Innehållsförteckning för December 2016 från Car and Driver

IT CAN BE AS LOUD as standing alongside a Boeing 767 at takeoff. And it’s about as irritating as having someone thumping on a bass drum in the back seat. Whether you call it wind throb or buffeting or just plain annoying, it happens when someone in the car opens a single window at speed and it stops when a second window rolls down. The phenomenon that produces this noise is the Helmholtz Resonance, the same principle that makes a bottle hum when you blow over its open top. It’s the interaction of the gas in a container with a single orifice and the other gases that are, um, passing over that orifice. In this case, the container is the car. The interaction between the two masses of air produces…

001. Intake-manifold charge-air coolers (left/right) 002. Radiator 003. Air-conditioning condenser 004. Intercooler 005. Auxiliary radiator 006. Auxiliary transmission cooler 007. Auxiliary intercooler 008. Engine oil cooler 009. In-tank transmission cooler 010. Rear-axle cooler Cooling that goes to 11 That the ZL1 packages 11 heat exchangers into its powertrain shouldn’t surprise you. Six hundred and fifty, after all, are a lot of ponies to chill. Of the 11, seven are air-to-liquid coolers and four are liquid-to-liquid. There’s an air-conditioning condenser packed in there as well because drivers need cooling, too. Chevy engineers came up with a novel solution for keeping the ZL1’s active differential from cooking its lube. Cooled transmission oil is routed to a heat exchanger inside the differential housing where it extracts heat from the differential oil. An auxiliary…

Four unprepared teams. Four disease ridden $1500 vehicles. Three grueling days of mud, sand, and pavement. It must be... 1990 GEO TRACKER Price: $1200 Owner profile: Big Johnson T-shirt enthusiast Favorite food: McRib Spirit animal: Barbie 1979 FORD F-150 CUSTOM Price: $1500 Owner profile: LARPer Favorite food: Bison jerky Spirit animal: Lou Ferrigno 1988 JEEP CHEROKEE Price: $800 Owner profile: Public urinator Favorite food: Doral Lights Spirit animal: Roadkill 2004 LAND ROVER DISCOVERY Price: $1500 Owner profile: Dilettante Favorite food: Pumpkin spice Spirit animal: Labradoodle Jeep Cherokee [+]If you could put a price on potential, we couldn’t afford it. [-]Sometimes even cheap stuff is worth its price. [=]It sure would be nice to put a price on potential. Can we at least try? That’s more or less how we decided…

photography by MARC URBANO [+]Drives Like a Golf, delivers AWD for less money than an R. [-]Off-road pretensions are just that, gets pricey. IT HAPPENS EVERY FEW YEARS: An old letter turns up in the mail, delivered late. Really late. In 2009, Britain’s Royal Mail delivered a love letter sent during World War II to a military base 64 years after it was written. Three letters addressed to a New York woman in 1969—including two birthday cards—spent 45 years missing before they wound up in her old mailbox in 2014. And a postcard mailed in France in 1877 finally arrived after taking 138 years to travel all of six miles. The letter we wonder about is also presumed lost. It’s the one written by Volkswagen’s U.S. outpost, begging the Germans…

illustrations by TODD DETWILER AN INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE is still a metal box of pistons that slap up and down (or side to side). But improvements through the years have transformed cars from the retrospectively simple devices of the Tin Lizzie era into complicated, computer-regulated tech labs. Infiniti is soon to deploy the latest major internal-combustion innovation, the variable-compression-ratio engine we covered last month. And the breakthroughs continue, as there are still plenty of improvements to be made to today’s automobiles before we begin beaming ourselves across the universe with our Roddenberry guns. Here are three inventions currently in the works, as deduced from reviews of recent patent grants by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: The Keytar COMPANY: Ford USPTO NAME: Increasing the number of cylinders in an internalcombustion engine…

illustration by TODD DETWILER T O OUR T EENAGE S E LV E S there was only one thing more enticing than the idea of developing new cars. And her name was Megan. As development engineers, we imagined, we would casually lay down heroic laps on world-famous race courses in awesome experimental works of wonder. We would be able to tell if the right-front tire was down a half pound of pressure thanks to our supernatural sensitivity to all things automotive. We would go to exotic places. Megan would probably dig us. We might even be a black belt because, well, because that would be sweet. What we did not expect was that in the real world of development engineers, we would have to know what the durometer scale was,…

“Where the hell do you put silverware in a Bugatti?” the customs officer asked, staring at the eating utensils packed in engineer Dennis Rohlfs’s fancy aluminum Zarges case, which was otherwise filled with spare parts for hot-weather testing of the new 1500-hp Bugatti Chiron. At Bugatti, even the engineers have expensive luggage. Rohlfs explained that he wanted to show good manners in America by using a knife and fork when eating the hamburgers he expected to be deluged with out in the desert west. Shaking his head, the customs officer let the weird foreigner pass. Welcome to America. That episode was two weeks ago, and Rohlfs’s silverware remains unused, lying in his box between the cables, seals, and other exotic Bugatti bits. He has already learned to eat burgers with…

MERCEDES-AMG S63 CABRIOLET Price: $214,525 • Power: 577 hp Torque: 664 lb-ft • Weight: 4929 lb C/D observed: 14 mpg BENTLEY CONTINENTAL GT V-8 S CONVERTIBLE Price: $272,995 • Power: 520 hp Torque: 502 lb-ft • Weight: 5572 lb C/D observed: 16 mpg dad bought a new Cadillac Eldorado convertible in 1976. GM touted it as the last of the big droptops, a majestic parting shot seemingly designed to transport prom queens, grand marshals, and Boss Hogg types into an increasingly dystopian, gas-rationed future. Dressed in triple red with every option, including fuel injection, automatic high-beams, power everything, and a hard tonneau “parade boot,” that 18.7-foot luxo-barge weighed 5231 pounds and was motivated via an 8.2-liter V-8 under a hood so long you could land an Airbus A380 on it.…

THE ORIGINAL PANAMERA brought new meaning to the phrase “draggin’ wagon” when it made its debut in 2009. The Porsche hatchback with a little extra junk in the trunk also made light work of stoplight sprints. It charged hard, scythed through curves, and swallowed highway miles whole, all while appearing to wear a loaded diaper. So it’s easy to assume that the second-generation Panamera’s primary mission is to do the cosmetic work that finally sets things right. With a lower roofline, a taller rear end, shapelier hips, and horizontal graphics that visually widen the car, the Panamera now looks like the fourdoor 911 it aspires to be. Yet the bodywork is actually the sidebar to, well, pretty much everything else. The 2017 Panamera is every bit as fresh as the…

[+]No traffic or stoplights, takes the any-idiot approach, trailers easily. [-]This or a Ferrari, light payload limit, company has had startup troubles. THE ICON A5 STARTED as a napkin sketch more than 10 years ago by ex–F-16 jet jock and Icon founder Kirk Hawkins, defying airplane convention with its carlike dashboard, simple controls, and ultrastable flying manners. If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to take off from your bathtub in a Mazda MX-5 Miata with wings, this is as close as you’ll probably get. Starting around $222,000, the A5 is likely to be the umpteenth vehicle in your household(s), best suited to your isolated lakeside estate where it can serve as a go-totown vehicle, able to land on either water or, with its retractable wheels deployed, airstrips. A…

MEET THE NEWEST OF AUDI’S GNARLIEST, THE 400-HP RS3. HORSEPOWER COMPARED AUDI OFTEN DENIES THE U.S. its juiciest fruit, especially when it comes to high-performance RS models. We were adjudged worthy of the RS4 sedan, RS5 coupe, and RS7 coupe-sedan, but not of the RS4 and RS6 wagons or the RS3. Until now. While the RS3 hatch (“Sportback” in Audi-ese) will remain in Europe, the sedan arrives as redress for these denials. This is an RS that’s been designed for our side of the Atlantic, and Audi figures 40 percent of total model sales will happen in North America. As apologies go, a 400-hp five-cylinder compact sedan certainly beats a muffin basket. CHASSIS When the official history of Volkswagen’s MQB compact architecture is finally written, it will top the best-seller…

illustrations by ANDY POTTS AN INESCAPABLE COLLISION with a large truck is a driver’s worst nightmare. On August 25 in Binghamton, New York, a semi hauling a load of stone plowed through 10 cars stuck in construction traffic. One car burst into flames, and an SUV was so compacted that the semi’s front license plate was mashed into the back of the driver’s headrest. Luckily, onlookers pulled the driver from the flaming vehicle, there were no back-seat passengers in the crushed SUV, and no one in the incident died or suffered life-threatening injuries. It was just another in a recent uptick in truck crashes that is sounding alarms around the country. But pending legislation that threatens to undermine decades of progress could be what really reverses us into deadlier territory.…

illustration by CHRIS PHILPOT Bursting airborne and sideways, wheels stretching for the ground, the raw, stunningly rapid, and now very aloft Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 should be a barbaric, deadly thing. Yet, in the crucial milliseconds following its oblique touchdown, it defines itself differently. Aaron Link, the ZL1’s lead development engineer, adds a breath of countersteer, stays in the gas, and carries the slide, fully committed, to the track’s edge. Crimson leaves explode behind its rear diffuser, then waft to the ground in what remains of the ZL1’s throat-punch exhaust note. The most powerful Camaro ever made fires a round of upshifts into the autumn air and hurls itself at the next corner, unfazed. It’s a hell of a way to start the day. “That’s the eLSD,” says Link, referring to…

Mario Fasanetto goes shrieking through the forests of the Eifel Mountains in a Lamborghini Aventador SV, a car that seemingly came about when Clark Kent and the devil had a baby. The Lambo’s body is slashed with cuts and gouged with holes and tattooed with black blades that order the wind to either go through it or around it. The four pipes under the rear origami “bumper” gush blue flame—flame!—a good six inches when the whip comes down on the 6.5-liter, 8500-rpm V-12. This is the car that appears when you call for an Uber in Mordor. Today is one of those special days when being a car-magazine editor is exactly what everyone thinks it’s like all the time. We’re behind Fasanetto, Lamborghini’s chief test driver, trying to keep up,…

photography by Marc Urbano Cue the pipers and turn your hymnals to “Amazing Grace.” This is where we mourn the demise of one of our all-time favorite engines, Porsche’s naturally aspirated flat-six. The final nails are being hammered into its coffin as Porsche powers all 2017 911s with twin-turbo sixes, and the cylinder count gets whacked from six to four throughout the 2017 718 Boxster and Cayman lineup. Chalk up this move to the relentless quest for efficiency. Replacing cylinders and cubic inches with turbos is now a favorite powertrain strategy because, shrewdly done, power and performance can be maintained or even improved while paying the EPA piper. Unfortunately, the side effects can be tragic. The tenor wail of a free-breathing boxer-six belting out a Puccini aria on the way…

photography by MARC URBANO [+]Goes faster than it looks, well-calibrated electronic damping. [-]“Sport” composure erodes beyond seven-tenths. REMEMBER WHEN Detroit-brand family sedans had horsepower to spare? Those good ol’ days are back. Ford’s four-door Fusion Sport offers 325 horsepower from its twin-turbo 2.7-liter V-6—enough to erase those midlife, mid-size–sedan blues in a scant 5.1 seconds. That’s how long this furious Fusion needs to hit 60 mph; it’ll clobber the quarter-mile in 13.7 seconds at 101 mph. The 278-hp V-6 Honda Accord Sport, by contrast, previously stood out by clocking 5.8 seconds to 60 mph and 14.4 in the quarter. And the Ford’s turbocharged thrust greatly hastens two-lane passing (the Accord’s 50-to-70-mph time was 0.7 second slower). But the freshness doesn’t stop with the engine. The mid-term update for ’17 brings…