Innehållsförteckning för Dec-14 från Car and Driver

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com COVER LETTERS If you put another 2015 Corvette on the cover of your magazine your readers will start to think that GM is your new publishing company. KURT KUCZEWSKILIVONIA, MICHIGAN Don't worry, Kuczewski. We've moved on to the 2017 Corvette—Ed. "Why the Occupy movement exists." Since when? STEPHEN BONDGROVE CITY, FLORIDA I hate that you felt the need to inject politics into a car magazine, but if you're going to do so, at least get your facts straight. The "Occupy" movement is a result of too many spoiled brats going to expensive liberal-arts schools on mommy and daddy's dime who resent that those going into the business world will likely earn more than them, never…

HOMOGENEITY Platform sharing used to be simple. You slathered a Toyota in leather and fake wood, filled every crevice with sound deadening, swapped out a few body panels, and stuck a Lexus badge on the trunk. Or, if you were GM, you might have skipped a few steps and gone right to the upscale-badge part. But today, nobody operates so simply or crudely. Most manufacturers' portfolios are filled with vehicles that share significant parts of their makeup. In some cases, one basic layout begets multiple body styles and sizes, sold by several brands at vastly different prices in markets all over the world. It must be working, as the largest global players are increasing the numbers of vehicles sired from common platforms. The advantages of this approach for the carmakers…

"There is no black and white, this is a grey business." So says Rick Mears on page 427 of the 546-page book Making It Faster: Tales from the Endless Search for Speed by Dan Binks and Norm DeWitt. I mention the page number because I've developed a habit of allowing a book 100 pages to grab my attention. If by then it hasn't, I toss it. That is, I throw it across the room. I recently hurled Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, a biography, a good 15 feet—and, really, how could you make Jack London's life boring? And eons ago, I completed an NFL-worthy Hail Mary of James Clavell's 1376-page Noble House, which arrowed into a wall and awakened the tenant next door, who later told me she thought…

Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack PRICE > $39,490 POWER > 485 hp TORQUE > 475 lb-ft WEIGHT > 4226 lb C/D OBSERVED MPG > 16 IT'S HARD TO RECONCILE THE 2015 FORD MUSTANG and its competitors with the city in which muscle cars were born. While decaying Detroit slogs through bankruptcy proceedings, still shrugging off the millstones of its past and working hard to get up and running again, the Ford is fully transformed into something sleek and modern. Meanwhile, its two direct and highly successful foes have recently been freshened with changes of their own. The new sixth-generation Mustang finally gets an independent rear suspension, a mainstream-Mustang first and the equivalent of Detroit hosting the Olympics. That's matched by a redesigned front suspension supported by a lighter, stiffer subframe.…

TYPICALLY, WHEN FULL-LINE CAR COMPANIES SET OUT to develop a coupe, they start with a sedan from the current lineup, trim two doors, and re-wrap the package in a sleeker body. A shorter wheelbase is optional. Lexus rolled up that memo and burned it before going to work on the RC. Instead, to form its new coupe's structure, Lexus combined the front clip of the GS sedan, the center section of the old IS C convertible, and the rear end of the IS sedan, using adhesives and welding and a fancy technique called laser screw welding, which allows for more frequent tacks and thus greater rigidity. The three-piece approach makes more sense once it's explained. The GS front gives engineers the extra track width they wanted for handling. They deemed…

HIGHLIGHTS MOST EXPENSIVE Porsche 918 Spyder $875,175 LEAST EXPENSIVE Nissan Versa Note S $14,800 HIGHEST TOP SPEED Lamborghini Aventador 217 mph* LOWEST TOP SPEED Smart Fortwo ED Cabriolet 78 mph QUICKEST 0–60 MPH Porsche 918 Spyder 2.2 sec SLOWEST 0–60 MPH Chevrolet Spark 11.2 sec QUICKEST 1/4-MILE Porsche 918 Spyder 9.8 sec SLOWEST 1/4-MILE Chevrolet Spark 18.3 sec SHORTEST STOPPING DISTANCE Porsche 911 GT3 135 feet LONGEST STOPPING DISTANCE GMC Sierra 2500HD Denali 4x4 217 feet MOST GRIP Porsche 911 GT3 1.12 g LEAST GRIP Mercedes-Benz G550 0.64 g BEST FUEL ECONOMY BMW i3 137/111 city/hwy MPGe WORST FUEL ECONOMY Lexus LFA 11/16 city/hwy mpg ACCELERATION: Elapsed times from zero to 60 mph and through a quarter-mile distance. Tests are run in two directions and corrected to standard…

One could argue that the Toyota Tacoma's dominance of its semi-full-size truck segment is attributable to its easily condensed name. As in, "Hey, brah, sweet Taco." It's probably no coincidence that the Los Angeles area, where people say "brah" a lot, accounts for the bulk of Taco sales. It helps that the Nissan Frontier—just try to come up with an equally illustrative and organic chunk of lazy vernacular for that name—has been the only other player in the segment for the last few years, and the truck is almost 10 years old. So Toyota hasn't exactly needed to be on the offensive. Sensing an opportunity where other manufacturers—such as Ford (Ranger) and Dodge (Dakota)—have fled, Chevrolet is bringing an all-new mid-size (larger than a Tacoma, smaller than a Silverado) Colorado…

Under BMW's stewardship, the Mini Cooper has been a rambunctious ball of hanky-panky, all stiff ride, manic responses, and general churlishness. Alas, the blouses are being rebuttoned and the flies re-zipped, for—like a parent interrupting a teen groping session—BMW is tossing some cold water on its spry British hatchback. It starts with forcing the Mini onto BMW's new, larger front-drive platform. BMW's compact UKL structure won't go any smaller, meaning the base Cooper tested here, relative to its predecessor, is saddled with a 209-pound ball and chain plus a larger footprint. As it does in the 189-hp Cooper S, the enlargement dulls the car's responses and calms the ride. That the S model shrugs off the chub when accelerating is expected; that this less-powerful Cooper does the same is not.…

YELLOW FEVER "If you tell the driver how many seconds there are left in a yellow light, they run it every time. That's not the information they need. They need a yes or no decision." —Debby Bezzina, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCK OF V2V IS THIS WI-FI–LIKE RADIO THAT LETS CARS "SEE" EACH OTHER AND WARNS OF IMPENDING CRASHES. We've seen how OUR ROADS WILL WORK 40 YEARS from now, and the future might not be so terrible after all, at least from a safety perspective. Contrary to sci-fi visions of robotized roadways, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute's (UMTRI) version of tomorrow says drivers are still in control and still use gas pedals and steering wheels. The critical difference is that lapses…

RUMINANT RUINATION Somewhere in Detroit, an engineer is working late, sweating combustion efficiency and catalysts to diminish the emissions from his company's next bestselling car. He steps out to grab a chicken sandwich for dinner. Maybe he realizes it, maybe he doesn't, but that sandwich is his environmental ally. Recently, a team of researchers led by Gidon Eshel from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and Alon Shepon at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science weighed the full environmental impact of farming, from animal flatulence to emissions associated with feeding, transporting, and processing. They concluded that beef is "about one order of magnitude" (roughly 10 times) worse for the environment than other meats. Per calorie, it requires 28 times the land and 11 times the water, and, of particular interest to…

At the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year, Porsche PR escorted me to the breakfast table of Hurley Haywood, who won his first Le Mans back in 1977 in a Porsche 936. Having just come back from Porsche's pits, where a roomful of engineers managed the remaining 919 hybrid still in the hunt, Haywood said with a snort, "It's like Mission Control over there." Racing's lovable Dr. Grumpypants continued, saying that he's awful glad that he raced when he did, before radios and telemetry and voices telling you what to do. In other words, back when there was just one brain in the cockpit. "You were alone in the car," he said. "All those dials and buttons on the steering wheel nowadays and the room full of engineers telling…

Porsche Macan Turbo The world will forever remember the tragedy of September 25, 2002. Porsche unveiled the Cayenne on that day, shocking the Paris auto-show crowd with a five-door SUV so horrid to behold that, after gazing upon it, no fewer than 17 members of the media were turned to stone. Nine others were then crushed when the vehicle, which outweighed a family of elephants, hurtled wildly off the stage. The company's reaction has verily defined corporate callousness ever since: Porsche announced that it was immediately ceasing production of its 911 and destroying all spare parts for the venerable sports car. So, that's not entirely true. But reactions to Porsche's first foray outside of sports cars were no less fantastical. One infamous media gadfly proclaimed that the Cayenne threatened to…

NAME DAVEY G. JOHNSON EXP. DATE DECEMBER 2014 PAGE 074 PHOTOS JEFF SINGER APPROVED DRIVER Want a Silicon Valley tech job? Hop on the ride-sharing bandwagon that's giving fits to gentlemen with "India Out of Khalistan" bumper stickers and try life as an Uber driver. While the service's users are accustomed to riding in Civics and Priuses, our disdain for the ordinary is somewhat legendary. Which is how I found myself swanning around San Francisco as a completely amateur and entirely untrained (and, indeed, unlicensed) taxi driver behind the wheel of a $490,215 hunk of weapons-grade plutocracy. Uber, the ride-sharing operation that connects smartphone-wielding drivers to app users who need a cab, springs from a deep well of Bay Area innovation. There's a culture of fiddlers here. Of tinkerers. Of,…

Maybe no evolution of the Audi TT can have the impact of the original. When Audi conceived the TT in the mid-1990s, the little coupe and cabrio came into a virtually deserted segment and served as a statement of Audi's commitment to style and precision. Like the 5000 more than a decade before it, the TT pointed to Audi's relevance in the design world. The second-generation TT, launched in the 2006 calendar year, was a better vehicle in many respects, but it lacked the uncompromising spirit of the original. The third generation, on sale in Europe right now, has a bit more design rigor than its immediate predecessor, but neither is it the landmark shape to launch a renaissance. What we will get, when it arrives here in a year,…

What's this? Yet another derivative of the F30 BMW 3-series? Indeed, that benign sedan has now sired a wagon, a long-wheelbase Gran Turismo five-door, and the 4-series trio of coupe, convertible, and this Gran Coupe—which, despite its name, is not a coupe. Its door count doesn't make it a sedan, either, because this five-seater is actually a cleverly disguised hatchback. BMW's bits have grown as familiar as our own reflections. Either a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder making 240 horses and 255 pound-feet of torque or a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six rated at 300 horsepower and 300 pound-feet gets matched with a ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic. While four-wheel drive is a $2000 option, a manual transmission cannot be had in the Gran Coupe at any price. The 428i model starts at $41,250 and the…

C/D: You first won a drag race in 1952? CK: Yes, at Half Day, Illinois, in my 1936 Ford Phaeton. I still have that car. I haven't missed a year of racing for 62 years. C/D: Your first NHRA race was in 1964. How has that scene changed? CK: When I was young, I started building my own dragsters after looking through racing magazines. I didn't have any money to buy one and didn't know anyone else in the Chicago area in the early '50s who was building dragsters. Same with engine work. But as time passed, guys were able to do it better than me. The big thing was going to motors in the rear; when something blew up, you didn't get engine parts in the face. C/D: How…

HOW TO… The gas dynamics that make a turbo such a fine way to boost an engine's output are the same ones you'll find in a turbojet. In other words, any turbocharger can be converted into a jet engine. But hold on a sec, Tex: Not everybody should try it. On Revell's three-step scale of model-building difficulty, this probably rates about a 13. Decent welding skills and a cautious, measure-thrice mentality are required. For an idea of just how badly this conversion can go, search "colinfurze burnt" on YouTube. STEP ONE: Find a suitable turbocharger. We recommend going to a junkyard and stripping one from a diesel. The bigger the turbo, the more thrust it'll make. A turbo with a 4.5-inch compressor inlet can yield as much as 350 pounds…

Track Clinic We're lucky enough to have some 80 road-racing circuits in America, scattered across more than 30 states. Each is unique in its layout, elevation changes, surfaces, sightlines, and runoff areas, so each requires dedication and instruction to master. That's where we come in. In this second installment of our Track Clinic series, we've turned our attention to Lime Rock Park, the short but technical Connecticut track that's a cornerstone of tri-state-area motorsports. If you're in a major Northeast city, you're in luck, because Lime Rock Park is within easy driving distance. And best of all, it's surrounded by undulating roads that are almost as fun as the circuit itself. HISTORY Lime Rock is the third-oldest continuously operating road-racing track in the country, after Road America and Watkins Glen.…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 34th annual Cruste & Spackle Collector Car Auction and Buffet here in sunny Palm Ocean Desert. As your auctioneer, I look forward to stoking the excitement as more than 4000 cars cross the block over the next 72 hours. At the end of this thing you can call me Cuddles the Miniature Pony, because I'll be a little hoarse. That's some auction humor for you. We auctioneers like to make jokes to distract ourselves from wondering how you mouth-breathers can afford to buy a clean pair of jorts, never mind a Freightliner full of E-types. But that's a question for another day. The question right now is: Are you ready for a barn car? And the answer better be yes, or you're gonna miss…

"We are as famous as the gondolas in Venice.That's how iconic we are in this city." So says Ian McKeever with his Irish brogue and the hyperbole that apparently affects all the horse-drawn-carriage drivers in New York City's Central Park. "I'd say that 90 percent of the horses you see here, if they weren't here, they'd be dead." Thing is, New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, wants them gone. And the animal-rights activists who helped elect him last year have already produced an alternative: a 6400-pound electric dreadnought styled to resemble brass-era motor carriages. Called the Horseless eCarriage, it's intended to keep all the 160-or-so current carriage drivers—every one a card-carrying Teamster—employed, while the 220-or-so geldings and mares currently in the tourist business are retired to glistening glades where they'll…

A couple of weeks driving any car as gifted as Audi's S7 is never enough. So, after our initial fling earned this five-door hot rod its 2013 10Best award, we signed up for a more meaningful relationship: a 40,000-mile test, ultimately lasting 13 months and traversing more than a dozen states. The joys and woes from our long-term logbook follow. The S7 arrived two years ago as the higher-caliber version of Audi's A7 mid-size coupe/sedan/hatchback (take your pick). This is where the apogees of style, comfort, versatility, and driving verve converge. A sturdy aluminum-and-steel unibody armed with a ballsy twin-turbo V-8, a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, and Audi's Quattro four-wheel-drive system give the S7 stellar performance. The air-spring multilink (front and rear) suspensions with variable dampers are tuned for sporting comportment.…

Hawaii's Big Island, the world epicenter of bliss, is a good place to enjoy a Toyota Camry's soothing interior, placid ride, and worry-free disposition. Pavement imperfections and speeds above 55 mph are forbidden here. Drive a Camry—any Camry—in Hawaii and you might wonder why the world's most methodical carmaker would call its prodigy in for fresh Mai Tais (virgin, of course) only three years after its last redesign. The easy answer is because it can: With more than 400,000 Camrys sold in the U.S. last year and twice that volume worldwide, there's ample cash to fund this company's $1-million-per-hour R&D budget. The harder answer, at least for Toyota, is this: Half a dozen competitors now offer mid-size sedans that shame the Camry's dynamic abilities. So, without risking core virtues of…

BMW's creation of the modern Mini Cooper 13 years ago would make a great Harvard Business School brand-management study. Starting with a car based very loosely on a model that never saw much success in America, BMW fashioned an automotive simulacrum that caught the imagination of buyers looking for small cars with style and panache. In the intervening years, Mini has judiciously added variations on the theme—including a tiny SUV—and redesigned the basic car twice. But until now, there has never been a proper four-door. Starting in January, Mini dealers will rectify that oversight with the Cooper Hardtop 4 Door, as Mini calls it. God forbid there are any hatchback references, even though that's what it is. From the A-pillars forward it's unchanged from the three-door Hardtop [see page 120],…