Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i Car and Driver

It’s not unusual for a car designer to enjoy seeing their creation in use, but the weekend of the Monterey Historics was a big one for Frank Lamberty, the man whose sketches and clay models brought the first Audi R8 to life. Like so many other automakers, Audi has a performance plan for the future that doesn’t leave room for gas-burning, naturally aspirated V-10 engines. Amid the golden hills of Monterey Car Week, Audi celebrated the final year of its supercar with a gathering of R8s, and racer Tom Kristensen set the pace for an honorary last lap around the freshly paved corners of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. While there will certainly be supercars to come wearing the Auto Union rings, the R8 as we know it has reached the…

SAY, ARE YOU HANDY WITH A WRENCH? Do you think the Ford F-150 Raptor would be a great truck if only it had a better suspension? Got about $25,000 of extra cash and a late-model Ford F-150? Well then, Factory Five Racing has the perfect project for you. The XTF, its newest kit, transforms a stock F-150 into something you could drive down to Ensenada and enter in the next Baja 1000. We’re not sure which class it would land in, but you’ll have plenty of time to research that while you’re figuring out what to do with a stock F-150 frame. Because you won’t be needing that anymore. Prior Factory Five offerings hewed to the time-honored kit-car practice of scavenging donor hardware from a production car to build something entirely…

A road trip that puts tires in all 48 contiguous states and hits 50 major U.S. landmarks was the perfect exclamation point to put at the end of our time with the CT5-V Blackwing. Our route followed the framework of a 13,699-mile itinerary designed by a data scientist in 2015 [see “Where’s Blackwing?,” page 58]. We figured we could get it done in about 30 days if we kept a steady supply of fresh drivers, so we sliced it into seven chunks, with keys handed off from one pilot to the next about every four days at various points around the country. Some staffers brought a spouse, a child, or a friend along for the ride, and all reveled in the cathartic healing of a road trip exploring the vastness…

The Toyota Technical Center Shimoyama, located in the lush mountains near the company’s Toyota City headquarters, began partial operations in 2019 and played a significant role in the development of the GR Corolla. Built at a cost of more than $2 billion, the 1608-acre site encompasses various test tracks. The headliner is its country-road handling course, a 3.3-mile roller coaster of a track inspired by Germany’s famed Nürburgring Nordschleife. Split into two lanes and incorporating pavement undulations for ride-quality testing, the course climbs, falls, and bends across 246 feet of elevation change and around some 32 corners. With blind switchbacks, sharp rises that can launch cars into the air, and fast, diving sweepers, it’s a challenging playground for chassis engineers. Towering catch fences keep vehicles on track in the event…

Medium-rare steak. Gooey-soft chocolate chip cookies. There are benefits to taking things off the heat before they’ve fully cooked. However, some items should absolutely not come out any earlier than they need to. This includes chicken, cake, and the 2023 Mercedes-AMG C43. Returning from its hiatus, the C43 now inhabits the skin of the latest-generation C-class. The shrunken-down S-class looks suit it, and the cabin is more what you would expect from a Mercedes that’s no longer the entry-level model. The center tunnel sits a little high, but there’s plenty of usable storage space, and the interior rarely feels cramped. The materials above the center console are quite nice, although there’s plenty of hard plastic below that waterline. The old C43’s six-cylinder is gone, and in its place is a…

Mercedes’s EQS sedan seeks to be the S-class of electric vehicles, but it feels alien and lifeless compared with the brand’s beloved flagship. The new-for-2023 plug-in-hybrid Mercedes-Benz S580e, however, steps confidently into the future while preserving the Sonderklasse’s past and does so with few compromises. The PHEV S-class pairs a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six with an electric motor. Exceeding its 46-mile EPA range estimate, it traveled 58 miles on electricity alone in our 75-mph range test—that’s greater than any other PHEV we’ve tested (unless you count the BMW i3 with a range extender; you shouldn’t). Of course, the electric EQS goes farther, but range anxiety remains an issue on long trips. The S580e avoids those worries by offering gas fill-ups along with DC fast-charging capability, a rarity among plug-in hybrids. Mercedes…

It’s weird how every Tom, Dave, and Harry claims to report on “real world” or “true” EV range, yet makes fundamental mistakes in methodology. Car and Driver is as much a culprit as others, vaguely hinting at secret calibration factors and other conspiracy-theory reasons on the part of some EV manufacturers. In range tests, C/D does not actually drive electric vehicles until they drop, instead relying on the car’s battery-charge indicator to indicate how much battery charge is left. This is a fundamental flaw because EV manufacturers leave some extra charge “in the tank” when the battery-charge or range indicator reads zero as a service to drivers so they don’t become stranded immediately at zero. But this amount left in the tank varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Unless you actually…

TO PARAPHRASE CHARLES DARWIN, EVOLVE OR DIE. That imperative applies to cars as well as animals and plants. Take the automotive species known as Corvette: In a bid to stay relevant, it branched off of its evolutionary tree for 2020 when the C8 generation sprouted an engine behind the seats and turned into something not unlike an Italian supercar. The C8 deepened its Ferrari-ness with the Z06 and its naturally aspirated flat-plane-crank V-8, an engine that yawps like it escaped from a Maranello dyno cell. Now comes the next evolution of the C8, the 2024 E-Ray, with a hybrid powertrain, all-wheel drive, and standard all-season tires that bring it ever closer to being a four-season supercar. And don’t worry about it trading away performance in the name of saving fuel;…

PAINTED LIKE A BULL’S-EYE IN THE BACK CORNER OF TOYOTA’S FACTORY IN MOTOMACHI, JAPAN, is a large turntable redirecting freshly minted GR Corollas (and foreign-market-only GR Yarises) onto an alignment rack, obviating the need to turn their steering wheels. It’s a seemingly simple procedure imposed by the assembly line’s compact layout. The aim is to minimize uneven loads on the new cars’ suspension bushings, thereby improving the precision of final chassis adjustments—uncanny attention to detail for a major manufacturer to impart on what are essentially hopped-up economy cars. But as racing-inspired driver’s cars, these limited-production hot hatchbacks have posed unprecedented challenges to Toyota’s traditional manufacturing methods. Propelled into being for the 2023 model year by former CEO and all-around car guy Akio Toyoda, the GR Corolla is the handiwork of…

On our second annual Smoky 600, you’ll drive Appalachia’s renowned roadways, stay at its finest luxurious hotels, and enjoy delicious local cuisine, and sample the region’s most famous export: Bourbon! Stretch your cars’ legs to the fullest at the iconic NCM Motorsports Park and explore the National Corvette Museum, home to iconic examples of the marque’s history and the world-famous “sinkhole” exhibit. Rally through Tennessee and Kentucky’s best backroads and wander their charming town squares. While this region’s roads are all exceptional, it wouldn’t be a trip to the Smokies without an early morning run down the Tail of the Dragon to the Cherohala Skyway, perhaps some of America’s most famous and legendary driving roads. Don’t miss this adventure of a lifetime to join Road & Track editors, special guests,…

If you have a quarter-mil burning a hole in your Balmains, your automotive choices have never been wider. From fortress-like super-SUVs to road-scraping supercars, there are more $200K-plus vehicles available now than at any time in history. Astonishingly, there are now twice as many Ferrari models as Buicks. But none of these prancing horses are as pretty or as purely intentioned as the new Ferrari Roma Spider. None capture the romance and myth of the front-engine V-12 cars of the ’60s like this louche convertible 2+2. In the Roma Spider, you are Marcello Mastroianni rolling up to Cinecittà, Anita Ekberg in the passenger’s seat. You’ll get no such dolce vita energy from an F8. Sure, the Roma has four fewer cylinders than the legendary 250s and 275s, but eights are…

The recipe for a commuter car is simple: one part efficiency, one part practicality, and two jiggers affordability, garnished with eye-catching styling. Since its inception, the Hyundai Kona has followed that basic formula, even going so far as to add some driving fun to the mix. For 2024, Hyundai redesigned the little runabout within the same tasty parameters. In most trims, the Kona gains 5.7 inches from nose to tail, and the price of the 2024 model starts nearly $2000 above the outgoing one. Even so, at $25,435 in the base SE trim, the Kona is still among the most affordable vehicles on the market. The ’24 Kona retains its two-box silhouette, but the split headlights are gone, replaced by a razor-thin daytime running light stretching the width of the…

Ford never intended to build a $300,000 Mustang, but upon seeing a clay model of the Mustang GT3 race car, the Blue Oval’s CEO decided the company needed to create a road car out of the competition-based model. The 2025 Mustang GTD is the culmination of that effort. Despite the two Mustang models sharing styling cues, the GTD is not simply a street-legal Mustang GT3. For instance, the roadgoing GTD forgoes the naturally aspirated V-8, dog-tooth gearbox, and tube frame of its racing inspiration. Instead, the upcoming flag-ship Mustang relies on a supercharged 5.2-liter V-8, a Tremec dual-clutch automatic transmission, and the same basic unibody underpinnings as its lesser four-cylinder EcoBoost and V-8 GT and Dark Horse kin. Still, the GTD cribs plenty of engineering concepts from the race car.…

The burrito artist issued a succinct two-word review of the 2023 Porsche 911 Sport Classic as we sat nearby. “Nice spec,” he said, nodding toward the haunchy machine we’d backed into a front-and-center parking spot. He had no idea how right he was, even though the editor in our head thought that “awesome,” “wicked,” or even “bitchin’” was more apt for the car’s heritage vibe. The vibe harks back to the 2010 911 Sport Classic and beyond. This new car combines that 997 special’s ghostly skunk stripes, double-bubble roof, and Carrera RS 2.7–style ducktail spoiler with similar gray paint, an indented hood from the air-cooled era, Fuchs-inspired wheels, and chunky Porsche Turbo tires and fenders, but without air intakes marring their flanks. Power comes from the twin-turbocharged 3.7-liter flat-six found…

While Toyota’s World Rally Championship–spec Yaris race car features a hybridized turbo four-cylinder, the production GR Corolla and GR Yaris are powered by a turbo three that produces 300 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque in the Corolla’s top Morizo tune. Assembled on a separate production line near the company’s Shimoyama testing complex, this G16E-GTS engine receives performance-focused attention, including the matching of its cast-aluminum pistons by weight. Toyota says it chose the 1.6-liter three-cylinder for the configuration’s more favorable torque curve and reduced exhaust back pressure compared with an inline-four. Displacement is 1618 cubic centimeters for eligibility in the WRC2 (Rally2) class, an affordable support series in which the GR Corolla was originally designed to compete. A prototype of Toyota’s Rally2-spec customer race car, which the company hinted at…

The Dodge Hornet R/T is freighted with expectations. In the post-Challenger world, we’re all looking for a sign that Dodge can find its way without supercharged V-8s and red key fobs. The Hornet is a vision of that future, infusing a dreary yet marketable form—the small cross-over—with trademark lovable Dodge dumbness. The car has functional hood scoops, an ornery exhaust burble, and the hybrid version of temporary overboost, which Dodge modestly calls Power-Shot. The Hornet hits 60 mph in 5.5 seconds, not too far in arrears of the 5.1 seconds required by a manual Hemi Challenger R/T. On paper, this vehicle fits neatly into the Dodge pocket-rocket succession, joining rowdy former luminaries such as the Omni GLH and the Neon SRT-4. In reality, the story is a little more complicated.…

The mid-size three-row SUV segment’s roster continues to grow with new and redesigned options from Honda, Mazda, Toyota, and more. Volkswagen, however, cedes this trend and instead puts more lipstick on its aging Atlas. For 2024, the Atlas takes an incremental step forward, courtesy of a considerable refresh (its second this generation received). Volkswagen zhuzhes up the boxy SUV with new LED headlights and taillights and fascias that incorporate the German automaker’s latest design cues while maintaining the Atlas’s bland but inoffensive style. The interior enjoys a far more substantial update. Higher-quality materials and richer plastics line the dashboard, door panels, and center console, while a 10.3-inch digital gauge cluster and a 12.0-inch center touchscreen come standard. Alas, the infotainment system’s irksome user interface largely offsets the cabin’s tactile improvements.…

Grabbing hold of a thin-rimmed, leather-wrapped steering wheel reads luxury in much the same way thick-rimmed wheels connote sportiness. Not many modern vehicles have thin-rimmed steering wheels, but the Buick Envista does, and it sends a subtle message that this inexpensive car’s mission is to provide luxury. The Envista is Buick’s new entry-level model, slotting in just below the Encore GX. But you wouldn’t know it’s the least expensive Buick by looking at it. It’s nearly a foot longer than the Encore GX and rides on a 106.3-inch wheelbase, 4.1 inches longer than the Encore’s. The package results in 97 cubic feet of passenger volume. Rear-seat legroom is ample, and the flat floor gives a sense of spaciousness. The sloping roofline is a nod to current design trends—fortunately, rear-seat headroom…