Zac Palmer
Zac Palmer is an editor at Road & Track who focuses on modern performance cars, with a recurring emphasis on the hardware that shapes driver involvement, especially manual transmissions and advanced chassis tech. His coverage blends news, deep-dive reviews, technical columns, and photo-led stories that follow new models from early teasers through track testing and full visual walkarounds. He brings a consistent enthusiast’s lens to a wide spread of vehicles, from hypercars and sports cars to pickups, SUVs, and emerging electric models. His professional background includes prior roles at automotive outlets such as Autoweek and Autoblog.
Manual Transmissions and Performance Cars
Palmer’s work repeatedly returns to performance cars where the transmission and powertrain are central to the story.
He covers manual gearboxes both in news and reviews, writing about McLaren teasing a new car with a manual transmission, the 2027 Nissan Z Nismo Manual as “the one we’ve been waiting for,” and the Hennessey Blackbird hypercar built around a naturally aspirated V-8, a manual, and no screens. Across pieces on Porsche’s U.S. leadership discussing how long they will keep selling stick shifts and Aston Martin weighing real versus simulated manuals, he tracks how major brands treat the third pedal, treating it as a strategic question as much as a driving detail. His testing of the 2026 Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC and related coverage of that car’s upgrades over the Shelby GT500 show an attention to incremental performance changes, drag-strip behavior, and how extra power and track packages translate to real-world driving.
Articles on Ruf’s 650-hp Ehra widebody homage, Spyker’s C8 Preliator revival, and Ferrari’s CZ26 and Amalfi Spider keep his beat anchored in high-output, enthusiast-focused cars where engine character, aerodynamics, and mechanical feel are foregrounded.
Industry News and New Model Coverage
Alongside enthusiast hardware, Palmer files steady news on new vehicles, corporate moves, and technology updates across the industry. He covers Ford’s new hypercar testing in France, McLaren’s planned sale to CYVN Holdings, and Scout’s upcoming Traveler SUV and Terra pickup with features like Pet Mode, Camp Mode, and Night Mode, treating brand strategies and feature sets as part of the story of how people will use these vehicles.
His reporting on the 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA-class EV and its two-speed transmission, Ram 1500 recalls tied to stability control, and the Ram 2500 HD Yellowstone Edition shows a willingness to cover both engineering decisions and practical reliability issues. Headlines on Ford’s affordable new EV pickup named Fathom, Lucid’s Gravity Sapphire and delayed Cosmos SUV, and a four-door Mustang plus a $25,000 SUV shown to dealers indicate coverage that follows product planning at legacy brands and new EV players alike.
A retrospective on the long-lived Ram 1500 Classic and testing of the Ram 1500 RHO add pickup-focused depth, connecting truck performance, recall activity, and model evolution in one continuous beat.
Design, Interiors, and Car Culture Features
Palmer often steps away from pure performance to examine design, materials, and the culture around cars. He writes about Jaguar’s Type 01 interior with its living-room aesthetic and unconventional screens, the Pininfarina and JAS Tensei NSX interior that mixes old and new, and the “Curated By Cadillac” program that brings deep customization to the Escalade IQ.
A feature on how iconic automotive paint colors come to life traces how a color goes from idea to potential icon, showing an interest in the process behind visual identity rather than just the finished product. His coverage of Bentley’s Torcal EV with an optional Merino wool interior and the detailed walkarounds of vehicles like the Nissan Qashqai and Toyota RAV4 GR Sport highlight the cabin, trim choices, and styling decisions as much as mechanical specs.
A Monterey Car Week auction preview, with highlight vehicles from RM Sotheby’s, Bonhams, and others, shows him engaging with the collector and auction side of car culture, where rarity, history, and presentation all matter.
Tested Reviews and See Every Angle Coverage
Palmer’s work at the masthead includes hands-on reviews and extensive photo galleries that document new models in detail. “Tested” pieces such as the 2026 Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC and Ram 1500 RHO emphasize instrumented performance, driving impressions, and how upgrades change the character of already well-known nameplates.
His gallery-led stories, often titled along the lines of “See Every Angle of” a given vehicle, provide visual tours of cars like the 2026 Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC, Dodge Charger R/T 4-door, Nissan Qashqai, and Toyota RAV4 GR Sport, pairing photography with concise context to show design, aero elements, and key features. Short news hits, such as Waymo’s four-way autonomous-vehicle standoff in San Francisco, sit alongside these longer formats, but across story types he maintains a clear, direct style that keeps technical points and model positioning understandable.
Taken together, his output gives readers and industry watchers both numbers and narrative: how cars are changing, what they look like, and how they feel to drive.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.