Innehållsförteckning för March 2016 från Car and Driver

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com ALL THE PRETTY HORSES I never thought I’d say this, but there is such a thing as too many ponies. Month after month there’s another Mustang on the cover. Is Hearst consolidating cover photos now? ALEX MOKAY GRAY SAUGATUCK, CONNECTICUT How can you battle it again and for the very first time? Your fourth-grade English teacher will not be happy. IGNACIO ITURBE BONITA, CALIFORNIA Oh, you know Mrs. Cunningham would’ve gotten that joke—Ed. MY LITTLE PONIES In the Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro comparison [“Invasive Species,” December 2015], you mentioned the BMW M235i, which I drive. The M235i is an excellent sports car and would make a very interesting matchup against these two—Mustang and Camaro—over a course…

A damning report released last year by Consumer Reports revealed that auto insurers use Big Data to learn their customers’ credit histories and spending habits, relying more on those factors than driving history to determine premiums. Insurance regulations, practices, and costs vary from state to state, but CR compiled more than 2 billion price quotes from every ZIP code in the country, finding consistently unscrupulous practices nationwide. In Florida, for example, a motorist with a clean driving record and excellent credit would pay an average annual premium of $1409. The same driver with a poor credit rating would pay $3826. Even with a drunk-driving conviction, a driver with excellent credit would pay an average of just $2274. It gets worse. In a practice called “price optimization,” insurers gradually hike customers’…

Steve Finton worked in storm-water treatment, then became the traffic-engineering manager for Torrance, California, one of the larger independently incorporated cities within greater Los Angeles. In general terms, Finton’s job is the same as before: Maximize flow through the pipes. If you live someplace of any significant size, there’s a Steve Finton on your payroll, no doubt also trying to push more load through the existing plumbing. I live about a mile from Finton’s office, and I’ve spent the past 11 years driving around Torrance wondering what witless car-hating commissar designed the traffic system. There seem to be no priority streets in our seaside grid, the commuters evoking quantum physics by racing from red light to red light in short bursts of quickly dissipated energy. Crenshaw Boulevard, a name synonymous…

SIERRA RS COSWORTH YEARS PRODUCED: 1 986– 1 992 POWER: 204–2 24 HP Built to homologate race and rally variants of the Sierra, this RS used a Cosworth-developed 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder that made it one of the quickest hatchbacks in Europe. The quest for rally success led to the development of a fourwheel-drive sedan version, the Sapphire RS Cosworth. FOCUS RS (MK1) YEARS PRODUCED: 2002–2003 POWER: 2 1 2 HP With the link to motorsports homologation broken, Ford was free to create a front-wheel-drive performance version of the firstgeneration Focus. Power came from a turbocharged Zetec engine and reached the road through a limitedslip differential. ESCORT RS2000 YEARS PRODUCED: 1973– 1980 POWER: 1 1 0 HP This roadgoing sister to the Escort rally cars had a 2.0-liter Pinto engine instead…

C/D: What do you drive every day? BC: We have so many cars in the system, and I do all the final road testing. Last night I was in a Mercedes 300SL roadster, and tonight I’m driving a Porsche 906. That’s what happens here. C/D: Your dad sold Lincolns, Mercurys, Renaults, and International trucks. What did you drive then? BC: When I was old enough to drive, my dad told me I could order a new car. I had to pay the flooring interest [dealer inventory financing] and the insurance and the maintenance, and the car had to be sold in 12 months or less to pay off the flooring. I ordered things like Comets with 427s in them, with dog-dish hubcaps and 4.56:1 gears. My dad would go nuts…

AUTOMAKERS AND TECH COMPANIES alike seem to be pushing us toward an autonomous future in which streamlined, sustainable-bamboo-trimmed robotic taxis and luxury cruisers zip within inches of one another as they reel around turns and through crowded metropolises like pulses of light beamed through fiber-optic cables. The bots won’t crash as often as humans, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be infallible. The high-profile hacking of a Jeep Cherokee last summer calls attention to a particularly scary vulnerability in an interconnected web of self-drivers. And it’s not hard to imagine far bleaker worst-case scenarios: All vehicles make an immediate hard left when Doctor Evil presses CTRL+L, and so forth. But long before we reach that level of dystopia, autonomous vehicles will prove to have their own negative social impacts.Here are a…

As I write this, only 2687 current-gen Dodge Vipers have been produced since the car’s last refurbishment in 2012. Maybe we should think of calling Sir Elton John. He could belt out another rendition of “Candle in the Wind,” perhaps holding a deceased snake. Fiat Chrysler might well pay for his performance, too, because Viper production will cease next year. The original Viper appeared 24 years ago and is now in its fifth generation. It’s now almost pretty, rather than merely manly, with many of its Frankenstein flaws finessed. But now, of course, it’s too late. It reminds me of the Pontiac Fiero, which debuted for 1984 as a plasticky turd and evolved into a fairy princess for 1988, just in time for GM to snuff it dead. From day…

from the editors of CAR AND DRIVER There are few truly bad vehicles for sale today, but, when there are more models boasting more whistles and bells than ever before, that doesnÕt make car shopping easy. Even if youÕre car savvy, you can still make an uninformed choice or get a bad deal. And the wealth of resources for information can obscure the fact that many of the rules of the game have changed. But fear not: We can help. WeÕve spent months researching the changing auto-retail landscape and have collected the best advice here. As new ways of shopping supplant the old, those in the know can save time and money and get greater enjoyment out of their new car.   - starting line - RESEARCH OLD Spend a Saturday…

I stood beside a Porsche public-relations man at the company’s Atlanta headquarters looking for the last time at our long-term Cayman S, determinedly not saying what I wanted to say, which was, “How much money would it take to make this my personal car?” Even with 40,000 miles on its clock, I knew the Guards Red, lightly optioned Cayman S was out of my reach. Turns out, the PR guy was going through the same quiet calculations: “If the car started at 72 grand and I could get it for its auction price, then . . .” But the math didn’t work for him, either. I had just driven the thing from the frigid north down to Porsche’s tiny bit of Germany in America as a sort of homecoming (and…

The BMW Group has engineered front-drive Mini Coopers since 2001 as the opening act for the subversive X1. Its new UKL2 platform, shared with the Mini Cooper Clubman [see page 088] and the BMW 2-series Active Tourer (not destined for sale here), has a classic, tightly packed transverse-powertrain layout that will underpin many future BMWs and Minis. Mounting the engine crossways not only saves space, it also cuts frictional losses by a few percent since the crankshaft and the front axle rotate on parallel axes. Three- and fourcylinder gas and diesel powerplants are part of this strategy. While a simple on-demand four-wheel-drive system is standard in the X1, a less expensive front-drive edition is also expected. The driveshaft and two bevel gears necessary to power the rear wheels naturally increase…

Tell anyone that the new Chevy Malibu hybrid shares much of its powertrain with the Volt and they’ll inevitably ask how far it can go in EV mode. Answer: not far. Unlike the Volt, the Malibu hybrid is set up to maximize fuel economy from a running engine, not to stretch electric range. Wait till you tell them you can’t even plug it in. Instead, there’s this: 48 mpg city and 45 highway. Those projected EPA numbers are high enough to beat the hybrid versions of the Ford Fusion, Hyundai Sonata, Kia Optima, and Toyota Camry. It might not beat the Honda Accord hybrid’s 50/45 figures, but that car is on hiatus until 2017 as production moves to Japan. Pulled directly from the Volt are the two electric motors with…

The auto industry’s solution for distracted driving is to allow the person in the front-left seat to text or email unencumbered by vehicular responsibility. Named for the time, in minutes, of the average American commute, Volvo’s Concept 26 is a look at how the driver’s experience might change when he or she transitions to chief passenger. In addition to a drive mode, it has two autopilot settings that rearrange the driver’s furniture. In the optimistically named “create” mode, the seat and center console slide rearward, physically separating the driver from the controls—but not the centrally mounted tablet, which follows him rearward so he can do all the creative things one does on a tablet, but mostly create work emails. In “relax” mode, the steering wheel retracts, a cowl closes over…

As the CEO of Frigwell Motors, one of the more hallowed names in the car business, I’d like to address a few issues brought to my attention in recent weeks. It seems our company made some errors in judgment that led to problems on the manufacturing side, and the regulatory compliance side, and the safety and quality and performance sides. I’ll get to all that. But first, who do you think’s gonna win the big game? I know that right now, when this press release is going out, it’s 3 a.m. the night before the Super Bowl. That’s simply the only time we were able to send it, and I hope that our news, which is really important for our customers, shareholders, and bail bondsmen, doesn’t get subsumed in the…

2015 BMW M3 34,870 MILES 22 OBSERVED MPG With but a few thousand miles left in our M3 test, we have resigned ourselves to running the clock out on a disappointing season. There is a dichotomy in the M3: It wins comparison tests and generates astonishing track numbers, but it’s also the car we deal with in the real world outside of these glossy pages. The latter crashes noisily over the speed bumps in our parking lot and occasionally emits strange noises from its front end when turning left at low speed. Even after many months, our dealer remains flummoxed. When it comes to this beautiful-looking M3, so are we. 2016 MAZDA MX-5 MIATA 2426 MILES 30 OBSERVED MPG We took delivery of our long-term Club-edition Miata manual just before…

As art imitates life, so the favor is returned. Virtual Lamborghinis have been featured in driving games from 1987’s genre-defining Test Drive on down. Now the company has developed a new model—seemingly aimed at those who have grown up with video games—that lets you drift your virtual supercar with pixel-perfect precision. That’s certainly what we took from the technical briefing that introduced us to the new rear-wheel-drive Huracán LP580-2 at the Losail circuit in Qatar. Maurizio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s R&D boss, mentioned power oversteer a half-dozen times during his presentation, his words delivered against a backdrop of Huracáns drifting in superslow motion. Vaughn Gittin Jr. must have a rich Italian cousin. While this rear-driven Huracán is the cheapest path to new-Lambo ownership, it’s also being pitched as a more involving drive,…