Car and Driver October 2018

STOMPING GROUND “Alfa Romeo Stomps Porsche…” What?! The Macan Turbo outscores the Stelvio QF in your vehicle category by two points, 80 for the Macan and 78 for the Stelvio, and by two points in your chassis category, 57 for the Porsche and 55 for the Alfa. In your powertrain category, the Stelvio outscores the Macan by three points, 51 to 48. Looks like an overwhelming victory for the Alfa, down by one. A real stomping. Cut to a smokefilled room in C/D headquarters. “We can’t have another Porsche winner. Readers already think we have a Porsche bias based on how often P cars are on the cover. Let’s give the Alfa extra points in the subjective funtodrive category. Everyone knows that Porsches are no fun to drive.” Your headline should have…

THE RESURRECTED BUGATTI has had just two goals: speed and luxury. And it executes both superlatively. But when Stephan Winkelmann took the helm of the company in January, he found a team eager for the next challenge. “They were burning to do more,” he says. Winkelmann had something in mind. When he was CEO of Lamborghini, he helped create a number of sensational limited-production models, including the Reventón, Sesto Elemento, Veneno, and Centenario. All sold out rapidly and became instant collector’s items. To the satisfaction of the Volkswagen Group overlords, they turned a nice profit, too. Why not import the same concept to Molsheim? The product briefing took shape: It called for a unique but distinctively Bugatti design—a car sportier than the Chiron, with the emphasis shifted from flat-out top speed to…

OUR CARS ARE THE MOST COMPLEX devices most of us interact with on a daily basis. And as in-car tech has blossomed, owner’s manuals have become engorged to the point of uselessness. Are you really going to leaf through hundreds of pages to figure out how to pair a phone via Bluetooth or how to change the setting of the interior lights? Not likely. To flatten the new-car learning curve, a few automakers, including Genesis and Mercedes, are experimenting with ways to bring the owner’s manual into the smartphone era. Augmented reality (AR) might sound like a label on a jar at your local dispensary, but it’s fairly simple: It’s a way of superimposing computer-generated images onto a view of your real-world environment, often incorporating other sensory elements. Think Pokémon Go,…

ONCE, GARGANTUAN INLINE-FOURS ruled the world. In 1909, a 200-hp 21.5-liter four-cylinder powered racecar driver Victor Hémery’s Blitzen Benz to a then-outlandish 125.9 mph at Britain’s Brooklands circuit. For a moment, it was the fastest car in the world. General Motors’ new turbo 2.7-liter inline-four, code-named L3B, isn’t that big. But when it makes its way into GM’s full-sizetruck lineup this fall, it will be one of the largest gas-fired, spark-ignited inline-fours sold in the U.S. (the Toyota Tacoma has a 2.7-liter four, too). And there aren’t likely to be many larger ones. An inline-four can grow only so big before losing its advantages over other configurations with more cylinders. “A lot of it is packaging,” explains Tom Sutter, GM’s chief engineer for small gasoline engines. “To make a big four, you…

THE PANTHEON of humanity’s bad ideas is so full now that it takes a real blunder to achieve any measure of distinction. But it may be time for the Snapchat puppy filter to surrender its plinth. In its place, we submit the $1799 Onewheel+ XR, a motorized, self-stabilizing single-wheel skateboard. It was conceived by Santa Cruz, California–based personal-mobility company Future Motion and executed, we can only assume, in partnership with some otherworldly chaos agent. The Onewheel looks benign enough when you’re watching YouTube videos of expert riders effortlessly carving down mountain paths or grinding along curbs. When it’s powered on, a pressure sensor located under one of the footpads activates a gyroscope, and graceful users can step on, level out, and glide away under the power of a 2-hp motor, which…

OUR DRIVING HABITS can reveal a lot more about us than simply our personalities. According to a recent study, how we drive may also indicate if we are exhibiting early signs of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. The study was conceived by Adriana Seelye, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Psychiatry, and it explored whether people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)—a decline in memory and cognitive abilities that is often a precursor to Alzheimer’s—drive differently. If so, medical providers could use data from cars’ computers to detect underlying conditions before other warning signs develop. The researchers’ theory panned out. Seelye and her co-authors tracked 28 drivers, average age 82, through their cars’ onboard diagnostic ports for 206 days. Seven of the participants had MCI. Seelye found…