Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från Car and Driver

SUMMERTIME ROLLS You started your “Ragtops to Riches” comparo [June 2019] by noting that the cars got no attention in Los Angeles but “people stare” in Lake Isabella, California. What is the significance of this? Just curious. —M. Reed Danville, CA Sports cars like the Porsche 718 Boxster and BMW Z4 don’t get much attention in car-jaded L.A., but a sports car out in the country is a rare and eyeball-grabbing sight—Ed. Let me get this straight: BMW charges $360 to put Apple CarPlay in your car, then after the first year, you have to pay $80 per year to continue using what you’ve already bought?! What kind of ridiculous rip-off is that?! I vehemently object to that! Yet another reason I will never buy a BMW even though I…

CHRISTIAN VON KOENIGSEGG’S latest automotive peacock, the Jesko, makes 1603 horsepower and reportedly breaks 300 mph. What’s faster? Its Light Speed Transmission (LST), for one. That name is used as a figure of speech and not a technical claim, though we’re told the transmission’s shifts are superquick even by today’s norms. Koenigsegg says the gearbox can jump between any two ratios in just two milliseconds. To accomplish that, the LST combines elements of conventional automatic and manual transmissions to create a nine-speed automatic unlike anything we’ve seen before. In the simplest terms, the LST is essentially two three-speed transmissions arranged in series. Think of a bicycle with three gears at the crank and three at the rear wheel and you’ve got the basic principle. There is no torque converter or…

Anticipation can be the best thing about a new toy. Handling that shiny object still in its blister pack. Goosebumps ripple across your skin, your pupils dilate. The toy comes out and the serious business of fun begins. Now that Chevrolet has revealed the mid-engined 2020 Corvette Stingray, will playing with it live up to the 60 or so years of anticipation? Or will it be buried in the sandbox next week? Any all-new Corvette is significant. The big fuss with this one, the eighth generation (C8), is that the engine sits behind the seats for the first time in Corvette history [see “Middle School,” page 40]. So now it’s mid-engined, like a Ferrari F8 Tributo or a McLaren 720S. But while that change is the most obvious, Chevy did…

The dynamic advantages of a mid-engine layout have tempted Corvette engineers for 60 years. But beyond the dynamics are advantages even more compelling in the 21st century. Packing the engine and transmission behind the cockpit eliminates the driveshaft and frees up space for—let’s speculate—batteries. And without an engine up front, it’s easier to package—again, we’re just guessing here—an electric motor or motors. As the C8 launches, Chevy isn’t talking future versions. But it could soon be building a Kentucky Fried Supercar with hybridized awesomeness like the McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari, but with a four-figure total horsepower rating. Moving the engine to the back opens up other opportunities as well—not all of them all-wheel drive or hybrid. Without having to work within the confines of the C7’s engine bay, the…

WE LIKE TO TALK ABOUT CLASSES in the auto industry as though they were neatly defined categories that vehicles fit into. But that’s baloney. The car market is like some flowery New England school where students make their own curriculum: There are no classes. From the Fiat 500 to the Chevrolet Suburban, there’s practically an unbroken spectrum of vehicle sizes, weights, proportions, and purposes. And even specific points along the spectrum contain their own spectra—spectra within spectra, man, kaleidoscopic fractals within gifs of shorelines and galaxies and an Escher sketch of a cat’s iris… Whoa. Who brought those brownies in the break room? Speaking of high, the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque tested here certainly feels higher than the BMW X2 M35i we drove alongside it. Not high in the…

[+]Abundant torque, stupid fast, lots of grip. [-]Confused variable steering, V-8 flashbacks. FORGETTING THINGS IS EASY. Like why you’re in the dairy aisle when you came to the store for a six-pack of Labatt. Or the name of that weird kid who’d eat the entire apple, core and all. Dale? Brian? What the hell was it? Other things stay with you, like your first phone number, the name of the teacher who taught you to read, and, if you were lucky enough to have heard it, the caustic rip of the old Audi RS5’s V-8 as it erupted toward its 8300-rpm redline. Well, try to forget that V-8; you can’t get it in the latest RS5. Now your coupe or Sportback (i.e., four-door hatchback) will arrive with a V-6. Previously,…

[+]Posh, polished, unexpectedly good handling, indulgently roomy. [-]Looks kind of like a Toyota Highlander, expensive, sometimes humps the road. IF YOU’RE YOUNG AND FLUSH WITH CASH and you want to be seen in a big, expensive SUV, Mercedes will be more than happy to put you in a Post Malone–approved G-wagen. But that big, boxy status symbol packs five seatbelts only. The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS, on the other hand, is for all the parents out there: a restrained three-row family hauler and a triumph of substance over style. It’s also an undercover co-conspirator to parents who love to drive. Picture yourself on a long road trip in your GLS. Your spouse and offspring are along, all dozing comfortably. You find yourself smoothly sashaying down the mountain at improbable speed, disturbing…

Car and Driver contributing editor Davey G. Johnson died this June, the victim of an accidental drowning. He went missing on a motorcycle trip on the 5th, and his body was recovered days later. He was 43. “I saw Davey as the voice of his generation,” says former C/D editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman, who hired Johnson in 2014. “He was a gifted, innate storyteller and a man consumed with his enthusiasms.” Johnson had been making an impression on the business since he started writing about “the machines that move us,” as he described them, in 2001. Editor Andrew Wendler remembers him as “a superbly talented writer and master of the nebulous reference. Davey wrote without a net, often blending cultural touchpoints as disparate as punk rock, obscure Soviet history, and golden-era…

Chevy’s small-block V-8 has been a part of the Corvette legacy since the 1955 model year. It continues in the C8 as the 490-hp, 465-lb-ft LT2; with the Performance exhaust, you get 495 horses and 470 pound-feet. That’s 35 horsepower and 5 pound-feet more than comparable C7s. The LT2 expands the small-block’s capabilities with more-efficient intake and exhaust manifolds, a more robust lubrication system, and a new camshaft. It uses the same bore and stroke—as well as the same forged crankshaft, rods, and 11.5:1 pistons—as the LT1 on which it’s based. All Stingrays will now get a dry-sump system to accommodate the chassis’s increased track capability, which includes sustained lateral acceleration beyond 1.00 g. Previously, dry-sump lubrication was available on C7 Stingrays only as part of the Z51 package. The…

C/D: Why mid-engine and why now? TJ: We were reaching the technical limits for a reasonable front-engined car. We knew we were in trouble way back in the sixth generation when we started doing a ZR1 with a 638-hp engine and it wasn’t until the eve of production—and only because of the supersticky Michelin tires—that we were able to surpass the acceleration of the C6 Z06. We had aspirations for higher performance, but we were reaching the limits of the architecture. When you want more-powerful engines, that generally drives [up] mass, so the worst thing you can do—adding more horsepower and torque, placing less weight [as a percentage of the total] on the rear wheels and more weight on the front wheels—it’s all directionallywrong. C/D: When did Chevrolet make the…

Raise the Roof In 2012, NHTSA strengthened roof-crush standards. The agency now requires a vehicle like the HR-V to support three times its weight on its roof rails. The overachieving subcompact crossover can carry 5.1 times its weight, or more than 15,600 pounds of force, before the structure deforms more than five inches, according to Brian Bautsch, manager of crash safety at Honda. Path-ology Automakers have been helped by the democratization of high- and ultrahigh-strength steels and modern computer-simulation tools. “We’re able to dissipate energy in many load paths and send it out and around where the occupants are,” explains Bautsch. “We send it down the side sill. We send it down the center of the frame, the backbone of the vehicle. We send it up along the A-pillar and…

[+] Features galore, simple controls, strong value. [-] Wind noise, lame pushbutton shifter, Kia dealers sell a better-looking version. PEYTON OR ELI? SERENA OR VENUS? Oldsmobile or Buick? Each is part of a legendary sibling rivalry not unlike the one happening now between the Kia Telluride and this Hyundai Palisade in the three-row-SUV segment. And though these fraternal twins may not look alike, they share a lot of traits. The Palisade, on sale now, is powered by the same direct-injected 3.8-liter V-6 that motivates the Telluride. Coupled to an eight-speed automatic that is also shared with the Kia, the engine makes 291 horsepower and 262 pound-feet of torque—adequate for this application—and pushed our SEL-trim all-wheel-drive test vehicle to 60 mph in 6.9 seconds. Unlike the Telluride, the Palisade can be…

[+]Smooth and silent, useful new tech, seemingly efficient. [-]Lackluster interior, as expensive as the 6.2-liter V-8 but can’t tow as much. CONSIDERING THE EPA’S FULL-FRONTAL assault on diesel-powered anything and the scrutiny the agency has applied to such engines in the wake of Volkswagen’s diesel scandal, it’s a wonder the oil-burning 2020 Chevy Silverado 1500 exists at all. Even more remarkable is that each of the Big Three will have a light-duty diesel when the Chevy arrives at dealerships later this year. With the Duramax, Chevy now offers five different engines for its half-ton cash cow. And this is one of the good ones. Turbocharged and intercooled, the 3.0-liter inline-six twists out 460 pound-feet of torque at 1500 rpm and makes an easy 277 horse-power. The aluminum powerplant uses a…

[+]Sweet turbo engine, loads of legand headroom, widescreen interface. [-]Taut ride, joyless handling, might be too cute. THE 2020 KIA SOUL IS THE BOX. Honda Element? Dead. Nissan Cube? Dead. Scion xB? Dead. But where they failed, the Soul thrives, with Kia selling about 10,000 of them a month in the U.S. The third-gen Soul, rolling out for 2020, expands on everything good from the first two, adds hyperbolic details, and fortifies it all with a 201-hp 1.6-liter inline-four in the GT-Line Turbo. As a modern turbocharged engine, this long-stroke example is tuned to deliver consistent torque, which gives it an easy thrust-on-demand feel. The 195-lb-ft peak lasts from 1500 rpm to 4500. Let the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission shift and, around town, this Soul is an easygoing machine that doesn’t…

WHAT DO DRUGS, Christmas, and cars have in common? They’re all subjects of that cultural phenomenon known as “the war on X.” Growing interest in autonomy has popularized an imagined future in which car ownership dies and everyone travels around in driverless on-demand pods. We’re betting that future never materializes, but some elements of it seem inevitable. With that in mind, we devised a challenge: Go one week, Monday through Friday, in our quasi-urban college town without using personal vehicles. In so doing, we would see if the current alternatives to vehicle ownership could convincingly replace a car. In addition to biking and walking, we cobbled together a week’s worth of transportation using Ann Arbor’s limited bus system; ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft; General Motors’ short-term car-rental/car-sharing service,…

PORSCHE, VERY MUCH IN THE business of solving First World problems, finally has the technology to reduce the amount of dust produced by the Cayenne’s brakes. The company says its new Porsche Surface Coated Brakes, or PSCBs, cut down on dust by 90 percent compared with conventional iron discs. The appeal to vanity doesn’t end there. The mirror-like surface of the rotors is so reflective that you can see yourself well enough to pick spinach out of your teeth, fix your hair, or take a selfie. Brake dust that accumulates on a car’s wheels comes from the rotors, not the pads. Porsche’s solution, developed with Bosch, sprays a 0.004-inch tungsten-carbide coating onto iron discs, making them five times harder. In addition to reducing dust, the tungsten-carbide-coated brakes are said to…

A mid-engined Corvette, unlike many of its exotic mid-engined competitors, needs to be affordable, both to purchase and to produce. Controlling costs is a Chevrolet hallmark, and the C8 is no exception. It uses carbon fiber only where it is the most efficient choice in terms of cost, weight, strength, and stiffness. Two carbon-fiber pieces made the final cut—a rear bumper beam and an underbody close-out panel that runs along the bottom of the center tunnel, strengthening the backbone of the Corvette. Those carbon parts aside, the C8’s structure is all aluminum: 40 percent extrusions, 39 percent stampings, 18 percent castings, and 1 percent hydroformed pieces. The frame is bonded and screwed together, and without its top, the C8 is 19 percent torsionally stiffer than its predecessor, according to GM.…

In the automotive-design world, it doesn’t get much more pressure-packed than designing the mid-engined Corvette. It’s a mythical beast on which enthusiasts have been projecting their fantasies for decades, even lifetimes. If a unicorn is to finally step out from the shadows, it damn well better not look like an old mule with a horn. The C8 team members were aware of the expectations. It weighed on them. For years. Juechter says that the mid-engined C8 Corvette couldn’t be the wild fantasy of the team’s inner adolescents. The design had to have a long shelf life. And it still had to be recognizable as a Corvette, despite having new proportions. Chevy couldn’t go retro, because that’s a design dead end. But it was aiming for a sort of 1963 moment:…

The 2020 Ford Explorer ST pictured here can get to 60 mph in a scant 5.2 seconds, which is only a tenth of a second quicker than a 1991 GMC Typhoon could. How many of us would have thought back at the dawn of the grunge decade that the utterly outrageous GMC would be a harbinger of the future? We’d guess zero. At the time, the Typhoon and its pickup brother, the Syclone, were bizarre, out-of-the-blue-sky anomalies. But look around now: The market is chockablock with high-powered, hunkered-down SUVs. The Explorer ST, like the Typhoon, is powered by a turbocharged V-6. Both are all-wheel drive. And both eschew chrome and brightness in a bid to look at least a little bit menacing. A note to Ford’s communications staffers, who are…

In August 2018, a journalist driving a McLaren 570S Spider overcooked a corner on California State Route 33 and flew off the road. I was in the passenger’s seat. With the roof retracted, the 570S rolled twice before coming to rest 297 feet from where the Pirellis last touched asphalt, some 80 feet down a mountainside. There were no injuries. While the horrific sensations of the crash are etched in my memory, I had only a fuzzy idea of the speeds and forces that I survived. A NASA rocket scientist and an accident-reconstruction agency helped piece it together. LAUNCH We started the right-hand turn at 78 mph, per Principia Engineering, the firm that simulated the incident using the car’s specs and Google Earth road topography to arrive at the most…

[+]The flat-six returns, a more affordable naturally aspirated Porsche, a chassis that deserves an engine this special. [-]Pricing strays into 911 territory, we can’t help but wonder what it’d do with another 100 horsepower. INDULGE ME FOR A MOMENT, please. I’m not one to start an article with an I, which is why I didn’t here, even though I did. But with the 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4, it’s personal. I didn’t realize how much I needed this sort of pure palate cleanser. But I feel so much better about the world after driving this car that I have to shout it from the rooftops—or from page 82 of the magazine in your hands; whatever works. For cars, the point of diminishing returns typically lives somewhere around $100,000. Once you…

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