AutomobileDecember 2015的目錄

I GRIP THE STEERING WHEEL A LITTLE tighter, my knuckles whitening. It’s just past dawn on the Monterey Peninsula, and the usual shroud of fog cloaks the coastline. Out to my right the Pacific Ocean is down there somewhere. In front of me is one of America’s most storied stretches of road—California’s Highway 1. Pea-soup visibility is not going to stop me from attacking it in the mighty Mercedes-AMG GT S, but I’m on high alert. Thankfully traffic is extremely light, and I unleash the GT S on set after set of Highway 1’s squiggly ribbons of road; by now, I’ve been in Mercedes-AMG’s new beast for several hundred miles on the way up to and during the annual Pebble Beach car week festivities. It has proven to be a…

TAXI! As the epicenter of American taxi culture, New York City deserves a better cab. The aged Crown Vic is terrible yet still better than the swarms of cramped hybrids that have largely replaced it, while the Nissan NV200, the “taxi of tomorrow” expected to reign over the city’s taxi stands, has aroused opposition from all directions. NYC needs something swanky yet efficient, such as London’s Metrocab, an all-new, range-extended EV from across the pond that’s being tested now. Designed by British firms Frazer-Nash Research and Ecotive Limited, the Metrocab is meant to look like a traditional London hackney carriage. It’s hulking and ugly, but it somehow manages to look cool. And you don’t need to paint the thing yellow to know it’s a taxi. The Metrocab is more than…

Yes, that’s the name. But in truth this rural hamlet 40 minutes northwest of Ann Arbor is far too inviting to deserve its demonic moniker. Here you find leafy two-lanes, weathered hardware stores and laid-back pubs, hidden swimming holes, and some of the best—check that, the only—twisting, undulating driving roads amid hundreds of miles of otherwise pancake-flat farmland. On the other hand, after shaking down the long-awaited 2016 Chevrolet Camaro here, I began to think the town’s name couldn’t have been more fitting. This all-new ponycar is hot. Camaro fans and holdouts alike, prepare to throw out everything you think you know about Chevy’s two-door sport coupe. The sixth-generation version represents a paradigm shift at the model’s basic core. Previous Camaros have tended to be broad, not lean, and muscular…

While Carroll Shelby’s name rightly belongs before GT350, you’d be hard pressed to find another person more instrumental in bringing the super Mustangs to life than Chuck Cantwell. As project engineer for the GT350 program, he was the driving force behind the design and production of the street and track-attacking R model. He was even a GT350R test driver for a while. “That became the fun part of my job,” he said. No kidding. We caught up with Cantwell, 81, during this year’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, which honored the GT350’s 50th anniversary. “The object of the GT350 program was to beat the Corvettes in SCCA racing,” Cantwell explained. “So we had to first get a car the SCCA would accept as a sports car.” That would be the GT350R,…

The Dawn is the best-looking car by Rolls-Royce since the iconic British firm came under German ownership a dozen years ago. That’s our opinion, yes, but if reactions of the guests who were treated to a glimpse of a preproduction example of this elegant 2016 convertible at the Pebble Beach Concours in August are any indication, it’s a simple, objective fact as well. It has been more than eight decades since the rugged and reliable Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost was proclaimed by the automaker to be “The Best Car in the World.” Since those glorious days, there followed many splendid Rolls-Royces but also some truly dismal ones, notably in the Great Depression era. And when BMW and Volkswagen were ferociously vying to acquire the R-R and Bentley brands in 1998, almost…

When the reboot of the classic Mini Cooper first arrived on our shores in 2002, the sharp-handling, cute-looking German-owned Brit wowed us and won over a legion of loyal fans. Despite relatively high pricing, a wicked harsh ride, and mixed reliability, it proved that people—even Americans—will happily pay more for a fun-to-drive small car with a big personality. But times have changed, and the third generation of the modern Mini now faces more competition than ever from a plethora of premium small cars. In a bid to be taken more seriously, the new Minis are bigger and better-equipped, roll on revamped underpinnings, and are powered by a new engine family. We wondered if the latest Mini had become a real car we’d want to live with every day and if…

Before we consider the new 2016 BMW 7 Series, let’s clear the soft-hided elephant from the room: the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. BMW must be as tired of hearing about the S-Class as we are of talking about it. But that’s what happens when a car sets a new benchmark and locks up four in 10 U.S. buyers in its segment. The lame-duck 2015 7 Series has hung on to a distant second place, but that’s small consolation given that it hasn’t actually outsold the Mercedes since designer Chris Bangle’s bustle-backed 7 Series managed the deed in 2005. (Yet another argument for the rehabilitation of Bangle’s reputation.) The redesigned 7 Series seems expressly designed to change the conversation. Whereas the S-Class has everyone blathering about interior design and semi-autonomous cruising, BMW wants…

Lest we all forget amid the excitement over the all-new XE sport sedan or the latest hotdog variant of the F-Type, the XF is the car that saved Jaguar. It debuted in 2007, just as the automaker was leaving the orbit of Ford Motor Company, and marked a much-needed break with the past. With a combination of new-age style, potent engines, and a just-so blend of sport and luxury, the XF became Jaguar’s best-seller and proved the brand had something to offer even in a segment dominated by BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Now a re-energized Jaguar has come full circle and is introducing an all-new 2016 XF. Distilled to a single word, the directive for the new 2016 XF was “more.” More tech, more efficiency, more space, more fun to drive.…

THANKFULLY, NO, MAZDA DIDN’T SCREW IT UP. ITS NEW CUP CAR MARRIES CONTEMPORARY SOPHISTICATION WITH THE HONESTY OF THE ORIGINAL MIATA. Inside the cockpit of the all-new MX-5 Miata Global Cup car, I cinch down the shoulder harnesses until I have trouble breathing. I feel the usual cocktail of warring emotions that accompany the first drive of an unfamiliar race car. Exhilaration. Wariness. Anticipation. Anxiety. But as I try to focus on the racetrack in front of me, one thought flashes repeatedly in my mind like an annoying Internet pop-up ad. I sure hope Mazda hasn’t screwed this up. Ever since Mazda introduced the Miata for 1990, the MX-5 has been the sports car for the masses, beloved for its simplicity, purity, affordability, and fundamental goodness. Nearly a million MX-5s…

THE INFO YEARS PRODUCED: 1993-1995 I NUMBER SOLD: 13,879 I ORIGINAL PRICE: $32,500 (NADA) I VALUE TODAY: $16,150 (NADA AVG) You make allowances when you drive an old car. You tell yourself, “Two-hundred horsepower was a big deal back then.” Or you say, “Most cars didn’t have disc brakes in those days.” Or you think, “The handling’s not bad, considering the hard tires and the solid rear axle.” Newer is almost always better. Or so I believed until I spent a long weekend in a 1995 Mazda RX-7. Every time I buried the throttle or leaned on the suspension, a question buzzed in my head as insistently as the car’s free-revving rotary engine: “Where can I buy one?” Slap a Monroney sticker on the thirdgeneration Mazda RX-7, and it would…

As I walked onto the Pebble Beach Concours field that Sunday morning in August with old friend Rex Parker, one of the first cars we came to was the eventual Best of Show winner, this seriously overrestored, reproportioned, and rebodied “1924” Isotta Fraschini 8A. Parker remarked, “This shows you should never try to mix Italian and German design sensibilities.” Actually, the Teutonic sensibility in this case was Swiss. I’ve never seen a single Swiss coachbuilder’s design with any global merit. They’re always stodgy,   awkward cars, if beautifully made in the clockmaking tradition of accurate, precise metalworking. Mention a Graber Alvis and you’re discussing seriously innovative engineering—Alvis had independent front suspension and the world’s first all-synchromesh gearbox in the early 1930s—and some dazzling British coachwork as well. But once Graber…

JAGUAR LIGHTWEIGHT E-TYPE, WHAT A refreshing article! (“Lightness Dawns Again,” October 2015.) In these days of Mercedes cars without a three-pointed star on the hood, Rolls-Royces with shrinking grilles, Jaguars without the Leaper ornament on the front of the car, Bentley SUVs, and touchscreen computers everywhere, it’s nice to see that someone can still build a real car with some passion and some soul—even if it is a very limited production run. MARK D. PICKERILL Moss Landing, California JAGUAR AWESOMESAUCE Jaguar’s Lightweight E-type is awesomesauce. Unfortunately, the command of the English language shown by Jaguar Heritage’s Kev Riches is not. As your article states, Riches’ view is that a replica is a copy of someone else’s design, and so this continuation model of the Lightweight is not a replica. However,…

Don’t let the thicket of engineers standing around the Shelby GT350 fool you. Though they might look like scientists, they are really just Mustang guys at heart. Two of them even admit to us that they just recently stopped driving their 1980s-era Mustang 5.0s, and then only because both cars had finally dissolved into rust after 300,000 miles. But Mustang guys are not necessarily just young and dumb these days, an insight that comes to us as the Shelby GT350 shreds the straightaway here at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. We’re paying special attention because the shift lights in the head-up instrument display are twinkling as the Voodoo V-8 engine approaches 8,250 rpm, which is a pretty scientific number. This is the coolest engine we’ve driven in a long time, a…

What does James Bond drive? An Aston Martin, of course. That the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books actually featured a Bentley is inconsequential, as is the fact that the 24-film franchise has had the spy in everything from an AMC Hornet to a Toyota 2000GT. James Bond drives an Aston Martin, and that’s that. The torrid affair between the British institutions—which began in 1959 when Bond drove an Aston Martin DB3 in the book “Goldfinger” and was solidified five years later when the film version debuted with Sean Connery behind the wheel of a DB5—is fierier than ever. So on the eve of the release of “Spectre,” the latest film in the series, we decided to celebrate the inexorable bond between the man and his machines at Aston Martin’s…

1972 Datsun 510 sedan 2016 Nissan Maxima SR Is the all-new Maxima anything like its forefather, the Datsun 510? There’s no discernible tie between these two. One’s slim, the other’s bulky. One’s modest, the other’s outlandish. One says Datsun, the other says Nissan. Remarkably, this beige 1972 Datsun 510 sedan, a compact that helped launch the import market in America, is the progenitor of this big, brash, blue 2016 Nissan Maxima SR, the eighth installment of Nissan’s fullsize sedan. The Maxima has tried to stay on the sporty side of its typically stale segment for 35 years, but its sportiness has usually felt synthetic, not intrinsic like it did in the 510. The Datsun debuted Stateside in 1968 at the request of Yutaka Katayama, a corporate rebel banished from the…

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SE 3.5 Coupe Sold at $121,000 S/N 111.026.12.001787 GRAUBAU METALLIC (medium blue) over parchment leather interior. 230-hp, 3.5-liter OHV V-8; four-speed automatic transmission. Excellent paint with only slight cracking where the hood closes. Very good chrome. The parchment leather upholstery looks virtually new. The engine bay is clean but hardly concoursquality, with tired rubber and an incorrect battery. THE STORY BEHIND THE SALE: By 1969 the earlier “finback” Mercedes sedans were finally being replaced by the new W108/W109 chassis that featured clean, modern bodywork. Nevertheless, Mercedes-Benz continued building coupes and cabriolets on the former W111 chassis, thus preserving the elegant coachwork that had debuted in 1959 on the Mercedes 220 SE. These two-door W111 models were among the last hand-built Mercedes-Benz automobiles and remained in production until…