Car and Driver June 2017

LIL’ ROMEO Give me a break! Not one of you would actually shell out $79K on the Alfa Romeo in hopes that the reliability issues uncovered in your comparison test [“A Sports-Sedan Tragicomedy,” March 2017] would magically disappear. Everyone knows that is just the tip of the iceberg of the kooky crap that will plague that car. Spongy brakes, cheap interior, and an electrical gremlin that has already reared its head? So are we to assume the BMW payroll checks have now been supplanted by those from Alfa? —Tyler Thomas Leawood, KS Just want to say I appreciate the inclusion of all the players (well, almost . . . Audi S4?). I’ve often thought previous contenders should still be compared to new entries; sure, the BMW won last time, but what if I…

We wanted to retest the Giulia Quadrifoglio on the Michelin Pilot Super Sports, but a matched set isn’t available in the Giulia’s staggered sizes. After discussing the matter with the experts at Tire Rack, we decided torun the Giulia on Continental’s ExtremeContact Sports, a new tire with Pilot Super Sport–like performance. We retested the same Giulia Quadrifoglio used in the comparo on the new rubber. On the road, the Continentals didn’t feel any different than the Pirellis— same sharp steering response, impressive grip, and supple ride. With the test equipment attached, the Alfa’s numbers revealed a slight drop in grip while braking, on the skidpad, and in the launch. Rolling on the Continentals, the Alfa’s numbers were more in line with the rest of the group, though the difference wasn’t enough…

ONCE UPON A RECENT TIME, Fiat Chrysler’s SRT division slapped a supercharger on a big V-8. The engineers huffed, the marketers puffed, and they blew the garage down with not one, but two production cars packing 707 horsepower and wearing Hellcat badges. Now there’s a third vehicle stuffed with the blown 6.2-liter, except it’s not a car but an all-wheel-drive Jeep that forgoes the Hellcat label. Even former Chrysler president Bob Lutz, fighter-jet pilot and father of the Viper, couldn’t have foreseen a drag-racing Grand Cherokee when he climbed one up a staircase during the model’s 1992 Detroit auto show debut. But things are different now. SUVs are more popular than they were in the ’90s, with some offering the acceleration of Porsches (and some, indeed, are actual Porsches). The 2018 Jeep…

ANATOMY OF A ROUNDABOUT •Engineers will argue about its exact definition, but a roundabout, generally speaking, is a circular roadway at an intersection designed to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents. U.S. roundabouts flow counterclockwise. •Roundabouts differ from traditional traffic circles in that entering traffic yields rather than stops at either a sign or a light. •Roundabouts have a diameter small enough to cause traffic to slow but are larger than a neighNeighborhood borhood traffic circle. IN AND AROUND THE vicinity of C/D headquarters, roundabouts are proliferating. This follows a national trend from the past two decades, particularly between 2005 and 2010. It has also led to an alltoo- common phenomenon, in which those who understand the key benefit of these European-style circles—expediting the flow of cars through an intersection— come up…

IN THE 1990s, baby boomers deep into their earning years and nostalgic for their imagined youths built up a bull market in GTOs, Mustangs, and ’Cudas. But today, the next generation of collectors—not counting the Ferrari and Porsche folk, who’ve practically become automotive asset managers— is coalescing around a core of a dozen vehicles that will be the substance of the classiccar market for the next decade or more. Like muscle cars before them, these cars defined high performance, engendering passion and acquisitive lust in a generation of America’s young people. These are Gen X vehicles for Gen X collectors, and they’re starting up the same appreciation curve that Chevelles have been climbing since the ’90s. Beginning with the assumptions that speed still matters, that fourdoors aren’t proven collectibles, that limited…

WITH THE POPULATION DENSITY of the world’s largest cities trending upward, Pasadena, California–based URBAN626 is looking to ease the daily commute to the office or public-transportation connector with its URB-E. The electric scooter’s lightweight aluminum frame folds up with one pull, providing easy portability and storage when not in use. Since sales started in 2015, URBAN626 has sold about 2700 URB-Es, with the bulk of buyers in coastal cities: New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We rode ours in Ann Arbor. Through the halls of our office, actually. Pricing for the base URB-E Sport starts at $899. Like cars, the URB-E is available in various trim levels. At the top is the performance- oriented Pro GT ($1999). The Pro ($1699) and the Pro GT feature pneumatic 10-inch tires, a large…