Auto Express just posted a couple of new shots of Lotus’ new Eagle, and the pictures kind of have me scratching my head. Just what’s hiding underneath all the super square—literally and figuratively—body cladding? I imagine there will some family resemblance with the Elise, but since the Eagle will be a two-plus-two, it will have to be a little longer. As with the Elise, power will come from a Toyota-sourced motor, but this one will have two extra cylinders and a displacement of 3.5 liters. I can’t wait to see it in production trim. Four more pics after the jump.

This is why people have nightmares about putting their cars on the dyno. Yes, the stall at the beginning does portend bad things—but the outcome is way worse than I predicted. I figured this situation would end up something like  the one with this wicked Skyline did, but like I’ve been so many times before, I was wrong. One other thing: the guy who says "all right" at the end of the video? He’s a trooper. When it hits the fan, having someone who keeps their head on straight is important.   

via Winding Road

I’m so glad that people are still using these cars for hardcore off-road use. But considering their durability, I guess it’s not all that surprising. Can you imagine a modern "crossover" standing up to this kind of abuse?

Lotus hit it out of the park with the Elise and the Exige, so expectations for its new supercar—codenamed "Eagle"—are high. According to Auto Express, power will come from a BMW-sourced twin-turbo V8, so this baby should have no problems with motivation. The official release won’t come until the British Motor Show in July, but hopefully we’ll get some more pics before then. Get all the details over at Auto Express.

Am I the only one who thinks the Monday after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday? Think about it: to enjoy the game, most people need to ingest a significant amount of alcohol, and not watching is just un-American. I know I’m not alone here. Anyway, here’s the news:

• The more the merrier? Recent years have found Lotus only making tiny two-seaters, but the company’s next product, the Eagle, will have room for four. You can’t see much in this photo, but overall, the car looks pretty hot. Auto Express News
• Does Wal-Mart want to be a player in the green car market? As strange as it sounds, the answer might be yes. How long before people are driving Sam’s Club cars? Fresh Plaza
• Buick released pricing for the Lucerne Super today. The announcement kicks off an aggressive  campaign which will target nursing homes, Old Country Buffets and Turner Classic Movies fans. AutoBlog
• Talk about impaired judgment! In the Land Down Under, a drunk was recently arrested for doing burnouts in a police parking lot. Top Gear 

The welcoming of a new car into one’s life tends to be a pretty awesome and special event, so I was extremely stoked this weekend to help my friend Neil become CarDomain’s newest AMC Eagle owner! Yesterday we drove down to McChord AFB to check out this super-tough ’81 Eagle Sport wagon. It had the incurably leaking AMC plastic valve cover, the wiring was on the fritz, the differential was howling from a lack of gear oil, and an ominous billow of white steam from tailpipe suggested a blown head gasket. The front rotors were grooved, one of the rear brakes was dragging like crazy, and at least one of the wheel bearings was garbage. Nonetheless, Neil put down his cash and bought the car on the spot. Even I, who drove my own Eagle home from Pennsylvania out of a field the day I bought it, thought he was crazy for wanting to limp this car home (4 hours away). But the voyage back was unexpectedly tranquil, except when I had to frantically high-beam him to the shoulder when that draggy rear brake started trying to catch fire at 55 mph. Yep, this car is clearly another rescue project, but I get the feeling that Neil’s up to the task, and that this hard-miles Eagle is finally going to get a chance to be treated right. See more views of the Eagle on Neil’s new ride page!

And what about you? What did you do this weekend?

Because driving in Seattle is for the most part basically indistinguishable from driving underwater, I made a couple of bad-weather visibility upgrades to my Eagle, installing a pair of Blazer fog lights and a pair of heavy-duty Rainex Latitude blades. The end result is kind of hoopty (the lamps were very, very cheap), but hey, that’s how I roll. The important thing is that the Eagle now lights up the night, and the fact that I’m dying to test my new wiper blades pretty much guarantees that it won’t rain all week!

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

In the course of some drunken New Year’s Eve conversation, I somehow managed to convince a buddy of mine that he needed to get an AMC Eagle. This weekend, I got my payback: I had to go help him look at one he’s thinking of buying, and boy was it ever a depressing mess. Note to self: don’t ever let a 25-year-old sunroof-equipped car sit outside for extended periods in a rain forest. The upholstery was alive with fuzzy grey mould, the wiring was shot, and the outside didn’t look much better. This little SX/4, with only 3000-odd miles on a rebuilt engine, deserves better than this, and the current owner does not deserve 1200 bucks for ruining it.

How about you? What did you do this weekend?

I remember once during a surfing trip, hundreds of miles from home, sleeping in my Eagle near the beach, I was woken up by a North Carolina state trooper who claimed that my New York plates were "expired" and demanded to know if my sister and I were "runaways." The DMV never makes mistakes, right? Turned out an error in their computer system was responsible for my supposed expiration. If I’d been in the UK instead of NC, a glitch like this might’ve gotten my Eagle crushed, under a program instituted last year that involves the seizure and disposal of vehicles belonging to supposedly dirtball drivers. As the Manchester Evening News reported back in September, the vaguely-defined targets of the crushing rampage seem to include anyone with unpaid traffic violations, anyone without their insurance documents in order, and anyone with a criminal background. A vehicle deemed "unroadworthy" can be hauled away as well. Sounds nice and hazy, doesn’t it? It’s probably safe to assume that many innocent cars have gone to the crusher already—cops in Manchester alone have destroyed over 10,000 vehicles since the law went into effect in January ’06. And we thought California’s street-racing crush campaign was scary! Via The Truth About Cars.

At the beginning of the 80′s, AMC was in trouble. In a last-ditch effort to boost flagging sales, the company decided to retool its tried-and-true Concord body by dropping in a modified Jeep drivetrain and beefing up the suspension. The oddball offspring of this experiment ended up being one of the most innovative cars of its time: the AMC Eagle was the only true full-time 4WD passenger car on market—its ability to run in 4-wheel mode indefinitely on any surface was what set it ahead of the part-time 4WD’s offered at the time by various import makes. Love it or hate it, the Eagle was far ahead of its time, and set the precedent for the trendy "crossover" vehicles that would start cropping up nearly twenty years later. Eagles are burly survivors, and a lot of owners on CarDomain use them for off-roading even to this day: Mike’s page documents the transformation of his Eagle from drab grocery-getter to four-wheelin’ battle wagon, and Dubs is in the process of swapping an AMC 360 into his wagon and fitting it with a custom jacked-up suspension. For extreme wheelin’, the shorter-wheelbase Eagle sedan and SX/4 hatchback are even better choices because they don’t easily get hung up in the dips: get a load of Ethan’s unstoppable SX/4 in both snow and desert in Utah. Shawn’s SX/4 is kept a bit milder for daily driving, though that screaming green paint is a nice touch. While Chris’s rust-free SX/4 is an amazing mostly-original survivor, the cleanest Eagle on the site is probably Aaron’s wagon, looking pretty bling with its 17" Ford Explorer rims.