Innehållsförteckning för September 2013 från Car and Driver

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com COVER YOUR BASES I can't believe you guys sent me my June 2013 issue with a bunch of sedans on the cover when your newsstand cover featured the beautiful new Camaro Z/28! When I contacted customer service, they basically said it's the same magazine (no empathy). When I asked them to send the issue with the Camaro on the cover as part of my subscription (discount it off my sub), they never responded. How can you guys do that? I love the Z/28, and I'm a subscriber! JOSE LOPEZ MIAMI, FLORIDA So did you have two Lexus IS350s, or did you decide to make the cover car a different color? I thought a couple…

When it comes to motorsports, if you're not innovating, you're not winning. Or, to liberally paraphrase NASCAR's finest rule-bender, the late Smokey Yunick, to compete is to cheat. But when new ideas are too bleeding-edge, they often get banned. Here are a few of our favorites. MOVABLE AERODYNAMIC DEVICES Wings were becoming popular in the 1960s, but the Chaparral 2E did nothing less than revolutionize automotive aero. It had two movable elements: a giant airfoil on pylons at the rear and a small element in the nose to balance the large force of the rear wing. The wing provided huge downforce for corners, but the driver could reduce its angle of attack for less drag and more speed on straights. The Can-Am series banned movable aerodynamics, citing safety issues, effectively…

This has happened to me twice. I embark on a search for an obscure vehicle that has become the unremitting fixation of my desire, a search that I expect will take many months if not a whole year of emails and phone calls and web trolling into the wee hours of sleepless nights—and then it's over in two weeks. Done. Finished. The first time, a friend's next-door neighbor in Sydney decided to offload a nice Australian-spec 1972 Chrysler Charger just as my epic quest began for one of those esoteric muscle cars. Then, this past February, I launched what I thought would be another protracted search, giving myself a generous 16-month window to get it done, and only days later was wiring around 10 grand to the British Isles for…

Bentley is soft on China. To differentiate the former Continental Flying Spur, now known simply as the Flying Spur, from the two-door Continental GT, Bentley softened the sedan's suspension. This move was also intended to broaden the Spur's appeal among its likely customers in emerging markets such as China, where we drove it. The Flying Spur hasn't gone completely pillowy. On the spectacular road that climbs from Beijing to the Great Wall, the Spur acquitted itself nicely. Nowadays, the Wall is perhaps less useful for keeping out foreign invaders than keeping in Chinese drivers, who have, on average, about 17 minutes worth of experience. Incidentally, Westerners can now buy a driver's license at the airport. What better place to drive a barge with a 6.0-liter W-12 making 616 horsepower and…

HAT WHIFF OF SMOKED MICHELIN YOU smell and the bawl of tortured rear tires you hear confirm that we've popped the clutch on the Corvette's seventh generation. We uncorked it at GM's Milford, Michigan, proving grounds, where we strapped our testing gear to the thing and came away feeling sorry for almost any car that meets it at a stoplight, the track, or a winding road. But before we tell you about what it can do, here's a primer on what makes the C7 worthy of bearing the Corvette flame and the Stingray name. The new LT1 V-8 carries over a 6.2-liter displacement and pushrod architecture but nothing else. Direct injection and optimized combustion hike the power to 460 horses while fluffing the torque curve by 50 pound-feet between 2000…

The original 2006 Land Rover Range Rover Sport was a triumph of chassis tuning over weight, achieving admirable back-road composure despite its nearly three-ton bulk. It was never quite as athletic as a BMW X5 M or a Porsche Cayenne, but that didn't seem to matter much. The Sport quickly became the brand's bestseller, the plaque clogging the village arteries of Greenwich and Palm Beach. Its appeal seemed rooted less in its dynamics than in its tradition and its flouting of tradition—it was one part old stone manor house and one part Burberry diaper bag. Sic transit gloria. Drive a 2006 Sport now, and it seems hopelessly out of date; its steering wooden, its interior shabby. Drive the new one, however, and you'll find that it doesn't triumph over physics…

The full-size Benz sedan isn't just the brand's whiz kid, it's the valedictorian of the entire industry. HE LAST WORD IN LUXURY LIMOS HASN'T BEEN SPOKEN UNTIL Mercedes-Benz has had the floor. Herr Dr. Benz's firm was making the preferred shipping containers for the mostly un-elected elite when Audi was just a business plan, when BMW was in the bubblecar business, and when the word "lexus" was just badly butchered Latin. No company in this market has more experience catering to finicky buyers. Thus does Mercedes now deliver its latest take on the executive-level sedan, after just about everybody else, from Hyundai to Hongqi, has taken a shot. Over the years, Benz and its closest competitors have reduced power, handling, and comfort to commodities. Supplying them in overabundance is just…

Lest We Forget: Fisker Automotive, age 5. Cut down in its youth, Fisker Automotive recently succumbed to an overdose of naïveté and random acts of mismanagement. The company will be mourned by Karma, a $96,895 plug-in hybrid luxury sedan with plunging resale values, and by sibling Atlantic, tragically stillborn after poking its head out of the birth canal and then thinking better of it. The Business Plan We at Fisker will build advanced hybrids using only the dollar bills we find in our own wallets plus $171 million we find in the Department of Energy's wallet. We will hire the GM engineer most responsible for the Chevy Volt, then get aggressive about not using him. The car must never be called a "loser" by Republicans. In fact, Mitt Romney will…

"If you do DRIVE in the Dominican Republic, you should be aware that the utmost caution and defensive driving are necessary," warns the U.S. Department of State in the generally cautious travel section of its website. Except when it's talking about North Korea, this is about as strong a rebuke as our calm diplomatic corps typically musters. But the warning should be bolder, as the Dominican Republic has the highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world. Globally, traffic accidents kill twice as many people as does malaria. At more than 1.2 million deaths per year, crashes are among the 10 leading causes of death worldwide. With populations and relative incomes booming in low- and middle-income countries, these numbers will only rise. It's obvious, then, why international institutions like the…

A MICROSTEP AT A TIME MODERN ENGINES are controlled by computers that calculate how many microliters of fuel to inject into each cylinder per combustion cycle. To determine fuel efficiency, the computer keeps a running total of both the fuel delivered to the engine and the distance driven. MPG LOG SOME MIGHT CALL OUR DATA-COLLECTING OBSESSIVE OR ANAL, BUT WE'RE GOING WITH THOROUGH. THOUSANDS OF MILES OF DATA GATHERING REVEALED THE FOLLOWING: DISCREPANCY 5.7% DISCREPANCY 6.4% DISCREPANCY 4.5% In our April 2013 ISSUE, we took the EPA to task for its unrealistic fuel-economy assessments of hybrids. But is it possible that the EPA isn't the only one prevaricating about fuel economy? This is a subject near and dear to your author. Every time I fill up my 2007 BMW 335i,…

THIS DOUBLE RAINBOW is not intended to induce the joyous weeping associated with Stendhal syndrome. It's a color-coded look at how Americans' car- and truck-buying habits have changed in the midst of global economic woes and an increasing emphasis on fuel economy. The bottom rainbow represents the market at its 2005 peak; the arc above it projects how 2014 will stack up. Analytics firm AutoPacific provided the forecast. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? HERE IS YOUR COLOR-CODED KEY TO EVERY CAR AND LIGHT-DUTY PICKUP/UTILITY/VAN SEGMENT IN THE AMERICAN MARKET. DON'T LET IT FREAK YOU OUT. CATEGORIES AND THEIR COLORS: CONVERTIBLES/ROADSTERS COUPES/THREE-DOOR HATCHBACKS WAGONS/FIVE-DOOR HATCHBACKS VANS/MINIVANS SUBCOMPACT SEDANS COMPACT SEDANS MID-SIZE SEDANS LARGE SEDANS COMPACT UTILITIES MID-SIZE UTILITIES LARGE UTILITIES MID-SIZE PICKUPS FULL-SIZE PICKUPS 2014 MARKET SHARE BELOW IS HOW EACH BRAND'S…

Cadillac's new mid-size sedan is elegant, ambitious. YOU KNOW THAT FINE LINE BETWEEN CONFIDENCE AND ARROGANCE? That distinction you see every time Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel stand on the same F1 podium? Ask Cadillac people about the third-generation, 2014 CTS, and they flirt with and even cross that line nearly as often as do the German manufacturers they're targeting. The boasts aren't groundless, mind you. The car first seen on the New York show stand in April and the one described on paper is bigger but promises to be lighter than its predecessor; it looks more elegant but tougher than before; and it offers a suite of powertrains that cover more ground. The CTS's target is the BMW 5-series. Cadillac folk mention the E-class and A6 (never a Lexus)…

Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 PRICE > $50,755 • POWER > 355 hp • TORQUE > 383 lb-ft • WEIGHT > 5605 lb • C/D OBSERVED MPG > 13 Ford F-150 Lariat PRICE > $49,725 • POWER > 365 hp • TORQUE > 420 lb-ft • WEIGHT > 5828 lb • C/D OBSERVED MPG > 13 Ram 1500 Laramie Longhorn PRICE > $55,390 • POWER > 395 hp • TORQUE > 407 lb-ft • WEIGHT > 5999 lb • C/D OBSERVED MPG > 13 You know who simply loves Texas? Swine, that's who. Well, feral swine to be more specific. Oh, and pickup-truck drivers, of course. They also love Texas. The one-time independent republic is overrun with both. Truckmakers can't seem to agree on exactly what proportion of pickups sold…

Despite its name change to the Lincoln Motor Company, every Lincoln remains based on the products of the, ahem, Ford Motor Company. And without any platforms of its own, Lincoln continues to produce vehicles that invite comparison with their Ford counterparts. It is both a blessing and a curse that the Fords are good. This leads to a good Lincoln, but the pricier product should not only be different but also better. Which leads us to question whether the Lincoln MKZ hybrid should command a $5695 premium over a comparable Ford Fusion hybrid. The powertrain differences in the Lincoln amount to a shorter final-drive ratio. Other than that, the hybrid powertrains are identical, from the 141-hp Atkinson-cycle 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine and 118-hp electric motor combo to the planetary CVT and…

Sink the clutch and squeeze the brake pedal. Float the weighty stick through the gears from third to second without so much as brushing the gate. Foot cocked like a pigeon-toed toddler, your heel drops, your ankle rolls, and the outside of your right sole jabs the throttle, all while maintaining even pressure on the brakes. Revs rise, your left foot lifts, and the payoff—the payoff is that flat-six barking at 5000 rpm and the perfect setup for this tight right-hander coming up. In a Cayman, you're a star. Were this a Wachowski film, the corner would play out for six whole minutes in slow motion. Never mind that your flawless, rev-matched downshift probably took longer than the slowest gear change ever by a Porsche Doppelkupplung (PDK) automatic. Man and…

C/D: When you first got to GM, you said, "Nobody knows the mission." Did you ever think, "I can't fix this?" EW: Oh, of course. I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?" But I forgot about that real fast because it got so busy. C/D: Did you see a report from Steven Rattner that said "GM is unfixable"? EW: Well, I can't tell you. Maybe it was a report out of U.S. Treasury. It was bleak. C/D: One of your mantras at GM was "Management is 100 percent responsible." In the end, did they ever get it? EW: A lot never did. They'd say, "We didn't do anything wrong. It's the economy." Boy, I didn't have time to linger with that kind of attitude. They had no flexibility. They'd…

SIBLING RIVALRY STANDARDIZED TESTING ZL1 TEST: 8 DAYS 2210 MILES 760 LAPS 89 MPH AVERAGE LAP SPEED 75–90 Degrees Ambient temperature The Corvette, CTS-V, new Chevy SS, and even the HHR SS have all endured GM's rigorous 24-hour test at its Milford, Michigan, proving grounds. When the Z/28 enters the crucible later this year, engineers will be comparing it with the ZL1's results, shown here: 18 SETS OF FRONT BRAKE PADS AND ROTORS 36 SETS OF FRONT TIRES 12 SETS OF REAR BRAKE PADS AND ROTORS 18 SETS OF REAR TIRES 36 TANKS OF FUEL When Chevrolet unveiled the Z/28 last spring, Mark Stielow, its program engineering manager, assured us that the car could burn through a full tank of fuel on a track without overheating any critical fluids. He…

Last month, we tested the new Range Rover, and I deployed C/D's long-term 2013 Nissan Pathfinder as a photo/chase car. We drove both SUVs as far up Montana's Bitterroot Mountains as immaturity encouraged, although our ascents were reliably stymied by snow at 6000 feet. At one point, we ran up on the remains of a huge fallen ponderosa pine blocking a third of a muddy two-track. The right side of the road dropped off "a distance best measured by the FAA," opined photographer Roy Ritchie. We eventually inched the vehicles to safety, but it made me queasy. We'd have been a lot better off if both SUVs hadn't, over their lives, swollen into twin studies in naval architecture. The first Pathfinder I drove was a 1989 SE automatic, from which…

Like a jack-o'-lantern in mid-November, the 2014 Acura MDX looks softer and lumpier than the ute it replaces. Less menacing, too, its dual exhausts having been castrated in the redesign. But Acura assures us this third generation of its three-row SUV doesn't concede anything to models previous. In fact, the new one allegedly laps the Nürburgring eight seconds faster than its predecessor. Touché! Cliché, too. While nobody from Acura would divulge an actual lap time, we hit 60 miles per hour in 6.4 seconds and ran the quarter in 14.9 seconds. That's two-tenths quicker in both measures, despite the new model's smaller-displacement V-6. Rated at 290 horsepower, the 3.5-liter V-6 is down 10 horsepower compared with last year's engine but now employs direct injection and cylinder deactivation. That's good for…

Fiat has moved on from its initial marketing flop with J.Lo. The brand now deploys a little Italian cheek—literally—with scorpions snipping bikini tops and singer Pitbull fist-bumping the tiny 500 into the American psyche. Sexy sells, and sales are up, but now comes the 500L, where the 500's cutesy, bug-eyed face looks like it's been pasted onto a mop bucket. Fiat portrays the 500 as an emotional purchase. The 500L, on paper, isn't. It was created to a calculus intended to stanch the outflow of buyers who are looking for something bigger than an espresso machine with a key. Thus, the 500L rides on a larger—that's the "L" in its name—B-segment platform that stretches 27.7 inches longer than a 500, is 5.7 inches wider, and stands 5.9 inches taller. So,…

CAR MEETS ROAD I amlin, West Virginia, is nowhere. Which is exactly the place Jaguar sports-car development has been for the past 40 years. The XK? That, good sir, is a GT. That anything small and uncompromisingly sporty could or would grow in the sizable shadow of the E-type has long seemed impossible, what with Jaguar's spasmodic management over the decades. Yet here is the 2014 F-type, a proper two-seater with a folding fabric roof whose ancestral link to that last great Jaguar roadster is its audaciousness of spirit as much as its naming convention. Fashioned primarily from aluminum, as were some Es, the F-type's lightweight metal is welded, riveted, and bonded for the unibody and cast for the suspension, with huge sheets of it stamped and wrapped tightly around…

Whatever you thought Maserati stood for, you're going to have to rethink it. In the space of three years, the brand will rediscover turbocharging; introduce a diesel model; build both an SUV and a second, smaller sedan; and offer four-wheel drive in both its four-doors. All this in an effort to increase its global sales figure eightfold to 50,000 in 2015, thereby giving Ferrari's older brother the scale it needs to be stable. The plan doesn't lack ambition, and the process has already started with the launch of the turbocharged, four-wheel-drive-optional new Quattroporte. We've now driven the new Ghibli, the smaller sedan based on the QP. Maserati hopes it will rival the Mercedes-Benz CLS, Audi A7, BMW 6-series Gran Coupe and their conventional sedan brethren, and provide around half those…

Volkswagen Jetta TDI PRICE > $27,850 • POWER > 140 hp • TORQUE > 236 lb-ft • WEIGHT > 3255 lb • C/D OBSERVED MPG > 40 Chevrolet Cruze 2.0TD PRICE > $25,810 • POWER > 151 hp • TORQUE > 280 lb-ft • WEIGHT > 3487 lb • C/D OBSERVED MPG > 44 There's been a lot of talk lately about diesels finally taking hold in the U.S., but it's bunk; they took hold long ago. There's a National Hot Rod Diesel Association, in which diesel dragsters run in the sixes at more than 200 mph. A diesel has topped 350 mph at Bonneville. The Ram pictured on the previous page "rolling coal" (soot-head slang for blasting a black cloud from the exhaust) makes a claimed 925 horsepower and…