Innehållsförteckning för June 2011 från MotorTrend

CHEVY’S MALIBU was General Motors’ most popular car last year, with 198,770 sold. The new one launches in early 2012 and must rival the Toyota Camry (327,804 in ’10), Honda Accord (311,381), Nissan Altima (229,263), and Ford Fusion (219,219), while fending off the Hyundai Sonata (196,623) and potentially the U.S.-built 2012 Volkswagen Passat. It’s way more important for GM than the Volt. Like One Ford’s new models, the Chevrolet Malibu has been designed for all major markets with minimal variation. GM pushed its launch up to early 2012 in North America and China (version pictured), followed by South Korea, where it will be the first model in Daewoo’s conversion to the Chevrolet brand. General Motors is considering production and sales in Eastern Europe. The new design has been in the…

IT’S CRAZY. The Industrial Age replaces the horse and buggy with ever-faster cars and trucks. The system allows millions of drivers, each with a different level of education and skill, to go their own way on millions of miles of roads. It mostly works, though when it doesn’t, mistakes often are catastrophic. For more than half the history of the automobile, engineers have been working on a solution by advancing the science of cars that drive themselves for you. The time for autonomous car technology is now, says Jim Hall, principal of 2953 Analytics, and a frequent jurist on Motor Trend’s Car of the Year panel. Autonomous cars will hit the streets before the decade is out, he adds. “The first autonomous cars will be taxicabs,” Hall explains. “Welcome to…

AUDI’S RS division, which all but ignores the U.S. market, is keeping busy. It just released the RS3 in Europe, and next year will launch the new RS4. Most of its mechanicals come from the RS5, including a naturally aspirated V-8 engine making 444 horsepower at 8250 rpm. It feeds a crown gear center diff that’s able to send torque forward or backward according to programmed maps, making the car feel oversteery and driver-sensitive. Transmission is a seven-speed S-Tronic twinclutch. Active variable-ratio steering will be optional. The bodywork will incorporate extra aluminum compared with the regular A4’s, and be available in sedan and Avant variants. An R8 facelift comes later this year. The optical change is a new grille with angled-off corners. The significant mechanical change is a shift to…

ELECTRICS, hybrids, diesels, and Ford EcoBoost engines are all fine technologies to develop. But nobody’s giving up on the good old naturally aspirated internal combustion gas engine—especially not Ford. While the company has been touting EcoBoost turbo fours and V-6s in recent years, the new direct-injected 2.0-liter engine in the 2012 Focus is potentially the Blue Oval’s next volume engine. Ford started with the old 2.0-liter Duratec engine, and “we upgraded everything,” says engine program manager Scott Markowski. Only the bore centers and the 87.5mm bore x 83.1mm stroke remain. The new engine is all aluminum, with the stainless steel fuel rail on the side of the cylinder head instead of atop it. High-pressure solenoid direct injectors pump at 2200 to 2800 psi, versus 600-700 psi for a conventional port…

morbid motoring Note to Brothers Mortuary in Hamden, Connecticut: Prior to my passing, please purchase a Cadillac CTS-V Wagon in triple black. I need to prove my family wrong and this seems the only way to ensure my not being late to my own funeral. Thank you. Mike Dembiczak New Haven, Connecticut write us at 831 S. Douglas St. El Segundo, CA 90245 e-mail us online at motortrend.com or send an e-mail direct to motortrend@motortrend.com ■ letter of the month Dear Brothers Mortuary, you'll want to make sure the triple-black CTS-V Wagon you'll be buying for the Dembiczak funeral shines beautifully to fit the occasion. We're entrusting Mike with Meguiar’s Ultimate (fitting!) Paste Wax so he can make sure the job is done correctly. Please buy the Caddy as soon…

“THE BLOODHOUND SCC’S COMBINED OUTPUT IS 135,000 HORSES, EACH CARRYING JUST 0.1 POUND. TOP THAT, HERR PIËCH!” WE LIVE IN a world of ever-expanding superlatives. Remember way back during this century’s first decade when the Bugatti Veyron made a splash with its 1001-horsepower quad-turbo W-16 engine and 250-plus-mph top speed? Sure, it’s up to 1200 horses and nearly 268 mph for 2011, but really (yawn), what’s next?! A team of British engineers, aerodynamicists, rocket scientists, and so forth is building a car dubbed Bloodhound SSC that’s designed to top 1000 mph, advancing the land-speed record by almost a Veyron top speed’s worth (240 mph). What’s the powertrain? Well, there’s an 800-horse Cosworth Formula 1 V-12 engine onboard, but it’s only used to pump 2200 pounds of liquid hydrogen peroxide into…

SUBARU executives readily admit that their “anywhere, any time” all-wheel-drive rides aren’t always the prettiest. Nevertheless, the little automaker from Hiroshima, Japan, has been on a tear. In 2010, it posted its best-ever sales figures in the United States, an increase of 22 percent over 2009 for a total of 263,820 vehicles. In the last three years, as the rest of the auto industry struggled with double-digit sales declines, Subaru was the only automaker that posted consecutive sales increases. The key to this windfall? Subaru says that it’s attractive pricing and ideal vehicle sizing. So it makes sense that the company opted to stay the course on price and size for the fourth-generation Impreza, but to focus on improving two other vital characteristics of its best-seller. “With the 2012 Impreza,…

RS VERSIONS of Audi sedans and Avants have always skirted the edge of cult status. But the little A3 has been denied the RS treatment, even the previous not-for-America-generation A3. Now, as an admitted afterthought, the RS 3 has arrived on European turf. The specs are mouthwatering, and so is the price, which knocks on the door of $59,000, excluding Germany’s 19-percent value-added tax. For a compact hatch, it had better be pretty special. The engine is a good start. The RS 3 uses the 335-horse, 2.5-liter straight-five lifted from the TT RS. It’s wonderfully charismatic, but has no physical relationship with the turbo five that made Audi’s name in the 1980s and 1990s. This one derives its direct-injection cylinder heads and turbo from the RS 6’s V-10. The turbomotor…

OMG! The winningest team in F1 known for translating racing tech to its road cars has gone off the reservation and built an all-wheel-drive wagon with a suspension that goes up and down like a Range Rover’s. IMR? The Mayans were right—the world is ending in 2012! Hysterical tweets like that accompanied the unveiling of Ferrari’s replacement for the 612 Scaglietti, radically redesigned to lure more rich golfers and skiers. The design brief: Make the car accommodate four real adults plus two tournament golf bags or four carry-on suitcases for a weekend getaway without enlarging the 612’s footprint, while making it (A) reach ski resorts safely in winter and (B) perform like a Ferrari on dry pavement. That packaging mandate forced Pininfarina into the“shooting-brake” roofline. Raising the roof 1.4 inches…

THIS SEEMS like a bad idea: Ford takes an amazingly capable factorybuilt turn-key off-road racer and adds a 300-pound foot to it. That hyphen isn’t misplaced. We’re not talking torque here—300 extra pound-feet are always welcome. No, the SVT Raptor has been stretched by a foot to make the rear seat roomier than Motor TrendÕs corporate suite at the Joe Louis hockey arena. That extra metal, glass, and 10 surplus gallons of fuel-tank capacity mean that this supernumerary foot weighs as much as Fat Albert. Adding so much mass and length to a performance vehicle seems as unwelcome to us as polymelia or polydactyly (growing a surplus arm/leg or finger/toe). Of course, the upside to this growth spurt is added capability. The new SuperCrew Raptor’s longer, sturdier chassis can haul…

TODAY IS A very special day. I’m standing on hallowed ground—the pit lane at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway—and I’m about to drive my first-ever laps around the famous, fearsome 2.5-mile track. What’s more, I’m going to drive Parnelli Jones’ Watson Offy roadster Number 98, the Agajanian Willard Battery Special, a car I’ve loved since I was an 8-year-old in Australia, thumbing through my Uncle Don’s copy of Floyd Clymer’s 1963 Indianapolis 500 Mile Race Yearbook. My knees are knocking and my heart is pounding. And I haven’t even sat in Ol’ Calhoun yet. Ol’ Calhoun. Parnelli says the name came from an old football joke about a fast running back called Calhoun who repeatedly fails to take the ball. The coach, despairing of losing the game, asks the quarterback why…

THE IS 250 F Sport marks the end of the current Lexus IS line, but we hope it’s also the beginning of a long line of F Sport packages. This 2011 Lexus sedan has a better sense of identity than the IS 250 F Sport model we drove in 2008. Without taking F Sport too far, Lexus has crafted a daily driver with an added dose of sport for those who want a compact luxury sedan unlike the six BMW 328i’s down the block. Some of Lexus’ best work comes when the brand doesn’t try to be something it’s not. The new $2440 F Sport package is sporty without becoming so pricey that owners wonder why they didn’t simply pay for an IS 350. Retuned springs and shocks plus summer…

WHAT did our editorial forebears learn from slinging a new Lincoln around in the dirt? Not much, but it probably was fun. Motor Trend’s first editor, Walt Woron, once told me that engineering editor Chuck Nerpel’s idea of action photography was to show a car sliding in the dirt. Walt never fully understood why, and I can’t say I do either. They probably did it because it was easy to get a vehicle drifting sideways in the dirt without hitting any-thing, and it chewed up far fewer tires. Just about any car can spin its tires in the soft stuff, but the Lincoln carried Ford’s first new postwar overhead-valve V-8, in this car displacing 317 cubic inches and rated at 160 horsepower. Lincoln was first to get the new OHV…

No surprise that VW’s “The Force” campaign continues with its Jedi mind trick over all other automotive ads in the segment. More curious is how quickly Chrysler’s popular “Imported from Detroit” spot was pooched to third position by a couple of dogs from Subaru. A notable new entry is Ford’s new “Orange Puppet” campaign, which has the backing of writers from “The Simpsons” and “Borat.” * First appearance on chart ** Back on chart Source: Visible Measures (www.visiblemeasures.com) The Motor Trend Top 10 Online Video Auto Ads Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online video sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. MOTOR TREND…

THE NOTION of autonomous cars dates to the 1939 New York World’s Fair and General Motors’ original Motorama. Here’s what followed: 1950s: GM and RCA experiment with automated cars, using wire buried in pavement and magnetic pickup coils in cars. A 1958 Chevrolet Impala serves as a test car, and the technology is incorporated into two late ’50s concepts, the Firebird III and Cadillac Cyclone. 1958: Chrysler and Imperial are the first production cars to offer cruise control (called Auto-Pilot) as an option. 1977: Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory tests a car that can follow roads for up to 50 meters (about 55 yards) at speeds up to 30 kp/h (about 18 mph). 1980s: Ernst Dickmanns and the University Bundeswehr Munich begin work on“robot cars,” and become involved in the $1…

AVITAL new Volkswagen Group compact platform begins to roll out on VWs and Audis next year. The Geneva auto show gave a few hints, but Motor Trend has uncovered more details. VW Group will build 30 models off the MQB, or Modularer Querbaukasten, which translates as modular transverse-engine kit. It covers everything above the tiny “New Small” series of cars (the VW Up! and relatives) and below the modular longitudinal cars, the smallest of which is the Audi A4. It can be built in 103.5-, 101.8- and 98.2-inch wheelbases, the last for the next VW Polo, Audi TT, and A1. Flexibility and reduced production costs are key. VW claims 20-percent cost savings compared with the current generation of VW/Audi compacts. VW Group will use the savings to improve content and…

where do you read motor trend? E-mail digital photo(s) of you and Motor Trend to: motortrend@gmail.com or mail them to: Motor Trend, c/o Mail, Readers on Location, 831 S. Douglas St., El Segundo, CA 90245. VANISHING POINT—In southwest Bolivia, Zoltan Palmai stands at the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “It had a few inches of rain, but was traversable by four-wheel drive or motorcycle,” wrote Palmai. “With the water, the horizon seems to disappear and there’s no telling earth from sky.”…

Violent regime change in the Middle East. Earth-shaking, heartbreaking natural disasters in Japan. That distinctly American desire to get out of the house and onto the open road when the weather turns warm. All these factors and more conspire to send gas well into the $4/gallon range, if not higher, in the coming months. So what is the motoring enthusiast to do? Suck it up? Sell the sports car and dream of days gone by? Nope. This is America, and we don’t take kindly to restrictions upon our birthright. We innovate. Just like the cars showcased on the following pages: fast-moving proof that high performance, on the road and at the pump, can fit like a defiant fist in a driving glove. Let the liberation begin……

THE QUESTIONS start almost as soon as the presentation begins. Why doesn’t it have more power? Why target the Subaru WRX STI and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution? Why does it cost so much? And why do the Euros get all the fun stuff (again)? Let’s take it from the top. “This will be the most powerful Golf ever offered,” says Andres Valbuena, VW’s Golf product manager. “The last was the 250-horsepower Golf R32 [released in 2008]. The 2012 Golf R will have more power and greater fuel efficiency.” How much power? The exact output has yet to be determined, but the Golf R should make around 260 horses and 243 pound-feet of torque for North American markets. That’s a huge bump in output over the GTI (200 horsepower/207 pound-feet), given that…

Honda Civic Si ARRIVING: Spring 2011 Look hard and you’ll see the 2011 Civic Si’s redesigned front fascia, sculpted rocker panels, more prominent fender flares, redesigned wheels, and refreshed interior. Yes, the styling is evolutionary, not revolutionary, but with 200 horsepower and 170 pound-feet of torque from a new 2.4-liter inline-four, who cares? Highway fuel economy of 31 mpg is nothing to sneeze at either. Why You’ll Want One The gold standard of small sport coupes gets even better. Mini Coupe ARRIVING: Spring 2012 As a strict two-seater with an aluminum roof and a lower curb weight and center of gravity than the standard Cooper, the Mini Coupe should hang with the best of them around the local B-roads while delivering stellar fuel economy. Sharing current powertrains, a 121-horse base…

We have an Irish aviator/mechanic/tractor manufacturer named Harry Ferguson to thank for pioneering pavementoriented performance all-wheel-drive systems. Yes, decades before the Audi quattro, Harry was learning about the need for a center di erential from the missteps of four-wheel-drive racing pioneers like Harry Miller (crashed and DNF at Indy, 1932) and Jean Bugatti (Type 53, crashed at Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb, 1932). Ferguson’s 1961 P99 Formula 1 car featured AWD and Dunlop’s Maxaret mechanical antilock braking—both F1 firsts. Stirling Moss drove it to win the Oulton Park race. Jensen Motors Ltd. licensed the technology and brought it to market in the 1966-1971 Jensen FF, for Ferguson Formula. The system used a clever two-way clutch that leveraged any speed di erential between the front and rear axles during acceleration to lock the…

WE LEARNED three things about Saab after hanging out with its 9-4x team for a few days in Washington, D.C. One: You have to be taller than 6-foot-3 to work there. Two: You have to be an engineer. (They did bring a marketing guy from Sweden, but it turns out he is an engineer as well.) Three: You have to be an optimist. Saab has had a pretty tough decade. Becoming wholly owned by General Motors in 2000 after a decade of partial ownership, it has struggled on both marketing and manufacturing fronts. Tight finances demanded shared platforms, which made it difficult to build traditional Saab products. Small budgets made it nearly impossible to achieve the marketing penetration necessary for Saab to attract new customers. Toward the end of the…

YOU KNOW the old line about the inmates running the asylum? Well, the asylum’s been handing out engineering degrees, and the inmates are now running BMW, Cadillac, and Porsche. Meet the Unicorns—three cars, in the words of Raoul Duke, too weird to live and too rare to die. Each is a manifestation of a novel concept: maximum performance mated to oodles of capacity and practicality. All three vehicles are also patently absurd, in the very best possible sense of the word—so bizarre that we had to road-trip them to the only American city capable of standing up to this trio’s epic level of whoa: Las Vegas. First, an over-the-top snack. Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar in the Mandalay Bay serves something called the Rossini. This umami-laced indulgence features Kobe beef, sautéed…

AS “NEW” cars go, they don’t get much newer than Chevy’s extended-range electric Volt. So much is different about the first production plug-in hybrid that we have loads of questions: How do you “break in” an engine that may serve only occasional use? (Succinct owner’s manual answer: “The vehicle does not require a break-in period.”) What’s its real-world battery range? (So far: 22-30 wintry miles.) How does its climate-control system work in extreme temperatures? (Better dress for the weather.) Is it worth the money? (Not if you crave only net cost savings.) To better answer these questions and more, we took delivery of our long-term Volt in Detroit in a January mini-blizzard. On our very first day with the Volt, we learned that those low-resistance Assurance Fuel Max tires provide…

NEW Small Family or NSF: A VW brand-developed platform that serves the VW Up! unveiled late 2011, plus electric versions of same, a SpaceUp micro-MPV, and a Skoda variant. Audi considered using it, but designers said it felt too insubstantial. So a new A2 will now be built on the MQB, using lot of aluminum. MQB: See story above. Developed by VW. Does everything transverse-engined above the NSF. Launching as the new Audi A3 next year, with Golf and Seat versions following very shortly. (Audi A1 and Q3, American Passat, Mexican Jetta, and 2012 Beetle are the last cars on old transverse platforms.) Can also do crossovers. MLB: modular longitudinal. Developed by Audi. Entails A4, A5, A6, A7, and A8, so it can do steel and aluminum and mixed-material bodies,…

“THE MID-CYCLE REFRESH IS ALL ABOUT IMPROVEMENTS, IMPROVEMENTS, IMPROVEMENTS.” AS AN AUTO enthusiast and editor at this magazine, I find it impossible to not get amped over an all-new generation of car—e.g., “the 10th-gen Supermobile that delivers 100 plus horses, 10 extra mpg, and 1,000,000 more covetous stares than last year’s ninth gen.” What’s not exciting about that? This passion is why we here at Motor Trend report on all-new cars, dedicating covers, comparisons, and features to them. They represent the cutting edge of autodom, the best in powertrains, chassis, aerodynamics, safety, and design. Naturally, both the nuts-and-bolts enthusiast and the time-to-buy-an-Ato-B-transporter consumer are drawn to all-new next-gen models. I am, too. I mean, fresh generations are just so new, alluring, advanced, and, well, new. Of course, a few annoying…

TRUTH BE TOLD, the standard 2012 Ford Focus is pretty sporty for its segment as is. Properly equipped, it handles better than most compacts and can get up to 40 mpg. Still, enthusiasts rightly have trouble getting excited about 160 horsepower. Surely the brand that built the mighty Focus RS wouldn’t leave us hanging, would it? Of course it wouldn’t. Essentially a middle ground between the pedestrian Focus and the unhinged Focus RS, the European Focus ST has traditionally offered more power and a sportier look and drive than your average Focus, without the incivility and price tag of the RS. Ford, to its credit, sees no reason to alter this formula, and the Focus ST will be the first car born of the company’s new global Performance Vehicles strategy.…

“OH MY GOD, is that for real? It’s like a grown-up Big Wheel.” “It’s a Mini monster truck.” The Mini Countryman elicits all sorts of responses from bystanders. So far, they’re positive, but at the same time you get the feeling no one takes the pint-size crossover seriously. Other companies might cringe at the thought of their products being compared to toys, but Mini revels in it. A vehicle like the Countryman was never meant to be just another car; it’s all fun all the time. Like other S model Minis, the Cooper S Countryman is powered by a 181-horse, 1.6-liter turbocharged I-4. Even with the added weight of All4 all-wheel drive, the little crossover is still relatively quick. The six gears are a true pleasure to shuffle through, and…

The FF is certainly not the first square-back Ferrari, but the rest have been ex-works conversions built (primarily) for ridiculously wealthy people who call them “shooting brakes.” It’s an a ectation, like pronouncing a vase vahz after spending too much money on it. 1951 212 Export Fontana Giardinetta Chassis number 0086E wore four di erent body designs in its first few years. The first was a homely racing body by Fontana of Padua, in which it won its inaugural Tour of Sicily race. Next, Vignale did a Spyder body that was quickly converted by Fontana to a wagon back for ferrying spare parts in support of the November 1951 Carrera Panamericana race in Mexico. Months later, it received new Fontana Spyder bodywork. 1961 Ferrari 250 GT “Breadvan” In the “palace…

IT’S THE READING GLASSES. If you find Olivier Francois at an auto show, his black suit, open white shirt with no necktie, and especially his reading glasses will make you think “car designer.” Francois speaks about his two fallen brands, Chrysler and Lancia, more like a creative director than brand manager. That sort of personality chooses reading glasses with magnets attaching the lens frames at the bridge.To read, the president and chief executive officer of the Chrysler Brand, Chrysler LLC and of the Lancia Brand, Fiat Group Automobiles snatches up the two halves of his glasses, secured around his neck with a lanyard, and snaps them together. It’s a telling detail, like Francois’ viral Super Bowl XLV commercial for the Chrysler 200, starring Eminem. The one in which the voiceover…

YOU’RE sitting at a stoplight in your new 312-horse, six-speed manual Camaro V-6. The street ahead is clear. When the light flashes green, you’re going to rapidly excuse yourself from the rest of the herd—including that 2011 BMW X3 xDrive35i right next to you. Dispatching it shouldn’t be a problem, right? You had better hope whoever is behind the wheel of that crossover doesn’t have similar aspirations. Because, while you artfully Fred Astaire the pedals, they'll merely slide the transmission into sport mode and step on the gas. Then the X3 will reach 60 mph in 5.6 seconds, matching your Camaro. Let’s say this hypothetical drag race goes a quarter mile. It’ll take the X3 all of 14.2 seconds to get there, which—wouldn’t you know it?—is the same as the…

ASSOCIATE online editor Scott Evans spent some quality road-trip time in the LaCrosse. “‘A Buick?’ That’s what everyone kept asking when I told them what car I was driving. What car would I rather take on an 800-mile drive? Considering how poor the weather was the weekend before, I was glad to have a car with a good set of all-season tires.” He was happy with his choice. “Six hours of freeway cruising will make anyone appreciate a soft, smooth ride and a quiet interior. The seats offer virtually no lateral support, but I found them comfortable for kicking back with the cruise control on. The steering is not performance-oriented, but being light and quick made it incredibly easy to drive in parking lots and on the interstate. My brother,…

YOUR OPINION of the Mazdaspeed3 depends on the cars you coveted in high school. Were they the European thoroughbreds, the ones with equal amounts of heritage and performance? Were they Detroit’s finest, with rear tires as wide as their torque plateau? Or were they economy cars, the ones with 15-inch wheels shod in R-compound rubber for weekend autocross duties, the ones that constantly needed a bit of fiddling with a laptop plugged into an OBD-II port, the ones that had a stack of Sport Compact Car issues integrated as a loadbearing part of theirframe? As it became most apparent during the 21,293 miles we logged on our Celestial Blue Mica example over the past 12 months—a large number of which were spent with the front tires pulling slightly to the…