Car and Driver August 2013

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.comor join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com UPTON GIRL Regarding your May cover line "Forget Kate Upton!" I don't think so. To borrow a punch line from an old joke, "I've been in a Corvette!" MARK BARILLARO POUGHKEEPSIE, NEW YORK CORVETTE RAGGING What gives with the phoney computer-generated Vette pics in the May 2013 issue ["Star Spangled Banger"]? The interior shots look legit, but the exterior ones, including the one on the cover, look pretty artificial to me. For example, on page 41, how is it possible to have a rearward shadow cast by the side mirror on the passenger door and a forward shadow cast by the car on the ground? Two suns perhaps, or just some bright photo editing? BEN HOYT FREDERICTON, NEW BRUNSWICK Chevrolet required that the Vette be…

Without launching into a Ben Stein–like dissertation on economics, we find it important to note that President Obama's March announcement of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is hugely important to the car industry and to car enthusiasts. The Partnership's aims include abolishing tariffs on imported cars, as well as finally aligning U.S. and European automotive safety and environmental standards. If adopted, the agreement could result in increased manufacturing here by European brands and American dealers stocking a broader product lineup. It may even bring back brands that have been exiled from these shores for decades. CHEAPER CARS, DIRT-CHEAPER TRUCKS The standard tariff for importing cars to the U.S. is 2.5 percent of their value. For pickup trucks and commercial vans, the tariff is a whopping 25 percent [see page…

After a 2001 EARTHQUAKE damaged a double-deck section of State Route 99 running through Seattle, city planners decided to just bury it. Rather than rebuild the so-called Alaska Viaduct, they are replacing a two-mile stretch with a tunnel. So how do you dig a nearly-60-foot-diameter tunnel under downtown Seattle? With the world's largest tunnel-boring machine (TBM). "Bertha," as Seattle has named the machine, is currently being assembled in a pit at the head of its path and starts chewing through buried flannel shirts and Starbucks cups this summer. CUTTERHEAD With teeth optimized for digging the softer soil found under Seattle, Bertha's cutterhead grinds through the earth, collecting displaced dirt and rock in the excavation chamber directly behind her head. Conditioners are added to the soil in the chamber to create a goop. SOIL…

In the war ON DRUGS, the daily grind of law enforcement is enough to make even Sisyphus feel fortunate; at least the guy knew what his boulder would look like each morning. Cops who work to intercept traffickers, however, see ever-evolving methods of deceit in the transport of contraband. It's no wonder, then, that the Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) backed legislation last year making it a felony in the state to build or use a secret compartment in a vehicle. Known as "traps," "hides," or "clavos," hidden compartments that exploit voids in a vehicle's structure are certainly not a new phenomenon in drug running. But Republican state Senator Jim Hughes, the man behind the Ohio law, says the increasing sophistication of these devices and the escalation of their use has…

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), only 5 percent of American adult men are taller than six feet two. Shaquille O'Neal towers seven feet one inch, wears size-23 shoes, and had listed his weight at 325 pounds during his playing days. That's a lot of retired NBA center to shove behind the wheel of a Buick LaCrosse for a pair of commercials. Don Shreves, GM's global total vehicle integration engineer, explains just how far outside the usual scope Shaq lies. "Our minimum goal is to accommodate 90 percent of the population. In the U.S., that [starts with] a female who is approximately four-foot-ten. She's smaller than all but 5 percent of the female population." From there, he says, the typical focus ends with a 95th-percentile male—which Shaq…

Worried that Kim Jong-un might momentarily launch irradiated kimchi into your salad crisper? Let it go. We have scarier things to fear. Namely, the exhaust sounds of the 1.6-liter V-6 turbos that the FIA has mandated for the 2014 Formula 1 season. As that "aural cliff" looms, fans are popping Pepcid while texting end-of-days proclamations in which F1 has scant months to live before Fox News announces that Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt both have vestigial horns and twin bastard sons who are plumbers named Darrell. The upcoming single-turbo V-6s are said by FIA president Todt "to be more relevant," by which he means more relevant to road-car manufacturers with checkbooks as thick as the Yellow Pages. On the other hand, it is comforting to imagine longtime V-6 proponents Toyota and…