Throttle Weekly Issue 45: Jaguar's Electric Rebirth, Verstappen's Sepang Win, and a $2.7M Ferrari
Jaguar's first electric car, a Porsche plan that keeps the 911 on petrol, and a software-broken Formula 1 race at Sepang lead this week's sourced car digest, alongside a Las Vegas NASCAR win, a first Petit Le Mans win for Porsche Penske, the WRC title and a record Ferrari sale.
The week in one pass
Coverage: September 30 – October 7, 2026.
Jaguar showed the car its future depends on, and it is electric and enormous. Porsche admitted its electric-first bet overshot, promised the 911 will stay petrol, and hinted at a supercar above it. Formula 1 put on a race that began with cars stranded on a wet grid because of a software bug, then handed Max Verstappen his first win of the season. In between came a Corvette engine that can weep oil, 41,748 Fords that may need new headlights, a federal agency taking a second run at the headlight rules it left unfinished in 2022, and a weekend of racing that decided one championship and all but ended another.
- Industry: The 2028 Jaguar Type 01 is the first car of the British marque's electric restart: three motors making a combined 1,015 horsepower, and a starting price around $130,000. 12 Porsche's new plan keeps the 911 on petrol, brings a gas-powered Macan back in 2028, and previews a possible mid-engined supercar above the 911 with a concept on October 15. 3 A GM service bulletin covers every 2027 Corvette with the new 6.7-liter LS6 V-8, which can leak where the oil pan meets the oil-cooler adapter. 4 Ford is recalling 41,748 Expeditions and Super Duty trucks because a contaminated LED chip can dim or kill their headlights. 5
- Trackside and community: Max Verstappen won the rain-delayed Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia at Sepang on October 4 by 2.307 seconds over Kimi Antonelli, after a 40-minute delay and a 53-minute stoppage caused by an FIA software fault. 67 Chase Briscoe swept both stages and held off Kyle Larson over the last 12 laps to win NASCAR's South Point 400 at Las Vegas. 8 Porsche Penske won Petit Le Mans outright for the first time, by 1.205 seconds. 9 Elfyn Evans took his first World Rally Championship title when Oliver Solberg slid off at the final corner of the season's last stage. 10
- Explainer: NHTSA says it will rewrite the U.S. lighting standard, and the reason American cars cannot have Europe's matrix headlights comes down to a one-degree transition zone between the bright and dimmed parts of a beam. 1112
- Car culture: Michael Jordan's 1997 Ferrari 550 Maranello sold for $2.7 million, roughly ten times what the model usually brings. 13 And a Street Fighter II bonus-stage Lexus LS400 now exists in real life, complete with a coin-slot seat warmer. 14
Industry news
Jaguar's restart begins with a 1,015-horsepower electric sedan
Jaguar revealed the Type 01 in New York on Tuesday evening. It is the first model of a rebuilt lineup and the first electric car in the marque's history, and it reaches the United States around the middle of 2027 at a starting price in the $120,000 to $130,000 range. 12
Three electric motors — one driving the front axle, two the rear — make a combined 1,015 horsepower and 1,007 pound-feet of torque, enough for Jaguar to estimate a 0-60 mph run of 3.1 seconds. That makes the Type 01 the most powerful road car the company has built. 1
A 118-kilowatt-hour battery sits under the floor, and the pack is split so the car can charge on either a 400-volt or an 800-volt connection. Jaguar says a 350-kilowatt DC fast charger takes the battery from 10 to 80 percent in about 22 minutes, or adds 200 miles in roughly 13 minutes. The company estimates 400 miles of range, and about 320 miles of steady 75-mph highway driving. 1
There is no rear window at all; cameras replace it, with a small conventional mirror kept at the top of the windshield because U.S. rules require a reflective surface. Inside, a 24.0-inch OLED screen serves the driver and a 7.0-inch portrait screen in each row handles climate and seat settings, all running on an Nvidia-based architecture that accepts over-the-air updates. Design held the reins nearly everywhere else: the door openings are small, and the rear compartment is cramped enough that Road & Track describes it as closer to a four-door 2+2 than a sedan. 12
Porsche keeps the 911 petrol and bets on exclusivity instead of volume
Porsche announced a multi-year plan in Stuttgart that its executives call Sportwagenschmiede '35 — roughly, "sports car craftsmanship." The company has to fix its finances first: profit fell from the equivalent of $5.9 billion in 2024 to $101 million for 2025, after heavy spending on electric vehicles that the market did not buy in the numbers Porsche expected. 3
The plan keeps petrol in the lineup. The 718 Boxster and Cayman will return in 2027 as electric cars only, Porsche's entry-level sports car, with U.S. sales expected late next year; a plan for gasoline versions of the 718 was scrapped. A new gas-powered Macan arrives in 2028, developed with Audi and offered in pure-combustion and plug-in hybrid forms alongside the electric Macan. Porsche aims for two gas or hybrid models for every electric one, and CEO Michael Leiters said plainly that "the 911 will never be electric." 3
The growth is meant to come from cars priced far above the current range. Porsche will raise its stake in Manthey Racing to 67 percent and let it build limited-run road and track cars; it wants Sonderwunsch commissions to grow sixfold, with 15 one-off projects now underway priced between the equivalent of $1.8 million and $15 million. Porsche already restores and recommissions Carrera GTs, with 11 finished and 37 more planned. A mid-engined supercar architecture would underpin a model line positioned above the 911, previewed by a concept called Mission S on October 15. 3
Two seals are all it takes to fix an oil leak on some new Corvettes
GM has issued a service bulletin, PIP6132, covering every 2027 Corvette equipped with the new 6.7-liter LS6 V-8. Some of those engines can leak where the oil pan meets the oil-cooler adapter, and with the engine running, owners or technicians may see bubbling around the adapter's front or rear mounting points. 4
The LS6 is the headline engine of the 2027 car, making 535 horsepower and 520 pound-feet in the Stingray, Grand Sport and Grand Sport X. The fix is small: technicians replace two high-pressure port seals between the oil pan and the adapter, and GM stresses that the four adapter bolts must be tightened evenly and in sequence to keep the leak from coming back. This is a service bulletin rather than a recall, which means GM is notifying dealers, not owners. Any owner who finds oil under a new Corvette should take it to a Chevrolet dealer. The car starts at $73,795. 4
Ford recalls 41,748 SUVs and trucks over their headlights
Ford is recalling 41,748 vehicles because a contaminant under an LED chip in the headlight assembly can make the lights fail to meet federal safety standards, according to the paperwork the company filed with NHTSA. The recall covers the 2025–2027 Expedition SUV and 2026 models of the Super Duty line: the F-250, F-350, F-450 and F-550. 5
The contamination came from the chip supplier's factory, and Ford expects only about 1 percent of the recalled vehicles to have the faulty part. Affected drivers may find their daytime running lights, parking lights, low beams or high beams dimmed or dead; a dashboard indicator warns of reduced low- and high-beam performance. Dealers will inspect both headlights and replace a failing unit at no charge. Ford mails dealer notices on October 26 and owner letters on November 6, and owners can check the NHTSA recall lookup from October 26. 5
Trackside and community
Verstappen wins at Sepang after a software bug strands the grid
Max Verstappen won the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on October 4, the race this season's calendar puts at Sepang International Circuit, by 2.307 seconds over Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton finished third for Ferrari, Charles Leclerc fourth, and Isack Hadjar fifth. The winning time was 1:47:14.808 over 55 laps. 6
The race started badly. A first attempt to start was aborted, delaying the field 40 minutes and then red-flagging the session for another 53, because cars had gone into a power-unit "sleep mode" all around the circuit on a soaking formation lap. The fault was in the wet-weather mode of the standard software every team uses, which trims electrical power from 350 kW to 250 kW in some track sectors. The mode had never run in a race weekend this year, and at very low formation-lap speeds it tripped a bug that cut power for about 60 seconds at a time. The FIA's software engineers wrote a fix and pushed it to all teams in roughly 20 minutes. 715
Verstappen had taken pole the day before, the first of the season that did not go to a Mercedes-powered car, and the first for a Ford-badged entry since Rubens Barrichello's Stewart-Ford in France in 1999. The win delivered what Road & Track had flagged as Ford's first Formula 1 victory since 2003. 16 The race itself turned on tires: Verstappen lost the lead at the start, took intermediates on the restart while the Ferraris stayed on slicks, and took the lead back two laps later. George Russell ran second until his power unit failed with seven laps left, which cost him 18 points instead of the three he would have lost to Antonelli. Antonelli now leads Russell by 84 points; even three straight wins for Russell with Antonelli scoring nothing would leave the Italian nine points clear. Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso took eighth for the team's best result of the season. 67
Briscoe holds off Larson at Las Vegas and climbs the standings
Chase Briscoe won the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on October 4, sweeping both stages and leading the most laps for his first win of this year's post-season. The win was worth 75 points and moved him from ninth to sixth in the standings, four points behind Ryan Blaney. 8
The result repeated a scene from a week earlier at Kansas, when Briscoe led late and lost the race to Kyle Larson. This time Briscoe held him off over the final 12 laps. Larson, the points leader, had lost a lap in a disastrous first stage after a long pit stop to work on his right front, then drove back to the front; his second place stretched his lead over Denny Hamlin to 40 points. Hamlin spun on his own while running fourth and had another poor day. On the final lap Larson got loose in Turn 4, hit the wall and collected his teammate Tyler Reddick, who spun through the grass and still crossed the line third. 8
Porsche Penske wins Petit Le Mans outright for the first time
Laurens Vanthoor held on to give Team Penske its first overall win at the Motul Petit Le Mans on October 3 and Porsche its first top-class victory at Road Atlanta since 1987. The No. 6 Porsche Penske 963 beat the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8, with Sheldon van der Linde driving at the end, by 1.205 seconds. 9
The ten-hour season finale ran in volatile weather, starting wet, returning to rain in the fifth hour and then being red-flagged for lightning nearby. Only six GTP cars finished on the lead lap. The No. 6 car ran off course shortly after its final pit stop with under 50 minutes to go and looked to have thrown the race away, then held the BMW off in a ten-minute sprint to the flag after Earl Bamber crashed the championship-clinching No. 31 Whelen Cadillac with less than 19 minutes left. The No. 31 crew of Bamber and Jack Aitken had already clinched the GTP title by starting the race. A Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac finished third. 917
Evans takes the WRC title as Solberg slides off at the last corner
Elfyn Evans won his first World Rally Championship title on October 4 at Rally Italia Sardegna, and he won it without winning the rally. Oliver Solberg, who had closed a 21-point gap and led the rally by 57.6 seconds over Sébastien Ogier, was 1.9 seconds up on Evans going into the final 7.10-kilometer Sassari-Argentiera stage and two corners from the championship when his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 slid off a small berm. Solberg recovered and rejoined, but he finished 9.8 seconds behind Evans's stage time of 4:59.8, handing the title to the Welsh driver and his co-driver Scott Martin. Evans finished fifth in the rally. 10
Evans had to get to that final stage first. A front-right puncture in the Osilo-Tergu test, the fourth stage of the rally, put him on the back foot for the rest of the weekend. "I was quite sure that it was over," Evans said after the finish. "I didn't drive the best stage. I threw everything at it, but it wasn't clean." Solberg's father, the 2003 champion Petter Solberg, wrote on X that taking the fight to the final stage of the final rally in his son's first full season was "truly a champions' drive." 10
Explainer: why American headlights stop short of Europe's
NHTSA announced on October 6 that it will rewrite Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108, the rule that governs every lamp on a new vehicle sold in the United States. The agency lists five areas: headlight glare, lighting technology such as LEDs and automatic high beams, how headlamp height and aim affect what a driver can see, testing and materials for plastic optics, and alignment with international lighting standards. For the first time in more than 25 years, NHTSA is using negotiated rulemaking to do it. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will appoint up to 18 stakeholders, and comments and membership nominations close November 9. 11
The technology people keep asking about is the adaptive driving beam, or ADB. In the federal rule's own words, an adaptive driving beam is "a long-range light beam for forward visibility that automatically modifies portions of the projected light to reduce glare to traffic participants on an ongoing, dynamic basis." In practice, the system watches for oncoming and leading vehicles with a camera, then dims or blanks only the slice of the beam that would fall on them, leaving the rest of the road lit at high-beam intensity. The driver keeps high-beam reach without blinding anyone. 18
NHTSA already tried this. A 2022 amendment to FMVSS 108 was written to permit adaptive driving beams, but instead of adopting the international standard the agency built its own requirements inside the old framework, and almost nothing changed. Among the sticking points was a one-degree transition zone: the U.S. rule limits how wide the fade can be between the bright and dimmed parts of the beam. Manufacturers that petitioned the agency said the overwhelming majority of systems already sold elsewhere use transition zones of about four degrees, or shift and overlap light segments, and would therefore fail the American test. NHTSA denied manufacturers' requests to loosen that requirement in December 2024, and only Rivian and Tesla have gone to the trouble of engineering headlights built specifically to the U.S. rules. 1219
Glare is the other half of the problem, and it is the half owners notice. A recent AAA study found that six in 10 American drivers call headlight glare a serious issue, and a 2025 British study found 96 percent of drivers think most or some headlights are too bright. Better technology can mask part of that, but NHTSA's administrator, Jonathan Morrison, framed the announcement around what the current rules forbid: "Today's standards do not allow automakers to deploy the latest safety-improving lighting technologies." The agency has not said when new rules will arrive. 1112
Collector corner
Michael Jordan's 550 Maranello brings $2.7 million
The auction house Joopiter, founded by Pharrell Williams, sold a 1997 Ferrari 550 Maranello that Michael Jordan bought new, and it brought $2.7 million on September 30 against an estimate of $700,000 to $1,300,000. Clean 550 Maranellos trade for $200,000 to $300,000, so the price reflects roughly ten times what a typical example costs. 13
The car's history is the reason. Jordan took delivery in late May 1997 through Foreign Cars Italia in North Carolina and kept it until 2002, covering about 6,400 miles, much of it on the drive to and from Chicago Bulls games and practices with the Illinois plate "MJ 5." It is chassis 108712, one of 3,083 built, and the shoe designer Tinker Hatfield worked its shape into the Air Jordan XIV. After Jordan sold it, the car went to a California owner and did not surface publicly for 24 years. The dealer Curated found it after a decade of searching, reconstructing the VIN from an incomplete chassis number that had been posted on an internet forum, and staged the photographs at Jordan's mansion. The "Last Dance" jersey sold in the same auction for $12,260,000. 13
The human-interest coda
The Lexus that Street Fighter players destroyed a million times is now a real car
In Street Fighter II, the bonus stage gave you 40 seconds to wreck a Lexus LS400 parked in a garage, and the more gratuitously you did it, the higher you scored. The General, an insurance company, and the builder Dennis McCarthy's Vehicle Effects have now built that car for real. It was revealed at ComplexCon in Los Angeles ahead of a Street Fighter film release. 14
The recreation goes past the wrap. The grille surround protrudes from the nose in blocks, the mirrors and door handles are shaped the same way, and pixelated covers appear to hide working headlights and turn signals underneath. The interior was reupholstered with patterns embroidered into the headrests reading "YOU" and "WIN," and the centre console carries a coin-slot change holder that doubles as a seat warmer. The car is being given away with a cash prize of $25,400.69 — and the giveaway winner should expect the obvious, because the movie's cast started hitting the car almost immediately at the reveal. 14
References
- 12028 Jaguar Type 01 Revealed as the Historic Brand's First EV
caranddriver.com
- 2Jaguar Type 01: 1015 HP, Wild Looks, and a Big Price Tag
roadandtrack.com
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12NHTSA Says It's Finally Modernizing Headlight Standards
roadandtrack.com
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17Aitken Clinches GTP Championship with Petit Start
roadandtrack.com
- 18
- 19
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.