Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Car and Driver

Domestic dogs’ brains are hard-wired to bond with their owners. Levels of the feel-good hormone oxytocin rise in both human and pooch when maintaining eye contact. ALABAMA, THIS AUTHOR’S HUSKY, will jump into a truck bed before the tailgate is even down. Another staffer’s Newfie dances around as if her paws were in a frying pan and runs in circles when she hears the word “ride.” Only dogs seem to love cars as much as humans. There’s little (or no) science investigating why, so we invited the experts to speculate. Dogs experience the world more through scent than sight. Where a human’s nose has up to 5 million olfactory receptors, a dog’s can have up to 300 million. No wonder they like to stick their snoots out the window and…

CHEVROLET MALIBULT PRICE > $27,940 POWER > 163 hp TORQUE > 184 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3159 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 23 TOYOTA CAMRY SE PRICE > $27,075 POWER > 178 hp TORQUE > 170 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3297 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 23 MAZDA 6 i TOURING PRICE > $26,130 POWER > 184 hp TORQUE > 185 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3227 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 25 HONDA ACCORD SPORT PRICE > $26,900 POWER > 189 hp TORQUE > 182 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3356 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 23 LET’S START THE PROCEEDINGS WITH A COUPLE OF TOASTS . First, here’s to the ancient Chumash Indians, the name of whose little creekside California hamlet of Humaliwo got boiled down by the tongues of the conquering Spanish into…

THE RIPE, GOLDEN APRICOT fit perfectly in my palm. “That’s the future of the automobile in your hand,” says Nygârd Lünd. “Didn’t think it would feel fuzzy, did you?” Not any more than the bro hug I just got from this billionaire in the midst of a tour of his backyard orchard. But that’s where I found myself the target of a spontaneous embrace, the fruit still in my hand. Lünd, the six-foot-eight 47-year-old currently grabbing me, wants to reinvent the world, which predictably enough starts with completely reinventing the car. “Have you ever seen one of those science-fair demos where some kid powers an electric clock with a watermelon or whatever?” Lünd asks. “Well, we’ve taken that idea and magnified it.” I first spotted him six months ago; before…

HIGHLIGHTS MOST EXPENSIVE Porsche 918 Spyder $875,175 LEAST EXPENSIVE Chevrolet Spark $15,895 HIGHEST TOP SPEED Porsche 918 Spyder 214 mph* LOWEST TOP SPEED Smart Fortwo ED Cabriolet 78 mph QUICKEST 0–60 MPH Porsche 918 Spyder 2.2 sec SLOWEST 0–60 MPH Ram ProMaster 1500 13.4 sec QUICKEST 1/4-MILE Porsche 918 Spyder 9.8 sec SLOWEST 1/4-MILE Ram ProMaster 1500 19.7 sec SHORTEST STOPPING DISTANCE Chevrolet Corvette Z06 128 feet LONGEST STOPPING DISTANCE GMC Sierra 2500HD Denali 4x4 217 feet MOST GRIP Chevrolet Corvette Z06 1.19 g LEAST GRIP Mercedes-AMG G65 0.58 g BEST FUEL ECONOMY BMW i3 137/111 city/hwy MPGe WORST FUEL ECONOMY Mercedes-AMG G65 11/13 city/hwy mpg ACCELERATION: Elapsed times from zero to 60 mph and through a quarter-mile distance. Tests are run in two directions and corrected to standard atmospheric…

“ALWAYS GET THE BIG ENGINE” your grandpa used to say, typically while unwrapping a Werther’s Original candy and shouting at The Price is Right as it gave away yet another economy model. But in these days of 300-hp four-bangers, is there still value in choosing the bigger engine? ¶ Certainly the answer depends on the car and the carmaker. And so we busied ourselves with the infographic adjacent, an overview of which automaker’s optional horsepower is the cheapest. ¶ We began by compiling the prices and outputs of a selection of available performance vehicles. In the interest of simplifying what is still not a simple data set, we counted only trim levels and optional engines, ignoring performance-enhancing exhausts and other stand-alone power bumps. Then we minimized redundancies whenever two or…

If the CT6 were truly Cadillac’s new flagship, it might well fly a banner of surrender. Because by any reasonable accounting, the CT6 is not a direct competitor to the big German luxury barges. But that’s okay. Like the first two generations of CTS sedans, the CT6 is something of an in-betweener, bigger than the mid-size class but less replete than the luxury full-sizers. It covers roughly the same dimensions as the short-wheelbase 7-series that BMW doesn’t sell here. But for just $54,490—about what you’d pay for another BMW, a nicely appointed 3-series—you can get into a base CT6 with a 265-hp turbo 2.0-liter, as Cadillac tries to manage the high-wire act of balancing sales volume with prestige. A sharper sword in the form of a twin-turbo V-8 has been…

The stretch of Florida State Road A1A that island-hops from Miami to Key West is flat and straight, the speed limit almost never exceeding 45 mph. Passing zones are rare; A1A is a lousy place to evaluate a car. But if you’re Buick and you want to conscript a bunch of unwitting writers into a guerrilla marketing campaign for your new convertible, the A1A is a savvy place to stage a group drive. Florida is, not surprisingly, one of the biggest convertible markets in the U.S. (the others being California, New Jersey, New York, and Texas). Buick is big in the Midwest and China and that’s about it. Company executives readily admit that the Cascada is as much about garnering attention and getting people into showrooms as it is about…

TESTED + Quick reflexes, slamming power, glorious heritage. - Slop-bucket build quality, punitive ride, throwback technology. The Lancer Evolution Final Edition is a compact sedan that costs nearly $40,000 and has no navigation system or backup camera. The sole USB port is hidden in the glove compartment as an afterthought. Most of the plastic panels look as if they were blow-molded by an asthmatic, the switchgear actively discourages switching, and leaving a bowling ball loose in the trunk will complete the structure’s imitation of a spray-paint rattle can. There’s a lot to loathe about this, the last Evo that’s ever likely to be. And then there’s so much to love. The turbocharged 2.0-liter four is rated at 303 horsepower, delivers colossal mid-range torque, and sounds as if it’s consuming a…

IT’S THE RARE auto executive who is content with sales figures. But Duncan Aldred, the head of Buick and GMC, seems comfortable, if not complacent. Buick set its third straight global record in 2015, with more than 1.2 million sales. It plans to launch seven new products by 2018, with the compact Envision crossover and Cascada convertible set to go on sale imminently [see page 085 for our Cascada first drive]. “People forget,” Aldred says, “that we outsell Audi in the U.S. We outsell Infiniti and Acura. We outsell Lincoln.” Indeed, Buick beat Cadillac by nearly 50,000 sales last year. It’s the fourthbestselling premium brand in the U.S. (You might not consider Buick a premium brand, but GM’s accountants most certainly do.) And Buick achieved that mark with just five…

POP QUIZ: The yellow diamond-shaped sign on the side of the road says you should take the upcoming curve at 35 mph. At what speed can you actually travel through the bend? 45 mph? 55? Can you double it? Depends on the car, right? It’s no surprise that the suggested speeds through curves fall well below what the average BMW can manage. Traffic engineers design for trucks, inclement road conditions, inept drivers, and ambulance-chasing lawyers, not P Zero–shod sports coupes. But it also depends on the curve, and how reasonable that suggested speed actually is. We looked into how recommended cornering speeds are set, and we found a mishmash of malleable procedures that are inconsistently applied. That’s why a 45-mph curve in Happyland, Oklahoma, often looks nothing like a 45-mph…

Albert Hammond sang it best: “It never rains in California, but girl, don’t they warn ya; it pours, man, it pours.” A winter storm is pounding Southern California, and wouldn’t you know it? Its arrival perfectly coincides with our week with the new BMW M2. What luck. It pours, man, it pours. To beat the storm, we’re headed east in the hope that the Sierra Nevada’s prodigious rain shadow will keep us dry. Three hours northeast of Los Angeles is Olancha, a tiny settlement with a population of 192. We pull into an abandoned diner to consider our options. It’s still raining out here, but the forecast is dry for Day Two of M2, so we make plans to settle in nearby Ridgecrest for the night. Olancha sits at the…

Jaguar Land Rover’s test facility near Arjeplog in northern Sweden is only 35 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and in the winter, every surface of this place is covered in either snow or ice. Or, in the case of the 300-foot-diameter circle on the frozen lake around which we’re drifting a prototype F-Pace, a combination of both. Although it’s barely past noon, the sun hangs just above the horizon and is about to disappear, and the outside temperature is a bracing –22 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet this supercharged V-6 F-Pace seems entirely happy to slide around indefinitely, the cabin staying warm and the well-mannered chassis politely declining every invitation to spin out. This despite the provocation of a pinnedopen throttle and the deactivation of every dynamic aid. It’s a memorable…

Even in a world with no shortage of ridiculousness, the Mercedes-AMG G65, a three-ton military vehicle crammed to overflowing with a 621-hp V-12 and quilted leather, stands tall as an exemplar of absurdity. Give Mercedes its due for this accomplishment. What other entity could muster the resolve to produce a consumer product quite so insane? If Chrysler decided to cram a Hellcat V-8 into the nose of a Wrangler, well, that might come close. But even Chrysler, which once produced the Plymouth Prowler, isn’t quite that nuts. The other car companies aren’t even in the game. In fact, the G65’s only real competition for the title of “Most Absurd of All the Vehicles” are other versions of the G-class. G63 AMG 6x6, anyone? Bizarre as this stick-axle, flat-windshield nuclear brick…