Innehållsförteckning för Nov-14 från Car and Driver

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com ISSUE ISSUES I got the August "Speed" issue of Car and Driver in the mail and promptly tossed it on my coffee table for two weeks. Why? you ask. On the cover was the same Porsche that seemingly hasn't changed since 2006 and a mid-size BMW. Then I actually opened it and discovered that I'd been ignoring stories on a $1.4 million Ferrari, a McLaren worth more than a million, the new Lamborghini, and a Mercedes that costs more than the Beetle and the BMW combined! I realize I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but if you've put together a truly exciting issue, please give me some clue. DARIN JOST STERLING, COLORADO After…

Conventional wisdom says THAT cars are getting more expensive, and they are, a fact accompanied by much hand-wringing. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) says that the average retail price of a new vehicle was up 3 percent in 2013, to a record $31,762. And this is par for the course. The only year since 1995 that the average price didn't rise was 2008. But what do these year-over-year increases tell us? Are cars actually becoming less affordable? Seeking answers, we did two things. First, we compared average new-vehicle prices to median household income and found that, in relative terms, cars are not any less or more affordable today than they were two decades ago [see "Stop Complaining," right]. Surely, though, some vehicles are more expensive than they used to…

All 19 feet of a pristine 1974 Cadillac Sedan DeVille came swanning down the ramp at Terminal 2 of John F. Kennedy International Airport, a leviathan landshark hugging the pavement and making a hole through the ratty herd of taxis and Town Cars with its invisible force field of coolness. I slid in, and we were off. Queens, the Van Wyck, White stone, and the Bronx floated past. With 5000 pounds of vintage finned Cadillac around us, a full 27 gallons sloshing in the tank, and that towering wreath-and-crest out front cutting the wind as our beacon and guiding saint, we felt like a couple of made men. My college pal Jeff, a lifelong Long Islander, was driving and trying to make the eight-track player work. Walter Murphy's "A Fifth…

PORSCHE CAYMAN PRICE > $70,345 POWER > 275 hp TORQUE > 213 lb-ft WEIGHT > 3080 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 21 ALFA ROMEO 4C PRICE > $68,495 POWER > 237 hp TORQUE > 258 lb-ft WEIGHT > 2471 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 24 Do your tax returns routinely trigger DEFCON alerts at the IRS? Are your personal finances cited in biz-school case studies of the filthy rich? If so, please skip this story. This comparison test is for sports-car enthusiasts of somewhat lesser means—those with Moët tastes and, well, a Moët budget, once in a while, if the kids are already out of college. After years of threatening a comeback and delivering a few 8C moon rocks, Alfa Romeo has resumed shipping cars to America. If images of…

Long-Term Test 2013 Volkswagen Passat TDI Sel Family sedans from Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, and Toyota have all earned their places in our culture, but Volkswagen's Passat has always struggled to assimilate. Between its arrival in 1974 as the Dasher and its sixth-generation redesign in 2012, the Passat was at times too small, too unreliable, and too expensive. Sales remained relatively microscopic. Just 12,497 Passats moved in 2010; Mitsubishi came close to unloading more Galants. Back then, the Passat didn't even account for 0.01 percent of the sales in the largest segment of what was then the largest new-car market in the world. A poor showing for the Volkswagen Group, which aspires to be the world's No. 1 automaker. To help realize its dream of world domination, Volks wagen designed the…

So, you've survived your harebrained youth. It wasn't easy, what with Woodstock '94 and all. Now, settled into a bungalow in the 'burbs, you bid farewell to slammed hatchbacks, red brake calipers, and flagrant GT badges. What didn't change is your quest for roads to nowhere and rapture at the wheel. Who says that kids' braces and funding an IRA mean that you have to be dead inside? Not Audi. Several months ago, the new A3 2.0T Quattro thumped its arch rivals, the BMW 228i and the Mercedes-Benz CLA250 4MATIC, in our out-west comparison test. Audi's smallest sedan won by a fair margin, providing the best combo of creature comforts, performance, and driving enjoyment. But can sports-sedan salvation be had without spending for the bigger engine? To find out, we…

A good vehicle makes you think, "This car would've conquered the world five years ago." Whereas a great car fosters this thought: "In five years time, this will still be a great car." After a week with this Golf, we'd say it falls into the latter group. The Golf's greatness doesn't come from a lustful place. Walking past a new Golf in a parking lot won't trigger any long, envious glances. It barely looks redone. Even in its seventh generation, the Golf remains very much a box with windows. Not to imply that the Golf isn't new; it shares almost nothing with its predecessor. The wheelbase is up 2.3 inches, length grows by 2.1 inches, width is up a half-inch, and the roof is 1.0 inch lower. The body is…

We think every performance-car buyer should go to driving school. And we're not talking about the type that the judge sentences you to for speeding. What we're talking about is a high-performance driving class that teaches you how to tap a vehicle's true performance. Such schools usually cost thousands, but a few carmakers offer an advanced education for free when you purchase one of their vehicles. FORD ST OCTANE ACADEMY Buy a 2014 Ford Focus ST or Fiesta ST and you get a one-day school at Ford's ST Octane Academy at Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah. You'll have to spring for getting there. The course starts with 30 minutes in a classroom, then proceeds to braking exercises (including handbrake turns into a parking box) and negotiating the autocross-like course…

C/D: Tell me about the decision to run a double—the Indy 500 and the Charlotte 600 on the same day. KB: Indy was all about doing something different, about giving myself the challenge to push myself in a new driving discipline. In the world of NASCAR, we race 40 weekends a year and it consumes your life, and sometimes you burn out. When I landed on the front straightaway at Charlotte after finishing at Indy, everybody was applauding me like I was no longer the bad guy, so much as people were saying "we always knew he was a racer." C/D: It was redemption after all the bad press you'd received? KB: Maybe that's one way of talking about it. But it just seemed to come…

Jaguar does not sell many cars. This is not a criticism or a subjective evaluation, just a fact. Through the first seven months this year, Jaguar moved only 9504 cars in the U.S., representing a mere 24 percent of Jaguar Land Rover's combined U.S. sales volume. JLR has sold more Range Rover Sports this year than it has Jags. Among mainstream brands, Jaguar is dead last in sales unless you count Maserati and Smart, which we don't. Even Tesla outsells Jaguar by a three-to-two ratio. But this could soon change. Jaguar will finally rejoin the entry-luxury sports-sedan segment—the one it once tried to tap with the late, unlamented X-type—with the new XE, headed stateside in 2016. While it won't put a number to its volume expectations, Jaguar is forecasting that…

Driving has been getting easier since Alfred Vacheron invented the steering wheel. But all the sensors and active systems fitted to a modern vehicle still can't solve the real-time trigonometric puzzle of backing up while towing a trailer. Until now, that is. Power-steering-system producer ZF Lenksysteme in Germany, a joint venture between ZF and Bosch, has developed what it calls "Smart Trailer Parking," a remote-control system that enables you to maneuver a coupled load via an Android app. Although it's currently at the prototype stage, we're assured there are no major technical impediments to putting it into a production vehicle. The biggest hurdle might be legal: As with the use of autono mous cars, the system would require local laws allowing you to operate a vehicle without sitting in it.…

One thing I've learned about kids as a relatively new dad is that you can't just tow them behind your car in a soundproof trailer. They have to be right there in the car with you. Given this onerous requirement, what you want is for them to be as far away as possible, which means that a long road trip demands a minivan. So when I planned my first family road trip, North Carolina to Cape Cod, I schemed a Toyota Sienna. The Sienna is so big you can get it with an intercom so you can yell at your kids without straining your voice. Plus, it offers four-wheel drive, which makes it the minivan I'd get if I had to get a minivan. I don't really need four-wheel drive,…

Spurred by new technologies, regulatory impetuses, economic trends, and societal shifts, automotive progress is moving faster than it ever has. These changes are redefining the fundamentals of the car—what fuels it, how we build it, and who (or what) drives it. The status quo is faltering; ideas defining the car of tomorrow are now fighting for supremacy. We've pegged this special package to the year 2025 because that is when the looming regulatory bomb of the 54.5-mpg corporate fuel-economy standard finally detonates. But the battle lines are being drawn now. No one knows exactly how these skirmishes will play out over the next decade. We only know that the outcomes will determine what we drive in 2025 and beyond. CAFE ///// MANUFACTURERS vs. THE MAN ///////////////////////////// Can we hit the…

A party game with a name unfit for print has participants organize three items by which one they'd sleep with, marry, or kill. Let us apply this to Acura's vehicles. There's the lust-worthy NSX, the ILX luxo-Civic for which we'd happily unharness the bolt gun, and a couple of cars over the years with which we'd walk down the aisle, including the rev-happy first-generation TSX and its mature contemporary, the third-gen 2003–2008 TL. Eventually, these two nuptial models got pretermitted by Acura in its bid for mainstream ac cept ance, which produced softer and stranger replacements. Today, there's a long, dry desert between the ILX and the RLX luxury barge. But galloping in from the horizon is this TLX, intended to replace the TSX, the TL, and much of Acura's…

With a turbo four-cylinder Ford Mustang now a real thing, we're moved to reexamine the genre of the entry-level muscle car, long associated with secretarial pools and rental-car lots. Under discussion today: the V-6–powered Dodge Challenger SXT, sporting a new eight-speed transmission and a redesigned interior. Is it still more show than go? It's certainly still got "show." For 2015, Dodge adds 1971 cues to the basic 1970 styling theme, including its split-port grille inserts and quad taillamp treatment. Other updates include headlamps with stern-looking LED halo rings and smoother front and rear fascias. If the Challenger's body changes only a little, an utter transformation occurs inside. Stylists placed a 1971 Challenger dashboard in the studio during the design process, and its influence can be found in the sweet, conical…

The new Cadillac ATS coupe is the lovely, delightfully adept product of a Hobson's choice, which means no choice at all. See, luxury-coupe sales are stagnant, yet here comes a new luxury coupe because there are really no alternatives for Cadillac as it tries to bake the ATS's hardware into something new. An ATS wagon would have been a sales non-starter. At least the ATS sedan translates extremely well into a two-door. Designers walked away from the butch, super-wedge themes that made the old CTS coupe so polarizing, instead going for light, spare, and conservatively elegant. The ATS's roof drops about an inch because coupes should have lower rooflines. But a similarly low waistline keeps the quarter-glass large so that the design doesn't get heavy, as it did in the…

This is Silicon Valley's success formula: Get funding; conspire with friends to use the internet to disrupt an existing industry; rake in money. Alejandro Resnick, 32, and Owen Savir, 33, are attempting to apply the formula to the used-car business with their brainchild, Beepi.com. The site acts as a virtual used-car lot, where buyers can peruse a selection of vehicles backed by Beepi's own inspection and three-month, 3000-mile warranty. "It came out of my personal experience while at MIT," explains Resnick. "I was moving from Argentina and bought a used car from a dealer. It turned out to be awful, and I had to sue him using Massachusetts's lemon laws." Resnick figured there was a better way, and Beepi looks to replace traditional dealer lots with internet marketing. Beepi doesn't…

Located between Northern Cali for nia's dense redwood forests and the Pacific Ocean, the city of Eureka is the seat of Humboldt County. It feels like the lushest, greenest place on earth. Only about 27,000 people live there, and it has almost nothing in common with Iraq. Except that it's patrolled by an MRAP. Built by several manufacturers in a dizzying array of variations, the MRAP (mine resistant, ambush protected) is a vehicular legacy of America's Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is engineered around an armored V-shaped hull to survive mine and improvised-explosive-device attacks. The first owner of Eureka's own Navistar MaxxPro, the Department of Defense (DOD), spent between $500,000 and $700,000 to buy it in 2007 or 2008—one of the thousands the Pentagon acquired for a reported $40 billion.…

Come December 1, Maserati will be 100 years old. I've followed the marque's duck-and-dart adventures since the summer of 1967. That's when my father and I, in our death-pallor-gray Ford Taunus in downtown Paris, spied a canary-yellow '67 Ghibli whose driver was busy curbing its wheels. It was the first Maserati I'd ever seen. My toes may have shot through the tips of my Hush Puppies. My Timex stopped forever at 3:14 p.m. In the intervening 47 years, sadly, few Maseratis have come my way, and those that have were often out of chronological order. I think it's partly because Maserati's PR depart-ment, until the last decade, was possibly led by the sixth-grade nephews of Modenese employees; partly because the brand's execs felt journalists would blow up their cars within…

Join us for lunch one of these days, and you will come to know that we are connoisseurs of well-crafted crudeness. It won't come as a great surprise, then, that we are unabashed fans of the last few years of the last-generation Ford Mustang—which triumphed over the Crown Victoria to become the last regular passenger car in the U.S. market to carry a live rear axle. Ford hasn't allowed a stick on the rear of its big, bloated Expedition for more than a decade. But for its iconic sporty car? Sure, why not? Clearly, Dave Pericak, chief engineer for the fifth-generation Mustang since mid-2008, and his team turned the old log-axled pony car into something sweeter than it had any right to be. For the ability to make the spectacular…

TOASTING THE PORSCHE 911'S 50TH BIRTHDAY A YEAR AGO, we decreed its life and times to be exceptional. This is the two-door that defined what a modern, fast, and comfortable sports car should be. Porsche's half-century of earnest development turned a flawed blueprint into a machine with grace and soul. If you don't long for a 911 of some stripe, your head is in the wrong magazine. Which is why any manufacturer serious about building a worthy sports car hangs its bull's-eye on the 911's shoulders. Mercedes—or, more accurately, the newly coined Mercedes-AMG—is the latest to fix aim with its GT/GT S. The Benz boys are no strangers to sporty two-doors. There's the SLK for mistresses and the SL for their sugar daddies. But those roadsters bow down to the…

Oh, Mercedes! Have you already abandoned your efforts to become BMW? This new C400 4MATIC is a beautiful mini-limousine, an S-class ritually shrunken as if by Ama zonian tribesmen, but it's no 335i dog fighter. Maybe Benz is tired of trying to be somebody else and just wants to go back to being Mercedes, the world's best purveyor of grand-luxury Pullmans, sizes S to XL. Okay, this characterization is a bit cruel. Stuttgart's starliners have dramatically improved their handling over the past generation or two, but it does not mean Gottlieb's kids are just copying BMW. Good handling is now a minimum requirement in the strata in which Benz and its rivals operate. But this particular C400, optioned up to $61,755 (the larger E400 4MATIC is $56,775 to start) and…

"No! It is not a car for a dentist's wife!" came my Brit companion's incredulous response. I was sitting lakeside several years back, having a few beers with some visiting Englishmen, when the topic of the Jaguar XK came up. I might have been overstating my position on the car (thank you, beer), but the thrust of the whole dentist's-wife contention was that in the States, people don't really view the Jag XK as a direct competitor for the Porsche 911. Mercedes-Benz SL, sure. But 911? Nope. This did not sit well with the crowd, and it took a transplanted Brit, who also happened to once work for Jaguar in the U.K., to confirm our analysis before things quieted down. The group then began discussing how it was that English…

We live in a world where 200 horsepower is economy-car fare, 300 horsepower is mildly interesting, and 400 horsepower is the minimum needed to command many enthusiasts' attention. Big horsepower is affordable, too, if you know where to look. In the past decade, the world has seen its share of 400-hp cars, and they've now depreciated into the realm of attainability. At $20,000 or so, however, they're not giveaways, and with as many as 100,000 miles on their odometers, they're definitely used. But we're still talking less money than a new Camry, and that's just affordable enough for many to take the plunge. So here are our five favorite 400-hp-or-more vehicles that can now be had for as little as $20,000. 1 2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 DOHC 32-valve 5.0-liter…

Can a hamburger sell a new car? "At Galpin, it could," says Jeff Skobin, marketing manager at the sprawling Galpin Motors complex, which includes a diner, at the corner of Roscoe and Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys, California. What about a fruit smoothie? "No," says A.J. D'Amato III, sales manager for pre-owned vehicles at Newport Lexus in Newport Beach, California. "But, the people making that smoothie might [sell a car]." More than ever, dealerships are going to great lengths to provide a little something extra that will keep the customer happy and, perhaps more importantly, hanging around in the store. The thinking is the longer you stay, the more likely you are to buy. The extras have the added effect of creating a positive experience. An espresso, a meal, or…