Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 i MotorTrend

Just before we started on this issue, our Motor Trend Original Programming team, led by Bobby Akin, live-streamed the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion and Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. It was a monumental achievement built upon our efforts last year, when we live-streamed just the Concours d'Elegance on Sunday. This year, the team added the monstrous complexity of broadcasting the racing action from Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Saturday and Sunday with live timing and scoring from the track and roving reporters all around. It was a feat we could not have done without the help of Michelin, BMW, Mazda, Hagerty Insurance, and Robert Talbott menswear, our sponsors. Jonny Lieberman and I, along with vintage-car expert Alain de Cadenet, played supporting roles in the Sunday Pebble Beach broadcast, providing color commentary,…

Just as manufacturers have nearly completed updating vehicles to survive the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's small-overlap crash test to earn Top Safety Pick status, NHTSA is teeing up a new challenge: the 15-degree oblique test. Was Uncle Sam just peeved that he was no longer setting the safety agenda? Maybe, but the bigger motivation behind as yet unfinalized upgrades to the New Car Assessment Program's Five-Star rating system for the 2019 model year was a 2009 study investigating why so many people (4,835 in 2007) were dying in frontal accidents despite wearing seat belts in modern cars with airbags. The largest common factor that could be engineered for, accounting for possibly a quarter of those, was the angle of impact. Oblique crashes can bend the crash structure out of…

The way the Porsche exits a corner is more impressive. Far earlier than seems wise, you can roll into the throttle, straight to the floor. Forget the eggshells under your right foot. Forget oversteer. Forget understeer. Forget the 37/63 rear weight bias. Go ahead. Mash it. The 911 digs in and flings you out of the corner. Let's get to the flaws. The Corvette's gearing, as always, is too tall—in hopes that its endless torque will save the day. But it makes the 911 feel quicker in the midrange, where the Carrera's turbocharged engine is already at peak torque while the Corvette's is still climbing. The 911, meanwhile, has picked up some disappointing mid-corner understeer. On most cars, you wouldn't call this significant, but it's frustrating. Where the Corvette never…

It was a telling drag race up a hill with a 7 percent grade while towing a 9,900-pound trailer: a 2016 Ford F-150 with the original 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 and six-speed transmission versus the 2017 F-150 with the second-gen V-6 and new 10-speed transmission. We don't have official test results, but suffice it to say, it was a rout. As it should be. The outgoing 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 has been available since 2011 and was getting long in the tooth. The new V-6 benefits from lessons learned on subsequent EcoBoost engines, such as the 2.7-liter V-6 for the 2015 model year. The result is a 10-horsepower boost to 375 hp while torque increases by 50 lb-ft to 470 at 3,500 rpm—plenty of grunt for its 12,200-pound tow rating. The second-gen…

The dynamic of the family car landscape is shifting. For decades, sedans were among the industry's top sellers. The four-door was the vehicle of choice for taking little Joey to school, driving mommy to work, and hauling the family to the beach for summer vacation. The dominance of the sedan has slowly eroded as small crossovers have started eating into their market share. With the pendulum now in full swing, automakers predict that compact crossovers will overtake sedans in sales and as the vehicle of choice for families by the end of the decade. And these six are the crossovers that'll do it. The vehicles here represent the segment's best and offer a great balance of safety, comfort, practicality, and style. All are similarly equipped with all-wheel drive and a…

After 27 years and four generations, the Land Rover Discovery has undergone an existential transformation. The changes to the fifthgeneration model are myriad, but the greatest happens where you can't see it: The old truck-based workhorse is out to pasture, and a new unibody SUV has taken up the mantle. The steel-ladder frame is gone, replaced with an all-aluminum unibody platform. The changes in material and design have cut roughly 1,000 pounds off the curb weight, which would put it around 4,700 pounds based on the last LR4 we tested. With the Discovery having so much less weight to drag around, we expect better performance and fuel economy from the carryover 3.0-liter V-6, which is still supercharged and still pumps out 340 horsepower and 332 lb-ft of torque. New for…

For nearly 50 years, Motor Trend has pitted America's best sports car against Germany's, but never has the competition been this fierce. In fact, the last time we did it, the Stars and Stripes emerged tattered and torn. That was four years ago. Now, everything's the same yet completely different. Take the cars. Yeah, it looks like the same 911 Carrera S, sprayed blue rather than yellow, but this "991.2" Carrera S is a werewolf in wolf's clothing. The Porsche's flat-six engine is now turbocharged and produces 20 more horsepower and 43 more lb-ft for 420 and 368, respectively. It features an optional rear-steering system, standard PASM active chassis control, an updated suspension and dual-clutch transmission, and a refreshed interior. The extra gizmos added about 100 pounds, but the extra…

Acura teased the world for years with endless reveals of its NSX hybrid supercar. But if you think you've waited a long time for the new NSX to actually appear on the streets, the R35-chassis Nissan GT-R has been waiting for a worthy opponent for its nearly decadelong existence. Like any elite warrior, the GT-R would tell you it's lonely at the top, so watching the NSX roll into the ring is as exciting a proposition to the GT-R (and its creators) as it is to us. These two machines have far more in common than their badges' country of origin; they use technology to slay supercars. When the twin-turbo, dual-clutch, all-wheel-drive GT-R performed its first launch control on U.S. soil, Ferrari's loudest sports car was still sucking its own…

LUXURY STARTUP It was nearly 30 years ago that Toyota launched its Lexus luxury brand, throwing down a gauntlet to Germanic supremacy and demolishing the reputation of Japanese cars as tinny econoboxes. Now the Nappa leather shoe is on the other foot, as Hyundai launches its own luxury brand—and Lexus is the target. Hyundai has made tremendous strides in the past decade and feels it has improved its reputation from the days when rival executives derided Korean cars as "cheap and cheerful." It also tested the waters with premium cars and thinks it can compete with a stand-alone luxury brand. Although Hyundai has sold plausibly premium cars under its own badge, Genesis is the birth of an official luxury brand. The G90 flagship is designed to appeal to those who…

Volkswagen deserves to be punished for its vile deception of both the public trust and environmental regulators by deliberately manipulating its vehicles' diesel emissions. The planet's levels of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere are incrementally higher and certainly more harmful as a result of VW's misdeeds. When 11 million VW diesel vehicles pollute, it will have an impact on the planet. But are the sanctions sought by the tort-industrial complex commensurate with the damage VW has caused? For perspective, Dieselgate is a blip compared to the environmental horrors of Chernobyl, Bhopal, and Love Canal. It's not as if Volkswagen's illegal emissions hack directly killed anyone. Let's be clear: No one is advocating letting Volkswagen off the hook. This was intentional, willful malfeasance. But VW is staring at more than $15…

The intimidating, angry sound of side pipes, the rare scent of hydrocarbons knocking sooty memories from the corners of your brain, and the way classic body sculpting and painstaking details of an "old" car rekindle your teenage automotive lust is only part the experience. Because if you've ever driven a 50-year-old car, much less a highstrung '60s race car, you also know well the trepidation that's part of the irreplaceable experience. Will it start—every time? Will it overheat—in traffic? Will it stop—especially when the brakes are hot? Superformance takes all that is good and lust-worthy in a vintage race car and leaves the rest in the past. It also removes the apprehension of driving what for all appearances is a multi-multimillion-dollar vintage race car with provenance. Just five known original…

For the inexperienced driver, towing a trailer can be fraught with anxiety. But with miles of experience and many repeats of the coupling motions, it's a cinch. You get used to lining the truck up with the trailer and guessing how far you should reverse without ever seeing the hitch ball from the driver's seat, and you get used to swinging out wide. To the uninitiated, this entire ordeal may make the whole heavy-duty truck segment the ideal candidate for complete autonomy. The 2017 Ford Super Duty is certainly on the right track. All that super weight, length, width, and height can make checking your surroundings a challenge, so seven cameras feed data into the electronic brain. Two cameras on the side-view mirrors observe the flanks. A tailgate camera gazes…

Does luxury maintain its appeal if it's available to nearly everyone? Kia thinks so, and it's targeting anyone who has ever wanted goldilocks butt warmers and miles of ultra-quiet interior space. Meet the new 2017 Kia Cadenza. The Cadenza is nestled between the topof-the-line Kia K900 and the midline Kia Optima. Not quite as big or luxurious as the LeBron James of cars, the Cadenza is now in its fourth year of production, and it's getting an update to make it more upscale, more mature, and more refined. First, Kia tackled its looks. The car is the same length as its predecessor, but the wheelbase has been extended by 0.4 inch, and the entire car has been lowered by 0.2 inch and widened by nearly an inch. The extension of…

THE VALUE OF NOTHING RETHINKING THE AUTO INDUSTRY Think about this for a second: Uber is worth more than General Motors. That's right, a company that makes nothing, owns nothing, and has yet to turn a profit is, according to the arcane math of the financial mavens who deal in such ephemera, worth close to $70 billion. GM, which last year manufactured and sold a record 9.8 million cars and trucks around the globe, earning $152 billion, has a market capitalization of about $48 billion. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Facebook, called the world's most popular media company, creates no content and is valued at about $360 billion. So, too, is Amazon, a retailer that carries no inventory. Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no property and is worth…