Innehållsförteckning för December 2013 från Car and Driver

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com THE NEWEST IN NEW One surefire way to tell when a manufacturer is at a loss to understand why sales are sub-par is when it comes out with a naming convention for all of its vehicles that is sure to confuse the market for years to come ["New Cars for 2014," September 2013].Congratulations, Infiniti! Instead of putting something useful in your new cars like ventilated seats in the new G … er, I mean Q50 that can now top $50,000, you have given it a name that reminds me of last year's big SUV. JIM SCHINDLER HOUSTON, TEXAS In your September issue I was surprised to see that you failed to mention that the…

CVTs are our LEAST FAVORITE type of transmission mainly because their only nod to driver involvement is engine drone under heavy throttle. In spite of the lost love, CVTs are making inroads against manuals and conventional automatics. Toyota, for example, has introduced a new belt-and-pulley transmission as standard equipment on three-quarters of its 2014 Corolla range. Slow-laners adore the CVT's lack of drama. Stick it in D, tap the gas, and trust the flux capacitor under the hood to do what's right. In the event these cruisers deign to pass one of their own, a nudge of the accelerator provides extra thrust with no hint of shift shock. Audi, Honda, Hyundai, Subaru, and Toyota all make their own CVTs. Nissan owns a controlling interest in JATCO, the firm that supplies…

When I moved to Montana, I reluctantly bid adios to fast cars. Or so I thought. Last fall, I found myself in Missoula, renting a Jeep Liberty from Thrifty's avuncular manager, Owen Kelley. He glanced at my signature and said, "I know you. You drive fast cars." "Past tense," I corrected. "That's too bad," he replied, "because I thought you might like to drive my 1967 Shelby GT500. I've owned it for 31 years." Ten months flew past before I took him up on the offer, and then only because he shamed me into attending one of his Thursday-night club meetings. I envisioned balding fat men encircling a sticky VFW table, discussing tedious rules of order and the names of members with unpaid dues. Instead, the club meets at Gary…

Mercedes-Benz E350 PRICE > $63,490 POWER > 302 hp TORQUE > 273 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4000 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 21 BMW 535i xDrive PRICE > $67,600 POWER > 302 hp TORQUE > 295 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4187 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 19 Audi A6 3.0T PRICE > $62,745 POWER > 310 hp TORQUE > 325 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4105 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 20 Cadillac CTS 3.6 PRICE > $67,075 POWER > 321 hp TORQUE > 275 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3839 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 18 BEHIND THE RURAL GAS STATION that serves as Car and Driver's pork-cracklin's-and-beer depot during southern Ohio comparison tests squats a small, unadorned cinder-block structure slathered in white paint. Somehow, we'd never noticed this building on previous trips. It has…

It's been nearly 500 years since the passage of the Reinheitsgebot, the "German Beer Purity Law" decreeing that beer shall be made from only three ingredients: water, barley, and hops. (And yeast, of course, though its contribution to the fermentation process wouldn't be understood until a few centuries later.) The letter of the land until 1988, it holds considerable sway over brewers even today, a testament to the country's mania for integrity and tradition. It's this same sort of obsessive attention to detail that we so often admire in German luxury sedans, at least the ones we find as satisfying as a stein of authentic lager. This newest four-door from the fatherland, the Mercedes-Benz CLA, comes off more like Bud Light in comparison. Indeed, the CLA is a potion pitched…

TESTED Same great seats, chassis, and instrument panel as its big brother. Missing the hardware that makes a comparo winner. Beware the fine print. It's why your health club still dings your credit card even though you've returned to the couch with a tub of Chunky Monkey. Do you even know what the interest rate is on that Visa? Or what's actually in Chunky Monkey? Lexus's order sheet may not be intentionally insidious, but you should closely study the ingredient list of the IS250 F Sport. Though it looks similar, it is not the same as the IS350 F Sport that we feted in our last sports-sedan comparison. While opting for the 2.5-liter V-6 means giving up a liter of displacement, that's only the most obvious concession. Also missing are…

Seoul re-soles the Soul. Kia's goal with its sort-of-redesigned, second-generation Soul was straightforward: Don't screw it up the way Toyota did with the Scion xB. Don't make it a lot bigger for 2014, don't make it look different, and don't complicate it in any way. Keep it cute, keep it funky, and keep it selling at the rate of about 10,000 per month in the U.S. Though it may be tough for an enthusiast to believe, the Kia Soul outsells the BMW 3-series in America. It's bigger than the entire Audi brand over here. Which is not to say there's no room for improvement. The original 2010 Soul was burdened with listless acceleration, limp steering, a Playskool interior, and the ride of an alpine cabin tumbling under an avalanche. Minimize…

EDDIE ALTERMAN I CAN'T REMEMBER WHO TOLD ME THIS, more than a decade ago, but I'm sure it was someone smart. He said that what gave Japanese cars their bland competence, and what gave German cars their forceful personalities, was this: Japan's manufacturers strove for consistency and equilibrium in an attempt to satisfy the widest possible audience. Given 10 automotive attributes—styling, acceleration, braking, ride, etc.—a Toyota Camry would score a 7 of 10 in every category. A BMW 3-series, on the other hand, would be all over the place. It would post a 10 in handling, a 4 in rear-seat room, and a 2 in cup holders. These peaks and valleys were the key to a German car's spirit, a map of its priorities. Whereas the studied flattening of topographical…

To a pig, the law of diminishing returns is a sobering inevitability. As an edible animal, it eventually crests that point when the rising cost of feeding it during growth outpaces its increasing value as food. A pig hits that point after less than a year. During those few months, the most it can hope for is to forage enough acorns to impart a lively nuttiness to a BLT (or, from the pig's perspective, a me-LT). However, if it happens to be a piglet born in Oregon, it might just hitch a ride at the Tillamook County Fair's Pig-N-Ford race, in which competitors race stripped-down Model Ts around a dirt oval while clutching pork that is still in ambulatory form. The formula has been the same since the first Pig-N-Ford…

A friend in Southern California recently texted me the following: "Have they sold 500k of the Tesla Model S? They are everywhere! It seems like all the dr., lawyer, millionaire small business types are driving them. I see 5 to 10 a day easy." I responded that if he lived in Kansas, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But it's true; suddenly, Tesla is bigger than John Lennon saying the Beatles are bigger than Jesus. The company's early repayment of its $465 million federal loan and its profitable first-quarter result startled analysts. Tesla is rightly considered the longest of long shots: It's both a new car company and a clean-technology startup. Elon Musk might as well be in the business of anti-gravity belts, and most people were expecting black ink…

A Ferrari engineer once told me that his company got hold of a C6 Corvette a few years ago to see what the fuss was about. Assuredly, the foreigners pummeled the poor thing down to a grease spot. The Vette is big, loud, and fast, the engineer concluded, but "a little bit crude, no?" He said the last part with a smirk. My Yankee spine stiffened, and I said that before I'd agree, I'd want to see what a $50,000 Ferrari drives like. I just found out. Mamma mia and holy mother of Gorgonzola. Kids, you better hide your college funds, because temptation—real, reachable, I-can-do-this-if-I-just-reorganize-a-few-priorities temptation—is about to kick down the front door in high heels and leather. If dad can resist this thing, pass his phone number to the…

Singer MADE IN LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA The vehicles featured here aren't restomods, which are usually the result of bolting modern engines into old car bodies, but they are both old and new. They aren't even cars, exactly. They are, instead, the platonic ideals of the automobile come to life by way of expert craftsmanship, great piles of money, and acute automotive obsessive-compulsive disorder. And they are spectacular. We have gathered here our dream garage of reanimated icons. Two are from California, one is from England, and all three are from our most fevered dreams. THE PORSCHE on these pages, this gleaming ingot of retro perfection, was almost called the "Norbert." Sure, snicker in your ignorance of the fact that Norbert Singer was a longtime Porsche racing engineer and the master…

Silently through Whistler. Blasting along the two-lane Sea-to-Sky Highway up the mountains inland from Whistler, British Columbia, we encountered a slow logging truck climbing a steep grade. No worry: Tap the paddle shifter, nail the accelerator, and sweep around … only to fetch up behind three motorhomes dressed in vinyl-wrap rental-agency livery, plodding bumper-to-bumper at 15 mph under the limit. No space between, so we couldn't pass one at a time. Perhaps they were worried about missing the photo-op suggested by the numerous "Watch Out for Bears" signs. BMW satirically offered its own protocol for bears: "Take a phone photo and post to Facebook before proceeding." Bears are smarter than your average RV-er and snoozed—or whatever it is bears do—in the woods on B.C.'s hottest day this summer. When sightlines…

Wasn't it odd for an Ivy League art major to become an engine builder? I convinced the professor that he needed me to put a 327 Chevy into his Jeep Wagoneer. That's how I passed art class. In 1973, you became an instructor for Bob Bondurant. Me and Sam Posey, David Hobbs, Nick Craw, and Jim Busby. Bondurant demanded two skills: Control the car from the right seat and speak after dinner. We took car dealers around the track. Oh, many nearly killed me. We evaluated the danger as too high. We all quit. Bob never forgave us. When you quit, you "appropriated" one of the school's cars to turbocharge it. Yes, BMW gave me a 320i. I loaned it to [C/D's] Don Sherman, and he wrote a two-page piece…

E STREET BANDWAGON WIN, LOSE, OR DRAW — If successful, Formula E has the potential to accelerate EV development. Energy storage and motor efficiency could benefit. At the very least, the series will pioneer the use of a multigear transmission in an electric car. The upcoming electric-only RACE SERIES, called Formula E and governed by the FIA, promises all the thrill and glamour of a Formula 1 race without the head-hanging shame associated with the profligate burning of fossil fuels on a racetrack.* Like any other top-tier racing series, the stated goal is to use the open-wheelers as test beds for technology that might trickle into production cars. If a superior battery chemistry is going to make it to production, for example, it'll get tested here first. The series is…

Collision-avoidance image processing tops the list of data-intensive in-vehicle applications, requiring 100 billion operations per second. A typical modern car contains more than three miles of copper wire weighing more than 150 pounds. ELECTRONIC CONTROL UNITS The average vehicle has approximately 25 ECUs A Chevrolet Malibu has about 40 A Cadillac XTS has about 80 The most advanced vehicles have more than 100 65 percent of in-car processors are either application-specific or 4- or 8-bit chips with less than 256 kB of memory, roughly equivalent to an Atari 2600 game console. 30 percent are 16- or 32-bit with up to 2 MB of memory, roughly equivalent to a Super Nintendo game console. 5 percent are 32-bit processors with 4 or more MB of memory, like the original Sony PlayStation. The…

N A NATION OBSESSED WITH THE RIGHT NOW, few things have held up over the past 50 years as well as the Ford Mustang. The first pony car debuted at the 1964 New York World's Fair and instantly became a tent pole of Americana. Before the model officially turns 50 on April 17, 2014, Ford will celebrate its lasting contribution to the postwar-boom culture with a brand-new, much anticipated Mustang. But the times, they are a changin' (yep, a song also released in 1964). Ford's American icon continues to gain offshore admirers. The Blue Oval plans to sell the next Mustang globally, and to appease overseas buyers, the car will need to be lighter and more efficient. But that's not to say that traditional fans will be disappointed. BODYWORK While…

ONCE CLOSE ALLIES, MAZDA AND FORD FIGHT FOR THE COMPACT-CAR TITLE. FORD FOCUS SE PRICE > $22,550 POWER > 160 hp TORQUE > 146 lb-ft WEIGHT > 2999 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 31 MAZDA 3 i GRAND TOURING PRICE > $24,635 POWER > 155 hp TORQUE > 150 lb-ft WEIGHT > 2892 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 32 JUST AS SONNY OR CHER, INDIVIDUALLY, NEVER LIVED UP TO Sonny and Cher, you might assume that the greatest hits from Mazda and Ford are behind us. When Ford sold all but a symbolic slice of its stake in Mazda in 2010, it ended one of the longest-running, most successful automotive collaborations in history. Mazda's chassis expertise and Ford's engine know-how produced lively, nimble cars, none more significant than the…

THIS MONTH LEXUS IS250 F SPORT AWD / BMW X5 / FORD FIESTA ST / KIA SOUL Go for less. "Less is more," AMG chief Tobias Moers says with a straight face. He is referring to the new S63 AMG, which is definitely more. Way more. A group of journos has just ripped wormholes in space out of Salzburg, over autobahns and twisty mountain roads, into Kitzbühel, Austria. The engines are still crackling in the garage below the posh Kempinski Hotel Das Tirol. All day long, the hills were alive with the sound of 577 horsepower and up to 664 pound-feet of torque. Zero to 60 in 3.5 seconds (our estimate) and a terminal velocity of 186 mph. Ungoverned, the car might crack 195 mph. We are still waiting to…

Since its reintroduction to the American market a few years ago, the Ford Fiesta has been less of the party-on-wheels that its name promises and more of an office budget meeting. Sensible? Absolutely. Fun? Not exactly. Well, break out the tequila, because, with the ST variant of its Mexico-built, jalapeño-sized hatch, Ford has finally produced a Fiesta worthy of its name. The transformation from boring-office Fiesta to Vegas-weekend Fiesta starts where any hot-rodding should—with the powertrain. Ford dropped a 197-hp, 1.6-liter turbocharged inline-four mated to a six-speed manual in the little five-door. It's basically the same engine that's in the Escape and Fusion but tweaked for a bit more power. To boost midrange power in gears three through six, the 1.6 will enter overboost between 2500 and 4000 rpm where,…