Most Police Cars Don't Come With V8 Engines Anymore

If you’re a child of the 1990s, a V6 is probably part of the soundtrack to your youth, just like the Backstreet Boys. These engines were once the default choice when automakers needed a little extra power in sedans, SUVs, minivans—you name it. There have been many notable V6-powered performance cars as well, from the Buick GNX to the R35 Nissan GT-R. But V6s just don’t inspire the same passion as other engine formats. V6-powered cars have their fans, but the engine itself really doesn’t. The Drive explored why that is in a new YouTube video, and it starts with engineering compromises. Companies started experimenting with V6 engines before World War II, and Lancia brought the V6 to mass production in the Aurelia in 1950, but the story of the V6 as a truly mainstream engine begins in 1962 with General Motors. Looking to economize, the automaker’s Buick division lopped two cylinders off one of its smaller V8s to create the “Fireball” V6. It was all about saving engineering costs since, aside from the different number of cylinders, everything else was the same.

Higher octane ratings will cost you more but it could be worth the price Regular and premium gasoline may look and smell the same, but they differ in many key ways. In the U. S., most regular pump gas has an octane rating of 87, while premium gas generally ranges from 91 to 94 octane. The increased octane rating means premium gas is better for performance and is often recommended for use in supercharged, turbocharged, and high-compression engines. And in the Ford world, regular and premium gas can mean the difference between an engine that's constrained and one that produces maximum power.

Obrist, the Austrian engineering firm famous for ripping battery cells out of a Tesla Model 3 and bolting a gas engine into the frunk, is bankrupt. Three companies in the Obrist Group are insolvent with combined debts of about €31.8 million, or roughly $37 million. The company spent over a decade pitching its “HyperHybrid” range extender as the smarter alternative to battery-electric cars. It never got a single production vehicle out of it.

Classic gems, tasteful customs, legendary supercars - for Silvian, they're all fair game. He's been in love with cars and motorcycles for as long as he can remember, so it made perfect sense to eventually turn that passion into a full-time writing career. Around six years and more than 3,000 articles later, he is still going strong and doesn't plan on hitting the brakes anytime soon. We all know China doesn’t take kindly to those pesky pop-out door handles, having mandated an all-out ban back in February. It will come into effect on January 1, 2027, and Chinese lawmakers at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) aren’t planning to hang up the gloves just yet. As a matter of fact, the door handle saga might’ve been just the warm-up. MIIT’s crosshairs are now aimed at a trending feature we really wouldn’t mind seeing less of – annoyingly large touchscreens prone to distracting the driver. Quite frankly, we’re more than happy to cheer them on in this regard, and others may want to consider taking this particular page out of China’s rulebook.

With prices going up on, well, everything, having the ability to work on your own car (as long as the electronics allow for it) is a big money saver. There's a decent segment of individuals who can't do these things on their own, though, and it's possible, video games can help their journey to learn. Former Jalop Andrew Collins brought up the concept in 2020 with a video game called "Wrench," a grease-less automotive simulator that let you get your virtual hands dirty fixing cars in VR. A similar game released in 2021 called "Car Mechanic Simulator. " Now in 2026, "Wrench" has returned in a much more mature and updated version. YouTuber TalksWithNoise took to testing the concept in real time with a recent video, "I Tried Using a Video Game to Fix My Miata. "

Johnson joins CarBuzz on March 2026. He's currently studying MA Automotive Journalism at Coventry University in the UK which is the only course in the world to focus on this specific subject. He studied history in university which he combines the research and writing skills to produce contents related to automotive topics. Johnson’s passion for cars orginated from his early childhood which he grew up watching iconic Japanese anime Initial D and Pixar movie Cars and fell in love with all the stuff related to cars. According to Johnson’s family, he would be able to name the models and make of the vehicles on the road from a very young age.