Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2017 i Car and Driver

WITH THE DEBUT OF THE Q8 CONCEPT, Audi becomes the second lemming to chase BMW’s ungainly X6 coupe/ SUV over the edge of vehicular reason. Mercedes recently took the same plunge with the GLE and GLC coupes, and we’ve scratched bald spots into our heads mulling the logic of bulky SUVs with a lot of the useful space hacked out of them. Yet more keep appearing. Maybe it’s because they’re not hard to make. To generate the Q8, Audi will simply scalp the mainstream Q7 down to its running gear. The stylists handle the rest. EXTERIOR Exterior designer Andreas Mindt describes the Q8 concept as four door handles and a rear window wiper away from the actual production Q8 headed to showrooms next year. Next to its steroidal, hunchbacked peers…

NO AMERICAN ROAD-RACING TRACK resonates with as much history as Sebring. The Florida track’s first race, a six-hour enduro on a makeshift course marked with hay bales, happened on the last day of 1950. Less than two years later, the track hosted the first 12 Hours of Sebring, the race that undeniably made it famous. With one exception, the 12 Hours has run every year since, most often as part of whatever prevailing international sports-car championship was in place. Even when it wasn’t part of a series, though, Sebring attracted top-flight international teams that regarded its rugged pavement and hot weather as good durability testing for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Winners have ranged from Fangio to Foyt to Fittipaldi, Gendebien to Gurney to Gregg, Moss to McLaren to…

Beautiful lines and a beastly engine. Nose heavy, understeers, no manual option. THERE ARE NOW MORE LUXURY SPORTS COUPES on the market than at any time in recent memory. But only one offers 400 horses with a base price in the $50,000 range: Infiniti’s new Q60 Red Sport 400. As with the competition from Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz [see sidebar], Infiniti also offers a base model with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four. However, it’s the twinturbo 3.0-liter V-6 that raises the Q60’s red mist. A 300-hp tune is standard, but tack $3000 onto the sticker and Infiniti turns the boost up from 8.7 to 14.7 psi, delivering the extra ponies that put the Red Sport into that space between a standard offering and a dedicated performance variant like a…

ADMIT IT, you like watching a good face punching. We all do. Monster Energy thinks we like it as much as we like NASCAR. Monster is the new entitlement sponsor of NASCAR’s premier racing series, now known as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, and it’s bringing its own brand of entertainment to the races beginning this year. That includes the possibility of freestyle motocross, gymkhana, off-road demos, and yes, even mixed martial arts fights in the pre-race show. “We built our brand on doing things people think are cool,” says Mitch Covington, Monster Energy’s vice president of sports marketing. “That won’t change here.” Americans, evidently, think caged combat is as cool as a three-car-wide, 200-mph territorial dispute. And because Monster brings with it MMA athletes such as Conor McGregor…

Handsome quasi-ute styling, spacious and straightforward interior, 50-mpg rating. Still slow, defaults to sluggish eco mode, your mileage may vary. SAY “KIA NIRO” three times quickly and it can sound like “Canyonero,” that fantastically flawed 35-seat sport-utility vehicle from The Simpsons, a vehicular ode to glorious excess gone awry. The new Niro is essentially the polar opposite of that—a lean, frugal wagonoid, albeit with a twist of the upright and rugged. From across the parking lot, the Niro’s modern crossover proportions, bright accents, and brawny, blacked-out lower body tease utility-vehicle allegiances. But step close and it’s abundantly clear that the Niro is instead a tidy hatchback with a tall roofline. There’s no all-wheel drive to be found in the Niro, and, depending on trim, its window sticker boasts an EPA…

Screwphysics (!) suspension, seriously quick, first fun CVT in history. Lacks proper harnesses, still seeks inversion, Miata price tag. THE LIST OF TROUBLES one forgets when airborne in a Can-Am Maverick X3 is significant. You’ll not give a second thought to your cross-threaded relationships with the in-laws. Your latest flurry of poor life choices will fade to insignificance. You’ll even dismiss the single inevitable event that accompanies every human flight: returning to Earth. Because, unlike as in any other vehicle, landing in this one utterly lacks consequence. Touching down in the X3 is a thing that happens in a heaven ruled by different physical laws. It’s a perfect blue morning in the Dolomites, a lungful of crisp Yosemite Valley air, a freshly cut alfalfa field in southern Michigan. We “tested”…

GORDON PLATTO JOINED FORD more than 25 years ago and has worked as a designer on everything from minivans to the Mustang. Since 2011, he’s been the chief designer for the F-series and the Explorer. Away from the office, he turns his eye to vintage motorcycles, with a collection that currently includes the 1948 Indian and the 1931 Harley-Davidson pictured here, as well as a 1978 Kawasaki KZ650, and more. C/D: You’ve certainly got the ends of the size spectrum covered. GP: Trucks and motorcycles seem to go together. A lot of the people we get rotating through the studio either have a motorcycle when they come in or end up having one when they leave. Willie Davidson [the former head of design for Harley-Davidson] actually did an internship at…

“IF YOU COULD HAVE JUST ONE CAR . . . ?” You’re a car person, so non–car people, who, heaven bless ’em, are just trying to make party conversation, probably ask you this all the time. It’s an absurd question of course, because as every car dude knows, owning just one car is like owning just one sock. But it’s a fun mental exercise and relevant since many of us realistically can’t fit more than one car into our lives. For this magazine, the ingredients for the One Car are light and tight handling, breezy but not fuel-ravenous power, an efficient interior package that converts quickly from commuter taxi to Home Depot hauler, a manual transmission, and an affordable price that leaves enough dough left over for another car. A…

ALTHOUGH WE RARELY CELEBRATE the work of the Grim Reaper, we will happily make an exception when it comes to the Mini Paceman. While the first-generation Countryman crossover sold in sufficient volume to warrant development of the successor we’re driving here, its ungainly, two-door alleged-coupe sister found more ridicule than buyers. Mini confirms that it won’t be making another Paceman, and for that we are genuinely grateful. The Paceman’s demise means the new Countryman will become the priciest Mini, performance specials aside, with its segment-spanning purpose undergirded by a serious expansion in size. The first Countryman was big when compared with the bijou Mini hatchback of the day, but it was still pretty compact, even by compact-crossover standards. Owners and potential buyers told Mini they wanted it to be bigger…

Handsome looks, composed ride, available manual transmission, roomy rear seat. Touchy brakes, recalcitrant transmission, lacks passing power. THE ALL-NEW 2017 Jeep Compass just squeezes into the 15.4-inch gap between Jeep’s wee Renegade and its mid-size Cherokee. Built on the same “small-wide 4x4 architecture” that underpins the bugeyed Renegade, the Compass’s wheelbase grows 2.6 inches, the new ute casting a shadow 6.4 inches longer than its smaller sibling. The additional space between the Compass’s axles affords a decidedly refined ride and, when whipped, the little Jeep doesn’t embarrass itself dynamically. Over the pockmarked and twisting back roads just outside Hollister, California, the Compass felt secure and composed as a result of its limited body roll and appropriately weighted, if aloof, steering. While brake dive was minimal, the brake pedal proved touchy.…