Innehållsförteckning för August 2018 från Car and Driver

ASTON MARTIN’S PAST, PRESENT, and future hit the Blendtec with the 2019 DBS Superleggera. Both the DBS and Superleggera names hark back to what Aston was. But the new car is an extension of the current DB11, and its V-12–supplied 715 horsepower is here to illuminate a brighter tomorrow for David Brown’s venerable firm. On an interconnected automotive ocean, tiny Aston sails alone, save for its various hardware partnerships with AMG. Its greatest asset remains its own heritage. This is the third Aston Martin to carry the DBS name—George Lazenby as James Bond beached his in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Daniel Craig violently rolled his in 2006’s Casino Royale—and the first to combine it with the Superleggera modifier. But while Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera designed DBs…

“IF ONLY I’D HAD A VIDEO,” you might’ve thought at one point, “I could prove that that scumbag ran the two-way stop,” or “I could prove he rolled backward” or any of the other stupid things people do. You’ve been on YouTube, so you know that everybody in Russia—and, to a lesser extent, in other European countries—has a dash-mounted camera. They’re catching on here. In 2017, Americans bought 237,000 of them, and sales are projected to rise to 285,000 units by year’s end, says Danielle Cassagnol, a spokesperson for the Consumer Technology Association. Why, then, do auto-insurance companies still not offer a discount for using one, have no standard policy on accepting or reviewing footage, and refuse to nudge you to get one when they practically beg for post-accident photographs?…

I did see it coming—the deer bounding off the shoulder of the freeway—in time to lock up the drum brakes of my then 30-year-old 1965 Buick Skylark. The animal still took it in the belly, crumpling the fender and popping the hood, which flipped back into the airstream and slammed into the windshield header as the car spun from the force of the impact. After a full 360, the Skylark came to rest. So did the deer, but more finally. I felt lucky. That is, until I called my insurance company and learned that collision insurance, which I had, does not cover collisions with animals. The accident cost me a few thousand dollars. And that is just the tip of the antler, so to speak. The large and often unseen…

Among the enormous challenges facing driverless-vehicle developers is how to program systems to recognize animals, which then poses the inevitable question: Should your computer-driven car brake for squirrels? Unfortunately, most manufacturers aren’t even asking that yet. When it comes to the calibration of today’s driver-assist systems, most engineers aren’t making the distinction between animals and any other object in the road, regardless of which combination of conventional cameras, thermal-imaging cameras, radar, and lidar they’re using to sense what’s up ahead. This is largely a pragmatic decision. Classifying an object—determining whether it’s a dog, a human, or a cardboard box—takes longer than simply recognizing that something is there, consuming valuable milliseconds that could be spent avoiding it, says Ram Vasudevan, assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University…

I harvested my first roadkill in January 2009. It was nearly midnight, and I was driving with a friend on I-89 through Vermont. We saw the then unidentifiable heap on the road’s shoulder, and my friend encouraged me to stop once he realized it was a large deer. The buck was still warm and pliable on a below-zero night, a fresh hit. Two of the animal’s legs were broken, but he looked otherwise peaceful, as if he’d simply stopped for a nap. As traffic sped by, we heaved the deer into the car. Folded to fit the confines of my hatch with his neck twisted, he no longer seemed so tranquil, and I felt a passing sadness at the unfairness of it all. To a deer, motor vehicles have no…

THERE’S SO MUCH grille that the headlights squint to fit in. It’s so much more grille than what the new 2019 Toyota Avalon needs for cooling that most of it is actually blocked off. That giant maw is, however, a distraction. Because what matters about this conservative, old-dude sedan is what’s in back: a trunk. The Avalon has 16 cubic feet of easily accessed storage under a steel cover that locks down with a secure thud. The stink of things thrown into it will not intrude into the passenger compartment, and prying eyes cannot see inside it. This trunk thing may have a future. And a trunk isn’t an option on any past, current, or future crossover. Radical. The Avalon sedan remains the Camry’s bigger, better-equipped brother. Built on the…

LIKE THE SUN RISING in the east and setting in the west, the electrification of cars is inevitable. But don’t worry about it screwing up Porsche’s Panamera. While many plug-in hybrids set new standards for awful styling, lifeless powertrains, and numb chassis, this seductive hot-rod hybrid wagon isn’t among them. The foundation of the E-Hybrid’s powertrain is the Volkswagen Group’s twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8, tuned, in Panamera Turbo spec, to 550 horsepower and 567 pound-feet of torque. Sandwiched between the aluminum engine block and the eightspeed dual-clutch transmission is an electric motor fed by a 14.1-kWh lithium-ion battery. It’s good for an additional 136 horses and 295 pound-feet of thrust. Combined output rivals that of many supercars: 680 horsepower and 626 pound-feet. Though the allure of 14 miles of EPA-rated all-electric…

NOW THAT 300 HORSEPOWER is just a conversation starter, automakers have concluded that you lack a very particular set of skills, skills you have not acquired over a very long career. How then, as a speed junkie buying the fastest car you can afford, do you admit to being a driver in need of training? The answer: You buy a car that offers a track-time program, and tell your friends you’re attending only to show the instructors “how it’s done.” Many automakers now host full-day track sessions that can include drifting, drag-racing, and autocrossing instruction, sometimes at no additional charge to their customers. “If you’re buying a $100,000 drag car, you’re probably not a rookie,” says SRT marketing chief Mark Malmstead. But, he says, even experienced owners of an 840-hp…

NO, IT’S NOT MADE by Stark Industries, but that shouldn’t stop you from feeling a little bit like Iron Man every time you strap on the Levitate Airframe, a mechanical exoskeleton worn by workers at car-manufacturing facilities,such as BMW’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Intended to prevent on-the-job injuries and curb employee fatigue, exoskeletons limit the amount of strain placed on specific parts of the body. Ford employees wear the similar Ekso Bionics EksoVest at the Flat Rock and Wayne, Michigan, plants; Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Volkswagen are also investing in exoskeletons. Upper-body units such as the Airframe are used largely to prevent shoulder injuries that result from overhead work. The device offers a gentle push up on the arms, like a personal trainer aiding a client through the final reps…

Dead skunks in the middle of the road may stink to high heaven, but it’s deer that have the insurance industry wrinkling its nose. According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, deer are responsible for one-third of all animal-related claims. Which is why auto insurance giant State Farm conducts an annual study of claims from deer and other ungulates such as elk, caribou, and moose. The company uses data gathered from the claims history of its 44.1 million insured drivers to project the total number of deer strikes across the industry—and to determine in which states drivers are at the greatest risk. Based on State Farm’s estimates from mid-2016 to mid-2017, deer caused more than $5.6 billion in losses. Here are your odds of hitting a deer, by state: Striking…

Shilling is co-director of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, and lead scientist for the California Roadkill Observation System, a crowdsourced database of roadkill sightings. C/D: Why did you create the California Roadkill Observation System? FS: In 2009, I wanted a system for recording road-kills that I would observe, and I assumed that other people would use it as well. It was meant to engage people. The first image in the system was a raccoon. That’s really what inspired it, that raccoon. We developed CROS mostly to be an ecological tool, wanting to understand what kinds of animals were being hit. When? Where? Could we collect enough data to think about solutions? Who do you have taking pictures of roadkill and uploading them to the database?…

HOW MUCH CAR DO YOU WANT, and how much car do you need? It’s a nearly impossible distinction to parse, and the automakers like it that way. They make more money if you buy more car than you need, and most of us do exactly that. Hence America’s best-selling vehicles—the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado rather than the Honda Fit and Volkswagen Golf. Subaru has exploited this imprudence as deftly as any brand. In recent years, it has transcended its humble roots as a small, off-beat automaker with an unconventional customer base by convincing an ever larger number of people that not only do they want all-wheel drive, plastic body cladding, and extra ground clearance, they need this stuff. Sure, not all of it is strictly necessary for the daily…

I JUST HAD SOME SERIOUS ALONE TIME, in Italy, with the Ferrari 488 Pista, a car that will start at an estimated $350,000 when it arrives this winter. Automakers usually make us share their cars with other journalists on launch programs like this one, but Ferrari’s PR team just handed over the key with no instruction except to be back in time for lunch at Ristorante Cavallino next to the factory. Without a passenger to talk to, I’m left with a bunch of questions bouncing around my head. Like, why do people open the shades on airplanes when there’s turbulence? Are they expecting to see a construction crew? Or, when exactly in our lives does a smock become an apron? I think it happens around age 10. Alone time can…

FOR ALL THE MECHANICAL and technological advances of the 2019 RDX, Acura’s intent to transform the model from a popular but dynamically unremarkable SUV into a genuinely sporty one is apparent in one minor but revealing detail: The driver can set Sport as the default drive mode. The three other modes include two levels of relaxation (Snow and Comfort) in addition to the even sharper Sport Plus, but the decision to bias the RDX’s personality right out of the gate signals an attitude adjustment from that of the most recent RDX and back toward the spunky first generation. The third-gen RDX is larger than the outgoing model in every exterior dimension. Its wheelbase grows to 108.3 inches from 105.7, overall length expands to 186.8 inches from 184.4, width increases to…

IN RECENT YEARS, automakers have mastered the craft of extracting greater mileage from their engines, and we’re not just talking about mpg ratings. An increasinglypopular powertrain strategy, widely practiced by German luxury brands and their in-house speed shops, reduces the number of engine configurations and displacements in a company’s portfolio while increasing the number of variations of those basic engines. The goal is to accommodate a range of applications, from sedans to crossovers to sports cars to factory hot rods, without starting from scratch. Think of 2.0-liter four-cylinders that stretch from 200 to 400 horsepower and V-8s that cover a similar spread in the 400-to-600-hp arena. This approach reins in the costs and complexity of both engine development and manufacturing. BUILDING BLOCKS The engines’ linerless aluminum-silicon-alloy blocks have the same…

RIVALRIES NEVER REST. A Bostonian’s contempt for New York doesn’t stop at baseball. Even when the Bears are garbage, the Packers don’t phone it in. The Wendy’s Twitter account won’t back down just because the McDonald’s social-media team can’t field a comeback. Corvette versus 911 is no different. This 53-year-old battle will never be over, and at the moment, the competition is as fierce as it’s ever been. With the near simultaneous releases of the 755-hp Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and the 700-hp Porsche 911 GT2 RS, we’re witnessing the ultimate showdown of the ultimate automotive adversaries. Here, these icons transcend their stations as sports cars to become legitimate supercars, each carrying a sticker price roughly three times that of the entry car on which it’s based. With great power comes…

You’ve probably heard of the infamous Swedish “moose test,” an evasive maneuver that can produce disastrous, YouTube-worthy results in certain high-riding vehicles. But there’s another moose test, one conducted by Volvo to improve the real-world safety of those vehicles whose drivers aren’t lucky enough to avoid an ungulate impact. This one uses a 790-pound moose surrogate made from a stack of 114 rubber discs, which mimic the density of a moose and are strung together with steel parts and wire. When struck by a Volvo traveling between 43 and 56 mph, this pseudo-moose will hit the windshield first, then roll up and over the roof in a fraction of a second, annihilating everything it touches along the way. This moose test is destructive by design, explains Lotta Jakobsson, senior technical…

Roads cover less than 1 percent of the land in the United States, but their effects extend beyond their edges, disrupting the habitats and movement of many animal species. So, yes, Crossy Road may be just a Frogger rip-off, but it’s also based on real life. Acknowledging that we’re not going to stop building roads or driving on them, ecologists and government offcials have embraced wildlife crossings. Though costly compared with highway warning signs and reflectors, crossings are the most successful roadkill remediation tactic. A 2016 study has shown that properly implemented crossing structures led to an 83 percent reduction in large-mammal roadkill. A recent $46 million project in Colorado did even better. While rebuilding an 11-mile section of State Highway 9, Colorado allocated $12 million of the budget for…

WE HAVE FOUND OUR PEACE. And no, that’s not because we based the first part of this comparison test out of a resort/spa in the woods, where each of us had his own cabin complete with fancy soaps, a deep soaking tub, and a porch swing upon which we could consume beer and contemplate the slight misalignment of our chakras. No, we are at peace with the world as it is presented to us because, in a few ways that we care deeply about, the material realm is a better place today than it was before. Should we rail against the proliferation of quasi-SUVs, a form factor now sopervasive that it’s no longer a class or a segment but instead an SUV-shaped reflection of the entire automotive market? Life coach…

WHEN IT COMES TO BUYING CARS, Americans can be pretty dumb. We wander into dealerships and buy whatever the guys with pinkie rings have on the lot, usually without even a glance at an ordering guide. This behavior amazes German car executives, who have developed a unique way of looking down their noses at us while taking our money. Which brings us to the redesigned, replatformed, though not all that different-looking Audi A6. In Europe, the A6 is considered a large sedan, more of a junior A8 than the jumbo A4 it represents to most American luxury-car buyers. (All three now sit on the same MLB Evo component set.) So while the European A6 has nearly every bell and whistle of its flagship sibling, Audi’s U.S. operations will be streamlining…

IT’S POSSIBLE THAT THE 2018 MAZDA 6 will be best remembered for what it doesn’t do. Though it retains much of the lovable character of most Mazdas—purity in operation and communication—it also greatly diminishes one fault that, in recent years, became the brand’s most glaring flaw: noise. Indeed, the new 6 is quieter at 70 mph than both the 2016 model and the Honda Accord Touring 2.0T, a fact made possible by more than 70 noisereducing changes to this revised 2018 model. So profound are the NVH improvements that even the Mazda 6’s doorsills receive seals to keep noise from penetrating the cabin. Starting at the source, new 19-inch Falken tires (17-inch Yokohamas on Sport models) reduce tire howl, and stiffer wheels help quell sound transmission. Tracing the path of…