Innehållsförteckning för November 2009 från MotorTrend

■ International Showtime The general malaise that’s infected the auto industry around the globe hasn’t stopped most of the world’s biggest automakers from showcasing their latest and greatest wares on the big stage. In case you missed it, the Frankfurt show press days just passed, and we have showfloor photos, information, and insight on all the biggest debuts from the home turf of BMW, Benz, and VW. We’ll also be on the floor of the upcoming Tokyo show (October 21-22 press days), which is expected to premiere the long-awaited Lexus LF-A supercar among other surprises from the Asian market powerhouses. Catch all the action at www.motortrend.com/auto_shows…

FORD’S big Frankfurt show splash triggers the beginning of the new, global Blue Oval. A dozen years ago, the North American Focus launched with hopes we would get a small, C-segment Ford as good as the European one. Instead, it was brought down by recall problems and lacked the European model’s constant updates. The 2011 Focus, which also underpins the C-Max and makes its debut at January’s Detroit show, is different. Ford says the ’11 Fiesta coming to America will share 60 to 70 percent of its parts worldwide. The ’11 Focus and Focus C-Max will score more like 75- to 80-percent common parts. And suppliers of the new Focus will make the same parts and components around the world. Europe gets a five-passenger and a new seven-passenger C-Max, while…

HOT-HATCH COMPARISONS are among our favorites to put on at Motor Trend. After all, we get to bring together the best-handling cars you can find around $25K to see which dominates on twisty canyon roads, and we learn how much handling prowess you can buy for relatively little money. The Volkswagen GTI has been the car to beat in this category, and it’s been improved again for 2010. While the MazdaSpeed3 has not beaten the GTI when facing it in one of our comparisons, Mazda has given it new life for 2010, and we wonder: Is that going to be enough to dethrone the GTI? You can tell just by looking at it that the MazdaSpeed3 has been restyled for 2010. No surprise, it shares the smiley-face front end with…

FORD, HONDA, AND TOYOTA have tied their fortunes to gas-electric hybrids. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and VW have been pushing clean diesels for years. Next year, General Motors is going all out on plug-in hybrids. Where is Nissan, Japan’s number-three automaker, on the clean, green, alternative-fuel front? Quietly preparing the Leaf—what could be the most significant vehicle of the century. With plans for a limited, worldwide launch in 2010, Nissan claims the Leaf will be the first affordable, mass-market electric vehicle. For roughly $25,000, Nissan says the Leaf will provide 100 miles of all-electric, zero-emissions driving, which, it claims, covers the needs of 90 percent of the world’s drivers. This is a bold assertion, but one Nissan hopes will help secure its status as the world leader in zero-emissions motoring. How does…

“TURN AROUND,” yelled the motorcyclist on the rust-red outback trail. We were in the southwest corner of Australia’s Northern Territory, one of the most remote parts of the world’s most deserted continent. He was riding toward us on a big performance dirt bike, the sort you see in the Paris-Dakar desert race, and his leather overalls and Darth Vader helmet were covered in dust. “The sand ahead is terrible,” he said. “You have no hope of getting through. Especially,” he paused, nodding rather dismissively at our car, “in this.” At our Mini. Turning around was unthinkable. Forty-four years after the first east-west crossing through the center of this massive country by car, there’s still no paved road through the middle that connects the east and west coasts. The only paved…

IT’S A LITTLE hard to spot the point of the BMW 760Li. Does anyone consider the current top Seven, the twin-turbo V-8 750Li, too slow? Too unrefined? Doesn’t BMW look a little flatfooted for launching such an engine into today’s constricted market? Well, yes, the engine (it’s pretty much all-new) was given the go-ahead in better times. To ensure it’s a technology showcase, this direct-injection unit has two turbos, one for each bank, and it’s hooked up to a new ZF eight-speed automatic transmission. On the autobahn, the 760Li is magnificent. The engine merely whispers, its efforts drowned by the wind and road roar, and they in themselves are subdued to near-subterranean levels. And, boy, this car is a tech-fest. You can alter the setup of the engine response, transmission…

YOU’VE GOT to give it up to the Germans. No matter how out of fashion the wagon has become in this crossover-crazy land of ours, they keep bringing them over. So we figured, what the heck, instead of testing out Audi’s new A4 in sedan form, we’d add the 2009 Audi A4 Avant 2.0T quattro Tiptronic (say that five times fast) to our long-term fleet. Is it hip to be square? We’re going to find out. Looking at the numbers, it’s a virtual dead heat at the dragstrip between the Avant and a similarly equipped 2009 A4 sedan we tested last year. Audi’s 211-horse, 2.0-liter turbo is as stout a four-banger as they come and boogies the Avant to 60 in 6.4 seconds and on to a 14.9-second quarter mile…

“AH, I STILL DON’T hear anything, sir,” offered the polite technician from Orange Coast Jeep/Chrysler in Costa Mesa. We were heading back down the _ freeway again, me at the wheel, trying to reproduce a frightful aerodynamic howl that had recently cropped up along a breezy desert stretch during a cross-country vacation. But, of course, no matter what I did (sorry about that, big-rig), the banshee wail was being coy today—and was that technician giving me doubtful side glances, or was I just imagining things? Oh, well, perhaps it was better to not add any more to our Chrysler Town & Country minivan’s swelling list of heavily documented miseries. On its third visit to the dealer (at a still-new-smelling 19,404 miles), we had staggered out with a bill for $879.13…

VOLKSWAGEN’S New Midsize Sedan (NMS) may displace the smaller Passat from the North American market, says VW chief Ulrich Hackenberg. The NMS is aimed, in terms of size, power, price, and taste (read: lots of big cupholders), directly at the heartland of cars such as the Camry, Accord, Fusion, and Malibu, but with VW’s premium feel. VW will start building the car in early 2011 in its new Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant. It will be joined later by a Jetta replacement designed with the States in mind. Hackenberg says he hopes to sell 150,000 NMSes a year initially, with plant capacity expandable to 300,000. VW currently sells about 50,000 Passats in the U.S. in a good year. To get the necessary quality, VW will use many of the same suppliers…

SO WE jumped the gun reacting to EcoBoost Fusion mules spotted around Dearborn. Fact is, Ford will not launch its first four-cylinder EcoBoost (turbocharged, gas direct-injection) in the 2011 Fusion midsize sedan. That car will have to wait until its next complete redesign, expected for the ’13 model year. Meanwhile, the first four-cylinder EcoBoost will be a 1.6-liter engine expected as an option in the Focus and Focus C-Max. The 2.0-liter EcoBoost is likely to be introduced in a performance Focus before the next Fusion gets it.…

AFTER a spring/summer tour of U.S. dealerships, Hyundai announced it will import the new Equus flagship sedan here, beginning in summer or fall 2010. Target is the Lexus LS, though the pricey Equus (sticker is expected to be between $50,000 and $60,000) could also pick up near-lux buyers left stranded by the disappearance of the Lincoln Town Car. Although the South Korean version doesn’t include groundbreaking technology as do a Mercedes S-Class or BMW 7 Series, U.S.-spec models will include such equipment as adaptive cruise control. Launch powertrain is likely to be the new 5.0-liter direct injection version of the Tau V-8, which will drive the rear wheels through a new eight-speed automatic transmission. Our versions will also likely get a more toned-down grille, and much crisper steering and suspension…

letter of the month church, grandkids, cars He was the fire chief, and with the city’s money, my dad, who was the head mechanic at the local Chevy dealer, bought a junked fire truck from Warner Robbins Air Force base and rebuilt it. The Jackson, Georgia, fire department had a special phone arrangement so citizens could dial one number and all volunteer firefighters would drop everything, head to the firehouse, and follow the big truck to the flames. But one evening, Dad got the call on our regular home number because the KKK had set fire to a big cross in a local man’s yard. My father rushed to the scene, put out the fire by himself. The next night, men wearing white hoods began driving by our house. But…

NOW HERE'S a Corvette after Martha Stewart’s heart. The domestic diva is forever transforming things found around the house into lovelier new things that sit around the house. In these rather tough times, the Corvette team has taken a page from Martha's book, ripped it out, and headed to the garage. By scrounging up some of their best performance hardware, they’ve managed to cobble up a new car that just might be cool enough to warrant resurrection of the storied Grand Sport moniker. Underneath all the shiny/pretty, it’s a base steel-frame LS3-powered Vette, to which are fitted a mix of Z51 performance package parts (spring rates, closer-ratio manual transmission gearing and shorter axle ratio on the automatic), and Z06 bits (front and rear fascias, hood, anti-roll bars, brake rotors and…

RACING is in Ron Dennis’ blood. Dennis began his racing career in 1966 as a mechanic with Cooper, the British race team whose giant-killing hot-rod Minis are remembered with today’s Mini Coopers and the John Cooper Works Special models. Since 1980, he’s run McLaren Racing, which has won seven Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championships and 10 Drivers’ World Championships with such drivers as Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Mika Hakkinen, and, of course, 2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton. Intensely competitive and obsessively perfectionist, Dennis was the very archetype of the modern Formula 1 team boss. But in April this year, he suddenly announced he was stepping down from the day-to-day operation of the McLaren F1 team. You’re looking at one of the reasons why: The McLaren MP4-12C, a brand-new supercar, the…

NISSAN, MITSUBISHI, AND SUBARU parent company Fuji Heavy Industries are working together to build a grid of charging stations in Japan for EVs. Nissan’s interest obviously makes sense, but so does the others’. Subaru’s Stella plug-in EV went on sale in Japan earlier this year as did Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV electric vehicle. Like the Leaf, the i-MiEV is also coming to the U.S. The i-MiEV (i is the minicar this model is based on; the rest stands for Mitsubishi innovative electric vehicle) is powered by a battery composed of 88 lithium-ion cells connected in series and also uses a permanent magnet synchronous electric motor and a single-speed reduction gear transmission. An on-board charger allows you to charge the battery with 100V/200V AC, taking seven to 14 hours for a full charge.…

NOT everyone was a fan of the 2004-09 350Z Roadster. But the new 370Z version gets it right. The body is more curvaceous and better proportioned, with more of the visual mass moved to the rear. The top is much improved. The interior has gone upmarket. Bonus tracks: More power, less weight, and a base price increase of just a hundred bucks. The 370’s top stack, made by Magna in Germany, is a much higher quality piece. It’s a one-touch deal and will fully raise or lower in less time than it takes for the light to go from red to green. The old top resembled a football helmet, but this one touches down farther back on the rear deck for a longer, sleeker appearance. It’s neatly self-covering, with the…

WE FIRST drove the rare, expensive, sonorous-sounding 8C Competizione coupe in late 2007, and track-tested one just a few months ago. We’ve now had a crack at the open-topped version, and we’re pleased to report it’s more of the same, just al fresco. Carbon-fiber bodywork bolts and bonds to a steel and aluminum tubular chassis. There’s additional bracing to compensate for the structural strength given up by the loss of its lid. While structural rigidity suffers by nearly _ percent, the coupe was so strong to begin with that the Spider is a mostly body-wiggle-free machine. Alfa bagged the notion of a retractable hardtop in favor of the more coachbuilt nature of a rich-looking soft top. Weight goes up about pounds. Underhood is the Ferrari-designed- and-built 4.7-liter V-8 offered in…

IT WAS SHORT, light, with an engine bay tailormade for a V-8 engine. Ford’s Bronco first came to market in 1966, the same year a group of California based off-road enthusiasts founded National Off-Road Racing Association. The new organization’s first major event was the Mexican (later Baja) 1000 in 1967, a crazier-than-thou romp beginning in Tijuana, then racing from Ensenada to La Paz. Ford race-car builder Bill Stroppe and Indy 500/Trans-Am legend Parnelli Jones were the most notable pair running Broncos in Baja, winning the 1971 and ’72 Baja 1000 plus other races in a tube-framed, pure-racing machine named Big Oly—after its sponsorship by Olympia Breweries. But they weren’t the only Bronco busters. One such effort was that of Rodney Hall and Larry Minor. Hall won the inaugural Mexican 1000…

GENERAL MOTORS outlined its new-model strategy into the 2013 model year and unveiled a few other new models further out into the decade in a recent press preview. No photos of the myriad new products were allowed or handed out. We’ve predicted most of these in previous issues and at motortrend.com. There were a couple surprises, however. For one, the Super-Epsilon Cadillac, codenamed GM 166, which we broke at motortrend.com and in the July issue, isn’t designed to slot in below the ATS (Alpha RWD platform) in price. It will be Cadillac’s “flagship” until a proper large RWD sedan can be developed off Gen III CTS hardware. The Chevrolet and GMC lineups are what we predicted, although the Aveo replacement won’t get a name change to Viva. There’s a new…

KIZASHI is not a “tweener” car, a Suzuki official told Motor Trend at the official unveiling of the production model recently. It was always meant to be a C/D-segment sedan. Still, we couldn’t help but think that it had lost … something. Suzuki previewed three concept versions at auto shows around the world, including a 2.0-liter turbodiesel four wagon and a 3.6-liter V-6 sedan. The V-6 was the clue. It was to be the same gas direct-injection engine found in the Cadillac CTS and Chevy Camaro. But General Motors sold 17 percent of its 20-percent stake in Suzuki in 2006 and then sold the remainder in November 2008 for $230 million, as it sought loan guarantees to float it through the Great Recession. The production Kizashi, we reported, was to…

THE LUXURY wagon business isn’t growing in the U.S. BMW is likely to scrub importation of its 5 Series wagon after the hatchback 5 Series Grand Touring makes its debut here, evening out the lux estate business as Cadillac adds the CTS Sports Wagon. And the bestseller in this category is the Audi A4 Avant, which moves about 4000 units here in a good year. That’s not enough to keep the king of luxury import wagons away, though. The latest generation of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class wagon goes on sale in the U.S. in June 2010. Why is it the king? Because it gives up the “sport wagon” conceit and the fast D-pillar in favor of a more upright look and cargo capacity greater than the GLK’s, but less than the…

THE HIGHLY REVERED Grand Sport name is rooted in Chevrolet’s furtive forbidden racing history. General Motors, in lockstep with its Automobile Manufacturers Association cohorts, outlawed factory racing in 1957, but the competitive spirit of folks like Zora Arkus-Duntov and his Corvette team is not so easily snuffed out. They’d been quietly designing special race-ready equipment packages like the Z06 (360-horse 327, heavy-duty suspension, Al-fin brakes, posi, and 36-gallon fuel tank) and laundering race-support money through their ad agency Campbell-Ewald. Then the FIA dropped its displacement limit on production-based GTs, and Zora could taste a Le Mans victory. Based on the drubbing his Z06 Sting Rays had already taken from the new Ford-powered Shelby Cobras, he knew winning meant his car needed to shed 1000 pounds, which meant heading back to…

I MEAN, this is amazing, right?” shouts SVT Vehicle Dynamics engineer, Ford Tier 3-certified test driver, and possible asylum candidate Gene Martindale over the din of 35-inch tires pulverizing desert gravel. Amazing? No, this is utterly ridiculous. It’s 106 degrees F, and we’re streaking across the rock- and sand-strewn frying pan that is Borrego Springs, California, in August. It’s absolutely miserable out here, so hot and dry the scorpions have taken refuge under the sidewinders. You’d never know it from inside our truck. The A/C is blowing cubes, and Gene keeps his right foot flat as we literally glide over whoop after whoop (an off-road-racing term for the thousands of beige speed bumps scattered before us). We’re maxed out at 100 mph. At half this rate, any regular truck would…

CARS AND GUITARS You could say rock ’n’ roll started with a song about a car, Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88,” a 1950 homage to the latent sex appeal of Oldsmobile’s seminal musclecar. Like the man said, they don’t write songs about refrigerators. Here, in no particular order, are just a few of the car-culture tracks from the past 60 years—the good, the bad, and the obscure. ■ 1. “Little Deuce Coupe” The Beach Boys ■ 2. “Drive My Car” The Beatles ■ 3. “Ramrod” Bruce Springsteen ■ 4. “Little Red Corvette” Prince ■ 5. “Hot Rod Lincoln” Charlie Ryan ■ 6. “Dead Man’s Curve” Jan and Dean ■ 7. “Hey Little Cobra” The Rip Chords ■ 8. “Jeepster” T. Rex ■ 9. “Mercedes-Benz” Janis Joplin ■ 10. “Jump in My…

IN A SNEAK peek a few years back, Cadillac said the CTS Sport Wagon was designed to lead its assault on the European market, where BMW 5 Tourings and Benz E-wagons sell like luxury crossovers. Cadillac expected to sell just 4000 per year in the U.S. Finances have since put the brakes on the European foray. No more diesel program. No more right-hand-drive CTS. The Sport Wagon has to sell here on its own merits. Styling alone could make it a sales breakout here. Cadillac has transformed perhaps the best-looking modern luxury sedan into the best-looking luxury estate. Its roof extends to a very fast D-pillar and power tailgate. The “finlike” taillamps are exaggerated into vertical light pipes that run nearly to the cargo roof rails. Unlike wagons of yore,…

AFTER WEEKS of rumors swirling around our Long Term-Vehicle Fleet Department, there it was. Parked, otherworldly among our rows of somber-colored, technologically conservative long-termers was a fish-shaped, electric-blue Honda Insight. At first glance, I spontaneously blurted, “Ack! Ack!”—then looked around to see if anybody had heard that. It’s my understanding that Ack! Ack! is Martian-speak (per Tim Burton’s authoritative film, “Mars Attacks!”) for, well, just about anything. It felt like the best language in which address this most foreign of visitors who will be staying with us for a year. The Insight didn’t respond, but seemed to be smiling. And for good reason. If you were to plot ultra-gas-stinginess against low initial cost, way up in the corner of the graph sits the Insight. Of course, only Insighters (© Reynolds,…

“I GOT a chance to take the FX on a ride up to Sacramento to watch some rowing races,” says assistant Web producer Nate Martinez, “and it proved a comfortable long-hauler. Like my four passengers, I most enjoyed the well-put-together cabin, with its soft, somewhat worn leather, easy-to-use navigation, and clean-sounding stereo system.” Martinez, who has an eye for detail, wasn’t missing the FX’s. “The Infiniti’s intricate interior details are worth noting. The clock, although a brand staple, is a bit too old-school for my taste and seems contrary to the overall modern styling. The stitching in the leather is nice for a car in this class, as are the individual LED lights in each door handle. Dash layout, with its buttons and knobs, is comfortable and within reach of…