Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2025 i Car and Driver

WINNER: JOHN FORCE America’s fastest senior citizen made the save of the year when his Funny Car’s engine exploded at Virginia Motorsports Park. That kind of thing is prone to happen when your vehicle packs a 496-cubic-inch V-8 that burns nitro-methane and makes more than 11,000 horsepower—for as long as it holds together. Now, any incident involving the phrase “engine exploded” is going to present a certain set of challenges, especially when the action unfolds at over 300 mph, as it did during Force’s race against Terry Haddock. With flames licking up in front of his face, Force, 75, calmly countersteered and kept his car pointed straight as it pinballed off the walls. Nonetheless, there was a violent crash, and he spent the following months recovering, eventually rejoining his team…

NISSAN ISN’T SHY about experimenting with its subcompact offerings. In the recent past, it briefly gave us the adorable Cube, seemingly designed by Hello Kitty, followed by the frog-eyed Juke that somehow spawned a six-figure R-badged super-SUV in other markets. The comparatively normal Kicks introduced for 2018 resonated better with American shoppers. Yet with a meager maximum of 125 horsepower, the Kicks was soon outflanked by a series of newer, more substantial competitors. Novelty is fleeting, and tiny SUVs aren’t so tiny anymore, so while extroverted elements glint across the redesigned 2025 Kicks, Nissan’s primary focus was bringing more size, power, and content to its smallest SUV. The new Kicks has distinctive style and is sufficiently attractive, albeit devoid of funky flourishes like the Cube’s asymmetric rear-end design. Chunky lines and…

It’s easy to say a vehicle rides well but much more difficult to explain the nuanced implications of that highly subjective statement. It’s harder still to do the design, engineering, and tuning work to make a vehicle thrive in the numerous circumstances it can encounter. Doing so involves far more than just tuning springs and dampers; engineers select the properties of each rubber suspension bushing and powertrain or subframe mount, not to mention wheel and tire properties, and must create a solid vehicle structure upon which to hang these subsystems. The more you dig into how and why vehicles ride the way they do, the more the complexities will blow you away. The essence of good ride means filtering out whatever the tires encounter so that the occupants feel as…

These plots show frequency on the X-axis and the amount of energy (on a logarithmic scale) on the Y-axis. Below four hertz is primary ride; these are the big body motions that if uncontrolled could cause you to feel seasick. The next band, from four to eight hertz, is chop, which is often wheels and tires resonating over impacts. From eight to 16 hertz is shake or jiggle, which is what you might feel in certain body parts when subjected to these frequencies. Above that point is more of a buzz. In general, the area under the curve in each zone equates to which one feels best, but a particularly high spike can make a vehicle stand out negatively, even if the overall energy level is lower than another one.…

IT’S A RASCAL. Some might say the four-cylinder Lotus Emira needs more discipline, but we think the British sports car’s quirks add to its charm. The Emira is plenty quick and surprisingly efficient, so if it occasionally burps or gets rowdy in polite company, we can forgive that for the pleasure of its presence. More than just fun, this mid-engine Brit is also a beauty—compact and curvy, it sits low to the pavement yet easily clears speed bumps. The petite exterior belies an airy, uncluttered interior that’s not stingy with the leather and faux suede. This Emira is a First Edition in Sports trim, which brings a stiffer suspension and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires. Its turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four from Mercedes-AMG and eight-speed dual-clutch automatic join the existing Toyota-sourced…

THE DISCUSSION AROUND this year’s 10Best Trucks competition had some editors wishing the award were called 12Best. The crop of excellent family (or whatever) haulers grew by leaps and bounds, while last year’s winners, including some models that are getting quite old, aged gracefully. The need for nanometer-scale scrutiny has never been higher. Thankfully, we have a great evaluation process in place—the exact same one we use for cars, in fact. After two long weeks of driving everything new that’s not a car around our evaluation loop and creating roostertails on dirt roads, we settled on the 10 vehicles that best fulfill their intended mission while still being a joy to drive. The Porsche Macan’s logbook contained more superlatives than any other. Porsche didn’t have an electric Macan for our…

After multiple complaints about the degree of loudness inside the cabin of the Kicks, we set out on an impromptu back-to-back sound-level test of Nissan’s latest SUV and a prime subcompact competitor, the 10Best-winning Chevrolet Trax. In addition to our usual 70-mphcruise benchmark, we took measurements at 80 mph, as well as on two surfaces from the ride-quality test found on page 66: a coarse concrete road (at 30 mph) and broken asphalt (at 40 mph). In every case, the Trax is monumentally quieter. At 70 mph, the reading inside the Kicks is three decibels higher, a vast and instantly noticeable difference. To give you a sense of the significance of that gap, the disparity is the same between a Ram TRX and a Mercedes E-class. The gulf between the…

RAMPING UP THE POWER is one way to get around a track faster, but a straight-line missile can trip over its own rubber-soled feet once a corner shows up. It’s vital to balance power with agility. The 2025 Audi RS3’s mid-cycle redo boosts the supercompact’s handling on the road and the track without throwing off the feel. There are changes you can see—headlights, bumpers, steering wheel, gauges, shifter—though the ones you can’t are more impactful. The torque-vectoring rear differential uses a pair of clutch packs to send up to 100 percent of the available torque to either rear wheel and gets some algorithm tweaks to improve communication with the stability control, adaptive dampers, and other systems. The goal is to boost turn-in and improve corner-exit speeds. The turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-five…

THE RED MIST DESCENDS It’s been more than a decade since we first saw Ferrari’s previous halo car, the LaFerrari. Now it’s time to say hello to its spiritual successor. Limited to 799 examples, the Ferrari F80 returns to a naming convention last used on the F60 America. Like the LaFerrari, it’s a hybrid. This time an 888-hp twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 pairs with a trio of electric motors and a small battery to produce a combined 1184 horsepower. With that much power and all-wheel drive, we bet it’ll hit 60 mph in 2.0 seconds or less. While we’ll miss the V-12, the six’s 9200-rpm rev limit should produce a mighty aural assault. But Ferraris are about more than raw power, and the F80 delivers in other ways. At 155 mph,…

WITH OVER 241,000 MILES on its odometer and counting, Kevin Enderby’s 1984 Ferrari 308GTS has possibly the most miles of any Ferrari. These are hard miles too. Enderby is a track rat and regular at circuits such as Laguna Seca and Thunderhill Raceway. “Ferraris all look pretty, but it’s when you drive them that you realize the engineering prowess,” Enderby says. “If you don’t drive them, you’re missing half the fun.” Yet maintaining the hardworking sports car is a challenging task all its own. Tony Palladino, a fourth-generation mechanic and owner of Modena Motors in Redwood City, California, estimates the 308 has undergone more than 1100 hours of work since Enderby first brought the car to his shop in 1990, at which point the Ferrari had already clocked 30,000 miles.…

“What’s the best car?” Getting asked that question is an occupational hazard in this business. (And, yes, we realize that it’s not actually hazardous, at least compared with the occupational dangers faced by, say, ironworkers who build skyscrapers or zookeepers who feed lions.) When you drive and test hundreds of cars every year—as our editorial team collectively does—it’s a natural query. And our annual 10Best awards provide the answer. Since 1983, we’ve been conducting this exercise: We identify the very best of what’s available, not merely our favorite new models introduced for a given year. An onslaught of new or significantly redesigned contenders vies with the winners from the previous year for one of the 10 coveted spots. These days, the price cap is $110,000 (sorry, Ferrari). We gather our…

SOMEWHERE IN WEST VIRGINIA, A GAS-STATION ATTENDANT EYES THE CALIFORNIA PLATE ON THE 2025 BMW M3 COMPETITION AND ASKS, “YOU BOYS BRING ANY OF THAT LEGAL CALIFORNIA WEED WITH YOU?” One of us, gassing up the 2025 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing, says, “No, we drove from Michigan. Where it’s also legal. But still no.” A third editor, stepping from the 2024 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, asks, “Isn’t weed legal in West Virginia anyway? We saw a medical dispensary.” The gas-station guy replies, “Well, yeah. But if you have one of those cards, then you can’t own a gun.” Effectively illegal, then, to this guy. Fueled up and with a fresh understanding of West Virginia drug law, we return to the road with our mind-altering sports sedans, legal in all 50 states…

Although bad roads are plentiful in our home state of Michigan, all of the surfaces used for instrumented testing were inside the high fencing of Stellantis’s Chelsea Proving Grounds to ensure repeatability of both the road condition and the chosen test speeds.…

WE’VE LONG BEEN fans of the Kia Carnival. In our most recent minivan comparison test, it finished second to the Toyota Sienna, a hybrid [“Minivans and Best-Laid Plans,” May 2023]. A major reason for its loss was fuel economy. The new Carnival Hybrid addresses that disadvantage. The 2025 Carnival Hybrid is rated at 33 mpg combined, a whopping 57 percent increase over the standard 3.5-liter V-6. However, that large gain applies only to lower-speed driving. In our 75-mph highway test, the hybrid averaged 29 mpg, worse than the Sienna and the rest of the gas-minivan segment, aside from the V-6 Carnival. A 178-hp, 195-lb-ft turbocharged 1.6-liter inline-four is supplemented with an electric motor that contributes 74 horses and a healthy 224 pound-feet. They produce a combined 242 ponies and 271…

SOMETIMES—NOT OFTEN, BUT sometimes—car manufacturers create something semi-wondrous that is also borderline irrational and three-quarters inexplicable to their own marketing types. A Chevrolet Corvette masquerading as a Cadillac XLR, for instance. A tiresome Pontiac LeMans that arose as a Woodward Avenue legend thanks to a would-be cocaine dealer. A British trucklet that deployed as a tractor after World War II and, once adorned in cowskins and bird’s-eye maple, emerged as a status symbol for hedge-funders. In the early ’90s, every automobile that Mazda sold here—even its carlike MPV minivan—was a glittering ingot that we admired: the MX-5 Miata, the MX-6, the Protegé, the RX-7, the 323, the 626, the 929. Each sparkled in the niche it contested. That Mazda was fearless could be proved with two words: Wankel rotary. Yet…