Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 från Car and Driver

When Cadillac showed the Escala in 2016—the third in a string of gorgeous full-size concept cars to escape the brand’s design studio in the ’10s—we thought it might mean that General Motors’ halo brand was finally going to make the Mercedes-Benz S-class fighter it needed to compete in the luxury market. Pieces of the Escala’s design have begun to filter down to the Cadillac lineup, but the true production form of that show car won’t arrive as a chauffeur-worthy sedan. Instead, it comes as the 2021 Escalade. Like earlier generations, the fifth-gen Escalade will share its platform with GM’s other large SUVs, the Chevrolet Sub-urban and Tahoe and the GMC Yukon. Magnetorheological dampers come standard on all but the base Escalade, and a set of height-adjustable air springs will be…

As a regular driver of new cars with all manner of sensors and warnings and chimes and buzzers, I give my attention to very few of them anymore. I have beep fatigue. Every morning as I back out of my driveway, I am greeted by a chorus of beeps, buzzes, and bongs because whatever vehicle I happen to be in goes into full panic mode. Sure, the route from my backyard parking spot to the street is a sort of low-speed autocross course. Playing the role of the orange cones are a free-standing basket-ball hoop; ankle-high bricks surrounding an ornamental tree; a row of arborvitae; aluminum fence posts at the very edges of the driveway; a long concrete curb to the right, beyond which are plants my wife would like…

This 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse is probably worth more as scrap than as a used car. The wheels and tires could command a higher price if they weren’t bolted to this heap. Logically then, ol’ Flame Job here carries a negative value. But this liability can also print money. Your phone’s app store is brimming with ways to turn your car—no matter how crappy—into cash. You can drop packages, schlep drunks home from the bar, hustle food to hungry stomachs, or transfer a guinea pig 64 miles across Georgia. These opportunities are brought to you by the modern economy, where jobs are outsourced to apps rather than overseas. For anyone with a car who can pass a basic background check, these gig-economy apps are an easy way to make a buck.…

2019 PORSCHE CAYENNE ARRIVAL: NOVEMBER 2019 MILES: 3723 OBSERVED MPG: 19 We normally take delivery of long-term cars at our office, but since Porsche offers pickup at its two Porsche Experience Centers, we checked that $350 option for our new Cayenne and set out for Atlanta. Porsche’s other center is in Los Angeles. That’s a $395 add-on and a lot farther from our office. The delivery experience is a half-day event that includes lunch, 90 minutes of on-track driving instruction in a similar Porsche, a tour of the facility, and, of course, a one-on-one introduction to your new vehicle. Considering many buyers would have to fly to Atlanta or L.A. to do this, it’s an extravagance. Otherwise, we showed a lot of restraint when specing our Biscay Blue Metallic ute.…

Ask a marketer what’s in a name and you’ll find yourself in a meeting where you’ll be told that the future-proofing of a product’s rationalization cycle as it pertains to branding is at its core a consumer call-to-action activation and a mission-focused key performance indicator factoring SEO keywords from the global research of the monetization structure critical to ROI. Our advice? Sit near the door, walk out like you’re heading to the bathroom, don’t ever go back. A name isn’t that important; it’s the product that matters. Knowing your C-3POs from your R2-D2s and BB-8s is easy. They’re beloved. But try to imagine an XT4 or a Q50. If they’d been the droids you were looking for, you’d be able to recall them instantly. But they aren’t, and you probably…

Highs: Pulsing V-8, spacious interior, graceful ride quality. Lows: Poor fuel economy, outrun by a BMW X7, S-class money. The origin story of Mercedes-Benz’s biggest SUV goes like this: Mercedes executives were tired of hearing about Americans whose Benzes shared garages with Chevy Suburbans. So Mercedes made a Suburban of its own and introduced it to the U.S. market for 2007 as the GL-class. Now called the GLS-class, this behemoth begin sits third generation and remains in many ways a German Suburban, albeit a very, very nice one. Even though Mercedes has been touting its new hybrid-assisted inline-six lately, Benz’s big three-row SUV has always offered a V-8, and a V-8 is what you really want in this or any Suburban. The twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 makes for a quicker GLS.…

Seeing the 11 interior shots in the December issue allowed me to cross off eight of them for not having screens incorporated into the dashboard. Let me guess: You like televisions inside wooden furniture—Ed. The Screen Test: Which design do you prefer? Integrated Would you prefer to have screens integrated into the center stack? Nonintegrated Or do you like the modern look of a tablet sticking out of the dash? Send your vote to: editors@caranddriver.com…

McLaren is determined to maximize minimalism in the coming $1.7 million 804-hp Elva. In that pursuit, it has removed a windshield from its list of standard equipment. This poses an issue familiar to anyone who has ridden a motorcycle without a full-face helmet: Wind is cold and insects hurt when you hit them going fast. So the company came up with a clever solution that provides both the open-air feel of a glassless car as well as some protection from small bugs and windburn. It’s called the Active Air Management System (AAMS). It’s not a pithy name—Ferrari nabbed Virtual Wind Shield for its Monza SP1 and SP2—but bad branding doesn’t stop McLaren’s system from doing its job. We rode in an Elva mule with a prototype version of the AAMS…

It’s been a decade since the Kia Optima took its last big styling leap. Kia’s follow-up to the breakout 2011 model was mostly a cleaned-up version of its predecessor. It was a careful approach but one Kia isn’t replicating with the 2021 Optima. This latest model is sleek, low, and graced with details that move it in the direction of sexy. You wouldn’t necessarily know by looking at it, but the Optima is closely related to the Hyundai Sonata. Our brief drive in a Kia K5, the de facto Korean Optima, revealed a firm suspension and light steering, but the company hasn’t finalized this tuning for the U.S.-market car. The Optima GT will get the SonataN Line’s turbo 2.5-liter inline-four that’s expected to produce at least 290 horses and 310…

The Lamborghini Aventador SVJ roadster looks as if it had been chiseled out of a block of petrified cash with a hole on top. And the exhaust sounds as though it were composed by Giuseppe Verdi and sung by Maria Callas. Shockingly impractical, spectacularly theatrical, it’s altogether maniacal. The one we drove had a window sticker that read $667,661. As in the SVJ coupe, a massive 6.5-liter V-12 is in the middle of the car and is remarkable for what it lacks: turbochargers, a supercharger, direct injection, and any concern about fuel costs. It’s a real Lamborghini engine, too, and not shared with any of the brand’s Volkswagen Group kin. Compared with the Aventador S’s 730-hp V-12, the SVJ’s mill is fortified with titanium intake valves and fitted with a…

Highs: 707 horses underfoot, a blown V-8 in your ears, and that sweet smoke in your nostrils. Lows: That smoke cost $722. After 20 seconds, when chunks of molten rubber began landing on the windshield, we knew things were going well. Our immature, downright destructive but almost scientific experiment was going exactly as planned. Armed with childlike curiosity, a bathroom scale, a stopwatch, and a 707-hp Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody, we set out to answer a burning question: Just how long would it take for the world’s most powerful mass-produced sedan to literally burn through two of its $361 Pirelli P Zero PZ4 tires, size 305/35ZR-20? The Charger’s line lock wouldn’t work for our little exercise; it ends the party when the rear tires pass 200 revolutions. That takes…

Highs: Smooth operator, deeply comfortable, feature rich. Lows: Explaining what you bought to the neighbors, that grille. The Genesis G90, with its subdued style, has been the perfect sedan for people who don’t want to draw too much attention to themselves. But it won’t be so easy to hide in the 2020 model. On the 2019, Genesis’s winged logo, the one that looks as though it were lifted from a Bentley, served as a subtle identifier, adorning both the front and rear of the G90. A year later and the sedan is no longer quite so shy, proudly sporting the Genesis name in large letters across its sleek rear end. There’s a new wheel design and some other styling evolutions, but it’s the large home-plate-shaped grille that’s going to draw…

Highs: Drives a lot like the 3, tasteful inside and out. Lows: Lacks low-end grunt, slower than the 3. Have you considered the 3? That’s the first question we have for anyone interested in the Mazda CX-30. The CX-30 has barely more interior room and no more cargo space than the 3 hatchback, and it can’t match the latter’s fuel economy. But we get it: The CX-30 starts at $24,950, or $1675 less than the entry 3 hatch, and this is the shape and seating position that buyers want. Look, we’ve got no beef with this ute, it’s just that we love its lower sibling more. The good news is that the CX-30 is, at its core, a lifted 3. We don’t think that the 3 needed lifting, but we…

Aston Martin might be betting its future on the DBX, but it’s an informed bet. Vehicles such as the Bentley Bentayga and Lamborghini Urus have already taken much of the critical flak over whether or not luxury automakers should be producing SUVs. Not to mention the long-term success of the Porsche Cayenne, which proved that sportscar brands can pivot to SUVs without destroying their credibility. Of course, to succeed in the luxury-SUV market, you still have to build a luxury SUV. As with Aston’s sports cars, the DBX has a bonded aluminum structure. Also like many of its sports cars, the powertrain comes from Mercedes-Benz. The DBX’s AMG-sourced twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 pulls duty in the base DB11 and the Vantage, too. Here it makes 542 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of…

Highs: Spacious and attractive cabin, stylish exterior, improved driving position. Lows: Slow and noisy, no engine upgrade, competence strays toward dullness. Nissan’s new Sentra bears little resemblance to those of the past. That’s a good thing for a nameplate that has suffered from a rental-car stigma for too many years. There’s actual style on the outside now. Designers lowered the roofline by nearly two inches and made the Sentra look more like the Altima and Maxima and definitely less awkward. It’s better inside, too, with design cues borrowed from Mercedes-Benz and rich, pliant materials. It’s attractive in a way that suggests designers and not accountants were in charge. And Nissan nailed the driving position. Past versions had the pedals too close to the driver and the steering wheel too far.…