Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i MotorTrend

One year has passed since I sat down to pen a column for our previous annual Future Cars issue. So much has happened since then. The biggest news was we awarded not one but two of our Golden Caliper trophies to electric vehicles. The Rivian R1T captured our 2022 Truck of the Year honors, and the Lucid Air won our 2022 Car of the Year award. Our 2022 SUV of the Year, the Genesis GV70, will be available as an EV soon, as well. The Hyundai Ioniq 5—a real stunner—has taken over Los Angeles. At one point we considered creating an EV of the Year award, but we resisted by arguing (correctly) with ourselves that the entire industry is going electric. It’s InEVitable. The future is plugged in, and sooner…

The car you see here—the RML Short Wheelbase—is a strange concoction of Ferrari 550 Maranello and the stunning 1959 250 GT Berlinetta Short Wheelbase, or 250 SWB as it’s commonly known. It’s built by RML, a company based in Northamptonshire, England, and costs $1.6 million. RML will create just 30 examples, and you might think this is a pastiche designed to separate millions of dollars from the rich and stupid. However, RML’s history and reputation give its SWB instant credibility. The story began with Arthur Mallock, a prolific hill-climb driver and racer in the 1940s and ’50s who introduced the Mallock U2 special in 1958. A strong, stiff, lightweight spaceframe chassis, it was affordable for any enthusiast. The story continued with Arthur’s son, Ray Mallock, father of Michael—RML’s boss today—and…

I ’ve just learned it’s not entirely our fault, as Homo sapiens, that we cause 95 percent of car wrecks. That’s because we haven’t evolved the physiological ability to both see far enough ahead and process visual data sufficiently to eliminate “accidents.” I learned this when a California company called Neural Propulsion Systems (NPS) unveiled its AtomicSense Platform sensor fusion product, which it says can sense and interpret enough data to prevent crashes. NPS wrote a paper theorizing that perceiving the environment far enough, clear enough, and early enough to eliminate roadway deaths (that is, those from avoidable crashes) requires a data acquisition and processing rate of 100 terabits per second—that’s 10 million times the sensory data rate flowing from your eyes to your brain when you’re not drunk or…

We go into every comparison test with an open mind, but in this matchup between Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 and Toyota’s newer bZ4X, the Hyundai was the heavy favorite. After all, it already won a comparison test against its corporate cousin, Kia’s slick EV6, and it’s our top pick among electric SUVs. Turns out we were both right and wrong: Right about which EV would win but wrong about the reasons why. What we found were two exceptionally useful electric cars with their own distinct strengths. The Ioniq 5 is a talented and stylish EV and the first vehicle from Hyundai’s all-electric Ioniq subbrand. Although the bZ4X is Toyota’s first modern-day battery electric vehicle, Toyota introduced an electric RAV4 back in 1997 and has been selling the Mirai FCEV (an electric…

The most impressive new car I’ve driven so far this year? The XPeng P7. No, I’d never heard of XPeng or its P7 sedan until a few months ago, either. To be clear, the XPeng P7 isn’t a world beater in terms of its design, performance, or powertrain technology. It’s merely an accomplished EV—quick and smooth, quiet and comfortable, handsome in the Tesla Model S fashion but with a more luxurious interior and similar levels of tech. It would be right at home right now in any American driveway, with no excuses needed. And that’s what makes the XPeng P7 so impressive. You see, the P7, which made its debut at the 2019 Shanghai auto show, is the second car from the automaker, which has only existed for eight years.…

MotorTrend contributor Jethro Bovingdon has lived out some epic car-enthusiast dreams in his 20-plus-year career as an automotive journalist, but his role as a co-host of Top Gear America beats them all. OK, maybe not every single moment—his description of driving the MTM Bimoto Audi TT at full speed on an autobahn makes your neck hair stand up—but as we chatted recently about the new Top Gear America Season 2 on MotorTrend+, we asked him: Is this the best job you’ve ever had? “Yeah, it is,” he said. “And you know what? The funny thing is, I wouldn’t have thought it would be before I started.” He made this observation near the end of our conversation, after we had asked what it’s like to work with fellow hosts Dax Shepard…

Yes, you read that right. Hertz is going to rent a 900-plus-hp Mustang GT500 to just about anyone who can swing the rental fee. We took the first Hertz Ford Shelby Mustang GT500-H for a quick drive to find out whether that’s a good idea. There’s at least precedent for this. Hertz and Shelby first teamed up in 1966 with the GT350-H, which was tuned up to 306 hp instead of 271 hp, a 13 percent increase. When you think about it that way, the 18-ish percent increase in power between a stock 2022 GT500 and a Hertz Shelby GT500-H seems fairly reasonable … until you remember we’re talking about more than 900 horsepower. If we’re honest, the GT500 didn’t need more power, but that’s kind of Shelby’s thing. A…

VinFast is more than just a name. “Vin” denotes its place as part of Vingroup, Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate. “Fast” is appropriate given the speed with which the fledgling automaker is working to establish itself as a global player, with plans to sell electric SUVs in the U.S. later this year and build EVs and batteries in North Carolina in July 2024. U.S. sales are to begin with the 2023 VinFast VF 8 two-row midsize SUV in November with a starting price of $41,900, not counting the monthly charge of $35–$110 to lease the battery, depending on the subscription plan. The three-row VinFast VF 9 will follow a month later with a starting price of $56,700 plus $44–$160 per month for the battery. In 2024 buyers will have the option…

The writing’s been on the wall for 122 years. Smitten by his first drive in an early EV back in 1900, Charles Rolls enthused: “The electric vehicle is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration, and they should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.” What better time than the 21st century for his namesake luxury marque to jump to the inevitable conclusion? The Spectre, Rolls-Royce’s first fully electric production vehicle, won’t be ready for prime time until late 2023. But the carmaker granted us early access to a development vehicle, lifting the veil on what it says is the company’s most important milestone since Rolls met Henry Royce in 1904. Piggybacking onto the vehicle’s cold-weather testing process in Arjeplog, Sweden—an industry winter evaluation…

For the first time ever, Porsche is offering a dedicated Lightweight package for its 911 Turbo S, a kit that the company says saves about 65 pounds—for $10,340. But does the added lightness substantially improve the already mind-boggling performance? The package includes thinner glass, one-piece carbon-fiber seats, a sport exhaust, and a PASM adaptive suspension that lowers the car by 0.4 inch. Porsche also deletes the rear seats, some insulation and sound-deadening material, and even the quilted seat and door panel inserts. (Also, you can’t get heated seats. Sorry if you have a cold tuchus.) This boils down to $156.66 per pound of weight reduction. Our example also featured the $3,890 carbon-fiber roof that saves 2 more pounds, and it weighed a relatively svelte 3,550 pounds overall. We previously tested…

“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it,” Ray Bradbury wrote. “Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.” The dystopian view from Bradbury’s crow’s nest in the 1980s very well may have made it easy to imagine an automotive world that resembled today’s reality: electric propulsion, advancements in autonomous driving, and an industry-wide arms race to pack new vehicles with as much comfort, convenience, and entertainment tech as possible. We’re faced with more than ever, but is it better? That depends on what matters to your automotive…

Several years ago, Nissan’s chief product specialist for the GT-R and Z, Hiroshi Tamura, bought an R32 Skyline GT-R souped up to about 1,000 horsepower. He made it his own by detuning it to 600 because sending more than 150 horsepower to each driven wheel simply overwhelmed the tire technology of the time and made the car completely unruly. As he did with his R32, Tamura aimed to make the 2023 Nissan Z more of a willing dance partner. This overarching philosophy drove many decisions that now promise to draw distinctions between the significantly revised Z34 and its archrival, the J29 Toyota GR Supra. The lineup encompasses Sport and Performance trims, both being rear drive. With just two wheels to deliver power, the 400 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque…