luxury segment.
2019 Cadillac XT4: An Escalade Puppy
Sure, it may be the last of the major-branded luxury-compact crossovers to report for duty in a segment that has been glowing red hot for several years now, but Cadillac’s great dare in this space is a bet that consumers won’t really care which chicken came before the egg, just if there’s a vegan alternative to the omelette. As a late entrant, Cadillac claims it’s been able to study the segment, getting to know the intimate needs of the younger demographic it’s been working to understand and engage for the past five years. And if there’s one thing the thirty-something, upwardly mobile, cosmopolitan, condo-dweller loves more than engineering a career, spinning, and brunch, it’s a puppy.
2019 Lexus ES 300h: The Best at What it Does
“It's like butter, it's like the butter baby, not no Parkay, not no margarine, Strictly butter, strictly butter, baby."
The voice of Q-Tip on the hook poured from the Mark Levinson audio system as the Sunlit Green Lexus ES pulled back up the drive of Westhaven Golf Club thumping with the boom-bap of The Low-End Theory– I had just been out touring some of Tennessee’s finest twisted tarmac in a 2019 Lexus ES 300h. “Huh,” I thought, “how fitting.”
2018 Chevrolet Tahoe RST: The False Negative
It’s a common trope spouted by all your favorite automotive websites: “In big cities, it’s better to have something small so you can be mobile, and nimble," writes a man who lives 45 minutes outside the city but sometimes ventures in for tacos and gluten-free bread.
Balls, I’m here to tell you that, provided you can handle it, bigger is always better. This is the 2018 Chevrolet Tahoe RST, a great white shark of a commuter truck capable of consuming just about anything on the street in a single gulp of gasoline.
2018 Jeep Compass: The Urban Life for Me
So you like Jeeps, well, at least you like the idea of a Jeep, you live in a large city and have things to do, maybe you’re single, maybe you have a kid or two, dogs are probably part of the picture.
You dream of crawling up mountains, barging through mud, ignoring limits, and living to the beat of your own drum, it’s a Jeep thing, and other people just don’t understand. But I do. What you need is a different kind of Jeep for a different kind of adventure.
A Dream Come True at Daytona
Sun-drenched skin, saggy tattoos, beer bellies, the smell of lingering cigarettes mixed with fried food, obscene lines for the bathroom, cargo shorts, and an endless supply of Busch Light.
Attending the Daytona 500 is a point of pride and there are people who make the journey year, after year, after year. For more than a week Daytona Beach throngs with people addicted to speed, the drinking starts on Thursday and doesn’t stop until after the race on Sunday — there's a liquid energy that is undeniable, and a frenzied anticipation that builds and builds until the green flag drops.
2018 Nissan 370Z: Purity Never Lasts
Many things in our world are short lived.
Technology evolves quickly, leaving a wake of obsolescence. Fashion is fleeting. High-level athleticism requires unbridled slavery to the craft, only to slip away the instant neglect seeps in. Sports cars are equally ephemeral, a Catch 22 of constant compromise between style, speed, substance, and sales potential.
2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT: The V8 Rally Wagon
The city churns out a trail of burned-out brains, dopamine domination, social lives sculpted by pure image, furious individuals screaming into the blinking blue echo chamber as a defense against their own impotence.
Well then, what are the optics of a 5,000-pound shoe box happy to dispatch asphalt with sadistic laughter at speeds best measured in felonies?
Fast and Frenzied in Montreal
Mechanics have made their last-minute checks, drivers circulate sur la piste managing tire and brake temperatures, engineers confirm strategies; cars stage on the starting grid, the dissonant cacophony of twenty 1.6-liter V6 hybrid Formula 1 engines spooling reverberates through the grandstands as five red lights illuminate sequentially.
Hosted on Montreal’s Île Notre-Dame since 1978, the Grand Prix Du Canada has always been a special place for the Formula 1 paddock. For decades, drivers have loved the city’s vibrating atmosphere and unbridled passion for the sport, but what they really love is the circuit’s proximity to a devilish downtown core drowning in alcohol and impeccably dressed women.
2018 Mercedes E-Class Coupe: Every Man is True to His Trade
Things begin to escalate as they always do when you put hot shots with hot shoes in hot cars. The E300 makes less power but rotates better thanks to a lighter nose, my E400 has more torque available over the same rev band but I’m hauling around an extra 400 pounds, most of which hovers around the front axle. The car was happier to square off corners and claw its way forward rather than fighting understeer trying to carry corner speed.
But our fun is cut horribly short as we came up quickly on a Renault who was coming up even quicker on a truck filled with fruit. I ask the lasseiz–faire navigation lady to find me a place to stop, leaving my colleagues and pulling up to a corner café in Tossa del Mar to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.
2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1: The Democratization of Fast
We’re at the legendary Willow Springs and I’m jittery and on edge. Chain smoking, unable to shake the realization that I'm about to hot lap one of the fastest tracks in the country. I just watched IndyCar star Josef Newgarden step out of a 10-speed ZL1 and call this place “fucking gnarly.” The tarmac at Willow is bumpy and narrow, the apex curbs are crumbling from decades of abuse, and where the tarmac ends the desert begins – how else am I supposed to feel?
Whatever.
Zuuttt, screams the supercharger overtop the exhaust’s rhythmic raaaawwllll, hook another gear, SPLAT – more please – zuuuuttttt, raaaaaawwwwwwlll, SPLAT – YES, MORE – zuuuuuuuuuutttttt, rawwwwaaawwwwwwllllllllllll, SPLAT — oh my god is there actually more???
The Other Way to Get a Ford GT
“I ended up, by hook and by crook, going into the offices and I met a gentleman that I had no clue who he was,” L’Abbe recounts with a slight grin. “It ends up that it was Raj Nair [Ford president and vice president of North America]. So, we start chatting and I say, ‘Mr. Nair, I’m one of the partners at the Calabogie Motorsports Park.’”
The circuit itself is an up and down, side to side tarmac ribbon ride through the woods in the middle of nowhere; it’s also where Ford and Multimatic had chosen to clandestinely develop the GT, with Scott Maxwell laying down thousands of laps before the car even debuted publicly. Not many people know this, but Ford doesn’t win Le Mans in 2016 without Calabogie Motorsports Park.
2017 Chevrolet Camaro 1LEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEE
The SS 1LE is simply a full-blown addiction, we’re talking exhilarating feelings of excessive confidence, hyper-alertness, rambling speech and dilated pupils.
Together, we shattered the California border at speeds typically reserved for the terminally insane, babbling to myself about stability and fuel cut-off, terrified at how much further the car was willing to go.
Reaching transcendence in the middle of the Mojave, I back off slightly, giving me time to check the map for our turn back to Nevada. Just as I drop the TREMEC six-speed back into fifth for another run to the stratosphere, the bottom of my stomach falls out. The blue and red cherries of a California Highway Patrol cruiser light me up from out of the desert haze...