Car and Driver June 2016

Sic your dogs on us at: editors@caranddriver.com or join the discussion at: backfires.caranddriver.com FOCUSIN’ That Ford Focus RS on the March cover reminds me of the gal at work who had all the plastic surgery; I’m not sure if I like it, but I can’t stop looking. TOM PAGE WINCHESTER, OREGON Kudos to Ford for giving the green light to import the 350-hp four-wheel-drive Focus into America [“High-Plain Drifter,” March 2016]. Love the styling and the performance, a true pocket rocket. Then I flipped to page 41 and noticed the deal breaker: a photo of the steering wheel and dashboard. Yuck, yuck, yuck. I could never cough up $40K and be happy sitting behind that cluttered and ugly dashboard every day. DAVE SPREITZER NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA Finally, the Ford Focus RS hatchback is going to be sold in the…

I’m a professional comedian (well, I’m an eighth-grade English teacher, but my students think I’m hilarious; just ask me), and I’ve always believed that the best joke is the unexpected joke. I encountered just such a joke in the Upfront section of the March 2016 issue. I was minding my own business—doing my business—just reading Jared Gall’s coverage of the Lexus LC500 when I happened upon the caption, which I don’t know if Gall wrote, for the photo of the LC’s inside door handles. “The door handles have no bezels.” How interesting and beautiful, I thought. “They emerge from the forehead of Worf, son of Mogh . . . ” Bam! I was so surprised by the reference in the (accurate) description that I laughed out loud. So loud, in…

* GODSPEED YOU! GREEN EMPEROR KAISER ROLL — A so-called one-and-a-quarterton truck, the original Kaiser Jeep M715 was built for the armed services from 1967 to 1969. It served as an ambulance and a troop carrier. MOAB, UTAH, WITH its geologically stunning slickrock, is a special place for the Jeep faithful and an idyllic playground for the brand’s 4x4s. It’s also the site of the Easter Jeep Safari, an annual off-roading celebration held around the holiday weekend that draws thousands of four-wheelers to this desert outpost. While the event isn’t exclusive to Jeeps, the brand’s enthusiasm for it has resulted in the creation of some shut-up-and-takemy-money concepts over the years [see sidebar, page 018]. For this year’s shindig, which marked Jeep’s 75th anniversary and the Safari’s 50th, Jeep shipped out an array…

100 MILLION Lines of code in a Bentayga, the vast majority of which are written in proprietary computer languages. The Bentayga’s product-line director tells us that refining and debugging the software in a modern car can be the biggest task facing its developers 90 Number of control modules, or computers, communicating across the Bentayga’s local area network. 110 Approximate weight, in pounds, of the wiring in a Bentayga. For comparison, Painless Performance, a company that builds wiring harnesses for restorations, tells us that a barebones muscle car’s harness weighs less than 10 pounds. ALMOST AS MUCH AS FUEL, electronic signals are the lifeblood of a modern vehicle. And the Bentley Bentayga is a poster child for just how complex today’s electrical systems can be. If it doesn’t have the most-elaborate wiring in the civilian ground-bound vehicular…

THIS MAGAZINE’S history with Ralph Nader could charitably be described as contentious. The safety crusader was a regular punching bag for our columnists for the better part of our existence. But we’re men and women enough to stand here today and admit that there’s a chance we got a little carried away, and maybe the guy chalked up some worthwhile accomplishments in his career. Whether the American Museum of Tort Law, recently opened in Nader’s birthplace of Winsted, Connecticut, is one of those, well, that remains to be seen. A legal museum sounds about as exciting as a Museum of Unspoken Petty Criticisms. (Marquee display: June 21, 1987, Man takes more than his fair share of space in the office fridge . . . again.) But our curiosity was piqued. We…

REAR SIDE AIRBAGS 17% Full-length curtain airbags are standard on every car save for the Jeep Wrangler and a few exotic coupes. But rear side thorax airbags are standard on only 46 models, and they’re standalone options on certain Audis and Mercedes. The E- and S-class coupes are the only two-doors on sale that offer this protection for rear passengers. BLIND-SPOT MONITORING 59% Blind-spot monitoring is increasingly paired with rear crosstraffic alert, which scans for vehicles moving perpendicular to the rear of a vehicle backing out of a parking space. Some vehicles, such as Jaguars and Land Rovers, alert the driver to particularly fastmoving vehicles in either lane by rapidly flashing a warning light. BACKUP CAMERAS 93% By 2018, backup cameras will be required on every new car. At that point, Lamborghini won’t be able…