Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i Car and Driver

A few automakers are taking advantage of Earth’s vast aquatic playgrounds by making boat engines. Honda’s the big one, offeringmore than 20 flavors of outboard engines. Some are built for comfort, others for speed. A few are derived from the 1.5-liter in the previous-gen Fit; some others, the 2.4-liter in the seventh-gen Accord. AndHonda’smostpowerfulboat engine—a 250-hp3.6-liter V-6—isbasedona stroked version of the 3.5-liter found in the second-gen Odyssey. Tomake these engines work in the marine world, some big changes must happen. SUMP PUMP In a car, an engine sits with its crankshaft parallel to the ground and (normally) mates directly to a transmission. In its outboard life, the engine’s crank is perpendicular to the water and directly turns the prop shaft. With the engine rotated this way, Honda had to relocate…

To offer a stick shift in the 911, Porsche converted its dual-clutch automatic to work like a manual trans. It wasn’t a straightforward procedure, since the automatic lays its gears out in a way that would create a strange shift pattern for the manual if left alone [see below]. For instance, first gear is where you’d expect to find fourth and fourth is where sixth should be. To avoid confusion and allow this manual to retain a familiar shift pattern, Porsche developed MECOSA, which stands for mechanically converted shift actuator. MECOSA translates the conventional-shiftpattern commands made by the driver into the desired gear engagements within the transmission. Without it, the driver would have to use the aforementioned odd shift pattern. It’s a little mechanical ingenuity worth celebrating in this overwhelmingly…

If you aren’t yet convinced of the manual transmission’s superiority, perhaps a financial argument will win you over. When it comes to 20thcentury performance cars, manual-equipped examples generally retain more of their value than automatic ones [see below]. Plus, a five- or six-speed stick of that era easily outperforms its threeor four-speed slushbox alternative, and it’s a joy to wield. When it comes to the sports cars of the 2000s, many were sold with fastshifting but frustratingly jerky and dimwitted singleclutch automated manuals. If a car came with a choice between an automated manual and an actual one, you’ll usually find that the latter now costs more than the former on the used-car market. We didn’t see an appreciable difference in C7 Corvette prices based on transmission, but we suspect that’s…

After patiently waiting more than two decades for the Supra’s return, maybe you were so excited about the new one that you put money down to secure an early example. Possibly you even paid more than sticker price to be first. If this describes you, if you’re among the 4100 people in the U.S. who bought a 2020 Supra, then Toyota’s changes to the model for 2021 are going to hurt. First, a small bit of good news for you first-year buyers: There aren’t a lot of visible differences between the 2020 and 2021, so you’re not missing out there. But the new one does get aluminum braces that tie together the strut towers and core support, borrowed from the BMW Z4 M40i version of this car. It also sees…

For enthusiasts on a budget, the Honda Civic Si offers a whole lot of car for $26,155. We say “enthusiasts” because typical car shoppers won’t know what to do with the six-speed manual that comes on every Si. A manualonly car is a litmus test of sorts for car folks; three pedals weed out the poseurs. On the Civic spectrum, the Si aligns more closely with the base car than it does the Type R that occupies the lunatic fringe. The hottest Civic uses a 306-hp 2.0-liter, but the Si rocks a high-output version of the regular car’s turbocharged 1.5-liter four. For the money, we’re more than happy with the Si’s 205 horsepower and slick manual shifter. Now in the middle of its life cycle, the Civic Si gets a…

Cadillac has a sedan problem. In the last decade, it has built its share of great ones: the ATS, the CTS, the V models. But despite making up about half the product portfolio, cars accounted for only 18 percent of Cadillac’s sales in 2019. Meanwhile, customers are drawn to the XT4 and XT5 crossovers like moths to a flickering fluorescent light outside Costco The CT5 is the middle child in Cadillac’s restructured sedan lineup, in which three cars, clearly differentiated in size and price, replaced four sedans with more fluid boundaries. We enjoyed the 360-hp CT5-V but didn’t find much love for the base CT5 powered by GM’s 237-hp turbo 2.0-liter. The Premium Luxury trim we drove comes standard with the 2.0, but for $4850 more, you can option the…

In the summer of 2018, David Karpik of Kenai, Alaska, nosed Shelby Cobra chassis CSX2060 out of his garage and onto the road. The drive was a short one, the 289-cubic-inch V-8 rumbling as the car circled the block only a couple times. However, history was made: A Cobra had finally arrived in the northernmost state. According to club records, until Karpik, no one had ever registered a Cobra in Alaska. Ford had brought a GT40 up as part of its Total Performance promotional tour in the ’60s, but not a Cobra. CSX2060 could very well be the first example to turn a wheel on Alaskan tarmac. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Karpik restored a 1967 Mustang GTA fastback in his early teens with his father. He eventually sold that car…

If all goes as planned, right around the time this magazine arrives in your mailbox, an Atlas V-541 rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a new rover to Mars. Named Perseverance, this rover will look for ancient signs of life on the Red Planet, with the end goal being to determine whether humans could survive there. We’ll leave it to others to explain why man would want to live on Mars when we’ve got a perfectly good planet right here. We’re better equipped to answer more practical questions. Like: Why can’t we just launch a golf cart into space and drive it on Mars? What makes a rover different from a vehicle you’d use here on Earth? To help answer these questions, we talked to John Grant, a…

It’s been six months since I went to a car show. As of this writing, I have not Meetup-ed, fun-runned, spring-flinged, drive-in-ed, or car-cruised—at least not with anyone else—in a long dang time. The closest I’ve come to a Cars and Coffee event was sitting in a Hyundai Sonata with the car’s Sounds of Nature setting set to “Open-Air Café” while I drank a latte out of a Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing mug. I didn’t expect to miss car shows. I’m not an early riser and I hate washing my car. Since I’d never thought I was a car-show fan, I’ve been surprised to find myself daydreaming about standing around in a parking lot surrounded by raised scissor doors and polished chrome while a bunch of strangers tell…

Q: How much “too much” is enough?A: More. The Hulk when Abomination finally succumbs. Patrick Bateman splatting his ax into Paul Allen. Marshawn Lynch powering into the end zone after punching his way through another defensive line. That cathartic moment after you’ve let the beast inside run wild, and you look back at what you’ve wrought, and you see that it is good. That’s how we imagine BMW’s engineers feel lately. Even the regular 8-series can be had with up to 523 horses, 23 more than the E60 M5 that first stopped the general public in its tracks back in 2005. Five hundred horsepower? From a V-10? Wait. Back up. BMW made a V-10? And it revved to what? Back up further. Five hundred twentythree horsepower is more than double…

Porsche made us wait a year before producing a row-it-yourself version of its latest-generation 911, indicating that we live in a world where a sports car with a manual gearbox is no longer a priority. Sadly, we can see a future where something as pure and good as a new 911 with a stick shift might not be a thing. But we’ll embrace it while we still have it. It was definitely worth the wait. The 992-generation 911 may have silly electronic door handles [see “Overhandled,” page 18] and be larger and heavier than the last, but it remains a great driver’s car, made even better by an old-timey manual transmission. Porsche launched this 911 in 2019 exclusively with an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic. The once standard manual only recently became…

Buyer’s Choice Manual transmissions weren’t always an enthusiast niche. Our analysis of a few vehicle segments shows how stick-shift choices have dramatically dwindled, particularly within the past decade. Not Dead Yet Drivers who require a third pedal still have some options. For the 2020 model year, buyers can choose from more than 80 different vehicles that offer a manual transmission. Stalled Out The take rate for vehicles equipped with manuals has tanked in the past six years, giving up five points of already meager market share between 2014 and 2019. Source: IHS Markit…

To see if we could quantify the new Supra’s power gain, we took a 2020 and a 2021 model—both six-cylinders—to Livernois Motorsports & Engineering in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, for some back-to-back dyno pulls. Unlike an engine dynamometer, which measures torque at the flywheel, the chassis dyno we used for this test records output at the wheels. We put both Supras in the secret-handshake “dyno” mode and drove the rear wheels onto the machine’s rollers. Even with the power-sapping losses of the transmission and rear axle in play, we measured 345 horses and 409 pound-feet of torque at the wheels for the 2020. Both outputs are above Toyota’s 335-hp and 365-lb-ft ratings. And don’t go adding 15 percent to the dyno pulls to account for driveline losses like Dad did. Modern…

In addition to a new Boost Blue hue, the Type R sees revisions to its already superlative chassis for 2020. Compared with last year’s model, this one has rear bushings that are stiffer laterally, adaptive dampers that react 10 times faster, and lower-friction ball joints and updated bushings for the front struts. Honda fitted the front brakes with fade-resistant pads and new rotors featuring an aluminum hat, reducing unsprung mass by five pounds. These careful tweaks are hard to perceive without driving the new and old models back-to-back, but we did notice the firmer brake pedal, which Honda says has 17 percent less initial lost motion before the pads meet the rotors (and the Type R already had spectacular brake feel). Another detail that shows how much Honda sweats its…

Outside the U.S., the Suzuki Jimny is a 4x4 legend. With its squaredoff body and round headlights, the fourth-gen model appears to be the offspring of a Jeep Wrangler and a Suzuki Samurai and has the off-road chops to back up its looks. It’s a tiny little thing, about as long and wide as a Fiat 500 but nearly as tall as a Ford Edge. Underneath, there’s a full-length frame, live axles front and rear, and a two-speed transfer case. Light-effort recirculating-ball steering dulls the kickback from rough terrain, but it suffers from sloppy on-center feel on asphalt. The hard-plastic interior offers few amenities, but that suits the Jimny’s back-to-basics nature. The high seating position allows the driver to see all four corners well—important when you’re trying to place a…

How do you film a commercial for a car you don’t have? Ben Smith, the executive creative director for visual-effects company The Mill, encountered just that problem while working on an ad for the seventh-gen Chevrolet Corvette. With the real car unavailable, he improvised by shooting a C6 covered in LED markers. In post, CGI animators then used those markers as reference points to “reskin” the car to make it look like the C7. Though it never aired, the final product was flawless, and Smith got to thinking: What if we could streamline production by building something that animators could manipulate to look like any car they wanted? To make that idea a reality, Smith enlisted the help of special-effects company J.E.M. F/X and film-equipment providers Performance Filmworks and Keslow.…

NHTSA estimates that more than 36,000 people died in car crashes in the U.S. in 2019; that’s a death roughly every 15 minutes. The agency also attributes 94 percent of crashes to human error. Some experts believe bad road design may have something to do with that. We spoke with several traffic engineers to find out which common street designs force drivers to take risks that lead to accidents and ways to fix them. Limited Visibility THE PROBLEM: A lightly trafficked street intersects with a busy two-lane. The former has stop signs, but the latter does not, and people have parked their cars close to the intersection at every corner. A driver looking to turn right onto the busy street inches into the intersection, but the parked cars block his…

Driving a Tesla can be a revelation. It’s partly the way they look. Tesla pioneered building a dedicated EV that doesn’t seem intentionally ugly. Then there’s the performance. Anyone who has sat behind the wheel of a Tesla with Ludicrous or Insane acceleration modes knows that these are no weenie compliance cars. And there’s the perception that everyone else in the EV game builds appliances whereas Tesla builds status symbols, something entirely new. Setting up a Tesla, your brain—trained by a lifetime of expectation—wonders if having a dedicated control to adjust the side mirrors is actually necessary and if you’ll ever remember where the hazard-light button is when you need it (psst, it’s above you). But then once you start going, if you’re in a Model S or a Model 3,…

If you want to know why the manual transmission is as endangered as the northern white rhino, Arctic sea ice, and trust in government, the answer might just be attached to your steering wheel. The manual gearbox is being killed off by paddles. The, um, shift away from manual-equipped performance cars actually began when top-level race cars, particularly tech-forward F1 machines, got paddle shifters in the late 1980s and internationally famous race drivers started using them. That’s when it became not only acceptable but sexy for high-performance cars to have them—and for enthusiasts to embrace them. The tipping point came when Ferrari—the first F1 team to employ paddle shifters—abandoned manual transmissions in its production cars entirely by 2011, further solidifying paddle-shifted automatics as the enthusiast’s choice. Over time, paddle-shifted transmissions…

1984–87 Toyota Cressida Toyota used to sell oddball cars, so let’s take a moment to celebrate one of the oddest. How’s this sound? A big rear-wheel-drive Toyota luxury sedan with the contemporary Supra’s inline-six and a fivespeed manual transmission. Oh, what a feeling! 1988–91 BMW 735i Back when BMW made cars for hardcore enthusiasts, it offered a five-speed manual in its largest and most luxurious model, the 735i. The combination was as unexpected as it was awesome, but few buyers equated German luxury with a clutch pedal, so not many were sold. It’s the one we’d buy. 1990–93 Mercedes-Benz 300SL A 300SL cost about $90,000 in the early 1990s and carried all the refinement you’d expect of that price. What you might not expect is that Benz sold it with…

If you didn’t rush out and buy a Toyota Supra last year, that’s okay. You still can. But now you’ll have to face a real-life game of “Would You Rather?” when it comes to propulsion: Would you rather have the 382-hp 3.0-liter inline-six or save $8000 and go for the new 255-hp 2.0-liter inline-four? For $4000 per extra cylinder, maybe just buy the four, slap some Celica badges on the thing, and own it. Even down 127 horsepower on the six, the four-cylinder Supra is good fun. Its 295 pound-feet of torque boil up at 1550 rpm, helping the 2.0-liter feel brawny off the line. It’s helped by a curb weight some 170 pounds lighter than the six’s, a crash diet that prescribes both the cylinder removal and a smattering…

When we drove the new 4-series, we were behind the wheel of prototypes covered with camouflage stickers hiding the new gaping-maw kidney grille. Now that it’s shown its face, we find it—how can we put this? Let’s just say that no one will mistake this Bimmer for a 3-series if they see it head-on. [That’s an understatement, but having seen it only in photos, I’ll reserve judgment for now—Ed.] Said to be inspired by the front ends of pre–World War II models like the two-seat 328, the new grille will grace all of BMW’s latest 4-series coupes and four-door Gran Coupes. We drove near-production-ready versions of a rear-drive 430i and an all-wheel-drive M440i and found a lot to like. BMW tuned the 4-series for a sporty experience. Compared with the…

Venturing into a new segment is always a risky business. Remember the twoseat two-door T-top SUV class pioneered by the Suzuki X90? No? That’s because it failed miserably. But taking a chance occasionally pays off. Not quite a hatchback or a wagon or a traditional SUV, the GLA-class didn’t fit into any existing market category when it debuted for 2015. As a result, it carved out a new class. And now, for 2021, Benz is introducing a second generation of this crossover, a redesign that will arrive in the U.S. before the end of summer. The new GLA’s shape hews closely to its predecessor’s, but Mercedes smoothed the body panels, eliminating the first gen’s sharp cutlines. Benz kept the crossover’s overall length about the same, but it increased the height…