Innehållsförteckning för October 2013 från Car and Driver

Hosted by ED. SUPER COVER The cover of your July 2013 issue asks: "Ever try to get a 60-inch TV in a 911?" I've never tried a 60-inch TV. But I've carried lumber, an 8-foot-by-12-foot rug, a carpet cleaner, paper towels and toilet paper from Costco, two small lesbians and their two huge suitcases (girls in back, suitcases in the passenger seat). It's amazing what will fit in a 911. It bears remembering that a modern 911, though much evolved, is a Beetle deep in its heart of hearts. ALEC MCAUSLAND PHOENIX, ARIZONA I am a longtime devotee of the magazine, but lately I am losing hope. The July cover story just about pushed me over the edge. Calling the Volkswagen GTI and Ford Focus ST supercars? Really? What happened…

In this new series, we peek into the personal stables of the people behind our favorite cars. Russ Ruedisueli (roo-duh-SELL-ee) has been racing in Formula Vee and Formula Ford for more than 20 years and, at 54, continues to successfully compete in SCCA events. That experience cross-pollinates with his day job as the head of Chrysler's SRT and motorsports engineering. C/D: How did you get started racing? RR: Tom Wilkinson [now communications manager at Chevrolet] started racing out of Waterford Hills, Michigan, in a Formula Vee, and that was like my introduction to heroin. He got me out there crewing with him and then got me into the car and through driver's school. A couple years later I moved up to Formula Fords, and that's where I've kind of landed.…

In endurance sports-car racing, it used to be that strategy was king. If you had a two-car team, for instance, one car might be the tortoise, the other the rabbit. What's more, at the drop of the green flag, only the cars on the front row put the hammer down. The veterans in the rest of the field initially dilly-dallied around at two-thirds speed, as if vaguely stunned, staying clear of the watch-this rookies and the over-adrenalized gentlemen drivers whose egos and bank accounts overshadowed their brakes and grip. Nowadays, strategy is but a puddle of warm nostalgia. Sebring, Daytona, Le Mans are all flat-out sprints, Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash. Stay on the lead lap or go home. And, for the most part, it works. Of the 56…

MERCEDES-BENZ CLS63 AMG S-MODEL PRICE > $125,285 POWER > 577 hp TORQUE > 590 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4409 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 10 AUDI RS7 PRICE > $130,000* POWER > 560 hp TORQUE > 516 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4453 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 9 *C/D est. BMW M6 GRAN COUPE PRICE > $145,155 POWER > 552 hp TORQUE > 502 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4365 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 10 e've watched two Gulfstreams and a Learjet touch down in a span of 30 minutes, taxi along the stretch of pavement we're using as our provisional test track, and tuck into spotless hangars. Only the flight crews disembark from these planes. The nondescript southern German village of Schwäbisch Hall, population 40,000, isn't the kind of place where you'd…

TRIBAL LOYALTIES The Small Crossover with the Big Name. Resurrecting the venerated Cherokee name was an easy decision. Affixing it to the rump of a soft-edged, squinty-eyed crossover that includes neither a solid axle nor a traditional transfer case in its mechanical specs, however, likely took a little more thought. Soften it too much, and you've got a Cherokee without the integrity and grit. But go too hard-core, and you risk alienating today's crossover customer, an archetype that didn't even exist when the previous Cherokee XJ's 17-year reign of right-angle styling and farm-implement simplicity began. By now, most have decided which side of the transfer case they stand on, so we'll just inform you that Mark Allen, Jeep chief designer, followed one overriding philosophy when designing the Cherokee: "To pay…

COUNTING CARS What began in 1976 in the U.S. with a single E21 two-door model has proliferated into a well-rounded family of 3-series (and now 4-series) variants offered in multiple trim levels and body styles (outgoing convertible not shown): 3-SERIES The 3-series, a number now reserved only for the sedan (and five-door) versions, currently comes in five levels of potency: the 320i with a 180-hp 2.0-liter turbo four; the 328i with a 240-hp 2.0-liter turbo four; the 335i with a 300-hp 3.0-liter turbo six; the 328d with a 180-hp, 2.0-liter four-cylinder turbo-diesel; and the ActiveHybrid 3, producing a combined 335 horses from a six-cylinder and an electric motor. All except the hybrid are available with four-wheel drive. 3-SERIES xDRIVE SPORTS WAGON One of the few wagons still available, the 328i…

GTI chassis, TDI heart. THIS MONTH ROLLS-ROYCE WRAITH / TOYOTA TUNDRA / MERCEDES-BENZ GLK250 BLUETEC Volkswagen enjoys the adoration of two divergent legions: the hot-hatch hooligans who revel in the GTI's plaid seats and turbocharged pull and the diesel devotees who boast of the TDIs' 40-plus mpg and, uh, turbocharged pull. Effectively a GTI with a high-output diesel engine, the GTD may offer these dissimilar fan bases a common ground—if it in fact comes to the States. Our chances look good. Previous Golf generations have included a GTD for Europe, and our last Golf TDI already had the GTI's suspension tune. VW's North American team tells us that getting a GTD featured in our seventh-gen Golf brochures is just a matter of hammering out the details of when and how…

The GLK250 BlueTec is a diesel-drinking Hermès clutch of a crossover that hit stores this spring as a fashionably late member of the refreshed 2013 GLK lineup. Engine geeks ought to be thrilled by its tech-stuffed 2.1-liter, Benz's first four-hole diesel in the U.S. since the naturally aspirated one in the 1985 190D. Back then, life was more leisurely with just 72 horsepower and 96 pound-feet underfoot—the GLK250 gives 200 horsepower at 3800 rpm and 369 pound-feet at 1600 rpm. A seven-speed automatic routes the output to a standard four-wheel-drive system. Two turbochargers work in series. The smaller unit minimizes lag at low engine speeds, then a larger turbo takes over at higher speeds. Two balance shafts quell tremors, and four piezo injectors squirt fuel into the cylinders at 29,000…

WHAT WE SAID: "Summer tires are one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase a car's performance. " — C/D, AUGUST 2009 If you love the way your car drove when it was factory fresh, or if you want to experience how your used car drove when it was new, you may want to replace your tires with the ones that came on the car. But replacing your tires with the original rubber may not be as straightforward as you think. Many tires marked with the same brand, model, and sizes look identical to the untrained eye but in fact vary widely, with characteristics optimized for specific cars. To make sure you're getting your car's exact tire, you may have to learn a cryptic code. The…

EDDIE ALTERMAN THE MOTOR CITY, THAT ONCE-GREAT economic engine of America, is broke. Those of us who live in it or its shadow already knew that, but on July 18, Detroit's emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, made it official by filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The 139-square-mile municipality had been on a long, slow glide path since the '60s, but the prevailing attitude within city government always seemed to be: "We're still in the air, right? What's the problem?" Various half-hearted tugs at the yoke did nothing to prevent the ground from filling the windows. This latest, local high-profile bankruptcy means pundits have found it impossible to resist drawing parallels between General Motors and the city it calls home. Both, they contend, were out-of-control dinosaurs, too big for their own…

At the introduction of the new Corvette Stingray, Chevrolet engineers crowed that the C7's thrones come from the same supplier used by Porsche. True, but that manufacturer, Lear, also produced the C6's soft, floppy seats. Now that we've spent some time in the Stingray, we can say that the C7's chairs have more in common with a Porsche's than with any previous Corvette's. We contend that it doesn't matter who built them, but rather how they're made. To find out what distinguishes the new Corvette buckets from the old, we sliced into each with a scalpel, some fabric scissors, and a bread knife. CAR FLOOR TO TOP OF CUSHION:10.8 INCHES SUSPENDED SEAT BOTTOM The c6's seat cushion rides on a gel pad sandwiched between two plastic sheets that are suspended…

DUCATI 1199 PANIGALE I shall assume that you know nothing about motorcycles. That's because people rabid for bikes seem not to take much notice of cars, except when one is bearing down on them. It's a church-and-state thing. Bikers think we're crazy for sealing ourselves up in thousands of pounds of metal, and we think they're crazy because they don't. Recently I was recounting various drives of new cars over lunch during a visit to the Ducati factory in Bologna, Italy (Ducati makes motorcycles). Name-drop a new car model there and all you get is polite blankness. They know Ferrari, they're vaguely aware of Lamborghini, and they think of their neighbor, Horacio Pagani, as that nice man who "does the something with the cars." The bikies only perked up when…

RE-TURNING JAPANESE MAZDA GOES IT ALONEAND FINDS ITSELF. MAZDA'S HISTORY CHANGED FOREVER IN 1971. That was the year Ford introduced the Courier pickup, a Mazda with a Blue Oval mask. After that, Mazda and Ford often relied on each other to fill gaps in their respective lineups. A Mazda 323 turned into the first Mercury Tracer, a Ford Explorer became a Mazda Navajo, and, in a reversal of the Courier plan, Ford Rangers were eventually sold as Mazda B-series trucks. Intermarriage had blurred family lines by the time the 1991 Mazda Protegé and Ford Escort arrived. Ford engines powered Mazda's small sedan, and it became difficult to tell where the Ford ended and the Mazda began. Mazda replaced the Protegé with the Focus-based Mazda 3 in 2003, but now that…

Shall we tell you why so many of us are so torqued off about the sixth-generation BMW 3-series? No, it's not because of the loss of steering feel. Well, yes, it is. But it's more than the steering. It's the sense of time passing and youth slipping away. When our largely Gen-X staff looks at this, the archetypal sports sedan, we see our own reflection. The 3-series has put on weight over the years. It's gotten softer. The creep of technology and features that have nothing to do with driving threatens to overwhelm the car, just as the pressures of family and finance leave us in a fog, wondering how, exactly, we arrived at this point in our lives. Too much introspection for a car magazine? Perhaps. But if you…

To better understand the evolution of the BMW 3-series, we borrowed a 335i (E90) and a 328i (F30) from BimmerWorld, a BMW racing and tuning emporium in Dublin, Virginia, for a bottoms-up chassis exam. Morse Measurements in Salisbury, North Carolina, bolted the test subjects to its $3 million kinematics and compliance (K&C) machine to record exactly how each car's suspension reacts to cornering, steering, and braking forces applied through the tires. The Morse Measurements data confirms some suspicions but also refutes a few impressions logged during thousands of miles of 3-series seat time. Here's what we learned: [1]The 328i we tested for 40,000 miles weighs 3434 pounds, while a 2007 335i owned by former Car and Driver editor-in-chief Csaba Csere scales in at 3671 pounds. (Weight and CG data came…

It is a historical curiosity that when Rolls-Royce first used the Wraith name way back in the late 1930s, the company sold only the running chassis. Independent coachbuilders supplied the bodies, built to reflect the owner's particular (and sometimes peculiar) taste. These days, the new Wraith's running gear traces its ancestry to corporate overlord BMW, while the body is the portion that defines a modern Roller as both distinct and distinctly British. Odd, then, that the Wraith's fastback roofline—the car's defining feature—was cribbed from a couple of Italian cars. You see, Rolls has no precedent for a roofline that looks anything like this, so its designers couldn't play the heritage card. According to design director Giles Taylor, the inspiration comes instead from the Lancia Aurelia coupe and the Maserati Ghibli…

WHAT WE SAID: "A car that is as fun as it looks."— C/D, JUNE 2011 2009–13 Mini may be first and foremost an automotive fashion statement, but it's an enduring one. Spy photos reveal that the third-generation Mini hardtop, set to arrive in November, will look quite similar to the current one, despite riding on a new platform with all-new drivetrains. The transition should be no more jarring than the one between the first- (2001–2006) and second-gen (2007–now) hatches, so owners of used Minis needn't fear that their cars will look horribly dated next year. Thank you, retro-design ethos. For those who love the style, nimble handling, and decent performance and are willing to tolerate scant rear legroom and utility, a certified pre-owned Mini Cooper or Cooper S hardtop—with extended…

1989–96 Making its debut as Giorgetto Giugiaro's "Silver Car" concept in 1972, the production Esprit arrived in 1976 and lived on, and on, and on, until 2004. For nearly 30 years, this distinctive fiberglass wedge combined supercar looks and performance for far less than comparable Italian exotics. The same is true today, as many used Esprits can be acquired for less than the price of a new Toyota Camry. But do service and repair costs completely negate the value the Esprit offers to entry-level playboys now? Let's have a look at the Esprit's later, four-cylinder years, shall we? — james tate ENGINE: The final four-cylinder Esprits used variants of Lotus's 2.2-liter engine, tuned to produce 264 horsepower in the SE and S4 models and 300 horsepower in the S4S. Because…

SCRUTINEERING LOST IN TRANSLATION THE GLA CONCEPT shown at the 2013 Shanghai auto show came to life absent its most notable features: laser-beam headlight projectors, roof-rack-embedded dash cams, recessed door handles, and a see-through dashboard. At least give us the lasers. EVEN DISGUISED IN BROWN, MERCEDES' NEW DESIGN LANGUAGE CANNOT BE CALLED CONSERVATIVE. MERCEDES CONTINUES ITS BOTTOM-UP BRAND-BUILDING WITH THE GLA CROSSOVER. Few brands Do recombinant DNA better than Mercedes-Benz. The luxury manufacturer spins dozens of variants from its core product lines, including a carousel of coupes and convertibles and a stable of sedans, wagons, and SUVs. Even the gullwinged SLS shares a few parts with other M-B models. With their familial resemblance and similar hardware underneath, Mercedes vehicles rival the Habsburgs for adhering rigidly to a house style.…

Inventing elegant solutions to complex problems is a Honda specialty. When the first hybrids arrived in the U.S., Honda beat Toyota to the market, barely, by simply installing a pancake AC motor ahead of the engine's flywheel. That design, called Integrated Motor Assist, was compact and efficient but didn't offer pure-electric drive until 2006. Now that hybrids are evolving into plug-in hybrids, Honda has created a new, two-motor powertrain layout that's also nothing like the intricate CVT-based drive system found in the original Prius and many subsequent hybrids. What's clever about Honda's latest innovation is that it has no transmission. At least, none in the conventional sense. There are four gearsets between the electric and combustion power sources and the front wheels, but all drive ratios are fixed. The compound…

I like knobs. Steve Jobs liked knobs. John Varvatos, the fashion designer with his own Chrysler 300 edition, likes knobs. In fact, Varvatos has created what might be thought of as a temple dedicated to knobs. In his New York store, occupying the former CBGB's, the legendary punk bar on the Bowery, he displays a prime collection of 1960s and 1970s audio equipment with large, brushed-metal knobs, solid as the turrets of Admiral Dewey's battleships, faces gleaming with ever-shifting reflections. Touch the knobs on such equipment and they convey to the fingers a solid feel, light but sure. Turning carefully calibrated knobs can be immensely satisfying. They have the quality we are searching for and find largely missing in the many interfaces in our lives. We want the same happy…

THE FIRST GREAT ELECTRIFICATION OF AMERICA tripped a breaker a century ago when 15,000 miners walked off their jobs in northern Michigan's Copper Country. The largest labor strike in the history of the republic up to that point marked the beginning of the end of Michigan's copper empire. Seventy years earlier, Detroit hardware-store owner Julius Eldred sparked a mineral rush by hauling a 3700-pound chunk of pure native copper out of the north woods and selling it to the U.S. government for $5644.93. Known as the Ontonagon Boulder, it has been collecting dust at the Smithsonian ever since. The great Copper Country Strike of 1913 ended in April 1914 as a labor defeat, but by then, Michigan began to be outpaced by other regions as the copper basket of America,…

We don't celebrate base models enough around here. It's not that we don't love the cheap versions, but carmakers usually loan us models tarted up with more options than sense. But the stripper, the price leader, the key-and-a-heater—that's the way to obtain the goodness of a particular car for the least amount of money. The lowest rung on the 3-series ladder is now the 320i, starting at $33,475. We can almost hear the sales pitch: "This 320i is $4550 less than the 328i, and you get the same 2.0-liter turbo engine." That's true, but what your salesperson might not tell you is that you give up 60 horsepower to the 240-hp 328i, and the 320i's zero-to-60 time of 6.5 seconds is 0.9 second slower than the 328i's. But mid-range acceleration…

"If I could have sold one more hot dog, I would have broke even." — EARL BALTES, ELDORA SPEEDWAY FOUNDER IN A SINGULARLY SAGGING SEASON, give NASCAR credit for pluck. Or, at least, for hiring people paid to be plucky. Faced with criticism over perhaps the most deadly dull race in years, the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July, the drivers came out swinging when backed into a corner by the press. Even surlier than usual, Tony Stewart, who finished fourth, addressed complaints regarding the utter absence of passing. "Look up 'racing' in the dictionary and tell me what it says in the dictionary. Then look up 'passing,' " he said. "We're racing here." Then he said this: "For some reason in the last 10 years, everybody…

Mildly manlier. In 2007, after selling medium-size pickups here for 14 years, Toyota figured it understood what truck buyers in America wanted. It bet that its then-new whopper-sized beast, the second-gen Tundra, would draw plenty of Ford, Dodge, and GM pickup customers into the fold. It seemed almost mercenary that the new Tundra would be built in San Antonio, Texas, to claim some sort of geographical pedigree. Toyota guessed wrong. The 2007 Tundra's styling was polarizing, the model lineup confusing, and the price not low enough for that to be a factor in drawing defectors from other brands. Mostly, though, Toyota underestimated just how good the Big Three's full-size pickups were. Enter the refreshed 2014 Toyota Tundra, the first real opportunity to right those wrongs. Enter, also, the minor Toyota…

WHAT WE SAID: " 'Too much money' is not in a car dealer's vocabulary." C/D, MAY 2006 Along with 45.1 million other Americans, you're a Costco member and live a Costco lifestyle. You sleep between the warehouse club's Kirkland Signature–brand sheets, you serve Kirkland wine at dinner, and you cover your curves in Kirkland jeans. So of course you'll want to buy your next new car at Costco, too. Well, sort of. Promoted with vehicles placed near the entrances of nearly all its 449 warehouse stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, the Costco Auto Program (CAP) doesn't allow you to drive away from Costco with a car. Franchise laws still guarantee that nearly all retail new-vehicle purchases must go through dealers; Costco can't make direct sales. Instead, the…

C/D: You have a long history of car movies. RH: I do. Particularly for a traditional Volvo owner. C/D: The first movie you directed was Grand Theft Auto. RH: Yeah, and for Todd Hallowell, who is the executive producer and second unit director on Rush, that was actually his first movie. And he even doubled for me a couple of times. Everyone doubled up on jobs in Grand Theft Auto; it was a typical Roger Corman production. C/D: Is there any shot or technique from Grand Theft Auto that you carried forward 35 years into this new movie? RH: Definitely the approach to shooting the stunts and breaking them down. Basically, trying to make the cars and the drivers a single character together. In Grand Theft Auto we were doing…