Car and Driver October 2016

COVERED The front-cover fold-out advertisement in your July 2016 issue might be the most irritating thing ever. Well, right behind left-lane squatters and check writers in the grocery store. Keep up the good work otherwise. —Darren DuKate St. Louis, MO The 2017 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport is not simply the best Corvette ever, it is the best f**king car General Motors has ever made. —Tom Nelson Somers, WI Wouldn’t fit on the cover—Ed. FONT OF DESIGN Again with a design change [“Gleaming the Cube,” July 2016]? Looks like you went with the ADHD theme. You have to be the most insecure periodical on the market. Would you like me to send you a Car and Driver from the 1980s to remind you what a carenthusiast magazine should look like? —David Orlins Muscatine, IA Talk about presentation. The new spider charts are a…

In Atkinson-cycle operation, a cylinder’s intake valves remain open after the piston has passed bottom dead center, allowing a portion of the intake charge to be pushed back into the manifold before the valves close. This makes the power stroke longer than the effective compression stroke, and, compared with an engine running the conventional Otto cycle, a greater portion of the energy released during combustion is converted into torque. This is not to say that more torque is generated, however. The Atkinson cycle raises efficiency but reduces peak output because it reduces the amount of air available for combustion. The Atkinson cycle is commonly applied to hybrid powertrains where efficiency is king and an electric motor can compensate for lost low-end torque. Atkinsoncapable engines use variable valve timing to switch between…

1952–2016 For 32 years, veteran shooter Aaron Kiley was C/D’s “house photographer,” outlasting four editors and eight art directors. He photographed more than 1500 road tests and was responsible for more than 85 covers. He said he spent “half a lifetime waiting in the bushes on the outsides of corners, trying to capture cornering and drifting action,” which led to innumerable discussions with agitated cops. It is fair to say that, in the 1990s in particular, the look of C/D was largely of Aaron’s making. Once, in response to an assignment to “put something interesting” in the bed of a Subaru Baja, he rented two tigers. On June 22, Kiley was a student in a glider that crashed in the French Alps, near Authon. His instructor sustained serious injuries but survived. Aaron…

I loved your Game of Life: Chrysler Edition. I worked at Chrysler from 1976 to 1985, and I got to experience part of the game firsthand. What you should really do is take a look at all the companies that have been left to die while Jeep moved on to new owners—Willys, Kaiser Motors, American Motors, Renault, Chrysler, DaimlerChrysler, and Chrysler Group LLC. Jeep just keeps growing, but somehow its owners always go bankrupt or are acquired by other companies. Perhaps Bantam laid a curse on Jeep after the U.S. government took Bantam’s design and gave it to Willys? Is FCA next? —John German Ann Arbor, MI Hey, aren’t you the guy who discovered VW’s cheating?—Ed.…

IT’S HANDY FOR CADILLAC that the name of its latest concept car, Escala (or “scale” in Spanish), sounds a lot like Escalade. There’s a nice link there to the brand’s best-selling SUV, plus it slides off the tongue more easily than, say, CT8, which is what the Escala might be called in the very likely event that some version of it reaches production. This concept, which made its debut at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August, is the latest in a string of Cadillac show cars (see Ciel and Elmiraj) hinting at a large flagship to compete with luxury icons such as the Mercedes-Benz S-class and the BMW 7-series. The Escala’s dimensions confirm those targets and would make it the biggest car in Cadillac’s stable. The brand’s upcoming twin-turbo 4.2-liter DOHC…

YOUR VEHICLE’S TIRES are rolling kick drums. Keith Moon played two; your car plays four. Expansion joints, potholes, and heaves pound the rubber, which compresses the air inside and transmits hollow thuds to the cabin. As cars get quieter, engineers are working to stifle the drumbeat of tire impacts. Their current favored method is polyurethane insulation glued around the tire’s inner liner. These acoustically insulated tires have stealthily spread through the market to the point that they are now offered by all the major tire manufacturers and come installed from the factory on several high-end luxury vehicles, including those hallmarks of tranquility, the Mercedes-Maybach S600 and the Tesla Model S. Tire manufacturers see big potential for the technology as electrification silences powertrains, making tires one of the most obvious sources of sound…