LA Auto Show 2015: The biggest car news announced this week in Los Angeles – The Verge

LA Auto Show 2015 wrap-up: the best (and worst) cars on the floor

2015-11-22T09:00:02-05:00

It's not quite a full-on podcast*, but The Verge's Tamara Warren, Chris Ziegler, and Jason Harper sat down for a few minutes of banter after the end of day one of this year's LA Auto Show. What did we see? What did we like? What did we hate? You'll just have to tune in and find out. (Despite the relatively small number of global debuts at LA '15, the Fiat 124 Spider and wild Land Rover Evoque Convertible could fill up an hour's worth of discussion alone.)

For all our LA coverage, check out the StoryStream - and be sure to follow Tamara, Chris, and Jason on Twitter.

*If you'd like a Verge transportation podcast at some point, let Chris know …

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The Rolls-Royce Dawn is a beautiful convertible for the 0.01 percent

2015-11-19T19:51:25-05:00

In the midst of the LA Auto Show this week, Rolls-Royce invited media to a private event away from the hustle and bustle of the convention floor to show off its Dawn convertible. Needless to say, the scene was just a little bit higher-end.

The Dawn - which is loosely based on the Wraith coupe - features a 6.6-liter V-12 that puts out 563 horsepower, but this isn't a sports car: this is the kind of machinery you use to loaf across Monaco or Malibu, celebrating your trust fund or your latest multimillion-dollar real estate deal. Like other Rollers, it has suicide doors, a retractable (yes, retractable) hood ornament, and an option list that r …

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Inside Faraday Future, the secretive car company chasing Tesla

2015-11-19T15:39:40-05:00

Inside a suburban Los Angeles industrial building that once served as an R&D facility for Japanese automotive giant Nissan, natural midday light spills through the windows. Today, a very different company occupies this space. I arrive at lunchtime. It's catered, in true startup fashion - there's no time to have your employees actually leaving the building for lunch, of course. By 1 o'clock, the cafeteria cleared out; there isn't much time for kicking back, even on a Friday afternoon.

This is the headquarters of Faraday Future, a young, seemingly well-funded company with an odd name that hasn't said much about what it's working on. We know t …

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The new Porsche 911 Targa 4 is indecisive in the best way possible

2015-11-19T11:57:02-05:00

Like basically every version of the Porsche 911, the 911 Targa is an icon; it's instantly recognizable for its removable roof that rests somewhere between the hardtop and the full-on cabriolet. It's the 911 for the indecisive, basically - indecisive in the best way possible.

When the Targa was last refreshed a couple years ago, it was a seminal moment in the classic sports car's history: Porsche had brought back the wide, silver bar wrapping around the cockpit that gave classic Targas their signature look starting in the late '60s. Now, there's another refresh to match the new Carrera hardtop introduced a couple months ago. The biggest chan …

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The Fiat 124 Spider is the most polarizing car in LA

2015-11-18T19:22:58-05:00

The Fiat 124 Spider unveiled at the LA Auto Show last night is a little polarizing, to say the least: the roadster, based on Mazda's lauded new Miata, has some odd design elements that seem to leave it hanging somewhere between Italy and Japan. But even if you don't love the way it looks, there's reason to be excited, because the 124 is shipping with the same turbocharged mill as the 500 Abarth - a great little car that sounds wonderful and knows how to move.

We had a chance to get up close with the Fiat 124 on the floor of the show, so check it out and decide for yourself - if you're in the market for a small, light, inexpensive convertibl …

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Chevrolet Bolt to be unveiled at CES in January

2015-11-18T16:33:41-05:00

At the LA Auto Show today, GM executive vice president Mark Reuss said that the company will unveil the production version of the Bolt at CES in a few weeks' time. The car had been shown as a concept at Detroit's North American International Auto Show last January, so it marks about one year from concept to the production design. GM had previously said that the Bolt would launch in 2016, so the timing of the unveil doesn't come as a surprise.

CES has rapidly morphed into a car show over the last decade, focusing on next-gen driving technologies - connected car tech and autonomous driving, to name a couple - and automotive executives have fr …

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Here’s what Volvo thinks you’ll do when your car is driving itself

2015-11-18T16:00:02-05:00

According to Volvo's research, the average American spends 26 minutes driving to work. One way. That's more than nine days a year, and the Swedish carmaker is building a time machine to get some of that time back for you.

Well, it's not actually a time machine (though that would be awesome too). This is Concept 26, Volvo's vision for what a driver will do while the car is driving itself, unveiled today at the LA Auto Show. It's very different than futuristic concepts like the Mercedes F 015 which shows a bunch of people facing each other while the car whisks them off to a cocktail party or wherever. The idea is to give you some of that time …

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The new Toyota Prius isn’t just a good hybrid, it’s a good car

2015-11-18T03:01:02-05:00

Unless you're an automotive battery technician, a Toyota shareholder, or an environmentalist who still needs to drive to work and can't justify a Tesla, it's always been hard to get really excited about the Prius.

Like many Toyotas, the Prius is a perfectly adequate - if a bit boring - way to get around. Everything in the car is compromised in the name of increased fuel economy, and it's not particularly fun to drive. And millions of Prius owners like it that way, thank you very much. So, fine.

But most of those Prius owners are buying it because of what it delivers (great fuel economy) and the statement it makes to everyone else on the ro …

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The turbocharged Fiat 124 Spider (that’s still sort of a Miata) is here

2015-11-18T00:01:02-05:00

If you've had your eye on Mazda's excellent MX-5 convertible, but you wish it had a wonderful and tiny turbocharged engine in it - or you wish it was a bit more Italian - then Fiat has the car for you.

It's the oft-rumored Fiat 124 Spider, a new car with a classic name. Fiat has taken the excellent chassis and interior from Mazda's MX-5 and added it's own exterior design and the turbocharged 1.4-liter four-cylinder power plant from the Fiat 500 Abarth. It pumps out 160 horsepower and 184 pound-feet of torque, a nice jump from the 155 and 148 in the naturally aspirated MX-5.

The design will naturally draw comparisons to the nearly universal …

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The Evoque Convertible is Range Rover’s strangest car, but it’s not as crazy as you think

2015-11-17T20:58:24-05:00

The premise of chopping the top off of the popular Evoque crossover took a certain amount of audacity on Land Rover's part - and the impacts of its efforts are delightfully polarizing, as I learned when I saw it up close ahead of the LA Auto Show this week. The Evoque Convertible is not for everyone, but that notion is what gives it legs. It's a plucky, rolling contradiction that somehow avoids coming across as gauche. (Sorry, but we have to throw a wee bit of shade at the late Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet.)

Land Rover makes off-road vehicles that are designed for getting messy in the muck but still polish up as proper show cars to parade a …

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