Editor ’s Let ter
Backfires
As a longtime subscriber of Car and Driver, I have noticed that as the years have passed, especially in this century, more and more articles in the magazine have concerned not cars as historically defined, but trucks and various categories of SUVs. And now, as noted in your October issue, we’re faced with an unprecedented list of discontinued cars. —Tyler Thompson Little Rock, AR We’re still upset about the death of the Grand Marquis and our inability to joke about the availability of the de Sade package—Ed. Anybody else think the new Volkswagen Passat’s nose looks like the one on a mid1970s AMC Matador sedan? —Michael Melton Hobbs, NM Pedro Romero killed some 5600 bulls in his 28-year career as a matador—Ed. Well, well, well! What have we here? Seems the comprehensive “New Cars for 2020” article has an echo chamber, what with the Silverado HD’s description repeated word for word with that of the Sierra HD, save for the substitution of the truck names. Sure, we know the trucks are carbon copies; badge engineering, I think it’s called. Still, a wee bit of verbal creativity would have been welcome. Some of us oldsters still do read, after all. Oh, did I mention one tiny
10
And then there were (actually) 10 need to start this letter by admitting that I’m not a superstar when it comes to arithmetic. But it didn’t take me too long in the new job to determine that our 10Best contest was a bit of a lie. With one 10Best list for cars and another for trucks, SUVs, and vans, we actually have been coming up with 20 10Best vehicles. This is not one of those internet math tricks. It’s true. Pull out your trusty TI-86 calculators and check my math, if you must. Separating cars and trucks made our lives easier, but we couldn’t live with the lie any longer. So this year, we decided that we’d combine all vehicles and choose only 10. We invited back last fRN_μ` dV[[R_` N[Q NYY aUR [Rd \_ `VT[V¼PN[aYf b]QNaRQ cRUVPYR` a\ arrive at 93 contestants competing for 10 spots. As in years past, we shook down all of them from our base camp at a Boy Scouts facility in rural Michigan. It wasn’t easy to pare down our list of favorites. There were plenty of comments, impassioned arguments, and desperate pleas for votes: “If the Kia Telluride isn’t on your list, consider a new career.” “I swear I’ll quit if the Jeep Gladiator is a 10Best winner.” “These doughnuts are stale!” After driving our 10Best loop in Michigan for two weeks and giving each car the same level of scrutiny we always do, we arrived at a list that feels like a nice cross section of all the things we love to drive and would buy. Listen, I can already hear your complaints. There’s no need to go buy N `aNZ] S_\Z aUR ]_V`\[ P\ZZV``N_f a\ ¼_R \ß N[ N[T_f UN[Qd_VaaR[ YRater. I know. We are Car and Driver, not SUV and Truck and Driver. But guess what? Most Americans are really, really into SUVs and trucks. We’d be ignoring a huge chunk of our audience if we pretended traditional cars were the only choice and unequivocally superior to their topheavy brethren for every task. And I get it. Change is hard. Take a couple deep breaths, squeeze your stress ball, and then turn to page 25 to take a look at what we believe to be the best of what’s for sale right now.
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S H A R O N SI L K E C A R T Y E D I TO R - I N - C H I E F
JAN UARY 2020 ~ CAR AN D DRIV ER
S IC YO U R D O GS O N U S AT: E DI TOR S @ CA RA N DD R I V E R.CO M O R JO I N : BACK F I RES.CARAND D RI V E R.CO M P HOTO G RA P H BY J E NN Y R I S H E R
hideously restyles its iconic grilles to suit China’s market, Chevrolet badly clones the Acura NSX, and Porsche slaps the Turbo name on a car with no engine at all. Apocalypse, if not now, then very, very soon! —M. Winter Toronto, ON
