Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i MotorTrend

Head of Editorial Welcome to our inaugural Performance Vehicle of the Year (PVOTY) issue. A quick history: We’ve awarded our Car of the Year title since 1949. In 1978, we added Truck of the Year and then SUV of the Year in 1999. Alongside Person of the Year, these have been our automotive Of The Year awards for decades. Until now. Why, and why now? It’s instructive to look back at MotorTrend’s old Import Car of the Year. First awarded in 1970, the idea of ICOTY was to finally acknowledge an indisputable truth: Cars from auto manufacturers outside of America were here to stay and should be celebrated, at least for a while. We awarded ICOTY alongside COTY until 1999, when my predecessors decided to fold the former back into…

Modern Lamborghini has a habit of milking its series-production cars for all they’re worth to create rebodied and mechanically upgraded limited editions. So it’s not terribly difficult to sometimes take a cynic’s view that the company relishes finding easy ways to tap into its richest clients’ hedge funds or crypto accounts rather than developing truly new machines—the type of cars we might remember as vividly as the ones on which Lamborghini made its name. So we were thrilled to discover the Essenza SCV12 is a long way from being a rebodied and retuned production model. It’s effectively a purpose-built race car, one whose point wasn’t homologation for competition but rather to explore what’s possible when unfettered by racing rules. Lamborghini let us behind its F1-style wheel for 16 laps of…

It took me a bit more than one lap in the 2022 Pagani Huayra R to forget founder and CEO Horacio Pagani’s plea from the night before: “Please, don’t crash it.” We were at the Four Seasons hotel in Austin, Texas, having a nightcap after the penultimate day of the 2021 Pagani Raduno, an event for the brand’s owners, which this time culminated at Circuit of the Americas (COTA), the big, Texas-sized Formula 1 track. I was there to drive the latest and perhaps most epic of Pagani’s creations to date, the all-new 2022 Huayra R. As of this writing, the bare carbon-titanium Huayra R with gold and white stripes is not just a prototype; it’s the only R in existence, though 30 customer examples will soon join it. All…

We were as excited as anyone to see Acura’s venerable Type S performance subbrand make its triumphant return after a 13-year absence. But in our closed-course Performance Vehicle of the Year testing, the TLX Type S was a resounding disappointment. Based on our previous reporting, this verdict surprised. Past street drives had convinced us the new TLX Type S was a legitimate sport sedan that could just use a little more power. In our PVOTY testing, though, we discovered its street moves don’t at all translate to near- or on-limit handling. What works at quick but reasonable speeds on a back road falls apart when you push the car hard on a track. Far and away our biggest source of frustration was the inconsistent Super Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) system.…

Let’s come right out and say it: If this contest were the 2022 Luxury Vehicle of the Year, you’d be reading about a finalist. True, in general we’re not fans of the BMW X7. It came in fourth in a four-way comparison test behind bitter rival Mercedes-Benz GLS and two American three-rows, the Cadillac Escalade and comparo-winning Lincoln Navigator. Our big gripe is body control, specifically the lack thereof. As features editor Scott Evans said of the X7, “The body is always moving around, side to side, diagonally, front, and back.” Seems as if Alpina, BMW’s quasi-in-house tuning wing, had a mountain to climb. And climb it did. The first big change is what’s under the hood. As BMW has yet to wade into the cash-flush waters with its own…

Ever since the sixth-generation S550 Ford Mustang made its debut with an independent rear suspension as the starring attraction, we’ve been in and out of love with it. We fell hard for the Shelby cars, specifically the GT350 and 350R, with their screaming Voodoo engine and carbon-fiber wheels, and the absolutely astonishing GT500 was the 760-hp muscled-up Mustang of our dreams. But we haven’t been enamored with some of the performance-package Mustang models, several of which aren’t as good as similar Chevrolet Camaros. The 2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1 represents an attempt to merge what we love about the Shelby cars with the best of the Mustang GT models, and after a short affair with Ford’s newest pony performer, we found it to be a reasonably compelling proposition. “If you’re…

Let’s take a trip back to 2016, even if Porsche diehards would prefer we didn’t. That’s when the company introduced the fourth-generation Boxster, now with a 718 prefix and (cue the loyalists’ gags) turbocharged flat-four engine offerings in place of the naturally aspirated flat-sixes that had powered every version of the popular and much-lauded roadster since it first arrived 20 years earlier. The new engines were among the best four-bangers in history, but nevertheless, cries never ceased for a reversion to the old. So while other 718 Boxsters carry on with the 2.0- and 2.5-liter turbocharged units, the prior 2.5-liter 718 GTS that lasted a scant two model years in the U.S. (2018 and 2019) is gone. Instead, the new 982-series 718 Boxster GTS 4.0-liter gives many of us what…

Volkswagen’s new Golf R faced an uphill battle heading into this Performance Vehicle of the Year showdown. After all, we previously evaluated both it and the new GTI as part of the 2022 MotorTrend Car of the Year contest, and despite the car generating some enthusiasm among our judges, we uncovered a few major issues. For one, there’s too much understeer in the all-wheel-drive Golf R’s handling repertoire, and we also disliked that the six-speed manual version’s clutch engagement point was difficult to locate. But the car’s multitude of capacitive controls irked us even more, making for aggravating interactions and at times causing us to trigger some of the controls on the steering wheel while driving hard. Simply put, the unnecessarily added “technofluff,” as we called it in our COTY…

There’s a scene in the movie Mad Max where Max gazes upon a blown V-8, whining and roaring in the engine bay of a Pursuit Special as the mechanic maniacally exclaims: “It’s the last of the V-8s!” We couldn’t help but replay that clip in our minds as we hammered the CT5-V Blackwing around the Hyundai Proving Ground and later as a finalist on Angeles Crest Highway and the Streets of Willow circuit. We’re not in some dystopian future, yet here is the last of Cadillac’s supercharged V-8 superheroes, a stupendous, 668-hp sendoff to the marque’s high-performance V-series cars. “What a shame Cadillac is going to stop making monstrous supercharged track machines like this,” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said. “It just feels so good to drive. Let’s call the…

“Abear ran into Stoklosa.” Imagine my surprise when, at approximately 7:15 a.m., a quarter hour after all nine Performance Vehicle of the Year finalists were supposed to have met at a predetermined spot on Angeles Crest Highway, my query about why the mighty Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series was late returned that answer. Yes, friends, fellow judge Alex Stoklosa managed to tangle with a bear. “It wasn’t a big bear,” I was assured. “He’ll be here in a minute.” Right, carry on. Joking aside (the bear barely glanced off the car, only knocking off the passenger-side aerodynamic dive plane before running off into the woods), this AMG is a beastly beast. The 4.0-liter twin-turbo flat-plane-crank V-8 produces 720 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque. As features editor Scott Evans pointed out,…

To the surprise of the few and the horror of those trying to purchase one for sticker price, the 2022 Porsche 911 GT3 is MotorTrend’s 2022 Performance Vehicle of the Year. The competition was fierce for this year’s inaugural award, but in the end most of the judges voted for the GT3. The two who didn’t score it first had Porsche’s latest and greatest in second place—quite a close second place, at that. And yes, the word “greatest” is apropos here. That is, until the next GT3 iteration drops—which should be any time now. Why so dominant, why so loved, why so great? Several reasons, but first let’s go backward. We considered ourselves fortunate to attend the launch of the old 991.2 911 GT3 in Spain back in 2017, not…

The first 911 Turbo gave powerful Porsches, especially turbocharged ones, their reputations as widowmakers. In that car, the difference between maximum cornering speed and the engine attempting to pass the front tires is measured in fractions of a mile per hour, and by the time you realize what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything about the speed. Lift, and “you’ll end up backward in a ditch,” folks said. Instead, you work the steering wheel like an actor “driving” in front of a green screen and hope you hold it together until things straighten out, physically and emotionally. Subsequent 964, 993, and 996 generations tamed this tendency with anti-roll bars made of steel rather than cheese, but the laws of physics always lurked. That’s readily apparent from our original review…

Electric cars are boring and dumb, and putting an electric motor in a classic car would certainly ruin its character. Right? The Superformance MKIII-E all-electric Shelby Cobra replica says different: It’s fun as hell. Outwardly, the MKIII-E looks like a normal Cobra. Peek inside, though, and something’s up: The oddball rearward-mounted manual shifter is gone, the tachometer goes to 14,000 rpm, and the gauges have logos showing a charging cable circling the car’s silhouette. According to Superformance, this is its quickest Cobra ever, and tuning isn’t even finalized yet. The rear axle is replaced by a Tesla Model S P100D rear motor, and a 31.2-kWh battery pack is fitted to the reworked engine compartment. All in, the MKIII-E is said to be about 100 pounds lighter than Superformance’s 427 V-8…

Last month while reading our excerpt from the book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan, I received a press release for the WayRay Holograktor concept car that seemed to shorten the time horizon the story predicts. “The Holy Driver” in the excerpt was a Sri Lankan gamer who discovers the cars he drives in a simulator to earn money are real vehicles located elsewhere in the world. So this line in WayRay’s release widened my eyes: “The three-seat Holograktor has been conceived as a ride-hailing car [that] can be driven by remote control.” Is the 5G remote-driven car “a thing,” I wondered? I quickly scheduled a call with Michal Macuda, WayRay’s product platform manager, who explained the concept car’s main purpose is to…

We’ve all dreamed the dream. Cash in the 401(k), sell the sensible-shoes SUV, buy something low, fast, and loud, and drive it every day. But could you live with a supercar? And I’m not talking about in those near-mythical magazine-story moments when, as an empty road twists and turns into the distance ahead, you crack open the throttle and start hunting apexes with a 600-hp snarl exploding in your ears. I’m talking real life: crawling through city traffic, schlepping through the suburbs, hum-drumming it on the freeway. I had three months at home in the U.K. with a McLaren Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) GT to find out. To live the dream. Simultaneously, Mac Morrison did the same in Los Angeles with a 720S Spider, and his recounting of that experience follows…

ACURA TLX TYPE S • AUDI RS Q8 • BMW ALPINA B8 GRAN COUPE • BMW ALPINA XB7BMW M3 COMPETITION • BMW M4 • BMW M5 CS • CADILLAC CT4-V BLACKWING CADILLAC CT5-V BLACKWING • FORD MUSTANG MACH 1 • FORD MUSTANG MACH-E GT HONDA CIVIC SI • HYUNDAI VELOSTER N • LAMBORGHINI HURACÁN STOMERCEDES-AMG GT BLACK SERIES • PORSCHE 718 BOXSTER GTS 4.0 PORSCHE 911 GT3 • PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO GT • PORSCHE TAYCAN TURBO S SUBARU BRZ • TOYOTA GR86 • VOLKSWAGEN GOLF R JUDGES/TESTERS ERICK AYAPANA Associate Road Test Editor SCOTT EVANS Features Editor MIKE FLOYD Editorial Operations Director ALAN LAU Road Test Analyst JONNY LIEBERMAN Senior Features Editor ED LOH Head of Editorial MAC MORRISON Executive Editor CHRISTIAN SEABAUGH Features Editor ALEXANDER STOKLOSA Deputy Editor CHRIS…

It’s helpful when things look the way they drive. Gaze upon the Audi RS Q8, the most powerful, sportiest version of the two-row Q8 you can buy, and there’s no missing its chunky shape, big tires, and—well—its visual mass. At 5,452 pounds, the RS Q8 has a lot of actual mass, too; it’s the second-heaviest vehicle evaluated at our inaugural Performance Vehicle of the Year test, behind the BMW Alpina XB7, a luxury-lined three-row SUV weighing about 200 pounds more. Needless to say, that’s a lot of cheddar to spread over a twisting road. Sure, the RS Q8 is quick. With 591 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque, it ripped to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds, well ahead of the XB7’s 4.0 seconds. By the time it passed a quarter…

Behold, the BMW M4! Rear-wheel drive with a six-speed manual. The most affordable base price of any Bavarian at our PVOTY party alongside an M-barrassment of M- and Alpina-badged riches. BMW performance at its purest, right? Not quite. Despite wanting to love this seemingly stripped-down I-6 turbo coupe, our judges found some of the most important driver touchpoints overwrought or undercooked. The M-badged steering wheel was deemed comically thick, the seats side-stabbingly over-bolstered, and infotainment menus cartoony (or fun, depending on who you asked). And that six-speed manual? A BMW birthright and this M4’s calling card? Universally savaged. Every judge used variations of the word “rubbery” to describe it; three dubbed it “easily the worst manual here.” Adding insult to injury, opting for the manual effectively limits engine output by…

No matter the sport, if you look at any Hall of Fame athlete, you’ll notice they all have one key trait in common: the ability to perform at a high level consistently. The 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition should take this lesson to heart. Like any Mustang GT, the top dog of the Mach-E line builds on more pedestrian variants by upgrading the power, brakes, and suspension and adding sportier styling. The standard Mach-E GT has a unique nose that ties it to traditional Mustangs, two upsized permanent-magnet motors—one at each axle—good for a combined 480 hp and 600 lb-ft of torque, Ford’s “extended-range” 93.0-kWh battery, larger rotors, a retuned suspension, and 20-inch wheels wrapped in all-season performance tires. The Performance Edition takes things a bit further. Horsepower…

There were more than a few nudges and snickers when Porsche first announced that its Taycan electric sports car would wear the Turbo S badge, despite, you know, not actually having an exhaust-gas-driven compressor for the engine it also doesn’t have. We forgot all about the joke right after our first test of the Taycan Turbo S, after which it (briefly) held the title of quickest vehicle we’ve tested. After a few blasts in the 2022 Taycan Turbo S we had at Performance Vehicle of the Year, we’re flat-out laughing in delight. “Ridiculously quick!” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said. “Rockets up to 120 mph in the blink of an eye, and it’s very happy once it’s there.” Pure speed isn’t all the Taycan Turbo S delivers. Plop yourself into…

There are two places where you’ll probably never catch a glimpse of the new BMW M3’s garish front end: from its driver’s seat and, for anyone sharing the road with one, from another car. Why? Because it’ll take some fairly exotic machinery to keep up with, let alone pass, the M3 Competition. Even when the M3 is coming at you, it’ll streak by so fast, those nostrils will blur into wider shapes that recall BMW’s kidney grilles of yore. Whatever your thoughts about it, BMW did ensure the M3’s sniffing schnoz shovels a ton of air into the engine bay, where its fierce 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six lies. BMW says the engine produces 503 hp and 479 lb-ft of torque. But man, it seems like there’s no way this I-6 punches…

The first and potentially last of its kind, the 2021 Hyundai Veloster N carries great meaning behind its performance. It’s both a mission statement for the nascent N performance subbrand and a living example of how quickly this new division learns, adapts, and grows. The only Veloster you can buy anymore, the Veloster N has evolved remarkably in its short life. The first N of any kind available in the U.S., the 2019 model was a bit of a wild child. It had the right pieces—the power and grip and braking—but it was raw and unrefined. It rode far too stiffly and slid around when it could’ve kept gripping. Man, was it fun, though. It’s amazing what two years can do. Running changes have made the Veloster N a more…

Porsche’s GT division is responsible for building some wildly successful performance cars: the 911 Speedster, 718 Cayman GT4 RS, and 911 GT3. But the division has never built an SUV. Still, that didn’t stop the Cayenne team from slapping the “GT” badge on the rump of its new fastback SUV. Thing is, the Cayenne Turbo GT might just be something the GT division wishes it could claim credit for. We must believe the unmitigated critical and commercial success of the Lamborghini Urus (with which the Cayenne shares its platform, engine, and transmission, among other things) is in part what led to the creation of the Cayenne Turbo GT. Slotting in above the Cayenne Turbo S, the Turbo GT gets a reworked 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8, a quicker-shifting eight-speed auto, a water-cooled…

Prior to driving the new 2022 Subaru WRX, I thought back to when I bought a black 2002 WRX wagon. Although the WRX had been on sale in Japan and other markets since 1992, that was the first model year we Yanks could own one. Four years later, I bought another new WRX wagon, a 2006 in World Rally Blue. So I’m a fan and former owner of the brand’s previous efforts in this space. And as fate would have it, I’m in the market for a new car, so am I buying a 2022 Subaru WRX? Let’s find out. For the first time in its history, the WRX has completely unique sheetmetal. But with its wider hood scoop, fatter fender flares, and black plastic cladding, the new WRX still…

The wild and wonderful Pininfarina Battista is almost more conversation than car. Creating a visual stringboard of what this almost 1,900-hp, quad-motor hypercar represents for the industry, Italy, Pininfarina, the future, and the past would end up looking like the conspiracy room of a dangerous psychotic. If you’re familiar with the world of exotic cars, you know the Pininfarina name is intimately associated with designing Ferraris. But as the market for hired design houses has all but dried up, new management decided to design its own car on borrowed running gear. The car features a so-called E-Heart that uses two speakers to send a deep, audible resonance through the car, subtly throbbing the sound in a way that can be felt through the seat backs. You’d expect anything with 1,877…

Corrections: In our March issue, an oversight in our records meant we failed to report a routine service performed on our long-term Mazda CX-30. Our verdict story should have said we spent about $375 on maintenance, not $143.18. Also, a spec template error resulted in us stating the C8 Corvette Z06 is a front-engine car. Readers Respond to Past Issues Why don’t you print more reader’s letters? Other magazines print pages of them, as they are usually funny and entertaining. Rod O’Byrne Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada Easy answer: Spend more time writing funnier letters, and we’ll publish ’em. As a friendly reminder, you can write to us at MotorTrend@MotorTrend.com.—Ed. I love your magazine and the content you put out. The Rivian adventure was amazing, the 2022 COTY competition was epic, and…

“Why do I feel like he’s having a much different experience than I am?” I said this aloud to myself on a hot Los Angeles afternoon as I idled “my” certified pre-owned 2020 McLaren 720S Spider in a McDonald’s drive-through. Across the pond, Angus MacKenzie, MotorTrend’s former editor-in-chief turned international bureau boss, was banging around in “his” GT, along the way taking in a road trip through the Scottish Highlands, and here I was in the middle of tracking down Happy Meal toys promoting a critically panned movie starring L.A.’s self-anointed basketball king. (Blame the 6-year-old for this mission.) I pictured MacKenzie’s window down and his trademark mane fluttering in the salty breeze, hammer to the anvil in his GT passing fairytale Scottish castles, his soothing Australian accent calling out…

There are two key positives we netted by changing our annual high-performance hullabaloo to a MotorTrend Of The Year program. First, the number of cars competing increases substantially. With Best Driver’s Car we were hamstrung by logistics and could only ever evaluate a maximum of 12 vehicles. Year One of Performance Vehicle of the Year saw a field of 22 contenders, and if not for the pandemic, the semiconductor chip shortage, and general supply chain woes, the number would have been greater. Second, the amount of time our judges get with each car increases, especially on the track. We did lose the amazing contributions of professional race car driver Randy Pobst and his Laguna Seca lap times, but these changes allow for a better story with a better verdict. We…

Living somewhere in the white space between Gran Coupe versions like the BMW M850i and M8 Competition is this slightly more refined-looking and sophisticated model, one that doesn’t deliver quite as much aggression as the M8 but offers nearly as much performance and a similar price tag. In essence, it’s the big-time baller of the 8 Series crew—an 8-baller, if you will. This is the 2022 BMW Alpina B8 Gran Coupe, a car that can lope along all day at triple-digit speeds and look fine doing it, as several Performance Vehicle of the Year judges discovered for themselves during evaluation loops at the Hyundai Proving Ground. “The B8 is absolutely at home on the oval at 120 mph,” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said. “Calm, cool, and collected: This machine…

The new BMW M5 CS—for Competition Sport—immediately caught our attention, thanks to the visually stunning combination of its $5,000 Frozen Deep Green Metallic paint and its bronze wheels and grille surround. And once on the move, it was quickly established BMW had delivered the most thrilling M5 in years. The S63 4.4-liter twin-turbo V-8 makes 627 hp at 6,000 rpm and 553 lb-ft of torque. Peak torque is the same as the regular M5 Competition’s, but the CS’ maximum power betters the Comp’s by 10 and the standard M5’s by 27. Snap the throttle open and hang on as monstrous acceleration takes hold, pushing the CS to speeds few other contenders could match on the faster parts of our evaluation circuits. But this isn’t merely a straight-line superstar. It benefits…

For the as-tested price of the Lamborghini Huracán STO, you could buy 15-and-a-half Si-badged Honda Civics, the lowest-priced, least powerful, and third-lightest contender that vied for our PVOTY calipers. Did a humble, sub-$30K, front-wheel-drive economy sedan making only 200 horsepower have a chance against all the Black Series/Wings, M’s, V’s, GTs, and GT3s? Abso-friggin-lutely. In fact, many of the supposed shortcomings of the 2022 Honda Civic Si made it stand out in our field of monstrously powered beasts. Subtracting brute force and head-snapping thrust—and much of the associated sound and fury—sharpened our judges’ perception of other attributes. “There’s something really tactile and raw about the Civic Si that gets me going,” director of editorial operations Mike Floyd said. “Its four-cylinder at full chat just sounds so lean and mean.” The…

If you’re an overthinker, the 2022 Subaru BRZ and 2022 Toyota GR86 are not the cars for you. These two small rear-drive sports cars have the same chassis, same engine, and same transmission, and they roll off the same factory line. The differences amount to a couple hundred bucks and some minor suspension tweaks, exterior visual differences, and interior trim bits. So how do you choose? And how will you know if you made the right choice? Truth is, you could just flip a coin, because either way you’re going to be left wondering: What if? The new BRZ and GR86 are both heavily revised versions of the 2012–2020 BRZ and Scion FR-S/Toyota 86. The pair gets an updated platform that’s 50 percent stiffer than before, plus more aggressive rubber…

It’s hard not to get a sense of déjà vu from the 2022 Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing. Ostensibly a new M3-fighting compact luxury sport sedan, the CT4-V Blackwing looks and drives much like a mildly updated Cadillac ATS-V. Question is—is that a bad thing? In a word, no. The old ATS-V was one of our favorite compact luxury sport sedans, thanks to its superb chassis dynamics, great steering, and driver’s car feel. Its imperfections—mostly centered around its 3.6-liter twin-turbo V-6—held it back from toppling the likes of the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio and Mercedes-AMG C 63 in comparison tests against its segment peers. Moving beyond the fact that this is a new-generation vehicle with a new name, Cadillac made only subtle changes to the CT4-V Blackwing over the ATS-V in an…

It’s not often a car comes along where the only thing you can find to complain about are the names, functions, and number of the drive modes, but here we are. The 2021 Lamborghini Huracán STO is so insanely good to drive, we’re left with the nittiest nits to pick. “You look at the STO and its wings ’n’ things,” deputy editor Alex Stoklosa said, “then consider that it’s shoving a V-10’s worth of power to only the rear wheels, and you assume it’ll be hairier than a barbershop floor. Not at all. There is so much grip, and the chassis is so balanced, that it drives nothing like it looks. There is no evil here. Sure, the Lambo hustles in ways most cars don’t or can’t, but it simply…

Look, there’s no way we could host a Performance Vehicle of the Year event and not bring the affordable, rear-wheel-drive, stick-shift sports car along to the finalist round … right? Well, yes and no. After a day at Hyundai’s proving ground with both the new Toyota GR86 and its mechanical sibling, the Subaru BRZ, our finalist selection process devolved into a final-week-of-the-season morass like the one often faced by the College Football Playoff committee. Lots of de facto ties, followed by overly nuanced arguments for and against the Toyota and Subaru. One key takeaway? The GR86 and BRZ aren’t as alike as you’d expect. Each sport coupe wears slightly different styling, sure, but also unique tuning. Subaru and Toyota mount their fighters’ rear anti-roll bars differently, with the GR86 locating…

The notion that human error is responsible for 94 percent of road crashes is “a deadly myth,” David Zipper says. Writing in The Atlantic, Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, contends that blaming crashes on drivers’ bad decisions implies nobody else could have prevented them. “That enables car companies to deflect attention from their decisions to add heft and height to the SUVs and trucks that make up an ever larger portion of vehicle sales, and it allows traffic engineers to escape scrutiny for dangerous street designs,” Zipper writes. Zipper’s article appeared after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported last October that more than 20,000 Americans died in road crashes in the first half of 2021, an 18.4…