Car and Driver April 2013

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com LETTER OF THE MONTH After reviewing all the information in the Data Central portion of the 10Best feature, I wanted to inform you of the correction needed in the 10 Best/Worst Performers of 2012. The 77-dBA interior sound level gloriously emitted by the Chevrolet Corvette 427 convertible and Porsche 911 were mistakenly listed in the "Worst" column. Just a simple oversight. KURT HOFFMAN, AUBURN HILLS, MICHIGAN FORD'S THEATRE John Phillips's column, "Now It Gets Interesting? No, Now It Gets Difficult" [January 2013], is a masterful piece and a true insight into the desperate state of the Lincoln Motor Company. It has to be, hands down, one of the best-written articles I have seen in a long time. Referring to Mr. Farley's job of reviving Lincoln as…

TURN TO PAGE 105 and you'll find a new section devoted to all the nittier and grittier aspects of buying and leasing that magazines such as ours typically avoid. And I'm not sure why we typically avoid them. That frozen hinterland between the printed (or web) page and the driver's seat is fraught with thin ice, but it must be crossed and guidance is essential. The initial car-shopping phase is all gauzy and dreamlike. You are emboldened by choice and visions of conquest. But then what? You can't just endlessly hunt for vehicles on our site or on eBay or Bringatrailer.com while you should be working, while your girlfriend's asleep, while the laundry festers in a pile. At some point, the people around you are going to complain. You have to…

WORD TO THE WEALTHY DAMSON: An optional paint color for the Flying Spur. According to Bentley, it's "a rich hue inspired by the extremely rare purple diamond." Matching leather also is available. DARK FIDDLEBACK EUCALYPTUS: One of the two standard wood veneers. It's a stretch to call eucalyptus "standard"; dark fiddleback eucalyptus, on the other hand, is anything but. When you build cars that cost a quarter-mil, the phrase "striking gold" doesn't sufficiently differentiate a windfall from what happens on a normal day. Bentley, in a sense, strikes gold with every vehicle that rolls out of its marble-lined dealerships. But when it unveiled the Continental GT in 2003, it struck a gold artery. The model quickly became Bentley's most successful ever and spun off the Continental GTC convertible and Continental Flying Spur sedan.…

Ferrari's home market is in a shambles even as the company records massive growth in the U.S., China, and India. Italy accounted for only 248 of the black stallion's sales in 2012, half the number sold there the year before. Maserati's sales have fallen 80 percent since 2009, but it's not just Fiat brands that are hurting. Lamborghini president Stephan Winkelmann can count Italy's monthly sales on one hand. The cause for the collapse goes far beyond the European economic meltdown. Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo slammed the government in Rome: "Once again, the exception is Italy, where we have witnessed a drop partly due to the economic crisis, but also to a hostile environment for luxury goods which have long been, and continue to be, an important resource for…

Gary Conley doesn't build model V-8s. He builds real engines that happen to be only 8.5 inches long and 8.25 inches tall. He manufactures them in his Glen Ellyn, Illinois, shop, churning out dozens at a time. The Stinger 609, his current production model, is a roughly one-quarter-scale version of a Viper V-10 with two cylinders lopped off. With a bore and stroke of 1.00 by 0.97 inch, the 6.09-cubic-inch powerplant develops a claimed 5.5 horsepower at 9000 rpm. It spins to 12,000 rpm. Putting together an engine this size involves more than just working with really small stuff. Physical properties such as fluid dynamics and surface tension don't scale, raising carburetion, cooling, and ignition issues. Conley modifies chain-saw carbs and feeds them from a tiny diaphragm-type fuel pump attached to…

Carmakers go to INCREASINGLY WEIRD LENGTHS to capture every potential customer. Witness the explosion of available vehicle types and classes over the past 15 years (roughly two to three product cycles) as manufacturers have sought to fill every bit of white space between conventional segments. BMW has been a prime culprit here, giving us genre-benders such as its X6 "sports-activity coupe." Depicted here are the brands that added the most models to their lineups between 1998 and 2013. Yet, notice the market-share figures for each carmaker. Even if flooding the market with new models doesn't necessarily result in directly proportional share gains, there is a clear winner here: car enthusiasts. There are scads more performance models available today than there were two decades ago, from STs to RSs to AMGs.…