Innehållsförteckning för December 2009 från MotorTrend

Flexing Monster Musclecars They’re a trio of the meanest American musclecars on the block, steroid-injected freaks with enough horsepower to literally melt the tires right off the rims—and we were there to film it through all the smoke. After reading who collected the bragging rights among the Hennessey Camaro HPE650, SpeedFactory Challenger SRT8, and Shelby GT500 Super Snake, head on over to motortrend.com to see them perform on the track and otherwise tear up the asphalt. While you’re there, check out our hot lap around the Nürburgring with the Lexus LFA prototype. Find it all here: www.motortrend.com/multimedia/videos MOTOR TREND…

FUEL EFFICIENCY has been slipping on the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze even before its North American debut. A couple years ago, then-General Motors chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner announced the car would achieve 42 mpg highway with a manual transmission. Since then, GM officials have toned that down just slightly, to “about 40 mpg” on the EPA highway loop. Whatever the actual mileage, the Cruze will achieve it with a 1.4-liter turbo four. But that new engine will be an option over the base 1.8-liter normally aspirated four that powers the European-market Cruze already on sale. Enter the Special Project, GM’s high-fuel-mileage version of the Cruze, fashioned after Chevy’s Cobalt XFE and Silverado XFE. Engineers reassigned from GM’s Performance Division are tweaking the 1.4-liter turbo and the Cruze’s six-speed automatic with…

BMW IS SERIOUSLY considering launching its new turbocharged four-cylinder engine in the Z4 sports car, Motor Trend has learned, even after M Division chief Ludwig Willisch said before retiring last summer that the engine was designed for a 1 Series M. Why the Z4 before the 1? Product cadence. BMW won’t have an all-new 1 Series until calendar 2012, the 2013 model year in North America. The turbo four is being readied, and BMW isn’t in the habit of launching an all-new engine in an all-new car at the same time. BMW is basing its turbo four on the 2.0-liter gas direct-injection four, rated 170 horsepower and 155 pound-feet in normally aspirated form. The car will weigh less than 2900 pounds and, to be a proper M car, the 1…

CITING its inability to find a third-party car supplier after 2011, Penske Automotive has terminated discussions with General Motors to buy the Saturn brand. About 350 dealers will close down by the end of 2010 under GM’s previous wind-down agreement. Penske says the board of directors from the automaker that would have provided post-GM Saturn models rejected the plan. Penske Automotive didn’t name that third-party supplier. Most news reports speculated Penske was negotiating with Renault to supply South Korean Samsungs. Renault’s alliance partner, Nissan, seemed more likely, because Roger Penske wanted North American-built cars and Nissan has lots of excess capacity here. Under the now-terminated memorandum of understanding, GM had agreed to supply Auras, Vues, and Outlooks to Penske’s Saturn at least through 2011. With the deal dead, GM will…

american weigh As an owner of two SHOs (’90 five-speed and ’94 auto), your cover had me turning immediately to the first full article I’d seen on the new version (“Adult Entertainment,” September). The performance numbers look good but are so close to our 210-horsepower Forester XT, which still has three pedals and is a quick and nimble 3200-pound, all-wheel-drive sleeper. Ford took the great American weigh, producing a bigger and heavier car than the original. Too bad the Lotus theme of reduced mass was not followed to make a sleek, aerodynamic, and affordable four-door. The new twin-turbo V-6 with all-wheel drive moving pounds would’ve been stunning. Instead, the over-two-ton SHO ends up too large and mature for my taste—without a manual transmission—and with a big booty too. I guess…

TEXAS-SIZE braggadocio started this retro-car rumble. Back in January, famed Houston-area tuner John Hennessey released plans for a 705-horsepower, ZR1-engined 2010 Camaro. Naturally, this sent forum boards buzzing about when and how Ford would respond with its 2010 Mustang. Not two weeks later, a white-hot press release out of Las Vegas landed in our inbox, detailing Shelby’s plan for a 725-horsepower Mustang GT500 Super Snake. And just like that, the ultimate musclecar battle had begun. The easy match-up would have been simply to let these two braggarts throw down in an asphalt octagon, but we wanted more. So we set about arranging a 700-horsepower trifecta and went looking for a Challenger with enough swagger to go tire to tire to tire with Shelby and Hennessey. Like those two, our Dodge…

DOES THIS STORY seem like déjà vu times two? It should. Last spring, we were the first media outlet to compare Detroit’s new breed of ponycars (“Ponycar Wars,” March 2009). In that story, we pitted the 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T and 2010 Ford Mustang GT against the newly released 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS. Even before we declared the SS the winner, scores of furious fanboys bemoaned our vehicle selection. Despite a $10,000 price gap, some believed we should’ve included the top-step Challenger SRT8. Others thought inclusion of the top of the line SS V-8 was unfair (ignoring the fact that the SS is the only V-8 Camaro Chevy produces). The seeds of this discontent led easily and obviously to a rematch, this time with each brand’s heaviest hitters. That meant…

IF YOU KEEP the throttle mashed, you can hit 140+ on Monticello Motor Club’s long straight. Massive carbon-ceramic front rotors bleed off speed, and you’ll flick the downshift paddle numerous times in preparation for the (relatively) low-speed first corner. Aluminum suspension components help sticky Pirellis bite hard, and once past the apex, you’ll throttle the twin-turbocharged, 12-cylinder engine’s 590 pound-feet of torque back into the New York track’s surface. Lapping Monticello in a 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning prototype? No. It’s a leather-lined, roadgoing Bentley. One that weighs 5000 pounds, at that. Welcome to the latest, hottest, best-performing model in the Continental lineup, called Supersports. “We had one group of engineers working on getting more power out of our 6.0-liter W-12 engine,” says Brian Gush, Bentley’s director of Powertrain and…

FROM ITS 10-blade spoked wheels to its turned aluminum dash and toggle switches, the Spyker C8 Aileron looks just like the sort of thing Captain Nemo would’ve driven to the Nautilus’ drydock: an exotic sports car lifted from pages of a steampunk graphic novel. Indeed, the Aileron comes with numerous retro-futuristic idiosyncrasies that fit the brand’s Dutch, aeroplane roots. Just entering the louvered and low-slung coupe requires tripping a button under the driver-side mirror, before scissoring the door skyward. The ignition is even more cartoonishly wicked, like popping the ejector seat in 007’s DB5. Lifting a red, centrally mounted cover and flipping a stiff toggle switch immediately arms the mid-mounted, 4.2-liter Audi V-8. Stab the aluminum start button, and 400 kidney-jarring horsepower roar to life. Cracking the throttle sets off…

SINCE ITS inception in 1989, Lexus has never directly gone after the high-performance divisions of Germany’s automakers. As a result, over the past 20 years Audi RS, BMW M, and Mercedes-Benz AMG hot rods have been racing around America, battling each other and any other automaker daring enough to enter their ferocious fray. Lexus was not one of these. Sure, its LS, IS, and GS sedans took on various Teutonic transporters, but when it came time for an L-badged vehicle to battle Deutschland’s most dynamic on a twisty road or a racetrack, Lexus was nowhere to be found. Until 2008, that is, when the IS F made its North American debut. Here was not only Lexus’s first “F performance” vehicle, but also one that underwent extensive development on some of…

AS PARENT Volkswagen AG swallowed up Porsche, Audi scrubbed plans for its hybrid Q7, an impressive large crossover with a clutch that couples and decouples the 3.0-liter V-6 and electric motor. The Q7 hybrid could freewheel at speeds close to 60 mph, the motor quietly whirring as the tach needle fell to zero. VW, Audi, and Porsche all worked on the hybrid system, and Porsche will be the beneficiary. Audi has shifted its hybrid program to the smaller Q5, which is expected to get a four-cylinder gas engine coupled to an electric motor. Porsche will introduce a hybrid Cayenne next year, when it introduces the all-new ’11 model. The Panamera also will get the 3.0-liter Audi gas direct-injection V-6/electric hybrid system. It already has benefited from Porsche’s further development and…

LAST MONTH we showed you Ford’s new Focus-based C-Max, a mini-minivan in the mold of the Mazda5, which is coming to the U.S. Ford won’t be the only automaker tackling this segment in North America. Chevrolet, which like Ford has stopped trying to compete with Chrysler’s minivans, will introduce the 2012 Orlando in ’11. Good for the 2016 Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, right? Hold on. The potential setback to One Ford, the plan to sell a globally aligned product range around the world, is small cars sell for more money in Europe than they do here. Even if the C-Max stickers for $18,000 to $22,000, roughly the Mazda5’s range, it will be competing with discounted, commoditized V-6 Chrysler minivans. Mazda sells no more than 15,000 of its four-cylinder minivans…

SAY WHAT? A Buick Mini-fighter? General Motors’ Lab Web site (thelab.gmblogs.com) has released an illustration that “explores” the concept of “Small Premium” cars. Its illustrations of the Buick Avant looks like a Mini Cooper-fighter sketch we saw with a different grille (“Trend,” April 2008). The real Buick hides elsewhere in plain sight. In a video at the same Web site, new GM advanced design chief Andrew Smith appears before a coupelike B-segment two-door hatchback that’s more likely to become Buick’s small car. Cadillac also is working on a B-segment car, and designers are endeavoring to ensure there’s no visual connection between any B-segment models. Chevy has dropped plans for its “Mini” and will stick to with the new 2012 Aveo. GMC has already revealed a boxy Scion xB competitor likely…

GT500 SUPER SNAKE THE SUPER SNAKE’S impressive fury on the dyno comes from a 5.4-liter V-8 and Whipple, Roots-type supercharger codeveloped with Ford Racing. It’s hard to believe the smallest engine here puts out by far the most power. What’s even harder to believe is that the smallest, lightest, most powerful car here is not the fastest. SPEEDFACTORY CHALLENGER SRT8 WHY SO LOW? SpeedFactory’s Stage 5 SRT8 was supposed to come with a brand-new all-aluminum Hemi, bored and stroked to 7.2 liters. Instead we got a standard-issue 6.1 SRT8 Hemi with upgraded fuel injectors, a Vortech V3 centrifugal supercharger, air-to-water charge cooler, and Corsa exhaust. CAMARO HPE650 MORE IMPRESSIVE than the 722 crankshaft horsepower (using an 18-percent loss due to drivetrain inefficiencies) is the torque curve, which is taller and…

EVEN IN our gilded age of $5 coffee libations and $10,000 plasma TVs, the price shocks like a hornet sting: a Toyota that costs…nearly $400,000. True, the limited-edition, two-seat, rear-drive LFA supercar, due to appear here in early 2011, will hide its Toyota roots behind the velvet rope of its maker’s Lexus brand, but the sticker is staggering nonetheless. The most expensive model in the current Lexus portfolio, the LS 600h hybrid luxury sedan, starts at $106,910. “The LFA is a halo car for the F marque,” says national manager for Lexus Advanced Business Development Paul Rohovsky, referring to the Lexus F performance division (think “AMG Mercedes”) behind the IS F sport sedan. Indeed, Rohovsky is candid: “The LFA will raise passion for the brand, an admitted Lexus shortcoming,” he…

1. BATTLE ROYALE In what has become one of the most watched racing videos on YouTube, Gilles Villenueve in his Ferrari battles Rene Arnoux’s Renault at the ’79 French Grand Prix. Their dogfight lasts several laps, wheel to wheel, each passing the other with both on the razor’s edge. The amazing part: They’re fighting for 2nd place. Villeneuve prevails, but just. 2. LITTLE ART Ferrari is dominating Alfa Romeo in the World Championship for Makes sports car series in 1972, but enters only one car in the Targa Florio that year. The diminutive Arturo Merzario is suffering from the flu that day and is competing against four factory Alfas. But as each one fails, “Little Art” feels better, gets faster, and ultimately outruns the last of them to set a…

IT’S AN all-change season for the Sorento. In hitting the maximum reset button, Kia gave a total makeover to the Gen II iteration of this versatile midsizer, converting it from conventional SUV into unabashed crossover. The 2011 Sorento—and, yes, there is no 2010 model—also becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen starting in November, when production of the first made-in-America Kia commences at a new $1-billion facility in West Point, Georgia. We gathered in nearby Atlanta to drive pilot-build vehicles and see exactly what this recasting has wrought, paying a quick visit to its new digs along the way. With looks inspired by the KND-4 Concept, the new Sorento holds its scale but boasts a sleeker, more contemporary appearance. Moving the A-pillar forward and D-pillar back bumped interior volume by some 15…

THIRD PLACE. That’s the highest the modern-day Dodge Challenger has placed in both comparison tests we’ve invited it to and, coincidentally, third place was also last place. If we gave the win to the Camaro in one test and the Mustang in the other, why would we order up Mopar’s big bruiser for a long-term test? Though the Challenger was too big and heavy to keep up with the nimble Camaro and Mustang in our objective tests, it won us back in subjective reviews with stunningly good looks, a comfortable ride, and more charisma than President Obama. So enamored were our editors that they happily set aside the Challenger’s dynamic weak points—and highest as-tested price—to praise its all-American swagger. “Astutely executed, fast, and sit-back comfortable, the Challenger is the pony…

BMW’S roadster of the late 1950s is one of the sweetest-looking sports cars ever built. It was designed by Albrecht Goertz (who later inspired the original 240Z), was powered by a 3.2-literV-8 engine, and just were built. It was so cool looking that, back in the day, a young Army private named Elvis Presley bought one. Industrial-design legend Raymond Loewy thought he would take a crack at improving upon Goertz’s masterpiece and designed this one-off 507-based coupe, which was displayed at the Paris auto show. Loewy has designed, or managed the design of, some great-looking work over time, including several groundbreaking Studebakers. But most would agree that this wasn’t among his better efforts. There are a few interesting elements, and the dual rectangular headlights foretold the look employed on most…

CHEVROLET has revived the Camaro Z/28, which was put on hold in April as General Motors prepared for its prestructured bankruptcy. While most of the work is done on the car, it won’t launch until after the Camaro convertible (another on-again/off-again model that’s on again) goes on sale in the second quarter of 2011. The Z/28 arrives in showrooms no earlier than late ’11, as a 2012 model. Insiders say the Z/28 business case now makes sense because new UAW contracts have reduced the labor costs on the car to the point where GM feels it can price it competitively—and far enough away from Corvette. Our images are very close to the final signed-off design, based on photos of a scale clay model we’ve seen. Key details are the deeper…

WHEN General Motors entered negotiations to sell a majority stake in its long-time European brands, Opel and Vauxhall, it worried those who remembered how Chrysler Corporation’s Carter-era government loans forced it to sell off foreign interests and concentrate on North American production. Could GM become a regional automaker? The answer is a very qualified “no,” based on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between GM and Magna International. TERMS DESCRIBED IN THE MOU ARE: ■ Magna and its partner, Russian government-controlled Sberbank, will own 55 percent in exchange for about $500 million, $450 million of that in cash. Sberbank is proxy for Russian automaker GAZ, which is undergoing its own reorganization, and will take over as Magna’s partner in 2010. ■ GM retains 35 percent. The remaining 10 percent goes to…

MOTOR TREND’S 1998 Truck of the Year was the Mercedes-Benz M-Class. That choice inspired the launch of our Sport/Utility of the Year for 1999, with the Lexus RX 300 named as the first winner. Since then, truck-based SUVs have become a small, niche segment while “crossovers” have evolved. Every year, we have to determine how to define the term “sport/utility.” Fact is, this has been an issue for more than 75 years. ■ 1935 Chevrolet Carryall Suburban: The truck-based wagon didn’t become a separate nameplate until the late ‘60s. Base price (’36): $685 ■ 1946 Jeep Station Wagon: Willys quickly turned Army Jeep production into civilian Jeep production with this all-steel two-door station wagon, produced through 1965. An overhead-cam six was added for ’63. Base price (’46): $1495 ■ 1948…

HONDA’S modern CRX, the production-ready CR-Z concept, took center stage at the 2009 Tokyo motor show. The two-seater combines a 1.5-liter four with Honda’s IMA hybrid assist system, channeled through a six-speed manual. It goes on sale in Japan in February and in the U.S. later in 2010. Look for quick (for a hybrid) getaways and an expected 32-35 mpg, down from a combined 41-mpg EPA in the U.S. for the 1.3-liter/hybrid Insight four-door hatchback. Japan’s number-two automaker also displayed the electric-powered EV-Cub motorbike concept, designed to recall its first successful product in North America (“you meet the nicest people on a Honda”). Its EV-N compact commuter features a solar-cell roof, interchangeable seat fabrics, and a Segway-like electric unicycle that stores in the passenger door. Styling is an update of…

BMW NORTH AMERICA has a problem with the new 5 Series Gran Turismo. What to call it? Is this new BMW a car? Or a crossover? In Europe, the 5GT is being clearly positioned as a car: a response to the growing backlash against big, thirsty SUVs. But history suggests the only way Americans will be persuaded to buy any vehicle that could best be described as a large hatchback, or a neo-station wagon, is if they think it’s an SUV or crossover. Car? Or crossover? The 5GT is most definitely car-based (but then, so is a Lexus RX or a Lincoln MKT). It’s built on the new-generation BMW architecture that underpins the just-launched 7 Series and will be used for the next-generation 5 Series and 6 Series models. The…

PARIS TO STRASBOURG And a sparkling taste of the good life DAYBREAK, and we’re parked outside the Gare de l’Est, one of six major railway stations that serve Paris. Nothing particularly unusual about that, perhaps, except for the cars we’re driving: a pair of California-registered Hyundai Genesis sedans, both loaded 4.6-literV-8s. We’re a long way from Orange County, Toto. And we’re about to go farther. The Gare de l’Est is where the famed Orient Express train began its journey. We’ve all heard of the Orient Express: It was featured in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel“Dracula” and was the setting for Agatha Christie’s 1934 thriller, “Murder on the Orient Express.” James Bond rode it in“From Russia With Love.” It’s become a pop-culture icon. The original Orient Express, inaugurated in October 1883, ran…

IT’S BEEN a while since we’ve had a traditional ladder-frame SUV in our long-term test fleet—and for good reason. With consumers snapping up more comfortable, civilized, and carlike crossover vehicles, interest in the truck-based SUV segment has dwindled, having been labeled by many as passé and decidedly old-fashioned. In fact, when Kia introduced our latest long-termer, the seven-seat Borrego, last year, amid record-high gas prices and small hybrid sales, we wondered if the maker had arrived to the party a bit beyond fashionably late. Still there’s something to be said for traditional ladder-frame SUVs, and that something keeps sales churning for the Borrego’s hearty competitors—think Runner, Pathfinder, and Land Cruiser. We ordered our Copperhead (Kia-speak for burnt orange) 2009 Kia Borrego in EX 4X4 trim, which includes a version of…

“THE MAZDA6 is a very outside-the-box offering for the traditionally conservative midsize-sedan segment but that is probably why it appeals to me,” says assistant Web editor Kirill Ougarov. “The styling is decidedly different (but in a good way) and makes the car stand out from the crowd, especially given our long-termer’s dark-red paint job. It’s obvious serious thought and passion went into the sheetmetal design.” A fan of the exterior, Ougarov is also fond of the 6’s cabin. “The interior is reminiscent of our now-departed CX-9 long-termer, but I do wish the radio tune knob were better placed—as it is, it’s a bit too far to the right and requires leaning forward to reach.” Speaking of the radio, Ougarov isn’t convinced it’s especially premium. “Not sold on the Bose audio…