Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i MotorTrend

@Lohdown It all started back in 2006 when Kia Motors announced that Peter Schreyer would become its new Chief Design Officer. At the time, this move seemed equally audacious and puzzling: smart hire by Kia boss Eui-sun Chung, the son of Mong-koo Chung, the billionaire chairman and CEO of Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), but perhaps foolish for Schreyer. After all, what could the smaller automaker offer besides handsome compensation, frequent flyer miles, and a top-down corporate culture? Schreyer, a legit rock star in the design world (with the back-in-black wardrobe to match), already had an impressive résumé that listed icons such as the VW Golf, New Beetle, and Audi TT. He was on the short list to replace VW Group’s design chief, Walter de Silva. Surely, Schreyer had nothing to…

You might’ve forgotten the BMW Z4, last available in 2016. We did, too. So we agree to keep our phones tucked away in our bags as we pass through the security gate of the former Michelin, now BMW proving ground in Miramas, France. In a field of waist-high golden grass, a fast 15-turn handling course waited for us to evaluate the 2019 Z4 M40i. I hop into a camouflaged test car. I can see that the unit is close to production ready. Some plastic surfaces still lack graining, but the seats, steering wheel, shifter, a new digital instrument panel, next-gen iDrive controller/touchscreen display, and center console are fully functional. The production Z4 will sport a soft top instead of a hard-panel convertible top that eats space when stowed. Rated at…

“We’re always challenging our engineers and marketing to come up with what people want. That’s one thing Dodge has done well.” Steve Beahm took over as head of FCA passenger car brands for North America in February, responsible for selling and marketing once-majestic brands now struggling for relevance in an SUV-happy market. In 32 years with FCA, the Washington native has done fieldwork and supply chain management, and he led Maserati North America. He started racing at 16 in a ’69 Road Runner and still follows the sport, so when FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne asked him to take this job, “it was a quick ‘yes.’” FCA’s five-year plan centers on volume brands. What is the role of the brands you oversee? Passenger car brands represent 20 percent of NAFTA revenue.…

Strapping into the original 2000 Honda Insight, I was never more certain about anything: This will be a hit. The radically aluminum, slippery teardrop of a two-seater looked like an eye-catching cross between a Chiclet and a space pod dropped from Venus. In the end, a few engineering professors bought them—but there’s only so many of those—and then it quietly disappeared. In 2009, I picked the second-gen Insight over the recently redesigned third-generation Toyota Prius in a battle of four-door, five-seat hybrids. Call it temporary insanity, but I was too enthusiastic about the Insight’s cheapskate cost of ownership during the frightening downdraft of the Great Recession and not nearly disturbed enough by its otherwise dreariness. In the end, a few car-hating accountants bought them—you know the rest. Should I be…

The go-fast boffins at Jaguar Special Vehicle Operations decided to apply an old muscle car template and wedge the company’s largest engine into its smallest sedan. In the resulting XE Project 8, that meant the 5.0-liter supercharged V-8 from the XJR575, which makes 592 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque. For obvious reasons, all-wheel drive was added to the build sheet. To get the green light for production, Project 8 needed to break the lap record for four-door sedans on the Nürburgring Nordschleife—set by our 2018 Car of the Year, the 505-hp Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. In a “production-intent” car, Belgian racer and test driver Vincent Radermecker shattered the record at 7:21.23. That’s nearly 11 seconds quicker than the Alfa, and it matches the Ferrari 488 GTB, our 2017 Best…

LS Swap Mom’s Mustang It’s the car guy dream: build your high school ride into a legit race car that can take on all comers at the track. But can a 1966 Mustang really hang with a modern supercar? Filip Trojanek thinks so. He turned his mom’s old Mustang into a real pro-touring car, not a tribute. He was so determined to get the best weight balance, he committed the ultimate Ford guy sin and put a Chevy LS7 V-8 under the hood. But who’s really going to complain about over 600 horsepower at the wheels? It’ll have to be good, though, because it isn’t going up against any old 580-hp 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S, but one driven by our favorite pro racer, Randy Pobst. In addition to twin-turbo…

  Mark Rechtin We’re going on five years of proclamations regarding the demise of the frumpy family four-door sedan—flattened by the sport-utility vehicle. And although SUVs have indeed become the popular transport of choice, let’s not chime the death knell for the three-box car just yet. After all, you are reading the New Car issue of Motor Trend (SUVs and trucks come next month), so you must still be interested in those old-school rides. Sure, there are plenty of signs of sedans losing their sting. Crossovers and SUVs are now outselling sedans handily. A long-in-the-tooth RAV4 supplanted the Camry’s 15-year run as Toyota’s (and America’s) best-selling vehicle that’s not a truck. Just behind it came the Rogue crossover, which outsold Nissan’s traditional stalwarts Altima and Sentra. And the Honda CR-V…

It used to be that buying the base model of a budget-minded car meant you couldn’t even get power windows or door locks. But things are getting better for the value shopper as customers expect more from their vehicles and new technology trickles down from premium models. The new Nissan Kicks takes this idea a big step forward—starting at less than 20 grand. The standard features read like a list of things you normally wish you could get as options. Automatic emergency braking and forward collision alert. Automatic headlights. Three USB ports (some pricier competitors don’t offer that many on any trim level). A tilting and telescoping steering wheel. Automatic up/down front windows. Keyless entry and a push-button starter. A 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Bluetooth phone and streaming audio.…

ARRIVAL 2018 Honda CR-V LX FWD Miguel Cortina “The bare-bones edition means no CarPlay, no AWD, and no driver-assist features.” EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 26/32/28 MPG BASE PRICE $25,125 PRICE AS TESTED $25,125 Being crowned Motor Trend ’s 2018 SUV of the Year means that the fifth-generation Honda CR-V will be spending a year in our fleet. And we don’t mean the 2017 CR-V Touring AWD that visual assets manager Brian Vance has been chaperoning for the past 11 months. “My” CR-V is different. Because we are already familiar with the entire tech package and the 1.5-liter turbo engine that come with the Touring model, we decided to go to the less expensive end of the spectrum with the basic LX model. Why go cheap? Because most folks don’t…

Mercedes is joining the list of automakers ready to take Tesla’s lunch money. Its EQC electric all-wheel-drive crossover is roughly the size of the compact GLC, with e-motors mounted front and rear and an underfloor battery pack that will be rated between 70 and 75 kW-hr once final durability testing is complete. Engineers are keeping exact details under wraps until the EQC makes its public debut in September, but total system output will be about 400 hp with 516 lb-ft of torque. Range will be between 200 and 240 miles. Building the EQC with the MRA component set used for Mercedes’ regular E-Class, C-Class, and GLC models means a steel body and some packaging compromises compared to purpose-built EVs. However, this also means the ECQ can be built on the…

Hellcat has spawned a full litter. FCA’s efforts to define Dodge as a sports car brand continue with two more performance cars: the 2019 Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye and 2019 Challenger R/T Scat Pack 1320 street-legal muscle car. They follow the 2008 Challenger, 2015 Hellcat, and 2018 Demon. The Redeye “is a Hellcat that’s been possessed by a Demon,” said Steve Beahm, head of passenger car brands—Dodge, SRT, Chrysler, and Fiat—for FCA North America. It has a Hellcat wide-body and Demon engine with a different calibration. The 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V-8 generates 797 hp and 707 lb-ft of torque in the Redeye, making it the most powerful current production V-8 now that the limited run of the Demon is done. FCA says Redeye becomes the quickest muscle car with a…

July 27 LIVE! FIA Formula 3 Championship, Spa, Belgium Auto Mundial, Motorsport Mundial July 28 LIVE! FIA Formula 3 Championship, Spa, Belgium LIVE! Intercontinental GT Challenge: Practice & Qualifying 24 Hours of Spa LIVE! Intercontinental GT Challenge, 24 Hours of Spa July 30 HOT ROD GARAGE, Ep. 66 Aug 1 HEAD 2 HEAD, Ep. 105 Aug 3 LIVE! Virgin Australia Supercars, Sydney Auto Mundial, Motorsport Mundial Aug 4 LIVE! Virgin Australia Supercars, Sydney Aug 6 ROADKILL, Ep. 74 Aug 8 Mobil 1 The Grid, Program 13 PUT UP OR SHUT UP, Ep. 8 Aug 9 FIA World Rallycross, Canada Aug 10 Auto Mundial, Motorsport Mundial Aug 11 LIVE! DTM Championship, Brands Hatch LIVE! Formula Drift, St. Louis, Missouri LIVE! Trans Am Series, Mid-Ohio Aug 13 ROADKILL GARAGE, Ep. 34 Aug…

Stop the 40-ton presses and cool the autoclaves. There’s a new light/strong/cheap material poised to join the vehicle engineering toolbox, and it’d be recognizable to the designers of Conestoga wagons. Forget titanium, carbon fiber, and high-strength steel. The hot new substance on the automotive scene is … wood? Yes, wood might no longer be just for dashboards and Morgan body framing. Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a way to make cheap, renewable, fast-growing, CO2-consuming wood 10 times stronger and tougher than natural wood, aligning its strength with some steels but at one-sixth the weight and vastly lower cost. (The cost savings over carbon fiber apply, as well.) It’s called “densified wood.” Producing it involves boiling the wood in a solution containing sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfate just…

5M five-speed manual 6A six-speed automatic 6-sp auto-cl man six-speed auto-clutch manual 7-sp twin-cl auto seven-speed twin-clutch automatic FWD front-wheel drive AWD all-wheel drive RWD rear-wheel drive NHTSA and IIHS safety data is derived from recent model years. IntelliChoice five-year retained value data might apply to common vehicle variants, not an average of all model variants. Acura ILX Base Price $29,000* Body Type Sedan UNCHANGED Acura’s smallest sedan, based on the old Honda Civic platform, will likely soldier on unchanged before it’s redesigned or discontinued. It could receive a new exterior look as part of its refresh to put it in line with the rest of Acura’s lineup. A fresh multimedia system is also possible. But don’t expect anything new under the hood; the ILX will likely keep the same…

Should Ferrari make an SUV? Should Motor Trend sell puppies? Should Lexus pitch the latest ES as a performance sedan? Lexus thinks so on the last point, so it’s added an F Sport version to jazz up what has been lightly chided as a somnolent luxury cruiser since its 1989 debut. Pumping up the Executive Sedan known more for luxury and comfort is chapter three of the brand’s initiative to make Lexus seem more dynamic. We headed to Nashville to drive the longer, lower, and wider redesigned car. Styling is bolder, following the look of the LC and LS, with a wider stance, low hoodline, and long shoulder line. The ES 350 and F Sport have a 302-hp, 267-lb-ft 3.5-liter V-6 with direct and port injection. An eight-speed automatic transmission…

I started in this business as a freelance motorsport reporter, and over the years I’ve covered everything from club autocross to Formula 1. It’s been a long time since I arrived at a motorsport venue not knowing quite what to expect. That made my trip to the 2018 Berlin ePrix for electric cars doubly intriguing. Let’s be clear: Formula E, barely through its fourth season, is not about to overtake Formula 1, IndyCar, Le Mans, or NASCAR any time soon. But automakers are taking it very seriously, pouring millions of dollars into the category. As one veteran motorsport insider noted in Berlin: “Every single driver in this series is paid to drive. Not even Formula 1 has that.” BMW was the title sponsor of the Berlin race; Audi, Jaguar, PSA,…