Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i Car and Driver

In four short years of existence, Genesis has now won two 10Best awards. Clearly, the brand has our attention, even if the general public has no clue what to make of it. Like the other Genesis models, the GV80 has a not-so-subtle winged badge on its nose. If passersby confuse those wings with Bentley’s Flying B, so be it. The GV80’s design and presence only add to the ruse. It shouldn’t be surprising that Genesis found inspiration in Bentley. After all, the Hyundai Group employs former Bentley design chief Luc Donckerwolke, and while styling is subjective, it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch to say that the GV80 is more attractive than a Bentley Bentayga. If you’re thinking, “Well, anyone can rent a tuxedo,” the GV80 has real substance…

Perhaps you’re wondering how a compact crossover like the Mazda CX-5 lands on a list of our favorites. After all, this publication frequently derides and mocks the CX-5’s dull segment. While our values are often at odds with what’s happening in the small-crossover world, we recognize that a growing number of drivers want to sit high in a practical all-wheel-drive vehicle with an attractive price. The CX-5 fits that bill, but it is a 10Best winner because this Mazda is full of the reasons that we love cars. The CX-5’s sharp styling, handsome interior, and rich paint are visible differentiators in this class, but the driving experience is what elevates it. Mazda set up the CX-5 to drive like a premium brand’s sports sedan. Bend into a corner and the…

Being a fan of the Volkswagen GTI is a little like being a fan of the Yankees. You’ve aligned yourself with a perennial winner, but people are suspicious of your motives. Are you just a fan because it’s the easily defensible choice? Unlike the West Coast transplant who buys a blue cap when they move to Brooklyn, we’re not recognizing the GTI because we feel like we have to. The GTI was on C/D’s first 10Best list in 1983, and this year marks its 15th consecutive win. We reward it time and time again because it’s just that good. As is its fraternal twin, the Jetta GLI. These two cars share a 228-hp turbocharged inline-four, VW’s MQB platform, a limited-slip differential, and a pair of transmissions. They get extra credit…

UPMARKET-AUTO BUYERS are showing an increased preference for SUVs pretty much everywhere in the world, yet the S-class remains—explicitly—Mercedes’s flagship model. A new generation of the Sonderklasse always serves as both a range-topping luxury sedan and a tech showcase for features that will soon trickle down to lesser Benzes. Mercedes is rightly proud of the many innovations that previous S-classes introduced, including anti-lock brakes (1978), electronic stability control (1995), adaptive cruise control (1998), and all-LED lighting (2013). This generation (W223 in Benz code) adopts the active chassis aids and 48-volt electrical subsystem that we’ve seen in the GLE and GLS, but in terms of charting a course for Mercedes, the focus has shifted toward digitizing the driving experience and the cockpit. While there is indeed an abundance of new features…

When a hybrid achieves only a 4-mpg gain over its donorengine counterpart, it may not seem worthwhile, but in a pickup like the new Ford F-150, boosting the 3.5-liter V-6’s fuel economy by 4 mpg is a 20 percent improvement. That’s nothing to sneeze at. And when said hybrid runs just as smoothly as the unelectrified pickup while providing nearly as stellar payload and towing capacities, why not stretch your gallons a little further? Debuting in the refreshed-for-2021 F-150, the PowerBoost hybrid pairs Ford’s twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V-6 with a 44-hp electric motor, making this the highest-output powertrain in the current F-150 lineup. (Ford has yet to lay out what’s under the hood of the 2021 Raptor, which will almost certainly outmuscle this.) The motor is sandwiched between the engine and…

Highs: Insane power, great body control, the ultimate schlepper. Lows: Supercharger squeals even at low rpm, horrific mileage, not as refined as its German rivals. For you and your kin to experience the full potential of the Durango SRT Hellcat—the most powerful three-row SUV in existence—line up at a stoplight, punch the launch-control button, and put all those hours spent on the Peloton into the brake pedal with your left foot and into the gas with your right. When the light goes green, release the brake and feel the snarling cat stitched on your seat press between your shoulder blades. It’s unlikely to leave an imprint on your kids’ backs, but you’ll certainly imprint a love for acceleration into their minds. Are 710 horsepower and 640 pound-feet of torque crazy…

To drive a Porsche Boxster or Cayman is to experience the pinnacle of connectedness between driver, car, and road. It is to feel a level of confidence behind the wheel that few cars can impart. It is to know how pleasurable and engaging the sheer act of driving can be. Year after year, Porsche has refined these mid-engine two-seaters, and in one form or another, they’ve now earned 22 10Best wins since 1998. Consider just some of the praise we heaped upon them in the past two years. We called the 300-hp Cayman T the perfect starter Porsche and declared: “For some people, it might be the perfect Porsche, period… In a digital world, the T feels and drives like an analog machine.” We also called its steering “perfectly weighted…

Show us a vehicle that does it all and we’ll show you a vehicle that’s compromised in everything it does. That’s the story of most modern full-size pickup trucks, which play a role that’s part family SUV, part com mercial vehicle, part luxury car, and part circus strongman. Sure, your truck tows an impressive 10,000 pounds, but chances are it rides like a tractor, especially with a bed full of nothing but air The Ram 1500 can’t entirely escape these trade-offs, but it balances and minimizes them better than any truck on the market. Thanks in large part to the coil springs (or optional air springs) at each corner, the Ram rolls over broken pavement with exceptional civility. It goes down the road feeling more like a Mercedes-Benz GLS-class than…

We still love station wagons even though the buying public has largely abandoned them. Mercedes-Benz persists with its handsome example in the E-class line, but even Benz’s iconic wagon is changing to meet an SUV-crazed market. For 2021, the E450 looks a bit less wagon-y and gains a tough-sounding All-Terrain name in hopes of attracting buyers who might otherwise choose an SUV. But the E450 remains pretty much the car it was last year. Merc gave it a revised front fascia, some matte-black plastic cladding, and a couple of hood bulges. A new turbo 3.0-liter inline-six hides under those bulges. Buttery and rich with power, the engine makes 362 horses and 369 pound-feet of torque, with an electric motor adding up to 21 horsepower at low rpm. This six has…

Highs: Opulent interior, abundant features, brilliant price. Lows: Oversized cheese-grater grille, does anyone know what a Genesis is? What’s it take for people to readily associate a brand with luxury? Two things: compelling products and time. Hyundai has been selling cars in the U.S. under the Genesis brand since the 2017 model year, a mere blink relative to the tenures of upper-crust establishment marques like BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz. It takes decades to build ironclad credibility and premium-brand heritage, so it will be a while before Genesis becomes a household name in this country’s well-off enclaves. But the new G80 shows that Hyundai’s aspiring luxury division already knows how to build the right car. We spent several days with the second-gen G80 sedan and can confidently say it’s a different…

The Subaru Crosstrek has a more powerful engine option for 2021, but before you get too excited thinking that the company has swapped in the WRX’s 268-hp turbo engine, we’ll tell you that the upgrade is less ambitious Shared with the Legacy, the new-to-the-Crosstrek engine is a 182-hp 2.5-liter flat-four for the Sport and Limited trims. It has a significant 30-horse advantage over the carryover 2.0-liter and motivates the Crosstrek to 60 in 7.5 seconds, 1.6 seconds quicker than the base setup. The extra power is more satisfying underfoot, but the 2.5-liter sounds just as thrummy as the smaller flat-four. Unfortunately, the six-speed manual, which adds playfulness to the 2.0-liter ute, can’t be paired to the 2.5, and the mandatory CVT intensifies its waffling drone under acceleration. Hammering the new…

Recent comparos have shown cars as having two different final-drive ratios [“Lite Speed,” October 2020, and “Cheap. Quick. Good,” November 2020]. Assuming there are no great honking cast-iron transfer cases oozing fragrant final-drive lube on their unsuspecting owners’ driveways, there has to be an interesting explanation for it. —William Payne, Tucson, AZ Front-drive transaxles are squeezed for space in the narrow area between the engine and front wheels. To make the trans more compact, the internals of manual and dual-clutch transmissions are packaged in such a way as to have two paths and thus different gears to drive the differential. The steps between the overall ratios—the product of the individual gear and the final-drive ratio—are similar to what they’d be with a single final drive, so there’s no real difference…

Carlos Gone • January 1 A Tesla works as a boat for short periods of time, as an electric car has no air intake or exhaust to block & battery/motor/electronics are water-sealed. Submarines are just underwater EVs. • January 25 Just wrote a song called “Don’t doubt yer vibe” • January 30 The coronavirus panic is dumb • March 6 Coachella should postpone itself until it stops sucking • March 10 Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases [of coronavirus] in US too by end of April • March 19 We have extra FDA-approved ventilators. Will ship to hospitals worldwide within Tesla delivery regions. Device & shipping cost are free. Only requirement is that the vents are needed immediately for patients, not stored in a warehouse. Please…

In some alternate universe, golf clubs and targa tops don’t exist and the 2021 Chevrolet Corvette is 174.4 inches long. That happens to be the length of the Audi R8, a car that is about eight inches shorter than the Corvette. But Corvette buyers love Pings and they love removable roof panels, so the C8 has a big ol’ trunk behind its mid-mounted V-8. It looks weird from certain angles. Not as weird as a stretch Lincoln MKT but also not as tidy as it might have been. Maybe GM should’ve hired some of the people who used to build secret cargo compartments into Trabants headed to West Berlin. And that’s about it for our beefs with the Corvette, which is a performance value for all time. Its 2.8-second 60-mph…

On specs alone, you wouldn’t guess that the Kia Telluride is 10Best material. It’s a family SUV of normal size with normal power and a normal price. But then you climb in and say, “This costs less than $50,000? How?” One tester pointed out that between the Telluride and the Cadillac Escalade (base price $77,490), only one offers ventilated second-row seats—and it’s not the Escalade. But the Telluride’s appeal goes deeper than its 10-yardlong equipment list. The big Kia is a pleasure to drive, with the 3.8-liter V-6 churning out smooth power and its quick responses belying its proletarian 291 horsepower. The ride is sedate and the body control taut, erring toward sportiness. We can also say, based on our long-termer, that this Kia is blissfully free of reliability foibles…

You should know that the Porsche Macan shares some of its components with humbler and cheaper models from elsewhere in the Volkswagen Group. You should know this not because it matters but because friends and casual acquaintances are likely to share this information in the belief it makes the Macan less of a Porsche and anyone who buys one less of a judge of cars. You know better, though. If you’re not looking for a low-slung sports car, this is the pick of Porsche’s range, even if it is currently the oldest member of the clan. In engineering, as in high-end hash slinging, the finest chefs can turn even humble ingredients into truly sublime creations. While the Macan looks like an SUV, it doesn’t drive like one. Smaller and more…

The economics of modern manufacturing mean today’s low-volume sports cars often languish in the market with minimal investment beyond the initial engineering effort. The Toyota Supra, however, makes our 10Best list for the second year in a row because its already strong value as a great sports car got even better. For 2021, not only does the Supra 3.0’s silken turbo inline-six gain an additional 47 ponies (now up to 382 horses), but an entry-level model with a 255-hp turbo 2.0-liter four joins the lineup. Both BMW-sourced engines are two of the best examples of their kind, delivering loads of low-end torque but also spinning to their redlines with zeal. Even the starter Supra gets to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds. That the six does the deed in 3.8 seconds…

THE NUMBERS Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 4-passenger, 2-door coupe • Base/As Tested: $44,994/$52,444 • Engine: supercharged and intercooled DOHC 32-valve V-8, aluminum block and heads, port and direct fuel injection Displacement: 307 in3, 5038 cm3 • Power (mfr’s claim): 750 hp @ 7000 rpm Torque (mfr’s claim): 670 lb-ft @ 4600 rpm • Transmission: 10-speed automatic Dimensions, Wheelbase: 107.1 in • L/W/H: 188.5/75.4/54.3 in • Curb Weight: 3904 lb TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 3.6 sec • 100 mph: 7.6 sec • 1/4-Mile: 11.7 sec @ 124 mph 130 mph: 13.0 sec • Preceding results omit 1-ft rollout of 0.3 sec. • Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 4.0 sec • Top Speed (mfr’s claim): 155 mph • Braking, 70–0 mph: 156 ft Braking, 100–0 mph: 310 ft • Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.95…

Highs: Aggressive looks, improved refinement and road manners, good fuel economy. Lows: Hybrid powertrain hurts acceleration, second-row captain’s chairs cannot be removed. The 2021 Toyota Sienna wants to change how we look at minivans. To combat the kiddie-hauler stigma, Toyota dressed the Sienna more like an SUV, giving it a boxier front end with a taller hood. Curves and bulges along the sides and a massive grille give the van an almost aggressive look. But the biggest change lurks under the skin, as the Sienna is now a hybrid. A 2.5-liter inline-four coupled to two electric motors takes the place of the outgoing 296-hp 3.5-liter V-6. The combo churns out 245 horsepower in front- or all-wheel-drive form. Our all-wheel-drive test van got to 60 in 7.7 seconds, nearly a second…