Polestar tries to quantify what it’s like to drive a performance car

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VinFast showed up in the U. S. with a fleet of cars that were fundamentally not ready for prime time. Years later, the company's products still aren't great for their few customers, but VinFast is utterly determined to keep beating its head against the American wall in any way it can. Now, the company has figured out a new way to pretend to exist here: Get its associated taxi business going. VinFast brought Green SM, its associated taxi service from Vietnam, out to Los Angeles to compete with Uber, Lyft, and the rest as of October 16. Unlike those, though, Green SM is a traditional taxi service rather than a rideshare app — its teal electric VF8s are owned by the company and driven by trained full-time employees, according to the Los Angeles Times. The company claims this is a way to elevate "service quality," though that plan sounds at odds with Green SM's global commitment to only using VinFast vehicles. Surely we've all taken a Tesla rideshare at some point and thought the ride quality was just too dang nice, haven't we?

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Back before we had gargantuan three-row SUVs to haul stuff around in, station wagons were often configured as utility vehicles. Prime example: the Ecto-1. Before it was re-tasked as an otherworldly urban assault vehicle, it served New York City as an ambulance. And while the Ghostbusters’ ride was effectively coach-built by Miller-Meteor using GM engines and underpinnings, other niche models, like this Volvo 245 Transfer, came that way straight from the factory. You’ll need to break out your browser’s translator (or speak Swedish) if you want to dive deep under the hood of this oddball long-roof model. The brochure showcases it as a taxi cab, but it was also marketed as a solution for rural ambulance and school bus services. According to Teknikens Värld, the added length made it both difficult to maneuver and more expensive to fill up if you drove it around town a lot, but that’s what you get for stretching out what was already a pretty long car in 1977.

Dubai’s police force maintains a special Luxury Tourist Patrol Fleet of police cars. In regular use, law enforcement gets around in various SUVs such as Toyota Land Cruisers and Nissan Patrols, but for both policing and polishing its public image, Dubai Police have a large fleet of fancy cars for tourists to see and photograph. Think about the Ferrari Testarossa that starred in Miami Vice, and then imagine if it had huge MIAMI POLICE stickers on it. Over a decade ago, a Bugatti Veyron was added to the fleet, making it the fastest police car on the planet. The 250-mph (400-km/h) supercar does most of its work parked in tourist spots, despite its top-speed capabilities: the fleet has now been upgraded with a vehicle that has even more power and the capacity to float. That’s right, the force now has a nearly 1,200-horsepower Yangwang U8.