Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i MotorTrend

Jaguar’s flagship XJ sedan will be replaced by an all-new car with an extravagant interior and high-tech powertrains that will include a V-6 plug-in hybrid. And word out of Coventry is that despite a concerted push from some members of the senior management team who wanted a conservative three-box sedan to compete with Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the car will feature even more dramatic exterior design than the current model. A concept will likely be shown in 2018 when Jaguar celebrates the 50th anniversary of the original XJ. Meanwhile, the avalanche of advance orders for the new F-Pace SUV have made it the best-selling Jaguar in history. Before anyone has even driven it…Next door at Land Rover, things aren’t looking good for the two-door Range Rover Evoque. With 85-plus percent of sales…

Convertibles used to be an afterthought to manufacturers. They’d chop off the roof, add extra bracing, and call it a day. Drop-tops have come a long way over the past three decades. This Chevrolet Camaro was built from the ground up for the day it’d lose its roof. Its platform is modular, allowing Chevy to maintain the coupe’s tremendous structural rigidity in cloth-top form with 11 different structural braces it applies to Camaro Convertibles based on specific powertrain requirements. The rest of the Camaro Convertible package is as thoughtfully done as the extra bracing is. The soft top is fully poweroperated, dropping in 16 seconds and popping up again in 17. The top works up to 30 mph, and hides behind a hard tonneau cover painted to match the body,…

Automotive escapism Please excuse me for writing to you from the confines of prison and disturbing your sanctity and serenity. Be that as it may, I come to you from a dark place emotionally and spiritually. See … I was once a happy and content Motor Trend lifer, way back when Truck Trend was new. Then it happened. I was led astray. Flimflammed. Bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Seduced by two scantily clad twins, whispering amorous, lusty thoughts into my ear. “You can do better than Motor Trend. She is only one. We come as a package. You’ll have two of us for what it takes for just her. Both Road & Track and Car and Driver. Ditch her and come with us,” they told me. I broke weak. I cheated. And as…

Nissan couldn’t have picked a more fitting name for the 2016 Nissan Titan XD, which shares more with the giant machines of American industry than possibly any other fullsize pickup truck on the market. A team of Nissan engineers set out to prove this, visiting some real-world work sites that were instrumental in not only the inspiration of the new Nissan Titan, but also the construction of it. *Available feature. ** TITAN XD 4x4 Platinum Reserve shown. Towing capability varies by configuration. See Nissan towing guide and owner’s manual for additional information.” 1 Cummins Inc. | Columbus, IN At our first stop, our Nissan engineer joins a counterpart from American Fortune 500 company Cummins, Inc., to discuss the evolution of their revolutionary diesels, and some of the innovations within the…

Once a mere niche for farmers and yuppies, the tall-riding hatchback body style known as the SUV now sells in greater numbers than the sedan. Appropriately, the SUV segment can now be divided into subsets: the midsize SUV, the performance SUV, the luxury SUV. The two machines on this page occupy the small space on the Venn diagram where the luxury SUV subset overlaps with supercar. The purple thing is the fastest truck ever, a 187-mph Germano-British beast that’ll hang with a Lamborghini Gallardo LP 560-4 through a quarter mile. The white one is even quicker, hitting 60 in near silence 0.2 second sooner than a Ferrari Enzo we tested in 2004. Yet both of these machines, when properly optioned, are capable of carrying seven passengers. They can both tow…

The trademark AMG sound is magnified, a glorious rumbling basso profundo. AMG street cars. The iron fist in the velvet glove. Raw, capable V-8 brawn delivered in luxury accoutrements. The Teutonic muscle car. With the GT3, AMG Customer Racing yanks the gloves and bares the knuckles. Top-level sports car racing has transformed with the emergence of FIA International GT racing. In the past, a sanctioning body created a set of rules, and teams created race cars within those rules. Now these productionbased racers come to life on automotive manufacturers’ assembly lines and are sold directly to private teams. These factory-built GT racers are now the modus operandi in North America in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and Pirelli World Challenge GT series. This new AMG GT3 is based on the…

Special runs like this are part of Aston Martin’s strategy going forward, as they’re a handy way to improve the bottom line. Fifty-five years ago, the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato was an expensive one-off collusion between the storied British and Italian car builders that failed to attract enough interest to complete the planned run of 25 cars. Late last year, one of the 19 built sold for $14.3 million at auction. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of their ultimately vindicated car in 2011, the two companies teamed up once again to build the Aston Martin V12 Zagato, of which all 150 were immediately sold. Five years later, they’ve returned to the well once again and produced the Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato Concept. Unveiled at the Concorso d’Eleganza Ville d’Este…

What does $8,150 buy you these days? A set of really nice patio furniture or perhaps an all-inclusive two-week vacation for you, the spouse, and the kids? If you’re a Ferrari California T customer, you can spend it on the HS package, better known as Handling Speciale. Visually, you get very little. The front grille and rear diffuser bits are covered in matte chrome, and the exhaust tips are darker. Mechanically, the springs are 16 percent stiffer in front, 19 percent stiffer in the rear. The magnetic dampers have been reprogrammed to provide a sportier ride, and Sport mode is also sportier. Perhaps most important, the California T HS comes with new exhaust “silencers,” as Ferrari calls them. Essentially big square resonators, one per side. They result in an exhaust…

The Model 3 will come standard with Autopilot hardware and safety tech. After the Lotus-built Roadster put Tesla in the minds of car enthusiasts and hearts of environmentalists, the Model S sedan, our 2013 Car of the Year, put the company on the map. The recently released Model X SUV, the world’s first electric seven-passenger SUV (and the quickest crossover we’ve ever tested), is important, too, but it’s the 2017 Tesla Model 3 that’ll make or break the company. Billed as the “affordable” Tesla, the $35,000—before any available federal or state incentives—Model 3 slots below the Model S in the lineup and is designed to make zero-emissions driving attainable and desirable for every driver. About 90 percent the size of a Model S, the Model 3 benefits from advances in…

Most Rolls-Royce motorcars serve as opulent cocoons, enveloping their very special occupants with window screens and wide D-pillars that prevent the rabble from gazing on the immaculately exfoliated visages hiding behind glamorous sunglasses in the back seat. But at the press of a button, this new, more social Roller invites both admiring stares and the sun’s skin-darkening rays. The new Dawn and its Wraith stablemate are attracting younger, more casual, laid-back, and socially connected filthy-rich folks. Perhaps to drive this point home, the Dawn made its public debut not at Pebble Beach, not at the Geneva Motor Show, but online. Last September. That hashtag didn’t show up as trending on your feed? Sorry. You’ve missed out on the fully sold-out 2016 model year. The body is also designed with proportions…

Bentley calls the Bentayga the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious, and most exclusive SUV in the world. That’s a big claim, and Bentley is correct except where “most powerful” is concerned; the brick-shaped Mercedes-AMG G65 makes 21 more horses. Regardless, the Bentayga is the quickest gasoline-burning SUV we’ve ever tested. It leaves some big names in its wake on its 3.5-second journey to 60 mph, including the Ferrari F12, Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, Porsche Carrera GT, and Dodge Charger Hellcat. We could go on. In the world of internal-combustion SUVs, only the BMW X5 M/X6 M twins and Mercedes-AMG GLE63 S Coupe manage to hit 60 mph in the three-second range (3.7 and 3.9 seconds if you’re wondering), but by the time a quarter mile has elapsed, the Bentley has left…

The auto industry’s first automotive styling/design department was founded in 1927 as the General Motors Art and Colour department by the iconic Harley Earl. Only five others have held GM’s vaunted position of vice president of design since then: Bill Mitchell (1958-1977), Irvin Rybicki (until 1986), Chuck Jordan (until 1992), Wayne Cherry (until 2003), and Ed Welburn. Welburn, GM Design’s third-longestserving VP, started his career at GM at 21 upon graduation from Howard University. He’d been gunning for his dream job since he wrote to the company as an 11-year-old asking what he needed to do to design cars for General Motors. The encouraging reply he received motivated both his education choices and his keen interest in mentoring and talent development at GM. He started in the Buick exterior studio…

In 1986, I worked as a quality engineer in Chrysler’s Sterling Heights assembly plant. I wasn’t terribly proud of the craftsmanship of the Shadows, Sundances, Lancers, and LeBaron GTS models we were spewing out in those days, but that experience served to pique my interest in learning about new technologies and processes engineered to improve the assembly efficiency and build quality of today’s cars and trucks. Most such innovations are aimed at plants that crank out a (now vastly better) car every minute. I was therefore especially intrigued by the innovations in place at two plants I visited that don’t even produce one car per hour: the Bentley Mulsanne line in Crewe, England, and the Acura NSX Performance Manufacturing Center in Marysville, Ohio. Each is geared to build roughly 2,000…

Made in China In the April 2016 issue, Edward Loh writes (“The Lohdown”) that he doesn’t understand why Americans are opposed to buying cars made in China when we are OK driving American trucks made in Mexico, German SUVs assembled in Alabama, and Japanese cars built in Indiana. The reason it matters is that China has a horrible record when it comes to human rights, the environment, and stealing our military and production secrets and methods. And as far as the other products Mr. Loh writes of that are made in China for American companies—clothes, shrimp, and phones—I avoid buying anything made in China regardless of the country of origin of the brand on the label, and I know many others who do the same. American-made does still matter to…

Trans Am Worldwide Trans Am What’s New: The Camaro’s stout performance and classic style sometimes spark nostalgia for its lamented Pontiac twin, so TAW has been reskinning gen-five Camaros as ’77-’78 Trans Ams, complete with screaming chickens, shaker hood scoops, and optional T-tops. Design work on an Alpha-platform Trans Am is well underway, and it will offer two styling options—1969 or the Bandit-era look. Each will offer SLP engine upgrades of the LT1 V-8 likely mirroring the stages of Roots-supercharged tune available on the old LS3 (550, 650, and 700-plus hp). What’s Not: The idea of Pontiac-ifying Camaros or Plymouth-izing Challengers, though TAW raises the production quality to much nearer original equipment manufacturer levels. When: Spring 2017 How Much: $71,000 Buick LaCrosse What’s New: The Buick LaCrosse has gotten longer,…

“You must-a respect-a the speed limit,” our twinkly-eyed former F1, Indy, and Le Mans racer group leader, Domenico Schiattarella, said before we hopped into our Maserati Levantes and barreled off toward FCA’s famed Balocco proving ground. “Follow me.” After we whipped through a dozen roundabouts like so many eggs, I found myself parked on the Autostrada del Sole at 110 miles per hour—“parked” because despite our triple-digit speed, the Levante felt solid as a rock. Then a BMW X5 M blew by us, and, well, Seniore Schiattarella wasn’t having it. He went tearing after Mr. BMW. I buried my right foot, and voilá, I was seeing greater than 168 miles per hour on the speedo. Perhaps disregard is a form of respect in Italy? Either way, that’s damn fast for…