Inhaltsverzeichnis für February 2020 in Automobile

WE KNOW BETTER now, of course, but off-gassing fumes is still very much a thing in new cars. With all the synthetic material in vehicle interiors, modern cars continue to let loose a sustained barrage of lightly tethered petrochemical matter—what we used to call new car smell—for occupants to breathe deep in the months after a new machine is first pressed into service. Then, one day, the new car smell is gone. Where to, we’ll never know, but we have a pretty good idea it isn’t all good news. Through the years I’ve felt kind of bad about this, transporting my family in a procession of brand-new press cars, each at peak off-gas status. But I forgive myself. I’m a man of my times and not to excuse the unhealthful…

WHEN IT COMES to stocking our Four Seasons fleet, we seek new cars that are significant, contentious, and interesting—and we award bonus points for any overlap. Take our bygone long-term 2018 BMW M550i (see page 34). That Mediterranean Blue Metallic sled caused a staff standoff between those who found it just the right amount of “M” and those who maintained it was fussy, complicated, and an unnecessary half step. In contrast, the 2018 Kia Stinger GT we recently said goodbye to surprisingly satisfied all three aforementioned parameters, and turned curious curmudgeons into adoring fans in the 12 months and some 19,000 miles it remained under our care. Despite its stunning good looks and an impressive spec sheet, we didn’t quite know what to make of the red four-door liftback when…

WHAT CAR ENTHUSIAST doesn’t love a small, two-seat roadster with a manual gearbox and a high-revving dual overhead cam engine? For those reasons and many others, Honda’s S2000 sports car, launched for the 2000 model year, became an instant hit. Honda sold more than 66,000 of the nearly 111,000-unit global production run in the U.S. before it discontinued the model at the end of 2009. That’s a lot of cars, but the best examples today fetch far more than their original MSRP. First series “AP1” cars (so called for the first three digits in the VIN’s vehicle descriptor number) were produced from 2000 to 2003 and had a 240-hp, 153-lb-ft 2.0-liter VTEC inline-four that revved to 9,000 rpm. The second series “AP2” cars ran from 2004 to 2009 and traded…

EV CHEAT SHEET The time is upon us: The electric cars cometh. It’s inexorable, so like it or lump it, it’s time to figure them out. First, though, we need to understand a few terms and the basic concepts behind those terms before we can get a bit deeper into the weeds. Have you been reading and hearing about EVs and wondering, “What does this all actually mean?” We’re here to help. Volt: Think of the volt as a measurement of electrical “pressure,” like you’d find in a common garden hose. For a given diameter of hose, turning up the pressure moves more water. (Water is equivalent to power in this analogy.) Ampere: Continuing the garden hose analogy, think of the ampere (aka amp) as a measurement of electrical “flow,”…

MOTORSPORTS FANS, driving enthusiasts, and video game players have heard a lot in recent years about the realism of racing games and simulators. But just how valuable are these digital codes as training tools to top-level professional race car drivers, teams, and engineers? Ford recently offered us a chance to find out. In 2014, the Blue Oval opened its Ford Performance Technical Center in Concord, North Carolina, to help the company with its race car development programs. Conveniently, 2014 coincided with the beginning of the Ford GT’s successful “Road to Le Mans” effort that won the GTLM class at the 2016 24-hour endurance classic, with drivers Sébastien Bourdais, Joey Hand, and Dirk Müller. The tech center originally featured an advanced immersive simulator from Ansible Motion, a professional simulator manufacturer. Advanced…

MODERN MUSCLE CARS haven’t been one-trick ponies for more than a decade now, with both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro offering impressively competent corner-slaying models. At Ford, the latest and greatest road-course varietals bear the Shelby name; both the Mustang GT350 and GT350R have won considerable praise for their composure, balance, and pace. Now, a new GT500 joins the pack with 760 horsepower, launch control, and a mean new look. But is it as well suited as its brethren to tracks with turns, or is this the drag sheep of the family? The new super Mustang traces its heritage back to the classic GT500s of the late 1960s, but it’s the S197 Mustang GT500s that offer the most direct lineage. Those 2007-2009, 2010-2012, and 2013-2014 GT500s progressed from offering…

THE HYUNDAI VELOSTER N is the first U.S.-market car from Hyundai’s high-performance N line, tuned under the watchful eye of ex-BMW M division chief Albert Biermann, now a Hyundai president and head of its R&D division. We named it one of our 2019 All-Stars, so it won’t surprise you to learn that the hottest hatch ever to hail from Hyundai has garnered a ton of respect from within the Automobile ranks. That respect was hard earned. When the time came to evaluate our 2019 All-Stars contenders, a small group of fanboys on staff pushed the merits of the Veloster N, but those who hadn’t driven it yet questioned the notion that it could run with the industry’s best hot hatches. (We remember how poky the original Veloster was and how…

THE BUICK REATTA was first conjured in the early 1980s in response to a perceived gap in the marque’s lineup. Flint’s finest was missing a specialty niche vehicle, according to Jay Qualman, who worked in strategic planning for the brand during that era. The concept was for a two-place personal luxury car, targeting the contemporary Mercedes-Benz 380 SL roadster but taking inspiration from the 1955-57 T-Bird. “We had to slot something in there that wouldn’t compete with Corvette or Fiero, so it couldn’t be a pure sports car,” Qualman said. “But it would serve as a halo vehicle for the other Buick products. Something not as flamboyant but more luxurious.” This meant the car had to feature decent (but not blistering) performance, along with competent handling and refinement, voluminous cargo…

I GOT INTO “a heap of trouble” a few years ago when I parodied the bandits in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” by saying of the Kubang concept, “We don’t need no stinkin’ Maserati SUVs” in place of the film’s “stinkin’ badges.” Declared an enemy of Fiat-Chrysler, fired from the judge’s team at Villa d’Este, I was officially a bad guy because of my strongly negative personal opinion of all fancy SUVs. My thoughts were at odds with the desires of automobile industry leaders to join the rush to make heavy, inefficient, and unlovely vehicles they could sell at enormous profit. It now seems firmly established that every nameplate must be attached to a sublimated delivery truck, be it a Chevrolet Suburban or even holy-of-holies Rolls-Royce and (soon) Ferrari.…

SPENDING A YEAR with a vehicle has a way of uniting opinions, even in a group as diverse in their automotive predilections as the Automobile staff. But that wasn’t the case with the 2018 BMW M550i xDrive: After 13 months and 18,411 miles, our opinions about the car nicknamed the Rocket Couch by social media editor Billy Rehbock are every bit as divided as they were when it arrived. Not that anyone disliked it, but we remain firmly split into two camps: those who think the M550i is good, and those who think it isn’t quite good enough. “I could drive this all day, every day, in every situation,” executive editor Mac Morrison wrote. Features editor Rory Jurnecka drove it from L.A. to Scottsdale and said, “There couldn’t have been…

THE FACT SUVS are marketed as the car world’s ultimate adventure vehicles has always raised more than a few eyebrows around the Automobile compound because big wagons like the Volvo V90 have been the bedrock of family travel since SUVs were little more than glorified pickup trucks. What the V90 lacks in plastic body cladding it makes up for with all-wheel drive, a voluminous cargo bay, and a roof rack that can carry 220 pounds of whatever, to whatever godforsaken backwater you might long to visit. With this in mind, we set a plan for one of the newer members of our Four Seasons long-term test fleet: Take the V90 on the mother of all camping trips, loaded to the gills with gear in order to prove some of our…

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA— THE MASSIVE FOLDING door encompasses nearly one whole wall of the hangar. A push of a button sends power to a system of humming pulleys and cables that slowly, tediously raises the enormous barricade out of the way. You would normally see a private jet parked here, but today the hangar houses the cars left behind and mostly untouched after their owner, actor Paul Walker, died more than six years ago, in November 2013. All are scheduled for sale at Barrett-Jackson’s 2020 Scottsdale auction in January. It’s impossible to think of Walker and not recall the wildly successful “Fast and Furious” movie franchise that made him a hero to legions of fans. As Brian O’Conner, an undercover cop whose assignment to break up illegal Los Angeles street racing…