Innehållsförteckning för July 2020 från Car and Driver

SHINE ON Am I the only one who knows you traded your “Irreverence” for “Incandescence” on the April 2020 cover? Was this an Easter egg for your readers? —Tom SchillingFriday Harbor, WA Oh, boy, you wizards at C/D have pulled off the most awesome April Fools’ joke of the century! “Intelligence. Independence. Incandescence.” This and the pretty green title glimmering at the top. I just checked my expiration date. Count me out. The magazine is worthless to me. I will not resubscribe. —John M. UhelskiCleveland, TN If that’s all it took, color us insouciant—Ed. Great choice on your cover wording: “Incandescence.” Truly le bon mot. It encompasses irreverence but without its anarchistic undertones. Well done. —Don AchesonTwin Falls, ID I was shocked at the lack of irreverence on the April…

The past few months have upended virtually every plan anyone had made anywhere in the world. By the time you read this, you’ll be at least six weeks further down the road than we are now, which means you might know whether we’re wrong about what we’re about to say or (as we’ve long suspected) we’re geniuses whose every utterance should be heeded. So, with the knowledge that time makes fools of us all, and that pandemics speed the process, we’d like to make a prediction: This is going to be a great year to buy a car. In some ways, this is a simple supply-and-demand argument. March was a brutal month for car sales, which fell by 27 percent across the industry in the first quarter despite slight increases…

Any argument about the greatest car of all time is certain to rely heavily on C/D’s vast database of test results. But it’s a lot of data, and most people have access to only a small chunk of it. So, to put all arguments to rest, we’ve compiled a list of the quickest, grippiest, and stoppiest production cars we’ve ever tested. If you need any more evidence that we are living in a golden era of performance, note that only one car on this list is more than five years old, and that was a million-dollar car back when a million dollars meant something. 60 mph FIRST 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder 2.1 SECOND 2018 Lamborghini Huracán Performante 2.2 THIRD (TIE) 2008 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 and 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S 2.4 100 mph…

Pyramid. Barrier Reef. British Baking Show. It’s easy to spot greatness when it’s right there in the name. Even when it’s not part of the branding, it’s often easy to identify because greatness by definition stands apart. Greatestness, on the other hand, gets sticky. Drag racers: Who’s greater, John Force or RuPaul? Greatness inspires nothing so much as debate. And while the concept evolves, making it difficult to pit yesterday’s champion against today’s, you can’t be the greatest of all time without having been the greatest in your own time. Our list of the most important cars ever built starts in 1955, when this magazine was founded as Sports Cars Illustrated and as the modern auto industry came of age. These are Car and Driver’s GOATs.…

The XK-E is the marquee dream car of its era because it’s beautiful, but its beauty was incidental to its low-drag, high-speed function. The shape was penned by Jaguar aerodynamicist Malcolm Sayer. That striking body was draped over race-proven hardware that was ahead of its time in many ways, such that it’s hard to believe this alleged 150-mph car is now nearly 60 years old. The husky burr from the DOHC inline-six no doubt influenced the great naturally aspirated BMW sixes, and its 265 horsepower is enough to make you glad for the confident bite of the four-wheel disc brakes (located inboard at the rear). The cabin, all needles and dials and toggle switches, exudes timeless cool. When it was new, we tested the E-type with a 2200-mile trip from…

“It’s easily the best thing to come out of Dearborn since the 1932 V-8 Model B roadster.” C/D, MAY 1964 The elements that make the Mustang iconic today—rear-wheel drive, optional V-8, low-slung two-door shape—are also what distinguish it from the comparatively humdrum sedans and crossovers that currently dominate the sales charts. But the Mustang that first hit the scene in the 1960s was similar in constitution to the popular mass-market cars of its day. It shared mechanical components with other Ford models such as the Falcon and Galaxie, and its sub-$2400 base price made it a remarkably accessible proposition. What really made the Mustang special was what it represented to American car buyers: new possibilities for self-expression, driving enjoyment, and freedom. We were already obsessed with the idea of the…

Shortly after its European debut in 1970, British Leyland’s Range Rover became a museum piece—the first vehicle to be displayed at the Louvre in Paris. It was featured there as an “exemplary work of industrial design,” which would prove to be a prophetic accolade considering its lasting influence. Rover had set out to match the success of the Jeep Wagoneer and Ford Bronco with a luxury bent. In doing so, the company cast the mold for a vehicle as good in the wild as it was running errands. The Range Rover was powered by a Buick-designed V-8 planned for powerboats and first used in compact sedans in 1961. It was as comfortable in the types of places where you slept on the ground as it was on the meandering highways…

Jeep’s 1984 Cherokee planted the idea in mainstream consciousness: A four-wheel-drive vehicle could negotiate suburban streets as capably as it could the Rubicon. Smaller and lighter than the prior model, the XJ-generation Cherokee employed unibody construction that imparted a sense of refinement even as it rode on a solid front axle. It followed the Chevrolet S-10 Blazer and Ford Bronco II into the nascent compact-SUV segment but quickly shifted the emphasis from sport to utility as the first in the class to offer four doors. Buyers bought the idea, then they bought the Cherokee. This generation is timeless. The design soldiered on basically untouched until its demise in 2001. It paved the path for the 1991 Ford Explorer that cemented the SUV craze. And to this day, the XJ Cherokee…

1987 Ferrari F40 1987 Porsche 959 Nothing fuels fantasy quite like competition, the compulsory “would you rather” forcing deeper consideration than a solitary subject. In the late ’80s, when the 911 Turbo was making 282 horsepower and the Testarossa was at 380, Porsche and Ferrari unleashed a pair of race-bred outlaws with 444 and 478 horsepower, respectively. But power was just the beginning, with features like an adjustable-height suspension, sequential turbocharging, and carbon-fiber and Kevlar body panels bringing a new generation of racing technology to the streets. Both were featured in our November 1987 issue. The F40 was merely a static preview, but after testing the 959, we concluded, “If you want to call the Porsche 959 the best car in the world, you will get no argument from us.”…

Porsche’s mid-engine two-seaters really came into their own with the 981 generation. Lighter and higher tech than before, with aggressive styling and the crackling wail of a high-revving naturally aspirated flat-six, the third-gen Boxster and second-gen Cayman were simply two of the most finely honed driving machines ever created. Even with the adoption of electrically assisted power steering, their helms were models of precision and directness. Their chassis were sublime, responding to driver input with almost telepathic fluidity and control. And they had the presence and performance to finally step out of the pricier 911’s shadow as the brand’s purest sports cars. Today’s 718 Boxster and Cayman—two of the best-driving cars money can buy—bring even more power and grip. But their turbocharged fours filter out some of the mechanical zest…

Among all the outstanding 911s over the years, the 991.2-generation GT3 stands out as one of the best. There are few modern cars that impart such a cathartic driving experience, and even fewer that do so by way of a six-speed manual and a high-revving naturally aspirated engine. The 4.0-liter flat-six in the GT3 produces 500 horsepower and crescendos from a low hum to an ear-splitting 100-decibel howl as the needle races up the tach in search of the car’s 9000-rpm redline. The joys of the GT3 aren’t solely predicated on its powertrain, though. The continuity of the 911 design plays a part, too. From its perfectly weighted steering to its everyday livability and Porsche’s dedication to the finest of details, the 911 GT3 is perhaps the zenith of driver…

You would do us a great service if you measured turbo lag in road tests. —John Kepler, San Luis Obispo, CA Turbo lag, or the time it takes for a turbocharger to provide meaningful boost to the engine, isn’t something we specifically test. But our rolling-start 5-to-60-mph test should give you a good indication. In that test, we let the car reach a steady 5 mph before stomping the accelerator; then we time how long it takes to get to 60 mph. Cars suffering from turbo lag will take a beat before providing maximum acceleration. In our all-out runs to 60 mph, we largely avoid this lag by employing aggressive launch techniques, such as dumping the clutch in a manual-transmission car or using launch control when available. In turbocharged vehicles,…

The rest of this issue celebrates the greatest of all time, but this page is devoted to the greatest of right now. Not the greatest cars—10Best and comparison tests cover those. We’re looking at the best parts of our favorite cars. Given (only slightly) better fabricating skills and an unlimited budget, this is how we’d create the perfect modern car. BODY Mid-Size Sedan The Honda Accord makes space for more than enough people and stuff. Anything bigger is extraneous mass and expense. Wait. [Record scratch.] By the time we package a rear-mounted transaxle—we’re going to need a rear-mounted transaxle—we’ll need to bump this up to a wagon to preserve cargo space. ENGINE Ferrari 812 Superfast There is no more melodic, linear, and stupefyingly powerful engine around. Consider: At 5000 rpm,…

I got to drive a 1988 Porsche 959 recently. Now that I’ve mentioned that, thus fulfilling my imaginary obligation to participate in the Greatest of All Time discussion, let me tell you about the time my old Cherokee fragged a U-joint, causing the rear driveshaft to thump the floorboards like a freshly caught mackerel. Or about my E36 M3, which had a cooling system that was, I believe, constructed out of cardboard and soft cheese. Sure, we all have our list of GOATs, but what about the WOATs? Every car I’ve owned has had at least one day when I’ve declared it the Worst of All Time. Ever have an alternator crap out on you at night, precipitating a game I like to call “Spark Plugs or Headlights”? My 1979…

On March 26, 1955, Fonty Flock drove a new V-8-powered Chevrolet onto the half-mile dirt oval at South Carolina’s Columbia Speedway. Two hundred laps later, he earned Chevy’s first victory in NASCAR’s top division, Grand National (now called Cup). Since then, Chevy has become the winningest manufacturer in the history of the series. And it all started with the ’55. With antiseptically clean flanks, a grille seemingly swiped from Ferrari, and a roof dropped as much as six inches from the ’54 model, the ’55 was Chevrolet’s great leap forward in terms of style. A new ladder frame, control-arm front suspension, and leaf springs set wider apart in the back underpinned the car. It drove brilliantly, looked gorgeous, and didn’t cost much. But the great breakthrough was the small-block V-8.…

Imagine a rear-drive sports car powered by a high-revving 300-plus-hp V-8, riding on a sophisticated independent suspension, and dressed in a stunning body made from a lightweight material. If that sounds like a cool car today, imagine it on the road 57 years ago. That was the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. American cars of the early 1960s were lumbering, chrome-encrusted behemoths. The 1963 Sting Ray, the first of the second-generation (C2) Chevy two-seaters, was shockingly beautiful, lithe, nimble, and, of course, blindingly fast. The handiwork of engineer-racer Zora Arkus-Duntov and GM’s flamboyant design czar, Bill Mitchell, the C2 was available as either a coupe or a convertible and wore feathery fiberglass body panels virtually free of chrome trim. In ‘63, top models came with a fuel-injected 327-cubic-inch small-block V-8 rated…

“Well, you tried to race everything just to make a living,” A.J. Foyt told C/D in 2017. “If Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney, or I didn’t do something, we didn’t eat good that night.” From the end of World War II into the 1970s, that reality made for the golden era of racing. Jim Clark dominated in open-wheelers, rallies, hill-climbs, touring cars, and the 1965 Indianapolis 500. Mario Andretti claimed the 1967 Daytona 500, the 1969 Indy 500, and the 1978 Formula 1 championship. Parnelli Jones took Indy in 1963, shined in the Trans-Am Series, and overwhelmed the Mexican 1000 in 1971 and 1972. It was the era of Stirling Moss, Mark Donohue, Graham Hill, Juan Manuel Fangio—guys who won in everything from jalopies to the Porsche 917/30 and ground-effect F1…

The NSX’s multifaceted flyby still stands as the most spectacular overtaking maneuver in sports-car history. Acura’s mid-engine wedge forged new ground technologically with its aluminum body and suspension, an 8000-rpm V-6 sporting titanium connecting rods, and the first U.S. application of Honda’s now ubiquitous VTEC variable valve control. Formula 1 great Ayrton Senna personally insisted on last-minute structural improvements and had a hand in the car’s ruthlessly pure handling. How ruthless? In two different comparison tests, pilots from this fine publication left the road, engine first, in the NSX as it vanquished a variety of competitors, such as the Chevy Corvette ZR-1, Dodge Viper, Lotus Esprit, Porsche 911, and Ferrari 348 and F355. The tactility of its unassisted steering and the directness of its five-speed manual hold up against sports…

There’s an easy case to be made that we are living in the car’s greatest moment. Time passes; technology advances. Unless your DeLorean has a functioning flux capacitor, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more sophisticated vehicle than what’s on dealer lots today. These are the muscle car’s glory days, with creatine-snorting monsters that corner as hard as they accelerate. The most efficient car ever sold, the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus, clears 60 mph in a claimed 5.3 seconds. Two-and-a-half-ton luxury SUVs can turn credible lap times. Mid-engine cars practically grow on trees. No matter your budget, you have more choice than ever in what you drive. But assuming you’re not on Ferrari’s short list to buy a $625,000 SF90 Stradale, the greatest time to be a car…

With the second-generation Prius, Toyota turned an economy car into a status symbol. All it took was a complex gasoline-electric hybrid powertrain that promised up to 60 mpg (that number later fell to 48 mpg when the EPA revised its methodology for ‘08) and a distinctive teardrop shape to broadcast that you were doing your part to save the planet. During a time of rampant conspicuous consumption, the Prius offered the perfect antidote to gas-guzzling SuVs. That blend of economy, utility, and typical Toyota reliability made it the first successful hybrid. Although the RAV4 Hybrid now outsells it, perhaps nothing cements the Prius’s legacy more than the fact that its trademarked name has effectively become synonymous with hybrid.…

The specs alone don’t always tell the story, but they do here: 556 horses and an available six-speed manual in a rear-drive station wagon. That’s 51 more horsepower than the contemporary Corvette Z06 had. And the Caddy’s supercharged 6.2-liter meant that vastly more horsepower was just a smaller pulley away. The driving experience didn’t disappoint, either. Standard magnetorheological dampers balanced a civilized ride with track-attacking handling, Brembo brakes hauled things back to sanity after low-12-second quarters, and communicative steering justified Cadillac calling it a “sport wagon.” But nothing justified the long-roof V’s existence. Cadillac built only 1764 CTS-V wagons during the car’s four-year production run. Somewhere out there is a silver one with a “Save the Manuals!” sticker and a few signatures hidden behind the trim in the spare-tire well.…

Michael Jordan. The Beatles. Bill Murray. Some giants stand so far above the rest that their exceptionalism is a foregone conclusion. You can argue that someone else played the game better, but the societal consensus says you’re just being a contrarian. No vehicle looms large enough to be the uncontested greatest, though. We know because, in the course of debating Car and Driver’s list of legends, we hit gridlock when we tried to pick the one car that was greater than the other 41. We named our GOATs based on their technological innovation, influence on the industry, simple beauty, and/or driver engagement. Any car that’s going to rise above the others needs to rank highly in all four of those categories. Its shape should be as graceful as the Lamborghini…

When writers come to me with a story idea, I often ask them to justify their thesis by asking themselves a question: Why now? Why does this story need to be told today? What’s going on in the world that adds significance to your idea, what makes this piece of information relevant, why should people care right now? And so one might fairly ask the same question of us: Why are we doing an issue on the greatest cars of all time now? Well. First, this whole pandemic thing has shaken up the magazine world quite a bit. We aren’t traveling, we can’t do instrumented testing, and we’re getting mighty sentimental for life before we worried about getting sick from touching a gas pump handle. Beyond coronavirus fears, it feels…

We won’t complain if this magazine is the only thing you ever read. But in the event that you run through all your back issues or you tire of streaming TV, we’ve compiled some books that should be on every car enthusiast’s shelf. Written by veteran journalists, former executives, and sharp-eyed cultural commentators, these books bring cars and car culture to life, and in doing so, they shed light on why we love this stuff so much. Porsche: Excellence Was Expected by Karl Ludvigsen Some of you will think we’re crazy for putting a four-volume $525 marque history book on this list, but we wouldn’t feel right excluding it; we use it all the time. Our go-to guide for all things Porsche, this collection by automotive historian and former C/D…

Several small goats on a trampoline. Delightful. Additional goat-related internet searches bring up goats in trees and goats on people doing yoga. “Football goat,” though, brings up not pygmy-goat gridiron but a broad-shouldered man named Tom Brady who is not just good at football, he’s the Greatest of All Time. Ah, GOAT. I get it. What does it mean to be the GOAT? It’s more than math. The Toyota Corolla is the bestselling car globally, but it isn’t the greatest. At the track, is it the number of wins or innovations that make you the best? How do we compare someone like Barney Oldfield with Lewis Hamilton? Sure, Hamilton has won more races, but Oldfield did it back when race cars were made out of rattlesnakes and wasp nests. “I…

If you’re like us, you’ve found yourself talking about cars at a dinner party, on a date, or with your airplane seatmate—those were the days—when slowly you realize your conversation partner is somewhat less than enthralled. “Yeah, I’m not really that into cars. You catch the game last night?” Fair enough. But imagining the auto industry as either a niche enthusiast business or simply the purveyors of point-A-to-point-B transportation ignores its wide-ranging influence on society. For better and for worse, the auto industry’s great reach has continually redefined the American way of life. Allow us to explain. Henry Ford was responsible for an outsize portion of the car’s early impact on our society. Ford wasn’t without his vices. He was openly anti-Semitic and he employed a staff of investigators to…

Turn Your Hymnals to 2002 DAVID E. DAVIS JR. BLOWS HIS MIND ON THE LATEST FROM BMW. As I sit here, fresh from the elegant embrace of BMW’s new 2002, it occurs to me that something between 9 and 10 million Americans are going to make a terrible mistake this year. Like dutiful little robots, they will march out of their identical split-level boxes and buy the wrong kind of car. Fools, fools! Terrible, terrible, I say. Why are you blowing your money on this year’s too-new-to-be-true facelift of the Continental/Countess Mara/Sprite/Sprint Status Symbol/Sting Ray/Sex Substitute/Mainliner/Bel Air/Newport/Overkill/Electra/Eldorado/Javelin/Toad/GTO/GTA/GTB/GTS/GTX/Reality Blaster/Variant/Park Lane/Park Ward/Ward Heeler/XK-E/Dino/Dud car when you should be buying a BMW 2002? I ask. Down at the club, Piggy Tremalion and Bucko Penoyer and all their twit friends buy shrieking little two-seaters…

“The GTB is one of the most logical, comfortable, and easy-to-drive mid-engine cars ever built.” C/D, MARCH 1977 The two-seat 1975 308 GTB coupe was the first Ferrari road car with fewer than 12 cylinders that the company felt comfortable badging as a Ferrari. Along with the targa-top GTS that came in ’77, the carbureted 308 would stay in production until 1980, with 6116 built; a fuel-injected model took its place and lived until ’85. The 308 was so successful that Ferrari reinvented itself in this car’s image. The 2.9-liter V-8 came from the Dino 308 GT4 and made a stout 240 horsepower yet was also tractable and forgiving enough to be used every day. Factor in the car’s roomy interior and this was the most usable Ferrari to date.…

Against the dark backdrop of 1978, the Porsche 928 was a supernova. Replete with the best components and engineering available—a fuel-injected and aluminum-block SOHC 4.5-liter V-8 making 219 horses, a rear-mounted five-speed transaxle, a semi-trailing-arm rear suspension designed to mitigate lift-throttle oversteer, 50-series Pirelli P7 performance tires, adjustable pedals, an instrument binnacle that moves with the steering wheel, Recaro seats, HVAC vents in the door panels, height-adjustable headlights, and an air-conditioned glovebox—the 928 could not have been less like the 911 if it were designed to drive on the moon. The 928 ran to 60 in 6.4 seconds and could hit 144 mph in the days when a Corvette maxed out at 134. When automakers of indifferently built cars counted on buyers to be taken in by fake wood and…

Everyone reading Car and Driver now knows that the letters GTI are synonymous with hot hatch, but it wasn’t always that way. Volkswagen introduced this high-performance version of its iconic Golf hatchback in Europe in the mid-1970s, but it took years to come to our shores—and it had a lot to prove once it did. Back then, Americans didn’t take the idea of a front-wheel-drive performance car seriously. A tall economical hatchback hardly fit our image of a sporty vehicle. What’s more, the GTI that eventually reached U.S. dealerships for the 1983 model year emerged from Volkswagen’s troubled Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, assembly plant, which had become emblematic of the automaker’s struggles in our market. Compared with the German Golf, the American models—badged as Rabbits—were more shoddily built and less fun to…

The car’s constant evolution makes it easy to miss the step-change moments. When viewed over its decades-long development, fuel injection looks like any other technological advance. Its impact is far more significant than that. Electronic fuel injection (EFI) lifted the auto industry out of the dark age precipitated by two fuel crises and the advent of emissions tests. It allowed engineers to squeeze every drop of gasoline harder with engines that made more power while using less fuel—once they got the hang of it. And that established a rocket-like trajectory for engineering improvement that persists today. Thanks to fuel injection (among other advances), cars like the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye can coexist with the strictest emission regulations the U.S. has ever imposed. The benefits go beyond horsepower and miles…

Straight out the gate, the 1988 Honda Civic and CRX established themselves by seizing two spots on our 10Best list. While their predecessors were considered reliable and fun to drive, the fourth-generation Civic and second-gen CRX benefited from more aerodynamic bodywork, roomier interiors, and new fuel-injected engines that increased power and efficiency. Every model featured independent front and rear suspensions to greatly improve ride and handling. The sporty Si variant had a gutsy 105-hp 16-valve inline-four and exclusive chassis upgrades, including a larger front anti-roll bar, a rear anti-roll bar, firmer damping, and wider tires. Awesome agility and impressive power-to-weight ratios made these affordable small cars just as entertaining to drive as they were practical.…

Power without grip is just smoke. Today’s 700-hp cars only perform like 700-hp cars because tire technology has kept pace with the horsepower arms race. Steve Calder, product manager at Michelin, says that his company’s improvements in performance tires are largely the result of three advances over the last few decades. Sophisticated simulation tools allow engineers to model and optimize tires before ever making a prototype. The increasingly complex cocktails that make up a tire’s tread, known as functionalized elastomers, can be custom tailored to a vehicle’s attributes. And, Calder says, there’s magic in the way Michelin builds a tire, although he’s not telling exactly what makes it so special. The company won’t even patent the process for fear of exposing its secrets. Combine those elements and you arrive at…

Given Elon Musk’s reputation for missing deadlines, it’s easy to forget that the Tesla CEO made his name by delivering what many believed was impossible on any timeline. In 2010, Musk claimed that Tesla’s seven-passenger EV would travel 300 miles on a single charge, hit 60 mph in 5.6 seconds, and start at less than $60,000. It took time and multiple variants to hit those numbers, but the Model S eventually cleared each of those hurdles and did something even more unlikely: It proved that electric vehicles can be desirable and cool. Tesla found the winning formula by imitating Apple and luxury automakers while other brands futzed with cheap electric cars based on existing models. And as it rethought the car itself, Tesla also rethought everything about building and selling…

The new GTI looked a lot like the old one in pictures and on paper when this car debuted: strong turbocharged 2.0-liter, buyer’s choice of a gratifying manual or a quick-shifting dual-clutch automatic, and a sensible and inoffensive design. yet the seventh-generation GTI, built on the versatile MQB architecture, gelled even better than its forefathers. Volkswagen mastered the hot-hatch formula with the 2015’s balance of practicality, upscale maturity, and childish fun. And then it sold the car at a bargain starting price of $25,815. The GTI’s superpower is its ability to transform everyday driving into an occasion with its capable handling and energetic power. Behind the wheel of a GTI, even going to the dentist is fun. Factor in its affordability and efficiency and it’s the ultimate rational choice for…