Car and Driver Dec-15

OVERLANDING IS BEST DESCRIBED AS VEHICLE-DEPENDENT ADVENTURE TRAVEL, WHERE THE JOURNEY IS THE PRIMARY GOAL. AND IT HAS ITS REWARDS. FIND YOUR ROUTE, READY YOUR TRUCK AND SET OUT ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED. OVERLAND. Overland driving instructor Jack Quinlan in his 1983 ExMod 110 and artist Geoff McFetridge in his 2007 NAS Defender 110 laced up their Clarks Desert Boots, readied their trucks and ventured to the lowest point in North America, Death Valley, to California’s highest road in the White Mountains. A. Jack Quinlan (left) and Geoff McFetridge (right) peer out of the Badwater Salt Flats. The temperature hovered at 118°f. B. Geoff lets the pressure down in his tires as the road becomes rougher. C. Dust flies as Jack and Geoff make their descent from the top point of the White…

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com COPING WITH LOSS Your September issue’s cover states, “We have full details on every make and model.” Yet, I could not find a single word about the Chevy SS. I just purchased one six weeks ago from my local Chevy dealer (six-speed stick), and I was led to believe that it still will be sold for a few more years. Or did I somehow miss it? BRUCE NYQUIST MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN You forgot to mention the Chevy SS in your 2016 New Cars issue. SETH BIELEFELD SOLOMON, KANSAS As a (very satisfied) Pontiac G8 GXP owner, I couldn’t help but notice that your “New Cars for 2016” did not mention the status of the Chevy SS for 2016. These sister sedans have received near-universal critical…

I’m probably out here all alone on this one, but I believe that the most important car redesign of the decade, now that we’re midway through it, is the current Mercedes-Benz S-class sedan’s. I take little pleasure in claiming credit for this—let’s admit—staggeringly brilliant observation. I take equally little pleasure in the incrementalism of the car’s new form, pretty as it is. No more leaping from stylistic peak to peak, from W116 to W126 to W140, as was Mercedes’ wont long ago; today’s big Benz barely seems different than the car it replaced. It essentially carried over its powertrains and suspension hardware. It has the same wheelbase as its predecessor, casting virtually the same shadow on the ground. It’s what’s inside that counts now. Mercedes-Benz apparently spent all its S-class–development dollars…

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IT’S AMUSING to watch the mainstream press sink its fangs into an auto scandal. Business-page reporters hurriedly scan the releases and the statements—quickly now, the home page needs updating every 17 seconds—and distill a basic, highly superficial narrative. Press agents for experts in all manner of non-automotive subjects, from business ethics to crisis management to consumer advocacy, flood the email inboxes of the news outlets, their clients desperate for the exposure that comes from getting a rote observation into quotes. The flames of public outrage get fanned for a few days with hyperbolic and often-inaccurate punditry. Granted, Volkswagen’s diesel doomsday is not a simple story, rife as it is with technical inside-baseball. Basically, VW programmed an algorithmic routine into the controllers of its model-year 2009–2015 2.0-liter turbo-diesel engines that recognized the…

THE COLLECTOR-CAR AUCTIONS around the Pebble Beach concours are often described as a barometer of the hobby. Which makes us realize we don’t actually know how to read a barometer. But we do know old cars, and we know Microsoft Excel. So we’ve collated sales from Bonhams, Gooding & Company, Mecum, RM Sotheby’s, and Russo and Steele, companies that publish their results. In less than one week this past August, those auction houses sold 824 cars for a total of $390 million on the Monterey Peninsula. To put that astronomical number into perspective, it’s greater than the gross domestic product of a half-dozen island nations listed in a recent Congressional Research Service report on offshore tax havens. But there are a number of interesting facts to be teased from those monstrous…