Table of contents for July 2017 in Automobile

VOLUME 3 2 . NO. 4 . JULY 2017 I’M HARNESSED IN AND HANS-ED UP in the cockpit, cinched tightly in the Sparco seat. Under the hood is a custom-built, twinturbo 3.5-liter V-6 pushing 550-plus horsepower. There’s no windshield, webbing covers the sidewindow openings, and the entire vehicle is a giant tube frame wrapped in a fiberglass body with a suspension designed to handle relentlessly punishing terrain. The road ahead is a dirt path. This is either going to be fun or a colossal failure. “It’s a six-speed sequential transmission,” says a voice in my ear—or, more accurately, in my helmet—as the words of Jeff Proctor, chief driver and ringleader of the factory Honda Racing Ridgeline team, are piped in through a speaker. We’re about to light off toward the…

In a world where your mail, music, and phone fit in your pocket, there’s almost certainly room in there for art as well. Nothing has made that easier than Instagram, where artists the world over constantly share their creations. This month we’ve whittled down that endless crop to three creators who, through their originality and imagination, take us back to the adventure-rich days of childhood when we’d never be caught without a dream-inspiring toy car in our possession. Travelling Cars (@travellingcars) London-based Swiss photographer Kim Leuenberger has been to 23 countries in the last year alone, and her miniature vintage cars are always along for the ride. For the last seven years she’s been staging Bugs, Microbuses, Minis, and more in stunning outdoor tableaus. Often loaded up with roof racks…

BUGAT TI CHIRON / HONDA CL ARIT Y FUEL CELL 2017 BUGATTI CHIRON Its edges are elegantly chamfered and its form pleasantly rounded, but the slender slice of aluminum in the Bugatti Chiron’s footwell is more battle axe than scalpel. Squeezing the floor-mounted accelerator summons 16 cylinders, four turbochargers, and 1,500 metric horsepower (1,479 by U.S. measurement)— enough raw, roadgripping momentum to reach a higher top speed than an LMP1 race car at the famed Circuit de la Sarthe, home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But unlike those carbon-clad prototype racers, the Chiron has a sound system that can articulate a lubb-dubbing bass line at 18 hertz sugared with delicate top notes, thanks to its diamond-coated tweeters. Is this the future of speed, both lethal and luxurious all…

Along Exmoor National Park’s coastal bluffs, indigo waves fold over one another as they crawl onto gray sand beaches. Far in the distance, factory smoke stacks rise up from the shores of Wales. At the bottom of this steep country road sit Lynmouth and Lynton, small towns lighting up as the sun dips below the horizon. The rolling hills of lush greenery sit in stark contrast to the fluorescent orange sky as the all-new 2018 McLaren 720S bleeds slowly into the background, the fading light finding its way into every channel and outlet of the mid-engine supercar’s auburn body. Exmoor is an hour drive but a world away from McLaren’s headquarters in Woking, where I picked up the successor to the 650S. “The objective was to create something that went…

Michimasa Fujino sat up in bed one night in 1997, looked for the nearest piece of blank paper (the back of a page from his wall calendar), and drew the HondaJet before he forgot it. In his case, Honda’s “Power of Dreams” wasn’t just a marketing campaign. Indeed, Soichiro Honda was obsessed by those involuntary visions, going so far as calling the company’s first self-made motorcycle the Dream. Although Fujino admits he was awake when he had the idea for Honda’s first aircraft, at least he was in bed. As a typical Honda light bulb moment of engineering creativity, it’ll do fine. Like other Honda observers, you might wonder how a company that got it so right with the Super Cub, the S600 sports car, and the engine in Ayrton…

OVER THE COURSE OF THE automobile industry’s six score and 10 years, thousands of car brands have launched. Yet few have flourished, and today almost all have come and gone, save a handful. The car business is murder. Faced with this fact of perpetual marque death, the coldhearted realist brigade has been content through the years to tsk, tsk, tsk. But car lovers mourn each loss. For there can never be too many car brands. With so few automakers left and barriers to entry for startups as plentiful as they’ve ever been, the sacrosanct, irreplaceable nature of the brand only becomes more so. This is one reason we’re here to celebrate the new Aston Martin DB11 I just drove up and down the mountains outside of San Diego. I knew…

The 720S is a beautiful, sleek GT car, possibly the most aerodynamically exciting road car to come from the U.K. since the Jaguar E-type 56 years ago. My main criticism of volume-production McLarens—all of which until now used the same basic 3.8 liter V-8 engines and carbon-fiber monocoques—has been the gaping holes in the body sides required to provide enough cooling for the hot sections within the outer envelope. This new design has a beautifully simplified outer form and a complex internal-airflow management system that permits more power than any modern McLaren has enjoyed up to now. And the company achieved it without blatant air passages seen on the racing-oriented Ford GT or the road version of the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG003 GT. Most recent high-performance cars have had some…

Esteban Gutiérrez drove the car and is a big fan, but Vuhl has an even more important backer: the Mexican government. THE iPhone’s success might be traced to the fact it was not conceived by the usual phone guys but by a visionary unshackled by limitations or priorities repeated by industry regulars. Consider the Vuhl 05 the iPhone of track cars. Until now, loads of those cars were designed the British way. And although Great Britain has certainly given us plenty of track stars, the repetitive problem preventing them from admiration outside the U.K. is that it takes more than a virtuously sorted chassis and impressive steering to gain worldwide appeal. To find that thing in the track car business, we looked far outside the U.K. and discovered it in Mexico.…

Of all the post-war solutions to affordable, workingman’s transportation, the Citroën 2CV (known as the Deux Chevaux) is perhaps the most charismatic. Looking like something that might have been invented in a shade-tree mechanic’s garage outside of Paris, the 2CV is a rare sight on this side of the Atlantic. But in France— and throughout Europe and across the globe—the 2CV became an automotive icon, selling nearly 4 million examples over its lengthy, 52-year production run. The 2CV arrived when France was pulling itself back together following World War II, when it desperately needed a car to help put the nation back on the road to prosperity. Because much of France’s working class at the time relied on agriculture for their livelihoods, the 2CV was built to traverse the type…

JACQUES FLYNN LEAD DESIGNER FOR MAZDA DESIGN AMERICAS What was the reaction on a corporate level when you presented the design for the MX-5 RF because it was so radically different from the retractable hardtop? JF: It was positive. Very positive. I think it may have caught a few people off guard, but a lot of people pushed for an MX-5 coupe, inside and outside the company. It was well received, especially when they saw what the vision was and how it could be interpreted. We knew we were going to do some sort of retractable hardtop, and we jumped on this idea of blending these two worlds. The 911 Targa came out a little bit before, and that made conversations with corporate that much easier. We said, “Look how…

Volkswagen has made a great many product errors during its 79-year history, but it has been supported throughout nearly eight decades by two homerun vehicles and their derivatives: the original Porsche- and Hans Ledwinka-designed Type 1 KdF “Beetle” and Giorgetto Giugiaro’s most successful design, the Golf. Some of the offshoots, such as the Karmann Ghia sports models and the Type 2 Transporter, were fabulous successes in their own right. Others, such as the rear-engine 411 and 412, are best forgotten. Of all the mistakes, the most egregious was the Phaeton, a V-8 version of which we evaluated as part of a Four Seasons test. It was a big, comfortable car that was woefully unreliable and burdened with absolutely the wrong badge. Yet it was so smooth as a highway car…

KUDOS TO YOU FOR GATHERING TOGETHER 23 diverse vehicles, regardless of price, and for selecting six of them as your winners (May 2017). In spite of my bias, your team put together what I think is a pretty fair assessment of them all. I wouldn’t trade my 2016 Focus RS because it is, as stated, “one of the quickest street cars on any given road on any given day.” I find its utility exceptional and the creature comforts the same as the ST I sold to get the RS. The uncompromising freeway ride quality allows me to relive my Formula Ford racing days when commuting and pegs the smiles-per-mile gauge when the road turns challenging. Because the Focus RS will run with—or away from—many cars two to three times its…

“IF YOU SAY, ‘I THINK THERE’S A BETTER WAY WE COULD DO THIS,’ NO MATTER WHO IT OFFENDS, YOU LIVE WITH SOMEONE BEING PISSED OFF AND NOT PUTTING SOMEONE IN THE HOSPITAL.” Sera Trimble isn’t trying to scare me, but she does. By stomping a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder’s V-10 and flinging the wheel, she kicks out the tail abruptly in a plume of dust. I’m scoping her technique from the passenger seat before directing her in a video shoot, and despite the raucous, pebble-launching powerslides in a $300,000 car on a dirt road, the petite driver remains eerily calm. Trimble, it turns out, is one of the last humans on Earth to warrant concern. As one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stunt drivers, her skill set has navigated her through a…

BMW M2 VS. 1 SERIES M / CITROËN 2CV AUCTIONS / RICHARD PETTY FOUR SEASONS SPECIAL COMPARO When BMW enthusiasts crane their necks toward the night sky, their thoughts might often turn to coveted stars from the M galaxy. Whether it’s the E30 M3, Z3 M Coupe, E46 M3, or E39 M5, many longtime fans consider the cosmic formula of on-road performance, track athleticism, and a unique engine to be inviolable dogma. Then there’s the new BMW M2 and its predecessor, the 1 Series M. This terrible twosome managed to break free from the usual orbit, powered by inline-sixes that are not only turbocharged but are also based on engines in more “pedestrian” offerings such as the M235i and Z4 35is. Yet the limitedrun 1M sold out quickly in the…

AUCTIONS | GOODING & COMPANY AND RM SOTHEBY’S | AMELIA ISLAND, FLORIDA THE STORY BEHIND THE SALE: S/N WP0ZZZ99ZWS396005 ARCTIC SILVER OVER BLACK. 3.2-liter, 544-hp, DOHC flat-six. 6-speed manual transmission. Showing fewer than 5,000 miles on the odometer and appearing virtually as new. One of just 20 cars produced to satisfy FIA homologation requirements. The market has softened for many cars that have seen huge gains in recent years. For example, a 1973 Porsche 911 2.7 RS Touring offered by RM Sotheby’s didn’t sell with a low estimate of $550,000. That said, prices for the best-ofthe- breed continue to rise, as was the case here. Built to homologate the race car that would help Porsche score its 16th win at the fabled 24 Hours of Le Mans is this road-going…