Innehållsförteckning för August 2015 från MotorTrend

On a Wednesday morning in late spring, BMW invited me to a swanky mansion in Beverly Hills to preview its new flagship sedan. Technology has become the new platinum standard in luxury cars, supplanting supple leathers and sapele wood trim, and the new 7 Series certainly doesn’t disappoint. The 750i on display had more than one screen per passenger, including 10-inch monitors behind each front headrest and the latest Samsung Galaxy tablet in the rear center armrest to control nearly all of the comfort, convenience, and infotainment features. There is even a mini touchscreen in the new smart key. The luxury saloon is now one giant roving Wi-Fi hot spot capable of supplying high speed wireless Internet connectivity not only to occupants’ tablets and laptops but also to the vehicle’s…

SUBCOMPACT CUVS There’s a theory in the study of generations that after a set time the traits that define one generation repeat for a future generation. I’d argue that the auto market responds to the same generational shifts. Take a look at the average car that someone in the 1930s would drive, such as the Chevrolet Standard Six. Cars were two-box sedans that efficiently used all the space allotted by the car’s wheelbase, and because of the poor quality of the pre-interstate highway American roads, these sedans rode high for better ride quality. Sound familiar? It should. Two-box designs to maximize interior volume and storage? Check. High ride to handle crumbling urban roadways? You got it. These subcompact crossovers are the auto industry’s answer to those early requests, remade for…

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: The Ram Rebel is not a Ford Raptor-fighter. That was the Ram Runner, and it’s dead now. No, this is Ram’s rebuttal to the Ford F-150 FX4, Chevrolet Silverado Z71, Toyota Tundra TRD, and Nissan Titan Pro-4X. Set your expectations accordingly. That established, let’s talk about what makes a Rebel. Ram’s modifications are as clever as they are simple. The Ram 1500’s optional air suspension is standard on the Rebel, but the default ride height is now an inch higher, what a standard Ram would call Off Road 1. It’s now backed by Bilstein monotube shocks, and the alignment, steering gear, and rear anti-roll bar have all been tuned for the higher default center of gravity. A rear limited-slip differential is optional.…

The term “walk-off home run,” coined by Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley, originally applied to the losing team. Specifically, to the pitcher who’d just thrown the game-ending home run and then had to walk off the field in shame. These days, it’s often applied to the winners, who can walk off the field immediately (after celebrating) rather than play out the rest of the game. Calling the 2016 Honda Pilot a walk-off home run is bold for a number of reasons. First among them is that the game will never be over; the competition always gets another chance at bat. Second, it implies a neckand-neck finish, which doesn’t give Honda enough credit. See, Honda was confident enough in the new Pilot to bring nearly all the competition to…

Fuel cells, EVs, HEVs, and PHEVs make headlines, but experts will tell you that the suck-squishbang-blow engine will move most of us for the next several decades despite efforts to kill it. They trust the auto industry’s pocket-protected elite to continue developing dazzling new twists on combustion— two examples of which caught my attention at the 2015 SAE World Congress. Engineering consultancy FEV showed a variable compression ratio (VCR) system that doesn’t involve dramatic hinged blocks, wandering crankshafts, multilink connecting rods, or cylinder head plungers. Those concepts required radical redesigns of engine architecture, manufacturing processes, or both, but FEV’s simple, smart connecting rod concept allows for a step change between two ratios that are typically three or four ratio points apart. Up at the rod’s “little end” where it connects…

MICHELLE CHRISTENSEN ACURA NSX EXTERIOR DESIGNER “This was an Edra credenza that we saw at the Salone del Mobile design show in Milan. As car designers we get so used to everything being so precise and refined and somewhat organic, it was refreshing to sketch something so fractured and chaotic. It’s simple enough, but once the light hits it and reflects off the glass, it bounces onto the floor and then back up into the mirrored glass. “For something so simple it had so much depth. It was really striking in person. This was great inspiration for automotive details and lighting! “This sketch is based on the fractured mirror credenza, exploring abstract automotive form if it were fractured like glass. The form starts to unravel toward the rear as…

We interrupt this issue’s stream of thoughtful automotive analysis covering sensible proletarian SUVs, plutocratic fantasy limos, and sports sedans for the bourgeoisie to bring you some irrational exuberance about a couple of light, cheap, front-engine/rear-drive vehicular toys that nobody needs. Their pricing starts about $8,000 less than the national average new-car transaction price, though, so—statistically speaking—most of you could afford to buy them. And buy them you should! Consider it your auto-civic duty to bolster segment sales to lure more automakers into this endangered market. Today’s choice of cars matching the above description has dwindled to three, two of which are identical twins. The third, Mazda’s perky 26-year-old MX-5, has everybody salivating as it reinvents itself for only the third time. And what a charming reinvention it is, returning to…

Mercedes made luxury waves recently by reviving the Maybach nameplate. Again. Quick history lesson: Before World War II, Maybach was a German luxury car brand. During the war it built Panzer tank engines. In the late 1990s, after rivals BMW and Volkswagen respectively snatched up Rolls-Royce and Bentley, Mercedes-Benz decided it needed its own ultra-luxury player, so it dusted off the long-dormant Maybach badge and produced ultra-pricey, ultra-powerful vehicles that not enough 1 percenters wanted. Seriously, less than 50 Maybachs were sold in the U.S. in 2011. So Mercedes decided to “sunset” the brand, my favorite euphemism. However, the more things change, the more things change right back again. In late 2014, Daimler fired up the defibrillator once more and showed the world the Mercedes-Maybach S600. Over in England, one…

Mercedes-Benz S-Class. That’s all I need to say and you know exactly what class of car I’m talking about. Sure, there’s the BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, Lexus LS, and even Jaguar’s XJ. But not only does the S-Class outclass and outsell all of them, it also defines the segment. Are there other cars as prominent or dominant? Maybe the Ford F-150, America’s best-selling vehicle for 17 million years in a row? Thing is, if you add up Chevy and GMC sales, they usually outsell the F-150. Ram is coming on strong, too. Toyota Camry? Naw, the Honda Accord is right there. Same story for Civic versus Corolla. Hey, what about the BMW 3 Series? Oh yes, that’s a benchmark, a yardstick, a segment definer. Even more than the S-Class,…

About the size of California, a state that saw new-car sales of around 1.8 million last year, Japan is a car-hungry culture, consuming more than 5.5 million new vehicles over the same period. In other words, Japan fits three times as many new cars in its Golden State-size borders as the Golden State itself. For context, total U.S. car sales came in at 16.5 million; thus, if Japan were the size of the U.S., it would translate to new-car sales of about 143 million. Whoa. I’ve been driving in Japan for the past 10 months, and here are my takeaways: The roads are tight and congested, the fuel expensive, and the vehicles small and narrow. No surprise then that six of the country’s top 10 are compacts or smaller, and…

Barely more than a week after we finished this comparison test, the press release came across the wire, as if BMW felt a great disturbance in the Force. The all-new 340i, a more powerful 3, would answer the latest challenges. The 335i-replacing 340i comes equipped with an all-aluminum inline-six engine producing 320 hp and 330 lb-ft of torque. Transmission options include a standard eight-speed auto and a sixspeed manual available as a no-cost option for most trim levels. With the automatic, the 340i sedan sprints to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds with two-wheel drive or 4.6 seconds with all-wheel drive, according to BMW. We suspect those numbers are a bit modest; we tested a 2013 BMW 335i xDrive at 4.4 seconds to 60. BMW promises improved handling and overall driving…

The outgoing Ford Explorer 2.0 EcoBoost has few fans at Motor Trend or in the marketplace compared with the V-6 variants, but that might be about to change. The newly refreshed Ford Explorer still prioritizes ridiculously attractive looks above all else, but after driving a 280-hp 2016 Explorer 2.3 EcoBoost and two other variants, we learned that there’s only one thing standing in the way of Ford’s fifth consecutive year of increased Explorer sales. Although most Ford Explorer customers will still head straight for the base 3.5-liter V-6, the newly available turbocharged, 2.3-liter EcoBoost engine bolsters output by 40 hp and 40 lb-ft relative to the outgoing 2.0-liter, which limped a 2012 Explorer to 60 mph in 9.2 seconds in a Motor Trend test. Until we test the 2016 Explorer…

I don’t know why many of my media colleagues hate auto factory tours. Sure, we all want to get behind the wheel and take the latest new car for a good thrash, but I’ve always believed you never really understand a car unless you’ve seen how it’s made. The interaction of people, politics, and process—and the indefnable alchemy that results—is what makes a Chevy diferent from a Ford, a Toyota diferent from a Honda, a Mercedes-Benz diferent from a BMW. And it all comes together on the factory foor. I’ve lost count of the number of auto factories I’ve visited over the years. But I’ve learned something from every one of them. When I walked through Nissan’s Zama plant in Japan in the mid-1980s I was mesmerized by the mechanical…