Car and Driver's 2025 Top 10 Winners and Losers

Boutique Porsche modifier Singer legally applies the word "reimagined" to air-cooled 911s with house-size prices. But in April, Singer collaborated with CrossHarbor Capital Partners to restomod Willow Springs International Raceway. Fears that the Southern California staple would become a snooty members-only club were quickly dispelled. Willow Springs will remain public, and the tracks and facilities will get some much-needed rehab. Sonoma Raceway will oversee operations, and former F1 driver and track designer Alex Wurz is spearheading track improvements. We hear they might even get some decent food.

Remember the old Saturday Night Live faux ad for the Happy Fun Ball? The toy came with a litany of disclaimers such as "If Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke, get away immediately" and "Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball." Volvo's list of warnings for the 2025 EX90's lidar system, which flings photons from an array above the windshield, is Happy Fun Ball–esque in its extensiveness. Volvo advises not to "place or mount anything in front of or close to the car's lidar" or "use an ice scraper on this area," plus the lidar “must be cleaned on a regular basis and kept free from labels.” But one label that has stuck is camera destroyer, and there's a warning about that too: "Do not point a camera directly at the lidar." That's because powerful infrared laser pulses, concentrated by a lens, can fry a camera's image sensor, a fact that many would-be lidar photographers have learned the hard way. We'd show you a photo of the lidar array in question, but, well, you know.

Tiah McCreary bought a 2022 Kia K5 from Taylor Kia of Lima, Ohio. Shortly thereafter, it was repossessed because the finance company belatedly decided not to issue the loan. McCreary, understandably upset, explored avenues to express her frustration. And it turns out that Taylor Kia of Lima had let its registered name lapse, so McCreary registered "Taylor Kia of Lima" and told the dealer to stop using it. In July, an appellate ruling sent the case to trial court, where it is ongoing as of this writing. But if you ask us, McCreary has already won. We also hope she is getting herself a free Kia.

Drop a dime, and you've provided a tip. Drop nearly 8 million of them when you tip over your 18-wheeler, and you've caused quite a mess in Alvord, Texas. For those English majors out there, that's about $800,000 in coins scattered across U.S. Highway 287 last April. It turns out there's no easy way to clean up that much change. The solution: Send huge truck-mounted vacuum cleaners and teams of workers with rakes, shovels, brooms, and bare hands to return the highway shoulder to mint condition. Conceivably, some of the dimes could have been used to buy packages of Peanut M&M's that spilled all over a highway in New Jersey during a different truck mishap in September.

When Ram killed its 5.7-liter V-8 in favor of twin-turbocharged inline-sixes, the math looked sound: a 395-hp Hemi replaced by a 420- or a 540-hp Hurricane inline-six. Alas, sharp-eyed Ram buyers noted that 3.0 liters is smaller than 5.7 liters, and also that the six kind of goes BRRRmmmmm with impeccable smoothness, in-stead of glug-glug-glugRAAAAAAAGGGH. So Ram did the sensible thing: It brought back the engine with the boat-anchor iron block and ginned up a new badge implying that only the baddest of bad-asses would dare to thumb their noses at polite society and buy such a thing. The V-8-powered 2026 Ram 1500 hits 60 mph in 6.0 seconds, while a Ram with the 540-horse six needs just 4.2 seconds. But which one sounds quicker? Glug-glug-glug!

The original 2010 Acura ZDX may have had a short run, but it inspired the numerous SUV coupes that followed. For 2024, the nameplate reappeared on an Acurafied Chevy Blazer EV, which turned out nicer than that description implies. Surely, this time around, with a major American partner and more conventional styling, the ZDX would—and it's dead again. The ZDX apparently depended heavily on the $7500 federal EV tax credit, because with the elimination of that incentive came the elimination of the ZDX after just one model year. Acura, go ahead and retire that cursed nameplate, for good this time.

Losing your wallet is a terrible feeling, especially when you know you had it with you at work. Richard Guilford worked at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne back in 2014, correcting electrical problems on completed vehicles. One day he wore pants with no pockets, so he stuffed his wallet in his shirt pocket and set to work on a 2015 Edge. Soon he realized his wallet was missing. That remained the case until June 2025, when Minnesota mechanic Chad Volk found it on top of the Edge's transmission, wedged under the airbox. He mailed it back, the wallet having covered roughly 151,000 miles and still containing the $15 Guilford had the day he lost it. Meanwhile, in Carthage, North Carolina, a customer brought an Escape to Cooper Ford, complaining of strange noises. They turned out to be meows from a kitten who'd crawled up into the engine bay. The feline was safely extracted, and the Escape owner adopted the animal—now down to eight lives—and named him Cooper.

Just when you thought Volkswagen engineers couldn't concoct a user interface any worse than capacitive touch controls, they say halte mein Bier and file a patent for vision-based controls. Meaning, as you might infer, you'd control, say, the radio or seat heaters with your eyes. Experienced drivers among us will note that radios and seat heaters are different from the other thing you're often looking at from the driver's seat—no, not that Arby's sign for the new Ham & Swiss Melt deal. We're talking about the road. You'd think you should keep an eye on it, especially when you're driving. Maybe this patent isn't serious and just amounts to Volkswagen pushing our buttons. Which would be ironic.