"Nissan has given us a 2021 GT-R Premium outfitted with winter tires. Would you be interested?" Some offers you don't say no to, and sometimes it just takes seeing something familiar through new eyes to gain a fresh appreciation for it. While Nissan's flagship sports car may now be more than a decade old, it makes for an unexpectedly entertaining snowmobile.
In a year nobody could've predicted, where each day seemed hell-bent on eclipsing the former with fresh horror, surprise, or both, it's been tough to stand out as a category-defining gadget. The fact that the Galaxy Z Fold 2 managed to not only justify its existence as a $1,999 phone, but lay the groundwork for a whole new genre of foldable devices, is a testament to just how much Samsung got right in 2020. Despite what turned out to be largely self-imposed hurdles.
A new National Strategy for Planetary Protection has been released by the White House, detailing some of the challenges that need to be addressed to avoid contamination of Earth from other planets, and vice-versa. The document, handiwork of a team assembled by the National Space Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy, sets out some of the questions to be answered and policies to be created in order to avoid future missions to Mars and further afield from inadvertently resulting in terrestrial contamination.
The FCC is hoping to better crack down on persistent unwanted robocalls, with new rules putting more responsibility on phone companies to prevent them getting through. It's the latest escalation in an ongoing battle against unwanted and illegal robocalls, particularly those which aren't telemarketing, with new limitations being applied and extra tools for blocking repeat offenders.
The auto industry loves a trend, so here's hoping the 2020 Genesis G90 proves inspirational for 2021 when it comes to wheel style. For such an important part of how a vehicle looks and performs, it feels a lot like rim design has fallen into a rut over the past decade. Then along came luxury contender Genesis, and upset everything.
Change is in the air at Bentley and, as the British automaker mulls its electric future, the legendary Mulsanne bows out to make way for whatever modern luxury might look like in the next decade and beyond. Six-figures worth of handcrafted excess, the Mulsanne Speed remains a rarity even after 11 years of production, vast and uncompromising in both power and opulence.
Just how badly do you want people to stare at you? It's a question I had ample time to consider, hunkered down in the comfortable leather sports seats of the 2020 BMW M8 Competition and trying not to make eye-contact with fellow motorists, pedestrians, or the cyclist that almost swerved into its Java Green Metallic flanks.
The holidays may be drawing to a close, but BMW's M performance division has one last surprise ahead of the new year: the first details on the 2021 BMW M5 CS. The latest edition of a "Competition Sport" car, as you'd expect the M5 CS takes the standard sports sedan and cranks out more performance for those who really refuse to compromise.
The first thing I did with the 2020 Land Rover Defender 110 was get over my guilt that I didn't have some grand, off-roading adventure planned. Well, to be fair that was the second thing: first was pausing to appreciate just how handsome the SUV this storied nameplate is attached to is, as it makes its long-awaited return to North American shores.
A new supercluster of galaxy clusters has been identified, potentially helping explain the fundaments of galactic development, and validating the eFEDS project's ability to give groundbreaking new insight into some of the largest known structures in the universe. Expanding as our universe spreads, superclusters are several orders of magnitude above our Milky Way, and can potentially span billions of light-years.
Volvo is readying its second new electric vehicle for its big unveil in early 2021, though don't expect it to necessarily be cheaper than the XC40 Recharge. The automaker plans to use its new "Recharge" branding for a whole family of EVs, much in the way that it standardized on a smaller portfolio of gas engines back in 2014.
As anybody who wished for a more eventful 2020 now knows, sweating the details is important. How else to describe the LG Wing, a rotating dual-screen curio that - even in a time of foldable smartphones - still manages to be an outlier. We asked LG for more interesting phone designs, but maybe we should’ve been more specific.