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ON THE COVER Stream Top Gear America on the MotorTrend app on January 29.

EST. 1949 VOL. 73 NO. 3

Tests & Drives 36 MotorTrend Best Driver’s Car 38 Best of Times, Worst of Times The crazy year in which a smaller field made things harder. Jonny Lieberman 54 Randy’s Rankings Best Track Car How our pro hot shoe rates our field.

Randy Pobst

56 Track map Every contender, mapped. Kim Reynolds

58 WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca Lap times The fastest cars we’ve hot-lapped.

62 Survival of the Fittest When you’re this good, you don’t have to evolve to win.

But it doesn’t hurt. Scott Evans 70 World’s Greatest Drag Race 10 A year of change means we change up the formula. Mark Rechtin

MotorTrend (ISSN 0027-2094) March 2021, Vol. 73, No. 3. Published monthly by Motor Trend Group, LLC, 831 South Douglas Street, El Segundo, CA 90245. Copyright© 2021 by Motor Trend Group, LLC; All rights reserved. Periodicals Postage Paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Subscriptions: U.S. and U.S. Possessions $18 for 12 issues. Canada $30 per year and international orders $42 per year (including surface mail postage). Payment in advance, U.S. funds only. Postmaster: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 707.4.12.5); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: send address corrections to: MotorTrend, P.O. Box 37200, Boone, IA 50037.

6 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

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2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

16

FIRST TEST

Does Ford’s new electric Mustang Mach-E live up to the name?

Departments & Features 12 Reference Mark More content, more tech, more fun 14 Intake This month’s hot metal 24 Technologue Might this solid-state battery finally

MTGARAGE

democratize EVs? 26 Interview Chris Corbould 007’s special effects guru 30 Against All Odds Top Gear America Filming TGA at the height of a pandemic. Derek Powell

72 Does Racing School Make You a Better Driver?

We sent four junior staffers to BMW Performance Driving School. Did it stick? Duncan Brady, Alex Leanse,

Arrival Hyundai Sonata Updates Genesis G70 Nissan Sentra • Subaru Outback

Stefan Ogbac, Nick Yekikian

84 The Big Picture The Italian Job ALL-NEW TOP GEAR AMERICA IS HERE!

WATCH TOP GEAR AT MOTORTREND.COM/TOPGEAR More than 200 hours of programming, including 170 episodes of the beloved Top Gear U.K. series, are at MotorTrend.com/topgear.

8 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

MOTORTREND Presents

AMERICA

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Editorial

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Editor-in-Chief Mark Rechtin @markrechtin Int'l Bureau Chief Angus MacKenzie @Angus_Mack Senior Features Editor Jonny Lieberman @MT_Loverman Detroit Editor Alisa Priddle @alisapriddle Features Editors Scott Evans @MT_Evans, Christian Seabaugh @C_Seabaugh Editor-at-Large Edward Loh @EdLoh Manager, Visual Assets Brian Vance Photography Asset Editor William Walker @MT_dubdub Associate Photographers Renz Dimaandal, Brandon Lim, Darren Martin, Jade Nelson Managing Editor Rusty Kurtz Senior Copy Editor Jesse Bishop @thejessebishop Copy Editors Claire Crowley, Keegan Pope

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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Mark Rechtin

Reference Mark More content, more tech, more fun @markrechtin

W

elcome to the annual Best Driver’s Car issue, arriving a few months later than usual. Also, welcome to the Top Gear America issue.

That’s what COVID-19 did to us. Normally, we conduct BDC testing in July and get you the issue in late September with a November cover date.

But planning for these events started in March, and with everything falling into chaos and disorder (and stayat-home order), we quickly made a decision to postpone our annual supercar shenanigans.

We performed some test runs of socially distanced group gatherings in the process of performing our Car, Truck, and SUV of the Year evaluations. Having slathered ourselves in Purell, wiped down all cars with 91 percent isopropyl alcohol between drivers, and installing a COVID cop to ensure that we were doing things properly, we got through those tests with zero people falling ill.

But those were events held locally in L.A. Everyone went home at night. Best Driver’s Car would require a bit more complex logistics than that. Multiply that by several factors, and you have the difficulty deploying a world-class video production like Top Gear America.

Key to making BDC happen is access to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca so that we could have comparable lap times to past years’ winners. That would entail a road trip from L.A. for the MotorTrend editorial and video teams in the midst of a pandemic, staying at an unfamiliar hotel in Monterey, and getting take-out from unknown restaurants. It also meant having pro driver Randy Pobst fly to California from Atlanta.

None of these prospects was appealing. But by the time our October testing dates rolled around, we felt confident we could execute this enterprise and minimize risk at the same time. We took endless precautions and were able to achieve this magnificent content package that you can read about in these pages. (Thanks to Tire Rack for having the guts to underwrite the costs associated with this venture, not knowing if we could pull it off or would have to cancel. Also, a five-star rating to our hotel, The Clement Monterey, for really taking COVID seriously.)

If, after reading this issue, you want to see more, you can view video of Randy’s hot laps and the accompanying World’s Greatest Drag Race at MotorTrend.com by aiming your smartphone camera at this image and clicking the link that appears. Bang, done.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, these checkerboard icons are known as QR codes, and you will be seeing more of them throughout our pages. It’s part of our effort to get folks who read the magazine to also go to our website and also watch our

streaming video content on our app. Because MotorTrend is much more than just a magazine.

To that point, this issue of the magazine is about more than Best Driver’s Car. Just as exciting (and certainly more glamorous), we finally can announce the air date of Top Gear America, the MotorTrend adaptation of the series made famous by the BBC. It’s available only on the MotorTrend app.

Top Gear America brings the magic of Hollywood to your personal screen: Movie star Dax Shepard, comedian Rob Corddry, and pro racer Jethro Bovingdon will lead you on never-before-done adventures in the automotive world.

Look, we hear what you’re thinking: There are car shows, and there are car shows. Many have become formulaic and repetitive. We know that. And we are not doing that. This is going to be awesome.

Same idea: Aim your smartphone camera at this link, and it will take you straight to the site where you can access the new Top Gear America episodes, starting January 29, with all the speed limit–, gravity-, and common sense–defying hijinks that Dax, Rob, and Jethro could dream up. Not yet a subscriber to the app? You can do that at the link, too.

It’s dirt cheap.

We guarantee you will love this new iteration of Top Gear America. Not happy, thrilled, and ROTFL after watching it? Drop us a line, and Dax will personally come to your house and wash your car. OK, not really. But we are super-confident you will love the show. Check it out. Q

Starting January 29, you can access the new Top Gear America episodes on the MotorTrend app.

12 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Rob, Dax, and Jethro (from left) will be on your screens with all the automotive adventures Top Gear America could dream up. They dream really well.

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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Trend 3.21

WORDS JORDON SCOTT

Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. But this ain’t that.

Sure, we’re calling it Top Gear, and it’s a trio of hosts, and it’s about cars. But what made the original show great wasn’t the formula; it was the rapport and camaraderie of the hosts. The three lucky enthusiasts we’ve chosen have all of that in spades. Between the gas-fueled passion for life that is Dax Shepard, Rob Corddry’s Emmy-winning comedic stylings, and the vast car knowledge and driving skill of Jethro Bovingdon, our new trio is sure to entertain.

EXCLUSIVE

MOTORTREND AND BBC STUDIOS JOIN FORCES: ALL-NEW TOP GEAR AMERICA IS HERE!

S

et the date on the calendar, kids! Top Gear America is (finally) coming exclusively to the MotorTrend app, starting January 29.

This isn’t some rip-off of that motoring show from

14 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

across the pond, either—this is die-hard car enthusiasts who live and breathe cars.

When two of the most influential brands in automotive history—MotorTrend and Top Gear—join forces on a car show, what could go wrong?

We couldn’t ask just anyone to take up the American mantle of the most iconic car show in history. There have been many copycats and tributes over the years, but they all pale in comparison to that most venerable of trios:

Famous for movies like Idiocracy and Zathura, with TV shows like Parenthood to throw in, as well, Dax basically keeps working to pay for his next gas-powered toy. It might be a Bentley Continental GTS, it could be a long-travel Chevy K5 Blazer, it could be half a dozen motorcycles because they’re cheaper and that means he can buy more (very sound logic, in our opinion)—Dax needs to own it. He’s already out of space and is building a “barn” at his Southern California ranch to house more cars and motorcycles, but he never stops

TREND I 3.21

thinking about the next one.

And he isn’t precious about modifying things, either. If it doesn’t turn and stop just as well as it goes, Shepard is happy to modify anything however he sees fit. Numbersmatching? Who cares!

Collectability? He’d rather collect miles and smiles. If it burns gas, Dax wants to drive it. Fast. ’Nuff said.

Actor and comedian Rob Corddry loves everything car-related. Old car, new car, fast car, slow car—there’s something to love in all of it. He may or may not know why one engine is better than another or how Positraction actually works (but we think he’s just being coy); he doesn’t want to get all bogged down in the details and instead just

get psyched about the cars.

That’s Rob’s philosophy on loving automobiles. Hmm, an enthusiast who can and happily will talk cars until the streetlights turn off and has won four primetime Emmy awards for his acting and writing career. Is that a good fit for a car show?

You know his words from MotorTrend and Automobile magazines, and you know his face and his driving from Head 2 Head on the MotorTrend app, but did you know Jethro Bovingdon has two class wins at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring? And did you also know he’s driven just about every car you can think of? If it’s a supercar from the modern era, Jethro has probably driven it and told you all you could ever

want to know about it. As with the other two, Jethro is a lifelong petrolhead (British for car person) along with his father and brothers, who are professional mechanics.

How else could the four of them survive a transcontinental road trip in a Citroën D Super? And no one but a serious fanatic would spend years chasing an 8-minute lap at The ’Ring.

What’s a car show without cars and antics? Boring! And, also, not really a car show.

We’re going to try to avoid that. How, you ask? How does racing three very different expressions of a supercar sound? Or learning how to drift? Maybe throwing in a touching tribute to a modern legend? That’s just the series premiere. Try to keep up as Dax, Rob, and Jethro define a new era of classic cars and set future trends in collecting, then prove you can go overlanding for less money than some people spend on the wheel and tire package on their rigs.

Still not satisfied?! We’ve got road trips, we’ve got the

muscliest of muscle cars, we’ve got land speed racing, rally racing, road racing, drag racing—Ferrari versus a homemade station wagon racing.

Which supercar SUV is the best? Can you float a 10,000pound vehicle on tires? Even learn how to pull one over on a significant other while testdriving a BMW X5M. And that’s just the beginning. It all starts January 29, only on the MotorTrend app.

Not a subscriber yet? First, why not? There are thousands of hours of car-themed content just waiting for your eyeballs. Second, it’s only $2 a month with the Hooptie Holiday Bundle. Where else can you get over 3,600 hours of car-themed content, including all 27 seasons of Top Gear UK and Roadkill and Wheeler Dealers and Speed Racer? Nowhere but the MotorTrend App. POINT YOUR PHONE

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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP

Intake

FIRST TEST

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

M

y first Ford Mustang had a 4.6-liter V-8, five-speed manual, and rear-wheel drive. My next might have two electric motors, single-speed automatic gearboxes, and all-wheel drive.

The 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E is an all-electric, four-door, battery-powered SUV that’ll eventually have up to 480 hp and 634 lb-ft of torque. More than that, the new Mustang Mach-E is going to force the world to rethink just what it considers a Mustang. I’d argue it doesn’t really matter— what does is that the Mustang Mach-E is quite good.

The Mach-E shares many of the traditional Mustang styling cues—like its signature

The Ford Mustang Mach-E’s front trunk holds 4.7 cubic feet of stuff.

It also has a drain and cupholders to function as a cooler.

16 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

tri-bar taillights, roofline, and a dash-to-axle ratio reminiscent of rear-wheel drive—but that’s about it. It’s quite easy to get into the weeds here, but the important things to remember are that the Mustang Mach-E rides on an all-new electric platform underpinned by either a Standard Range (SR) battery with 68 kWh of usable capacity or an optional Extended Range (ER) battery with 88 kWh of usable capacity.

Single-motor rear-wheel drive is standard; dual-motor all-wheel drive is optional.

My old Mustang GT could talk a big game but couldn’t back it up when challenged at a stoplight. The Mustang Mach-E, on the other hand, follows the old Teddy Roosevelt mantra: Speak softly, and carry a big stick. Time after time, I’d stomp on the Mustang Mach-E’s accelerator as a light turned green and glance into the rearview mirror to see traffic frozen in time behind me. It lacks the catapult-shot violence of a Tesla Model Y, but the Mach-E I’m piloting is

The Mustang Mach-E’s interior isn’t quite as sparse as a Tesla Model Y’s. It’s minimalism done right.

basically the midlevel model— more is in the pipeline.

But as we all well know, performance is about more than going. It’s about stopping and turning, too. On the former front, the Mach-E is a mixed bag. Like the Model Y, the Ford offers a one-pedal driving option in each of its three drive modes, Whisper (comfort), Excite (normal), and Unbridled (sport), with varying levels of off-throttle regeneration aggressiveness depending on

the mode. Braking, when in one-pedal mode, is fantastic; the Mustang responds linearly as your foot comes off the throttle, stopping smoothly where you want it to just about every time. With one-pedal mode turned off, the brakes are more inconsistent; they’re a bit rubbery, and they don’t manage the transition between regenerative and mechanical brakes well, making it difficult to be smooth—especially when driving hard.

These taillights are one of just a few obvious similarities the Ford Mustang Mach-E has with other Mustangs.

Despite the unpredictable brake feel, the Mustang Mach-E felt like a true Mustang on the same roads where I had tested a Tesla Model Y Performance earlier this year. Despite its all-season tires (summers are optional), steering was quick and accurate, and the chassis felt remarkably neutral in the same way a good rear-drive driver’s car is. Unlike its gas-powered siblings, the Mustang Mach-E is easy to steer with the accelerator—crank the wheel through a long sweeper and come off the accelerator a touch before hammering back on it, and the rear end steps out in a controlled fashion, helping get the nose pointed quickly and lined up for the next corner.

The Mach-E’s suspension tuning is top notch, too. It isn’t easy to manage nearly 5,000 pounds of batteries and steel, yet the only times the suspension lets you feel the weight it’s managing is in tight back-toback hairpins or after hitting a major midcorner bump.

Otherwise the ride manages to be sporty while also remaining supple and composed—a balance Tesla hasn’t managed to pull off in the Model Y. It’s also worth noting that current Mach-Es ride on traditional passive suspension systems— later models, like the GT, will get adaptive dampers.

PHOTOGRAPHS WILLIAM WALKER

Despite popular misconceptions, charging and traveling long distances in the Mustang Mach-E ought to be easier than in any non-Tesla EV. Although Tesla built its own Supercharger network, Ford bought one, negotiating rates at third-party networks like Electrify America and others on behalf of its owners. This cobbled-together network, combined with the FordPass mobile app and the Mach-E’s new Sync 4A infotainment system, helps make long-distance travel as painless as possible.

The Mach-E lacks the built-in video games of the Model Y, but its cabin is arguably a better place to spend time. For starters, Ford actually bothered to design the Mach-E’s cabin. Although I appreciate the minimalistic California cool of the Model Y, the Mach-E’s cabin has a similar open-air feel but with a neat mix of textures and materials, like the real-feeling vegan leather upholstery and the rubberized weavelike trim anchored by that big infotainment display and a cool cloth-covered Bang & Olufsen soundbar set into the dash.

The seats themselves are snug and supportive up front, and in back I had no issues comfortably fitting my 6-foot frame behind the driver’s seat

The Mustang Mach-E has a trim-level for every budget and need, but the Premium ER AWD should be the volume model.

TRIM

HORSEPOWER

TORQUE (LB-FT)

RANGE (MILES)

Select

266

317

230

Premium SR RWD

266

317

230

Premium SR AWD

266

428

211

Premium ER RWD

290

317

300

Premium ER AWD

346

428

270

in my ideal position. Cargo space in back is generous considering the SUV’s sloping roofline, and the frunk has a built-in drain and cupholders to function as a cooler when not holding 4.7 cubic feet of stuff.

With prices starting at $44,995 before rebates or incentives, you’d be foolish to not at least consider a Mustang Mach-E if you’re in the market for a premium electric vehicle.

Christian Seabaugh

SPECS 2021 FORD MUSTANG MACH-E 4X BASE PRICE $43,995 PRICE AS TESTED $56,200 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-/rear-motor, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door SUV MOTORS Permanent-magnet, 346-hp/428-lb-ft comb TRANSMISSION 1-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,807 lb (49/51%) WHEELBASE 117.5 in L x W x H 185.6 x 74.1 x 64.0 in 0-60 MPH 4.8 sec QUARTER MILE 13.4 sec @ 103.5 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 109 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.85 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 26.2 sec @ 0.69 g (avg) RANGE 270 mi (est) CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.00 lb/mile (at vehicle)

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Intake

MIKE CONNOR

2022 Subaru BRZ

FIRST RIDE

Even if it ain’t broke, a few things can be fixed

M

eet the 2022 BRZ. Not only is the sheetmetal all new, but our prayers for more power have at last been answered.

Let’s start with all 28 extra horsepower. The engine remains naturally aspirated but grows from 2.0 to 2.4 liters. The result is 228 hp at 7,000 rpm and 184 lb-ft of torque at 3,700 rpm, up from 206 hp and 156 lb-ft in manual cars and 200 hp and 151 lb-ft of torque in automatics. Why no turbo? Subaru says to keep the BRZ’s price down.

In the Age of Hellcat, the BRZ no doubt sounds underpowered. Keep in mind, however, that Subaru says the new BRZ weighs less than 2,900 pounds, which would be about 100 pounds more than the last one we weighed. Do the math, and the weight-topower ratio still improves by

over a half pound per horsepower on the new car. You can have your 2022 BRZ with either a six-speed manual or a six-speed automatic. As ever, get the manual.

As for the chassis, it’s all new, though Subaru built it with lessons learned from the brand’s Global Platform.

The top of the boxer engine block sits lower than the top of the tires, so the center of gravity remains quite low.

The suspension is identical in setup to the previous car but completely reworked. The BRZ has grown fractionally in wheelbase and length but is unchanged in width, and the new one is actually shorter in height than the car it replaces.

There are five drive modes, and if you place the stability control in Track, the digital tachometer reconfigures itself into a line graph just like in a

Mustang or a McLaren 570S. How’s the 2022 BRZ drive?

Dunno. Despite begging, I wasn’t allowed to drive it.

However, Subaru was nice enough to trek former F1/ NASCAR and current Subaru rally driver Scott Speed out to the Thermal Club near Palm Springs to give yours truly some hot laps.

Although it’s not a drag racer, 0–60 mph should happen in the low 6-second range. More important, not only is peak torque up, but from the seat of my pants, the torque curve also seems fatter throughout the rev range.

Unlike in the previous car, it felt as if this BRZ was blasting out of corners. In the first-gen BRZ, you never felt that. Is that notorious flat spot in the middle of the rev range gone?

Again, didn’t drive it, but it feels like it’s mostly gone.

The new BRZ felt as balanced and as neutral as ever, with a hint of oversteer on turn in. Understeer basically doesn’t happen, due mostly to the suspension tuning, though I’d guess the sticky Michelin PS4S tires help some, too.

Subaru hasn’t announced pricing yet, but expect it to be in line with current BRZ prices when it goes on sale this fall, so just a hair under $30,000.

Jonny Lieberman

18 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

MT CONFIDENTIAL Where to, Bentley? Although two of Bentley’s current models—the Continental GT and Flying Spur—are based on Porsche’s relatively new MSB platform and one—the Bentayga—is built on Audi’s older MLB architecture, VW Group has decided to put the British brand more firmly under Ingolstadt’s aegis, to the point where Audi might even take a shareholding.

Driving the move is the bold plan to produce only electricpowered Bentleys from 2030 onward. Formally linking it with Audi means Bentley will get a major role in defining the characteristics it requires of the high-tech “Artemis” EV architecture being developed under the direction of former motorsport engineer Alex Hitzinger. Why not Porsche?

“Bentley is a luxury brand, not a sports car brand,” one insider says. “Audi is a better fit.” Electric Rivalry As Mercedes engineers put the finishing touches on the EQS, Stuttgart’s new all-electric flagship, their counterparts in Munich are readying a 7 Series–sized rival, the i7. The big electric BMW sedan is said to be a more conventionallooking car than the swoopy EQS. That’s because it’s built on a convergence platform designed to also package an internal combustion engine and a plug-in hybrid powertrain, rather than a unique BEV platform like the Mercedes. Screaming Silverados? Whispers out of Melbourne, Australia, suggest former Holden hot-shop HSV is working on a supercharged version of the Chevy Silverado 1500. With the demise of the Holden brand Down Under, the company that once developed Holden’s high-performance models has reinvented itself as a specialist engineering contractor for GM Specialty Vehicles. Among other things, it converts Silverado 1500s and 2500s to right-hand drive for the Australian market.

But old habits die hard, it seems. Australian sources say if it comes to market, HSV’s supercharged Silverado could pack as much as 670 hp. Look out, TRX and Raptor?

Bad to the Bone Full tang stainless steel blade with natural bone handle —now ONLY $79!

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he very best hunting knives possess a perfect balance of form and function. They’re carefully constructed from fine materials, but also have that little something extra to connect the owner with nature.

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The handle is made from genuine natural bone, and features decorative wood spacers and a hand-carved motif of two overlapping feathers— a reminder for you to respect and connect with the natural world.

This fusion of substance and style can garner a high price tag out in the marketplace. In fact, we found full tang, stainless steel blades with bone handles in excess of $2,000. Well, that won’t cut it around here. We have mastered the hunt for the best deal, and in turn pass the spoils on to our customers.

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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Intake

2021 Ford F-150 PowerBoost Hybrid FIRST TEST

Quick as a Raptor and can power your house

W

e borrowed a 2021 Ford F-150 Lariat Sport 4x4 PowerBoost, strapped our gear to it, and were frankly amazed that it’s ready to race Raptors for pinks. But by the end of our three days with this F-150, it was the power in the pickup box, not under the hood, that most impressed us.

Sandwiching a 44-hp, 221-lb-ft electric motor in between the 394-hp, 492-lb-ft 3.5-liter twin-turbo V-6 EcoBoost engine and the 10-speed automatic transmission boosts total output to 430 horses and 570 lb-ft.

The outgoing Raptor made 20 more horses but 60 fewer lb-ft of torque, and the last one we Power Pro Onboard allows the hybrid F-150 to act as a mobile generator. It’s a compelling sales proposition.

tested weighed 171 pounds less, but the hybrid has a better weight-to-power ratio.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, then, that the new truck runs nearly neck and neck with the Raptor. It zips to 60 mph in 5.3 seconds on the way to a 13.8-second, 102.1-mph quarter mile. All other F-150s we’ve tested need 6 or 7 seconds to get to 60 mph. Very much unlike the Raptor, the EPA reckons it’ll return 24/24/24 mpg city/highway/combined.

If only it didn’t moan like a five-cylinder diesel UPS truck.

For 2021, Ford has switched from vacuum to electric power braking, and—at least on this hybrid, which attempts to blend regenerative and friction

braking—the feel needs work.

At city speeds, the pedal feels wooden, and the response is not as linear or predictable as one expects. Ford has been in the hybrid game for too long to excuse nonlinear hybrid braking feel like this.

My best stop from 60 mph required 136 feet, on the high end of our recent F-150 stops, which have ranged from 118 to 140 feet. Some blame might be due to the slightly knobby Goodyear Wrangler Territory tires, though they managed to generate 0.75 g lateral grip, nailing the F-150 average.

The more likely culprit is that 5,832-pound curb weight.

As for handling, the F-150 ran around my favorite

handling loop remarkably well for a tall, hefty truck wearing galoshes. Body control was surprisingly reasonable, and the steering generally felt good—slow but linear. Ride quality was also quite good for a truck with a 7,350-pound gross vehicle weight rating and 12,400-pound towing capacity.

I drove up to my cabin on a chilly autumn day, plugged in a 1,500-watt space heater and my 14-inch McCulloch chain saw (880 watts). The heater ran for 5 minutes on the energy stored in the 1.5-kWh lithium-ion battery before firing the engine. Then when I started cutting firewood, still with the heater on, the engine still only switched on for brief periods to top up the small battery.

PowerBoost is available on SuperCrew versions of all F-150 trim grades. Prices for the hybrid and mobile generator tech are $500 less than the Power Stroke diesel and $1,900 more than the gas-only 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6, regardless of trim level. If you want to save fuel, get the diesel. Buy PowerBoost because it’s way cheaper and vastly more convenient than an equally powerful and reliable portable generator.

Frank Markus SPECS 2021 FORD F-150 LARIAT SPORT 4X4 POWERBOOST BASE PRICE $58,490 PRICE AS TESTED $64,760 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, 4WD, 5-pass, 4-door truck ENGINE 3.5L/394-hp/492-lb-ft twin-turbo DOHC 24-valve V-6 plus 44-hp/221-lb-ft elec motor; 430 hp/570 lb-ft (comb) TRANSMISSION 10-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 5,832 lb (60/40%) WHEELBASE 145.4 in L x W x H 231.7 x 79.9 x 77.2 in 0-60 MPH 5.3 sec QUARTER MILE 13.8 sec @ 102.1 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 136 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.75 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 24/24/24 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 140/140 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.81 lb/mile

REAR VIEW

TREND I 3.21

Intake

From the MotorTrend Archive ...

2022 BMW iX

FIRST LOOK

W

e drove the electric Jaguar I-Pace from London to Berlin in mid-2018 before scooting through the deserts of Abu Dhabi in Audi’s electric E-Tron just before Christmas that same year. We flew to Norway to sample the electric Mercedes-Benz EQC in May 2019. With luck, we’ll get to drive a production version of BMW’s electric rival to all three, the iX, in late 2021.

Which raises the question: What took BMW so long to enter its challenger to a wave of Euro-luxe electric SUVs? You don’t have to wander far into the iX’s 23-page press kit to find a clue: The new SUV, it says, is BMW Group’s new technology flagship. This

X5-sized SUV is being positioned as a vehicle that, more than even BMW’s traditional flagship, the 7 Series sedan, showcases what the best and the brightest brains in Munich can achieve. The iX not only unveils hardware, software, design elements, and manufacturing techniques that will influence all future BMWs, but it also readies a brand once defined by its appeal to petrolhead driving enthusiasts for an autonomous, electric world.

Some things haven’t changed, however. As you’d expect of a BMW flagship, the iX is powerful, with two electric motors—one mounted at the rear axle and one at the front—developing a total of more than 500 hp. And it

should be quick, assuming BMW’s claim of 0–60 in less than 5.0 seconds is almost certainly understated.

Of course, for most people the key issue with electric vehicles is not how fast one is but how far it’ll go per charge. The iX’s powerful motors, which have been developed in-house and do not use rare earth materials, draw from a high-voltage 100-kWh battery, and BMW says it aims to deliver an EPA-rated range of more than 300 miles. The iX’s power electronics allow DC fast charging at up to 200 kW, which means the battery can be topped up from 10 percent charge to 80 percent in less than 40 minutes. Adding 75 miles of range takes just 10 minutes.

An 11-kW Level 2 charger will take the battery from 0 to 100 percent charge in less than 11 hours.

The iX is built using a bespoke aluminum spaceframe, with light and rigid carbon-reinforced plastic used on the bodyside and roof frames, cowl, and the rear window frame. It’s as long and wide as the midsize X5 SUV, virtually the same height overall as an X6, and its wheelbase is 1.0 inch longer. The kick-up at the rear of the greenhouse and the aggressive M4-style “grille”—it is actually a closed panel hiding sensors, radar units, and cameras— make the synapses snap “BMW,” even if the rest is completely new.

The iX is expected to arrive in the U.S. in early 2022. In preparation, BMW has partnered with EVgo to provide access to more than 800 fast charge points and 35,000 Level 2 charge points via a smartphone app.

Angus MacKenzie

22 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Elsewhere in the issue, we reviewed the new Datsun 240Z and MAR 1971 PRICE: $0.50 Pontiac Ventura II, and we Our March compared the ’71 issue was Buick Centurion dedicated to a to the Mercury racing preview for the upcoming Monterey. (The Mercury won.) season.

MAR 1991 PRICE: $2.95

MAR 2011 PRICE: $4.99

Our March ’91 magazine was our (now-defunct) Import Car of the Year issue, as we used to limit Car of the Year solely to American cars. While the Chevrolet Caprice was our 1991 Car of the Year, the Import Car of the Year was the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4.

We’re curious which would’ve won if the awards were combined like they are now.

Ten years ago this was our Future Cars issue. Among the cars we previewed was the cover car, the reborn Chevrolet Camaro Convertible, as well as the then-new Ford Escape and Honda Civic.

2022 Infiniti QX55

S

top us if you’ve heard this before. An automaker realizes SUVs of all shapes and sizes sell like hotcakes, so to maximize profit, it releases a swoopy “coupelike” variant of one or more of its traditional (squarer) SUV models.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because BMW, Audi, and Mercedes all do it. Now you can count Infiniti among this group. The 2022 Infiniti QX55 hopes to challenge vehicles such as the BMW X4, Audi Q5 Sportback, and MercedesBenz GLC 300 Coupe.

Infiniti wants consumers to think back to the original Infiniti FX when eyeing the QX55, which cribs its sloping roofline from Infiniti’s

groundbreaking crossover.

Although its profile harks back to Infiniti’s past, the QX55’s front end aggressively evolves Infiniti’s current design language. With its gaping maw and squinty headlights, the QX55 certainly looks bold. The rest of this Infiniti’s design is more conservative.

That said, standard 20-inch wheels and tires, a black roof spoiler, and “piano key” LED taillights give the QX55 an additional styling edge over its QX50 stablemate.

Less separates their interiors. In fact, the QX55’s passenger compartment looks nearly identical to the QX50’s. This includes the brand’s middling dual-screen InTouch infotainment setup.

FIRST LOOK The system supports wireless Apple CarPlay. Android users, however, need to connect their device to one of the car’s USB ports to use Android Auto. A 16-speaker Bose audio system is available as an option on higher trims.

Like the QX50, the QX55’s second row slides to prioritize legroom or cargo space.

Behind the rear bench, the QX55 has up to 26.9 cubic feet of cargo space—5.0 less than its QX50 counterpart.

Seat trim offerings include leatherette, leather, or semianiline leather appointments.

The QX55 offers three trim levels: Pure, Luxe, and Sensory. Pure serves as the base trim and misses out on comfort options. The Luxe trim gets more niceties, and Sensory models come with all the trimmings.

Every QX55 is powered by a 268-hp, 280-lb-ft 2.0-liter VC-Turbo. A CVT sends that grunt to all four wheels.

Pricing remains under wraps, but we expect the QX55 to start right around the $39,000 mark when it hits dealerships this spring.

Nick Yekikian

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

TREND I 3.21

Frank Markus

Technologue Might this solid-state battery finally democratize EVs? ichael Faraday discovered solid electrolytes in the 1830s, and the solid-state battery has promised to be the next big electrical thing almost ever since.

The idea frequently makes news that I resist reporting because, to borrow a baseball metaphor, these “batters” too often start their home run trot before realizing it’s just a fly ball to the warning track. But noted scientist Paul Albertus says 10-year-old Stanford University battery startup QuantumScape appears to have hit a “home run in terms of their solid-state battery performance data.”

Here’s the deal with solid-state: These batteries have long promised to solve the thorniest issues preventing widespread battery-electric vehicle adoption while providing better performance on many metrics.

Liquid or gel electrolytes in today’s batteries are flammable and can freeze, so they require costly, heavy warming, cooling, and safety monitoring systems.

Graphite-based anode materials engineered to capture the lithium ions during charging are bulky and heavy, and side reactions within this material compromise performance over time. Charge a lithiumion battery too fast for too long, and lithium metal spikes (dendrites) can form on the anode and pierce the permeable “separator” through which the ions flow, short-circuiting the cell. Solid-state does away with the liquid electrolyte, removing the fire risk.

So why hasn’t solid-state happened? All of the approaches so far have either required high temperatures to operate or (more frequently) haven’t survived the required 800 cycles while retaining 80 percent capacity, or they have required pricey and delicate metallic lithium on the anode, which kills cost, makes the batteries heavy, and doesn’t contribute to energy storage. So, there’s a lot to overcome.

QuantumScape sought Albertus’ opinion because the former head of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E solid-state battery program is now a professional skeptic on the subject.

QuantumScape impressed Albertus by reporting performance results from multiple samples that were commercially sized like a playing card, not tiny single specimens. They also provided charge/discharge cycling data from complete cells, not individual layers, and tested them at significant current density (3 milliamps/square centimeter).

The test cells were also operating under light pressure (3 atmospheres versus the 20 required for Samsung’s solid-state design to work) and at 30 degrees C (they work down to -25 and up to 80, while rivals only work at high temperatures). Even better, QuantumScape’s batteries appear to be demonstrating just 10–15 percent capacity

M

24 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

fade after 800 cycles (240,000 miles)— quadrupling rivals’ performance.

What’s more, QuantumScape’s design eliminates the anode entirely, reducing size and mass to achieve upward of 400 Wh/kg and more than 1,000 Wh/ liter. Using a conventional lithiumnickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC811) cathode and a flexible ceramic separator of undisclosed chemistry, lithium ions from the cathode form a metal film directly on the current collector when charging. This causes the cell to expand, so the battery pack must allow for this.

Lithium forms on the current collector faster than it can on a graphitebased anode, and the ceramic separator resists dendrite formation, making higher charging rates safe. Charging to 80 percent capacity in 15 minutes is easily doable, as the ceramic separator can tolerate high current densities.

Ready for the biggest news? A full charge in two minutes seems feasible because the separator has been shown to tolerate even more extreme current densities than some of today’s fastest-charging lithium-ion batteries tolerate. That’s quicker than pumping gas, for those of you playing at home.

More promising news: That ceramic separator can be produced using existing roll-to-roll coating technology, and eliminating the metallic lithium anode required in some solid-state concepts makes it easier and cheaper to manufacture.

Perhaps the best indication of QuantumScape’s viability is the fact that Volkswagen has invested $300 million of the $1.5 billion in committed capital the company has raised. On the call unveiling the technology, Jürgen Leohold, QuantumScape board member and former head of research at VW, opined that the batteries will enter production in 2024–2025 on premium products first. We presume the Audi E-Tron GT, Porsche Taycan, and a promised 2025 EV from Bentley are prime candidates, with costs coming down as solid-state battery manufacturing matures.

To recap: Five years ago, QuantumScape quietly hit a solid single by identifying its ceramic separator and anodeless design that enables an 80 percent increase in range for a given size battery. In the years since, it’s been plugging away to perfect fast charging, long life, and operation across a wide temperature range while also focusing on manufacturability. Whether you count that as a towering Babe Ruth grand slam or a bases-loaded double to the gap, this battery might mark a tipping point. Q

The “ceramic” separator shown above is obviously flexible. It also represents the size envisioned for production. Individual cells are roughly sized like a playing card, with the battery module consisting of a stack about as thick as a deck of cards. They’ll need to be packed with room to expand, as the lithium plating causes each cell to grow, but only in the direction perpendicular to the “card” face.

NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Interview 007’s Vehicle Effects Guru They’re built really well and handled the terrain fantastically. When we do the filming, we actually have to disable a lot of the safety things to get it to work.

Otherwise, we would probably never be able to do what we wanted to in the film if the safety features were all on. So we had to work with Jaguar Land Rover and turn certain safety features off just so we could achieve what we wanted to.

Which Bond film was the most challenging for you? There’s no such thing as an easy

© 2020 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM.

How was it working with the new Land Rover Defender? It was an interesting

exercise because Jaguar Land Rover really had to pull out all the stops to

MIKE MARSLAND/WIREIMAGE

Y

ou might not know Chris Corbould by name, but you certainly know his work. With more than four decades of special effects experience under his belt, Corbould has left his mark on the likes of The Who’s Tommy (his first industry gig), Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy (where he helped develop the Tumbler, among other things), and the James Bond franchise, including the latest installment, No Time to Die (his 15th Bond film to date).

As the movie’s special effects and action vehicle supervisor, Corbould and his team were responsible for bringing the action sequences to life on the big screen.

We spoke with Corbould, who shared his thoughts on No Time to Die, the new Land Rover Defender, and his past Bond work.

get the vehicles ready for our shooting schedule. I think we had eight Defenders in the end. There was a pretty brutal shoot in the field that really put the Defenders through their paces, going down the steep hills and through rivers and through bogs and jumping.

What specific modifications were done to the vehicles? We got involved with the

stunt requirements, which were the roll cages, the hydraulic hand brakes that you have to put in, the fire extinguishers, the small fuel tanks.

How did the Defenders fare through filming? Oh, they were actually amazing.

Bond film, but a particularly challenging one was the chase on the ice lake in Die Another Day. When we first got into production, I immediately talked with the second-unit director and said, “Look, I think we both agree that we need the fourwheel-drive versions of [these cars].”

I went down to the Aston Martin factory and said, “We would love to use Vanquish; can we have the four-wheeldrive versions?” And they said, “You could if we had one.” And it was the same story at Jaguar. They had no four-wheeldrive version of the XKR. So we ended up adapting four Aston Martin Vanquishes and four Jaguar XKRs—modified the front ends—and made our own four-wheeldrive cars.

What’s one of the stranger moments in your career? The tank chase in GoldenEye

originally started off as a bike chase. And I got called into the producer’s office one day with the director, and they asked me, “Chris, how can we improve this bike chase?” And I said, “Well, how can you?

Get rid of it. Put him in something else.

He’s in a military park. Why can’t he get in a tank?” That whole sequence spurred from that one conversation.

Has your job affected your own car-buying habits? Not at all, really. I’ve got three

tractors at home, and I’ve got a pickup, and I’ve got a Brabus Smart car. I love my tractors. I know that sounds really weird, but when I’ve had a really hard day at work, to go out on the tractor on a lovely summer’s evening and drive around and do stuff—that’s my world. Greg Fink 26 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Your Say...

But first, a correction: On page 42 of our December 2020 issue (SUV of the Year), we mistakenly published a photo of the Audi SQ7’s interior instead of the BMW X6’s. Apologies to Audi for mistaking its interior for the Bimmer’s. BMW—you’re welcome.

Reactions to Car of the Year Starting in 2009, your COTY winners have included everything from a Nissan GT-R to a Tesla Model S to the Corvette.

And since that time, I have owned or leased nothing but new Mercedes-Benz E-Classes. I am on my fifth, a 2020 E 350 4Matic. Having owned several brands before and having other brands in the family now, I couldn’t agree more with your assessment that “this is a car I could happily drive every day for years on end.”

Throughout these years, BMW owners told me my Benzes were just not engaging enough. Audi owners said they had better interiors. Lexus drivers ranted how they have infinitely more standard features. My answer was always the same: The E-Class isn’t the best at just one thing—rather, it’s great at everything. Glad you guys agree.

Asya Domashitsky Brooklyn, New York

Just got the 2021 COTY issue in the mail (yep, still doing that), and at first my reaction was, “Really? This super plain-looking Benz won?” Mercedes-Benz, in my honest opinion, has not exactly been a leader in advancing design, safety, or performance.

It does all those things well, but it’s conservative in its approach. Again, just my opinion. Who was Mercedes up against?

So I bit, thumbed through the pages, and then I saw it. I saw what would have led me to give a nod to the E-Class for COTY. No, it most definitely was not the E 450 sedan cover car. I gazed my eyes on the Mercedes-AMG E 63 wagon. That’s what you should have led with. Wagons are awesome, and Mercedes has the ace up its sleeve in that it’s the only one with

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Rest in peace, John Lamm

three rows [on the E 450 All-Terrain—Ed.].

I’m not sure why others don’t add such an awesome feature.

Is this wagon perfection? No, but it’s pretty close. The only shortcoming (other than the price of entry) is the lack of a manual transmission. Then it would be one of the most perfect vehicles on the road. Come on, who wouldn’t want a 603-hp, 11-second station wagon?

Finally, the Car That Most Looks Like a Beaver Award goes to the BMW 4 Series.

Really, someone approved that design?

Ray Polakowski Metuchen, New Jersey

Any explanation of the acceleration difference between the Cadillac CT4 and the CT4-V? The less powerful engine is quicker to 60 mph and to the quarter mile. Perhaps the AWD provides a better launch, but you would think by the end of the quarter mile the CT4-V would at least close the gap. Unless you are a regular track user, is the V worth the extra money?

John E. Greene Via Email

The difference really boils down to the AWD car’s better launch. Despite the CT4-V being slower in a straight line, we all vastly preferred the way it drove. We’d spend the money on the V upgrade.—Ed.

Everyone’s a critic In this time of isolation, I feel I need to reach out to my fellow car enthusiasts and vent some thoughts on Car of the Year.

Porsche Taycan: great rear fenders, lovely roofline, unfortunately ruined by tears-of-a-clown headlights and the stubby front end. BMW 4 Series: The bucktoothed grille is just plain hideous.

Ugliest car on the market. BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe: Jakey likey. Gorgeous inside and out. Genesis (model not important): It looks like those anonymized cars they use in tire and floormat ads. The rear end seems like a throwback to Lincolns of the early ’90s. Polestar 2: It looks like a chunky, high-riding Dodge Avenger. Not exactly worthy of Thor’s hammer.

Elsewhere in the issue, the Maserati MC20 has me carefully reviewing my list of get-rich-quick schemes (again).

There! I feel better now. Don’t you?

Thanks for another great issue!

Jake Murdock Salt Lake City, Utah

Reader on location This month’s reader on location is airline pilot Larry Wolf of Wyoming, Ohio—one of the many essential workers keeping the world going as we battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s what he had to say from a recent layover in Australia: “I’d love to send you a beautiful picture of your magazine in front of the Sydney Opera House or on Bondi Beach, but I’m quarantined in the hotel. I flew the jet in today and leave tomorrow and get a police escort from my room to the bus to the airport. Such is the world in the crazy times of COVID for airline pilots. Glad I had your magazine to read cover to cover in my hotel room.” Thanks for all that you do, Larry!

Rest in Peace, John Lamm It was with a great deal of sadness that I learned of the untimely passing of John Lamm. When I was the technical editor of MotorTrend in 1973 and ’74, I had the distinct pleasure of working with John for an entire year. John left MotorTrend in late 1974 to go to Road & Track. I left about the same time to go to law school, after doing a review of a 1974 911 Carrera. We had to borrow the 911 from Beverly Hills Porsche-Audi because the factory had none available for our review, and after, I reached the conclusion that I had to have a job where I could own one of those. To this day, I consider John to be one of the top automotive photographers in the world, as well as a truly nice guy.

I would regularly curse John when he made me get up at 5 in the morning to shoot photos on Mulholland Drive or some other exotic locale because of his insistence on getting the early morning light.

I well remember attending the long lead previews with John in 1974, at GM’s Milford Proving Ground and Chrysler’s Chelsea Proving Ground, where he would shoot from early morning until 10 a.m., and then from 3 p.m. until he lost the sun, because his oft-repeated adage was that only mad dogs, Englishmen, and bad photographers go out in the noonday sun.

He was a stickler for perfect lighting, and he worked diligently when he found it, as is evidenced by his photos.

John will be greatly missed, but fortunately, he left a legacy of fabulous photographs, as well as his articles traveling the world with his good friend Phil Hill. I would suggest that MT should honor John by printing a collection of his photos.

John R. Fuchs Pacific Palisades, California MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 27

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e’re somewhere east of Flagstaff, Arizona, in the Coconino National Forest. A bustling film crew crunches back and forth over shifty piles of ancient lava rock. There’s no one around for miles; cellphone service is nonexistent. One car has stubbornly conked out halfway up a steep hill. We’re losing light, and fast.

In any other situation, this would be a recipe for disaster. But on Top Gear America, this unexpected turn of events is par for the course. And as a producer on the show, I’m seeing it all occur in real time.

For the past 28 seasons and counting, the U.K. version of Top Gear has been the

30 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

gold standard of high-quality automotive content. Originally a straightforward review series, it underwent a dramatic transformation in 2002. Although the show was as informative as ever, it was also now wildly entertaining to boot, topped off by epic filmmaking.

Mayhem, mishaps, and misunderstandings: it’s all part of Top Gear America, which blends serious car cred with some seriously over-the-top adventures.

But Top Gear’s real draw was the iconic trio of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond as the hosts. They were collaborators. Conspirators. They were brilliant, funny, and as talented in front of the camera as they were behind the wheel.

So when BBC and MotorTrend joined forces to develop Top Gear America, “finding the right cast was the top priority,” said Travis Shakespeare, executive producer of the show for BBC. “There are things we can do as producers to stack the deck to make the best show possible, but if you don’t have that essential lightning-ina-bottle chemistry, it doesn’t matter how great the production really is, because it just won’t land.”

In other words, they knew that recruiting “car guys” wouldn’t be good enough. This trio had to be downright captivating.

Dax Shepard’s name was on the list from the very start. A car guy through and through, Dax grew up in Detroit with parents who both worked in the automotive industry. While other kids were content with having a

license and a car at 16, Dax was roaring around Michigan International Speedway in Corvettes.

And Dax can drive.

“Generally on a film set I’m asked to slow down,” he said. “But on Top Gear America, I’m encouraged to drive like I did in high school. Sometimes I’m even applauded for doing so.”

If Dax was born with the car gene, Rob Corddry has been sequencing it in a lab.

Famous for his work on The Daily Show and creator of the comedy Children’s Hospital, Rob’s obsession with cars was just in need of the right outlet.

“I represent the car enthusiast viewer who, like me, has never done these things they’ve longed to do,” he said. “Because I don’t have the pedigree of the other two hosts, I have to put a lot of

work into my choices. If I can be so bold, I think I’m pretty good at it.”

Jethro Bovingdon hails from a prolific background in automotive journalism.

His career started pretty much right after college, when he landed an apprenticeship at Evo magazine in the U.K. So although I personally spent that same summer working at Pottery Barn, Jethro was learning how to drift, driving a new car every week, and honing his writing skills— all on the magazine’s dime. And once he

Rob’s first drift! “I love how Rob soaks up information like a sponge,” Jethro says.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 31

TOP GEAR AMERICA was in that world, he never left. “I guess it’s why I’ve always done this job,” he said.

Dax agrees. “Jethro is an expert, Rob is the funniest, and I’m the tallest,” he said. “There’s a lot of love and support between us, as well as some maniacal competitiveness.”

“It felt special before it had even begun,” Rob said. “Given our comedy and improv backgrounds, Dax and I were destined to fall in love.” And as for Jethro? “He has the best giggle. I love making him giggle.”

So does their chemistry work? In a word, yes.

“I think what’s amazing about making this first season has been watching the hosts—who didn’t know each other previously—become fast friends,” said head writer Joe Berry, who hails from the U.K. He cut his teeth working on The Grand Tour.

“I came from a world where the hosts were constantly bickering and fighting, leaving each other in the dirt when their cars broke down and things like that. And then it became very apparent on day one of shooting Top Gear America that these three hosts were never going to be like that. They are really supportive and caring about one another.”

The rest of the crew is equally as tight. As you might expect, a fairly high percentage of the team loves cars, as well. It’s apparent in what they drive, the language they use, the way they spend their free time going on canyon drives together and sharing endless autoclassified links.

Even with all of this essential knowledge, perhaps the hardest part of making Top Gear America is explaining exactly what the show is about. Is it a buddy show that just happens to feature cars? Or is it a car show with humans as supporting characters? It’s unscripted but follows a rigorous outline. You have to know the objective but stay open to the unexpected.

Top Gear’s philosophy is full of contradictions that somehow work, and the show’s simplicity belies the complexity that lurks beneath.

“Things are going to happen whether you plan for them or not, and it’s generally the things you don’t plan for that makes the best episode,” co–executive producer Joe Coleman says. And it all has to be faithfully captured in a narrow window of time.

Each episode is shot in only four days. There’s the “beauties” day, when the camera crew spends daylight hours visually caressing the cars with cameras.

These images are always shot in advance just in case a vehicle doesn’t survive during the main episode filming. During those latter two shoot days, the story plays out in real time—what happens here is what goes into the film.

Finally, there are the car reviews, shot in a single day and designed to feel timeless.

Because episodes air several months after they’re shot, it’s crucial that even the newest, hottest car reviews feature an evergreen take.

After all, cars aren’t just a hobby here.

They’re the lifeblood of the series. A

million-dollar McLaren has a tremendous draw factor, but so does a 25-year-old Buick Roadmaster wagon; each one has a unique character that one of the hosts brings to life. The host’s genuine enthusiasm and opinion makes the vehicle and its story compelling, regardless of price or provenance.

Even on a good day, television production is a notoriously difficult beast to tame. It’s a perpetual motion machine of writing, shooting, and editing, often all at the same time. The complexity of sourcing cars and locations in a short amount of time only compounds the difficulty.

Top: Unexpected guest stars. Middle: Drag racing a luxury tank. Above: Yet another one-sided conversation.

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sea level and named for the nuggets of volcanic rock blanketing the forest floor, Cinder Hills is just northeast of Flagstaff and spans nearly 2 million acres. The colorful topography of black lava rock and green pines is anything but brown.

This trip to Arizona was perhaps our most ambitious one of the season. In just more than a week, we would start with a car review in Phoenix, shoot one episode in Flagstaff, and then film another episode that would span from Sedona to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway back in California. In the middle of all of this, “It’s like a traveling circus,” said Jamie we’d hang a detour down to Camp Verde Kellum, executive in charge. “Constant traveling, heavy logistics, a lot of stopping to finish the episode we began during and starting.” And she’s right. Except here, that short-lived trip to Austin way back in March. Ten picture cars, 10 support vehithe animals are cars, and each location is an entirely new big top. cles, approximately 50 crewmembers, and four hotels, all across thousands of And then the pandemic hit. miles—and all in just eight days.

Halfway through filming the third episode, in Austin, Texas, during From achieving that high point, the mid-March, showrunner Craig Armstrong cast and crew soldiered on through got the call to shut it down. As the crew another month and a half to complete gathered around to hear the news, we the season. Trucks got totaled, tires got were only sure of one thing: We were going shredded, bones were broken, and cars home. But miraculously, the production were blown up. Most of this was even on soldiered on, communicating over Zoom purpose. twice a day for the following three months.

Showrunner Armstrong has decades And by June, we had a game plan to see us of experience in television, and he still through the rest of the season. can’t believe his luck on how everything Now the challenge was of a different turned out. sort. The same caveats and rules of “It’s hard enough making a TV show,” making Top Gear still applied, but they he said. “But when you put all those had to be accomplished in locations that other obstacles into the mix, it’s enough were no more than a day’s drive from Los to make you just want to walk away. But Angeles. And in the summer, that meant no one did; we all stayed focused and everything in close proximity was the managed to put out really good stuff. And same color.

I’m super proud of that.”

“Finding locations that can work well Editor’s note: Several calls to The Stig to with the content is always challenging,” contribute to this story went unreturned. Q producer David Silberman said. “When Top Gear America streams January 29 we could fly, we could shoot anywhere. only on the MT app. Sign up at But around Los Angeles? It’s hard to find MotorTrend.com/TopGearAmerica. different looks to fit the story when everything is just brown, brown, brown.”

Then there’s the matter of securing access; associate producer Dawn Fanning Moore is a master of these logistics.

“You might find the perfect road only to discover that it travels through three different jurisdictions in the area you want to film,” she said. “So not only do you have to get a permit from each of the agencies, but then you need to orchestrate traffic control across those borders.”

Getting that variety of looks and roads was crucial to creating a unique tone for each episode. We ventured east, north, and south in search of these spaces, retroactively revising a lot of existing ideas to make them work in this new, smaller zone.

Which brings me back to the Coconino National Forest. At 7,300 feet above MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 33

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by

TESTERS/JUDGES MARK RECHTIN Editor-in-Chief JONNY LIEBERMAN Senior Features Editor SCOTT EVANS Features Editor CHRIS WALTON Road Test Editor RANDY POBST Professional Racing Driver KIM REYNOLDS Testing Director ERICK AYAPANA Associate Road Test Editor

2020

MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR C O N T E N D E R S CHEVROLET CORVETTE Z51 • FERRARI F8 TRIBUTO • FORD MUSTANG SHELBY GT500 LAMBORGHINI HURACÁN EVO • PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4 PORSCHE 911 TURBO S • PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO COUPE

PHOTOGRAPH WILLIAM WALKER

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 37

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by

T

ake a moment to realize how fortunate we are to have written this story, because there was a very real chance that the 2020 edition of MotorTrend Best Driver’s Car wouldn’t happen.

If something as massive and allencompassing as professional basketball could be paused just like that, our little supercar festival was surely doomed. We started hearing murmurs, then reality set in. First BDC was postponed, then budgets were slashed, then we found we This year, as you may well have noticed, had no sponsor. Time was running out. things are a little different. Even though What we’d come to expect from BDC we started running BDC on October 11, I’m going to back up this narrative by six months would be no more.

Of course, more important than the to March 11, the day Utah Jazz center Rudy financial picture was the safety of our Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and team of road testers, editors, photogthe NBA postponed the season. Call it the billion-dollar canary in the coal mine. raphers, videographers, track workers,

and manufacturers’ support staffs in the midst of a pandemic. Could we pull this off even if we wanted to?

This debate went on for months, until the very day we were going to call the whole thing off and tearfully pull the plug … when by a stroke of magic/luck/salesmanship the fine, fine (did I mention fine?) folks at Tire Rack swooped in and saved our rubber-burning bacon by cutting a check to cover the costs of Best Driver’s Car. BDC was back on, socially distanced in October instead of July, but

W , S E M I T F O T S BE 38 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

THAT CRAZY YEAR IN WHICH A SMALLER FIELD MADE THINGS HARDER WORDS JONNY LIEBERMAN PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF

S E M I T F O T S OR MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 39

OMG it was happening. So if you want to thank someone for what you are about to read, buy your next set of tires from Tire Rack. (I will now swing my leg back over the fence separating the editorial and advertising sides of the business.)

The 2020 edition of BDC would look much different. The number of competing cars was chopped in half, as was the number of judges, to shrink our quarantine bubble and reduce health risks to our team. For all sorts of inside-baseball reasons, we couldn’t do our normal closure of the carnival ride known as State Route 198, either.

However, with a shrunken field, we could potentially get all of Randy Pobst’s racetrack hot laps done in one day, which meant the judges would be able to spend time driving around WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Score!

Catered meals, boozy dinners, quick swaps between cars, anything resembling normalcy was out. Face coverings, alcohol wipe-downs, and eating takeout alone in our hotel rooms were in. But BDC was a go. In fact, the strictures allowed us to focus more closely on the cars.

Ah, yes, the cars. Pre-pandemic we had of course planned to bring along our usual dozen competitors. When we realized that we’d only have half the crew compared to BDCs past, the painful decision was made to cut the field essentially in half. Logistically, it was simply impossible to deal with 12 cars, no matter how super. Here’s what we wound up with:

• • • • • • •

Chevrolet Corvette Z51 Ferrari F8 Tributo Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Lamborghini Huracán Evo Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Porsche 911 Turbo S Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe

A damn fine list if I do say so myself, and a Porsche SUV. Why so many Porsches?

Why an SUV? Why no McLaren? Why not the car you wanted to see compete?

Back when BDC was happening in July, there was a scenario where we could have had five Porsches. Allow me to flip that question over to you: How do you choose between a 911 Turbo S and a Cayman GT4? How do you not include the Taycan Turbo S? At some point, we had to make some hard decisions.

One thing was for sure: We needed to follow the market. Like we’ve done for the past two BDCs, we included an SUV— decided by a super-SUV shootout, the winner of which was guaranteed a spot.

We were also toying with the idea of having a super-wagon competition, and the winner may very well have been the Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo.

But because BDC is one-half road trip, it was easy to cut the range-limited electric Taycan. And the Audi RS 6 was delayed, so no wagon shootout happened.

Even though it was 2020 and any sense You gotta start somewhere. We decided to begin our weeklong supercar odyssey on the beach just west of Malibu.

of rule-making was out, we included the shootout-winning SUV, the Cayenne Turbo Coupe—hence we have three of Zuffenhausen’s finest.

As for a McLaren, specifically a 765LT, when BDC was set for July, that Super Series monster wasn’t available, so we wrote it off. As it happened, the 765LT became available in the U.S. the week before BDC started. Let’s just blame the pandemic for this one, though it was funny hearing from McLaren during BDC, asking why we didn’t have its car.

The inverse of this involved Ferrari.

In the past, Maranello wouldn’t play when Sant’Agata Bolognese showed up.

Because we had Lamborghini firmly in the “yes” column, we just assumed Ferrari would decline. Then, with mere days before nailing down the field, Ferrari rang and asked if we would like an F8 Tributo for Best Driver’s Car, knowing full well a Huracán would be present. You can imagine our response.

As for all the other cars not represented, obviously the seven performance vehicles we chose are all quite good. Also, we’d previously driven all of the cars that we uninvited, and, well, we brought along the cars we thought had the best shot of winning. And an SUV, which turned out to be much more than a go-fast gear schlepper.

BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by Tire Rack

Right! Day one began with the five judges (editor-in-chief Mark Rechtin, road test editor Chris Walton, features editor Scott Evans, pro driver and Laguna Seca legend Randy Pobst, and yours truly) rendezvousing with the photo and social teams (who collectively would be driving two of the competitors) at Mugu Rock just west of Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway early one Sunday morning.

One thing we didn’t count on was how many other people thought the giant seaside boulder would be a cool place to hang out before 8 a.m. on a Sunday.

Multicolored supercars draw crowds, and on that day the gathered crowd had many questions, many more opinions, and very few masks. We quickly split for our next destination, the Shell station at

the bottom of State Route 33 near Ojai.

Which of course meant heading up the 33, one of the greatest canyon roads in a state littered with them.

The first surprise of the day involved the two cars in the 700-horsepower club, the 711-hp Ferrari and the 760-hp Ford.

Evans was in the F8, Walton was in the GT500, and Evans could not shake him. I was about 10 car lengths behind the two of them in the (slightly) less powerful 630-hp Lamborghini Huracán Evo, and I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. A Ford hanging on the bumper of a Ferrari?

Sacrilegio!

Back at Mugu Rock, Walton had extolled the virtues of the GT500. “The harder you push it, the better it gets,” he said. I’d also read his First Drive review, in which the normally stoic Walton not only called the Shelby a “world-class supercar-killer” but also said it was “a helluva thing, a monster!” It took me seeing him jamming that Ford up the Ferrari’s tailpipes to fully buy the Shelby hype. I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised, as the refreshed GT350 came in second overall last year, and the same engineer is responsible for both Shelbys

(thanks, Steve!), yet somehow, I was shocked. The Lambo? Pretty darn good, as well, but we’re familiar with the Huracán, what with it having won in Performante guise in 2018. No surprises there.

We spent the remainder of that first day rapidly meandering our way up the coast to our hotel, the Clement Monterey, switching cars every hour or so. Nothing else too shocking occurred, though a few talking points began to emerge.

One was that we made an excellent choice in selecting the Chevrolet Corvette as our 2020 Car of the Year. Not that any of us had doubts, but speaking for me, it had been over a year since I’d driven the mid-engine C8—and between then and now I’d driven an embarrassing number of mid-engine supercars—so it was a nice reminder of just how stellar a job Chevrolet Performance had done.

What impressed us the most was how great the Corvette’s ride was, easily the best in the group, even better than the Cayenne Turbo Coupe’s. Weirdly, there wasn’t a lot of chatter about the Porsche Turbo S, the 640-hp stud muffin that has been eating up comparison tests ever since it launched.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 41

BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by Tire Rack The opposite was true of the Cayman GT4. Every judge praised the uberCayman in the canyons and cursed its ride quality on the freeways. Speaking of cursing, a bit of a dark cloud had formed above the Ferrari. Although it was feverishly quick, the steering was odd—too quick and too light. To a man, we found the brakes wooden, weird, and frankly a little spooky. Something wasn’t right.

We arrived at the hotel well after dark.

Time for food, sleep, and an early morning at the track.

For more than a decade, the generous folks at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca have granted us track days in June or July—squeezing us in between an endless array of IMSA, Superbike, single-marque, and myriad other race weekends.

Our test team straps three GPS antennas to each contender before it goes out for its hot lap.

Typically, those summer mornings are cold, damp, and foggy. What would this October date be like? Hardly cold at all, which immediately burned off into actual hot weather. Different for sure, but maybe a warmer track would be good for laps?

For his part, Pobst felt the track’s lack of use due to the pandemic would mean the racing surface wouldn’t have enough rubber on it (racer speak for the

42 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

rubber coating tracks get after months of continual racing, rubber literally left from the previous cars’ tires).

That said, Randy Pobst is still Randy Pobst, multichampionship racing driver and maestro of Laguna Seca. Right out of the gate, he popped off a 1:40.27 lap in the Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe. Threetenths of a second ahead of a Toyota GR Supra might sound decent, even expected from a 541-hp SUV, until you realize that Pobst beat his own time in a Lamborghini Urus (1:40.90) and therefore set the SUV lap record at Laguna Seca. The very first thing in the morning! So much for the track being slow.

Pobst, our test team, and our video team churned through the seven cars at a rate of about one per hour. The quick version of the process is that the test team begins mounting the necessary datalogging hardware while the video team begins fitting GoPros, microphones, and sound gear—all while wearing masks and wiping everything down. Then Pobst jumps in and heads out for a couple of warm-up laps before coming back to the pits so our test team and engineers from various OEMs can adjust the tire pressures.

Also, sometimes the stability control isn’t at its most optimized, Pobst isn’t thrilled with a particular suspension setting, or a camera fell off. We’re able to make quick adjustments and get him back out there.

At which point he rips off his three hot laps. And although we have Vboxes to time his laps to the thousandth of a second, no one can resist hand-timing with their iPhones. Typically, Pobst’s tires are best on his first lap, his reactions are at their sharpest on his second, and then everything starts to fade by lap three. That’s street cars on a racetrack for you. This year, I’d jump into the cars as soon as Pobst was out and perform both a cooldown lap

and a quick spiel to the camera for the hot lap videos (presented by Tire Rack!). Meanwhile, Evans would interview and record Pobst for a subsequent transcription. Rinse and repeat.

By the end of day one, the Huracán Evo had quietly set the quickest lap of the field, popping off a 1:32.85 humdinger that was good enough to crack our all-time top 20.

Two things: The Evo wasn’t actually quiet, blowing over 105 decibels on Laguna’s sound meter, on a day when we were limited to 93 dB (apologies for our noise, residents of Monterey, Carmel, Salinas, and probably Santa Cruz). Also, the lap seemed a bit slow, as it was 2.85 seconds off the Huracán Performante’s pace from two years ago (1:30.00). When we asked the Lamborghini technician why that would be

The reduced field meant that each editor had the opportunity to spend time lapping each contender around the 11 awesome turns of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

We film videos of each hot lap at Best Driver’s Car. Microphones and cameras capture all the action from various places around the vehicle.

(remembering that the Performante and the Evo have the identical 630-hp 5.2-liter V-10), he explained that the Evo is missing the Perf’s fancy active aerodynamics, aka ALA. Laguna is a track that rewards braking and cornering, where ALA really comes into play. How about that?

Meanwhile, Ford, Porsche, and especially Ferrari (barely a second quicker than the Mustang) were unhappy with their lap times and requested that we retest all three cars the following morning .

quite right on the 911 Turbo S. Meanwhile, the boorish Shelby blew over 107 dB on the sound meter, causing Pobst to get a meatball flag thrown at him by a confused corner worker (meatballs typically mean the car is leaking gas or something similarly catastrophic). Pobst immediately slowed to a crawl and thus lost his “hero lap,” the mythical first few miles when the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s are at their best.

All three cars improved the next day.

The Shelby GT500 went from a 1:34.99 to 1:33.84. That’s better by a second. It’s hard to chalk that up just to the “hero This is one of the reasons we get Laguna Seca for two days: to get the best lap times lap,” especially as the subsequent laps possible. Ferrari wanted to rebuild the F8’s were only a few tenths off the faster time. Were conditions better on the brakes overnight (we figure a $20,000second day? Probably, but this same plus service for Joe Hedgefund). Porsche controversy follows BDC every year. felt that we never got the tire pressures MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 43

BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by Tire Rack

Next up was the 911 Turbo S, which had put down a suspect 1:33.67 lap on Monday. Why suspect? Well, a 2017 Turbo S had done a 1:33.21. The new 992 version, which comes packing 60 additional horsepower, shouldn’t be slower. However, the 2017 Turbo S sat on racy Pirelli P Zero Corsa tires, and the 2021 model showed up wearing plain old P Zeros. Why not Corsas? Porsche explained that at the time of this test, the only Turbo S tires available to U.S. dealers are P Zeros.

That will change in the future, but for now the Turbo is stuck with a midrange street tire. Pobst had another go and— no big surprise—beat his time from the day before, laying down a 1:32.97, barely beating the 2017 lap but, crucially, beating it. The new car is quicker. As it had better be. We’re already imagining its time wearing Corsas.

Then came the Ferrari. Three years ago, a 488 GTB not only won BDC but also laid down a blistering lap of 1:31.68, the 10th-quickest we’ve ever seen. That

lap happened under similar circumstances: After day one, Ferrari asked us for a do-over. We said sure, and then a team of Italian engineers specially flown out for our event rebuilt the brakes overnight. Suddenly, the car was 1.53 seconds quicker. Did anything besides the brakes get changed? Hard to say.

This year the F8 Tributo had only managed a 1:33.80 on its first go-round, nearly a second behind the Lamborghini and, much more troublingly, more than 2 seconds off the pace of the 488 that it replaced. Try spinning that one. However, we knew there was something legitimately weird going on with the Ferrari’s brakes. Another attempt was in order.

At first, it didn’t go well. Pobst is not known for his use of profanity, so when I heard his tapestry of expletives over the walkie, I knew something truly bad had happened. As it turned out, the brakes had not been properly bedded, and Pobst went off the track at Turn 11 on his warm-up laps. Luckily, he didn’t hit anything, and

BDC’s not all wine and cheese platters.

Sometimes we have to get our hands dirty, but smarter people wear gloves.

Our video crew takes a breather while the editors are out on track.

44 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Laguna Seca is hard on brakes. Luckily, most of the rotors were carbon ceramic.

Nothing was set to stun. Safeties off, track modes engaged. Or in the charming case of the Lamborghini Huracán Evo, Corsa.

the brakes were now properly bedded.

In a bittersweet lap for Ferrari, Pobst was able to run a 1:32.27, the fastest lap of the competition but still more than half a second slower than the 488 GTB. The official explanation? There isn’t one. One more thing—Pobst off-handedly mentioned that he thought if we re-lapped the Lamborghini, it would shave at least a second off its time, which would place the Huracán Evo in front of the Ferrari.

Having finished hot laps by lunch, the judges were able to spend most of the remainder of that day lapping all seven cars, a real treat. I’d go so far as to say that we ought to cut half the field again next year and do the same.

A few truths revealed themselves. As much as we generally like the Corvette and the Turbo S, they were the only two competitors that showed up not wearing R-compound tires. This hurt both cars on the track. The Cayman GT4, which so impressed us all out on the road, felt underpowered on the track (though its precision made for a great familiarization-lap car to get the lay of the land, and we horsepower junkies can wait for the GT4 RS, which is coming soon).

On the opposite end of the spectrum were the Italians. The Ferrari is a veritable missile of an automobile. But paired with those brakes, well, let’s just say it’s not an ideal combination. No one felt comfortable driving it. Meanwhile, the Lamborghini was brash and bombastic—yet out of all the competitors, it universally gave the judges the most confidence in driving/lapping at pace. Be it a pro racer like Pobst, an experienced

track rat like Evans, a properly quick guy like Walton, or a desk driver like Rechtin, each one came back into the pits shaking his head in admiration of the Huracán’s composure at speed. It turns out you don’t need ALA, after all, the Huracán’s chassis is that good.

The Cayenne Turbo Coupe proved to be an absolute laugh riot around Laguna’s 11 corners. Sure, the not quite 2.5-ton (4,999-pound) pachyderm was different than the other competitors, but it had a killer app: burying your right foot in the throttle solved everything.

Losing traction? Pointed the wrong way?

Understeering into an apex? Just punch it. Purists can of course look elsewhere— or take a long walk off a short pier—but I can’t remember laughing as hard while on a track. Only 2.5 seconds behind the Corvette, too.

As we sat down to an outdoor fire pit with some brown liquor to discuss the previous three days, we narrowed the field of potential winners down to two cars that are basically opposites: the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 and the Lamborghini Huracán Evo. Yet here they both were, the two cars we liked driving the best.

One would go on to be our 2020 Best Driver’s Car; the other was probably robbed. (Send your furious emails to MotorTrend@MotorTrend.com, and we’ll print the best ones.) Before you read the winner story, know that every judge would have been able to sleep like a baby if any of the top five cars had won, as this year’s Best Driver’s Car was so evenly matched and surprisingly close. That said, I think the best driver’s car won, especially because it’s the one I voted for. Q

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2021 PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO PRO Supercar performance, well-hidden weight, great fun to drive CON Sick-pumpkin appearance, high price, it’s an SUV

7 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe

WORDS JONNY LIEBERMAN PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF

Forget physics, Porsche’s uber-SUV is right at home at Best Driver’s Car ow do you explain it?” I asked the Porsche PR man standing along the K-wall at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

Legendary wheelman Randy Pobst had just finished his hot laps in the Cayenne Turbo Coupe, and something had gone, well, not quite right. Quite wrong, you might even say. See, Porsche is owned by Volkswagen Group, as is Audi, and Audi owns Lamborghini. At our 2019 BDC, Lambo’s Urus had set the SUV lap record at Laguna Seca, at 1:40.90. You maybe see where this is going.

The Porsche, which stickers for $82,559 less than the Lambo, beat the Urus with a 1:40.27 lap.

“Well,” the Porsche flack said, his eyes rolling up into his skull and looking for a way to spin it, “the rear brake rotors are a bit bigger.”

Yeah, 1.5 inches (16.1 versus the Urus’ 14.6) is a bit bigger ...

Did I mention that we loved the Porsche SUV? “This thing’s better than the Ferrari—it stops!” Pobst half-joked. Said a very relaxed editor-in-chief Mark Rechtin:

“H

“I’m trailing the 911 Turbo S and watching it skitter and seesaw over these awful agricultural road bumps that haven’t been paved in decades. Meanwhile, I have the Cayenne in Comfort shock mode, and I’m just gliding over everything, doing 110 mph.”

Features editor Scott Evans was more agitated in his praise.

“This thing just breaks my brain,” he said. “I can think of quite a few sports cars that don’t handle this fluidly and a ton that don’t ride this well while doing it. And this thing’s an SUV with an off-road mode. This shouldn’t be possible.”

46 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

The key point Evans raised is that quite a few sports cars aren’t as good to drive, which is true for (almost) every other SUV ever made, as well. (The Cayenne was invited to Best Driver’s Car based on its win in our SUV shootout.)

I’m still trying to figure out exactly what makes this thing tick.

When I first drove it, I was stymied trying to identify what, aside from the roof and an 18mm-wider rear track, differentiates the Turbo Coupe from the regular Cayenne Turbo. I still don’t know.

My single best moment of this year’s Best Driver’s Car was hunting down the mid-engine Corvette on Laguna Seca while driving the Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe. Ridiculous, I know, but here we are. I never actually caught the Chevy, but if we had stayed out for a few more laps, I’m claiming I would have. Yes, I was driving as hard as I could and my colleague in the Corvette obviously wasn’t, but still.

The Porsche makes it so easy; burying the throttle solves everything. Rechtin said, “The degree of confidence that I have, as a non-professional, non–racing driver, in this car (ahem, SUV) is incredible.” Amen. SUVs aren’t supposed to behave like this on a racetrack. They’re supposed to oversteer and not stop and just kinda suck. The Cayenne Turbo Coupe came alive.

Does that make the Cayenne Turbo Coupe a contender for the podium? Not really. But most years we have 12 entrants, and this year we were limited to seven.

Had we delivered a full field, the

Cayenne could have finished seventh out of 12, not seventh of seven. And that is a heck of a result for an SUV competing against supercars, an SUV that not only blitzes a racetrack but also hauls four people and their stuff in complete comfort for a weekend out of town.

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BEST DRIVER’S CAR

2020 FERRARI F8 TRIBUTO PRO Missile acceleration, quick cornering, bumpy-road mode CON Wooden brakes, light steering feel, looming snap oversteer

WORDS MARK RECHTIN

6 Ferrari F8 Tributo Straight-line acceleration thrills but braking and cornering chills n reviewing the Ferrari F8 Tributo with proper clarity, we need to go back a few years and admit with mild chagrin that our 2017 Best Driver’s Car–winning Ferrari 488 GTB might have been a ringer. This goes beyond Ferrari sending four factory techs to work day and night to be sure everything ran perfectly. (By contrast, Porsche traditionally sends Frank the PR Guy, who watches the Italian antics with mild amusement.)

Rather, the 488’s testing numbers we posted were more akin to what the 661-hp GTB would have produced had it been chipped to 800 hp. And well-placed sources with deep connections say that might indeed have been the case. But what’s that the old salts say? “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.”

It would be far from the first time a manufacturer sent a hot car to a magazine’s shootout. Hey, innocent until proven guilty, right?

Fast-forward to this year’s contest, and witness the 488’s spiritual successor, the F8 Tributo.

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It’s lighter, and it has more power.

But is it faster? Not according to our test numbers, where the 488 GTB was quicker 0–60, neck and neck at the quarter, quicker around the figure eight with a much higher average g load, and an astonishing 0.6 second quicker around Laguna Seca raceway.

Plus, the F8 Tributo had issues, the most serious being its wooden brakes that required a trackside rebuild—an estimated $20,000-plus fix at your neighborhood Ferrari dealer. Then, after an incomplete bedding-in by a Ferrari tech, the F8 had mild-mannered Randy Pobst swearing a blue streak as he blew through Laguna Seca’s crucial Turn 11 and into the gravel trap.

So what’s the deal? “Intermittent thrills and chills followed by clenched teeth and relief,” road test editor Chris Walton said. “This was the only car that spooked me at Laguna Seca.”

The F8’s super-quick steering ratio combined with too-light steering feel prompted some nervy moments when aiming for

the apex. Pobst’s answer: CT-Off mode, where the nannies still deliver reassurance to the driver.

Features editor Scott Evans also took issue with corner-exit traction: “Leaving a tight corner with any gusto felt like dancing on a landmine. The car can’t put the power down when there’s any steering in it. You’re asking for snappy power oversteer. No, thanks. This car feels dicey when you push it all the way.”

However, going fast in a straight line to impress your passenger is something the Ferrari missile does very well, senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said, adding that the dual-clutch transmission shifts “like a buttered hummingbird” and that the columnmounted aluminum paddle shifters are a tactile delight.

Once off-track, everyone praised Ferrari’s “bumpy road” driving mode, which will turn expansion joints and big rig– induced chop into afterthoughts.

Some judges also were underwhelmed by the rather tame engine and exhaust notes. There was no shrieking, no sound of shredding paper. Just a humdrum thrum. Even during Pobst’s hot laps, the Ferrari didn’t blow up the track’s 92-dB sound meter; the Lamborghini did it in fifth gear coasting at 60 mph. This impacts the driver, as well, as there is no aural hint that the engine is approaching redline.

And although exotica comes with the expectedly steep price tag (the $277,480 base price roared up to $386,288 with options), we couldn’t determine

which was the worse price gouging: charging $34,000 for carbon-fiber wheels (part of a big $18,500 package on the Ford GT500 and made by the same supplier) or $4,200 for Apple CarPlay (free on a Kia). In looking at the total package, we advise you to do the math.

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MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 47

2020 CHEVROLET CORVETTE Z51 PRO Great powertrain, refined cruising, launch power CON No manual transmission, regular summer tires, no performance variants (yet)

5 Chevrolet Corvette Z51

WORDS JONNY LIEBERMAN

The new mid-engine layout places Chevy in exotic car territory he mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette feels like other exotic cars, which is a new sensation for anyone familiar with the Chevy sports car.

Hopping from Ferrari to Lamborghini to Chevy, the Corvette affirms that we made the a pretty good choice when we named the C8 our 2020 Car of the Year.

Let’s be clear: The mid-engine Corvette Z51 is a car designed around the driver. Yes, it’s easy to look at the strip of Chiclet-sized HVAC control buttons separating the driver from the passenger and make fun. But once you’re behind the C8’s funky steering wheel, you’ll realize that the controls you need are the easiest to get to, and you’ll thank the car gods that they’re physical buttons, not buried in a touchscreen.

The touchpoints are great, even the secondary ones. The steering wheel, the paddle shifters, the metal transmission buttons, and the drive mode puck all feel proper, if not pricey.

The biggest surprise with the Z51 was the ride quality. Wow. “On the road, I don’t think anything

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rode as well as the Corvette did in this year’s field, except maybe the Porsche Cayenne,” road test editor Chris Walton said.

I’d argue the ’Vette had a finer ride than the SUV. Yes, it’s that supple. Also, Walton knows I’m right, admitting: “I was hoping I’d get assigned the Corvette for the long drive home.” See? Aside from being comfy, the powertrain rocks. Pro driver Randy Pobst noted the “fat torque curve with a great low end.”

Large, naturally aspirated V-8s are lovely things, and they’re getting rarer than manual transmissions, something Chevy doesn’t offer on the C8. The dual-clutch transmission it does have works great if you leave

it in automatic, though I much prefer pulling the paddles myself.

Speaking of working great, the Corvette hits 30 mph in 1.0 second, the same as the AWD Lamborghini. “Incredible traction on launch,” Pobst said. “Claws out!”

Although it was our 2020 COTY, is it the Best Driver’s Car? Hmm. “I guess this Corvette just left me wanting more,” features editor Scott Evans said.

The Chevy and the Porsche 911 Turbo S were the only contenders to arrive on summer tires, as opposed to stickier, R-compound meats. So that didn’t help, especially on the track. “Even when I was driving it at my 9/10ths in a mid-engine sports car on a proper track, I was bored,” Walton said. “Honestly, bored.”

Did he really say “bored” twice?

Yes, we’re spoiled rotten brats.

We know. But Walton felt what he felt. When Walton was in the alien blood–colored Chevy, I was gaining on him in the Porsche SUV, so I think he was actually so bored he wasn’t really driving at his 9/10ths. Regardless, his point stands—although the Z51 trim is a fine start, we are eagerly anticipating hotter versions.

“The Corvette is not as impressive as I thought it would be,” editor-in-chief Mark Rechtin said.

“Sure, it’s still fast, but it’s just the ‘base’ model, which means just wait for the performance models.”

Bingo. If you look at the Porsche 718, you have to get through the Cayman, Cayman S, and Cayman GTS before you arrive at the GT4.

There’s a $25K Mustang rental car lurking underneath the GT500’s

armor. There’s also a less powerful rear-drive Huracán to be had.

This Corvette is just the starting point. We know a much sportier, racier Z06 is coming, as well as the rumor-mill all-star Zora. The C8 Corvette has the bones to win Best Driver’s Car, but it’s not there yet.

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BEST DRIVER’S CAR

2020 PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4 PRO Supreme balance, fantastic teacher, great track tool CON Jittery suspension, tire noise, underpowered

WORDS CHRIS WALTON

4 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 I could be blindfolded and tell you I was driving a Porsche his car has all the makings of a Best Driver’s Car winner: engine mounted in the proper place directly behind the driver and revving to a glorious 8,000 rpm, a delightful manual shifter (unique this year), unflappable carbon-ceramic brakes with excellent pedal feel, and sticky Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires.

This is a sports car that punches way above its 3,127pound featherweight status. The 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 lapped Laguna Seca quicker than a Ferrari 458, AMG GT 63 4Matic+, and various flavors of Nissan GT-R. Like with any Porsche I have ever driven, I can tell it’s a Porsche in the way all of its controls have matched efforts and responses.

Nothing in the steering, pedals, or shifter is too heavy or too light.

All respond with exactly what you’d expect from your effort or request. I could be blindfolded and tell you that I was driving a Porsche, and from the exhaust note, I could probably tell you which one. “The engine noise, this is what an exotic car costing three

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times as much should sound like,” editor-in-chief Mark Rechtin said.

“Thunderous, guttural, startling, and snarling.”

Sure, it rides harshly on the street and makes a ton of tire noise. But say it with me: “It’s a GT4.” So yeah. On the twisting highway portion of our drive, it felt more like a dance than a flogging.

It was absolutely in its element and hanging on the tailpipes of 600- to 700-horsepower cars that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

“The 718 Cayman does everything right, all the time, so you can just work on your lines and your braking zones,” features editor Scott Evans said. “Anyone can get in this car and drive to

their limit immediately, then work on increasing their limit.”

Also, as a Porsche, it responds to and rewards being driven hard at the track. The Cayman GT4 gets better the harder you drive it. And although it has the lowest horsepower rating in this year’s field, it succeeds as a “momentum” car, and that’s how it’s been engineered. (However, as senior features editor Jonny Lieberman noted: “This thing has 14 more horsepower than the original Viper with half the displacement and four fewer cylinders.”)

There’s no blast from a turbocharger or extra motor, no all-wheel drive, no secret trick or electronic gizmo making it go faster. Just six cylinders’ worth of atmospheric air and fuel burning.

“It immediately inspires my racing instincts and urges me to drive flat-out,” resident pro driver Randy Pobst said. “The reward is great pleasure and satisfaction of my driving addiction.”

That said, some judges found the track-focused suspension too immediate and jitterbuggy on less refined back roads or around town (but in a nod to Gen X drivers, the Cayman still offers a CD player).

It was the first car I took out at Laguna Seca, and it was a great way to refamiliarize myself with the track. The GT4 is such a great instructor.

“Dammit, drive me and trust me,” it goads. What you do matters, so find the perfect line and enjoy. The GT4 provides so much “we got this” that I found myself pushing and pushing, but

the car was always there for me.

Such a great quality that only a few cars provide.

“The Porsche 718 is a wonderful sports car—light, potent, precise, and deceptively capable,” Lieberman said. “Once you accept that it’s not a 911, holy hell does this thing cook!”

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MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 49

2021 PORSCHE 911 TURBO PRO Absolute magic on a back road, wonderful GT car, insanely quick CON Magic replaced by cold competency on the track, street tires only

WORDS SCOTT EVANS

3 Porsche 911 Turbo S One step shy of perfection—and that’s precisely the problem e thought it was gone.

Banished. We believed the good people of Stuttgart, with a bit of help from Weissach, had finally cured the Turbo’s one remaining weakness. Charging valiantly into our 2020 Best Driver’s Car field, though, the 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S revealed that its Achilles’ heel remains.

That one issue, the one that’s deprived 911 Turbos of the past from more than one MotorTrend podium, is the car’s cold, emotionless virtuosity when pushed to the limit. (The 911 Carrera S, last year’s winner, does not have this problem.) It’s a trait that was far more apparent on previous Turbos, showing itself on the road and on the track.

With the new 992 generation, we thought it had been vanquished.

It’s easy to see why we’d think so. In two back-to-back comparisons earlier this year, both the coupe and convertible annihilated their challengers. McLarens and AMGs couldn’t hold a candle to the new Turbo S on the road.

And things weren’t much different this time around. Just a few

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corners without traffic are all it takes to experience that 911 Turbo magic—the way the car behaves exactly the way you want it to, exactly the way you expect it to, and exactly the way you instruct it to at every moment, so much so you don’t have to consciously think about it. The 911 Turbo S lets you drive by instinct at speeds where other cars demand every bit of your attention.

“It’s the meticulous engineering that makes it so accessible to every driver, regardless of skill,” road test editor Chris Walton said. “Anyone can jump into it and exceed their expected levels—by the second corner, I’m guessing.”

Then we drove it on the racetrack, and the last vestiges of the old Turbo showed themselves.

50 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

“This car is so perfect, it’s anodyne, unobtrusive,” Walton said. “There’s no bother, but no excitement. It’s super capable. It does everything so well that you can’t mess up with this car. It is so uniquely competent.”

Competence doesn’t necessarily stir the soul, though.

“Without a doubt, it’s the best car on Angeles Crest Highway,” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said. “But on the track my feelings about it went down.”

Interestingly, our actual race car driver had the opposite reaction. “There’s a lot more GT3 stirred into the Turbo S than there used to be in the old days,” Randy Pobst said after hot laps. “I felt so much like the car was an extension of myself. It was just locked into my driving so beautifully.”

Pobst’s inversion of opinion continued on the road: “This car’s only flaw is that it shows no fangs.

It’s just so drivable that it rarely challenges. Its performance is at the forefront of the modern sports car fleet, and it’s so refined that it is not as entertaining.” Either way, we all felt much of its personality vaporized at some point, and it was back to making big numbers in the most efficient manner possible, not the most emotional.

Partly to blame, we think, are the tires. Pirelli P Zeros are great tires, and they do a phenomenal job on the road, even with this kind of power behind them. On the track, though, even Pobst agreed they just don’t have the capability to keep up with this 911. Yes, they’re still pulling a seriously impressive 1.10 lateral g, but there’s no doubt

Corsa or Trofeo R tires would lead to faster—and therefore more thrilling—cornering speeds.

Would that be enough to reignite the spark? We think it might. For Porsche’s part, it says Turbo customers haven’t been interested in higher-performance tires, so it doesn’t offer them. Pity.

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BEST DRIVER’S CAR

2020 FORD MUSTANG SHELBY GT500 PRO Chassis to match power, steel brakes, intimidating power CON Drives big, stiff on back roads, intimidating power

WORDS SCOTT EVANS

2 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 The GT500 is finally, indisputably the best Mustang you can buy ften, history is made simply by breaking a cycle.

Sounds easy enough, but sometimes a thing hasn’t been done for a good reason. The GT500 has never been the best Mustang, just the one with the biggest engine.

Not anymore. The 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 has changed history.

“This car is the ultimate expression of what the American pony car can be,” pro racer Randy Pobst said after only driving it on the street. After driving it on the track: “God, that thing pins you to the seat running from corner to corner. It hooks up very, very well.

That impresses me tremendously.

Ford Performance has done a terrific job of setting up that chassis to put down power. I’m in love with the car.”

OK, so the superhero likes it, but what about the regular people? Oh yeah, we love it, too.

“Now, this is what a proper Best Driver’s Car podium finisher looks like, sounds like, and drives like,” road test editor Chris Walton said.

“As soon as you stop driving it like a Mustang and start driving it like

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the supercar that it is, it all falls into place. It’s gob-smackingly capable and confidenceinspiring in ways that few cars (costing multiples more) are.”

It reminded us in all the best ways of the 2014 Best Driver’s Car champion, the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, in that you can absolutely thrash the car and it just laughs in your face and asks for more.

Ride it hard and don’t let up, because it doesn’t. Fling it at a corner without a second thought.

It always comes through, begging you, mockingly, for another effort.

It’s stupid-quick, too. Putting your foot down getting on a freeway feels for all the world like it ought to be illegal, or at least require a special license. It sounds like absolute insanity and slings

you down the road in a way not even a Hellcat can match.

It’s the same sensation while stopping. Stand on the plain old steel Brembos, and the Shelby GT500 stops like a race car every single time. “I never really got to 100 percent of it because it was so good,” Pobst said after his hot laps. “I could have gone deeper.”

Then he started yammering (repeatedly) about how much better the GT500’s steel brakes are than the Ferrari’s carbonceramic jobs, much to the chagrin of the Ferrari rep.

“I was following the Ferrari F8 Tributo,” Walton said, “and it couldn’t shake me—not on the brakes, not in the corners, and not even on the straights.”

There’s a difference, though, between fantastic and perfect.

Unlike the Mustang Shelby GT350, which we love, the GT500 drives big. It always felt like it was taking up the entire lane, never shrinking around you the way the Shelby GT350 does. It’s also considerably stiffer than the GT350, which is fine on a smooth track but had the car dancing around a bit on rough roads. Counterpoint, per senior features editor Jonny Lieberman: “The GT500 beats up the GT350, takes its lunch money, and buys more gas.”

It also demands respect. “You have to be very judicious with the power,” Pobst said. “You got to have that egg between your foot and the gas pedal in the middle of the corner and just roll on the power. And if you do that, it transfers weight and just hooks up. It’s possible to spin up the back tires

in second gear, third, and fourth, but if you’re just a little careful, it hooks up.”

That’s the GT500. Everything about it is intimidating and forceful. It attacks the road and isn’t sorry for using the whole damn thing. Keep up or get out of the way.

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MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 51

The Contenders ...

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR

ILLUSTRATIONS RYAN LUGO

48.6”

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

76.1”

182.3”

RPM 0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

2.8 SEC

11.1 SEC @ 123.2 MPH

97 FT

23.3 SEC @ 0.90 G (AVG)

0-60 MPH

QUARTER MILE

BRAKING DISTANCE 60-0 MPH

MT FIGURE EIGHT

BASE PRICE $59,995 PRICE AS TESTED $92,365 VEHICLE LAYOUT Mid-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door hatchback ENGINE 6.2L/495-hp/470-lb-ft OHV 16-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 8-speed twin-clutch auto CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 3,587 lb (39/61%) WHEELBASE 107.2 in LATERAL ACCELERATION 1.04 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 97.83 sec EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 15/27/19 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 225/125 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.03 lb/mile SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Control arms, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar BRAKES, F; R 13.3-in vented disc; 13.8-in vented disc, ABS WHEELS, F; R 8.5 x 19-in; 11.0 x 20-in cast aluminum TIRES, F; R 245/35R19 89Y; 305/30R20 99Y Michelin Pilot Sport 4S

47.5”

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

77.9”

181.5”

RPM 0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

2.9 SEC

10.5 SEC @ 139.3 MPH

98 FT

22.8 SEC @ 0.93 G (AVG)

0-60 MPH

QUARTER MILE

BRAKING DISTANCE 60-0 MPH

MT FIGURE EIGHT

BASE PRICE $277,480 PRICE AS TESTED $386,288 VEHICLE LAYOUT Mid-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe ENGINE 3.9L/711-hp/568-lb-ft twin-turbo DOHC 32-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 7-speed twin-clutch auto CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 3,398 lb (41/59%) WHEELBASE 104.3 in LAT ACCEL 1.06 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 92.27 sec EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 15/19/16 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 225/177 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.17 lb/mile SUSPENSION, F; R Control arms, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar BRAKES, F; R 15.7-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc; 14.2-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS WHEELS, F; R 9.0 x 20-in; 11.0 x 20-in carbon fiber composite TIRES, F; R 245/35R20 95Y; 305/30R20 105Y Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 KR

53.7”

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100

76.6”

189.5”

RPM 0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000 10,000

3.6 SEC

11.3 SEC @ 131.6 MPH

94 FT

23.5 SEC @ 0.89 G (AVG)

0-60 MPH

QUARTER MILE

BRAKING DISTANCE 60-0 MPH

MT FIGURE EIGHT

BASE PRICE $74,095 PRICE AS TESTED $93,595 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, RWD, 2-pass, 2-door coupe ENGINE 5.2L/760-hp/625-lb-ft supercharged DOHC 32-valve V-8 TRANSMISSION 7-speed twin-clutch auto CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,054 lb (56/44%) WHEELBASE 107.1 in LATERAL ACCELERATION 1.05 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 93.84 sec EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 12/18/14 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 281/187 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.37 lb/mile SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Struts, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar BRAKES, F; R 16.5-in 2-pc vented disc; 14.6-in 2-pc vented disc, ABS WHEELS, F; R 11.0 x 20-in; 11.5 x 20-in carbon-fiber composite TIRES, F; R 305/30R20 103Y; 315/30R20 104Y Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Presented by

RANDY’S RANKINGS WORDS RANDY POBST, MT STAFF PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF

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hen it comes time to stop debating and start ranking our Best Driver’s Car finalists, we trust democracy.

Our judges consider everything they’ve learned about the contenders during our week on the road and our days at the track, take Randy Pobst’s feedback from his official hot laps of WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, and submit ballots ranking the contenders.

A simple golf score determines the outcome; the car with the most first-place votes will have the lowest score and be named the winner, the second-lowest will be second, and so on.

Although the ballot is secret and every vote counts equally, we recognize Pobst has a unique and important perspective as a championship-winning racer who has memorized the iconic racetrack down to every midcorner pebble. So we’ve asked him to share his personal rankings of how the cars behaved at 10/10ths while he ran their timed laps. Here are his off-the-cuff rankings and hot takes, presented from best to worst.

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1. Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Overachieving American. It hooks up very, very well. That impresses me tremendously. Ford Performance has done a terrific job of setting up that chassis to put down power. You got to have that egg between your foot and the gas pedal in the middle of the corner, and just roll on the power. If you do that, it transfers weight and just hooks up. It comes off the corner. A little bit drifty if you want it. I’m in love with the car. God, this thing pins you in the seat running from corner to corner. Also very, very impressive in its braking capability. It’s over 4,000 pounds and 760 horses, so when we get to the end of the acceleration zone, we’re moving. Yet it just comes right down.

2. Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Wonderful balance. It just feels so racy. It feels low and lively and Porsche. Real direct steering responses. The most “race car” of the bunch, so I loved to drive it. Perfect braking but way-tootall gearing. Manual transmission driving purity, though. The shifter is light and very fast, the

way it feels, so the penalty for manually shifting is not as much as it might normally be. In the right gear it rocks because in the right gear you’ll be in 6,000–6,500 rpm, you’re in the power curve, and it comes off strong enough.

There’s a little teeny bit of power oversteer, which is something I don’t know if I’ve ever felt in a Cayman before. It was a pleasure, a delight, the way it revs out.

3. Porsche 911 Turbo S Too perfect. So refined. So dang good at everything. PDK transmission was not perfect, though it’s great. It was annoying in Turn 2, every lap, a real slow second-to-third shift. Did it every lap, some worse than others. The grip on a pure street tire felt fantastic. I’m disappointed that it doesn’t have an R-compound on it because of its speed potential. It’s just really beautifully developed, stable yet without understeer, which is the magic of a good handling car. There’s a lot more GT3 stirred into the Turbo S than there used to be in the old days. Needs more fang, but it’s a winner.

THE CHAMPION RACER RANKS THIS YEAR’S FIELD AT WEATHERTECH RACEWAY LAGUNA SECA

4. Lamborghini Huracán Evo Thrilling engine sound and powerband. Much faster than its torque rating. It really felt a lot faster than the other cars I’ve driven today, both in acceleration and in grip. Tremendous cornering grip, real quick steering response, but absolutely planted in the back. And I got more and more confident and aggressive and could get a little bit of rotation, but I had to ask for it, which I like. I want to be the one making it rotate. I don’t want a car to do it on its own.

And that’s where the Lamborghini was. Brakes went away on fast mountain roads and on the track. Perhaps this was a maintenance issue on this example, as I’ve never felt it before.

5. Chevrolet Corvette Z51 This generation of Corvette is such a step forward. It’s more than a generation. It’s a new epoch. It’s a whole new millennium for the Corvette. It has gone so far in terms of its refinement. This car actually handles well. This car carves a corner. It has the slightest entry oversteer, which points it toward the apex, but

it’s a bit too nervous off throttle. Needs e-diff lockup when off throttle. GM guys still need to learn this from the 911. The braking actually was better in the old ’Vette. It doesn’t seem to just hit home like the C7 did on braking, and there’s not that direct linearity. Great ride and handling blend. Rumbling V-8 gives it personality and instant torque. Impressive accomplishment, especially for the price.

stability control to allow normal drivers to enjoy beautiful small drifts. Very nervous at any initial driver inputs. I realized much later in the test that this is by design, to feel lively, and it works. In a car this powerful, though, it’s just disconcerting to not have the brakes respond instantly and with a lot of braking g. They don’t. You have to push really hard, and then it still doesn’t seem to stop all that well.

6. Ferrari F8 Tributo

7. Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe

It’s a demanding car to drive fast. The car is a knife-edge car, and part of that is wheelspin. It doesn’t put down power terribly well.

When you get on it hard in the lower gears, it’ll get squirrelly. Took me a while to understand how this car relies on its extremely advanced

Fabulously fast, big, fat SUV. I hate SUVs, but it’s an amazing effort by Porsche. Best feature? In Comfort, the ride is utterly plush.

It’s like hot lapping from the grandstands because the seating position is so high—but I don’t have a sense of much body roll. Turn-in is fantastic. If we frame it as an SUV, it’s utterly incredible. I actually had a really good time. I didn’t feel like I was wrestling a hippo. I had a lot of confidence, which is a real compliment to something that weighs almost 5,000 pounds.

This AWD system is very effective. It’s actually beautifully balanced off the corner. Q MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 55

BRAKING BEFORE TURN 11 Ford ..........................-1.26 g Porsche 718 ............-1.24 g Ferrari......................-1.21 g Lamborghini ..........-1.15 g Chevrolet ...............-1.11 g Porsche Cayenne -1.11 g Porsche 911 ............-1.04 g

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LAT G @ TURN 11

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FERRARI F8 TRIBUTO

4

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LANE 7

LANE 1

As the cars approach the finish line, the Lamborghini’s power noses it ahead of the 911 Turbo S for second place.

But look how close the Shelby GT500 is to them!

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7 CHEVROLET CORVETTE STINGRAY

what appears to be a comic overkill of instrumentation, running a stack of three Vboxes, powered by independent batteries and sensing a string of dedicated antennas shielded beneath by metal plates to deflect spurious signals reflected off the ground.

Are we being excessively redundant? Not if you were me, a few years ago, when an Audi R8 returned to the pits with all three instruments gone

FORD LAMBORGHINI MUSTANG HURACÁN SHELBY GT500 EVO AWD

Porsche 718 ............1.21 g Porsche 911 ............1.21 g Lamborghini ..........1.18 g Ford ..........................1.16 g Ferrari......................1.14 g Chevrolet ...............1.10 g Porsche Cayenne 1.01 g

2 PORSCHE 911 TURBO S

LANE 1 PORSCHE 718 CAYMAN GT4

Rocket, and having this sole, experienced driver do our Best Driver’s Car laps every year is completely intentional to obtain high-quality, comparable times. Each best-effort lap time gets gaffer-taped to the garage wall where a small crowd gathers to briefly consider it. Some nod, and inevitably there’s an “I told you so” as they wander away.

Over the decade-plus we’ve been doing this, we’ve evolved

PORSCHE CAYENNE TURBO COUPE

A

t the top of every hour during our two days of hot laps at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, another one of our Best Driver’s Car hopefuls gets the thumbs-up in the pits. Inside the car, the blackhelmeted Randy Pobst nods as he revs the engine and snakes out onto the celebrated 2.24 miles of asphalt.

None of these cars ever races another. There’s only one Randy the

1

Lamborghini ..........1.25 g Porsche 718 ............1.25 g Porsche 911 ............1.25 g Ford ..........................1.23 g Chevrolet ...............1.20 g Ferrari......................1.20 g Porsche Cayenne 1.10 g

LAT G @ TURN 2

3

MAX MPH AFTER S/F

Ferrari......................148.3 mph Porsche 911 ............140.2 mph Ford ..........................140.1 mph Lamborghini ..........140.0 mph Porsche 718 ............130.7 mph Chevrolet ...............127.8 mph Porsche Cayenne 125.9 mph

goose-eggs as they simultaneously lost their satellite locks through the Corkscrew.

That’s very rare. But single-unit glitches happen, and this simultaneous measuring has been an accidental insight into lap time precision. We now report to the nearest hundredth of a second after often seeing that the second decimal place can dither between instruments by a hundredth, or even two.

2

-1.25 g -1.23 g -1.21 g -1.20 g -1.15 g -1.10 g -0.94 g

BRAKING @ TURN 1

Porsche 718 ............

Lamborghini ..........

Porsche 911 ............

Ford ..........................

Ferrari......................

Chevrolet ...............

Porsche Cayenne

For downstream, video-production reasons, we don’t average them but report either from two that match, or the middle number if all three differ.

Never the outlier best or worst.

But those 90 or so clock ticks say absolutely nothing about the g-forces of braking and cornering involved in the blurring past the start line and returning to it. For a glimpse at that, follow us around the track map, above. Kim Reynolds

56 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Braking

7

WEATHERTECH RACEWAY LAGUNA SECA Monterey, California Track Length: 2.238 miles

6

MIN/SEC

Lamborghini ..........1.45 g Ford ..........................1.41 g Porsche 911 ............1.41 g Ferrari......................1.38 g Porsche 718 ............1.35 g Chevrolet ...............1.23 g Porsche Cayenne 1.23 g

LAT G @ TURN 6

The F8 rifles away as the field approaches Turn 5, but the Huracán, GT500, 718, and 911 reel it in with greater grip.

Ferrari F8 Tributo ...................................... 1:32.27 Lamborghini Huracán Evo AWD .......... 1:32.85 Porsche 911 Turbo S ................................. 1:32.97 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 ................ 1:33.84 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 ...................... 1:36.14 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray ................ 1:37.83 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe ........... 1:40.27

BEST LAP TIMES

Ferrari......................15.1 mph Ford ..........................14.5 mph Lamborghini ..........14.0 mph Porsche 911 ............12.9 mph Chevrolet ...............12.6 mph Porsche 718 ............12.3 mph Porsche Cayenne 11.7 mph

MAX VERTICAL CLIMB VELOCITY

Track Map KEY

Cornering Dots represent vehicle positions at 13.18-second intervals

MAX VERTICAL DROP VELOCITY

8 8a

Ford ..........................1.63 g Ferrari......................1.60 g Porsche 911 ............1.59 g Lamborghini ..........1.54 g Chevrolet ...............1.52 g Porsche 718 ............1.50 g Porsche Cayenne 1.35g

LAT G @ TURN 9

Ferrari......................14.1 mph Ford ..........................13.2 mph Chevrolet ...............12.5 mph Lamborghini ..........12.4 mph Porsche 911 ............9.8 mph Porsche 718 ............9.6 mph Porsche Cayenne 9.4 mph

THE CORKSCREW

9

4

5

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR Presented by

LAT G @ TURN 5

Lamborghini ..........1.40 g Ford ..........................1.36 g Porsche 718 ............1.34 g Porsche 911 ............1.34 g Ferrari......................1.32 g Chevrolet ...............1.25 g Porsche Cayenne 1.19 g

MPH BEFORE TURN 5

Ferrari......................133.4 mph Lamborghini ..........127.3 mph Porsche 911 ............127.1 mph Ford ..........................124.4 mph Porsche 718 ............118.9 mph Chevrolet ...............117.1 mph Porsche Cayenne 114.7 mph

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 57

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Historic track times

WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca Lap Times

2020 BDC Contestant *Best Driver’s Car winner **Best Handling Car winner

Track Length: 2.238 miles TIME

Y.M. VEHICLE (OPTION, HORSEPOWER/TORQUE)

1:27.62 1:28.30 1:29.78 1:29.89 1:30.00 1:30.46 1:30.71 1:30.97 1:31.58 1:31.68 1:32.27 1:32.46 1:32.85 1:32.97 1:33.01 1:33.05 1:33.21 1:33.29 1:33.37 1:33.62 1:33.84 1:34.23 1:34.30 1:34.50 1:34.58 1:34.87 1:35.01 1:35.03 1:35.30 1:35.51 1:35.52 1:35.57 1:35.62 1:36.02 1:36.11 1:36.14 1:36.22 1:36.26 1:36.36 1:36.40 1:36.63 1:36.83 1:36.96 1:37.08

2019 McLaren Senna (789 hp/590 lb-ft).............................Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R MC2 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS (Weissach, 691 hp/553 lb-ft)Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R N0 2018 McLaren 720S (710 hp/568 lb-ft) ...................................... Pirelli P Zero Corsa MC 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder (887 hp/944 lb-ft) .............. Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N0 2018 Lamborghini Huracán Performante (630 hp/442 lb-ft)*Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R (L) 2016 Dodge Viper ACR (645 hp/600 lb-ft) .............................Kumho Ecsta V720 ACR 2015 McLaren P1 (904 hp/664 lb-ft) ..............................................Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder (Weissach, 887 hp/944 lb-ft)Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N0 2016 Dodge Viper ACR (645 hp/600 lb-ft) .............................Kumho Ecsta V720 ACR 2016 Ferrari 488 GTB (661 hp/561 lb-ft)* .............................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2020 Ferrari F8 Tributo (711 hp/569 lb-ft) .................... Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 K2 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 (ZTK, 755 hp/715 lb-ft) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 ZP 2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo AWD (630 hp/442 lb-ft)* Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R L 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S (640 hp/590 lb-ft)...................................... Pirelli P Zero NA1 2018 Mercedes-AMG GT R (577 hp/516 lb-ft)....................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2016 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 (Z07, 650 hp/650 lb-ft) .....Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2017 Porsche 911 Turbo S (580 hp/516 lb-ft) ............................. Pirelli P Zero Corsa N0 2016 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (493 hp/338 lb-ft) .................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N1 2019 McLaren 600LT (592 hp/457 lb-ft)................................ Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R MC 2014 SRT Viper TA (640 hp/600 lb-ft) ...............................................Pirelli P Zero Corsa 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 (CFTP, 760 hp/625 lb-ft) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2017 Audi R8 V10 (Plus, 602 hp/413 lb-ft) ...........................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE (6M, 650 hp/650 lb-ft) Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3R 2012 McLaren MP4-12C (592 hp/443 lb-ft) ......................................Pirelli P Zero Corsa 2016 McLaren 570S (562 hp/443 lb-ft)* ............................................Pirelli P Zero Corsa 2017 McLaren 570GT (562 hp/443 lb-ft) ....................................Pirelli P Zero MC PNCS 2017 Nissan GT-R NISMO (600 hp/481 lb-ft) ...Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT600 DSST 2014 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG (Black, 622 hp/468 lb-ft) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2016 Mercedes-AMG GT S (503 hp/479 lb-ft) ..................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2015 Nissan GT-R NISMO (600 hp/481 lb-ft) ...Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT600 DSST 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S (433hp/390 lb-ft)* ................................. Pirelli P Zero NA1 2016 Mercedes-AMG GT S (503 hp/479 lb-ft)* .................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S (560 hp/516 lb-ft).................Dunlop Sport Maxx Race N0 2018 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport (7M, 460 hp/465 lb-ft) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2016 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350R (526 hp/429 lb-ft) ..Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 (414 hp/309 lb-ft)...... Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N1 2010 Ferrari 458 Italia (557 hp/398 lb-ft)* ................................ Michelin Pilot Sport K1 2019 Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4Matic+ (630-hp/664 lb-ft)Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2017 Acura NSX (573 hp/476 lb-ft) .................................................Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R 2017 Porsche 911 Carrera S (420 hp/368 lb-ft) ......................................Pirelli P Zero N1 2014 Nissan GT-R Track Pack (545 hp/463 lb-ft)..... Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT600 DSST CTT 2019 Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang (526-hp/429 lb-ft) .. Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2019 Jaguar XE SV Project 8 (Track setup, 592-hp/516 lb-ft) Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 J 2017 Nissan GT-R (Premium, 565 hp/467 lb-ft) Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT600 DSST CTT

POINT YOUR PHONE

camera at this code to view all of the lap times

58 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

TIRES

TIME 1:37.43 1:37.54 1:37.66 1:37.77 1:37.82 1:37.83 1:38.27 1:38.28 1:38.42 1:38.42 1:38.52 1:38.70 1:38.75 1:39.40 1:39.57 1:39.65 1:39.69 1:39.81 1:39.95 1:40.05 1:40.05 1:40.18 1:40.27 1:40.50 1:40.57 1:40.71 1:40.83 1:40.90 1:40.92 1:41.21 1:41.26 1:41.77 1:42.01 1:42.70 1:42.95 1:43.20 1:43.40 1:43.50 1:43.51 1:44.22 1:46.16 1:48.18 1:48.47 1:50.11

TIRES 2016 Porsche Cayman GT4 (385 hp/309 lb-ft) .......... Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N0 2019 Jaguar XE SV Project 8 (592-hp/516 lb-ft ) ........Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N1 2016 BMW M4 GTS (493 hp/443 lb-ft) ................................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2017 Chevrolet Camaro SS 1LE (455 hp/455 lb-ft) . Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3 2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 (505 hp/481 lb-ft)* .....................Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R 2020 Chevrolet Corvette (Z51, 495 hp/470 lb-ft) .....................Michelin Pilot Sport 4S 2019 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera (715-hp/664 lb-ft) ...............Pirelli P Zero A7A 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Z51 (460 hp/465 lb-ft)Michelin Pilot Super Sport ZP 2019 Aston Martin Vantage (503 hp/505 lb-ft)................................. Pirelli P Zero A6A 2018 Ford Mustang GT (PP2, 460 hp/420 lb-ft) ...............Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 2016 Cadillac CTS-V Sedan (640 hp/630 lb-ft)............... Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2014 Audi R8 V10 Plus (550 hp/398 lb-ft) ....................................................Pirelli P Zero 2017 Jaguar F-Type SVR (575 hp/516 lb-ft) .................................................Pirelli P Zero 2019 BMW M850i xDrive Coupe (523-hp/553 lb-ft)Bridgestone Potenza S007 (star) 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 (415 hp/300 lb-ft)** ........................... Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio (505 hp/443 lb-ft) ..................Pirelli P Zero AR 2015 BMW M4 (425 hp/406 lb-ft) ......................................... Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2018 BMW M5 (600 hp/553 lb-ft) ............................................... Michelin Pilot Sport 4S 2018 Audi TT RS (400 hp/354 lb-ft) ....................................................... Pirelli P Zero R01 2017 Aston Martin DB11 (600 hp/516 lb-ft)........................Bridgestone Potenza S007 2017 Porsche 718 Cayman S (PDK, 350 hp/309 lb-ft) ..........................Pirelli P Zero N1 2016 Cadillac ATS-V Coupe (464 hp/445 lb-ft) ............... Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2020 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe (541 hp/567 lb-ft) ....... Pirelli P Zero Corsa N0 2015 Mercedes-AMG C 63 S Sedan (503 hp/516 lb-ft) .. Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2020 Toyota GR Supra Launch Edition (335-hp/365 lb-ft)Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2014 Aston Martin Vanquish (565 hp/457 lb-ft) .........................................Pirelli P Zero 2019 BMW M2 Competition (405-hp/406 lb-ft) ... Michelin Pilot Super Sport (star) 2019 Lamborghini Urus (641-hp/627 lb-ft) ................................................Pirelli P Zero L 2009 Audi R8 (420 hp/317 lb-ft)** ..................................................................Pirelli P Zero 2020 Bentley Continental GT V8 (550-hp/568 lb-ft) ........................... Pirelli P Zero B 2014 Porsche Cayman S (325 hp/272 lb-ft) .................................................Pirelli P Zero 2017 Aston Martin V12 Vantage S (565 hp/457 lb-ft)....................Pirelli P Zero Corsa 2015 Jaguar F-Type R Coupe (550 hp/502 lb-ft) ......................................Pirelli P Zero 2019 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye (WB, 797-hp/707-lb-ft) .Pirelli P Zero 2009 Porsche Cayman S (PDK, 320 hp/273 lb-ft)* ...................... Michelin Pilot Sport 2015 Lexus RC F (467 hp/398 lb-ft) ...................................... Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2018 Lexus LC 500 (471 hp/398 lb-ft) .................................. Michelin Pilot Super Sport 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Q4 (505 hp/443 lb-ft) ...................................Pirelli P Zero AR 2015 Bentley Continental GT3-R (572 hp/518 lb-ft) ..................................Pirelli P Zero 2018 Honda Civic Type R (306 hp/295 lb-ft) .................Continental SportContact 6 2018 Kia Stinger GT (365 hp/367 lb-ft) ..................................... Michelin Pilot Sport 4S 2019 Jaguar I-Pace EV400 AWD HSE (394 hp/512 lb-ft) .........................Pirelli P Zero 2019 Mazda MX-5 (Club, 181 hp/151 lb-ft) ......................... Bridgestone Potenza S001 2015 Volkswagen GTI (217 hp/258 lb-ft) ...........................Bridgestone Potenza S001

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2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR I Charts POWERTRAIN/CHASSIS

2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT

2020 Ferrari F8 Tributo

2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500

2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo (AWD)

Mid-engine, RWD

Mid-engine, RWD

Front-engine, RWD

Mid-engine, AWD

ENGINE TYPE

90-deg V-8, alum block/ heads

Twin-turbo 90-deg V-8 alum block/heads

Supercharged 90-deg V-8, alum block/heads

90-deg V-10, alum block/ heads

VALVETRAIN

WEIGHT TO POWER

OHV, 2 valves/cyl 376.0 cu in/6,162cc 11.5:1 495 hp @ 6,450 rpm 470 lb-ft @ 5,150 rpm 6,400 rpm 7.2 lb/hp

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl 238.1 cu in/3,902cc 9.6:1 711 hp @ 7,000 rpm 568 lb-ft @ 3,250 rpm 8,000 rpm 4.8 lb/hp

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl 315.1 cu in/5,163cc 9.5:1 760 hp @ 7,300 rpm 625 lb-ft @ 5,000 rpm 7,500 rpm 5.3 lb/hp

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl 317.6 cu in/5,204cc 12.7:1 630 hp @ 8,000 rpm 443 lb-ft @ 6,500 rpm 8,500 rpm 5.8 lb/hp

TRANSMISSION

8-speed twin-clutch auto

7-speed twin-clutch auto

7-speed twin-clutch auto

7-speed twin-clutch auto

AXLE/FINAL DRIVE RATIO

3.55:1/1.70:1

4.38:1/2.81:1

2.77:1 (front), 2.65:1 (rear)/2.23:1

SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR

Control arms, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, antiroll bar 15.7:1 2.5

Control arms, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, antiroll bar 11.9:1 1.9

3.73:1/2.09:1 Struts, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar 16.0:1 2.3

BRAKES, F; R

13.3-in vented disc; 13.8-in vented disc, ABS

16.5-in 2-pc vented disc; 14.6-in 15.7-in vented, drilled, carbonceramic disc; 14.2-in vented, 2-pc vented disc, ABS drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS

9.0-17.0:1 2.2 15.0-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc; 14.0-in vented drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS

WHEELS, F; R

8.5 x 19-in; 11.0 x 20-in cast aluminum

9.0 x 20-in; 11.0 x 20-in carbon fiber composite

11.0 x 20-in; 11.5 x 20-in carbon fiber composite

TIRES, F; R

245/35R19 89Y; 305/30R20 99Y Michelin Pilot Sport 4S

245/35R20 95Y; 305/30R20 105Y Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 KR

305/30R20 103Y; 315/30R20 104Y 245/30R20 90Y; 305/30R20 Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 103Y Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R (L)

104.3 in 66.0/64.8 in 181.5 x 77.9 x 47.5 38.7 ft 3,398 lb 41/59% 2 Not available Not available Not available 7.1 cu ft

107.1 in 63.8/64.4 in 189.5 x 76.6 x 53.7 in 44.1 ft 4,054 lb 56/44% 2 37.6/– in 45.1/– in 56.3/– in 13.5 cu ft

103.2 in 65.7/63.8 in 178.0 x 76.1 x 45.9 in 37.7 ft 3,645 lb 43/57% 2 Not available Not available Not available 3.5 cu ft

1.3 sec 1.8 2.3 2.9 3.5 4.2 4.9 5.8 9.5 1.2 10.5 sec @ 139.3 mph 98 ft 1.06 g (avg) 22.8 sec @ 0.93 g (avg) 92.27 sec 1,250 rpm

1.8 sec 2.4 3.0 3.6 4.3 5.1 6.0 7.0 10.7 1.3 11.3 sec @ 131.6 mph 94 ft 1.05 g (avg) 23.5 sec @ 0.89 g (avg) 93.84 sec 1,550 rpm

1.0 sec 1.5 1.9 2.5 3.2 4.0 4.8 5.9 9.5 1.1 10.5 sec @ 132.7 mph 93 ft 1.12 g (avg) 22.3 sec @ 0.96 g (avg) 92.85 sec 2,400 rpm

$59,995 $92,365 STABILITY/TRACTION CONTROL Yes/Yes

$277,480 $386,288 Yes/Yes

AIRBAGS

4: Dual front, front side/head

$74,095 $93,595 Yes/Yes 8: Dual front, side, curtain, knee

3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles 20.6 gal 15/19/16 mpg 225/177 kWh/100 miles 1.17 lb/mile Unleaded premium

3 years/36,000 miles 5 years/60,000 miles 5 years/60,000 miles 16.0 gal 12/18/14 mpg 281/187 kWh/100 miles 1.37 lb/mile Unleaded premium

$267,569 $312,269 Yes/Yes 6: Dual front, front side/head, front knee 3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles 21.9 gal 13/18/15 mpg 259/187 kWh/100 miles 1.31 lb/mile Unleaded premium

DISPLACEMENT COMPRESSION RATIO POWER (SAE NET) TORQUE (SAE NET) REDLINE

STEERING RATIO TURNS LOCK TO LOCK

Control arms, coil springs, anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, anti-roll bar

8.5 x 20-in; 11.0 x 20-in forged aluminum

DIMENSIONS

107.2 in TRACK, F/R 64.9/62.4 in LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT 182.3 x 76.1 x 48.6 in TURNING CIRCLE 36.4 ft CURB WEIGHT 3,587 lb WEIGHT DIST, F/R 39/61% SEATING CAPACITY 2 HEADROOM, F/R 37.9/– in LEGROOM, F/R 42.8/– in SHOULDER ROOM, F/R 54.4/– in CARGO VOLUME 4.0 (front)/8.6 (rear) cu ft WHEELBASE

TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH

1.0 sec 1.5 0-50 2.1 0-60 2.8 0-70 3.7 0-80 4.6 0-90 5.8 0-100 7.1 0-100-0 10.8 PASSING, 45-65 MPH 1.4 QUARTER MILE 11.1 sec @ 123.2 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 97 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 1.04 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 23.3 sec @ 0.90 g (avg) 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP 97.83 sec TOP-GEAR REVS @ 60 MPH 1,300 rpm 0-30

0-40

CONSUMER INFO

BASE PRICE

PRICE AS TESTED

4: Dual front, front side/head

3 years/36,000 miles POWERTRAIN WARRANTY 5 years/60,000 miles ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE 5 years/60,000 miles FUEL CAPACITY 18.5 gal EPA CITY/HWY/COMB ECON 15/27/19 mpg ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 225/125 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 1.03 lb/mile RECOMMENDED FUEL Unleaded premium BASIC WARRANTY

2020 BDC 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4

2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S

2020 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe

Mid-engine, RWD

Rear-engine, AWD

Front-engine, AWD

Flat-6, alum block/heads

Twin-turbo flat-6, alum block/heads

Twin-turbo 90-deg V-8, alum block/ heads

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl 243.8 cu in/3,995cc 13.0:1

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl 243.9 cu in/3,996cc 10.1:1

228.5 cu in/3,745cc 8.7:1

414 hp @ 7,600 rpm 309 lb-ft @ 5,000 rpm 8,000 rpm 7.6 lb/hp 6-speed manual

7,200 rpm 8-speed twin-clutch auto

541 hp @ 5,750 rpm 567 lb-ft @ 1,960 rpm 6,800 rpm 9.2 lb/hp 8-speed automatic

3.89:1/3.15:1

3.33:1 (front), 3.02:1 (rear)/1.84:1

3.48:1/2.23:1

Struts, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar; struts, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar

Struts, coil springs, adj shocks, antiroll bar; multilink, coil springs, adj shocks, anti-roll bar

13.2-17.1:1 2.6 16.1-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc; 15.4-in vented, drilled carbonceramic disc, ABS

12.5-14.1:1 2.4 16.5-in vented, drilled carbonceramic disc; 15.4-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS

Multilink, coil and air springs, adj shocks, adj anti-roll bar; multilink, coil and air springs, adj shocks, adj anti-roll bar 12.2:1 2.2 17.3-in vented, drilled carbonceramic disc; 16.1-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS

640 hp @ 6,750 rpm 590 lb-ft @ 2,500 rpm 5.7 lb/hp

8.5 x 20-in; 11.0 x 20-in, cast aluminum 9.5 x 20-in; 12.0 x 21-in, forged aluminum

9.5 x 21-in; 11.0 x 21-in, forged aluminum

245/35R20 95Y; 295/30R20 101Y Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 N1

255/35R20 93Y; 315/30R21 105Y Pirelli P Zero NA1

285/40R21 109Y; 315/35R21 111Y Pirelli P Zero Corsa N0

97.8 in 60.6/60.4 in 175.5 x 70.9 x 50.0 in 37.5 ft 3,127 lb 44/56% 2 39.1/– in 42.2/– in 51.3/– in 5.2 (front); 9.5 (rear) cu ft

96.5 in 62.4/63.0 in 178.6 x 74.9 x 50.9 in 35.8 ft 3,628 lb 38/62% 4 37.9/32.5 in 42.2/27.2 in 52.6/47.9 in 4.5 (front)/9.3 (rear seat folded) cu ft

114.0 in 66.4/66.5 in 194.5 x 78.4 x 65.1 in 37.8 ft 4,999 lb 56/44% 4 38.2/38.3 in 41.1/40.0 in 59.1/56.5 in 53.4 (beh front) 21.1 (beh rear) cu ft

1.8 sec 2.4 3.3 4.1 5.0 6.1 7.5 9.0 12.9 1.8 12.3 sec @ 117.9 mph 106 ft 1.05 g (avg) 23.2 sec @ 0.88 g (avg) 96.14 sec 2,400 rpm

0.9 sec 1.4 1.8 2.3 3.0 3.7 4.5 5.6 9.3 1.0 10.3 sec @ 132.3 mph 97 ft 1.10 g (avg) 22.5 sec @ 0.96 g (avg) 92.97 sec 1,250 rpm

1.1 sec 1.7 2.4 3.2 4.2 5.5 6.8 8.5 12.4 1.7 11.7 sec @ 116.8 mph 100 ft 0.98 g (avg) 24.1 sec @ 0.82 g (avg) 100.27 sec 1,400 rpm

$100,550 $118,600 Yes/Yes 8: Dual front, front side, front curtain, front knee 4 years/50,000 miles 4 years/50,000 miles 4 years/50,000 miles 16.9 gal 16/23/19 mpg 211/147 kWh/100 miles 1.05 lb/mile Unleaded premium

$204,850 $224,780 Yes/Yes 8: Dual front, front side, f/r curtain, front knee 4 years/50,000 miles 4 years/50,000 miles 4 years/50,000 miles 17.6 gal 15/20/17 mpg 225/169 kWh/100 miles 1.15 lb/mile Unleaded premium

$133,250 $160,250 Yes/Yes 10: Dual front, f/r side, f/r curtain, front knee 4 yrs/50,000 miles 4 yrs/50,000 miles 4 yrs/50,000 miles 23.7 gal 15/19/17 mpg 225/177 kWh/100 miles 1.17 lb/mile Unleaded premium

Our resident racer (and Lord of Laguna) Randy Pobst gives us reliable, repeatable lap times every year.

any racing fans think the Corkscrew is the toughest corner at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, but they’d be wrong. Iconic? Yes. Thrilling? Ditto. Toughest? No. Rather, we go to the opposite end of the circuit, to the front straight, and investigate the infamous Turn 1.

Located just past the start/finish bridge, Turn 1 isn’t really much of a “turn” so much as a blind-crested kink that vanishes to your left as it dives toward a tricky, double-apex hairpin that will accordion a pack of cars into a frantic mess.

In any real sports car, you will hit the kink at well north of 100 mph. And although everyone has their favorite line, three things are certain: You have to keep your foot on the gas, you must have

M

62 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

absolute faith in your car’s chassis as you get very, very light, and you have preposterously little space in the subsequent braking zone to cut your speed in half.

It feels like both an instant and an eternity. It’s a true test of a car’s character and of a driver’s intestinal fortitude. Your car’s rear end dances; your breathing stops.

Frankly, it scares the hell out of me.

So there I was, ripping down the front straight in the Lamborghini Huracán Evo, closing in on 130 mph as I hit the kink.

Presented by

2020 MOTORTREND BEST DRIVER’S CAR WINNER

Lamborghini Huracán Evo WORDS SCOTT EVANS PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF

WHEN YOU’RE THIS GOOD, YOU DON’T HAVE TO EVOLVE TO WIN. BUT IT DOESN’T HURT. MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 63

Lap times inform the Best Driver’s Car decision, but they don’t dictate our choice. When a car is as good to drive as it is fast, though, it’s a distinction without a difference.

Reaching that point of mild terror, I awaited the car’s reaction—and my own.

I can list on one hand the number of street cars that have given me sufficient confidence to keep my foot down all the way over that crest. The Huracán Evo is squarely on the list. What’s more, among the 2020 Best Driver’s Car field, no other car, going that fast, provoked that same reaction from me. In that moment, I knew: The Lamborghini Huracán would win Best Driver’s Car. Again.

But don’t take my word for it. We always wait eagerly as MT’s pro driver for hire, Randy Pobst, screams each car up the front straight during his timed hot laps. Will he lift before the top of the hill?

Not usually, not if the car is balanced and

64 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

trustworthy. Usually, he’ll lift just after the crest. In the Huracán Evo, he kept his foot down over the crest then pulled an upshift and kept his foot in it even longer before braking for Turn 2. An upshift on the run down into Turn 2? That never happens.

“The braking was incredibly strong,” Pobst said. “On the second timed lap, I was really starting to feel confident. I went over the hill—I think we’re all the way into sixth gear at least over the top. The car’s moving, and I braked aggressively late.

“You can throw it into a corner like an idiot, and it would just do this beautiful little drift,” he continued. “It works as one—the steering, braking, suspension.

It is emotionally satisfying, and it’s really attractive.”

It wasn’t just Pobst and me singing its praises after a lapping session, either.

Every judge got out of the car babbling like a fool in love about how good it was.

“I’m not quite skilled enough to push the car to its limit all the way around the track,” senior features editor Jonny Lieberman said, “but maybe two or three times per lap the holes in the Swiss cheese would line up and I’d hit a corner just so.

Damn, did it feel righteous.

“The Evo sang as it carved,” Lieberman added. “The gluey tires held. The stiff

chassis rotated just the right number of degrees, and I rolled on the throttle.

I’m salivating thinking about it. I felt like a hero. I felt like a champ. I felt like a pretty darn good driver.” A Best Driver’s Car winner doesn’t just make a talented amateur feel like a hero, though. It has to impress and inspire every driver, from a rookie to a pro. And the pro liked it.

“Tremendous cornering grip, quick turn-in, real quick steering response, but absolutely planted in the back,” Pobst said, “and as I got more and more confident and aggressive, I could get a little bit of rotation, but I had to ask for it, which I like. I want to be the one making it rotate. I don’t want a car to do it on its own. And that’s where the Lamborghini was.”

It’s mechanical harmony, every input and feedback system working together.

Every piece of the car that makes it go, stop, and corner is in lockstep with the others and with the driver. Every input you make, every response you get from the car, is exactly what you want and expect.

Above all, the Lambo doesn’t lose any of that sensation when you put it on a track. That is the failing of the Porsche 911 Turbo S; all those tingly feelings it gave you on the road got dulled on the track. The Lamborghini was always thrilling to drive

no matter where or when. And it was as thrilling and confidence-inspiring on the open road as it was on the closed track.

Tearing through the valleys that define California’s Coast and Transverse ranges, the Huracán Evo lulls you into that perfect state of driving bliss, traveling incredibly, illegally fast without a conscious thought in your head. The Huracán allows you to be completely engaged in the moment, seeing braking points and apexes but sending the information directly to your hands and feet without analyzing the situation, reacting to the world rushing at you and feeling the car move about around you in precisely the way you instructed, as if it were an extension of your body.

“I’ve driven Lambos that were twitchy and itchy,” editor-in-chief Mark Rechtin said, “but after driving the BDC-winning Huracán Performante a few years back, I learned to trust the raging bull. And although the Evo doesn’t have the active aero technology of the Performante, it still instills this insane amount of trust in the driver.”

Yes, the Huracán is a two-time winner.

That this car—which has continually, ahem, evolved into new forms since its

launch in 2014—can still bring home the silverware against much newer supercar technology is a testament to the engineering talent in Sant’Agata Bolognese.

“You can drive it like you stole it, and it’ll be there for you,” road test editor Chris Walton said. “The steering and handling are world class. It makes all the noise. It has rear steering. On Trofeo Rs, the Evo lapped Laguna faster than the 911 Turbo S (on regular P Zeros) and only 2 seconds slower than the Performante with the game-changing ALA active aero system.”

Still, the Huracán Evo wasn’t perfect.

Pobst somehow got the brakes to fade a

little after a few laps, which he chalked up to new pads. Something in the passenger door was loose and rattling over bumps.

The bulkhead between the cabin and the engine creaked like an old wood floor when you put some twist in the car entering or exiting a driveway. The iPadsized touchscreen in the center console is full of indecipherable alien petroglyphs and impossible to use while driving.

And true, the Huracán was 0.58 second slower around Laguna Seca than the Ferrari F8 Tributo, but Pobst would eventually attribute the Ferrari’s lap time to the F8’s two turbochargers and the

2020 MOTORTREND BDC WINNER

extra 81 hp and 125 lb-ft of torque they provided. Plus, the Ferrari had a brake rebuild before it went out on the course.

But when a car drives as well as the Huracán Evo, you forgive a lot.

“All that is ignored when you put your foot into the accelerator and you hear that guttural, window-shattering V-10,” Rechtin said. “You know every single dollar you spent was worth it. Mothers two counties away hurry their kids inside.

We blew up the sound meter at Sonoma Raceway … and we were at Laguna Seca.”

Walton agreed: “We all kept making excuses for it because just listen to it!”

The noise is intoxicating. “There’s just something about this car,” Lieberman said.

“Je ne sais … Luigi?”

Consider the cars it beat. The Ferrari F8 Tributo is an evolution of the 458 Italia and 488 GTB, which both won BDC. Not this time. In what world is a Lamborghini an absolute joy to drive on the track and a Ferrari a nervous, edgy nail-biter at the limit? This one, apparently. Lamborghini caught Ferrari napping and leaning on its Side Slip Control to bandage over the Tributo chassis’ shortcomings.

Lamborghini made a better chassis then put excellent software on top of it.

The new Porsche 911 Turbo S is an absolute revelation to drive … on the street. It’s as much a religious experience on a back road as the Huracán Evo. Put both on a track, though, and the 911 goes cold and sterile. The Lamborghini just keeps hitting your dopamine producer like a game show contestant attacking the

buzzer. And although the second-place Mustang Shelby GT500 was a beast and a bully at a (relatively) bargain price, it lacked the refinement and zhoosh required of a winner.

“Handling is aggressively stable, a rare combination,” Pobst said, “but the heart of the Huracán experience is that thrilling V-10. It’s beautifully loud, like a superstar rock concert, and constantly straining at the leash. This one inspires. The powerband goes from strong midrange to thrilling wails to redline and loves every fire of every cylinder.”

Lieberman agreed: “How much can we praise this 5.2-liter masterpiece of a V-10?

Never enough! Engines like this will be gone soon, forever. Bless Lamborghini for keeping the 10 spark plugs lit. And this is the best version of this motor, lifted straight out of the Performante. Numerically down on power (and especially torque) compared to most of the BDC field, the Evo manages to be as quick if not quicker. How does it do that? A brilliant

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66 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Congratulations Pirelli for driving the Lamborghini Huracán EVO to win this year’s Best Driver’s Car title!

So, what’s the

BEST DRIVER’S

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2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo (AWD) DRIVETRAIN LAYOUT

Mid-engine, AWD

ENGINE TYPE

90-deg V-10, alum block/heads

VALVETRAIN

DOHC, 4 valves/cyl

DISPLACEMENT

317.6 cu in/5,204cc

COMPRESSION RATIO

12.7:1

POWER (SAE NET)

630 hp @ 8,000 rpm

TORQUE (SAE NET)

443 lb-ft @ 6,500 rpm

REDLINE

8,500 rpm

WEIGHT TO POWER

5.8 lb/hp

TRANSMISSION

7-speed twin-clutch auto

AXLE/FINAL DRIVE RATIO

2.77:1 (front), 2.65:1 (rear)/2.23:1

SUSPENSION, FRONT; REAR Control arms, coil springs,

anti-roll bar; multilink, coil springs, anti-roll bar STEERING RATIO TURNS LOCK TO LOCK BRAKES, F; R

9.0-17.0:1 2.2 15.0-in vented, drilled carbonceramic disc; 14.0-in vented, drilled carbon-ceramic disc, ABS

WHEELS, F; R

8.5 x 20-in; 11.0 x 20-in forged aluminum

TIRES, F; R

245/30R20 90Y; 305/30R20 103Y Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R (L)

DIMENSIONS

WHEELBASE TRACK, F/R LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT

103.2 in 65.7/63.8 in 178.0 x 76.1 x 45.9 in

CURB WEIGHT

37.7 ft 3,645 lb

WEIGHT DIST, F/R

43/57%

TURNING CIRCLE

SEATING CAPACITY

2

HEADROOM

Not available

LEGROOM

Not available

SHOULDER ROOM

Not available

CARGO VOLUME TEST DATA ACCELERATION TO MPH 0-30

3.5 cu ft

0-40 0-50 0-60 0-70 0-80 0-90 0-100 0-100-0 PASSING, 45-65 MPH QUARTER MILE BRAKING, 60-0 MPH LATERAL ACCELERATION MT FIGURE EIGHT 2.2-MI ROAD COURSE LAP TOP-GEAR REVS @ 60 MPH

1.0 sec 1.5 1.9 2.5 3.2 4.0 4.8 5.9 9.5 1.1 10.5 sec @ 132.7 mph 93 ft 1.12 g (avg) 22.3 sec @ 0.96 g (avg) 92.85 sec 2,400 rpm

CONSUMER INFO

BASE PRICE

$267,569

PRICE AS TESTED STABILITY/TRACTION CONTROL

$312,269

AIRBAGS BASIC WARRANTY POWERTRAIN WARRANTY ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE

Yes/Yes 6: Dual front, front side/head, front knee 3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles 3 years/Unlimited miles

FUEL CAPACITY

21.9 gal

EPA CITY/HWY/COMB ECON

13/18/15 mpg

ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY

259/187 kWh/100 miles 1.31 lb/mile Unleaded premium

CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB RECOMMENDED FUEL

68 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

AWD system paired to a quick-shifting dual-clutch transmission.”

What really makes it special is that it can do everything, and it can switch personalities at the driver’s whim.

Whether blitzing a racetrack, carving a tight canyon, roaring through a series of long sweepers, or loafing on an endless highway, the Huracán Evo is pure joy. Even mooching around town, the dual-clutch transmission avoids most of the herky-jerky issues such trannies often have. (Advice from Jonny: keep it in Sport; Strada had some balky moments.)

My experience: Tuesday afternoon, I whipped it around Laguna Seca and loved every second of it. Wednesday afternoon, I flung it all the way out on the notoriously twisty, hilly State Route 198 to its terminus, and I adored it just as much. Then I turned down a deadstraight country highway, put the car in Strada, and cruised at 100 mph for two hours, totally relaxed.

The next day, I took the Lamborghini to a proving ground where we’d film World’s Greatest Drag Race 10; the Evo popped off 10.5-second quarter miles all day long, tying the Ferrari and only two-tenths behind the 911 Turbo S despite being down on power and way, way down on torque. The only thing this car doesn’t give you is a cupholder.

“Yes, the Lamborghini with 631 horsepower is ferocious in a straight line,” Lieberman said, “but the Evo turning so well is the real news. Well, if you’ve been paying attention to what Lamborghini has been up to for the last half decade, this is not news at all. Many people just can’t get past the brand’s reputation for building loud, flashy, brash cars with big engines and not much else. Seriously, get that stereotype out of your mind.”

So you don’t get the Huracán Performante’s stunning ALA aero system, but the Huracán Evo is just as delicious going around a corner. And it costs $22,000 less to start and $33,000 less as tested than the winning Performante did three years ago.

I have judged all 10 Best Driver’s Car competitions, and I’ve found each one to have some kind of redemption story. Cars we might have snubbed in previous years suddenly make podium finishes, or midcycle improvements turn midpack finishers into winners: to wit, the middling Camaro that became the Z/28 (sixth to first), the lifeless McLaren MP4-12C that became the 570S (fifth to first), the overpowered SLS AMG that became the AMG GT S (eighth to first).

The Huracán Evo had nothing to redeem. The Huracán Performante was a phenomenal car and a runaway winner against supposedly all-conquering cars like the McLaren 720S and Porsche 911 GT2 RS. Yet here, this year, the Huracán Evo actually devolved into a less advanced car than the ALA-equipped Performante, and it still won the title.

The Huracán Evo is just as thrilling, lustworthy, and confidence-inspiring— with only half the Performante’s hardware. The Huracán didn’t need to evolve. The competition still hasn’t caught up yet. Q

Randy Pobst is a special talent. He’s fast, he’s consistent, and he can articulate exactly what a car is doing at every point on the track, and he sets lap records in the process.

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ith military bases closed to the public to protect against potential foreign agents (of molecular size), the usual procedure for World’s Greatest Drag Race had to be scrapped.

Gone was any option for using those velvet-smooth, 3-mile military runways.

Thus, our three-year stint at Vandenberg Air Force Base came to a close. But where to go instead?

W

Our original site for WGDR—the decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station El Toro—has become so degraded over time that we didn’t dare to take a field of supercars on high-speed runs. And most private airfields within reach of Los Angeles weren’t long enough to handle what has gone from a crazy idea to the expected: a half-mile run to determine the ultimate winner. (Note for the uninitiated:

POINT YOUR PHONE

WORDS MARK RECHTIN PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF 70 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

camera at this code to view the World’s Greatest Drag Race video.

It takes a lot of real estate to slow down a two-ton supercar doing 170-plus mph.)

Enter an undisclosed test track in the California desert. The generous entity that donated its track has asked to remain anonymous, even though Redditors will probably figure it out in about 5 minutes.

All we can say is that the track is sufficiently long and perfectly immaculate for world-class cars accelerating from a stop to

Host Jonny Lieberman defends the Ram 1500 TRX’s reason to be here: It can go off-road all day and still turn a 12.7-second quarter mile.

A YEAR OF CHANGE MEANS WE CHANGE UP OUR FORMULA …

BUT WE STILL GO A HALF MILE TO DETERMINE THE CHAMPION the quarter mile in about the time it takes you to read this sentence aloud.

However, a test track is still not a runway. There is a certain matter of width. We couldn’t fit 12 cars abreast.

Heck, we couldn’t fit eight. So we figured, we’ve followed this same formula for a decade—let’s change it up. And although we originally tweaked the idea of a drag race by running all the cars at once, this

year we’re reverting to drag racing’s mano a mano roots: two cars and 1,320 feet; then, for the final, 2,640 feet. Loser leaves town.

Here’s the bracket; we swapped the Porsche 718 for the hybrid performance shootout–winning Acura NSX, then threw in the 2021 Truck of the Year Ram 1500 TRX for good measure. Who won? Aim your smartphone’s camera at this QR code, and it will take you straight to the video. Q

Can American muscle stand up to foreign technology? Ford, Chevy, and, yes, Ram go up against Porsche, Ferrari, and the Ohio-built Acura.

WGDR 10 Final Mid-Engine Exotics Acura NSX Ferrari F8 Tributo

European Royalty Lamborghini Huracán Evo Porsche 911 Turbo S

Chevy vs. Ford Chevrolet Corvette Z51 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500

Are You Kidding Me? Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe Ram 1500 TRX

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 71

FEATURE I Driving School

WORDS MARK RECHTIN

WE SENT FOUR JUNIOR STAFFERS TO BMW PERFORMANCE DRIVING SCHOOL AT THERMAL RACETRACK TO LEARN CAR CONTROL AT SPEED. DID IT STICK? 72 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

One of the first lessons racing school students learn is “Eyes up!”

Looking where you’re going, rather than where you are, is the best way to protect against road hazards.

A

ccording to Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” rule, we aren’t born prodigies. We don’t have an innate sense of car control at speed as we first get behind the wheel. But put in enough time, and you can get pretty darn talented.

MotorTrend’s four junior staffers are decent drivers, but we wanted to push their envelopes a bit and increase their respective skill sets. We don’t necessarily need them to be racer-fast, but they do need to be able to test the limits of a car while their brains and bodies are able to process those inputs and retain them long enough to get their thoughts on paper.

After all, it’s no good to you readers if our car testers are as fast as Lewis Hamilton but come back from a drive with nothing more than, “Wow, that was fun!” We want them to develop their inner-ear (or inner-buttock) sense of when brakes are wooden, when steering feel is spooky, or whether it’s compression or rebound that’s making a suspension uncomfortable going over freeway expansion joints.

When the BMW Performance Driving School reached out with just such an opportunity for our crew, we jumped

at the chance. The PDS is located at the Thermal Club racetrack out past Palm Springs and offers a wide range of driving schools for people of all ages and capabilities.

And although the BMW folks offered up a day session in a GT4-level car, we dialed back those expectations to something a bit more real world in nature.

The one-day driving school costs $849 per person (which BMW comped, full disclosure), but given what body shop and insurance bills are, that could be the best money you spend. There are teen-driving courses and less expensive half-day sessions, as well.

The daylong car control session is the equivalent of a 101-series course, whereas the “M School” would be a 301-series course. Personally, I have found nailing the basics is a far better way to improve and amplify your skills up to higher speeds, as opposed to repeating your same old bad habits during a 130-mph joyride session.

It’s easier to concentrate on nuance and learning when your hair isn’t on fire. It’s also a better way to learn how to drive vehicles while ingesting information so that you can write more informed articles.

When the gang of four expressed sorrow at the relatively introductory nature of their upcoming course, I reassured them that there would be plenty of wheel time at velocity and at the limit … just at a more controlled pace. We also agreed that if they could prove to the Car Control instructors that they were above the level of the course syllabus, they could always turn up the wick.

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, certain elements of a traditional performance driving school were off limits.

Chalk talk sessions would be limited in size and duration, and of course, the driving would be done solo with communication via walkie-talkie. That’s always harder because the instructor is just watching the attitude of the car from downrange but cannot witness the actions of the driver’s hands and feet that put the car in that position. It also prevents interventions by the instructor to put the car where it needs to be (as anyone who has driven with Hurley Haywood riding shotgun can attest).

What follows are the autobiographical accounts by our staffers about the mistakes they made, the bad habits they overcame, and the lessons they learned over the course of the day.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 73

FEATURE I Driving School

Nick Yekikian

Your brakes won’t break I’m no racing driver, and most of my experience behind the wheel has been limited to the daily commute, the occasional road trip, and some “enthusiastic” driving when the going gets twisty.

What I know about driving at pace has been learned through reading, pointers from more experienced members of the MotorTrend staff, and carefully watching professionals like Sebastian Vettel and Tatiana Calderón.

I’d been an editor for MotorTrend for scarcely a year out of college when the opportunity to attend BMW’s Performance Driving School presented itself. That’s intimidating but also thrilling.

What followed was a day of hands-on learning that did more for my skills behind the wheel than anything I could have ginned up on my own. And although much of the day’s focus was on going as fast as possible, my biggest takeaway had nothing to do with speed.

Instead, I made my biggest gains when it came to slowing down. The challenge was to accelerate to 50 mph from a standstill and slam on the brakes as hard as possible

74 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

once the nose of the car crossed a set of marker cones. It sounds straightforward enough, but most folks really don’t have the chance to practice threshold braking on a public road. Until you’re familiar with how hard you can smash a brake pedal—and the ways the car will buck, dive, squeal, and squirm underneath you—it can be downright terrifying.

At this point it’s worth noting BMW’s braking exercise wasn’t the first time I’d abused a brake pedal on track. The MotorTrend figure eight tests grip, acceleration, and, you guessed it, braking.

My first-ever laps around the figure eight were in a BMW Z4 with testing director Kim Reynolds in the passenger seat.

Right away he noticed that I was being timid into the braking zones.

“Why are you braking so softly?” he asked as we sped toward the left-hand sequence of el ocho. “Are you afraid the brakes are going to fly off the hubs?”

After thinking about it, I stopped the car and simply replied, “I don’t really know.”

Reynolds, in his own way, followed my answer with a story about the brakes on an AMG C 63 once catching fire around the figure eight. “Brakes have gotten a lot better in the last 10 years,” he concluded, and I believed him.

Chalk talk from instructors still exists during a pandemic, albeit in a socially distant way.

With that lesson stashed in my back pocket, I was able to attack BMW’s braking test with a bit more confidence.

When it came time to slow the M240i from 50 to 0, I smashed the brake pedal with everything I had, and wouldn’t you know it, the little 2 Series did exactly what you’d expect: It stopped.

Over and over, I raced to 50 mph and jammed on the brakes the instant I passed the markers, and the car gripped down to a stop in the same distance every time.

In everyday driving, we barely use a fifth of the braking potential of our cars.

This is for a number of reasons—mostly, we just want to preserve pad life and ensure we don’t blow hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on a wear-and-tear item. But if you ever find yourself worried about stopping in a hurry, don’t be. Your brakes aren’t going to break.

Stefan Ogbac

Visibility is your BFF I’m no racing driver. To me, driving is for pleasure and getting from one place to another safely. However, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t benefit from a performance driving course.

Several lessons apply directly from the track into the real world. Proactively looking well ahead of where you’re aiming your car is the most important one because your eyes are your first line of defense against road hazards. The rest of your body, including your hands and feet, follow your eyes.

After a one-day car control class at the BMW Performance Driving School, the importance of active vision was the most valuable lesson I learned. Why? Because that skill is as applicable on public roads as it is on the track.

The car control course puts you through different exercises, including slaloms, emergency lane changes, emergency braking, a skidpad, and autocross.

Despite the different takeaways from each one, staying aware of where you’re going remained a refrain: “Look farther ahead and stop staring at the cones,” one instructor said over the radio. “Turn and

Lead-follow exercises allow students to learn the best lines through the course, allowing them to concentrate on improving their skills.

look out of the left side window as you make the turn,” added another.

Staying alert is key on the track because it gives you time to react faster to achieve that perfect line, nail that apex, and apply the right amount of braking, steering, or acceleration. I lost track of how many times I heard, “Look toward where you’re going,” which helped create a new habit: keep an eye on your surroundings. That forces you to practice and develop new skills that may seem odd, like looking out of the side windows toward your intended direction or looking straight ahead while you’re snaking through a slalom.

These also increase your level of awareness because constantly using these abilities while driving helps turn them into second-nature habits even when you’re not on the track.

On the streets, a high level of vigilance translates to constantly watching for danger. Being able to scan around or change your line of sight quickly enables a driver to react faster, helping you navigate dangerous situations safely and promptly. As the emergency lane change drill stressed, this grows in importance the faster you drive. Your eyes need to be way ahead at higher

speeds so you can make the proper steering inputs. Not doing so inevitably resulted in cones getting hit, especially after the instructor narrowed the gap between obstacles. In the real world, that could be the difference between getting through a panic swerve safely or your car hitting something or someone.

The fast-paced environment of a track forces you to push yourself in a controlled setting while applying newly learned skills. If you make a mistake, you just skitter off into gravel, not into a guardrail or ditch.

Whether you’re on the track or simply cruising, using your eyes proactively allows you to get ahead of hazards on the road. Don’t just gaze straight ahead; turn your head and use those mirrors and windows so you know what’s around you, too.

Would I go back and do the car control course again? Definitely. This class teaches drivers new reflexes or finetunes existing ones.

Together with finding the right seating position, establishing good pedal techniques, and holding the steering wheel properly, you get a comprehensive lesson in good driving habits for use on and off the track.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 75

FEATURE I Driving Schools

Alex Leanse

Racetrack to canyon I’m no racing driver.

Most of my driving is the perfect opposite of racing: running errands, cruising on the freeway—or dawdling in traffic. But when I review performance cars, count on me to head straight to the hills above Malibu.

I’ll spend hours coursing up and down its canyon roads, doing my best to suss out the vehicle’s capabilities and retain those observations in my head.

Did my day at driving school make me better in any of those arenas? Not quite.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a blast, and I came away with new skills. That’s all owed to BMW’s instructors, who explained the science behind vehicle dynamics to hone my technique. Throughout the day they guided me through various exercises, two of which felt especially beneficial: the skidpad and the handling course.

A suggestion: Raze your landscaping, and replace it with a swath of polished concrete. You want a skidpad of your own. Sliding an M240i absent stability control was massive fun. But holding epic (-feeling) powerslides and drifts didn’t come naturally. Initially, I could catch little prods of the throttle with nervous

twitches on the wheel, but linking the accelerator’s lower depths to a reaction from my hands was challenging. In my first few laps I managed to point the taillights in the wrong direction.

Calls came over the walkie-talkie to add more, more, come on Alex, more opposite lock as the rear stepped out. Suddenly, with the steering wheel’s bottom spoke waving at the headliner, I felt that catch point. Now I could steer with the throttle, modulating it to adjust my angle. It was a lightbulb moment, and by the end of the skidpad study, I was looking ahead through the side window as much as I was through the windshield.

Next was the handling course, designed to combine each individual lesson we’d practiced. Made up of left–right transitions, sightline-testing radii, and straights just long enough to grab third, it drove like a flattened section of mountainous Malibu. As I pushed an M340i to my maximum, it was validating to feel how all the lessons from earlier came together.

Nonetheless, maintaining consistency between laps was damn near impossible, renewing my respect for pros who do so for hours on race day.

But here’s the thing: That’s not how I drive in the real world—ever. Let’s just say I’m not trying to go slow when I’m in the

Adam Seaman, BMW Performance instructor

How did our guys do? ll in all, the four guests were above average when compared to our typical Car Control Clinic students.

They all had a basic understanding of driving dynamics, terminology, and theory before attending the class. With that being said, they all still fell victim to the normal mistakes that we see with 99 percent of our participants. After speaking with the other instructors, Bryan and Dave, we came to the conclusion that all of them would benefit from a two-day M School followed by either private instruction or the Advanced M School.

A

76 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Improvements that could be made by the entire group were as follows: VISION: Disciplining the vision to stay ahead of the vehicle and continuously pick up new visual references without target fixating. This is the single biggest improvement that they could all make in their driving and would more than likely fix many if not all of the problems listed below.

BRAKING: Braking either too little with not enough pressure or braking too late is a common issue when the vision has not been disciplined. It could also be a result of poor decision-making, but neither I nor the other instructors think that was the case.

canyons, but I never dare to take the car or myself to the limit. There are too many risks, and I can still get a feel for things below the extremes. Most of the time, the main limits I explore are how much stereo volume or heated seat I can tolerate.

Much of what I learned at driving school doesn’t really apply there. Next time I’m at a track, I’ll feel more confident, but I’ll probably need to drive to the grocery store a few times before then. Any enthusiast who invests in driving school will have fun and learn a lot. I sure did. Just know that what you learn is more likely to help you avoid a crash on an errand run than give you race car driver skills in a day.

STEERING INPUTS: Many times the guests would abruptly ask the car to change directions by steering the wheel aggressively and all at once. This can cause many issues with the handling of the car, but the most common is inconsistent steering response due to understeer. When driving, steering inputs should always be done in a smooth and progressive manner, but this is especially true when we near the limits of the tire. Again, this can usually be fixed by disciplining the vision.

ACCELERATION: All four guests had a tendency to apply throttle early while exiting from a corner. This is another mistake that can cause many different issues with the handling of the car, but the most common is understeer, pushing the car to the outside of the track too early on corner exit. Acceleration should be done in direct relation to steering input. Under the assumption that the driver is at the tires’ limits while cornering, acceleration can only take place when the steering wheel angle is

Duncan Brady

Grip and grin I’m no racing driver.

I’ve played plenty of Forza, enjoyed blasting through the canyons on occasion, and put on a respectable performance at the 2019 office karting party, but more experienced folks on staff could run circles around me.

That’s how I ended up in class for the first time since college, frantically tapping at a keyboard to record every wisdom nugget our stunt driver turned instructor was willing to share. He detailed how and why to keep my eyes as far ahead as possible, the proper seat positioning for performance driving, and the reason I wasn’t taught to position my hands at 9 and 3 (it has to do with World War II expats and Hollywood cinematography). But the most significant insights came from behind the wheel.

There are two limiting reactants in any cornering equation: grip and the nut behind the wheel. Extracting every last modicum of speed from a corner involves pushing yourself (said nut) and the tires

to their limits without exceeding them, as doing so saps precious momentum and makes it tricky to keep your tires on the pavement. More on that later. The only way to familiarize yourself with these limits is to push past them; the skidpad and handling course provided a safe environment where we could do just that.

After a much-needed slalom warmup (my first run had instructors watching me drive the wrong direction and flatten a cone), the four of us formed a caravan of M340i sedans behind Adam—a tall, slim former competitive drifter with a cool Carolinian drawl. Think gymkhana McConaughey with a green M5 Competition in place of the Lincoln.

Adam led us to a circle of diamondpolished concrete with grip similar to a post-blizzard parking lot. At just 20 mph, a light throttle blip was enough to scoot the rear out. Our first sloppy pirouettes had me grateful none of us is a dancer.

With ample coaching from Adam via radio, we each learned precisely where the limit was and how to control the car with opposite lock and throttle once we had gone past it.

The skidpad facilitated our familiarization with the tires’ lateral grip limits, an ABS braking session did the same for longitudinal grip, and we had to test our own limits to bring it all together for timed laps of a technical handling track.

Driving too aggressively through the corners caused traction control to step in and cut power. Exploring how late I could brake, I shot off the track into the dust and had to be shuttled back to the start in the golf cart of shame. Only when I managed to stay within my own limits and those of the car did I secure the quickest lap of the day and bragging rights over my co-workers.

Few of the program’s lessons apply to everyday transportation outside emergency scenarios, but I left the school with a greater confidence for driving quickly and a stronger familiarity with cars’ cornering and braking limits, should I ever exceed them on the street. Crazy fun was a welcome side effect. Q

being decreased. This is usually a mistake that can be fixed through experience and disciplining the vision.

One guest was very cautious in his driving.

He had a tendency to find his comfort level and then stay there without challenging the speed much further. I don’t think that this should necessarily be considered a mistake or viewed in a negative light at all. Instead,

I consider this good decision-making on his part. He knew his limits, and he stayed within that lane while turning consistent laps that were technically sound and easily repeatable.

This type of decision-making is what I would look for in a driver if I needed controlledcircumstance vehicle testing done.

In closing, Alex, Duncan, Stefan, and Nick were all a pleasure to work with. They

understood and responded to feedback without extensive explanations, and they displayed knowledge that our typical Car Control Clinic customers would not be familiar with prior to our school. This was fun for us as instructors because we were able to get into some of the more advanced teachings that we would not typically be able to share with the average customer.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 77

TRENDING PRODUCTS FOR ANY VEHICLE

FloorLiner™

CupFone® with Hand Sanitizer Holder

Auto

Updates on our long-term fleet

MT PHOTOGRAPHS MT STAFF

Arrival: 2020 Hyundai Sonata Limited 1.6T EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ 27/37/30 mpg

“The new and improved Hyundai Sonata joins our long-term fleet.

Will it stand the test of time?” Kelly Lin BASE PRICE $34,475 AS TESTED $34,630

he Hyundai Sonata is no longer just the value pick in its segment.

Although the Accord is our overall favorite, the Sonata has a unique youthful appeal, boasting an eye-catching appearance and superior technology. Plus, its nimble handling makes it feel smaller than it is. We’ve driven multiple variants, but it’ll take further evaluation to know if the Sonata’s allure holds up over time. Is it reliable and affordable to own? Is all the

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fancy tech really useful? Is it comfortable on long road trips? This is what we aim to find out by the end of the year.

Our Sonata rolled into the MotorTrend garage wearing a Stormy Sea coat of paint, which looks more inviting than it sounds. Underneath its sapphire skin is an interior fitted with all the posh trimmings afforded by the Limited trim. Perched at the top of the Sonata lineup, this model comes standard with leather upholstery, heating and ventilation for the front seats, a panoramic sunroof, a 12-speaker Bose audio system, and a hands-free trunk. The cabin looks fresher than rivals thanks to its crisp 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster and wide 10.3-inch touchscreen

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with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and navigation. This wide central screen responds quickly to touch, though the controls can be a little bit far from the driver’s reach.

To make driving easier, the Sonata Limited comes with adaptive cruise control that works even in stop-and-go traffic. The much-publicized “smart park” feature allows the car to park itself without the driver needing to be inside the vehicle. If you choose to DIY, the Sonata’s 360-degree camera provides an aerial view of your car pulling into a parking space.

Thanks to its interior materials and technologies, the Sonata feels like a luxury car compared to my previous longterm vehicle, the 2019 Toyota RAV4 XLE. And it’s only about $3,000 more expensive. With the aforementioned standard features, plus an extra $155 for

SPECS VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, FWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan ENGINE 1.6L/180-hp/195-lb-ft turbo DOHC 16-valve I-4 TRANSMISSION 8-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 3,316 lb (60/40%) 0-60 MPH 7.4 sec ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 125/91 kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.63 lb/mile

Height 56.9”

Width 73.2”

Wheelbase 111.8” Length 192.9”

BMW 228i

MAZDA 3

BMW X7

UPDATE GENESIS G70

MAZDA CX-30

MERCEDES-BENZ GLE 450

HONDA CIVIC SI

NISSAN SENTRA UPDATE

ARRIVAL HYUNDAI SONATA

KIA SOUL

KIA TELLURIDE

RAM 2500 HD

SUBARU OUTBACK UPDATE

TOYOTA GR SUPRA

2020 Subaru Outback Service life: 5 mo/5,398 miles Average Fuel Econ: 21.6 mpg

“We set out with a rooftop tent do do Outbacky things. How did it go?”

Carol Ngo Avg CO2 0.90 lb/mi Energy cons 153 kWh/100 mi Unresolved problems None Maintenance cost $0 Normal wear cost $0 Base price $35,905 As tested $37,995 EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ 23/30/26 mpg Real MPG 24.5 mpg comb

carpeted floormats, our Sonata rings out to $34,630. For what it’s worth, a loaded 2021 Accord will cost you $37,655.

Under the hood, our Sonata packs the upgraded 1.6-liter turbocharged four-cylinder mill. Making 180 hp and 195 lb-ft of torque, it has less horsepower but more torque than the base engine. We’ll dive into its track performance to find out how it compares to rivals, but we already know this isn’t the car for speed fiends.

More important, it accelerates smoothly from a stop, and we’ve had no problems merging or passing other vehicles. The EPA rates this engine at an adequate 27/36/31

mpg city/highway/combined.

We’ll soon conduct our own test to discover the Sonata’s real-world fuel economy performance.

How has our blue chariot treated us so far? On a COVIDconscious trip to Las Vegas, we enjoyed its smooth ride and quiet cabin. More and more, we’re discovering that convenience features and tech are what will truly make or break your long-distance drive.

Fortunately, the Bose system provides crisp audio to keep us entertained. In future updates, we’ll explore how the smart cruise control system, though far from perfect, alleviates the stress of driving.

verlanding is all the rage right now, and what better way to social distance ourselves than to leave the city for some weekend car camping?

We reached out to our friends over at Thule to see about testing their rooftop tents on our longterm Outback. They sent us the Tepui Explorer Kukenam 3 ($1,700), which seemed like an ideal way to do a few Outbacky things.

The Kukenam 3 accommodates up to three people (or 600 pounds, whichever comes first). Its internal frame, made from welded 5/8-inch aluminum tubing, is wrapped to protect it from weather damage. Thule says it’s “built to withstand any environment,” and although we can’t vouch for all potential conditions, it felt sturdy to us. Installing the rooftop tent was a bit frustrating, as I’ve never installed one before and the instructions weren’t always clear. The total time was 4 (!) hours.

Our Outback has an easyto-use retractable crossbar, but Thule’s installation instructions say not to use those for a rooftop tent. Luckily, Thule offers crossbars and brackets with a higher weight rating that work with factory crossbars to prevent roof damage. Once that was installed, we headed up to

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Bishop, California, for a weekend of camping.

The rooftop tent held up quite well during our ride to Bishop. The tent packs down to just 12 inches tall while driving, creating no noise disruption at all, and it felt secure. Inside the Outback, our drive up was comfortable with the Onyx-specific StarTex upholstery seats. We barely even noticed the Subaru had a rooftop tent. It weighs about 130 pounds, so it’s the weight equivalent of adding a small passenger in the back seat.

Setting up for camp was a breeze. All we had to do was fold out the tent, and everything was all set. The same was true when we packed up. The convenience saves a lot of time so you can spend more time exploring—which is precisely why many buy an Outback in the first place.

The rooftop tent exceeds the weight capacity for the factory roof rack, but Thule has a solution.

MARCH 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 81

MT GARAGE

2020 Nissan Sentra Service life: 4 mo/2,686 miles Average Fuel Econ: 30.0 mpg

“Some adventures are a little too adventurous. As Bilbo Baggins said, ‘Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today.’” Claire Crowley Avg CO2 0.65 lb/mi Energy cons 112 kWh/100 mi Unresolved problems None Maintenance cost $0 Normal wear cost $0 Base price $21,195 As tested $24,800 EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ 29/39/33 mpg Real MPG 32.1 mpg comb n the last update we shared some observations MotorTrend SEO guru Thomas Rosquin garnered when he took our long-term Sentra on a family road trip to Arizona. Well, I caught the bug and shortly thereafter packed up for my own getaway to our cabin at Bass Lake, California, one that ended up being much more taxing than it was relaxing.

Although the Sentra appears petite on the outside, it can house an incredible amount of luggage and other assorted stuff. In our case, the 14.3-cubic-foot trunk stored backpacks, folding chairs, a large cooler, board games, inflatable lake toys, a case of citronella candles, even a huge beach umbrella, which the split-folding rear seat accommodated nicely while still leaving room for a rear passenger.

The 310-mile drive proved to be both uneventful and comfortable. Although the 149-hp four-banger struggled a tad to get up to speed on the highway on-ramp, once it got going it mostly held its own for a compact sedan. There were two exceptions, though. The first came when we hit Interstate 5’s notorious Grapevine. This demanding section of the Tejon Pass has a 6 percent grade, which is why it stood in for the Davis Dam during this year’s Truck of the Year testing. As expected, the Sentra didn’t appreciate the steep uphill and took its sweet time getting us to the top, but at no time did it feel unsafe. Our second climbing adventure happened once we got to the lake and started up the steep private road to our cabin. The Sentra slowed almost to a halt and spun up to nearly 6,000 rpm before I instinctively looked down and noticed an “L” on the gear shift, something I wish

I

I’d thought to do on the Grapevine. In low gear, it conquered the hill without breaking a sweat.

On the interstate the steering was reassuringly firm, helping the car drive straight without requiring a lot of tiny adjustments. On the winding mountain roads closer to our destination, the car seemed to hug the road. It didn’t allow much body roll, making that part of the drive less nauseating than it can be in some cars.

As for gas mileage, we started with a full tank and made it 302 miles to North Fork (the geographic center of California!) before our first fill-up. Over the entire trip, we traveled 653 miles on 19.7 gallons of regular unleaded, netting us an overall mpg of 33.1, square on the EPA’s 33-mpg combined rating.

At our gas stop, after five uninterrupted hours in the driver’s seat, I was expecting plenty of grief from my creaky bones and was surprised and delighted to notice some stiffness but no pain. Nissan’s Zero Gravity seats are supremely comfortable and supportive, and best of all, they’re standard in all Sentras regardless of trim.

Because a built-in navigation system is not available on any variant of 2020 Sentra, we relied on Apple CarPlay, which, along with Android Auto, is standard on the SV and SR trims. CarPlay performed flawlessly the entire trip.

Upon arrival, like good scouts, we almost completely unpacked, lugging our belongings up the dirt driveway and settling into the cabin for the night. The misadventure part of this adventure? At

ON THE INTERSTATE, THE STEERING WAS REASSURINGLY FIRM, AND THE SENTRA HUGGED WINDING ROADS.

82 MOTORTREND.COM MARCH 2021

Brunch, anyone?

Al fresco lakeside dining at about 10 a.m.

Yes, that's a shot of the lake.

9 the next morning, it looked like the sun had failed to come out. A quick poke of the head outside revealed heavy smoke, and a scan of the news showed that the 380,000-acre Creek Fire had started the day before at nearby Shaver Lake. We spent most of the day inside, enjoying the clean air and listening to emergency alerts. That evening the sheriff came through town announcing a mandatory evacuation, so everything got repacked into the Sentra and back home we went— without even dipping a toe into the lake.

Because of its admirable performance the day before, I had plenty of confidence in the Sentra, and by and large it did a fine job again getting us home. Although the following admission will likely get me excoriated around the MT offices, I’ll admit to not being a fan of driving mountain roads. No, forget that, I hate driving mountain roads, and I loathe driving them even more at night. The silver lining was that I had a chance to test out the Sentra’s high-beams and its High Beam Assist (auto-dimming) function. It did its job, but it always seemed to wait just a hair too long before it dimmed the lights.

On top of my ruined vacation, I didn’t want to be the … ahem … jerk-face who blinds oncoming traffic, so I adjusted the high-beams manually.

The moral? Check for wildfires before you load up for a road trip. And if you need a decently powered, comfortable compact sedan with lots of storage space and good gas mileage, you could do a lot worse than the Sentra.

UPDATES If you were a dealership service tech, would you send someone back out on the road with a tire that was down to the cords?

2019 Genesis G70 Service life: 11 mo/12,460 mi Average Fuel Econ: 20.5 mpg

“COVID be damned, Genesis needs to get its branded showrooms open fast.”

Mark Rechtin Avg CO2 0.95 lb/mi Energy cons 160 kWh /100 mi Unresolved problems None Maintenance cost $0 (oil change, inspection) Normal wear cost $0 Base price $44,745 As tested $46,495 EPA City/Hwy/Comb Fuel Econ 17/26/21 mpg hen folks buy a car, most hope that’s the last they’ll see of the dealership. But in the luxury car arena, many brands have created Taj Majal showrooms that, before the pandemic, served as well-heeled hangouts—complete with espresso bars, putting greens, and other glitzy touches.

If you needed an oil change, it was a far more plush place to chill than at Jiffy Lube with a stack of old magazines and the hoi polloi.

But Genesis is going a slightly different route—partly as a futuristic endeavor, and partly out of necessity. You see, Genesis is an offshoot of Hyundai Motor, and Hyundai dealers wanted to get Genesis franchises, as well, just like Toyota dealers did with Lexus. Problem is, Hyundai dealers rank below the industry average among mainstream brands in the JD Power Customer Satisfaction Index.

Plus, Hyundai dealers were resistant to spending millions of dollars on a shiny retailing palace for an uncertain return.

Add in numerous states’ arcane and often conflicting franchising laws regarding new dealerships, and it’s not the greatest starting point for a new brand.

Amid this standoff, Genesis still had cars to sell, and it didn’t want its quizzical customers to go to a Hyundai store.

So it created a concierge service that would deliver cars to your door for a test drive and do the paperwork online. If you needed service, the concierge would deliver a loaner and whisk away your car.

That it was based out of Hyundai dealers didn’t matter; the customer never saw how the sausage was made.

Until current social distancing rules set in, that is. That was how I discovered how my long-term G70 got worked on.

Early on, when the G70 had some transmission and turbocharger woes, the local Genesis dealer responded promptly, delivered a top-trim Genesis replacement loaner, and took care of the issues (though leaving a reminder in the form of oil-stained seats). But when quarantine and social distancing measures went into place, our local Genesis dealer pulled the plug on the concierge. That meant I would be going into a rather bedraggled Hyundai store to get service done.

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When photographer Brandon Lim came back from a photo shoot reporting some vibration in the G70, he looked at the tires and noticed some premature wear in the right-rear Michelin. He didn’t remember hitting a pothole and swore he wasn’t doing donuts. Still, the wear looked pretty harsh. And it was just one tire, with a shade more than 12,000 miles on the clock.

I called the Genesis, ahem, Hyundai dealer and made an appointment to get a second opinion and have an alignment check—because, hey, free maintenance for three years on all Genesis products, plus this could be a warranty issue.

For service, our local Hyundai dealership partners with a neighboring Mazda dealer, which gave the alignment a slight true

and gave it the all clear. But I took another look at the tire, and it looked pretty bad.

Down-to-the-threads bad. The mechanic nonetheless said the tires were fine. With another MotorTrend staffer ready to put some big miles on the G70, however, I didn’t want to take any chances. I sent some photos to Jen Stockburger at Consumer Reports, who previously led tire evaluation for Pirelli Armstrong. She called it out for “chunking” and advised immediate replacement.

Fortunately, our friends at Continental sprung for us to have a new set of ExtremeContact Sports, and the folks at Tire Rack got them to us in no time flat. ZipTire switched out the rubber, and we were back in business.

Still, I was disturbed that the Genesis/ Hyundai dealer missed this one.

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NEWS I OPINION I GOSSIP I STUFF

Angus MacKenzie

The Big Picture The Italian Job: I’ve owned one car almost 30 years. And hardly driven it.

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ur story begins more than four decades ago, when I decided I had to buy a sports car. Tatty MGBs, I quickly discovered, were going for about $5,000, which was more than I could afford. And when I actually drove one, I was dismayed to discover it had pitiful performance, woeful handling, trucklike steering, and so-so brakes. Sports car? My mom’s Valiant station wagon was faster, cornered better, and had electronics that actually worked.

Assorted Triumphs, Austin Healey Sprites, and MG Midgets were even more expensive and only marginally better to drive. Childhood dreams were shattered: British sports cars of the ’60s and ’70s weren’t actually all that good. But I still needed to scratch that sports car itch.

Alfa Romeo’s original GTV coupe, the one styled by Giugiaro when he worked for Bertone and first seen at the 1963 Turin Motor Show, attracted my attention because of its good looks, its throaty exhaust note, and the fact that used ones were cheaper than MGBs. It had occurred to 19-year-old me that a car with a twincam engine, side-draft Weber carburetors, a five-speed manual, and disc brakes all around might be a little more expensive to maintain than an MG, which was little more than a doddering old Morris in fancy clothes.

But, hey, Dad was a mechanic …

Some searching turned up a 1967 GTV fitted with the later 1750 engine for a reasonable $3,150. It wasn’t pristine—the Italian vinyl on the rear seat had disintegrated under the ravages of the Australian sun, and it needed new tires all around. But after the disappointment of the MGB, the GTV (the progenitor of the modern-day Giulia) was a delight. It was smooth and supple through traffic, actually went around corners, had nice steering and good brakes, and sounded like a sports car should.

Within 12 months I’d sold the GTV to buy a Datsun 510 to turn into a rally car. But Dad, whose first experience of an Alfa had been to test-drive mine, was hooked. Before long he’d tracked down a GTV he could afford—the sort of car usually described with the words “needs work.”

It was, like mine, a 1967 model. It had a straight, virtually rust-free body—a legacy of a life spent in the California-like climate of rural southeastern Australia—and was totally original throughout. The asking price was $1,300. The bad news? After years of fast country cruising, nearly all the paint had been sandblasted from the front of the car. The seat coverings were shredded. The transmission jumped out of reverse gear. The diff whined. And there was a terminal rattle coming from the vicinity of the crankshaft.

Dad spent the next few months painstakingly rebuilding the Alfa, reusing as many parts as he could to save money. It hit the road again at the beginning of 1982, and he used it as his daily driver for years.

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In the early ’90s, while rebuilding a shopworn FJ55 Toyota Land Cruiser for yet another foray into the Outback, Dad decided he needed to sell the Alfa. I bought it, but my nomadic lifestyle meant I had nowhere to keep it, so it stayed in the backyard of the family home in South Australia for 20 years, Dad regularly taking it out on his favorite roads through the nearby hills. When he got too frail to enjoy the little red coupe anymore, I shipped it to California, where it slumbered in my garage, awaiting restoration.

More than six years and another transoceanic relocation later, that restoration is finally underway, a complete back-tobare-metal refurb at the hands of Ian Ellis, one of the U.K.’s best Alfa specialists. I haven’t driven the GTV since 2013, when I was in Australia filming an episode of Epic Drives.

But once the restoration is complete, I want to take it from London to the Alfa Romeo Museum in Arese, just outside Milan—on the site of the factory where the car was originally built more than half a century ago.

Dad’s Alfa will have then truly been around the world. He would have liked that. Q

After more than three decades of MacKenzie ownership, this 1967 Alfa Romeo GTV is finally getting the restoration it deserves.

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