The Drive
Porsche Files Patent App for Tunnel Mode, and It Sounds Like the Best Car Gimmick Yet
New cars have too many gimmicks. Take it from someone who reviews ’em for a living. Remote engine revs? Come on. Cabin perfume dispensers? Give me a break. But just as I thought I’d seen it all, Porsche applied to patent a party trick that might actually be pretty sweet. It’s called Tunnel Mode.
The feature is exactly what it sounds like: It detects when you’re about to enter a tunnel, rolls down the windows, and downshifts while opening up the valves on the active exhaust. The whole idea is to let that heavenly flat-six sing as loud as it can while you and your passengers experience sore cheeks from all the smiling.
According to the patent application, which was first spotted by CarBuzz, there would actually be a second option for tunnel mode in convertibles. With the feature engaged, it would sense when a tunnel is coming up and prompt the driver to pull over so the roof can be lowered. Supposedly, it would also turn the heat on to counteract the cool breeze to make sure nothing stops you from hearing that howl at full tilt.
The patent filing makes a curious mention of Tunnel Mode for EVs. In that case, it sounds like a fake exhaust sound would be projected through the exterior speakers to make it seem like you’re in a gas car. Now, that’s kind of sad, but I’m not here to judge.
Tunnel Mode would supposedly tighten up the car’s steering while making the chassis behavior “sportier” for more enjoyable drives. That sounds nifty, considering everything returns to normal once you’re through the tunnel. You can be cruising with the steering and suspension in their comfort settings until you reach the sound tube, and after you’ve exited, the car’s camera system will relay the info so it’ll return to your previous configuration.
Now, it’s impossible to say at this stage if Tunnel Mode will ever show up in a production car. I hope it will. Despite Porsche’s seriousness, I feel like it’s exactly the type of automaker that would implement a feature like this in a 911 GT3 RS or something similar. It wouldn’t make that 4.0-liter flat-six sound so good if it wasn’t supposed to be the highlight of every drive.
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Cadillac Actually Made the 2025 Escalade V Quieter Because the Old One Was a Bit Much
When the Cadillac Escalade V arrived for 2023 it might have been one of the loudest SUVs money could buy. The 2025 refresh ended up bringing more than a tech overhaul and front end redesign, it put a muzzle on the rowdy V SUV.
After spending a week living with and road tripping in the 2025 Cadillac Escalade V both myself and my buddy Philip noticed this iteration of the V seemed … quieter than before. Turns out that’s because it is. Cadillac spokesperson Michael Albano confirmed to The Drive the 2025 Cadillac Escalade V is indeed quieter than the outgoing model due to modified exhaust tuning.
“We just turned it down to an 11,” Albano said.
The man isn’t wrong, because the 2025 Escalade V is still hilariously loud with a thunderclap upon cold start and a burble at idle that would send shivers down the Devil’s spine.
The change was done in the name of refinement. But the hardware was in no way modified, according to Albano.
The sole reason the Escalade V is quieter than before comes down to different exhaust tuning. Albano didn’t divulge details on how exactly, but was clear and repeated twice that the hardware didn’t change, only the tuning of the system changed.
The tuning changes also go beyond the physical exhaust hardware. The Escalade V’s active noice cancellation system’s been retuned to be more refined than before. The result? While cruising down the highway the Escalade V’s exhaust doesn’t drone, and that’s doubly true for those seated in the second row, according to my bud Philip. He sat back in the second-row of both the 2023 model when it launched and this updated 2025 model for nearly 700 miles. The man would know.
For anyone looking to wake up the neighborhood with the Escalade V you can sleep soundly, because this thing’s still fully capable of doing that. Philip noted, “We heard you long before we saw you come down around the curve.” I also purposely had the Escalade V in V mode, which opens the electronic dumps on the exhaust system. It was 7:05 am. Sorry, not sorry.
Still loud and proud, the Escalade V’s exhaust has now been … refined. Wether your neighbor will notice is unlikely, but your rear seat occupants just might.
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The New Dodge Charger Drag Pak Has a V8. So Where’s the Hemi Road Car?
You’re looking at a new Dodge Charger with a V8 under the hood. It’s a factory job, and although it’s a far cry from a production model, one can’t help but feel like this might foreshadow something. Now, I’m not saying that a stock Charger will hit the road with a monstrous 3.0-liter Whipple supercharger like this drag racer has, but Dodge sells high-performance Hurricane I6 crate engines that would’ve fit the bill for this. Come to think of it, the last Challenger Drag Pak ran one of those twin-turbo six-cylinders. Hmm…
You and I could speculate all day about what this car means for the brand, but before we do that, I’ll hit you with the facts and specs. It runs a 358-cubic-inch V8 that’s NHRA-approved for competition. That engine is obviously a mighty one, and it helped Dodge win the last two NHRA Factory Stock Showdown championships.
In addition to the 3.0-liter Whipple, the engine sports a cast aluminum block with six-bolt main caps, a forged steel crank with eight counterweights, forged H-beam connecting rods, and diamond aluminum pistons. The roller lifters and rocker arms are from Jesel, while a Holley EFI lightweight Dominator ECU manages all the thinking. Rest assured that it sounds great thanks to stainless steel long-tube headers.
Dodge made sure the rest of the drivetrain was up to snuff, too. A three-speed Coan Racing XLT automatic transmission works in tandem with a 9.65-inch torque converter from the same company, sending power to a Mark Williams Enterprises modular 9-inch rear axle with a 4.30 final drive ratio. The standard driveshaft is a lightweight 4-inch tube made from 7075 aluminum, though a carbon fiber one is available. To me, what’s downstream of the engine is where factory builds stand out from most (not all) big-power customer cars. Well, that and the suspension.
Speaking of suspension, the Charger Drag Pak features an adjustable four-link rear suspension with coilover shocks. Crews can further dial the car in by adjusting the anti-roll bar, as well as the camber shims and toe links. The front suspension also received its fair share of attention with aluminum upper and lower control arms, plus a lightweight K-member with clever integrated engine mounts.
All this means something to drag racers. I won’t pretend like I’m the end-all, be-all expert on the topic, though I will say that Dodge knows what it’s doing with these specialized machines as well as anyone else. What I’m most curious to know is if this is a sign of what’s to come, given that the manufacturer could have gone forward with the 1,000-hp “CatX” crate engine that it teased last year. But it didn’t. What gives?
I believe I have a pretty good idea.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com
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Lost Tesla Drives Wrong Way Onto Hot Track During Live Race Broadcast
“In a world of what the F, I present to you, what the F. This may be the biggest F I’ve ever what’ed,” the race commentator said during the live broadcast of an AFM event at Buttonwillow last weekend. A red Tesla appeared to have wandered onto a hot track—against race traffic—befuddling and infuriating track workers. We can laugh now since nobody died, but man, what a screw up.
Last weekend was the fifth round of AFM’s motorcycle racing season. Multiple classes ran at Buttonwillow in Kern County, California, on October 25 and 26. The events seem to have gone off without incident, with the exception of this wayward red Tesla Model Y sneaking onto the track, probably looking for a charging station, as the real-time commentator speculated.
You might as well just watch the clip. The car shows up around the 07:23:40 mark of a nine-hour broadcast, during the Middle Weight Super Sport Wave 2 race. You can hear the guy say “no, no way,” then there’s some yelling, and the audio goes out:
The Tesla just appears to be motoring along on the right side of the track like it’s any other road until it’s aggressively flagged down by marshals. Even in the grainy zoomed-in footage, you can see from body language that the Tesla driver’s getting quite a stern talking to (understandably).
A red flag is called, track workers guide the car back off the track with a UTV, and action eventually recommences.
The incident was discussed on Reddit’s r/motorcycles earlier this week, where people were commenting that the event organizers share some blame here for not comprehensively closing paved routes to the course.
Which, yeah, I guess. But I’m sure this Tesla drove by some strong indicators that it was not heading somewhere it wanted to be. And we, as a society, should be able to expect a modicum of common sense for civilians in cars. Like, come on, man.
It sounds like a red flag was called before the car actually appeared on camera, so the flag stand probably did spot it before it actually entered the track. The flag went up, racing was paused, and the situation was handled. Frankly, from the looks of it, the race organizers took care of business as best as one could when somebody randomly drives into your race.
“I feel pretty confident this is going to make the banquet highlight reel,” the commentator says. Indeed. And now these racers will probably have a hard time seeing a red Tesla without feeling a tiny pang of PTSD.
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Toyota’s Flagship Century Will Challenge Bentley and Rolls-Royce in America
In 1990, Toyota challenged the fundamental rules of the automotive luxury establishment with the introduction of Lexus—a luxury brand aimed squarely at the likes of Mercedes-Benz and BMW, both of which had made extensive inroads into the U.S. market during the 1970s and ’80s. Thirty-five years later, Toyota’s gearing up to make a similar splash, and with even loftier aspirations this time around as it sets its eyes on the flagship luxury segment. Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Maybach beware: The Century is coming to America.
Automotive News managed to confirm the story with Lexus this week amid the goings-on of what was once called the Tokyo Motor Show, now the Japan Mobility Show. And yes, despite being sold as a Toyota in its home market, the Century will slot in above the volume luxury market (BMW/Mercedes-Benz/Audi/Lexus/Acura/Genesis/Infiniti/etc.) and instead offer something for the bespoke crowd. And we should caution that while this is an official confirmation, Toyota doesn’t yet have a definitive timeline for introducing the nameplate to our market.
According to the employee quoted in the initial report, it could be years before you see a Century for sale in the United States, as Lexus will have to lay the sales and surface infrastructure groundwork necessary to support a new model line. That means both Lexus and its dealer network will have to lay out some cash up front.
While they will be sold in select Lexus dealerships, you won’t see the brand’s name or badging anywhere on the cars—or the paperwork for that matter. Why? Long story short: franchise laws. Digging into the nuances of it would require a law degree, but suffice it to say that demonstrating anything resembling favoritism within your dealer network is a fraught process. Just ask Hyundai how that went when it tried to launch Genesis.
Going after tier-one automotive brands is no easy task, but nobody manages a war chest quite like Toyota. We don’t expect a half-measure, but given the state of the world, it’s hard to predict what sort of sales environment the Century might encounter by the time it’s cleared for landing here in the U.S.
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Toyota Wants to Be the ‘Last Company’ Making Engines, and It’s Not Shy About That
If Toyota made something clear among the myriad concepts it brought to this year’s Japan Mobility Show, it’s that the company wants to meet people where they are. Take the futuristic, new Corolla concept, for example. It might look like an electric vehicle, but Toyota is confident it can also achieve its silhouette and expansive interior volume by cramming a tiny gas engine in its short nose. And it better, because Toyota isn’t merely aspiring to keep churning out engines for a little while. When all’s said and done, it wants to be the last one standing.
“In my personal opinion, I think that Toyota Motor Corporation should be a company that will be making engines until the very end,” Hiroki Nakajima, Toyota’s chief technology officer, said through an interpreter during a technical Q&A session with media in Tokyo on Thursday, before adding that he wanted Toyota to be the “last company” in the practice.
Generally speaking, Toyota’s stance on this has been clear for a long time. Former CEO, now chairman Akio Toyoda said somewhat controversially years ago that while Toyota’s primary goal is reducing carbon emissions, it doesn’t consider battery electric vehicles the only means to achieve that end. Halfway through this decade, it seems other automakers have come around to agree that there’s still an important role for internal combustion to play.
Still, it’s one thing to say that we need gas engines right now; it’s another to aspire to keep them around for as long as possible. During this panel, Nakajima spoke about balancing the necessity to reduce CO2 emissions with consumer wants and needs, but he also spoke about his personal love of motorsports, and a belief that synthetic carbon-neutral fuels can allow gas engines to live on for enthusiast applications.
His colleague Takashi Uehara, who runs Toyota’s powertrains division, likened high-performance EVs to trying to enjoy fireworks on mute: just seen, not heard or felt. It’s obvious that the chairman’s passion for internal combustion isn’t an edict from the top—the sentiment is echoed down the chain of command.
But Uehara also extolled the practical benefits of gas engines, like the recyclability of their aluminum construction, and the power-dense fuels they harness. He shed some light on Toyota’s upcoming 1.5-liter, four-cylinder hybrid powertrain, which takes up a remarkably small amount of space, and targets 134 total horsepower with a 10-to-20% improvement in fuel economy over the firm’s existing inline-four of the same displacement.
That’s the technology Toyota envisions for the Corolla on the show floor, and it’s enticing for those customers that just don’t see an EV fitting into their life yet. To Nakajima’s point, maybe it’s also a sign there’s plenty of life left in gas engines after all. As to whether Toyota will be the last to still make them, only time will tell.
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Cadillac Celestiq Now Costs Over $400,000 After Price Increase: TDS
Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short.
Light, tight, and right TDS gathers the latest automotive news bubbling around the globe and places it in one spot. Stories are summarized in a single, sometime long, sentence accompanied by a link for those seeking more information.
It’s almost dinner time here in Japan and I’m reasonably wired up on coffee at the moment, so let’s get into it.
What I’m driving: Nothing, but I just rode a bullet train from Tokyo to Tochigi.
The 2026 Cadillac Celestiq arrives with a large price increase translating to the EV going from $340,000 to now over $400,000 before customization, though previously optional equipment is now standard.
Scout CEO Scott Keogh revealed the startup automaker, which is owned by Volkswagen, has 130,000 reservations, but over 80% of those are for the extended-range model with a gas engine; Keogh reconfirmed the Scout models will feature real buttons and knobs so controls aren’t eight layers into a touchscreen interface.
Kia delayed the EV4 for the U.S. “until further notice,” due to shifting marketing conditions.
Hyundai revealed an “off-road ready” Ioniq 9 concept that will appear at the SEMA Show next week in Las Vegas, which could be a completely over-the-top version of what we might see with an XRT model in the near future.
The NHTSA is investigating 583,600 Hondas for safety issues including 142,600 2023-24 Honda Pilots for a possible malfunction of the rear seat seat belt warning system, and 441,000 2018-22 Honda Odysseys because the passenger side airbag might deploy unexpectedly while the vehicle’s in motion.
Volvo’s CEO now said the Swedish automaker will keep plug-in hybrids in its lineup until the end of the 2030s.
Ford has expanded it current recalls to over 400,000 vehicles for multiple issues including moonroof window deflectors that might fall off and bubbles in the windshield glass to a loose bolt on the driver’s seat frame or a defrosting and defogging issue.
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