Innehållsförteckning för Sep-15 från Car and Driver

Dropping Democracy

ANVIL ON WHEELS The Army’s newest four-seat, turtle-back, armored HMMWV, the M1151A1 UAH, carries its center of gravity more than three feet off the ground and, when rigged for an airdrop, weighs 14,160 pounds. CHUTES TO THRILL The aircraft tows a small, 15-foot drogue chute for 5 to 10 seconds before the navigator gives the green light to drop the cargo. At that point, the loadmaster releases the drogue, the sole purpose of which is to pull out the larger, 22-foot extraction chute. The drag on the extraction chute unlocks the platform from the aircraft’s cargo rails and yanks it out of the C-130 at 0.93 g. SKYFALL The military performs heavy airdrops from both C-17 and C-130 transports. A C-130 drops cargo at an airspeed of 140 knots (161…

AARON ROBINSON

People with absolutely no friends in your state’s capital include terrorists, communists, smokers, and those cited for a driving offense. No politician with reelection on his or her mind would lift a finger to help out speeders and stoplight runners. Hey, they broke the law, they deserve whatever we give them, right? This political truth proved itself over and over again in the last decade as states rushed to patch holes in annual budgets by dumping more and more extraneous fees onto traffic tickets. As with a cigarette tax, a traffic-ticket surcharge generates little opposition from the assembled representatives, none of whom wants to be seen as representing the interests of lawbreakers. In Pennsylvania, fees have been tacked onto tickets for state police training, emergency medical services, the state’s judicial…

SPIDER BITE

SPECIFICATIONS VEHICLE TYPE MID-ENGINE, REARWHEEL-DRIVE, 2-PASSENGER, 2-DOOR TARGA BASE PRICE $65,495 ENGINE TYPE TURBOCHARGED AND INTERCOOLED DOHC 16-VALVE INLINE-4, ALUMINUM BLOCK AND HEAD, DIRECT FUEL INJECTION DISPLACEMENT 106 CU IN, 1742 CC POWER 237 HP @ 6000 RPM TORQUE 258 LB-FT @ 2200 RPM TRANSMISSION 6-SPEED DUAL-CLUTCH AUTOMATIC WITH MANUAL SHIFTING MODE DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE: 93.7 IN LENGTH: 157.0 IN WIDTH: 73.5 IN HEIGHT: 46.7 IN PASSENGER VOLUME 47 CU FT CARGO VOLUME: 4 CU FT CURB WEIGHT: 2500 LB PERFORMANCE (C/D EST) ZERO TO 60 MPH: 4.3 SEC ZERO TO 100 MPH 11.3 SEC 1/4-MILE: 13.1 SEC TOP SPEED: 160 MPH FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST) EPA CITY/HWY 24/34 MPG Alfa Romeo’s new Spider isn’t a convertible in the sense that say, an Aston Vanquish Volante is a convertible. Instead, the…

VELOCI RAPTOR

CADILLAC CTS -V + INCREDIBLE POWER, POISE, AND PERFORMANCE. _ STEERING IS LIGHT ON FEEDBACK, DOOR MAKES AN UNCOMFORTABLE KNEE BRACE. = A VERY SCARY SEDAN, BUT ONLY IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE EMPLOYED BY MERCEDES-AMG, BMW’S M DIVISION, OR AUDI’S QUATTRO GMBH. Need we remind you these are seriously twisted times? Without prompt intervention, Bartholomew JoJo Simpson, that lovable fourthgrade cartoon cutup, will never see his 11th birthday. Homer is dumping Marge for a younger woman. Former down-home darling Miley Cyrus might be the instrument of some secret society. And in our own world, zeroemission vehicles are vying for garage space with modern muscle cars. What we need to weather this maelstrom is a car we can trust. Something fast and fun, an automobile suitable for commuting that will…

8 min

AEROSMITHING

The Ferrari 488GTB is as much a study in air management as it is a garage trophy. Twin turbos coax 661 horsepower from just 3.9 liters of V-8, which propels a form that provide s 50 percent less drag with 50 percent more down-force than the 458, according to Ferrari. Here’s how the new mid-engine Ferrari makes the air its ally: Short Stack Two-tiered rear-fender intakes route upper airflow to the engine. What's not ingested there exits next to the taillamps to feed the wake and trim drag, while the lower fow gets ducted through two intercoolers. Playing Through What Ferrari calls a “blown rear spoiler” is a narrow fixed wing created by a slot in the body just aft of the rear glass; it directs air through to the…

1 min

QUIET STORM

SPECIFICATIONS VEHICLE TYPE FRONT-ENGINE, FRONT-WHEEL-DRIVE, 5-PASSENGER, 4-DOOR SEDAN PRICE AS TESTED $38,945 BASE PRICE $38,495 ENGINE TYPE DOHC 24-VALVE V-6, ALUMINUM BLOCK AND HEADS, PORT FUEL INJECTION DISPLACEMENT 213 CU IN, 3498 CC POWER 300 HP @ 6400 RPM TORQUE 261 LB-FT @ 4400 RPM TRANSMISSION CONTINUOUSLY VARIABLE AUTOMATIC WITH MANUAL SHIFTING MODE DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE: 109.3 IN LENGTH: 192.8 IN WIDTH: 73.2 IN HEIGHT: 56.5 IN PASSENGER VOLUME 98 CU FT CARGO VOLUME: 14 CU FT CURB WEIGHT: 3545 LB C/D TEST RESULTS ZERO TO 60 MPH 5.9 SEC ZERO TO 100 MPH 14.1 SEC ZERO TO 130 MPH 27.3 SEC ROLLING START, 5–60 MPH 6.0 SEC 1/4-MILE 14.4 SEC @ 101 MPH TOP SPEED (GOVERNOR LIMITED, C/D EST) 135 MPH BRAKING, 70–0 MPH 168 FT ROADHOLDING, 300-FT-DIA SKIDPAD 0.87…

5 min

CAR AND DRIVER TEST RESULTS

ACCELERATION TEST NOTES: The XC90 launches without fanfare. Power builds quickly and with a steadiness that belies the two separate sources of induction pressure. The acceleration, though not bloodstirring, makes it hard to believe there’s a 2.0-liter engine under the hood. HANDLING ROADHOLDING, 300-FT-DIA SKIDPAD .............. 0.77 g UNDERSTEER ......................... MINIMAL TEST NOTES: Soft and secure, the grip on the skidpad feels greater than 0.77 g. A more aggressive set of rubber would allow for much better skidpad performance, but the available grip is usable and safe. Come to think of it, that could be the XC90’s motto. BRAKING, 70-TO-ZERO MPH FIRST STOP ................................... 176 ft SHORTEST STOP ....................... 184 ft LONGEST STOP ............................. 191 ft FADE RATING ............................. SLIGHT TEST NOTES: Distances increased slightly over the six stops, but the brake pedal…

1 min

The Roads to Nirvana

WHY METRO AREAS? The population of a core city rarely represents a region’s full population. A metropolitan area generally consists of one large city and several smaller ones. Detroit’s population is about 675,000. The metro area holds 4.3 million. YOU’RE READING THIS magazine, so you probably enjoy driving. But how much of it? If nearly all your time behind the wheel is spent commuting, likely not much. Sure, you could get out of town and experience the joy of an open, twisty road, but how often do you actually do that? If you have a fun car but answered “not often,” where you live might be the problem. Some of us are closer to good driving roads than others. Some of us enjoy more good weather than others. Then there’s…

Casting Call

NASCAR IS THE red, white, and bluest form of racing there is. But the very heart of most NASCAR stockers is born at Grainger & Worrall, a family-owned company in the British West Midlands town of Telford, Shropshire. Every Chevrolet and Ford starting the Daytona 500 this year ran a block cast by Grainger & Worrall. As does every Chevy, Dodge, and Ford facing off in NHRA Pro Stock drag racing. Confidentiality agreements keep G&W from saying what, exactly, it casts for Formula 1 racers, but several teams are customers, including the dominant Mercedes-AMG Petronas. G&W also supplies castings to teams in WRC, Le Mans, and FIA Touring Car racing. Yet, somehow, the company is so off the radar that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page—at least not yet.…

EZRA DYER

The Corvette Z06 and I go way back. A 2002 Z06 was the first test car I ever wrote about, back when having 405 horsepower warranted carrying a badge that read “405 HP.” Those early cars were voted “Most Likely to Have Their Titanium Mufflers Replaced With Glasspacks Because The Owner Thinks ‘Titanium’ Is That Thing Where You Have A Ringing In Your Ears.” The C5 Z06 was powerful, always entertaining, and just a little bit cheesy: the Hulk Hogan of cars. A few years later, I got the first crack at the new and wayoverhauled C6 Z06, a scary car to drive at the limit. I brought it to the infield road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where I challenged Dale Earnhardt Jr. to a duel. The equalizer: I’d…

SARTHE BOUND

As your mother probably warned you, there’s no second chance to make a first impression. And Audi was clearly determined that our initial experience with the new R8 would be a memorable one. The invitation was simple: Come to Le Mans for the 24-hour race and, during a break between practice and qualifying sessions, take the new R8 for a single lap of the track. That means just 8.5 miles of the Circuit de la Sarthe to get acquainted. The drive itself was every bit as surreal as we secretly hoped it would be. But before we get to that, a bit about the car itself: The new R8 looks very similar to the first-generation wedge but is almost entirely new. It’s closely related to the Lamborghini Huracán, to a…

5 min

CAR AND DRIVER TEST RESULTS

ACCELERATION TEST NOTES: Might be the best launch-control programming of any car with a torque-converter automatic. It can be matched with careful throttle manipulation, but not beaten. It’ll hit 170 mph in less than one mile. HANDLING ROADHOLDING, 300-FT-DIA SKIDPAD .............. 0.98 g UNDERSTEER .................... MODERATE TEST NOTES: Seems slipperier on the flat skidpad than on a racetrack. Understeer easily managed with throttle. BRAKING, 70-TO-ZERO MPH FIRST STOP .................................. 149 ft SHORTEST STOP ...................... 149 ft LONGEST STOP ............................ 153 ft FADE RATING ............................... NONE TEST NOTES: This two-ton car is unfazed by repeated braking from tripledigit speeds. What the numbers don’t tell you is this car did a 149-foot stop on its first and last stops. Suck it, fade! Carbon ceramic has nothing on this rotor, caliper, and tire setup. WEIGHT CURB…

1 min

MUDSKIPPERS

JEEP RENEGADE PRICE: $26,360 POWER: 180 HP TORQUE: 175 LB-FT WEIGHT: 3395 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 25 FIAT 500X PRICE: $29,100 POWER: 180 HP TORQUE: 175 LB-FT WEIGHT: 3361 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 24 CHEVROLET TRAX PRICE: $25,540 POWER: 138 HP TORQUE: 148 LB-FT WEIGHT: 3256 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 23 HONDA HR-V PRICE: $26,720 POWER: 141 HP TORQUE: 127 LB-FT WEIGHT: 3106 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 26 KIA SOUL PRICE: $24,750 POWER: 164 HP TORQUE: 151 LB-FT WEIGHT: 3085 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 25 MAZDA CX-3 PRICE: $25,500 POWER: 146 HP TORQUE: 146 LB-FT WEIGHT: 2932 LB C/D OBSERVED MPG: 28 In the beginning, God may have created the heavens and the Earth, but it was Cambrian metazoan hookup culture that gave us the basis of most life-forms we…

16 min

CELL MATE

HYDROGEN FUN FACTS THIRD-MOST ABUNDANT ELEMENT ON EARTH. HYDROGEN MAKES UP 90 PERCENT OF THE UNIVERSE’S ATOMS. H2 MELTS AT -434 DEGREES F, BOILS AT -423 DEGREES F. HYDROGEN’S ENERGY CONTENT IS NEARLY THREE TIMES GREATER THAN GASOLINE PER POUND, BUT THREE TIMES LESS PER GALLON IN LIQUEFIED FORM. AS A GAS PRESSURIZED TO 10,000 PSI, HYDROGEN PROVIDES LESS THAN ONE-SEVENTH OF GASOLINE’S ENERGY CONTENT. Mirai is Japanese for “the future.” This is Toyota’s way of saying that its sedan most resembling SpongeBob SquarePants on a skateboard runs on hydrogen and produces no emissions. The Mirai is the first fuel-cell car offered for sale, not just lease. (The conceptually similar Honda FCX Clarity and Hyundai Tucson FCEV remain corporate property through and after the duration of their leases.) The standard…

6 min

HOW SWEDE IT IS

Once upon a time, it seemed as if Sweden and Volvo were destined to rule the world. In 1975, Björn Borg was emerging as the world’s dominant tennis player, ABBA had already won the Eurovision Song Contest and was climbing the charts, IKEA’s relentless expansion was underway, and Volvo’s new 240-series was the industry’s most sensible shoebox. The 240 was square and austere, but it glowed with that aura of Swedish democratic socialism that made it irresistible to anyone holding a poli-sci doctorate. The ’70s was the decade of Peak Sweden, but that was 40 years ago, and hey, nothing lasts forever. So here is the new, sweetly handsome, slightly eccentric, even subtly glamorous XC90 intended to return Volvo to the forefront of the progressive automotive consciousness. Ejected by Ford…

10 min

what i’d do differently ... JOHN KRAFCIK

C/D: At Ford you were chief program engineer on the Expedition. Why did you leave? JK: After the 2003 Expedition launched, I moved back over into a functional role. I got to the point where I didn’t aspire to do anything else in the company. This was before Alan Mulally had come in . . . the culture at the company wasn’t a very positive one. I had a headhunter reach out to me for a position running Hyundai’s U.S. product and strategic planning. C/D: You became Hyundai’s CEO just as the recession hit in ’08. JK: We knew all we had to do was to get our dealers through a 12-to-18-month period until the new Sonata launched and we would absolutely rock the industry. So we brought our dealers…

Q&A: Mark Rosekind

FINE ART NHTSA fined automakers more than $126 million last year, surpassing the agency’s 43-year total. Here are the top five civil penalties issued by the safety agency in 2014: JUST AS THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was about to close the books on 2014, a year in which a record number of cars were recalled, it underwent a change in leadership. On December 22, Mark R. Rosekind, a former NASA researcher and member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), was sworn in as administrator. The GM ignition-switch-defect investigation cast doubt on NHTSA’s ability to police the industry, and Rosekind’s tenure has so far been dominated by the Takata airbag recall, which has ballooned to become the largest consumer-product safety action in history. It’s no wonder then…

JOHN PHILLIPS

My father was fond of punishing inanimate objects. He owned a pair of loafers with metal buckles, and when the buckles chafed his feet, he grabbed a claw hammer and reduced the offending metal to brass parings, resting occasionally to fling the shards down the basement stairs. With each fling, a bad word was involved, but when he finished the job he smiled and handed me the Columbus Dispatch to show me a particularly colorful Formula 1 race report. I also recall a metal recirculating fan that blew air only when it wasn’t pointing at my father. The fan landed maybe 70 feet in our front yard, exploding in a grassy shower of blades and sheared electrical wire. It looked like a hang glider had crashed there. When our lawn-mowing…

CONSIDER THE CROSSOVER. NOW, PLEASE STOP IT.

What can easily be forgotten in this age, when anyone with a Twitter account and opposable thumbs can call themselves a “content creator,” is that words matter. We are called Car and Driver, which over the years has made us unusually protective of the word “car,” even more so than those car companies around which our world revolves. That word—car—its meaning both to the general public and to us as enthusiasts, has long been threatened with dilution by all manner of conveyances that are not cars, from trucks to minivans to SUVs. But right now it is the actual physical car that is being subsumed. Compact crossovers have surpassed mid-size sedans to become the most popular body style, claiming 16 percent of retail sales last year (to 15 percent for…

55 min

APPLE vs. ANDROID

The term “infotainment,” despite being a marketing portmanteau that makes our eyes roll, does neatly sum up the increasing variety of human-machine interfaces that dominates today’s dashboards. Now, Silicon Valley has leapt into the infotainment fray with technology that promises to simplify the often contentious relationship between man and modern machine. New phone-mirroring software from Apple and Google beam their mobile operating systems—redesigned with fewer apps for the car—from your phone to the vehicle’s central display. Automakers are rushing to adopt these phone-integration systems, dubbed Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, both to appear hip and to keep drivers’ hands on steering wheels where they belong. Having sampled both phone-mirroring solutions, we can report the following: OUR VERDICT Any technology that takes more phones out of drivers’ hands is good. But…

BLOWN OUT

SPECIFICATIONS VEHICLE TYPE MID-ENGINE, REAR-WHEEL-DRIVE, 2-PASSENGER, 2-DOOR COUPE BASE PRICE $242,737 ENGINE TYPE TWIN-TURBOCHARGED AND INTERCOOLED DOHC 32-VALVE V-8, ALUMINUM BLOCK AND HEADS, DIRECT FUEL INJECTION DISPLACEMENT 238 CU IN, 3902 CC POWER 661 HP @ 8000 RPM TORQUE 561 LB-FT @ 3000 RPM TRANSMISSION 7-SPEED DUAL-CLUTCH AUTOMATIC WITH MANUAL SHIFTING MODE DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE: 104.3 IN LENGTH: 179.8 IN WIDTH: 76.9 IN HEIGHT: 47.8 IN CURB WEIGHT: 3250 LB PERFORMANCE (C/D EST) ZERO TO 60 MPH 3.0 SEC ZERO TO 100 MPH 6.3 SEC 1/4-MILE: 10.5 SEC TOP SPEED: 205 MPH FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST) EPA CITY/HWY 15/20 MPG Turbos! Two of them—two big snails of swoosh—have invaded the holy sanctum of a Ferrari engine compartment, and life will never be the same. Next thing you know, the future CEO…

7 min

PEER PRESSURE

SPECIFICATIONS VEHICLE TYPE FRONT-ENGINE, 4-WHEELDRIVE, 5-PASSENGER, 4-DOOR HATCHBACK BASE PRICE (EST) $70,500–$110,000 ENGINES TWIN-TURBOCHARGED AND INTERCOOLED DOHC 24-VALVE 3.0-LITER V-6, 362 HP, 384 LB-FT; TWINTURBOCHARGED AND INTERCOOLED DOHC 32-VALVE 5.5-LITER V-8, 577 HP, 561 LB-FT TRANSMISSIONS 7-SPEED AUTOMATIC WITH MANUAL SHIFTING MODE, 9-SPEED AUTOMATIC WITH MANUAL SHIFTING MODE DIMENSIONS WHEELBASE: 114.8 IN LENGTH: 192.6–193.6 IN WIDTH: 78.9 IN HEIGHT: 67.6–67.7 IN CARGO VOLUME: 23 CU FT CURB WEIGHT 4900–5200 LB PERFORMANCE (C/D EST) ZERO TO 60 MPH 4.0–5.2 SEC ZERO TO 100 MPH 9.6–12.1 SEC 1/4-MILE: 12.3–13.7 SEC TOP SPEED: 155 MPH FUEL ECONOMY (C/D EST) EPA CITY/HWY 13–19/18–24 MPG Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Or as Wolf-Dieter Kurz, the Mercedes-Benz vice president who introduced us to the new GLE Coupe puts it, “We are matching ourselves with…

FORD’S VOODOO V-8

The new rev-happy 5.2-liter V-8 in the Mustang Shelby GT350 is one of the most compelling reasons to visit a Ford dealership in 2016. Code-named Voodoo and sharing its basic architecture with the Mustang GT’s 435-hp, 5.0-liter Coyote engine, this new powerplant is an altogether wilder animal, producing 526 horsepower at 7500 rpm and 429 pound-feet of torque at 4750. Camaro Z/28s, beware. Voodoo harbors in its belly a flat-plane crankshaft with throws spaced every 180 degrees, like a four-cylinder—and also like a Ferrari V-8. The leaner crankshaft with lighter counterweights has lower rotating inertia than the 5.0-liter and provides evenly spaced exhaust pulses in each bank for better breathing. Along with greater specific output, the result is a hellacious exhaust note unlike any other American V-8; the fury is…