Car and Driver February 2013

Take Two Tablets Not sure if you were paying attention to the television this past holiday season, but if you were, you probably saw them: ads for tablet devices. Large tablets, small tablets, medium-size tablets. Three new screens from Amazon, two from Apple, and one from Microsoft, all being stroked and plied by children and bright-eyed teens of diverse ethnicities over a backdrop of bold color blocks and soft sans-serif type. The future is here, and a toddler is going to show you how to use it. Indeed, the tablet is becoming so enmeshed in modern life that some pundits are saying it is going to replace the desktop. Nice that someone's not bloviating about the death of print for a change, but of the conventional computer. I digress. Regular readers might…

Sic your dogs on us at:editors@CARandDRIVER.comor join the discussion at:backfires.caranddriver.com WHY THE LONG FACE? The ultimate expression of Ford's new global design language? That Hyundai Genesis coupe–looking thing on page 18 ["Revolution of the Species," November 2012] is not a Mustang. Period. ROB CURTISGARNERVILLE, NEW YORK Nice-looking Hyundai Genesis on the cover. Why does it have a Mustang emblem on the grille? If this is what Ford wants to go with, at least get rid of the rice-rocket fog-light enclosures and move the fog lights into the grille. That's where Ol' Shel would have wanted them. JJ WESTVANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA No, Ford, no! Bad dog; no biscuit. Please, no. God, no. Aaarrrrggghh! Say it isn't so. Please, no. No. No. Aaaaaaaaaa (fading into the distance …). RICK BREWSTERAMITY, OREGON Though my impression of the Ford Evos concept from…

P. 13 Leasing Q&A Luxurious family car or sporty luxury car? P. 14 Park Place Don't have $3 million? Park some other place. P. 15 Most Wanted Bring 'em back alive. No reward for capture. P. 16 Oh, Deer! A rundown of where we run down deer. P. 17 SBW Seeks OK Taking the next step in electric power steering. ELECTRIC CARS HAVEN'T YET CAUGHT ON THE WAY THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO. WILL THEY EVER? Last October, Audi announced that it was canning its R8 e-tron electric supercar, in development for three years, before a single vehicle came to market. While the R8 e-tron certainly wasn't going to sell in huge volumes, its cancellation is just the latest setback in the electric car's slow—some might say false—start. From all the hoopla, it looked like 2012 would…

MY FIRST CAR DEAR LEADER KIM JONG-UN, as told to Bruce McCall My grampa, Kim Il-sung, gave me a clean, one-owner, never-raced Iso Rivolta for my sixth birthday, but the mechanic in charge of showing me how to drive it had to be shot by the Household Police for using the wrong bathroom, so it sat unused until a team could be sent to Italy to kidnap another Iso Rivolta mechanic. That was my first car, but it didn't count because of Edict No. 3476—what we of the Leading Cadre of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea call a "mulligan." My second first car was a Panhard Dyna confiscated from the French Embassy in 1957, but the tank was almost dry and it ran out of gas. When we got around to…

Depending on which metropolis you call home, parking is anything from a major annoyance to a genuine source of hardship and strife. That is, unless you're one of the lucky one-percenters who has so much money that other people's problems aren't really your problems. While most urban dwellers fret about finding an open parking space [see bottom of page], even one far from their front doors, the rich are loath to leave their megadollar supercars in a garage or entrust them to a valet (whom they'll have to tip, the cheapskates). Where there is need, there is someone to meet demand, and now some urban elite can simply ride in elevators—along with their cars—up to their apartments. The "Sky Porch" parking units in SINGAPORE'S HAMILTON SCOTTS APARTMENTS feature separate elevators for…

IT'S STRANGE AND SAD that a time of such rapid automotive innovation should produce a vehicle fleet ever more homogenous and bland. But compounding regulation drives up development costs, and humanity is falling out of love with the automobile. The people who design and engineer our preferred mode of transport are left serving a diverse number of masters, few of whom properly appreciate cars as machines of soul and romance. What follows is a rundown of the enemies of cars as we know and love them. —JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN Clarence Ditlow Executive director of the Center for Auto Safety since 1975, Ditlow will never see a car he deems "safe enough." Formed by Ralph Nader, the CAS has been at the forefront in pushing for vehicle recalls—some justified, others not—since 1970. We're…