Tabla de contenidos para October 2015 en Automobile

I MAKE MY LIVING AS A LONG-HAUL TRUCK driver, and I see distracted driving and the carnage that results from it on a daily basis. It is beyond me how a person of even moderate intelligence can think that driving a two-ton vehicle at mile-a-minute speed on a public roadway demands anything less than the driver’s undivided attention. From this perspective I will sadly admit that automated vehicles might go far in reducing the number of highway fatalities (“Will Google Own Our Roads?” and “Near, But So Far Away,” August 2015). I would make the argument that if drivers would turn off whatever electronic gizmos they use to distract themselves, automated cars would have no value and would be relegated to the category of interesting but generally useless technology. Unfortunately,…

MARANELLO, ITALY Welcome to modern times at Ferrari, courtesy of the 488 Gran Turismo Berlinetta, the replacement for the much-lauded 458 Italia. Ferrari says its latest mid-engine offering is 85 percent new compared with its predecessor, but the key difference is the engine. The new twin-turbo, 3.9-liter V-8 develops 660 horsepower at 8,000 rpm; the outgoing naturally aspirated, 4.5-liter V-8 needed 9,000 rpm to dish up 562 hp. Even more radical is the disparity in the two engines’ torque curves. Whereas you had to push the 458 to 6,000 rpm to muster 398 lb-ft of torque, the 488 will lay down 560 lb-ft at 3,000 rpm. Not surprisingly, the GTB cuts the 0-60 time by 0.4 second to 2.9, beats the Italia in the 0-124-mph sweepstakes, 8.3 seconds versus 10.4,…

Mödlareuth, a small village in southeastern Germany surrounded by rolling green hills, was once divided by a heavily fortified border. Today, amid the morning fog and the crumbling remnants of the concrete wall that split this town from 1952 to 1989, sits a new 2015 Ford Mustang GT. This is the starting point for a four-day journey in the sixth edition of the legendary ponycar. We’ll be taking the American, now for sale in Europe, on an 850-mile tour of the divide between the former West and East Germany, a route still pockmarked with reminders of a contemptible era. On the eastern side of the rift, the scenery is still dominated by untouched nature, endless oak and birch alleys, and CinemaScope landscapes embroidered with quaint, lookalike villages. It’s nothing like…

Brothers reconnect across 10 states and 2,879 miles in an Alfa Romeo 4C The Oklahoma skies are a sickening swirl of green, gray, and orange. Dirtfilled air whips against my skin as I poke my head out of our long-term Alfa Romeo 4C. “We should really find somewhere to park and wait out the storm!” yells my older brother Jon, fidgeting uneasily in the passenger seat. “We’re going on!” I yell back, knowing full well he’s right. It’s my fault. I had the brilliant idea to live for Four Seasons with an Alfa Romeo 4C, a glorified track toy. Then I had the brilliant idea to drive it from Detroit to our California office. “What kind of car guy am I if I don’t seize the opportunity to take one…

1 208 GTB/GTS TURBO (1982-1985) Ferrari in 1980 introduced the 208 GTB for the Italian market, where new cars with engines larger than 2.0 liters faced a 38 percent value-added tax. In 1982, a KKK turbo pushed the 2.0-liter V-8’s output from 153 hp to 217 hp. A targaroofed GTS model landed in 1983. The automaker built 437 GTB Turbos and 250 GTS Turbos. 2 288 GTO (1984-1987) This car was the stillborn result of the terrifying Group B era, when manufacturers created some of the most insane road-going homologation specials imaginable. Its 2.8-liter, twinturbo V-8 churned out 394 hp and 366 lb-ft of torque, allowing the car to run from 0 to 60 in about 4.6 seconds. Ferrari made only 272 GT0s. 3 GTB/GTS TURBO (1986-1989) These featured an…

Andrea Bocelli sang an emphatic “Nessun Dorma” before an all-new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio rumbled into the room. Harald Wester, Alfa brandmaster and chief engineer, introduced the “real revolution … the perfect symbiosis of man and machine … the reinvented soul of motoring.” Technical director Philippe Krief then waxed lyrical about the engine in the Quadrifoglio and its connection to Ferrari before gushing about the Giulia’s best-in-class vehicle dynamics. Lorenzo Ramaciotti, grand seigneur of the Alfa design group, described his farewell effort as “simple yet special … unique and unmistakably an Alfa Romeo but in no way over-styled … a real driver’s car that oozes Italianita.” Finally Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, wearing his signature black sweater despite the heat, called the Giulia a car that embodies all of Alfa’s…

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN Visit America’s money-bagging coastal cities, sniff around its private schools and fortress-like subdivisions, and a first-time visitor might ask: Does everyone in this flipping country drive a BMW, Audi, or Benz? Remarkably, the German brands’ sales and cultural dominance have only increased, thanks in part to a blitz of variegated SUVs that have left even Japanese luxury brands—let alone Cadillac—scrambling to keep pace. With its numbers off even in a booming luxury market, Cadillac’s own record runs from critical successes that have thus far generated lackluster sales—namely the ATS and CTS sedans—to the industry’s biggest egg-on-face of 2014, the epically miscalculated ELR plug-in hybrid. And somehow this Detroit marque finds itself nearly bereft of small, smaller, medium, and large crossover SUVs. So like a Dutch girl with 20…

BALINGEN, GERMANY The Porsche 911 GT3 RS is not a numbers car, which is not to say it doesn’t achieve some very impressive numbers. For instance, it makes 500 hp and can hustle to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds. Its boy-racer bodywork creates crushing amounts of downforce—243 pounds in front at 186 mph from a low-riding aero splitter, 485 pounds in back from an adjustable rear wing. Largely because of that downforce, it reaches “only” 193 mph rather than 200 mph or even the regular GT3’s top speed of 196 mph, but that’s only because Porsche focused more on tuning the RS for the track. As a result, it’ll lap the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7 minutes, 20 seconds. But these numbers don’t explain why the GT3 RS is such a…

“We did not want to create a shape that is even more extreme than Huracán or Aventador. ...” FILIPPO PERINI - CHIEF DESIGNER A “quiet drive” in a Lamborghini has never been a thing. But here we are, silently hitting 75 mph in one of Sant’Agata Bolognese’s first plug-in hybrids, its electric motors humming quietly, its V-10 engine waiting impatiently to snap on. We pull into Sant’Agata’s town square, where we park our test mule next to the car that started this all, the electric blue Lamborghini Asterion LPI 910-4 concept, which announced the marque’s hybrid ambitions to the world at last year’s Paris Auto Show. The one-of-one orange mule, Tosca, named after composer Giacomo Puccini’s operatic masterpiece, is an Aventador that’s been fitted with essentially the same plug-in hybrid powertrain as…

LE CASTELLET, FRANCE —I am here to drive the McLaren P1 GTR. This is the machine at the tippy-top of McLaren’s supercar heap, based on the P1 and meant for the track only. It’s a race car refracted through an anime lens, exaggerated in all the right places, with a cartoonish yellow-and-green livery and more horsepower and torque than any real GT race car would ever be allowed to have. If any automobile deserves the ridiculous moniker of “hypercar,” the P1 GTR is that car. There’s only one drivable version in existence so far, the specimen McLaren first showed in a video racing against the Le Mans-winning F1 GTR and recently brought to the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the dash up the hill. It is this monster that I’ll…

THE INFO YEARS PRODUCED: 1967-1971 I NUMBER SOLD: 6,329 I ORIGINAL PRICE: $2,461 (NADA*) I VALUE TODAY: $31,500 (NADA AVG) Some say you should never meet your heroes, especially when it comes to classic cars. The thinking goes that you’ll often end up underwhelmed. This logic doesn’t compute for Bob Rath, who, after almost 40 years of a love affair with Minis from the Countryman wagon to the industrial Pick-up, finally nabbed the model he’s always wanted. The British Motor Corp. Mini Cooper S has always been about exceeding expectations since it first came to the U.S. in 1967, and it’s still full of surprises decades later, even to a Mini maniac like Rath. The Mini craze hit Rath, like many others, during the 1960s while he was stationed with…

The inclinometer reads 35 degrees. “It won’t roll over until it reaches 53 degrees,” says Bentley’s unconcerned director of whole vehicle engineering, Cameron Patterson. Through the windshield we see a steep, red-orange bank of earth on one side and a gully on the other. Just beyond the ravine is a drop that would certainly destroy the Bentley Bentayga prototype’s aluminum-intensive body shell. This is one of a small feet of Bentayga prototypes that has endured Scandinavian cold, South African heat, Arabian desert dust, and now Spanish mountain trails as part of the most intensive new-model test program Bentley has yet pursued. Even with strategically shaped fiberglass moldings and bodywrap that disguise the real design, the Bentayga clearly looks different from the EXP 9 F concept car that turned of visitors…

PORTIMÃO, PORTUGAL Do not go gentle into that good night. A new-age supercar should burn four wheels, as 10 cylinders rave on until close of day. Rage, rage against the prohibition on laser lights. During two days in Portugal, on road and racetrack, through brightest day and deepest night, we tested the 2017 Audi R8. The mid-engine machine is poetry in motion: pleasing to the ear and exciting to the heart, potent yet effortless. Audi is best when it melds technology and soul in equal parts. The new, second-generation R8, which is coming to North America next spring, mostly achieves that elusive mandate. As for technology, the R8’s naturally breathing 5.2-liter V-10 is the car’s essence, a soulful heart that spits verse every time it awakens. First, let’s talk laser…

BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA A tiny central European country renowned for cabbage soup and sheep’s milk cheese doesn’t exactly call to mind the words “new performance automobile.” But within an hour’s drive of the handsome capital of Bratislava lie both the delicious winding roads of neighboring Austria and, within Slovakia itself, the Slovakia Ring, a relatively new and impressively gnarly 3.7-mile race circuit. Which is to say, this place actually makes an exemplary setting for feasting fully on the 2015 Honda Civic Type R—the fastest front-wheeldrive hatch ever to circulate that other legendary Ring, the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The bad news: This rip-snorting Honda isn’t coming to the United States. It goes on sale in the United Kingdom (where it’s built) first and will reach other European markets later this year. The good…

WE’RE 8 YEARS OLD AGAIN. Lamborghini might not be the Lamborghini that made mad, bad wedges with strakes, intakes, and wings that appealed to the kid in all of us, but we’re giddy as the 6.5-liter V-12 in the Lamborghini Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce starts up and a big, dirty noise erupts from the four exhaust exits. The Aventador LP 750-4 Superveloce (SV) might be the perfect marriage of Lamborghini’s gloriously nutty past and a future rooted in engineering as well as theater. Say the name out loud and tell us you don’t want one. When you see it, your stomach flips and your heart thumps a little bit harder. The SV’s adjustable rear wing has three downforce settings, and working with a new front splitter, underbody panel, and rear…

NO MATTER HOW FLUSH YOUR 401(K), you’re unlikely to pilot the $2.4 million McLaren P1 GTR around a racetrack. But another British sports-car marque has a proposition for customers that is every bit as enticing and substantially cheaper: actually racing at Le Mans. Twice in the last three years Aston Martin has hosted a support race at the famed French enduro, with the flag dropping just hours before the 24-hour main event. The entry cost per car was $15,000, a bargain when it comes to high-profile motorsports. Gentlemen drivers could rent a GT3 or GT4 race car or use their own Aston Martin hardware. This past June, in front of grandstands crammed with 263,000 spectators, 40 Aston Martins lined up in the pits outside the Audi, Porsche, and Nissan factory-team…

1996 BMW Z3 James Bond Edition Sold at $24,200 S/N 4USCH7325TLE00762 BOND BLUE GRAY OVER taupe leather interior with tan cloth top. 114-hp, DOHC, 1.8-liter inline-four; fivespeed manual transmission. Less than 6,000 miles on the odometer. Excellent paint and chrome; wellmaintained leather seat upholstery and wood dash trim. Fully equipped with air-conditioning, power seats, custom floormats, a trunk-mounted CD changer, and even a luggage rack. The previous collector clearly cared for this car. THE STORY BEHIND THE SALE: Just how many cars are ever offered through a department store catalog? Actually, Neiman Marcus has become quite famous for doing this, and among the “fantasy” gifts presented in its 1995 Christmas Wish List was this limitededition, $35,000 BMW Z3. This car is the 62nd of 100 built and then sold exclusively…