Sommaire pour May 2019 de Automobile

Sometimes, you know a car is going to fare well at All-Stars just by watching our editors’ faces as they climb out of it. By midafternoon on day one at the track, as many of us got our first-ever taste of the new M2 Competition, the collective grin on Team Automobile’s mug stretched across the Antelope Valley from Willow Springs all the way to Palmdale. We still had days of driving to go, but already it was clear: BMW’s brilliant new M2 was a shoo-in. “A return to form for the M Division,” Jethro Bovingdon said. “I love pretty much everything about this car.” Basem Wasef agreed: “Immensely satisfying to drive, even back to back against the supercars.” Todd Lassa dubbed the M2 Competition “the BMW that best captures the…

It pays to look ahead in the McLaren 600LT. Far ahead. You sit incredibly low, laid back a little further than perhaps seems “normal” in the context of most road cars, and the view out is as vivid as an IMAX cinema screen thanks to the low scuttle and slender A-pillars. You feel you could reach out and touch the road. Not that you need to. McLaren has resisted the call of electric power steering, and the simple Alcantara-covered wheel dances in your hands, putting you intimately in touch with the contact patch between tire and tarmac. The driving environment is so well focused, with every control and sight line honed to help you deal with what comes at you. And for good reason. As the 600LT weighs around 3,000…

I’ve noticed something. Once someone drives a 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS, they change. Expressive faces freeze, talkers become mute, the silent bark like dogs. You doubt me? Then I suspect you haven’t driven one. I previously tested a GT2 RS before All-Stars, so it came as zero surprise to me that this weapon scorched its way to becoming a crowd favorite at our annual shootout. Why? Because it’s a completely correct, no-apologies, lap-record-breaking missile of a car that also happens to work on the street. My impressions have good company. “Such an intuitive, bogglingly powerful, and ultimately satisfying car,” Wasef said. St. Antoine, also impressed, enthused: “Dayum! Just so compelling—blistering speed, sensational steering, massive grip, and importantly, utter poise.” One word from Gold does a great job of summing…

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA January 12-20, 2019 IT DOESN’T TAKE a whole lot of persuasion in the middle of winter to get car enthusiasts excited about a trip to the Arizona desert. While many collectors’ cars are tucked away under covers in heated garages for the wet and snowy months, the sunny Scottsdale skies and warm weather make for a welcome reprieve from less fortunate climes. In fact, we saw plenty of great classic cars—top down, even—out on the roads around town while we visited for the annual Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction. This year’s nine-day affair was Barrett-Jackson’s most lucrative auction ever, with more than $118 million in sales, compared to $106.8 million in 2018. The all-important sell-through rate exceeded 99 percent, as is typical from Barrett-Jackson’s aggressive no-reserve policy on most vehicles.…

BOBBY ALLISON’S CASTS look like outtakes from Bassmaster magazine: long, glittering threads that land in the water with barely a ripple. Then he hands me the rod. My first two throws fall short, then the third floats out in a lazy arc that looks promising—until it hooks itself around the dock and gets more tangled up than a multicar wreck on a superspeedway’s back stretch. Even the fish look embarrassed. “The right guy or gal could teach you to cast one of these things properly,” Allison says. Then he smiles, and with meaningful emphasis on the second word, adds, “After you untangle it a few times, you’ll catch on better.” There are two Bobby Allisons. There’s the one who traded paint with Richard Petty on a weekly basis for almost…

From Willow Springs to Lake Hughes, our new All-Star locales were just right FOR THE PAST SEVERAL incarnations of All-Stars, we visited our Las Vegas-area friends at SpeedVegas and the Resort on Mount Charleston for our evaluations, but this year we moved the show to the Palmdale, California, area, with track work at Willow Springs International Raceway and street driving on roads near Lake Hughes. Although some of us missed Sin City’s bright lights and plinky sounds, all of us appreciated the change of pace when it came down to the actual driving. The best-known track of the several to be found on the grounds of Willow Springs International Motorsports Park is Willow Springs International Raceway, also known as Big Willow. But that wasn’t the one we chose for our…

On the short, tight Streets of Willow circuit, there’s really only one place to detonate the 12 cylinders of fury residing under the Ferrari 812 Superfast’s sculpted hood—down the front straight. Light the fuse out of the last turn and unleash the 812’s prodigious power, and you’ll feel it wiggle out back with each shift. Whoa, big fella. Even better, the engine is a performer with range, one unaccompanied by super- or turbocharged backup singers or a hybrid rhythm section. Thankfully, its sweet, sweet 789-hp siren song didn’t entice us to sail off the asphalt seas of Streets onto the rocky terrain beyond. Instead, it captivated us with “a special experience that treats nearly all your senses,” Jurnecka said. We know what you’re thinking: For about $475,000 as equipped, it…

Just ask Dodge how hard it was to design a new Challenger, or Chevrolet how much is riding on a new Corvette. Better still, ask Porsche about the conflicting goals and considerations that go into every all-new 911. Then you’ll have a pretty good idea just how risky it was to build an all-new G-Wagen after nearly 40 years of success. But fear not, G fans, for Mercedes-Benz has nailed the formula with the 2019 G 550, a vehicle that’s as true to the original as it should be and better in every possible way. The design is still squared-off, though the windshield angle has been laid back a bit, and it’s wider and longer than before—as St. Antoine put it, Mercedes “fixed all the right things: the dash, the…

UNSHAKEABLE FEELING 9D 11 VALENCIA, SPAIN DÉJÀ VU TYPICALLY strikes individuals, not large groups of similarly afflicted personalities. But at this point in the evolution of Porsche’s 911, you don’t need to have owned an example of the ageless rear-engine sports car to feel the tingle of familiarity wash over you. This is no swipe at the 2020 911 Carrera S, available now to order ahead of deliveries slated to begin this summer. (The same goes for the all-wheel-drive Carrera 4S.) But each time Stuttgart reintroduces the car that has, arguably, affected more impact than any other nameplate has on an automotive marque’s fortunes, a fair amount of hand-wringing from owners and dreamers accompanies the build-up: Is this the revision that will cock it all up? The eighth-generation, 992-series 911…

Specs PRICE: $68,995/$85,240 (base/as tested) ENGINE: 3.0L turbo DOHC 24-valve V-6/335 hp @ 5,000-6,400 rpm, 369 lb-ft @ 1,370-4,500 rpm TRANSMISSION: 7-speed dual-clutch automatic LAYOUT: 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine, AWD hatchback EPA MILEAGE: 22/29 mpg (city/hwy) L x W x H: 195.6 x 75.1 x 56.0 in WHEELBASE: 115.2 in WEIGHT: 4,332 lb 0-60 MPH: 5.2 sec TOP SPEED: 130 mph 2019 AUDI A7 SPORTBACK Audi’s four-door coupe placidly evolves Audi’s all-new second-generation A7 is “an easier-to-use multimedia interface (MMI) system wrapped in stylish sheetmetal with competent dynamics,” we said a few months ago after our first drive of the car. Nowhere did we call it a “sport sedan,” though that term gets tossed into Audi descriptions a bit too easily. Its sexy new take on the “four-door coupe” design is…

“How much fun can you have for less than $30,000?” asked Steven Cole Smith, who then proceeded to answer himself: “This much fun. Overbuilt like an armored car, the Veloster N alone proves Hyundai isn’t paying Albert Biermann—the engineer it stole from the BMW M Division—nearly enough.” The Veloster N was a surprise favorite of this year’s All-Stars competition. Its inclusion was the subject of much debate among Automobile staffers, and it was only after a lot of lobbying initiated by a couple of the Veloster N’s biggest fans on staff that the lion-hearted Hyundai got a shot at the title. And like the protagonist in any good boxing movie, the Hyundai came out swinging. Many of our editors got their first-ever taste of the N on the Streets of…

It happens every year during our All-Stars evaluations: At least one car arrives anonymously. It garners little interest from most of our evaluators up front—relatively speaking, especially when there are six-figure supercars on hand. Yet it slowly raises its head above the proverbial waterline, eventually also raising eyebrows. This time around, the 2019 Nissan Altima SR slotted into the zero-(initial interest)-to-hero role. “I jumped into the Altima right after a wonderful spin in the Ferrari and knew it would just suck,” Ed Tahaney said, unintentionally exposing that, despite our efforts, preconceived notions can’t always be eradicated. “When it proved to be the exact opposite, I was amazed and impressed. That VC-Turbo engine, also used to less good effect in the Infiniti QX50 crossover, really is good for something, and this…

WHEN I WAS a kid, my dad drove a 1978 International Scout II. Twenty years ago, no one wanted the things. They were pigs—crude, thirsty, and prone to leaving their body panels in rusty piles behind them—and as a result, a masochist like my father could pick up five or six of them for less than the cost of a decent set of tires. But there was something about the way they drove, far from the coddling Explorers, Tahoes, and Grand Cherokees that clogged the roads back then. The Scout was a truck, and it had no interest in hiding the fact, of convincing you otherwise. It rattled and clunked and envied hay wagons their civility. It was perfect. We loved it. Skip forward a few decades, and the universe…