Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i MotorTrend

After a one-year hiatus from the Honda Proving Center of California, we were excited to return to the venue for our MotorTrend SUV of the Year program. For nine consecutive days we drove, tested, filmed, and photographed a large crop of sport utility vehicles, all of them either new or updated significantly for this year. The mission: to narrow the field until we elect one of them the best the industry has to offer. We drove them across multiple surfaces, including a winding road, a powersports track with a sand oval, a gravel road, and a course that mimics several Los Angeles freeways. SUV of the Year features the largest field of contenders across all our MotorTrend Of The Year competitions. With virtually every automaker now focusing mostly on high-riding…

Tiny Croatian automaker Rimac says its 2022 Nevera electric hypercar will be both the quickest car and the fastest electric car in the world, with a top speed of 258 mph. So why shouldn’t our first drive of it happen in a flash? Rimac was in L.A. to show prospective buyers a pre-production Nevera, and it tossed us the keys to its $2.4 million baby. The only instructions? Be back in an hour. Built by hand in Sveta Nedelja, Croatia, the Nevera is an engineering marvel—especially when you consider Rimac is a 12-year-old company headed by 33-year-old Mate Rimac, and that it hails from a country that technically has never built a car before. (“Technically” because Croatia was part of Yugoslavia back in the Yugo days.) Notably, Hyundai and Porsche…

We had one question about the new 2022 Toyota GR 86 as we waited for our turn on the track: Did Toyota screw up one of our favorite cars? Once we received the go signal, we charged into the first sharp right-hander to find out. We turned in aggressively and lifted off the accelerator abruptly, and the GR 86 brought its rear around as neatly as you could want. We caught it with some opposite lock and were away. Toyota most definitely did not screw this up. The successor to the Toyota 86 and its predecessor, the Scion FR-S, follows the old formula—a moderately powered 2+2 that emphasizes handling over power—but this GR 86 addresses most of the old car’s faults without introducing new ones. It’s a wheels-up redesign, Toyota…

The 2022 Lucid Air Dream Edition R is a 966-hp electric luxury sedan that can drive 481–520 EPA-certified miles on a single charge. I witnessed and experienced the latter firsthand. The former? Not so much, but you’ll need to keep reading. There’s also an Air Dream Edition P (P stands for Performance; R means Range) that makes 1,111 hp and offers a range of 451–471 miles. Now get this—they cost the same price. So, you choose: Do you want a sleek-looking EV with nearly 100 hp more than the Tesla Model S Plaid? Or do you want the car that makes more horsepower than any Lamborghini ever made, beats the Tesla Model S Long Range at its own game by more than 100 miles, and puts the very notion of…

2022 Acura MDX PROS New 10-speed transmission paired with dulcet V-6 • Sharply tailored sheetmetal • Strong on standard features CONS Trackpad-controlled infotainment system • Joyless third row • Inconsistent road manners The 2022 Acura MDX faced lots of pressure this year. The three-row SUV is the brand’s flagship and the sole Honda Motor Co. representative in this SUVOTY field, as no new Hondas were eligible. Add in that we’re on Honda’s home turf at its California Proving Center, and the MDX should come up aces, right? On the tarmac, the MDX projects standout style. “Its new styling looks sharp, striking, and modern,” associate editor Alex Leanse said. “There’s enough complexity to grab your eye without going overboard; it’s a great look that’s distinctly Acura.” Interior-wise, our judges split on…

Acura clearly was tired of being asked when it would bring back the Integra, the beloved compact coupe and sedan model it hasn’t sold here since 2001. So the company decided to do something about it: At this year’s Monterey Car Week, it confirmed one of the two nameplates that helped launch the brand back in 1986—Legend was the other—will return in 2022, likely as a 2023 model. In fact, despite it being the entry-level Acura, the new Integra will replace the brand’s halo once the NSX drives off into the paddock in the sky after this year. “Now is the right time to retire the existing halo and bring in the volume entry car,” brand officer Jon Ikeda told us. “It’s time to return to Integra.” Brand aficionados specifically…

When you’re interested in performance, you look to vehicles that best deliver dynamic fun—and that means cars. We’re talking coupes, sedans, and hatchbacks, not tall, heavy, bulky SUVs. Weight is the enemy of performance, as is a high center of gravity. Most new vehicle buyers today, though, want SUVs; as such, a common ground has been established in the form of the performance SUV. This “solution” looks more and more like the future of factory-built performance. And if the 2022 Hyundai Kona N is any indication, the future doesn’t look nearly as bad as you might fear. Truthfully, this is barely an SUV. Front-drive only and with just 1.1 inches of additional ground clearance compared to, say, a Toyota Camry, it’s a highish-riding hot hatch. About 6.0 inches taller and…

Most months I use this space to explore some brand-new technology that promises to make motoring safer, cleaner, more convenient, or somehow better in the future. As I noted in my online September 2019 recap of 37 years of “Technologue” columns (many predating my tenure here), the percentage of subjects that had by then reached production was a rather disappointing 36. So this month, permit me to thank Porsche for helping bring a topic I’ve frequently covered to fruition: eFuel from direct air carbon capture. My July 2008 and March 2012 columns both looked forward to a day when we might pull CO2 directly out of the sky and turn it into fuel. In October 2018 I reported about a company poised to begin producing just such an e-fuel from…

ACURA MDX • CHEVY BOLT EUV • FORD BRONCO • FORD BRONCO SPORT • FORD MUSTANG MACH-E GENESIS GV70 • HYUNDAI SANTA FE • HYUNDAI TUCSON • INFINITI QX60 • JAGUAR F-PACE JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE L • JEEP GRAND WAGONEER • JEEP WAGONEER • JEEP WRANGLER 392/4XE KIA SORENTO • LAND ROVER DISCOVERY • LEXUS NX • MITSUBISHI OUTLANDER • NISSAN PATHFINDER PORSCHE TAYCAN 4 CROSS TURISMO • VOLKSWAGEN ID4 • VW TAOS • VOLVO XC40 RECHARGE JUDGES/TESTERS ERICK AYAPANA Associate Road Test Editor DUNCAN BRADY Associate Editor MIGUEL CORTINA Mexico Editor GORDON DICKIE Automotive Industry and Engineering Expert GREG FINK Senior Editor MICHAEL FLOYD Director of Editorial Operations ZACH GALE Buyer’s Guide Director ALAN LAU Road Test Analyst ALEX LEANSE Associate Editor JONNY LIEBERMAN Senior Features Editor ED LOH…

2022 Ford Bronco PROS Absurdly great looks • Massive capability • A worthy segment-advancing rival to the Jeep Wrangler CONS Poor build quality • Poor ride quality • No manual transmission for the big engine The all-new Ford Bronco did not win the 2022 MotorTrend SUV of the Year award. If you asked us going into this year’s competition—and several people did—we would have told you: The Bronco is great in many ways, but it’s by no means perfect. Our OTY winners are judged against our six key criteria, and the Bronco fell short in one specific area. It’s also worth mentioning that our technical director, Frank Markus, repeatedly questioned whether we should even consider bestowing our SUVOTY crown upon a vehicle undergoing a recall for its hardtop roof, and…

We’ve known since 2017 what the new 2022 Subaru WRX will look like: It’s a dead ringer for the Viziv Performance concept that appeared at the Tokyo Motor Show that year, right down to its relative proportions and character lines. Every fifth-generation WRX is equipped with a 2.4-liter turbocharged flat-four engine that develops 271 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque. That’s only 3 more horsepower and no more torque than the outgoing 2.0-liter boxer engine. But Subaru says bigger pistons and a turbo system outfitted with an electronically controlled wastegate and air bypass valves make it more responsive and give it a broader torque curve. A six-speed manual gearbox is standard; buyers can also spec the Subaru Performance Transmission (SPT), a revised gearbox that nevertheless is still a CVT like…

It was our own version of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the rest of the Inklings regularly converging on The Eagle and the Child pub in Oxford, England, to drink beer and converse about writing and other worldly pursuits. That is, if you swap in the SUV of the Year test team, the dining area of the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Tehachapi, California, and the discussion of nearly two dozen SUV models competing for this year’s award. The nightly ritual received a name of its own courtesy of MT director of photography Brian Vance: the Lizard Lounge. Whereas the Inklings bonded over their love for the written word—which we share—the particular connection between us Lizards was our passion for well-executed automobiles. Between sips of margaritas prepared by Mexico editor…

When Mercedes-Benz finance chief Harald Wilhelm announced the company would reduce its investment in internal combustion engine research and development by 80 percent by 2026, the automotive world shifted a little on its axis. Additionally, from 2024 the only new platform architectures Mercedes plans to create are for battery electric vehicles. This is a big deal. Mercedes can rightly claim to have invented the automobile, and internal combustion engines have powered its vehicles for more than 130 years. Now, like Volvo, Jaguar, and others, it’s committed to an all-electric lineup by the end of the decade. “We are going from EV-first to EV-only for our new architectures and cars,” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius confirmed as the company prepared to unveil electric-powered alternatives to not only the imperious S-Class limousine but…