Tabla de contenidos para November 2018 en Automobile

STEFAN BELLOF WAS never better—and never worse—than when he had something to prove. And Bellof always had something to prove, even if it was just a minor personal point, created from whole cloth to maximize motivation. Raw talent (emphasis on “raw”) allowed the German to drive on the knife’s edge, lap after lap. Luck, or the lack of it, determined whether he stayed on that edge or fell off to one side. On May 28, 1983, a lucky Bellof qualified his Porsche 956 at the Nürburgring Nordschleife track in Germany for the ADAC Nürburgring 1000 km. In traffic, on older tires, and with a nearly full tank of fuel, Bellof ran a lap of 6 minutes, 11.13 seconds at an average speed of 202.053 kph (125.550 mph). Jaws dropped, and…

AS ONE of maybe five people in Texas with a Genesis G90, it was with great anticipation I read your Four Seasons update (“Pardon Me While I Disappear,” July 2018) on this fine vehicle. In the second paragraph, you describe the car’s styling as a “gently lobbed down pillow.” Naturally outraged, I called a car friend and said, “Automobile says my car looks like a gently lobbed down pillow!” Said friend immediately responded with a video of a pillow being lobbed to the floor, saying, “Look at my new Genesis G90!” I admit it’s not the car you might use to pursue an evil villain across the Italian alps; this task is best left to the uber-non-comfy-pillow German competitors. It is also not the car to buy for whatever cachet…

AS THE OLD saying goes, records are made to be broken. But you gotta make them before anyone can break them. That’s part of the reason why I’m riding shotgun in a specially prepped Subaru WRX STI during a pouring rainstorm on Romania’s National Road 7C, aka the Transfagarasan, a serpentine stretch of pavement in south-central Romania that has captivated the imagination of automotive enthusiasts the world over. So much so that Subaru decided it was well past due for someone to lay down a record time. I await my turn to be tossed about in this STI’s newly installed passenger seat, on the slithering path up the mountain with veteran rally ace Mark Higgins at the controls. The weather has been pure garbage ever since the Time Attack Romania…

NOT SINCE ALFRED Hitchcock’s “The Birds” has an infestation been so fowl. The offenders are marketed by various brands—Bird, Lime, Spin—but essentially they’re the same: dockless, stand-up electric scooters that can be rented, via smartphone app, for as little as $1, plus 15 cents per minute. Seemingly overnight, they’ve descended upon metro areas from San Francisco to Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. But the plague may well be at its worst where I live in West Los Angeles. From Santa Monica to Westwood, you can’t walk so much as one block without ducking a swooping Bird. Come to L.A., and you’ll see them: dorks whizzing to and fro on their skinny scooters at speeds up to 15 mph. Almost all the riders are teens and 20-somethings (legally, you must have a…

THREE OF OUR ALL-TIME FAVORITE PORSCHES, IN HONOR OF THE COMPANY’S 70 YEARS OF SPORTS CAR HISTORY LAST SUMMER I was talking with a friend who possesses one of the finest design minds I’ve ever encountered. Although he has never worked on cars, he said something that I realized summed up Porsche’s operational philosophy perfectly: “The best way to do a new project is to use as much existing and off-the-shelf stuff as possible.” Cast your mind back to 1948 and Porsche’s humble beginnings as a car manufacturer, and you envision that hardy band in the Gmund sawmill doing just that. Quite literally making jewels out of junk, they rounded up off-the-shelf bits from military Kübelwagens and pieces they could get from an Austrian Volkswagen dealer to make VW hot…

2019 Jaguar I-PACE BLACKPOOL IS AS working class as fish and chips, a pint of bitter, and apple pie with custard. A favorite destination during the U.K.’s Bank Holidays, the seaside resort—known among other things for its neo-Eiffel Tower and antique beachfront trams—welcomes us with a glittering array of gambling arcades, low-rent fast food eateries, back street riffraff, and the grand autumnal illumination that has to double the city’s electricity bill. Speaking of electricity, mild panic made the rounds of Team I-Pace when the task of finding a sufficiently power-ful charging dock for the brand-new all-electric Jaguar proved more difficult than expected. Thankfully there were a couple of low-power wall boxes at the hotel. By the time Wolfgang Ziebart (the driving force behind the I-Pace’s development and my co-pilot for…

“TO ME, STEFAN BELLOF REMAINS A GIANT. TODAY MY RESPECT FOR HIS ACHIEVEMENT WITH THE TECHNOLOGY AVAILABLE BACK THEN INCREASED EVEN MORE.” THE WORLD’S MOST notorious racetrack was already 41 years old when, in 1968, Jackie Stewart referred to it as “the green hell” immediately after winning the Formula 1 German Grand Prix. Stewart had to battle not only the track, treacherous in the best conditions, and 19 other drivers, including pole sitter Jacky Ickx, but also severe rain and fog. It was, Stewart said much later, the toughest of his 27 F1 wins. Fittingly, it was also the race where driver Dan Gurney decided it might be a good time to introduce the full-face helmet to F1. That’s the sort of place the Nürburgring was and is: glorious, miserable,…

EARLY LAST YEAR, two uniquely American self-proclaimed super patriots met at a much-publicized White House event for a good-natured discussion of U.S. trade policy. In this corner: Donald Trump, the fast-talking, hard-nosed businessman and president of the United States. In the other: rough and ready Harley-Davidson, maker of the quintessential American motorcycle and one of the world’s most iconic brands. Its message, emblazoned on the company’s Facebook page: “115 Years of Freedom.” In remarks during the ceremony held shortly after his inauguration, the president was effusive in his praise of the venerable Wisconsin firm: “What a great, great group of people, and what a fantastic job you do.” Now the Trump and Harley brands are back in the news, together again, only this time because—just like in reality TV—now they’re…

What you strap on your wrist says a lot about you, regardless of the price tag. Don’t fall for the siren call or tick of the mall kiosk—you can do much, much better. We found 13 recently unveiled quality watches for most budgets, even if you can’t afford to drop a year’s worth of house payments on the newest Patek Philippe. NOMOS Autobahn Around $4,400 Car-themed watches are nothing new. Rare, perhaps, but not new. German designer Werner Aisslinger penned this automotive-inspired dial, featuring a fascinating semicircular block of lume that evokes a backlit speedometer. The open date display at 6 o’clock is reminiscent of an odometer, sitting just underneath a stopwatch-style running seconds subdial. Three colorways are available. Rolex GMT-Master II $9,250 Striking like a bolt of lightning at…

THIS SPRING, Jaguar celebrated the end of Saudi Arabia’s ban on female drivers by declaring June 24 as World Driving Day. Saudi car enthusiast Aseel Al Hamad took the wheel of a Jaguar F-Type Coupe and circled the Reem International Circuit in Riyadh, becoming the first woman to drive on a track in Saudi Arabia. We talked to her about the changes in the culture of both Saudi Arabia and the motorsports world. You said you’ve loved cars since you were young. Is this unusual for women in Saudi Arabia? AAH: You know when you go to the shopping mall and there’s a makeup stand—you wouldn’t stop there, right? Because it’s not your interest. Women here [have been] distant from cars and motorsports because they couldn’t participate. Buying cars or…