When starting off in the Z9GT, the first thing you notice are its electric doors. All four open and close at the touch of a button, and then the driver’s seat slides back to ease access – all of which adds a bit of flamboyance to the start-up process. 

Being an EV, the Z9GT sets off in a smooth, silent manner and at low speeds all the controls feel well calibrated – in particular the steering. At 5.2 metres long and two metres wide, the Z9GT might not seem the best fit for urban areas, but there’s rear-wheel steering here up to 8.5 degrees, and this gives the big Denza a supermini-like turning circle. 

The Z9GT can also perform pivot turning, where the front wheels lock in place and the rears turn and steer, for occasions when incredibly tight manoeuvres are needed. There’s also a ‘crab-walk’ function, where the car will drive diagonally up to 8.5 degrees. We experienced these from behind the wheel and the Denza completed the manoeuvres as quickly as we could do them ourselves.

There’s also a self-parking feature that can be activated  through the car or even an app on your phone – although if you have to use all those features regularly, you might want to reconsider if a huge shooting brake is the right car for you.  

Around town, the Z9GT doesn’t feel particularly unwieldy, although our car came with the optional digital wing mirrors, which work just about as well as any others we’ve tried, but still take time to get used to. Due to the swoopy shape of the Z9GT’s back end, visibility is poor through the rear view mirror. However you can flick the screen to the digital wing mirror, although unlike the one used in the Polestar 4, there’s no scope to pan across when indicating or adjustability of any sort. 

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The Brabus Bodo coupe was officially revealed Friday, and it’s just as epic as the leaked photos on Reddit suggested. Its hood and rear deck look like they were shaped by a taffy puller, making the Bodo as close to a production version of the Maybach Exelero as we’re likely to get.

With the full reveal comes the full story. The Bodo is named after Brabus’ late founder Bodo Buschmann, and is the brainchild of Buschmann’s son Constantin, who runs the company today. It’s the one car his father wanted to build but never got the chance to, Constantin said in a press release, so it’s getting built now ahead of Brabus’ 50th anniversary next year. Production will be limited to 77 cars in reference to the company’s 1977 founding year.

The senior Buschmann apparently had a thing for cartoonish proportions. At 16.6 feet long and 6.6 feet wide, the Bodo has nearly the same footprint as a Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class. But it stands just 4.2 feet tall, with that extra-long hood and teardrop tail framing the passenger compartment. In typical Brabus black, with its menacing vertical-bar grille and scowling headlights, it looks like something a supervillain would drive.

The performance should be downright evil too. The Bodo is powered by a Brabus-built, twin-turbocharged, 5.2-liter V12 that produces 1,000 horsepower and 885 pound-feet of torque. All of that power is sent to the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission, hurling the 3,911-pound Bodo to 62 mph from a standstill in 3.0 seconds, Brabus claims. The top speed is electronically limited to 223 mph, probably because the Continental SportContact 7 Force tires Brabus had custom made for the car are only rated up to 230 mph.

Those tires—size 275/35 ZR 21 at the front and 325/30 ZR 21 at the back—are mounted to forged monoblock wheels chosen for minimum weight. Also helping to keep weight in check is carbon-fiber bodywork, draped over an aluminum monocoque chassis. The release doesn’t say outright, but the above mentioned leaked photos indicate the Bodo chassis comes from a Mercedes-AMG SL. The interior certainly looks very Mercedes, although Brabus supplies its own black leather upholstery.

If you can see past that long hood, a claimed 50.2/49.8 front-rear weight distribution should aid handling. Stopping power is provided by carbon-ceramic brakes with 16.1-inch front and 14.1-inch rear rotors, while the suspension features electronically controlled KW coilovers with multiple driver-selectable settings. Four drive modes—including Wet, GT, Sport, and Sport+—affecting the engine’s response are also available.

All of this makes the Bodo a fitting tribute. The only question is, who wore the long-hood look better: this car, or Mercedes’ own Vision Iconic concept?

Mercedes-Benz has revealed the interior of the upcoming AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, and as expected, there are a lot of screens.

According to Mercedes, the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe offers a sporty driving position with a low-set seat and a driver-oriented cockpit. As you can see, the 14-inch central touchscreen is angled towards the driver. There’s an additional screen on the passenger side.

On the driver’s side, you have a typical AMG 3-spoke steering wheel and a 10.2-inch digital instrument cluster. The thick centre console houses a couple of wireless charging pads and cup holders, and three rotary switches: Response Control, Agility Control and Traction Control.

The AMG GT 4-Door Coupe comes with AMG Performance seats with integrated headrests. There’s a stylish quilted pattern on the door pads and carbon fibre trim all around. Another highlight of the interior is the electrochromic panoramic sunroof.

The Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe is expected to be derived from the GT XX Concept. The latter had a 1322 hp tri-motor setup and an estimated top speed of 223 mph. The exact technical details of the production version are unknown.

Source: Mercedes-Benz

Launching a new model name costs many millions of dollars, which is why automakers often bring back old names or radically alter the vehicles sold under an existing name.

That explains why Toyota’s new two-seat sport coupe is called Supra, reviving a name last used in 1998.

The new 2020 Toyota Supra has an inline-6 engine, just like the old one, though the new car doesn’t have even a vestigial rear seat.

Launched Monday at the 2019 North American International Auto Show, the 2020 Supra was inspired by the FT-1 concept developed by Toyota’s advanced design studio in California. It goes on sale in the summer and costs $50,920 for base models, or $56,180 for a launch edition coupe.

NEXT: Read our 2020 Toyota Supra preview

The styling is a mix of Toyota’s latest design language and a few cues from the Supras of the previous century, including the long-hood, short-deck proportions that indicate a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive sports car.

Its 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-6 is rated at 335 horsepower and 365 pound-feet of torque. It powers the rear wheels through an 8-speed automatic transmission and an active rear differential.

Toyota quotes a 0-to-60-mph acceleration time of 4.1 seconds, just a hair slower than the 3.9 seconds quoted for the larger LC F Track Edition performance coupe it also launched at the Detroit show.

The new Supra marks Toyota’s return to the specialized world of two-seat coupes, a category now occupied only by Toyota’s own 86 coupe and its Subaru BRZ twin and the very rare Jaguar F-Type coupe.

Above that, two-seat sports models are much pricier mid-engine cars from prestige brands like Porsche and Acura.

That means annual sales of the new Supra seem likely to number in the thousands rather than the tens of thousands, making it a very specialized vehicle indeed within Toyota’s high-volume lineup.

The secret is that underneath, the 2020 Supra shares much of its underpinnings—as well as its assembly line in Austria—with the latest BMW Z4 two-seat convertible sports car.

There’s not likely to be a convertible Supra, Toyota executives said at a media preview Sunday night, nor does BMW seem likely to do a Z4 coupe, so the two cars each occupy distinct niches.

And the BMW bits underneath likely won’t matter to buyers seeking either another Supra to replace their aging original, or those eager to have a rare and sexy-looking sport coupe that’s more luxurious than the stripped-down Toyota 86.

The new 2020 Toyota Supra will go on sale this summer, with a pair of trim levels—3.0 and 3.0 Premium—as well as a Launch Edition with extra equipment on top of the Premium trim.

For more from the 2019 Detroit auto show, head over to our dedicated hub.

Toyota provided airfare, lodging, and meals to enable Internet Brands Automotive to cover its various announcements at the 2019 Detroit auto show.