Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i MotorTrend

Five years ago, we put the curvalicious, basted-in-cherry-red backside of Toyota’s FT-1 concept on our cover. We haven’t had a better-selling March issue since—which explains why the highly anticipated production version of the FT-1 is our cover car this month. What is a surprise is how the excitement and anticipation for the return of Toyota’s legendary Supra has slowly given way to subtle shade and full-on Haterade from keyboard warriors on social media, the forum boards, and beyond. As more details of Supra’s co-development with BMW’s Z4 emerged, there were cries from Gardena to Bavaria to Kansai: Surely one shall pollute, or at least dilute, the other? Neither fish nor fowl, JDM nor DTM, what is this unholy union between Germany and Japan? It’s smart, that’s what it is. Toyota…

Code-named 992, the eighth-generation Porsche 911—launching in the popular Carrera S and 4S specifications—is longer, wider, and more powerful than the car it replaces. It also debuts a new transmission, new interior, and new driver-assistance tech. It is the most advanced Porsche 911 in history. A flip-up rear spoiler has 45 percent more aerodynamically effective area, continuously variable flaps in the front cooling vents close between 40 mph and 90 mph to reduce drag and fuel consumption, and the door handles retract. The twin-turbo flat-six, code-named 9A2 Evo, shares its crankcase, cylinder heads, oil system, and valvetrain with the 991.2 engine. The compression ratio has been upped, more precise injectors fitted, and the variable valve control system now opens one intake valve farther than the other under partial load to…

Evolution? Or revolution? The 2020 Range Rover Evoque places an each-way bet. The exterior is a sleeker, more reductive take on the existing Evoque’s pert proportions. Evolution. But the coolly minimalist yet well-equipped interior signals the Evoque is a luxury SUV in its own right, not a cheap Range Rover. Revolution. The 2020 Evoque marks the debut of JLR’s Premium Transverse Architecture, a platform constructed of regular and high-strength steel, aluminum, and magnesium. The MacPherson strut front suspension is attached to a die-cast aluminum subframe. At the rear, replacing struts with a multilink suspension helps make the rear cargo area 6 percent larger while improving ride and reducing transmitted road noise. The entry-level P250 features a 245-hp version of the 2.0-liter Ingenium turbo-four, while the P300’s powertrain makes 296 hp.…

Time to adjust your worldview a bit farther east. The Chinese auto market is larger than that of either the U.S. or Europe. Soon, it could be larger than the U.S. and Europe. That will have dramatic impact on the kinds of cars Western consumers can buy, as automakers adapt their designs and component sets to the desires of the world’s largest customer base. This shift also might affect which brands are sold here, as the writing is on the great wall that Chinese car companies desire global expansion. As the U.S. and European markets aren’t going to get any larger, that means the new Chinese brands are going to take market share out of someone’s hide. Lynk & Co, a luxury arm of Geely (which also owns Volvo), wants…

Letter of the Month My note today is to confirm that your instincts on the evolution of the SUV are more accurate than you may even know. I am remiss in not reporting this snippet of automotive history earlier. In the late 1970s I found myself on the American Motors Corporation legal staff. Among the several hats I wore was that of trademark counsel. Back then we exported Jeep-brand vehicles to over 100 countries and licensed a few foreign companies to assemble Jeeps from CKD (Completely Knocked Down) kits shipped from Toledo. The Jeep CJ-5, CJ-6 (export only), and CJ-7 were tough little mules that had no peers anywhere in the world. This meant there was no generic asset class to which “jeep-like” vehicles could be classified. Whenever a new…

How do the Supra’s dynamics compare to those of the Z4 prototype I also drove? In Sport+ mode, the Z4 M40i feels immediate and aggressive, frenetically piling on speed and issuing aggressive shifts like an M division car. The Supra felt more linear and polished in the way it accelerated, shifts were far smoother, and anybody would be able to discern the creamy, more fluid operation but also appreciate the shove of torque it delivers from just 1,600 up to 4,500 rpm. There are obvious questions that need to be answered: Would a person be able to detect the Supra’s 47-hp (13 percent) deficit to the U.S.-spec Z4? Perhaps a car-savvy person could, and basement bench racers will pound this drum until their moms tell them to do the dishes…

Cadillac is a brand under repair. Cynics paint a faded marque in existential peril. Optimists see light on the horizon. The crown jewel of the General Motors empire is pulling up stakes from its Manhattan headquarters to return to the safe confines of Detroit—ending its controversial four-year experiment in the Big Apple. This followed GM firing Johan de Nysschen, the brand’s top executive, just a few months prior. The entire Cadillac lineup is under review, as the current flagship CT6 sedan will cease production at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant in June after barely three years on sale. Countering the Lincoln lineup—with its magnificent Navigator getting raves and the splendid Aviator just unveiled—you wonder what Cadillac’s response will be. The finger in the dike appears to be the XT6 global three-row crossover…

When I was but a teenaged car freak, few cars held the appeal of the original BMW 8 Series coupe. Introduced in 1989, the 8 Series, specifically the V-12-powered 850i, was truly perceived as the ultimate in ultimate driving machines. What would Gordon Gekko drive? An 8 Series, obviously. With the possible exception of the i8, BMW hasn’t built a lustworthy halo car since the OG 8, and I say the brand’s image has suffered as a result. Fast-forward to now: Even though luxury coupe sales are nearly nonexistent, BMW is bringing back the 8 Series to try to get some of that swaggering, master-of-the-universe mojo back. Tall order. See, the 4,500-pound elephant in the room is that the new G11 8 Series—like the old 6 Series—is derived from the…

Porsche’s 911 may seem immortal, eternal, but in truth it’s always been a work in progress. Generations of engineers have spent their careers buried in the bowels of Porsche’s R&D headquarters in Weissach polishing, honing, refining, and reimagining the sports car that for more than half a century has been its lodestar. The 2020 911, aka the 992, proves the point. It looks familiar, feels familiar, sounds familiar. But there isn’t a part or component on the car that hasn’t been touched, tweaked, or totally renewed. I’ve now tested seven of the eight 911 generations, and the 992 is the most wondrous of the lot. Oh, you’ll hear some sniffing that it’s grown too big, too complex, too luxurious, that it’s lost the purity of purpose enshrined in Butzi Porsche’s…

Modern truck customers want more than a bed, a seat, four wheels, and a trailer hitch. Much more. They’re telling truck makers they want three things, and they want them in perpetuity: more power, more technology, and more comfort. For the first, Ram and longtime partner Cummins went back to the drawing board and cooked up an all-new diesel that shares only its displacement, cylinder count, and layout with the engine you know. The all-new 6.7-liter turbodiesel I-6 is lighter, smoother, and more efficient, and in optional trim it can churn out a simply ridiculous 400 hp and 1,000 lb-ft of torque (standard output is 370 hp and 850 lb-ft). Bolted into a Ram 3500 dually, the monster motor can tow a class-leading 35,100 pounds. Even the narrower Ram 2500…

Porsche has given its best-selling Macan a midlife makeover, a mix of cosmetic tweaks and technology upgrades designed to carry the car through to the arrival of an all-new replacement in 2022 or 2023. Visual changes include a new front fascia with gaping vents on either side of the grille. At the rear, the full-width taillight graphic is now a Porsche family design signature. Big 21-inch wheels are available on the Macan for the first time, and there are four new exterior colors. The 2019 Macans come standard with LED headlights. The base Macan is powered by a 248-hp, 273-lb-ft longitudinally mounted version of VW Group’s versatile 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine fitted with a new direct-injection cylinder head with centrally located injectors. Price is $50,950, a $2,100 bump over the outgoing…

The customer is always right. And when customers want SUVs, the flagship is an SUV. The eight-passenger Palisade is the largest SUV Hyundai has ever made, at 3.0 inches longer than the 2019 Santa Fe XL at 196.1 inches, with a 4.0-inch-longer wheelbase at 114.2. It is also 3.6 inches wider. Hyundai has tried to crack this nut before with the long-wheelbase Santa Fe variant. But it was too narrow to comfortably accommodate seven passengers. The Palisade enters a tough segment filled with established names from Ford, Toyota, Honda, and others. Last year Hyundai sold fewer than 28,000 Santa Fe SUVs in the U.S. compared with 270,000 Explorers and almost 216,000 Highlanders. The 2020 Palisade still uses some Santa Fe underpinnings, sharing modules with the smaller crossover. But the number…

With crossover demand rising, it was only a matter of time before the Audi Q2 subcompact CUV received a high-performance model. Whereas the base Q2 features a fuel-sipping 116-hp 1.0-liter turbo I-3, the hot-rodded version is powered by a 2.0-liter turbo-four with 296 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque and puts power down to all four wheels via the automaker’s Quattro all-wheel-drive system. The diminutive little Audi gets a thorough performance makeover, including an upgraded suspension that’s 20mm lower than the standard Q2, a retuned steering system, and an all-wheel-drive system than can send nearly all torque to the rear wheels. Aerodynamic improvements give the SQ2 a 0.34 drag coefficient, and a drive mode selector includes an Individual option to allow the driver to tailor the vehicle to his or…

By the time you’re reading this, Waymo will have launched its autonomous ride-hailing service in the Phoenix area. This pioneering company is betting big on traditional sensing technologies—including cameras, GPS, radar, and those super-expensive spinning lidar sensors on the roof. These Waymo cars are essentially beta-testers, which means they are not fail-safe. (Remember Uber?) If Waymo happens to have an accident and the fault is found to be with the sensor array, it’s a safe bet Waymo won’t be able to blame a blizzard or pea-soup fog. An MIT spinoff startup called WaveSense hopes to hasten the arrival of autonomy in regions with, you know, weather, by providing an additional “leg” of the environmental perception stool that is utterly weatherproof: ground-penetrating radar (GPR). There are numerous applications for this technology…

Sometimes comebacks are good: Johnny Cash, the denim jacket, and mixed cocktails. Other times they’re not: Vanilla Ice, the fanny pack, and tater tots. Seriously, people, stop it with the tots. In that same vein, it is always with some hesitancy that we consider comebacks of automotive nameplates once lost to history: Beetle. Z. Thunderbird. GTO. Giulia. Will it be a proper tribute to past glories while also flinging the brand into the future? Or will it be warmed-over mush, a conspiracy of shallow marketing and built-to-cost engineering with the old badge slapped on the trunk? It is with such critical eyes that we gaze upon the 2020 Toyota Supra—in its heyday one of the finest feats of Japanese sports car design and performance. This is a rebirth seven years…

“People should look at this car. There are many strong hints of what’s coming.” What is Infiniti? Nissan’s luxury brand is young—it was 30 years ago that it broke onto the international stage with the Q45 sedan unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But the spirit of performance it aims to deliver dates back to the boutique Prince Motor Company of the ’50s, which built sports cars that chased Porsche 904s around the Japanese Grand Prix (and often won). Nissan bought Prince in 1966, and those cars were the precursors to the Q50 on the road today. In terms of design, Infiniti was at its best when it created the “bionic cheetah,” the first FX concept at the 2001 Detroit show. A second, closer-to-production FX45 concept…

It’s around 9 a.m. at an upscale country grocery store in Ramona, California, a bit outside of San Diego. My drive partner and I are walking through the parking lot about to set off on the second leg of our drive of the 2019 Ford Ranger when a man pulls up in a 1990s-vintage edition. “That the new one?” he asks. “When are they going to bring back a basic model? Single cab, manual, crank windows? I don’t need all this fancy stuff.” I delivered auto parts in a fleet-special Ranger for a previous job, so I lament the loss of the no-frills small pickup as much as my inquisitor. Unfortunately, the truck he wants no longer exists. Sure, you can get the 2019 Ranger in a base XL trim…

D unes ripple off into the distance under a brassy sky. The Audi dances over stutter bumps as it slaloms between piles of soft sand. A quick flick of the wrists and flex of the right ankle: instant grip and grunt, dust and gravel spitting from all four wheels. The irony of the moment is delicious. We’re in the Middle Eastern emirate of Abu Dhabi, driving through a desert soaked in oil, having fun in an electric-powered luxury SUV. Meet the 2019 Audi E-Tron. The E-Tron is built on a brand-new battery electric vehicle (BEV) platform designed and engineered in-house at Audi. It follows the now-typical skateboard format, with a 95-kW-hr battery pack between the wheels and under the floor, and motors mounted front and rear to provide all-wheel drive.…

“This Jaguar had character rare in modern cars, beauty and athleticism I never tired of, and flaws that weren’t deal breakers.” Average Fuel Econ: 20.6 mpg Base price $57,295 As tested $64,743 We fell in love with the sporty style and sharp handling of Jaguar’s F-Pace at our 2017 SUV of the Year competition, but a starchy ride and polarizing interior torpedoed it from the top spot. Still, we had to know what a yearlong jag with this all-new Jag would be like. Could we deal with the stiff suspenders? And what of the whispers of questionable reliability? Thirteen months later, we have plenty of miles and, oddly, some feelz (as the kids say). As I live only 3 miles from work and travel regularly, I cannot take credit for…

Lexus’ bread and butter has always been soft, comfortable vehicles like the RX crossover and ES sedan. Yet starting with the LFA supercar, RC and LC coupes, and F performance subbrand, it started to look like Lexus was pivoting to become more of a sports-luxury brand. The new 2020 Lexus RC F Track Edition seems like a not-so-subtle hint at where Lexus is going. “The purpose of the RC F Track Edition is to show clearly what the Lexus behavior and taste is,” Lexus executive general manager Koji Sato told us ahead of the car’s official reveal. Developed at the Nürburgring and racetracks all over Japan (including the F subbrand’s namesake Fuji Speedway), the RC F Track Edition is designed for moneyed weekend warriors. Each will be kitted out with…

One of the more startling signs of the rampaging crossover craze is that annual sales of the Toyota Prius liftback have diminished to a mere 50,000 units. What to do? Its California island of Prius sales desperately needs to colonize the northeast, which is presumably sympathetic to the car’s environmental arguments. But it snows there, so they buy Subarus instead. Consequently, Toyota is gambling on an answer it’s had all along—the all-wheel drive Prius E-Four, which has been on sale in Japan since 2015. It offers about the simplest and lowest-cost AWD solution imaginable: a small electric motor on the rear axle that is tuned purely to help get the otherwise front-drive Prius moving on the crunchy white fluff. Once underway, it de-energizes and freewheels, with parasitic drag minimized because…

Since 2014, Tesla’s Autopilot has been a trailblazer for driver-supervised, single-lane guidance. It’s even tiptoed beyond this single-lane dominion with semi-autonomous lane changes—the driver checks that the coast is clear and just taps the turn signal. But despite these skills, it’s remained more autopromise than autopilot. Navigate on Autopilot is a whole different matter—and a very real step toward that multilane-roaming, autopiloted future. What’s changed is that Tesla has activated the current hardware’s previously dormant suite of eight video cameras, radars, and ultrasonic distance sensors, awakening it to a genuine awareness of its adjacent lanes. Its key new skill is that it can recommend lane changes. Once activated, Navigate can either suggest when and how to safely pass a car that’s slowing in your lane. Or—when following a nav route—the…

Known to insiders as one of the best-dressed executives in the auto biz, Bugatti CEO Stephan Winkelmann has also served in some of the industry’s dream jobs, leading both Lamborghini and Audi Sport. Now he takes Bugatti into the future as the iconic French brand celebrates its 110th anniversary. The Chiron is supposed to top 300 mph, and your predecessor promised a top speed run by now. Is there a delay? To me, a top speed run is not on the agenda. For me, performance has a lot of facets, and the Chiron, besides being a hypercar, is a car covering a lot more than other supersports cars. We were missing a big part of what the car is all about. It is much more important than showing one little…

Describing the Supra driving experience in relation to another car is difficult. There’s really nothing quite like it. Yes, there are rear-drive two-seaters. You’ll find turbo-fours, V-6s, turbo V-6s, and even V-8s. Only BMW and Toyota (and recently Mercedes-Benz) offer an inherently smooth straight-six with a turbocharger. Myriad other manufacturers use the ZF eight-speed, but that transmission is so customizable and tailored to each application that it’s not a thread to pull, either. So what we have is a bit of an anomaly—and something special. During my prototype Supra drive on the Jarama circuit and on the highways and hills near Madrid, my first impression was how smoothly and quietly the car accelerated and shifted, even in Sport mode. Acceleration is linear without an iota of turbo lag, and this…

Middle-class parents have been asking their “car guy” friends the same question for decades: What car do I buy my newly minted, freshly scrubbed, hormonally hypercharged 16-year-old that’s inexpensive, safe, fuel-efficient, too slow to get into trouble, and quick enough to get out of it? The answer was always the same: an as-new-as-possible compact or subcompact sedan. We had our preferred brands, sure, but the segment held a certain reliability of choice. No more. Sedan sales are circling the drain while automakers trip over each other to invent new classes of crossovers and SUVs. Although that means screaming deals can be had on certain forgotten three-boxes, automakers have been putting much more emphasis into creating innovation in the crossover space. As a result, if you’re buying a cheap and cheerful…

Can BMW deliver on the promise of the Ultimate Driving Machine once again? Over the past four decades, Bavaria’s sporting marque has endured tremendous pressure to constantly improve on what is seen as the segment benchmark. It is a cruel task. Improving one area often comes with a trade-off in another. BMW owners are as demanding as they are proud. Take it from someone who owned the 3 Series that really started it all—the 1988 E30 325i—as well as the outgoing-generation 2012 F30 328i (and who has tested every generation in between). We’re an arrogant bunch possessing sturdy right feet, and we have no qualms calling out missteps in handling and steering feel. The competition doesn’t sit still, either. For those among you who track these things, the past two…

N obody needs a luxury flagship. By definition, luxuries are things people don’t need, and the flagship banner only emphasizes the point. Besides, midsize luxury sedans have gotten so large these days that it’s hard to imagine anyone who drives themself needing a modern full-sized barge. And for the same money, you typically have the choice between a midsizer that’s loaded to the gills and a base-model flagship. Instead, you buy (or more likely, lease) a car such as the A8 because you want it. It’s a status symbol, a sign that you’ve clearly made it. So tossing logic and practicality aside for a moment, is the 2019 Audi A8 a car that makes you desire it? Does it stroke your ego and make you feel special, the way a…

“The 2017 Mazda CX-9 was fun to drive and had space to spare. Zoom Zoom with room.” Average Fuel Econ: 20.6 mpg Base price $38,710 As tested $41,105 It’s a beautiful, warm early October evening in 2017, and I’ve spent the better part of the day photographing Flyin’ Miata’s new turbocharged ND Mazda Miata for an upcoming Automobile magazine story. We’ve been leisurely zigzagging our way through the most scenic parts of Central California. We are on our way north to Monterey to participate in the annual Miatas at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (now WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca) gathering, and I’m driving my newly assigned long-term 2017 Mazda CX-9. If you’ve read any of our Best Driver’s Car stories, you’ve heard of a section of California State Route 198 that…