Table of contents for January 2018 in Automobile

so I’m well-acquainted with his considerable skills in front of the camera—“Inglourious Basterds,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Steve Jobs,” “Alien: Covenant.” But now, at Austin’s ultrafast Circuit of the Americas, I’m in the passenger seat of a Ferrari 488 GTB, Fassbender’s at the wheel, and I have no idea if the two-time Oscar nominee can drive. “I’ve never been in one of these before,” Fassbender says with a laugh as he guns out of the pits. “Only the 488 Challenge race car. So hang on!” By the time we’re howling out of Turn 2, I’m breathing easy. Fassbender is good. Smooth, relaxed, on line, and on the pace, he’s clearly learned a lot in his first year racing in the Ferrari Challenge. We talked more in the Ferrari team trailer.…

LUCERNE, Switzerland RR IT’S CHILLY AND gray, and reasonably hard rain is coming down, casting a pall over the otherwise lush, rugged beauty of this German-flavored slice of Switzerland. A terrible day to drive, a great day to be driven. I’m in the backseat of the all-new Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I roll down the double-glazed acoustic-glass window to get a quick blast of fresh Swiss air. A cacophony of wind and water rudely intrudes into the cabin. Enough of that. The metal window button is cold to the touch when I press it, and as the window hits the seal it’s as if a set of noise-canceling headphones has suctioned over the car. Time to recline the seat, let my head hit the pillow, and enjoy the magic carpet ride.…

SEASONS  Introduction A KOREAN LUXURY CAR. Does that sound a bit odd to your ear? It might. Most folks not so long ago looked a bit askance at Toyota for launching its Lexus brand. And you might not know it, but Hyundai has been selling luxury cars here for about eight years now—the Equus and the Genesis. The latter created a bit of buzz for the company’s premium efforts, and now its name has spawned its own brand and a new top-tier model, the G90. The 2017 Genesis G90’s exterior is, from most angles, a bit of a hodgepodge of other familiar full-size luxury sedans. BMW’s 7 Series and Mercedes-Benz’s S-Class definitely feature in its details, but the overall presence is more in line with the Lexus LS, which is…

FERRARI HAS BEEN throwing lavish parties and staging events all over the world in honor of its 70th anniversary, and as part of the celebration held a huge bash on its home turf in Maranello, Italy, last September. Brand luminaries including CEO Sergio Marchionne, Formula 1 race-car drivers past and present and Enzo Ferrari’s second son, Piero Ferrari, all turned out for the occasion. In conjunction with the event, RM Sotheby’s held its second Leggenda e Passione auction with an all-Ferrari catalog and some glitzy models at the top end of the sales list. By nearly any measurement, the sale was a success with a total of $75,154,443 brought in from 38 cars that sold. With a total of 42 cars in the auction, that equals a very strong 90…

WILD IDEA, BEAUTIFULLY EXECUTED I ADMIT, my initial intellectual reaction to the Infiniti Prototype 9 race car concept was, “That’s a really stupid idea. Why would Infiniti, a Japanese brand that didn’t exist in the era of Tojo’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, want to emulate the Nazi propaganda race cars of Hitler’s war machine?” But there it sat in front of The Lodge at Pebble Beach, an extraordinarily well-realized physical embodiment of an imaginary object of absolutely no actual relevance. But my first emotional reaction to the Prototype 9 was, “Wonderful!” This fantasy car is fun, it’s beautifully realized in every detail, and the horrible historical political aspects of its visual legacy are some 80 years behind us. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to create a suppositional “barn…

FIRST DRIVE BOLD, BRASH, AND BRAWNY—three words you’d be more likely to hear in reference to our commander in chief than the Lexus LS or its chief engineer, Toshio Asahi. But there’s no denying the boldness of Asahi’s description of the LS as the “definitive new-generation luxury car embodying Japanese tradition and culture.” Or the brashness in Lexus reminding us, “It is possible that no single automobile has, upon introduction, upended its category as decisively as the first Lexus LS did when it launched the luxury brand 28 years ago.” Lexus is certainly throwing—uncharacteristically, perhaps—real passion behind its latest projects, including both the new LS sedan and LC coupe, which share aspirations as well as architecture. That passion shows through most vividly in the LS’s cabin, not only through its…

IT’S NOT HYPERBOLE to call the Lane Motor Museum the world’s greatest collection of eccentric and oddball automobiles. Located in a warehouse district of southeastern Nashville inside what was once a Sunbeam Bread bakery, the Lane is delightfully free of glossy floors and garish automobilia. It’s a place where Tatras, Alpines, DKWs, and a cornucopia of other cars you’ve probably never heard of can shine. We’ve come to this glorious celebration of automotive obscura to sample the museum’s extensive collection of microcars. As part of its annual media drive, the Lane graciously allowed us behind the wheel of some of its strangest, rarest, and most interesting pint-sized wonders. To be clear, we’re not talking about the contemporary Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, or Smart Fortwo here. These cars will redefine your…

Plus “ROLEXES ARE INDESTRUCTIBLE,” says Hurley Haywood, one of America’s most successful endurance racers, as he stands on the terrace during a private reception at a mansion deep in the Hollywood Hills. Haywood pulls back his shirt cuff, gives a small smile—which, if you’ve spent any time with the laconic race car driver, you know a smile means high praise—and starts to tap on the watch’s sapphire crystal as lights from the Sunset Strip below cast a pinkish glow on his grin. “I’m rough on a watch. It’s got to withstand all of the rigors of racing, all the tax I put it through.” Haywood should know about the watch’s durability—he owns nearly every model of Rolex Daytona ever made, most of them hard won from time in a race…

I CIRCUIT MONT-TREMBLANT, QUEBEC, CANADA – I CAN SEE it in the distance, a black and green dragon waiting, hungry, practically drooling for a chance to swallow me whole and spit me out in tattered, racing-red shreds. Turn 8. And I’m blasting toward it so fast it feels like I’ve just exited a bazooka. Flat out in sixth gear, the mechanized fury of the turbocharged V-8 behind my ears pummeling me like a hailstorm inside the stripped-bare cockpit, the first in a row of LED redline indicators on the wheel alights—then another, then another. A rivulet of sweat plops into my eye, and I fight to blink away the sting. Still I’m flat on the gas. Then, within a single heartbeat, furious drama: I reach my braking marker, the dragon leaps…

IT WAS THE Woodstock of press drives, a car launch fit for a Swedish king or, better yet, a Volvo wagon nut just like me. To commemorate the launch of the V90, its new and large but chic and sleek carryall, we persuaded Volvo to let us drive one of the first examples on U.S. soil—actually former North American CEO Lex Kerssemakers’ personal car—from the company’s corporate U.S. headquarters (since 1964) in Rockleigh, New Jersey, to the site of Volvo’s first-ever and still very much under-construction U.S. factory in Ridgeville, South Carolina. Then back again. Close to 2,000 miles. The V90 marks not just a new Volvo wagon but also the most upscale one. It’s also a welcome re-staking of the wagon flag on American soil for the Swedish firm,…

VALENCIA, Spain WAKING UP THE 2019 Audi A8 invokes a brief but dazzling light show where photons pulse across hundreds of LED and OLED elements within the head and taillamps. The fleeting welcome sequence flourishes with two blue glows adjacent to night-piercing laser diodes, the pièce de résistance of a sophisticated lighting system that uses GPS data to illuminate the next bend before the driver turns the steering wheel. Is this the future of the übersedan? The lighting is but a fragment of the startlingly advanced features Audi hopes will help make the A8 into the gotta-have-it German four-door. Welcome to the (remarkably complex) machine. Fancy LEDs aside, the 2019 Audi A8’s prime push is its positioning as the first production car capable of Level 3 autonomy: conditional automation. Audi’s…

THINK OF SUBARU today and, besides the excellent BRZ sports car it codeveloped with Toyota, you most likely envision outdoorsy owners happily shuttling Fido around in a boxy, all-wheel-drive wagon. But long before the BRZ, there was another three-letter Subaru sports coupe: the SVX. Never heard of it? You’re forgiven. Subaru’s U.S. roots date to 1968, when the brand was established as a contrarian, would-be alternative to Volkswagen, Toyota, and Datsun. That’s when Malcolm Bricklin founded Subaru of America in the celebrated automotive hotbed of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Bricklin is the same wildcatter who later produced a gullwing-doored sports car bearing his name in New Brunswick, Canada, and later imported the much-vilified Yugo to these shores. By the early 1990s Subaru’s automotive business was taking off, and the automotive division…

PICTURE A RANGE ROVER, ready to show up anywhere dressed to kill, and you will have a pretty good idea of what Aether is all about. The Los Angeles-based company specializes in reshaping utilitarian outerwear into casually sophisticated clothing. Aether’s take on the classic waxed cotton jacket is a perfect example of its ethos. The ornamentation is gone. The contrasting brass zippers and buttons, the floppy and impractical belts all disposed of. What’s left is a jacket stripped to its essentials. Simplicity of line, thoughtful engineering, a nod to history. It’s not surprising that Aether cofounder Jonah Smith would be a Porsche guy. Smith and longtime business partner Palmer West traded one savage racket for another. As producers, the two have credits in major films, including “Requiem for a Dream,”…