koi88kdwpru magzus.org

This is the tomorrow we want

FERRARI

SPEEDING AHEAD OF THE FUTURE

Rethink what’s possible with Artura

Here is the full force of McLaren. Four types of carbon fiber make it impossibly strong and lightweight. Its all-new twin turbocharged V6 petrol engine and 94B HP e-motor deliver a total of 671 BHP of unrelenting performance, while an energy-dense Lithium ion battery offers dynamic charging on the move. And the all-new rear suspension system provides sublime handling and split-second agility. The shape of things to come has arrived.

1143

The Well

044 The Boy Who Would Be King

For Mate Rimac, life began on a dirt road. Now, at 33, he runs Bugatti. What’s next?

054 What Powers the F1 of Tomorrow?

Batteries, e-fuel, hydrogen . . . the race to power motorsport’s crown-jewel series.

062 Best-Laid Plans

Lucid spent years getting a luxury electric on the road. It was worth the wait.

072 The Future We Want

Hopeful editors imagine what’s to come, for both ourselves and the automobile.

084 Street Value

Experts explain how the march of progress will impact car collecting.

The Life

012 Hot Six

How three supercar manufacturers arrived at a single solution: the twin-turbo V-6.

016 2030 by the Numbers

Where the hell is my flying car? We divine the near future using data from the past.

018 This Bar Was the Mother of Motors Sidling up to Detroit’s Hotel Pontchartrain bar, where the automotive age took shape.

022 Future Extreme

Zenith goes where few watchmakers follow, chasing ever-smaller fractions of a second.

024 Attitude Adjustment

Against the noise and static of dystopia, we make the case for optimism.

026 Spillproof

This 200-mph sport bike looks like a bolt of lightning. And it wants to save your life.

030 The Full Moon

Celebrating the moonshot’s moonshot: the $38 million car that drove on the moon.

032 Spark of Life

The only thing that’ll outlast roaches is motor swaps. We survey their future.

034 Access Denied

A monthly fee for heated seats? How automakers stole tech’s worst idea.

036 Cyborg Stallion

Dissecting Ferrari’s SF90 Stradale hybrid supercar and its 1000-hp powerplant.

092 Your Electric Future Has a Dark Side The EV start-ups that were too good to be true—and the lies that sunk them.

100 Manifold Destiny Vehicles that showed us the way forward, from the humble Prius to the Countach.

120 Here Comes the Sun Once-dead Aptera rises again with another solar-powered prototype.

The Grid

128 Dossier: 2022 Tesla Model S Plaid

Cutting switchbacks in the most insane version of the car that made electrics cool.

138 The Sports-Car Driver’s Off-Roader

The Rivian R1T is a pickup truck with sports-car sensibilities.

144 Queen of the Desert

With an electric four-door coupe as its canvas, Audi brings the sex appeal.

150 In the Name of the Father

When Pininfarina turns its pen to the electric supercar, beauty results.

154

DIY: How to Track-Prep Your Tesla Wheels, tires, aero, brakes—everything you need to leave supercars in the dust.

156 Time Traveler

In 1902, EV maker Walter Baker became the fastest human in history (probably).

Huseyin Erturk

Introduced to the car world at a young age by his father, Erturk would later move to Los Angeles, where the city’s vast automotive culture stoked his passion. Influenced by masters such as Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, he started photographing interesting cars he found on the street, aiming to capture not only their beauty but also their unique character. Now he gets to take photographs for carmakers and publications around the world.

Mike Duff

After working as a radio journalist in the U K long enough to realize he wasn’t cut out for interviewing crime victims or bereaved parents, Duff switched to the easier life of writing about cars, spending time on staff with Car, Autocar, and Evo Now he mostly writes for U S titles that, as he puts it, “think my clue less Brit shtick is an act It’s not ” Long, expensive experience has not cured him of an obsession with elderly, unreliable German cars, his current pairing a Mercedes 190E 2 5 16 and a Porsche Cayman S

Road & Track® (ISSN 0035 7189), (USPS 570 670) VOL 72, NO 9, December/January 2022, is published six times per year by Hearst 300 West 57th Street New York NY 10019

U S A Steven R Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer; Wi iam R Hearst III Chairman; Frank A Bennack Jr Executive Vice Chairman; Deb Chiriche la Pres dent Hearst Magazines Group Hearst Autos, Inc : Nick Matarazzo President & Chief Revenue Officer; Debi Chiriche la Treasurer; Catherine A Bostron Secretary © 2021 by Hearst Autos Inc

Editorial Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Mike Guy

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Daniel Pund

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Nathan Schroeder

CREATIVE DIRECTION AND DESIGN Godfrey Dadich Partners

EDITORS-AT-LARGE A.J. Baime, Travis Okulski

COPY CHIEF Adrienne Girard

PHOTO DIRECTOR Thomas Payne

DEPUTY EDITOR Bob Sorokanich

SENIOR EDITORS John Pearley Huffman, Kyle Kinard

DIGITAL EDITOR Aaron Brown

SENIOR REPORTER Chris Perkins

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Mack Hogan

STAFF WRITER Brian Silvestro

COPY EDITORS Peter Gareffa, Chris Langrill, Kara Snow

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Eddie Alterman, Ross Bentley, Brett Berk, Mike Duff, Peter Egan, Matt Farah, J.R. Hildebrand, Jamie Kitman, Zack Klapman, Ryan Lewis, Brendan McAleer, Marshall Pruett, Elana Scherr, Bozi Tatarevic, Lawrence Ulrich

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & PHOTOGRAPHERS John Vincent

Aranda, Brown Bird Design, DW Burnett, Jeremy Cliff, Laura Cattaneo, Huseyin Erturk, Gerard + Belevender, Gluekit, Eddie Guy, Jim Hatch, Jonathon Kambouris, Zohar Lazar, James Lipman, Spencer Lowell, Tim McDonagh, Joe McKendry, Tim O’Brien, Alana Paterson, Pat Perry, Tom Ralston, Benedict Redgrove, Steve Sanford, Brad Torchia

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Chip Ganassi (Racing Mogul), Bob Lutz (Viper Creator, Exec), Sam Posey (Painter, Racer), Bobby Rahal (Indy 500 Winner, Team Owner)

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Joe Brown

DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Heather Albano EDITORIAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Juli Burke

PUBLISHER & CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Felix DiFilippo ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Cameron Albergo New York

EAST COAST SALES DIRECTOR Kyle Taylor GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Joe Pennacchio INTEGRATED SALES ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Richard Panciocco, Shannon Rigby ASSISTANT Keierra Wiltshire Chicago

INTEGRATED SALES DIRECTOR Rick Bisbee Detroit

GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Samantha Shanahan SALES DIRECTOR Marisa Stutz ASSISTANTS Toni Starrs, Rene Tuohy Los Angeles

GROUP ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Anne Rethmeyer

DIGITAL SALES DIRECTOR Lisa Lacasse SR. DIRECTOR OF SALES Lori Mertz

INTEGRATED SALES DIRECTOR Susie Miller DIGITAL ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Molly Jolls ASSISTANT Olivia Zurawin

Jim Hatch

Growing up in New Jersey, Hatch loved drawing and motorcycles, passions that became a vocation. He earned a BFA in illustration and eventually joined the team that conceptualized and built the Petersen Automotive Museum in L.A. He stayed there for six years as founding exhibit designer and art director. In 1998, he opened the Hatch Illustration Studio, catering to clients that require high-quality renderings of mechanical and technological subject matter. Hatch resides on the Central Coast of California.

NA writer and editor, Hopper isn’t quite sure where he’ll be living when this issue publishes He’s worked as an editor at Esquire and ideas editor at Time, and has also written for New York, the New Yorker, GQ, Entrepreneur, Air Mail, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among others He’s interviewed people ranging from Sean Penn to Yuval Noah Harari to Tony Kanaan, and he’s reported on subjects spanning video chat technology, caring for dementia patients during the pandemic, and the nature of luck

All r ghts reserved Trademarks: Road & Track is a registered trademark of Hearst Autos Inc Periodicals postage paid at New York NY and additional ma ling offices Editorial and Advertising Offices: 300 West 57th Street New York NY 10019 Subscrip tion Prices: $75 for one year Subscription Services: Road & Track will, upon receipt of a complete subscription order, undertake fu fillment of that order so as to provide the first copy for de ivery by the Postal Service or alternate carrier within 4 6 weeks Mailing Lists: From time to t me, we make our subscriber list avai able to compan es who sell goods and services by mail that we believe wou d nterest our readers If you would rather not rece ve such offers by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or an exact copy to Mai Preference Service, P O Box 37870, Boone, IA 50037 You can also visit preferences hearstmags com to manage your preferences and opt out of receiving marketing offers by

& Track assumes no responsibil

ited material None will be

unless accompanied by a

addressed stamped envelope Permissions: Material in this

tion may not be

without

issues are available for purchase in digita format only from your app store of choice Reprints: For nformation or reprints and eprints p ease contact Brian Kolb at Wright s Media 877 652

or bkolb@wrightsmedia

Postmaster:

all UAA to CFS (See

and

Hearst Direct Media SALES MANAGER Brad Gettelfinger

Administration

ADVERTISING SERVICES DIRECTOR Regina Wall

Production/Operations

PRODUCTION MANAGER Chris Hertwig

Circulation

VP, STRATEGY AND BUSINESS MANAGEMENT Rick Day EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CONSUMER MARKETING William Carter Hearst

300 W. 57th Street, New York, NY 10019

PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Steven R. Swartz CHAIRMAN William R. Hearst III EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN Frank A. Bennack, Jr. CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, HEARST MAGAZINES Mark E. Aldam PRESIDENT, HEARST MAGAZINES GROUP Debi Chirichella

Published By Hearst Autos, Inc.

PRESIDENT & CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Nick Matarazzo TREASURER Debi Chirichella CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Michelle Panzer CHIEF BRAND OFFICER Eddie Alterman EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF FINANCE Paul Neumaier SECRETARY Catherine A. Bostron EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Erika Nuñez PUBLISHING CONSULTANTS Gilbert C. Maurer,Mark F. Miller

DiFilippo

West 57th Street,

Mike Guy

York,

West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019

Editor: Juli Burke

West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019

Hearst Autos, Inc.

West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019

of Hearst Autos, Inc are:

Publications, Inc.,

West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019

Other

Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total

of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None

Tax Status: Not Applicable

Title: Road & Track

Circulation

Below: Aug/Sept 21

No. No. Copies

Single

Published

to

Months Filing Date

a. Total Number of Copies (Net press run) 336,416 166,100

b. (1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541

(Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies) 198,744 132,110

Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions Stated on PS Form 3541 (Include paid distribution above nominal rate, advertiser’s proof copies, and exchange copies) n/a n/a

Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside USPS® 6,269 4,000 (4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through the USPS (e.g., FirstClass Mail) n/a n/a

c. Total Paid Distribution (Sum of 15b (1), (2), (3), and (4)) 205,013 136,110

(1) Free or Nominal Rate Outside-County Copies included on PS Form 3541 106,078 12,024 (2) Free or Nominal Rate In-County Copies Included on PS Form 3541 n/a n/a

Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes Through the USPS (e.g., First-Class Mail) n/a n/a (4) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means) 5,865 4,275

Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution (Sum of 15d (1), (2), (3) and (4)) 111,943 16,299

Total Distribution (Sum of 15c and 15e) 316,956 152,409

Copies not Distributed 19,460 13,691

Total (Sum of 15f and g) 336,416 166,100

Paid (15c divided by 15f times 100) 64.68% 89.31%

and

S

the

WELCOME TO YOUR AUTOMOTIVE FUTURE

THE TECH REVOLUTION IS COMPLICATED.

There was an inTernal rallying cry and credo heard on the walkways of the Facebook campus in the early 21st century: “Move fast and break things.” Mark Zuckerberg’s intention was to encourage risk for the sake of innovation and not get caught up in making the perfect product at a time when no one really knew what the product would be.

Tesla has become a mighty player on the world stage, but it embraced Facebook’s “Move fast and break things” ethos a little too tightly. It’s a testament to the people actually building Teslas that the brand didn’t collapse under the ego of its cur rent CEO.

For a variety of very important reasons, the law-abiding leaders of the heavily regulated auto industry can’t—and probably shouldn’t—move so fast that things break. Car buyers—even enthusiasts who chase the fastest, most batshit-wild cars on the planet—expect a certain level of responsible practices to be baked into the process. I’d rather not break things if we’re moving fast.

And yet here we are, in the midst of the most pivotal technological upheaval in the 120-year history of carmaking—you could argue that it’s actually the first fundamental upheaval—and we have to watch closely as innovators reimagine what a car is.

People who peer into the future of the automobile often see a couple of realities: There’s a post-ownership world, where every car is essentially an Uber. This is an eradication of the world we want to live in. The other is the Mad Max scenario,

with a climate apocalypse and leather gangs battling for gasoline, water, and, presumably, spare parts for Holden V-8s.

But for the moment, we set aside those dismal scenarios (for more on what we want our future to be, turn to page 072).

In Volume 8 of Road & Track, we consider what’s next for automotive technology as both optimists and pessimists. Writer Jamie Kitman looks at the dark side of the electric-car gold rush and chases down the people who are moving so fast they are actually breaking things (page 092). A.J. Baime dives into what car collecting will eventually look like (page 084) and profiles the wild minds behind the solar-car brand Aptera (page 120). Nate Hopper, former ideas editor at Time magazine, looks closely at Mate Rimac, the Croatian wunderkind who has been tasked by Volkswagen with reimagining the storied Bugatti marque and creating a test bed for high-performance battery power (page 044).

The future of the automobile doesn’t have to be dismal, but nothing is certain in this world. Electric cars are here to stay. Some of them are blindingly quick; some are shoddily built. We have a long way to go—and a lot of cars to drive—to know what the next generation holds.

MIKE GUY EDITOR IN CHIEF

Welcome to the inner circle.

been dreaming of something like this ever since

picked up

There’s a big life

HOT SIX

IN THE DYING DAYS OF INTERNAL COMBUSTION, THREE

A. (Previous pages)

McLaren’s 120-degree V-6 is impressively compact, with two turbos nestled in the valley of the engine block.

B. Maserati’s Nettuno uses a more common 90-degree vee angle and outboard turbos, but hides an unusual prechamber ignition system in its cylinder heads.

C. The 120-degree Ferrari V-6 makes the most power of these three engines, thanks to huge boost from those top-mount twin turbos.

DREAMS DENIED1

Spherical Wheels

Connected to a car via a complex magneticlevitation system, the Goodyear Eagle 360 concept tire promises an omnidirectional future.

Sitting on four of the spherical tires, a car could pivot or slide in any direction with complete freedom of movement. Controlling such complex movement might be difficult for a human brain, but perhaps some future autonomous vehicle will roll on spheres.

B

CHRIS PERKINS

With feW exceptions, the modern V-6 engine inspires ambivalence at best. Yet a strange thing happened this year: Maserati, Ferrari, and McLaren introduced new 3.0-liter V-6s worthy of excitement.

Maserati has a long history with V-6s, launching its first in 1971 and then using the Biturbo V-6 to power much of its Eighties lineup. For its new MC20 supercar, Maserati created an engine called the Nettuno (Italian for Neptune), a twin-turbo unit making 621 hp and 538 lb-ft of torque. The Nettuno has some commonalities with Alfa Romeo’s V-6—itself derived from Ferrari’s V-8—but it also brings fascinating technology to the fore, notably a passive prechamber ignition system.

Derived from Formula 1 tech, the system uses a small separate combustion chamber (with its own spark plug) above the main combustion chamber. Matteo Valentini, Maserati’s chief engineer for high-performance V-6 engines, says the prechamber increases combustion speed by 30 percent. This allows the Nettuno to meet strict global emissions ratings while delivering over 200 hp per liter. The prechamber system also lets Maserati use relatively small compressor wheels in its turbochargers, reducing lag.

While the Nettuno uses the 90-degree vee angle common on V-6s that are derived from V-8s, both Ferrari and McLaren arrived at an unusual layout: a 120-degree V-6. Until now, Ferrari had been the only automaker to use a 120-degree V-6, with its F1-title-winning 156 in 1961.

“We made studies [to determine] what is the best thing, not only for the engine but for the whole car, to have the best package regarding center of gravity,” says Ferrari CTO Michael Leiters.

In theory, a flat-six offers a lower center of gravity, but for neater packing, Ferrari wanted a hotvee turbo layout, wherein turbos are mounted in the valley between the cylinder banks. This V-6 was developed for the new 296 GTB, a mid-engine hybrid. To counteract weight gain from the hybrid system, Ferrari shortened the car’s wheelbase

compared with its mid-engine V-8 siblings, requiring a shorter engine overall.

Ferrari being Ferrari, the new V-6 utilizes clever tricks to develop an almost unbelievable 654 hp from 3.0 liters. An electric motor mated to the engine helps Ferrari meet emissions standards and provides a torquey complement to the presumably peaky internal-combustion engine (we say presumably because we haven’t driven the 296 yet). But one does not generally develop 218 hp per liter without a bit of turbo lag. The 296 GTB’s engine and motor offer a combined 818 hp and 546 lb-ft of torque.

Similar packaging requirements led McLaren to develop a V-6 for its 570S replacement, the Artura. Like Ferrari, McLaren wanted a car with a shorter wheelbase and enough space to package an electric motor ahead of the gearbox. A low center of gravity and simple turbocharger plumbing were also important, so McLaren arrived at that same unusual 120-degree hot-vee layout. This V-6 is McLaren’s first in-house engine design, and in the case of the Artura, it allowed McLaren to take a holistic approach to vehicle production.

“That’s, of course, the beauty of doing ground-up cars, where everything’s new,” says Artura chief engineer Geoff Grose. “You just make the structure package work around these elements you’ve got to include.”

At 193 hp per liter, McLaren’s V-6 doesn’t have the oomph of the Italian sixes, but it does have a higher specific output than the Bugatti Chiron’s W-16 and (more important) McLaren’s longrunning V-8. Combined with an electric motor, the Artura makes 671 hp and 531 lb-ft of torque.

We often lament the homogenization of cars as regulations force automakers to adopt similar solutions. And indeed, three of them have devel oped V-6s with near-identical displacements and, in the case of Ferrari and McLaren, similarly odd layouts. But there is exciting engineering hidden under the homogeneity, something we welcome in the waning days of internal combustion.

DREAMS DENIED2

Rotary Engine

It might seem premature to call the rotary engine a failed technology, as Mazda attempts to resurrect its spinning triangles as a range extender in a supporting role for EVs. Yet imagine what rotaries could have become with the R&D budget of the giants in Stuttgart instead of plucky Hiroshima.

Number of gears in quickest car on sale

A. With the death of Sergio Marchionne and the fall of Carlos Ghosn, the auto industry is running short on big personalities in the boardroom. Musk’s reign as a household name should endure, as we understand he’ll likely never die.

B. They don’t build ’em like they used to— they build ’em better, with the average age constantly increasing. But we expect this trend will reverse once battery-electric vehicles hit their chemical expiration dates.

C. The technology that’s always just 10 years away.

D. At this rate, by 2741 we’ll be spending 24 hours a day in traffic.

E. With big dog Bugatti out of the fight and wind resistance increasing exponentially with velocity, advancing much past 300 mph may prove a 10-year challenge.

F. It’s feast or famine out here for Fiat. With only the 500X left in the U.S., the brand might not be long for this market.

G. Pay no mind to the companies building glorified helicopters.

The real flying car remains a distant specter.

H. The standard-bearer for the manual gearbox is losing a war of attrition. The new Civic just granted the manual a stay of execution, but don’t expect the stick to survive the next redesign cycle.

I. In the past 20 years, we’ve added about 800 hp to the top of this chart, so by the turn of the decade, expect 1900-hp Dodges and 900-hp Hyundai hatchbacks.

J. Don’t let the hype fool you. We aren’t there yet.

K. We were worried VW would swallow the whole industry. Offloading Bugatti suggests the megacompany is satiated. For now.

L. Big jumps have gotten harder to come by as we’ve reached the limit of tire technology. Maybe it’s time for the six-wheeled car to make a comeback.

M.For the love of God, get off your phone so we can turn this one around.

N. Given the insane powerband of modern electric motors, it might be a while before we see another multigear car become the quickest to 60 mph.

O. The growth of SUVs and trucks has been so explosive that current trends would forecast a market share above 100 percent by 2030.

Number of pedestrian deaths over time

Number of fully autonomous motor vehicles on sale to the general public

Number of brands directly controlled by Volkswagen

Trucks, SUVs, and crossovers as a percentage of U.S. light-vehicle sales

THIS BAR WAS THE MOTHER OF MOTORS

TAKE A TRIP BACK IN TIME TO DETROIT’S PONTCHARTRAIN, WHERE THE FUTURE OF CARS WAS BORN.

DREAMS DENIED3

Turbine Cars

Between 1963 and 1966, Chrysler put more than a million miles on a fleet of experimental turbinepowered coupes. The A-831 engine ran smoothly and reliably, idling at 22,000 rpm and promising an end to the age of pistons. But slow acceleration, poor fuel economy, and sky-high production costs brought a jet-age miracle crashing to earth.

BY A.J. BAIME

ImagIne the coolest gearhead bar on the planet, where the most powerful and brilliant minds in the auto industry gather to talk shop and get smashed. Elon Musk would sip chilled Beefeater and discuss the evolution of EV charging infrastructure with Mary Barra. The Ford Performance executive team would roll out blueprints of the next GT race car, the paper stained with rings from shot glasses. It would be more than a bar; it would be a laboratory of automotive innovation where the future of mobility would take shape.

Many years ago, at the dawn of the automotive age, that very bar existed in the Hotel Pontchartrain, at the corner of Cadillac Square and Woodward Avenue in Detroit. In the early 20th century, when the industry was just getting off the ground, dozens of budding engineers would be there comparing ideas and machinery. Ransom Olds, who founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in 1897, hung out at the Pontch. The Dodge brothers, who launched the most sophisticated machine shop in Detroit in 1900, hung out at the Pontch. David Dunbar Buick, who built his first car as early as 1903, hung out at the Pontch. The legendary racing driver Barney Oldfield held court there with tales of high speed adventure.

One local described the scene: “Excitement was in the air. A new prosperity was in the making. Fortunes were being gambled. Men played hard, but they worked desperately. It was not an uncommon sight to see four or five men carry a heavy piece of machinery into the room, place it on the floor or table and set it in motion. There, men began to talk a strange new language.”

The Pontchartrain became known as the Mother of Motors, a place that literally changed the world.

“Detroit in those days was seething with intensity,” a Motor City historian wrote of the era. “Millions were tossed into a pot, and lost; pennies were tossed into a different pot, and came out millions.”

Today, for the first time in nearly 120 years, our auto industry is experiencing a similarly wild trajectory. Countless start ups are on the scene (Waymo, Lucid, Aptera, Bollinger Motors, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, Rivian . . .). The electrification of automobiles has created a level playing

B

field where new inventors and innovators can grow in a way not seen since the early days of Henry Ford’s empire.

So why isn’t there a bar today where all these empire builders can convene, mixing heady cocktails of engineering brilliance? There should be. Meanwhile, a few collectors and historians are keeping the legacy of the Pontchartrain alive.

“Did you ever think that guys of our generation would be talking about artifacts we have from over 100 years ago?” says Lucas McGrail, a Detroit architect and historian. He keeps a collection of Pontchartrain items: two key fobs, a room key, postcards, a letter written on hotel stationery dated July 16, 1912. “For its time, it was very impressive,” he says. “On the letterhead they bragged that it was totally fireproof, which was a big deal back then. It was expanded twice because it was so popular.”

A. (Previous pages) Our re-creation of a spread at the Pontchartrain bar, with original postcards, key fob, and stationery from the hotel’s heyday over a century ago.

B. A typical scene at the Pontch, circa 1914: Crowds surround a Hupmobile after its driver successfully motored to Detroit from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

C. One of the few surviving photographs of the Pontchartrain bar.

D. The Glidden Tour, an auto endurance event, drew crowds to the Pontch annually. This shot was taken in 1909.

E. The Pontchartrain on Cadillac Square. The building was demolished in 1920.

C

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF LAZARNICK COLLECTION, BURTON HISTORICAL COLLECTION/DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY

The Pontch’s story dates to May 19, 1905, when the front page of the Detroit Free Press read “Detroit Will Have a Magnificent New Hotel.” It would “rank with the very best in the country” and “do an enormous amount of good to Detroit as a city.” The building stood 10 stories high. It opened in 1907, a year before Ford unveiled the Model T, and the opening-night banquet “was the hottest meal ticket in town,” according to Dan Austin, founder of the website HistoricDetroit.org. On the menu: cream of chicken princesse, fillet of striped bass, and haunch of wild boar.

The American Automobile Association met at the Pontch annually for conferences on how to launch a national highway system. Endurance competitions gathered dozens of newfangled autos in front of the hotel, where a starter gun ignited thunder as drivers took off on jaunts toward Chicago, Minneapolis, and Denver, just to prove the cars could make it. Detroit auto companies held board meetings at the Pontch.

Then, amazingly, the hotel was demolished in a matter of months in 1920.

“The Pontch had such a short history,” says McGrail. “It was there and then it was gone, and most people didn’t think to save anything or document anything. There’s very little photographic evidence of its interior at all. It was destroyed to make room for the First National building, one of Albert Kahn’s masterpieces, a building that still stands at that intersection.” (Kahn, who is among the most prolific architects in the history of Detroit, designed some early auto factories as well.)

For every inventor or engineer who became a household name as a titan of the car industry, there were countless more who hung out at the Pontch but failed to realize their dreams. Many died as paupers. That should be a reminder to us today of how exciting our current era of automotive history will seem in the future. Which of today’s new start-ups will survive and become tomorrow’s household names? Which will bring their investors financial doom? We will have to wait and see. Meanwhile, make ours an old-school Manhattan, light on the vermouth.

Joystick Steering

Inspired by its fly-by-wire Gripen fighter jet, Saab tried to reinvent the wheel in the early Nineties. Prometheus, a prototype 9000, had a joystick where a gearshift would normally be. The technology worked, albeit with a learning curve. But even for Saab, ditching the steering wheel was a quirk too far.

DREAMS DENIED4

A. Consider the achievement of making a mechanical device that’s accurate to

second and only

millimeters wide.

Zenith

Long ago, we tracked time with shadows. As they swept around a sundial, we understood hours and seasons, and we also extrapolated wonders, like the circumference of the earth. With time, sundials gave way to accurate clocks that shrank until they fit in our pockets. Then the timepiece crawled onto our wrist, where its analog form has lived mostly unchanged for decades.

So what’s left for the future of keeping time this way? It’s an answer that the Swiss manufacturer Zenith (and few other modern watchmakers) spends much energy chasing. Zenith’s strategy seems to be straightforward: push our understanding of materials science and engineering, chasing ever-smaller increments of time. To wit, this Zenith Defy Extreme’s titanium case houses an entirely mechanical chronograph movement that can accurately measure time to the hundredth of a second. If that doesn’t blow you away, consider the romance of any mechanical device that operates with such accuracy and precision at high speed, like the Mercedes Gullwing’s mechanical fuel injection or the tiny valves in a screaming motorcycle engine. Now shrink that device down and house it in a 45-millimeter case and you begin to understand the challenges.

What could you possibly need to time to a hundredth of a second? There are specific and obvious answers, like a lap time at Virginia International Raceway, but we’ve got digital tools that do a far better job these days. The more important thing is that thousands of years after the sundial was invented, companies like Zenith haven’t given up on improving the breed.

In-Car Cookery

What will we do with all the free time autonomous cars give us? Perhaps prepare lobster thermidor. Appliances that run off a car’s 12-volt system have come and gone, but perhaps autonomous EVs mixed with bored drivers will finally be the recipe for cooking on the road. For now, the closest thing is the Rivian R1T’s slide-out camping kitchen.

DREAMS

6

Nuclear Power

Sure, V-8s are cool, but nothing beats a nuke. The 1957 Ford Nucleon promised a future where you could upstage your neighbor’s Rocket 88 by way of nuclear power in the trunk. Considering that Ford went on to produce the Pinto, with its prone-to-rupture fuel tank, perhaps it’s for the best that this idea never progressed beyond the model stage.

ATTITUDE

ENOUGH WITH DYSTOPIA. IF WE

WE HAVE TO START THINKING LIKE IT.

Each gEnEration manifEsts a vision of the automobile’s future. Consider, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), the streamlined aerodynamics of the Rumpler Tropfenwagen, a mid-rear-engine car that acted as progenitor to the Tatra, the VW Beetle, and even the 911. Or the touchscreenactivated, search-engine-enabled cabs of The Fifth Element (1997) that presaged today’s tabletforward infotainment systems. Or The Simpsons’ Canyonero of 1998 predicting the earth-consuming preponderance of heavy, ultraluxe SUVs. (We still don’t have collapsible, nuclear-powered flying cars. Thanks, Jetsons.)

But one particular paradigm has resurfaced again and again without coming to fruition: the battle-armored, weaponized Frankencars of the Mad Max franchise. We don’t live in that future. Yet. But the concept of car-borne vigilantes waging guerrilla warfare in a parched dystopia has become a familiar trope.

This is not surprising when one considers the actual state of the world and the automobile’s role in it. So how can we, as automotive enthusiasts, reconcile our love of cars with the intrinsic and undeniable harm they are doing to the environment, when every moment of burning gasoline is, in essence, taking out a reverse balloon mortgage on the future of the planet?

The shift toward electrification is one bright spot. While battery production and disposal bring environmental challenges, they are, by and large, compensated for by the elimination of tailpipe emissions. And it is much easier to create clean electricity—via wind, the sun, or water—than clean gasoline (which, like clean coal, doesn’t exist).

Furthermore, practical reuse and recycling of automotive batteries at the end of their lives is

becoming possible and readily available, nullifying a major complaint about electric power. And companies like Electric GT, Ford, and Chevy are even creating bolt-in electric crate motors (see page 032) shaped like replacement stalwarts— such as the small-block V-8, straight-six, inlinefour, and flat-six—to ease the conversion of our vintage cars into silent, clean, torquey charmers.

But in many ways, it is not simply new technologies that we future-thinking automotive enthusiasts must embrace. We have to dare to espouse a deeper form of optimism. Best-selling author Richard Louv, who writes eloquently about our human relationship with the earth, warns against even thinking about a dystopian future. He asks us to consider what happens to a culture when the only images it can conjure of its destiny are Fury Roads and Thunderdomes. Be careful what you wish for; it might come true.

Louv suggests that we need to practice what he calls imaginative hope. He says we must transcend the notion of sustainability. No one wants their relationship with their job, family, or significant other to be “sustainable”; they want it to be enriching, mutually supportive, affirming.

That vision might not entail a quarreling swarm of flying cars. Or a connected city populated by streams of mindless self-driving pods—essentially a reinvention of the public-transport train. But there is truth in the idea that if we can’t think it, we can’t actualize it. And if we don’t want the next generations to end up in the Thunderdome, we need a fresh template.

So, close your eyes. Think about the cars of the future. Picture something wondrous, something awesome, something transformative.

What do you see?

BY BRETT BERK

ADJUSTMENT

AN

FUTURE

CAN

MEET THE DAMON HYPERSPORT, A GORGEOUS THAT WANTS YOU TO SURVIVE THE RIDE. SPILLPROOF

Car-Motorcycle Hybrids

Efforts to blend the practicality of a car with the congestion-easing aspects of a motorcycle often seem toylike. Take the Toyota i-Road: It is genuinely fun, leaning into corners and offering quick-charging short-range EV transportation in a diminutive package. A single parking space can fit four of them. Two passengers can ride. The i-Road makes sense, but downsizing is a hard sell.

It Is slate gray and raIny today in East Vancouver, the kind of day when bored commuters flick their wipers into high, children splash in puddles, and motorcycle riders die. In a nondescript building, a door rolls open. The hiss of rain on tarmac echoes across concrete, reaching two of the most advanced motorcycles on the planet, sitting on their stands. Even before they’ve braved the slick pavement outside, the bikes can hear the rain. They are aware.

Moments later, Dom Kwong, co founder of Damon, the company behind this pair of electric bikes, twists the throttle on the yellow one. The HyperSport prototype convulses with barely contained violence, its chain drive screaming like a chop saw blade, its stand wobbling with the torque. The HyperSport sounds like a weapon. Its designers call it the safest motorcycle ever made.

“Our goal is zero collision related fatalities with Damon products by 2030,” says Jay Giraud, CEO of Damon.

“Safe” and “motorcycle” are generally viewed as conflicting concepts. Riders exchange the safety of a car’s steel cage for a sense of freedom. The rewards are fraught with risk. But what if they didn’t have to be?

Taking inspiration from the driver assist technology in many modern cars, the HyperSport is fitted with fore and aft cameras and 360 degree radar. Infrared sensors track tire temperature. Microphones let the bike hear when the road is wet. G forces and GPS location are processed. The bike knows where it is and what it’s doing.

Feedback is presented to the rider in deceptively simple forms. The HyperSport’s handle­

bars vibrate when a crash is imminent. A thin LED strip, mounted just at the edge of the rider’s vision, provides yellow blind spot alert lights and red collision warnings.

The idea is simple. The execution is difficult. Building a motorcycle that can keep its riders safe is nothing like developing autonomous technology for a car. People driving cars generally need to get somewhere; motorcyclists ride by choice. They don’t want an electronic cage to replace a steel one.

Damon is forthright in approaching the issue. Near the front door of its headquarters is a closet with riding gear. The company has grown quickly over the past few years, from a dozen or so employees to 70, in multiple countries. All of them ride motorcycles. Every one. If you’re a newly hired software engineer, Damon will pay for your motorcycle instruction.

“You need to experience the plight of a rider,” Kwong says. “Understand the challenges we face on the road.”

Asked what he rides, Giraud rattles off a quiver of nine motorcycles, from the expected heavyfirepower Italian machinery to a brace of 10 hp Honda Groms. Kwong learned to ride on a 1998 Yamaha R1 that he still owns, and he tracks a KTM. Giraud has put in roughly 25,000 development miles on the older of the two HyperSport prototypes. The company is a motorcycle gang.

Understanding what feedback is useful to a rider is the key to Damon’s approach. Kwong previously worked developing head up displays for ski and snowboard helmets. He knows how easily the human brain can be overwhelmed with information. Iron Man’s helmet wouldn’t improve his

200-MPH ELECTRIC SPORT BIKE

A. Damon’s first design looks like just another two-wheeled missile, sleek and crouched. But it promises protection never before seen in bikes.

A. Damon co-founder Dom Kwong demonstrates a virtualreality CoPilot simulator at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show.

B. HyperSport riders receive collision alerts as haptic feedback through the handlebars.

C. At Damon headquarters, the coat closet stores motorcycle gear because every employee rides.

D. This HyperSport prototype dons a brassy drive-unit cover (it remains to be seen whether this finish will reach production).

reaction times, but it’s possible for a motorcycle’s feedback to get your Spidey sense tingling.

Damon calls its suite of assists CoPilot. The idea is to give riders an extra second of warning, enough to avoid a collision. The system can track up to 64 objects at once and is network linked to continually learn from each near miss. Software updates are pushed out over the air. The HyperSport will evolve as you own it.

And the HyperSport is capable of evolving its rider. By tracking data like body position, cornering forces, and even grip pressure on the handlebars, Damon’s technology can act as a riding coach. Imagine a traction-control system that becomes less restrictive as your skill grows.

If all of this technology is starting to sound like a two-wheeled Tesla, that’s because there are similarities. Despite still being in the prototype stage, Damon has secured enough deposits from potential customers to account for 15 percent of the U.S. sport-bike market. Damon customers skew far younger than the national average, in their mid-thirties as opposed to 50. And as any enthusiast will tell you, luring younger riders is the challenge that keeps legacy bike makers awake at night.

In manufacturing, Damon is doing a few things Tesla doesn’t. At the core of all future Damon bikes is the company’s HyperDrive technology, a structural battery pack that can be adapted for multiple motorcycle layouts.

The C-shaped HyperDrive pack serves as both the load-bearing frame of the Damon motorcycle and its 20-kWh energy source. The weight savings from this design mean the bike weighs roughly the

same as Kwong’s beloved R1, but it has 50 more horsepower and more than double the torque.

The HyperSport’s numbers: 200 hp, 200 miles of highway range, a top speed over 200 mph. Damon has imminent plans to reveal a second model, an electric rival to the likes of the cityoriented Ducati Monster.

The planned expansion of Damon’s lineup will trend toward lighter, more affordable commuter bikes and rugged adventure machines. The South American motorcycle giant Auteco has licensed some of Damon’s CoPilot technologies for use in its Victory brand of gasoline-powered motorcycles.

In South America and Asia, motorcycling isn’t a leisure activity; it’s how you get around. Making motorcycles safer through technology will lure drivers out of their cars, on both weekday commutes and weekend adventures. It’ll ease congestion in cities—20 cars make a traffic jam, but 20 bikes is a pack of friends. Speaking of packs, Damon’s bikes are designed to be daisy-chained: You and two friends all can plug into a single charger.

In Damon’s version of the near future, on a gray and rainy West Coast day, a rider will safely commute to work instead of taking their car. A couple of friends will load up panniers and take off early for a weekend excursion, confident they’ll both arrive back home in one piece. A novice will pore over feedback on an app, resolving to work harder on smoother inputs.

Damon has set out to save lives because the people who work there are riders. As a consequence, the company’s ideas about safety and tech may just save motorcycling itself.

Aquatic Cars

Amphibious cars have been a constant niche, from military landing craft to the cheerful Amphicar. The problem seems to be that a dual-purpose vehicle drives like a boat on the road and flounders like a car on the water.

C

DREAMS DENIED8

DREAMS DENIED9

Vehicle Platooning

Commuting sucks, especially when the infuriating Slinky effect has traffic stopping in waves for essentially no reason. Instead, imagine vehicles driving close together in great pods, safely moving as one unit at highway speeds. Perhaps a future evolution for adaptive cruise control, but potentially an amplifier of chaos should anything go wrong.

BY PROF. EDWARD ALTERMAN

It’s December 11, 1972, and Houston has a problem. The lunar rover on the Apollo 17 mission, LRV-3, has lost its right rear fender. Not a huge deal on earth, but on the moon, it’s potentially catastrophic. Fenderless driving kicks up a flume of lunar regolith that coats the rover’s navigation and communication instruments in fine, wave-blocking silt. It’s a silt that insinuates itself into the aluminum rings that hold the astronauts’ helmets and gloves in place, and it can’t be wiped off.

NASA comes up with a solution: Take four laminated pages from the survey maps, tape them together into a 15-by-10½-inch slat, and marry that piece to the shorn fender. It works. Outer-limit engineering fixed with tape.

As the alphanumerics imply, the LRV-3 was NASA’s third lunar rover. It was, in its most utilitarian sense, a tool for collecting geological samples. But in another, it was a perilous transport to the edge of the knowable. The rockets may have taken us to the moon, but the rovers allowed us to interrogate it.

In his meticulously researched and masterfully written new book, Across the Airless Wilds, Earl Swift tells the story of the lunar-vehicle program from its inception in the mind of ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun to the three rover excursions.

It is unfair to suggest that challenges facing the lunar-rover program were as steep as those posed by a lunar landing itself, but they were not insignificant.

NASA had to come up with an electric vehicle that could report back to our planet, withstand extreme temperatures (plus or minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit), operate in one-sixth gravity, fold up into and deploy from the tiny moon lander, and traverse unknown lunar terrain.

NASA put the contract out for bids, and the job went to Boeing. General Motors became the major

subcontractor based in part on its wire-mesh wheel design. One somewhat hilarious thing detailed in Swift’s book is NASA’s frustration with Boeing and GM. NASA worked to the very highest standards of testing, engineering, and process, predicated on the reputational and human risks posed by its missions. Boeing worked to slightly laxer stand ards, in keeping with the only marginally less dire stakes it encountered in its usual course of business. GM, on the other hand, worked to the safety standards of the Corvair.

Despite the development period’s many thrown slide rules and dislodged pocket protectors, the partners delivered the first lunar rover just 22 months after the project got the green light. It would cost the taxpayers $38 million, roughly a quarter of a billion dollars in today’s money.

Apollo 15 held the first rover, LRV-1, in its lander. After four days of space travel to get up to the Hadley Rille, astronauts David Scott and James Irwin drove LRV-1 a total of 17.25 miles over three excursions. Dave and Jim’s first drive, of 6.3 miles, surpassed all previous missions’ travels combined.

On their next jaunt, they hit pay dirt—a nugget of four-billion-year-old white anorthosite dubbed Genesis Rock. From Swift’s book: This “was the consummation of all the missions that had come before. . . . Until now, most missions had been built around testing equipment and sorting out proce dures. Apollo 15’s moonwalkers were conducting real science.”

We left three cars on the moon. But this is no space junk, no off-loaded, off-brand detritus from a pot-metal superpower. This is Grade A American equipment. The LRVs are what NASA decided to create when its moonshots had grown prosaic to the American public and perhaps even to itself. The rovers were the moonshot’s moonshot.

THE FULL

ANDMOON

LUNAR

ROVERS WENT TO THE

GOING.

DREAMS DENIED10

Hover Car

In 1959, defense contractor Curtiss-Wright built a fully functioning equivalent of a Star Wars landspeeder.

The Model 2500 Air Car floated aloft thanks to twin aircraft engines and used a system of louvers to direct thrust for acceleration and turning. Potholes were no longer an issue, but top speed was limited. Oh, and there were no brakes.

SPARK OF

PISTONS MAY DISAPPEAR, FORD’S ELUMINATOR, THE HALLOWED

LIFE

BUT THANKS TO CHEVY’S ECRATE AND ENGINE SWAP WILL LIVE ON.

A

Only the mOst passionate among us dedicate our blood, sweat, and time to swapping one engine for another in the name of performance and glory. But where does that part of the culture go once internal-combustion engines go away? Ford and Chevy have supplied enthusiasts with crate motors for decades; with the EV revolution upon us, America’s biggest automakers are racing to keep the engine swap alive.

Chevrolet’s answer is the Connect & Cruise system. It’s a collection of components, mostly sourced from the Bolt EV, that can be installed into virtually any existing vehicle with the space to accommodate it. At the system’s heart sits a 60-kWh battery and a 200-hp, 266-lb-ft motor called eCrate that can mount up to a conventional transmission. Cars with enough room in the engine bay can stack motor units for more horsepower, and as Chevy did on one show car, the underhood parts can be arranged in the shape of a V-8.

Over at Ford, the Eluminator is a nod to the company’s Aluminator crate V-8s. The kit borrows the Mustang Mach-E GT’s electric motor, rated at 281

hp and 317 lb-ft of torque and weighing just 205 pounds, less than half the heft of a 5.0. Priced from $3900, it’s cheaper than Ford’s Coyote crate engine, but unlike Chevy’s e-setup, it doesn’t include batteries or control units.

The performance numbers might not sound like much compared with a 700-plus-hp Dodge Hellcrate, but electric options like these are an important first step. When junkyard LS small-blocks and Honda K-series engines disappear, fiends who live for the swap will still have possibilities.

There remains the question of accessibility. While Ford has yet to publish specifics on how the Eluminator should be installed, Chevy has made it clear that only professionals should handle the Connect & Cruise kit. The automaker is launching a training and certification program specifically for installing and servicing the high-voltage systems. For EV swaps to catch on, they have to be friendly to shade-tree mechanics using basic tools and YouTube. That will happen eventually, though we suspect it may take a few more years. But thankfully, the swap will live on.

A. Ford’s Eluminator, like Chevy’s eCrate, should offer solid hits of power and torque while whittling away the complexity of an electric-motor swap.

GLUEKIT

HOW CARMAKERS USE SILICON VALLEY’S SUBSCRIPTION MODEL TO MAKE EVEN MORE PROFIT. ACCESS DENIED

car stereo. Mercedes-Benz’s latest electric sedan, the EQS, has rear-axle steering that can turn the rear wheels up to 4.5 degrees—until you download software, optional in most European markets, that unlocks 10 degrees of rear-steering angle.

It’s 2032, and you’re driving to work. Your 2028 sport sedan isn’t the newest thing on the block, but you prefer its light, direct driving experience over this year’s bloated crap. As you wait at a light, you hear a chime from the dash, followed by the slightly off-kilter voice of Bimmi, the artificialintelligence driver’s assistant. “ComfortPlus convenience package access has expired,” Bimmi reports in her stern, flat tone. Your heated seat goes cold; the massage fingers kneading your lower back freeze awkwardly, poking your vertebrae.

Turns out, today marks four years and one day since your car was delivered. Your complimentary access to ComfortPlus, SafetyPlus, and six other digital convenience packages has expired. An email buzzes your smartwatch, instructing you to set up a recurring subscription payment for the options your car just lost. You hem and haw for a moment, but decide to do it. Just one problem—you forgot your log-in info years ago.

Automakers are already laying the foundation for this minor dystopia. It’s all made possible by over-the-air (OTA) updates, which allow modern cars to download new software by connecting to a home Wi-Fi network or through a built-in mobile data connection like the one in your smartphone.

This smartphone-like ability to remotely update software has led carmakers to pursue another Silicon Valley trend: the subscription fee. Consider that most customers don’t buy hard copies of movies—they subscribe to streaming services.

Some automakers already charge a recurring fee for their most high-tech features. Audi bills $85 a month for a package that includes in-car Wi-Fi and upgraded navigation. Volkswagen charges $49 a year for a nav package with real-time traffic and parking data, plus $9 a month for its most advanced voice-recognition system. General Motors practically invented in-car subscriptions with OnStar, the safety and convenience system launched in 1996. Today GM’s expanded Super Cruise semi-autonomous system will require a monthly subscription after the complimentary new-car period expires.

Here’s the thing: If automakers can grant you access to digital features via OTA software updates, they can just as easily take them away. The industry long ago figured out how to squeeze a second dose of profit out of used cars via certifiedpreowned programs. It’s not hard to imagine automakers turning that grip toward custom ers, charging second and third owners to access factory equipment and capabilities.

Seatbelt Interlock

As recently as 2020, nearly half of all road fatalities involved a driver not using a seatbelt. As far back as 1973, federal authorities attempted to solve the problem by mandating systems to prevent a car from being started by an unbelted driver. The public revolted, and the rule was overturned almost immediately. At least we eventually ended up with mandatory airbags.

Tesla harnessed the power of OTA updates first, in 2012. Since then, the company has beamed out new software to improve vehicle performance, update Autopilot semi-autonomous driver assistance, and add gimmicks—like a whoopie-cushion button—to the dashboard touchscreen.

Tesla isn’t alone. Since 2018, BMW has offered Remote Software Upgrade, which lets owners in certain non-U.S. markets download upgraded vehicle functions including automatic high-beam headlight control, adaptive cruise control, and augmented engine noises that play through the

As customers, we’re willing to pay to lease our streaming content and apps. To carmakers, charging rent on things like heated seats, blindspot monitoring, and real-time parking updates must seem like the logical next step. It’s all part of the inexorable march toward a future where nobody owns anything and even our automobiles can be remotely bricked if we don’t pay the monthly tab.

It’s a future that sounds particularly unpalatable to us. We prefer our out-of-warranty luxury cars to lose their comfort features the old-fashioned way: when they break.

CYBORG STALLION

PEELING BACK THE LAYERS OF FERRARI’S 1000-HP HYBRID HYPERCAR, FROM EXOTIC CURVES TO A TWIN-TURBO V-8. IF THE NEXT GENERATION OF SUPERCARS LOOKS LIKE THIS, COUNT US IN.

The future of Ferrari is the SF90 Stradale. It’s the company’s first production plug-in hybrid, with a mix of internal combustion and electric motors offering 986 hp. Ferrari’s twinturbo V-8 grows to 4.0 liters here, contributing 769 hp. It connects to a 209-hp electric motor and an eight-speed dual clutch that sends power to the rear wheels. Up front, there’s one electric motor for each wheel, allowing for torque vectoring across the axle: Get on throttle early in a corner, and the SF90 will overdrive the outside front wheel and slow the inside wheel to help turn the car. You have to recalibrate your brain in an SF90, both to get used to the prodigious acceleration—60 mph arrives in 2.0 seconds—and to trust

the computer systems and lean on that front axle. Raffaele de Simone, Ferrari’s chief test driver, says this was one of the most challenging cars he’s developed. His work created a remarkably cohesive driving experience. The SF90 may start around $500,000, but it also qualifies for a federal $3500 hybrid-vehicle tax credit. Not quite having your cake and eating it too, but it’s something.

A. Silver and yellow stripes denote the optional Assetto Fiorano pack, named to honor Ferrari’s factory-adjacent test track. This $56,240 upgrade includes titanium suspension springs, Multimatic

spool-valve dampers, carbon-fiber door and underbody panels, a titanium exhaust, and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires.

B. The cockpit is lower than in previous mid-engine Ferraris, decreasing frontal

area and lowering the center of gravity.

C. Unlike McLaren, Ferrari’s production supercars are mostly aluminum. This chassis is related to the F8 Tributo (and both the 488 and 458 before it), but it’s

been reworked to increase rigidity without adding weight.

D. Much of the aero dynamic magic happens underneath the SF90, which can generate up to 860 pounds of downforce at 155 mph.

A. The two frontmounted radiators manage engine and gearbox temperatures. A third smaller radiator is used to cool the electric motors and their power inverters.

B. If you want to set ultimate lap times, you’ll need the optional Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires. They won’t last as long as a set of regular Cup 2s, but they play a big role in getting the SF90 around Fiorano 0.7 second quicker than a LaFerrari.

C. Regen from the electric motors provides deceleration on top of the carbon-ceramic brakes. Therefore, this is the first Ferrari with a by-wire brake pedal. That this complex Ferrari’s braking feels seamless is astonishing.

D. The interior departs from the conventions of Ferrari’s midengine road cars. Haptic pads on the steering wheel control almost everything, including the drive modes. The traditional manettino switch manages

chassis and tractioncontrol settings. There are touchpads for powertrain modes like eDrive, which uses just the front motors—yes, the SF90 has a frontwheel-drive mode.

E. Ferrari engineers concede that the SF90 Assetto Fiorano’s Multimatic DSSV dampers make for a harsher ride on the road, but the control gained on the track is worth the trade-off.

C DA B

A. The two front motors each contribute 133 hp and 63 lb-ft of torque, and share a single housing. The motors operate independently, giving the SF90 front-axle torque vectoring. The quickest way to drive the SF90 on the track is to feed in power earlier than you thought possible and let the car figure out the rest.

B. Ferrari says this 6.5-kWh lithium-ion battery pack and the rest of the hybrid system add nearly 600 pounds of mass, but the extra power offsets the heft.

C. For the SF90, Ferrari bored its twin-turbo V-8 out to 4.0 liters and gave it reworked heads and a new

fuel-injection system for 769 hp. The company also tweaked the intake and exhaust systems to help lower the car’s center of gravity.

D. Despite an additional forward ratio, this eight-speed dualclutch gearbox is lighter than its sevenspeed predecessor because it has no reverse gear. Backing up is handled by the front-wheel electric motors.

A

THE BOY WHO WOULD BE KING

The unlikely story of the 33-year-old Croat tasked with transforming Bugatti into an electric-car dream maker.

BY NATE HOPPER

BY

A. Mate Rimac’s 1984 E30 BMW nabbed multiple records as the quickestaccelerating electric car back in 2011. He started work on it when he was only 19.

ATE

FROM AFAR MATE, RIMAC IS BOTH UNFATHOMABLE AND

OI AR

The story of the 33-year-old Croat who will now run Bugatti seems to back up his reputation: He’s a visionary, people say, an easygoing guy. He’s just like you and me.

Over just a few short years, Mate Rimac has built a startling network at the pinnacle of hypercars. In addition to gaining the majority stake in Bugatti from Volkswagen Group, the world’s largest automotive company, he will maintain control of his own hybrid company—part builder of the world’s quickest cars, part supplier of batteries and high-performance EV technology to other manufacturers, such as Jaguar, Koenigsegg, and Aston Martin. Once merely an object of sports-car fanboys’ affection, Rimac (pronounced REE-mats) is a figure who will command the world’s attention.

The story of the man and his namesake company can seem like a fairy tale. And when the wonder fades, one might ask: How?

Mate riMac was born in what is now BosniaHerzegovina in one of its poorest towns; a car would pass along gravel roads perhaps once a day. His parents left him with grandparents as they headed in search of work to Germany, where Mate fled when the Yugoslav Wars began. The family moved to Zagreb, Croatia, when Mate was 14. The

accent he’d gained abroad made him sound, he’s said, like a “hillbilly,” leading him to suffer the sort of torment teenagers like to inflict on outsiders.

He burrowed into technological design, creating first a glove that behaved like a computer keyboard and mouse and then a mirror system that made cars’ blind spots visible—both of which won international design competitions. When he turned 18, Rimac used the money earned from patents on his inventions to buy a car he could race in local quarter-milers: a 1984 E30 BMW 323i with an engine that quickly blew.

This is when the vision struck him. He would rebuild the busted Bimmer as an electric car. Working with a forklift motor and the help of locals, he tinkered. His longtime friend Marko Brkljačić, who bought his own old BMW for racing around the same time, recalls when Rimac first took him for a drive in the electrified creation he and others built in local garages. Rimac told Brkljačić to put his head all the way back on the cushion—instructions Brkljačić was skeptical of, until the acceleration hit with instantaneity no internal-combustion engine can achieve.

There were occasional problems during the early races. But within a year or so, Rimac’s silent wonder was beating the muscular engines thun-

dering across the track. (In a photo from that time, Rimac leans on the hood of his green BMW—outfitted with decals resembling a circuit board—the lapels of his button-down flaring out from beneath a sweater, his distant squint slightly undercut by the appearance at his two front teeth peeking from between barely parted lips. “Imagine Mate coming [to the races] like this,” Brkljačić remarks.) The top racer at the local track, who drove a stripped-down Camaro that ran on nitro and alcohol, was toppled. “The guys who were basically making fun of Mate in the end were asking the [local racing] organization to introduce an all-EV category because it was not fair,” Brkljačić says. In 2011, Rimac’s electrified 1984 BMW—homemade in a country with no automotive industry—set five world records.

There was another vision: a fully electric supercar, made from scratch. He and a small crew that grew around him—among them a drone designer for the Croatian Army who was 16 years Rimac’s senior and a fellow 20-something designing cars for General Motors in Germany—committed themselves to the creation. With only a year to go, Rimac booked a spot in the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show— without a motor to show. They worked nights and weekends building every little bit themselves. They sometimes slept precariously beside live batteries. And so the prototype of the Concept One was finished, barely in time. It was not Rimac’s last improbable marvel.

Misfortune kept transfiguring into fortune. The royal family of Abu Dhabi, which Rimac has said promised to fund the car—and purchase two—withdrew their backing when, in 2012, Rimac refused to move his operation to the Middle East, away from Croatia. (Rimac would make similar refusals in the future, in devotion to building something in his country.) He put up everything the company had as security on a half-million-euro loan from a local bank. Rimac struggled to pay its utilities, suppliers, and employees. Mate Rimac has called the business’s survival a miracle. It occurred only because the company, for a time, sacrificed nearly all its own carmaking ambitions for the sake of building components for other manufacturers— saving itself and also building the foundation that would later enable it to thrive.

The company finally secured funding from sources in South America and China to construct eight Concept Ones. One of them was being filmed in June 2017 for an episode of The Grand Tour when Richard Hammond drove it off a Swiss hillside, setting off a reportedly five-day-long blaze.

A. In about 10 years’ time, Mate Rimac would go from a lone guy tinkering in a garage to part owner and CEO of one of the industry’s most storied brands.

B. A pre-beard Rimac stands with his first electric-sports-car concept, appropriately named Concept One, at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show.

C. While Mate Rimac ascends to global automotive prominence, construction of the Nevera continues in Croatia.

Another survival miracle, it turns out, for both Hammond, who somehow escaped not just alive but without serious injury, and the company, which had been trying to secure further funding. Surprisingly, money arrived in even greater force after word of the crash spread. Rimac the company exploded—in a good way.

In 2018, Porsche bought a 10 percent stake in Rimac (and upped it in 2021); Hyundai possesses a 12 percent stake. Rimac now employs more than 1000 people. And it has shown that its latest creation, the Nevera, can get to 60 mph in less than two seconds. The Nevera is what Rimac really envisioned as he and his team constructed the Concept One. Indeed, in some ways, it exceeds what they imagined.

But again: How? The list of accomplishments doesn’t explain this. After all, each of us has visions—albeit some more powerful and helpful than others. What turned a seemingly average 18-year-old petrolhead into a 33-year-old titan? What is the difference?

“InItIally, It was for sure the naïveté,” says Adriano Mudri, the young GM designer who helped with the original Concept One and is now Rimac’s head of design. Who else would think to build an electric hypercar? In reality, there were some others. But even when his own friends doubted him, Rimac believed it could be done. (“Speaking honestly, I was not a believer,” says Brkljačić, now head of strategic projects at the company.) He actually pursued the idea. “Many people promise, but not many people actually follow up,” Mudri says.

Naïveté may have also proved to be a technological advantage. Hypercar creator Christian von Koenigsegg, who has developed a friendship with Rimac beyond their collaborations, notes that Mate’s informal engineering background may have enabled him to pursue novel solutions. “We don’t have the academic engineering background but are more self-taught,” Koenigsegg explains. “I even think this might be a prerequisite for what we do, as we are more unlimited in our thinking when it comes to technical solutions.” Mate also deeply believes that in the Internet age, anything can be learned.

Naïveté can also mature into a form of bravery. Igor Pongrac, the former drone creator (who after nine years with Rimac has returned to designing tech for unmanned aerial vehicles, now in Abu Dhabi), recalls how in the early days, Rimac made choices that confused and even concerned

those around him—all of whom were older. He had a talent for “choosing the optimal moment to act on some decision that was sometimes completely weird but paid off in the long run,” Pongrac writes via email. “We would try to talk him out of it.” Often they were urging him to be more cautious with company finances. But Rimac, not interested in enriching himself, reinvested the money he earned into the company, be it for tools or a better stand at the Geneva auto show. Time and again, the risks paid off.

Rimac also had a willful ignorance of how long endeavors should take. “Sometimes he would assign us impossible tasks with impossible deadlines,” Pongrac recalls. But the passion of the team, despite being underinformed and underfunded, would match the demands. (This practice would serve Rimac and his colleagues later. Lutz Meschke, deputy chairman and member of the finance board for Porsche, remembers testing their know-how in 2017. “We sent them an extremely tough task, one that many at Porsche were certain they would not be able to solve,” he explains. Rimac’s group was given a Porsche Panamera E-Hybrid—but no specs and only three weeks to test the battery manage ment and suggest improvements. “He not only understood the system,” Meschke recalls, “he also made it more powerful.”) Impossibility lost its meaning. The company grew emboldened. “We used to promise things [to collaborators] that we didn’t have,” Pongrac says. But they would find a way to create them in time, endlessly reevaluating instead of giving up.

Still, doubt crept in, and Rimac worked to ward it off. Beyond crediting him with “big balls,” those around Rimac also frequently mention his ability to communicate his vision. Xavi Serra, head of racing at Cupra, remembers a 2017 meeting. Rimac had been challenged with creating a battery system for Cupra’s e-Racer, which aimed to become the first electric touring car in competition. The team seemed intimidated, but their boss convinced them this was another ambitious yet achievable goal posing as impossible. They found a way. “It’s a big asset, the way he explains and the way he moves the people,” Serra says.

Over time, this assurance and subsequent success created a sort of faith within the company. Inexperience alchemized by otherwise clichéd traits (passion, hard work, multitasking, a never-quit attitude) transformed into one of the most well-informed, specialized yet expansive forces in the hypercar world. These were not qualities one man alone could possess, but an entire col-

lective could. And Rimac listened to what he made. He maintained his technical awareness, developed his business savvy, and, while he maintained final say, did something tremendously powerful: He deferred to the wisdom of others.

Beneath the company’s accomplishments is also an unconventional strategy and structure. Its work as a Tier 1 supplier of novel technology to its competitors not only helps fund the construction of, say, the Nevera, but also informs its own creations.

“The beauty of doing stuff for other car companies is you’re essentially using their money to increase your own IP,” says Fraser Dunn, former chief engineer at Aston Martin. He worked with Rimac on developing the high-voltage battery and the infotainment system for the Valkyrie. Regardless of who technically owns what, the knowledge gained—not just about what worked but also what nearly worked yet could not be puzzled out before deadline—amounts to “an advantage to improve your own vehicles,” Dunn says. And the better Rimac’s cars are, the more appealing its technology is. Together this becomes something of a self-fueling machine.

Rimac can also operate beyond the constraints of the bureaucracy of larger corporations—and ingrained misconceptions about how long things take (sometimes triple the time Rimac needs) and how much they cost. The company also doesn’t need to concern itself so much with massive scale, which allows it to frame its priorities in a way major corporations can’t. “We don’t have to optimize for price. We can optimize for performance,” Mudri says. “This allows you to find solutions that you

would not usually find in the rest of the industry.”

Such is the freedom inherent in independence, which is what Rimac sought from the beginning, in the model of his idols. Over video chat, Horacio Pagani recalls a line he was lucky to read as an adolescent, something like “It’s better to be the head of the mouse than the tail of a lion.” As in, it’s better to be the brains of something small yet quick and nimble than swung around by a hulking larger entity—especially if the lion pays the mouse for its help.

there is another asset that Rimac possesses that others do not: his story. It seems to have an inherent meaning, be it instructive for how to build something in a restrictively, reflexively mechanized world or something more mystical. At times, people in Rimac’s orbit seem shocked that they believe in the magic. Mudri explained that the Rimac company was not simply a passive benefactor of timing, having devoted itself to electric vehicles right as governments began mandating the end of internal-combustion cars. “I wouldn’t say it’s by accident,” he says with a small laugh. “It’s destiny.” Not that it matters, really, the degree of belief. The outcomes do.

And sure, years ago, when Rimac happened upon a stretch of land by a castle, he decided, against the odds, that he would build his company’s campus there. Now, somehow, ground has been broken. On a planned test track, employees will see the dream of the Nevera drifting in reality. The surrounding fenceless land is populated with wild animals, which Rimac hopes might subtly persuade people to become vegans (he believes meat eating is

A. In early 2021, Rimac announced plans for a grand new campus in Croatia. Designed by a Croatian firm, the facility will serve as the company’s R&D and production base. It will also include a test track and a museum. B. To celebrate the launch of the production Nevera model, Rimac sent the electric supercar up the hill at Goodwood in a cloud of tire smoke.

PHOTOGRAPH BY THOMAS KIENZLE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

poisoning the world). And Rimac is building it, as he has all of this, in Croatia, becoming a hero to many of its people. Such things are unfathomable— magical—or real because of a powerful man who struggles to fathom his power by buying a (rather nice) plot of land.

Outsiders have questioned the value of the other acquisition: Bugatti. The popular press celebrated that Volkswagen had removed a brand it considered a distraction, one with a history of losing money. (In 2013, analysts estimated that even though the Bugatti Veyron had a price of about $2.5 million, the cost to develop and pro duce it led to the company losing more than twice as much on every car sold.) Mate Rimac, the laidback listener who now runs Bugatti, will stand in stark contrast to the late VW executive who purchased it decades ago, the oft-autocratic Ferdinand Piëch, grandson of the inventor of the Beetle and famed for his machinations and lavish spending. It also means a new mentality for Bugatti. “Bugatti always prided themselves on being a part of a large OEM and piggybacking off that structure,” Christian von Koenigsegg writes in an email. “Now all extreme sports-car producers are more standalone than before, even though, of course, Porsche is still in the background of Rimac/Bugatti.” As for the Rimac team, they’re excited to have two tracks to test on rather than one. It won’t be the first time that one entity’s poison is another’s possibility.

Still, there are worries among the excitement. Horacio Pagani has been cautioning Rimac to be careful. “It’s scary because, of course, the expectation is always very high,” he says. “And in that case, you have to be able to satisfy the expectation.”

One day in early September, Pagani woke up at 5 a.m. with a fresh worry. He wrote to Rimac, urging him to check with his lawyers that Bugatti’s past responsibilities (and lawsuits) would not become his own. Rimac replied to say that while he was on his honeymoon (which kept him from talking for this story), he checked with his lawyers, and all was well. Pagani was relieved.

Mudri says they work so quickly at Rimac that there is seldom celebration. “We don’t really have time for the ups because we have to resolve the downs,” he says. In the blur is the fact that, after all of this, they have only reached the beginning. The campus by the castle has not been finished. There is a battery-production rate to increase, more deadlines, more creations to craft. The decade ahead may prove wilder than the last. Indeed, Mate Rimac tells those closest to him, they are still in the first chapter.

A. At 33, Mate Rimac is now the CEO of Bugatti Rimac, which will eventually be headquartered at the Rimac campus near Zagreb. Porsche has a 45 percent stake in the new company.

B. At an event announcing the creation of Bugatti Rimac, Porsche executives Lutz Meschke (left) and Oliver Blume shake hands as a beaming Mate Rimac looks on.

C. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen visits Rimac headquarters.

B

What powers the F1 of tomorrow?

BY MIKE DUFF

ElEctric powErtrains have been with us since the beginning of motorsport. An electric Riker won the first formally organized race in the U.S., an 1896 demonstration of horseless carriages in front of 60,000 at Narragansett Trotting Park in Rhode Island. The second-place car was also an EV. But it didn’t take long for internal-combustion engines to assert their dominance. This was due to the higher outputs that could be more easily extracted from even early engines (that pioneering Riker made only

around 1 hp) and the greater energy density of a liquid hydrocarbon fuel when compared with the meager charge that could be stored in a leadacid battery. More than a century later, that gap has narrowed. As the global automotive industry moves toward electrification, motorsport faces a historic dilemma. Does it follow the same path or break the link between road and race technology? If top-flight racing is to stay relevant, it will require a new generation of powerplants. What form will they take?

The richest, most technologically advanced form of motorsport on the planet faces a crossroads.

1

While Formula 1 hasn’t finalized 2025 engine regulations, it seems all but certain that they will involve a switch to so-called e-fuel. We can expect much of the rest of high-level motorsport to follow that lead.

This isn’t a new idea. The basic principles of combustion engines have remained fairly con stant for more than a century, but competition cars have been run on many types of fuel—some with no relationship to pump gasoline—including methanol, ethanol, and even nitromethane, which gives Top Fuel dragsters their sweet, heady aroma. While gasoline is energy dense, the higher octane ratings of those alternatives allow for more to be burned quickly in tuned engines.

E-fuels are basically new marketing around an old idea: fuels made using renewable energy. They are made by performing electrolysis on water to create hydrogen and oxygen in the manner of that high-school science-class experiment that ends with a pop. The hydrogen gets combined—in very simple terms—with CO2 filtered from the atmosphere to form methanol. Some more chemical tinkering turns this into a synthetic form of gasoline.

This is what Porsche and Siemens Energy are set to do in a new plant in Chile. The companies say they will be able to make 34,000 gallons of e-gasoline in 2022, 14.5 million in 2024, and 145 million in 2026. Porsche has already committed to using this fuel for its own racing programs, and its road-car engines will also be able to run on it. And while the finer details of the 2025 Formula 1 engine regulations are still being argued over as we go to press, F1 boss Stefano Domenicali

wins out

A. Could a switch to e-fuels mean the return of V-12s, like this 3.0-liter Ferrari from 1995, to F1?

Almost certainly not. But we’d be delighted to hear a high-revving V-12 at the track again, regardless of what fuel it burns. We would also accept V-10s or V-8s.

A

Porsche was unable to hook us up with a senior executive to talk e-fuels. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown was much more willing, although his first point was that few F1 spectators are likely to be too concerned about the origins of the fuel the cars run on. “I think what Formula 1 needs to do is continue to be as it always has, with cutting-edge technology,” Brown tells Road & Track. “That is something the fan definitely cares about—that these are the fastest, most badass race cars in the world.”

A switch to e-fuels might help with that, of course. Formula 1 engines have been shrinking and shedding cylinders for decades: from 3.5 liters to 3.0 in 1995, to 2.4-liter V-8s in 2006, then down to the current 1.6-liter V-6 hybrids in 2014. The last move was justified on the grounds of maintaining relevance in light of smaller and greener road-car powerplants. But the claimed “carbon neutrality” of e-fuels could alleviate the perceived need for such symbolic asceticism. The prospect

fuel has confirmed it will run on some form of e-fuel, fromeitherChileorelsewhere.ThefactthatPorsche and Audi both are represented on the board of “prospective power unit suppliers” debating the new rules gives a clear indication of both Formula 1’s new direction and the Volkswagen Group’s enthusiasm to be a part of it.

of a return to screaming V-12s is enticing, unlikely though we know it is.

“Sure, if we’ve got e-fuels, then why not?” says Brown. “I think there are a lot of people who would love it, and Formula 1 is meant to be about the biggest, the best, and the fastest. Do I think it will happen? Probably not. But would I like it to happen? Absolutely.”

The behind-the-scenes debate seems to be over V-6s and four-cylinders. But e-fuels do stand against the auto industry’s rapid move toward full electrification—especially in Europe, where several countries plan to ban the sale of combustion-engine cars by the end of the decade. Will any automaker pay the huge costs of creating F1 powerplants that bear no relationship to its roadgoing portfolio?

“OEMs get a lot out of Formula 1 well beyond the power unit,” Brown argues. “I still think people will buy McLarens and Mercedes and Ferraris and follow the brands they love, even if the cars have a different type of power unit from the ones you see racing.”

There is plenty of dissent on that point, none more than from Alejandro Agag, the man in charge of the all-electric Formula E and Extreme E championships. “How are you going to do a race of combustion cars in a country that doesn’t allow the sale of combustion cars?” he says. “That’s 2030 in the U.K. So people will go to Silverstone to watch a race, yet they won’t be able to buy the same technology or anything close to it themselves. How does that work? I don’t think it does.”

A. There’s no indication that in-race refueling will return to Formula 1, but a switch to e-fuel should extend the life of internalcombustion engines in the series.

B. One thing stands in the way of Formula 1 adopting fully electric powertrains anytime soon: the existence of Formula E, which has a lock on FIA-sanctioned EV single-seat racing.

our friends are

2elec

Option

B

Which brings us to the second option: that racing becomes fully electric. Nobody knows more about e-motorsport than Agag. The Spanish businessman, former politician, and onetime Formula 2 team boss founded the Formula E championship in 2014. The series was widely derided by fans of more traditional motorsport in its early years, with slow, gawky-looking, and nearly silent cars competing on tight, featureless circuits and drivers having to swap their rides midrace due to limited battery range.

But its close and crashy racing and strong social-media presence have drawn both a younger audience and plenty of commercial backing. Some of the big automakers that entered the series early to showcase their green credentials have chosen to depart, with Audi, BMW, and Mercedes all punching out. But Agag says that, almost uniquely for motorsport, every driver on the grid of both Formula E and the off-road Extreme E is being well paid to be there.

While Agag is far from a neutral observer, his biggest criticism of e-fuels raises a solid point.

“I think e-fuel is the excuse to delay as long as possible going electric,” he says. “It’s a way they have found to say ‘We’re sustainable.’ No, you’re

ctric

not—you’re more sustainable than before, but you’re not sustainable. Because you are emitting CO2. The argument is that they absorb CO2 when they create the fuels, then release it back, so that makes them carbon neutral. You could make the same argument that oil has captured CO2 because it comes from very ancient plants and trees that absorbed it in the past, and all you’re doing is releasing it now.”

E-fuels are almost identical to the fossil fuels they seek to replicate, so they behave similarly when burned. And even aside from the debate about the relative virtue of different types of CO2, there is no denying that e-fuels are deeply inefficient. Manufactured e-fuel loses around 48 percent of the energy that has been used to produce it. Run it through even a state-of-the-art engine like the Mercedes F1 M08, with a thermal efficiency of over 50 percent, and less than a quarter of the energy that went into the fuel comes back. Use the same renewable energy to recharge a battery pack and that efficiency will best 70 percent.

Does this matter? To those in search of visceral thrills and loud race cars, not at all. But in a world where virtue must be signaled, especially by large corporations trying to demonstrate their green credentials, this is an important distinction and one that is likely to become more so as decarbonization is pushed harder.

While short on noise and drama, electric power trains are improving in terms of performance. Agag promises that the forthcoming Generation 3 Formula E cars will be both faster and lighter, capable of making more than 500 hp (the first gen made just 270 hp in their maximum-output mode). “They are going to be very similar performance to Formula 2 cars,” he says, “and I predict that by 2025 or 2026, we will have electric cars capable of going for over an hour at the same performance level as a Formula 1 car.”

Brown agrees that full electrification will ultimately reach even top-flight racing, although not for some time. “I don’t want to put a time frame on it because that would be guessing, but I imagine if you were to go 20 years out, then things might be that developed,” he says. “I’m confident the technology will get there eventually.”

For Agag, the transition will happen sooner— with what he hopes will be a merger between Formula E and Formula 1. While that may sound fanciful, F1 can’t go electric without him; he has exclusive rights to run an FIA-approved championship for electric single-seaters until 2039.

“I think they are going into their last dance with combustion, the [engine regulation] cycle between 2025 and 2030. After that, combustion becomes historic racing,” he says.

hydrwhat about

A. Hydrogen-fed fuel-cell electric race cars might be a ways off, but Forze Hydrogen Racing, a team of students, is building this 805-hp prototype racer with the help of Hyundai’s technical outpost in Germany. In 2024, there will be a hydrogen class at Le Mans, so the future might be closer than it appears.

COURTESY FIA F1, TURN PAGES: COURTESY EBAY MOTORS,

FIA FORMULA E, COURTESY HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY

is there another way? A fully sustainable, carbon-free liquid fuel in the shape of hydrogen?Yes and no. It’s possible to run specially designed piston engines on hydrogen gas; Toyota has even built a three-cylinder Corolla race car to demonstrate the concept in Japan. But the more rational (and efficient) thing to do with hydrogen in a car is use it in a fuel cell, where it combines with oxygen to produce electricity and water. Which makes it another form of electric motorsport. Agag has confirmed that Formula E’s lock on FIA-approved single-seat e-racers includes those powered by hydrogen cells.

That doesn’t mean that hydrogen doesn’t have a place in the future of racing. Brown and Agag agree that it will probably emerge as the most obvious way to power longer forms of carbon-free motorsport, such as endurance racing.

“There are big challenges with carrying it,” says Agag. “You need to put it at very high pressure or have a very big tank. But it can do the long distances that batteries will never be able to.”

There will be a hydrogen class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2024. We can work out how excited to get after seeing that.

ydro gen?

BEST-LAID

PLANS

The Lucid Air proves that a lot more PREPARATION and a lot less bragging will make something fantastic.

It’s taken LucId 13 years to get here, from a humble battery supplier to an American EV start-up that’s valued at roughly $39 billion before delivering a single customer car. It takes less than 10 seconds to realize it’s been worth the wait.

That’s how long the 1111-hp Lucid Air Dream Edition Performance needs to crack the quartermile, specifically 9.9 seconds at 144 mph. Here in the Arizona desert, just a few hours from Lucid’s greenfield factory in Casa Grande, I content myself with lung-squeezing whomps to 120 mph in the time it takes many cars to hit 60. With the Air in its electron-huffing Sprint mode, I struggle to put the spatial dislocation into words. You know how you flick a stray ant off a picnic table?

In the Lucid Air, you are the ant.

At rest in Tortilla Flat, Arizona, population 6, along a knotted lasso of a road through the Superstition Mountains, the Lucid makes fast

friends as it breaks cover in public. They include an excited pickup driver who’s been buying up Lucid stock hoping for the next Tesla and a posse of young outlaws in a Corvette Z06, a Mustang Shelby GT500, and a Dodge Hellcat. Nice try, fellas. Lucid’s stretch-your-legs sedan will beat them all in a drag race. And it won’t be particularly close. Lucid figures the Air can hit 60 mph in 2.5 seconds.

We’ve become used to such ICE-melting antics from EVs, including the tri-motor, $131,190 Tesla Model S Plaid (page 128). Tesla is on track to sell about 800,000 EVs worldwide this year. Lucid has miles to go, in everything from brand awareness to sales and showroom choices, before it can claim similar success. But talk about a first-pitch grand slam: The Air is the longest-range EV in history. An EPA-rated 520 miles for the 933-hp Dream Edition Range version whips Tesla’s best by 115, enough for nearly two bonus hours of highway cruising.

A. (Previous page) Lucid has been working for more than a decade to get to this point. The Air is an elegant, thoughtful design that promises to be one of the great next-generation EVs.

B. Lucid design head Derek Jenkins insisted on maintaining some analog switches and knobs instead of hiding everything in screens. A welcome departure from current trends.

An 800-hp Air Grand Touring earns a 131-MPGe rating, besting the 120 MPGe of the 670-hp Model S Long Range that seemed insurmountable.

The Air is almost surely the fastest-charging EV ever. Its 924-volt architecture and onboard Wunderbox charger can add up to 300 miles in 20 minutes, or 20 miles in one minute. So much for range anxiety and thumb-twiddling charging stops—at least when the 350-kW DC chargers required for such replenishment become more common. We’re unable to test the claim, despite a 350-kW Electrify America oasis in nearby Tempe, because our preproduction model’s software isn’t fully operational. Buyers will enjoy three years of free charging at those Electrify America stations.

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson, the former Model S chief engineer and current thorn in Elon Musk’s

side, tells me the Air’s drive unit brings nearly three times the power density of Tesla’s, at 41 hp per liter. This electric powder keg spins up 650 hp and 20,000 rpm from a motor, reduction gearbox, inverter, and differential that weigh just 163 pounds. Not much larger than the plumpest Thanksgiving turkey, that drive unit speaks, softly, to the company’s obsessive focus on miniaturization. Lucid claims the Air’s 0.21 coefficient of drag is a slippery new record for any luxury vehicle.

The Air’s Dream ($170,500), GT ($150,500), and Touring ($96,500) editions get two of those muscular units, one at each axle. They’re fed by 6600 cylindrical 2170 battery cells in 22 modules, the same basic cell format Tesla’s newer cars use. Rawlinson won’t cop to the Dream’s battery size, but insists it’s not decisively larger than the

112-kWh pack in the GT. By the end of 2022, Lucid plans to offer a single-motor Pure edition with 480 hp and a 408-mile range for around $79,000. That’s about $12,000 less than the ever-inflating Model S Long Range and about $32,000 less than a 2022 Mercedes-Benz S500 with 51 fewer horsepower. Lucid sees the S-class and other internalcombustion flagships as its true luxury analogues, not the Model S. Naturally, Lucid won’t object to trade-ins from Tesla owners who miss that frisson of Silicon Valley newness and prestige. The Air Pure will be followed by the Lucid Gravity SUV in 2023.

At the Casa Grande plant, where ochre earth is already graded for phase two of a four-part expansion, we watch some of the first customer cars roll off the line. After serial delays, Lucid promises some customers will be driving Airs by the end of

2021, with a 2022 production target of 20,000 cars. With some EVs from legacy automakers—the Chevrolet Bolt and Ford Mustang Mach-E—laid low by recalls, that factory and its quality may hold one key to Lucid’s fortunes. In one instance of forward thinking, a groundbreaking paint-booth process produces zero wastewater. I eyeball a specimen that’s the spitting image of our preproduction Dream Edition; its Eureka Gold paint is a fine match for Arizona’s old prospector country.

If Lucid strikes it rich, the Air’s curb and cabin appeal will deserve due credit. This tasteful lozenge of a sedan recalls a Citröen DS for the electric age, with deep-set LED headlamps, a clamshell hood, a corseted waist, and full-width animated lighting front and rear. An aluminum body (with composite decklid) is capped with an atrium-like

“glass canopy” and brushed-aluminum roof pillars. Even the Lucid’s one visual scar—a gaping shut-line that borders its hatchlike trunk—marks a packaging benefit, an uncommonly low lift-over and wide opening.

The Lucid, Model S, and Porsche Taycan are close matches in size, including nearly identi cal lengths. The Lucid is the narrowest but feels the roomiest, especially the sprawling back seat. Compared with taller-roof gas-powered sedans, including the roomier S-class—roughly a foot longer and 3.7 inches higher—the Lucid’s rear-seat cushions are positioned relatively low to carve out space. Rear riders must duck below the curling roof for ingress and egress. Once aboard, even lanky types won’t complain.

That roof, with sun visors affixed to the wind-

Lucid sees the gas-powered S-Class, not the Model S, as its true luxury analogue.

A. The rear angle of the Air might be the winner—elegant, understated, sleek.

Near perfect.

B. Lucid is a start-up, but the details and fit and finish could be from an automaker with decades of experience.

A

shield, heightens the, um, Airy effect. And the Lucid manages to out-Volvo Volvo with its sheltermagazine vibe, the stuff that makes handsome couples whip out the checkbook before they know the price. Is it really S-class rich? Not quite. Some accoutrements don’t measure up—compare Lucid’s in-house audio system with Benz’s dazzling Burmester stereo. But the massaging seats are excellent. And the Lucid beats the polyester stuffing out of any Tesla with that company’s inebriated fit and finish. In Dream Editions, limited to 520 copies, an exclusive Santa Monica cabin— one of several treatments inspired by California landscapes—is lined with open-pore eucalyptus wood, perforated napa leather, Alcantara, burnished metal, and a tweedy blend of alpaca wool and yarn sourced from recycled plastic bottles.

A dramatic 34-inch 5K display (actually three screens conjoined) arcs before the driver like a

set of wraparound shades. A smaller Pilot Panel motors from the dashboard to hover above the center console, laden with cupholders and cubbies like some posh minivan. The Lucid’s screencentric effect, seemingly de rigueur in luxury EVs, makes its digital point without being overbearing or an ergonomic minefield. Derek Jenkins, Lucid’s senior vice president of design, insisted on saving some analog switches, including for temperature, fan speed, and audio volume. A suite of 32 sensors brings a sophisticated 120-degree lidar unit and 14 cameras, one a driver-monitoring camera (that can be shut off) to help keep eyes on the road. The driver cam and lidar are two technologies that most experts see as critical to eventual autonomy but have brought notorious scoffing from Tesla’s Musk.

I originally envisioned driving the Lucid for a range test, but the car had other plans. The Air is

A. Even if it looks like something out of the future, the Air tends to complement any location.

traditional automakers have been playing the overkill game for more than a century. their time is running out.

A. In most ways, the Air is just a car. In others, it heralds the arrival of something new— the first EV with far more range than gas-powered cars, astonishing performance, and the thing is just drop-dead gorgeous. No wonder Lucid is targeting cars like the S-class rather than the

born for the autobahn. An adaptive suspension, steering, and powertrain adjust through Smooth, Swift, and Sprint modes. The latter unleashes the Dream P’s full 1111 hp, up from 789 in mel lower modes. Grip feels nigh unbreakable on optional 21-inch wheels that ding Dream P range to 451 miles from 471 miles on 19s. Lateral stick is more impressive considering compromises in the name of efficiency: Pirelli developed the first “high load”–rated tire to allow the Lucid’s 168mph top speed but with low rolling resistance. Even on the largest wheels, with their fanlike aero blades, the ride remains copacetic. Hydraulic-only brakes could use more initial bite, but so could the brakes on most megapowered luxury models. Regenerative braking on throttle lift is textbook perfect, however, including a stronger setting for one-pedal driving that also works beautifully in corner-to-corner action. That setting let me use my right foot like a rheostat and barely fuss with the brake pedal. Balancing the car became a breeze, with a bonus of less needless brake wear. It also underlined the Taycan’s biggest error: leaving critical regen mileage and driver choice on the table by spurning the benefits of selectable one-pedal operation.

In an era of Taycans and Lamborghini Uruses, the idea that a 5050-pound (or more) vehicle can actually be made to handle should no longer surprise. Still, the Lucid hustled. A shapely steering wheel supplies pleasing heft and accuracy but little in the way of road feel, also unsurprising in an EV. (The Taycan remains the king of sporty EV feedback.) But with so much thrust, the flat-handling Lucid is simply an unfair fight: Squeeze the throttle and the next corner seemingly appears out of nowhere.

Rawlinson drives out to Tortilla Flat to meet us in another Air. Next thing you know, Lotus’s former chief engineer takes his own pass through these forbidding volcanic mountains, with me riding shotgun. Rawlinson frets over a trace of frontend pitch and assures me it’s being addressed with a rolling change, 10 percent softer front springs and a 10 percent stiffer anti-roll bar. Tesla’s accelerative lead is being addressed via a forthcoming tri-motor Lucid Air. I toss out a rough guess of 1500 hp. Rawlinson doesn’t deny it.

This is prodigal (and profligate) power, but it’s only fair: Traditional automakers have been playing the overkill game for more than a century. Now their time is running out. Too dramatic? Well, when Lucid went public via a blank-check merger, the House of Saud—its CEO and crown prince one Mohammed bin Salman—ended up owning about 65 percent of Lucid. The Saudis already stand to earn $20 billion profit on an original $2.9 billion investment. Rawlinson says the arrangement strikes some observers as odd, but it’s actually not: Even the world’s largest oil exporter can see the writing on the wall, or the well.

THE FUTURE WE WANT

Trying To PredicT The fuTure is a fool’s errand. The only saving grace for those who attempt it is that they’re typically not around long enough to be proved wrong. While this volume of Road & Track is devoted to what lies ahead, we won’t be indulging in (surely faulty) soothsaying. Instead, we’re offering over the next several pages projections built around our own desires. Four editors were tasked with imagining a plausible way in which automotive enthusiasm survives, indeed thrives, in the face of coming challenges.

In the Hobby Shop

I never cared much for model-train sets. Somehow preteen me ended up with a small Lionel set anyway. I arranged a simple oval track solely for the purpose of seeing what the old Chesapeake Flyer could crush. I built a series of Lego overpasses, just a bit too short so the engine would shatter them as it steamed through. I put a Matchbox car across the tracks to see how far it would be thrown by a full-speed hit from the cowcatcher. The point is, I never bothered with the little trees and post offices and grain silos that model-train aficionados used in their tiny worlds—worlds that seemed aimed at replicating a town of at least a century ago.

Looking back, though, I think I missed the proverbial boat. Model trains are undeniably a deeply insular, impossibly nerdy hobby with no real value to society at large. Yet I’m beginning to understand how icons like Neil Young and Sam Posey could be so enamored of them. They represent fantasy worlds into which the tedious and hideous concerns of the real world can’t encroach.

It’s not for everyone, this particular backwardlooking nerdery. But then, neither is the love of sports cars. When this magazine was new (and Young and Posey were small boys), the number of sports-car and grand-prix fanatics in the U.S. was minuscule. And the charge of this magazine was in direct opposition to the vast majority of the American car-buying public. In the January 1952 edition of this august journal, we described the cars coming out of Detroit as “upside-down bedpans.” That sentiment isn’t too far from the tone

BY DANIEL PUND

of the current Road & Track staff’s Slack chats, although now the upside-down bed-pans emerge from factories all over the globe.

My hope for the future is that we can preserve pockets of car enthusiasm within a broader landscape of day-to-day transportation. After all, people still ride horses, don’t they? They just don’t commute to work on them. There are already racetracks (and racetracks posing as country clubs) scattered about in places inaccessible enough to not get devoured by housing developers. Or at least not soon. And if the migration to big cities continues or accelerates, as is widely predicted, why couldn’t we close off patches of once-public roads for the sole purpose of enjoying driving? Let us create our new-old world filled with the braps and squeals of traditional cars just as Young and Posey and countless others fill their miniaturetrain worlds with whistles and puffs. Perhaps, by the time gasoline-powered cars are largely legislated off the roads, people wearing lab coats and serious expressions will have scaled up production of a carbon-neutral fuel to feed our piston-powered machines. Or maybe we could acknowledge that the small number of vehicles involved in such endeavors won’t make much of a difference.

The broader world of transportation will need to change, though, toward a more responsible model. Undoubtedly, that will be messy—full of technological missteps, regulatory kludges, and more failures than successes. There won’t be a time when we all are handed identical white transportation pods and gleefully plug in to the hive brain. If we’ve proved

anything as a species, it’s that we are, collectively and individually, a spectacular jumble of contradicting views and desires, altruism and greed and so on. Predicting the future is a tricky business because the future itself is a tricky business.

What seems clear is that there will be a greater number of electric cars in the decades to come. And on the whole, that’s an encouraging development. Reducing the emissions of the national fleet is a worthy goal. And there will be clean ways to generate the power to motivate them. Okay, so you won’t be able to mount a Mr. Fusion to your car like Doc Brown did. But it’s hard to conceive of a future in which that power-generating source, nuclear fusion, doesn’t play a role. How could we not create power using the process that created the building blocks of everything we know? Cold fusion is fool’s gold. But hot fusion, with powerful magnets holding plasma in a doughnut shape of powergenerating goodness? That’s actual working science. How delightful would it be if doughnuts had been the answer to our problems all along?

But there will be multiple sources of power. There will still be privately owned vehicles and public transportation, and also people moving less through physical space because of network connectivity. We’re already there. I drive mostly for fun now. I do not commute farther than my back patio, where I am now writing these words.

And in front of me on my table is my old darkblue Lionel train engine. I dug it out of a cardboard box in the basement. I like it more now than I used to.

BY MIKE GUY

It’s difficult to maintain a sincere enthusiasm for cool cars when you’re less than enthusiastic about the approaching future of the human race. I think about this a lot. As I gather up the links to all the climate reports and read late into the night, my young daughters asleep in bed, I worry. About their future, and that of my grandchildren, who will surely be born into chaos.

In that context, it’s difficult to sweat details like what place auto enthusiasm has in the dubious future of the human race. After all, what’s the point of cool cars if tropical viruses and megastorms have wiped out the community that loves them?

I’m glad you asked, because I posit an apocalyptic scenario where automotive enthusiasm isn’t just an important player, it’s a crucial tool for survival.

Adaptability is what makes car enthusiasts such a special subspecies of the human race. We lament the looming loss of society as we knew it but see the opportunity to make cool shit happen with our cars. Automotive enthusiasm hasn’t just survived past recessions, social unrest, and conflicts. Curiosity and passion for the machines that move us have continuously given individuals the ability to choose where we’re headed.

This is where we’ll be: in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, dug in a few years after seeking refuge from the chaos on the coasts. The hurricane season now spans from March to November, and the storms have obliterated once-desirable waterfront property. FEMA has abandoned the coastline. In fact, FEMA no longer exists. When everything

AS AN AUTO ENTHUSIAST, YOU ARE PREPARED FOR THE NEW EPOCH.

is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. Society as we knew it no longer exists. The smart, the strong, the people with know-how have restarted their lives inland.

Luckily, that’s you. You were prepared. With the collapse of society came the collapse of vast swaths of heavy industry, which you watched closely. You understand the life cycle of refined and reclaimed fuel. By following the auto industry’s transition to EVs, you have a better-thanyour-neighbor grasp of battery technology and charging infrastructure. You know how to turn a wrench, and because you sweated through a LeMons campaign or two in that distant past when we took for granted convenient refrigeration and municipal sewage, you know how to improvise a repair out of next to nothing.

The first thing you’ve done is move to the UP. It’s one of the few places in the continental United States (will borders still matter?) where the ticking up of a couple of degrees on the thermometer will actually improve the habitat. The winters will eventually become milder—though perhaps not by much—but, crucially, summers won’t be as devastatingly hot as in the lower states. The growing season will start and end earlier. You can buy land for cheap in Schoolcraft County, along the shores of Lake Michigan—an important body of water that isn’t susceptible to the devastating destructive forces of sea-level rise or storm surge that impact the coasts. The fishing is great, the hunting is exceptional, and there’s enough wind and sun for a renewable-energy rig to harvest.

As an auto enthusiast, you are prepared for the new epoch. You have a second-generation Ford F-150 Lightning, an EV with a range of 300 miles, give or take, and a 10,000-pound towing capacity. This pickup with the funky frunk—perhaps a livebait well—is your daily driver. It charges on the grid you maintain, using wind and solar energy that is stored in battery walls in your compound. It also functions as an impromptu power source in case the grid goes down and you need to keep the freezers running on an unseasonably warm November day.

But you also have a Jeep Wrangler equipped with an EcoDiesel V-6, a name that is now somewhat ironic. Sometimes you won’t have all the juice you need to run that Lightning. Sometimes you’ll need the range and reliability of a diesel engine— especially when you’re chasing elk herds up into Ontario or west to the Dakotas.

Your obsession with automotive knowledge now pays dividends. If ever there were a time to lean into alternative fuels, this is it. You can solve the problem of spare parts by picking from discarded vehicles or even making overnight trips to Dearborn to fish through abandoned parts bins.

Back in the 2020s, people debated the catastrophic collapse of our habitat and whether industrialized nations could commit to “transformational change.” No longer. The transformation is now local. For some of us, the future is cloudy. For those who are interested in the how and why of the personal vehicle, there’s still a road to sunshine ahead.

Take the Blue Pill

It’s the year 2222. The day begins like any other. Your favorite treat arrives in the kitchen seconds before you think to order it, a piping-hot pumpkin-spice enema (doctors consider oral intake passé). You kiss the wife and kid goodbye and descend from a magnificent 100-story highrise into the morning bustle.

On the walk to work, the air tastes cool, crisp, clean. There is no smog. You can see for miles down the perfectly aligned city blocks, past the skyscrapers lined up like God’s own dominoes. Clacking heels and laughing schoolchildren fill in the soundscape.

There’s not a single car in sight.

Around 2100, the Alexa Central Government abolished cars. Dearest Leader Bezos, who has clung to life for centuries by harvesting organs from clones of himself, sacrificed the personal motor vehicle to build a cleaner Eden. Then he stamped out the ensuing uproar (you bet Alexa logs your “private” browser’s history). With time, the car became a curiosity, then an affectation, then a museum display.

But reprieve arrived for those who clung to dreams of big-blocks and four-on-the-floor—the Grid. At night, the skyscrapers go dark. Amazon City residents hardwire their brainstems into a neural network that duplicates our consciousness while our bodies rest. In the time we’d otherwise spend snoring, our consciousness is free. Our minds are lucid. We dream without limit.

One night you swing a chair up next to author Gay Talese at Elaine’s on Second Avenue. Maybe you orbit the planet in a Mercury capsule. If you’re like me, you spend most nights trying to put a

BY KYLE KINARD

pass on Schumacher in Monza’s Curva Parabolica. When Schumi boots you out of the corner and your Benetton catches fire, you simply go again.

Another night, you run pit strategy at Le Mans in the rain. Or maybe you screw together your perfect ’68 911 R clone—sans mufflers or emissions equipment—in some pristine monastic temple of a garage. Then you loose your creation on every switchback-heavy mountain pass in Europe without another soul in sight, taking in the cool mountain air while the flat-six yawps loud enough to make your vision blur.

Then you wake, fully rested. Outside the metropolis, the landscape is pristine and untouched, with only sawing crickets and the whistling wind for company. Earth is beautiful, and our baser desires are sated digitally, in full resolution.

If this all sounds like some bizarro-Matrix scenario, removed entirely from plausibility, consider the path we’re on. The Grid’s rhythm between night and day already mirrors the life of most young American males—daytime drudgery tem pered by long nights chasing digital glory.

Consider the state of our planet, too.

With a population cresting 8 billion, we’re producing more waste than we can reasonably handle. Here in Seattle, I’m regularly breathing smog that wafts over from cities in China. Much of the overflow stems from activities we don’t need for survival but that wash our lizard brains in dopamine—eating brisket, buying new sneakers, driving sports cars. We can’t sustain this course. But what if we could live cleanly and still get those hits of joy?

An angry reader is about to slam this magazine shut and fire off a letter to my boss that says,

“A future without cars?! By golly, the editors of Road & Track don’t even like cars anymore!” Stop and take a deep breath. Save your ink. I’ve spilled as much knuckle blood over the top of an engine block as any other shade-tree grunt.

Whether or not the world of my ramblings ever materializes, one thing is clear: The future is clearly intent on cleaving us from the cars we love. If the suits have their way, we’ll have little choice in the matter.

But hypothetically, if I had to give up my truck for that untouched fly-fishing spot in Montana, the one with the crooked river and the trout smarter than your poodle, well . . . would I do it? Would I miss taking in the wide sunrise through the dusty windshield of my pickup, a warm mug of coffee beating back the cool morning air on the drive out there? You bet.

I’m a car guy, sure, but also a naturalist. Those identities feel inseparable sometimes, usually when I’m sleeping in a truck bed under a blanket of shooting stars. But, especially recently, I’ve been thinking more about the way we live in relation to the places I love.

Does that make the Grid truly a best-case scenario? Of course not. But a perfect future where we fish pristine rivers and throw catalytic converters into the ocean for sport isn’t feasible either. Maybe our future can’t offer perfect compromise. Or maybe we’ll strike the right balance between age-old thrills and responsibility to Mother Earth.

If we can’t find a way to preserve what’s real, a digitized future beckons. I hope we consider where we’re going before it’s too late to turn back.

ON

BY JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,” Ben Franklin wrote in a 1755 letter to the Pennsylvania colonial governor, “deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The context of that letter may not be so relevant 266 years later, but the principles remain. What matters about the future isn’t technology (that’s just the sea we all swim in)—it’s the principles we live by. Cars and the culture that has arisen around them in the U.S. have thrived because of our collective commitment to liberty. And our recognition of the limitations of chasing safety.

Get in your car, point it in any direction, and go wherever you’d like. Most likely no one will stop you until you hit the Mexican or Canadian border. Or get stuck in the sand trying to drive into the Pacific or the Atlantic. You’ll never have to show a passport or a transit permit. There are about 168,000 gas stations strewn across the nation, and most of them sell snacks too. Sleepy? Stop at one of more than 54,200 hotels. Or park your car and conk out in a Walmart parking lot. There are more than 5000 of those.

There was no central plan for how the United States developed. No shadowy government agency decided where Cracker Barrel should locate its 664 restaurants. Sears and Kmart are dying because they can’t attract customers, not due to a Department of Commerce edict. The interstate highway system has proved its worth, but most of America’s best parts (and worst) were developed ad hoc and chaotically. It’s how we get things done here.

I don’t want that to change. A centrally planned future would be built by political diktat with greased

THE FUTURE I CRAVE INCLUDES PEOPLE BUTCHERING OLD CARS IN THEIR GARAGES.

palms and sublimated agendas determining most everything. A market economy is frantic, unsettled, always on the verge of anarchy. Consumers who usually don’t think much about what they’re buying or dismissing ruthlessly choose winners and losers. The market is often cruel but mostly oblivious. It still beats the alternative.

The automotive future I crave includes people butchering old cars in their garages. Fusion reactors in old Ford Fairmonts? Hell yes! Drag racers built from scavenged Tesla parts shoved into a Chevrolet Chevette? Someone somewhere in this country is probably already doing it.

Variety should persist with new types of vehicles. Sedans are already dying. I’m eager to find out what kills off the crossovers. Ferraris will thrill several more generations, Porsches can become ever more sophisticated, and I’m counting on another century of Corvettes, Mustangs, and Challengers. How they work is beside the point. What matters is that the buffet goes on.

I want our temples of speed to remain dedicated to the rhythm of racing. February NASCAR in Daytona, Gatornationals drag races in March, the Long Beach circuit in April, the Indy 500 in May. I don’t care whether the racing machines are powered by gas, electrons, or balls of compressed photons. What I care about are daring drives, innovative jury-rigging, and continuing intrigue. I want some kid now at Harvey Mudd or Georgia Tech or Purdue to exceed their own engineering ambitions on racetracks. I want the next Tony Stewart to be so great that we forget about Tony Stewart. I don’t want cheating stamped out; I want cheats too brilliant to get caught.

There’s always a temptation to be fatalistic. As we grow older, the world can seem ever more doomed. But fear and dread are lousy ways to confront the future. If there’s a post-carbon world to come, it will emerge from the minds of people optimistic enough to think they can tackle challenges. And they’ll get absurdly rich because they believed in their ideas while the rest of us thought they were nuts.

Of course, I want to minimize grinding commutes and open up a congested world. But that can’t be mandated, only innovated.

I will fight people who would regulate cars into undifferentiated travel pods. Contactless food delivery and online shopping are great. But let’s not blithely provide records of all our travels to Silicon Valley. Or register the distances we cover so we can be taxed by the mile. Videoconferencing is convenient, but let’s bring back the clandestine rendezvous too.

Within two blocks of where I sit, there’s a 702-hp Ram TRX for sale carrying a price tag $25,000 over MSRP. Next to that dealership is a Tesla store with a 1020-hp Model S Plaid on the showroom floor. Then there’s the Ford shop next door with a couple of new Broncos in its inventory. Those aren’t leaving at sticker either. Let’s keep this fever going no matter what technology arises.

I know the principles upon which I want the future built. I want technology to serve those, not crush them.

And I want a future where every town has a place with clean, enormous bathrooms at least as good as those at the Buc-ees in Baytown, Texas.

In

future, what happens to the world of collecting and preserving cars of the past?

VALUE

BY A.J. BAIME

hink about the big-name car collections. The Collezione Umberto Panini in Modena, Italy. The Revs Institute in Naples, Florida. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Now consider the real heart and soul of connoisseurship— the smaller collectors, like Hank Davis, owner of Hank’s Garage in Bucyrus, Ohio, with his 14 Edsels, or Robert Lederer, owner of Chicago Parts & Sound, whose cars you see pictured here.

Now imagine all that machinery left to rot.

From the talk we heard at Monterey Car Week in August, it seems the car-collector world is facing a crisis. Future generations won’t care about vintage vehicles. The internal-combustion engine will be legislated off the road. The values of prized cars will plummet.

Can that be true? Road & Track spoke with some big thinkers in the collector world to try to see into the future of vintage automobiles. Their view is not nearly as dire as the whispers we’ve heard.

Three conclusions stand out. First: Early automobiles will be viewed like fine art—celebrated, perhaps not frequently driven, museum items.

“What the automobile has done for personal freedom of mobility is epic,” says Bruce Meyer, the founding chairman of the Petersen. “There will always be a need to tell that important story.”

Second: “The concours phenomenon will get more exciting,” says Ed Welburn, a Pebble Beach judge and former head of global design at General Motors. “The classic cars of today will still be there, but there will be so much new that we haven’t even seen yet that will be considered classic someday.”

Finally, and most reassuring: There will always be passionate car fans. “Why do people collect Rembrandts and Picassos? Because they are true works of art,” says Ken Gross, vintage-car expert and author of countless automotive articles and books. “The same thing can be said about any number of automobiles of the past.”

A. (Previous pages)

The eclectic Robert Lederer collection in Chicago spans the entire motoring age and exemplifies the need for specialized caretaking skills.

B. As classic cars grow older, their value is tied less to their function and more to their elegance and style. But can that alone keep car collecting alive?

Author of the new book The Archaeological Automobile. Founder of the Revs Institute, one of the world’s most important car collections and an archive for research and historical study.

Car fans of today fear that future generations won’t value classic cars the way we do. Do you think that’s true?

There are literally millions of automobiles in the world that their owners define as being “classics” and “collector cars.” I think those will perseverate out there in the environment, at least some significant percentage of them. So the classic car will always be around. The next generation is interested in automobiles—on their terms. We shouldn’t judge how they are interested on our terms. The tuner culture, the drifting culture, lowriders—all of them are ways that various demographics have found to interact with the automobile. That is not going to change.

Are there new cars today that will become this generation’s Gullwings or Ferrari GTOs?

There’s a fundamental problem with that question. Will cars made today even be operable in 20 years? The automobile is the single fastest-growing platform for computing power. So like an iPhone, it’s capable of fantastic feats of technological virtuosity. But it’s unfixable and unmodifiable. The only way we can advance is to junk the one we have and get a new one, like we do with our phones. So it’s going to be hard for most cars of today to occupy that place in our hearts and minds that older cars have for many people. The good news is that older cars may ultimately be recognized as coming from the golden age of the collectible automobile, and that will always attract people.

Will future generations have the skills needed to restore and care for antique cars?

That is the big question. At the level of basic technology, the relatively simple things, the answer is yes. If we look at the portfolio of skills necessary as

MILES COLLIER

we move toward the more esoteric, such as authentic coach painting, the building and maintenance of wooden wheels, the servicing of early-generation Lucas fuel injectors, those kinds of things? The problem becomes more difficult. That, however, is one of the inflection points where the Revs Institute can move the needle. For those skills to last, we need master classes, technicians in residence, dedicated training in these esoteric skills. That is and will continue to be part of the Revs Institute’s mission.

Many collectors today fear that future generations won’t value classics monetarily the way we do now. They worry the bottom could fall out of the market. Your thoughts?

The way to think about this is to look at analogues.

We can consider the world of fine art or antiquities. What do we see in these fields? In every instance, the very rare, the very special, the extraordinary objects over time continue to set new highs. Yes, macro economic factors can depress a whole sector. We see prices move cyclically. But the bottom line is, those extraordinary cars that reflect all that is great in the human mind and spirit will continue to appreciate. There will always be cars for different purses and purposes, and cars that are not as expensive that are equally engaging. But there will always be an elite group that are enormously valuable.

In your new book, The Archaeological Automobile, there’s a chapter about the archaeology of the future. Tell us what that means.

We should think of the automobile as a paradigm of other disruptive technologies that we are being faced with now and will be in the future. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering—these are disruptive technologies that will change society enormously, just as the automobile did in the 20th century. The paradigm for what new disruptive technologies will do in the future is the auto mobile of the past.

B

As car fans, we hear people say younger generations just aren’t interested the way we are. Is that true? What can we do about it?

Maybe the worst thing we can do is try to persuade young people to be interested in cars. They need to discover it on their own and create their own new chapter, which might be something very different from how we perceive things today. We have to embrace that.

Another criticism says that kids today think of cars as appliances. Do you agree?

I’ve always thought of cars as an extension of your personality, or like your outermost layer of clothing. There’s an emotional connection between the vehicle and the driver. People talk about a vehicle as if it has a personality, because it does. It has characteristics, performance, luxury. All of that makes it a living and breathing thing that you interact with. You can’t say that about a refrigerator. Vehicles will change in many ways in the future, but that won’t.

You have been hugely influential in the Corvette world. What generation will increase most in value in the future?

The C3 was very exciting when it came out. It was like a spaceship. Then the enthusiasm went away

for a while. Low horsepower sort of tainted it. But for a whole group of people now in their thirties and forties, C3 is their favorite generation. I think it will stand out as one of the stars of Corvette in the future as that age group becomes more influential.

What other sectors of vintage cars do you think the next generation will really embrace?

One area that I think will create movement in the future is the luxury cars of the Sixties—the Riviera, the Eldorado, the Continental. I think they will become more collectible. They are now but will become more so.

You were heavily involved in the design of the C8. It was a massive leap of faith to put the horse behind the carriage. Will it be considered a classic Vette in the future or not a Vette at all?

I have been reading articles and headlines since the Sixties about mid-engine Corvettes. There were concepts and prototypes over the years. That jump to mid-engine in the production car was a huge deal, because you had a loyal fanbase who loved their front-engine cars. But I believe the C8 will be highly sought after in the future. It presents something really new while maintaining the original DNA that made it an icon in the first place. Low-volume production is important too. For all the reasons that cars become classic, the C8 will be a classic for future generations.

THE DESIGN ICON ED WELBURN

NONNENBERG

Co-founder and CEO of the auction site Bring a Trailer, which is, like Road & Track, part of Hearst Autos.

Why do you think it’s important for the next generation to get involved in the vintage-car scene?

So much of what we do today is digital and found on screens, and our kids spend too much time staring at screens and living vicariously through watching others. That is not good for the soul. With old cars, the analog technology makes you engage. They give you the opportunity to have your own adventures. If your Tesla breaks down on the side of the road, what do you do? You call SOS. But if your old car breaks, you can fix it and feel like you have accomplished something. And that is a forever thing that transfers to other problem-solving skills.

Bring a Trailer has gotten younger people involved in the hobby. Was that your intention?

I think of Bring a Trailer as a good entry point for young people to get involved in a lifelong passion. When I co-founded it, I was 29. Nobody in print or online was talking about the sales of cars that I liked— cheap stuff. I wanted to engage but didn’t have much money. I needed obtainable stuff, the four-by-fours and Datsuns and project BMWs. That has been in the Bring a Trailer DNA from the start, and it has resonated with a huge number of younger people.

Are there any cars being built today that will be thought of in the future as the Gullwing of our current era?

A Gullwing in its day was exotic and expensive. There’s crazy stuff on the high end of the spectrum today—the Ford GT, some Lambos—that people are going to buy and bubble wrap and put no miles on. Twenty years from now, they will auction them for a ton of money. But what interests me more are the collectible cars that normal people can afford: a Ford Raptor, a Subaru STI. Porsche has done a great job creating specialedition cars and colors, even on its lower-end models. I think all of those cars will be relevant in the future because they will be rare finds if kept in good condition.

Do you think it’s possible that someday gaspowered cars will be legislated off the road?

Probably. But if that happens, it will be pretty far down the road. The question is, what does that mean for collectors? It will obviously be a shame if you’ve got a 1966 Mustang in your garage and you can’t drive it. I think if that happens, it will be outside our lifetime, but sooner in crowded urban areas. The use of old cars may get narrower in the future, but it will still be fun for people who find a way. The enthusiast crowd will always find a way.

Former head of global design at General Motors. Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance judge.

B

A. Vintage race cars present a particular challenge: Better to preserve them as raced or recondition them to brand-new?

In different eras, each approach has been embraced.

B. The Robert Lederer collection has its own restoration shop.

“We do work for others as well as ourselves,” Lederer says, “as there are so few specialists left doing this type of work.”

THE NEXT GEN DAVID PHILLIPS

Twenty-six-year-old caretaker of the Lederer collection in Chicago, which is pictured in this story. Graduate of the McPherson College automotiverestoration program, the nation’s only Bachelor of Arts degree in car restoration. Owner and racer of a 1934 British Salmson.

Do you think your generation has the same kind of passion for automobiles that your father’s did? Absolutely. Being one of these younger guys, I’d say it is very much alive and well in my generation. But the young people have different interests. It’s not the same kinds of cars that the older generations associate with. I’ve had my Chevelle since I was 14. I would go to car meets at 3 a.m., and there’d be 400 or 500 cars there, and they were all kids with their Toyotas and Hondas and Acuras. They’re having fun with cars the same way my dad did when he was my age with his 1969 Camaro. These kids love drifting the way that, 40 years ago, kids loved drag-racing. The passion has changed, but I hav en’t seen evidence that it’s shrinking.

Will there be, in the future, people with skills to care for vintage collections like the one you work on?

Look at it this way: McPherson takes 50 students per year in the automotive-restoration program. Some people drop out. So you’ve got, at most, 50 people entering the world of automotive restoration each year with a college degree in this field. How many of those, for example, might have a specialty in Brass Era cars, like the 1910 Peerless in the collection I work on? Very few. It’s a little frightening.

What should be done to make sure coming generations assume responsibility for the care taking of old cars and collections?

The hardest part is blending these worlds and exposing young people to these cars. Because they don’t see them at their local cruises. Tracks like Autobahn in Illinois and Grattan in Michigan have drifting events, and they have vintage racing events, but never at the same time. So kids aren’t exposed to these old cars. There’s a communication gap. Some concours are starting to experiment. For example, I was at the Keeneland Concours a couple of years ago, and for the first time at a major concours, there was a tuner class. You had all these kids with their cars being judged, while at the same time I was there with a big Packard. That’s progress.

A

A. Classic sports cars easily make their way into collectors’ garages. Will the mundane commuter pods of the 21st century ever get this treatment?

B. The generation that designed, built, and maintained these cars is long gone. Cultivating a new crop of experts to preserve them is the collector world’s biggest challenge.

BEHOLD! Your Electric Future…

New industry, classic grift.

In Tesla’s wake, a crop of electric-car start-ups got huge buzz and major investments based on embellishment, exaggeration, and flat-out lies—and withered before they could build a single car.

has a dark side

BY JAMIE KITMAN

T

True believers always imagine that a new technology will lead to an explosion of human cre ativity, corporate transparency, and personal freedom. The mighty success of Elon Musk’s Tesla has many fantasizing that the automobile industry’s future will be different and more high-toned than its often sordid past. But many of the key building blocks of internally combusted automotive history—from wishful thinking to deceit and fraud— remain as the brave new electric world arrives.

At the turn of the 20th century, hopeful makers of the newfangled automobile sprang up seemingly by the thousands. The majority, overhyped and undercapitalized, were headed for failure. While investors big and small piled in, baldfaced bounders and stock-market swindlers competed with well-meaning but misguided venturers for the money. Distress sell-offs and crash-and-burn bankruptcies became the rule, not the exception.

Proving that everything old is new again, just as the successes of industry pioneers like Henry Ford, Billy Durant, and Ransom Olds emboldened myriad others to try their hand, today many endeavor to follow in Musk’s staggeringly wealthy footsteps. Whatever you think of him or his automobiles, Musk has moved the EV game forward. Indeed, the market adjudges Tesla the world’s most valuable car company—worth as much as the next six largest carmakers combined. True, Tesla is in the habit of overpromising. In particular, the name of the company’s semi-autonomous driving function, Autopilot, suggests the cars have full self-driving capability, which they plainly do not. But still, Tesla has delivered far more than most expected. And Tesla is tech. And tech is where wild overvaluations rule, as any denizen of the heavy industry that is the automobile business looking at their own pitiful market cap can grumpily admit. And when judged by the standard of tech and the future-focused metrics of Silicon Valley, Tesla’s success has been more justified than many and longer lived.

Others haven’t been as lucky. Let’s consider a few examples.

Take Nikola. Please. The start-up promised to revolutionize the world of over-the-road trucking, with a Class 8 battery-powered tractor. Investors were titillated, especially after General Motors announced plans to take an 11 percent ownership stake, a $2 billion exchange announced with great fanfare in September 2020 that would have seen GM engineering and assembling the Phoenix startup’s Badger electric and hydrogen fuel-cell pickups as well as providing fuel-cell and battery technology for the revolutionary heavy trucks Nikola envisioned.

As an EV start-up in the Tesla era, Nikola’s already buoyant shares skyrocketed 32 percent to $46.95 when news of the proposed association broke. And GM shares, adrift in the doldrums like the rest of the smokestack industry’s, perked up nearly 6 percent to $31.79.

Illustrating the downside of this particular EV start-up, however, Nikola founder Trevor Milton, who’d become an overnight paper billionaire riding his cache of Nikola shares, resigned suddenly that same month, shortly after the investment research firm Hindenburg Research accused his company of perpetrating an “intricate fraud” that involved telling an “ocean of lies.”

Nikola’s shares immediately dipped 8 percent, and soon GM (hadn’t this sophisticated investor asked to see the magic behind Nikola’s curtain?) pulled the plug on its deal. In July 2021, Milton— who, not coincidentally, adopted the long-deceased electricity pioneer Tesla’s first name as his company’s own—was indicted by the Department of Justice for making false and misleading statements to investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission also leveled similar fraud charges. The government has alleged that between November 2019 and September 2020, Milton “lied about nearly every aspect” of Nikola’s business during an extensive series of TV and podcast appearances, all in a quest to become one of the richest people in the world without selling a single truck. His bond, secured in part by posting two Utah properties, at least one of which was recently purchased, was set at $100 million. “Milton sold a version of Nikola not as it was—an early-stage company with a novel idea to commercialize yet-to-be proven products and technology—but rather as a trail-blazing company that had already achieved many ground-breaking and game-changing milestones,” the SEC’s complaint reads. Among other allegations of rank falsehood:

• Nikola claimed to have a “fully functioning” semi-truck prototype when Milton knew its proto type was inoperable.

• Nikola’s electric- and hydrogen-powered Badger pickup was not engineered from the “ground up” with Nikola parts and technology.

• Despite Nikola’s claims that it was producing its own hydrogen at lower-than-market prices,

“no hydrogen was being produced at all by Nikola, at any cost.”

• Nikola was not, as claimed, producing key componentry and batteries in-house but rather buying them from third parties.

• Nikola did not have billions of dollars’ worth of binding orders, as it insisted, but rather held reservations that could be canceled at any time “for a truck that Nikola had no intent to produce in the near-term.”

Milton and his attorneys deny the charges. By comparison, the products of earlier scandalplagued entrepreneurs—Preston Tucker’s 48 in the late Forties, Liz Carmichael’s Dale three-wheeler in the Seventies, and John De Lorean’s ethical sports car, the DMC-12 (a more credible car but a colossal business failure), in the early Eighties—seem fully realized machines.

But Milton hasn’t been convicted of anything (yet), and he remains the company’s largest share holder. What’s more, in a further proof of the indefatigable human spirit, in September 2021, the

FROM ABOVE): MASSIMO PINCA/REUTERS/NEWSCOM, COURTESY

MOTOR, COURTESY NIKOLA MOTOR, ROGER RESSMEYER/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES

D

A. Nikola CEO and founder Trevor Milton extolling the virtues of the company’s truck in 2019.

B. The Nikola Badger pickup was to be built by General Motors. When GM backed out of that part of the agreement, the Badger died.

C. Two examples of the Nikola Two fuel-cell electric vehicle that the company says will hit the market in 2024.

D. His saga might have ended in legal drama and humiliation, but at least John Z. De Lorean managed to actually build about 9000 cars.

A. Liz Carmichael with a model of the Dale three-wheeler. Her criminal convictions are the least surprising part of her story, which is detailed in the HBO documentary The Lady and the Dale

B. The Endurance is Lordstown Motors’ entry into the bloated field of promised electric pickups.

C. Taking over a shuttered GM plant in eastern Ohio, Lords town Motors fed hopes of an economic turnaround.

D. The handsome M-Byte electric SUV was to be the first product of the Chinese start-up Byton. It’s now likely that Byton will never build a single vehicle.

A B

PHOTOGRAPHS (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT): COLIN DANGAARD/COURTESY HBO, COURTESY BYTON, MEGAN JELINGER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, MEGAN JELINGER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES,

down-but-not-out Nikola announced plans to purchase hydrogen fuel cells from Germany’s Bosch Group, with final assembly and installation in regional and long-distance trucks to take place at the would-be truckmaker’s plant in Coolidge, Arizona. Bosch itself has been implicated in the Volkswagen “clean” diesel scandal and subsequent emissions lawsuits brought against Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (now Stellantis), BMW, Mercedes, GM, Ford, and others.

So that’s one model for today’s carmaker who wants to get rich quickly. Call it the American plan—big, bold, likely untrue, and enabled by an obscure vehicle called a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A shell company, in essence, a SPAC is set up by a group of investors (typically institutional) with the sole purpose of acquiring an existing company. The SPAC’s creators may tell the public at the outset which company they hope to acquire, but this isn’t legally required. Crucially, unlike the more traditional IPO (ini tial public offering) that private companies use

to raise money by selling their shares to the public, the reporting and disclosure requirements for SPACs are slight, satisfied more quickly, and often overlooked, with investors’ trust in the financial vehicles’ assemblers—or their hunch about the new company being acquired—counting for everything.

But there is an even bigger difference, as Reilly Brennan, a general partner at Trucks Venture Capital, an investment firm, explained to Road & Track. The entities that launch the SPAC are “effectively the financial shell. You form a SPAC and you take it public, saying, ‘I need $500 million now. Now, there’s no business inside [the SPAC], but I just want the $500 million. And once I have the money, I’m going to go out and start shopping for private companies that I’m going to buy, then merge with.’ And then effectively that company will be public. So you could start a SPAC and say, ‘I’m going to look for companies in automobiles, blue jeans, and healthcare. And before 24 months from now is up, I will have picked a company, merged with it, and it’s going to be great. Just trust me.’

“That’s why sometimes it’s called a reverse merger, because it’s putting the cart before the horse—you’re going public first, then finding the company. And these actually aren’t new to Wall Street; it’s just that SPACs have become more in vogue and are just indicative of the era. So I think when we look back on this, much like when we look back on the era of auto-tune, there’s just a lot of companies in this era that will have SPACs. Not all the companies with SPACs are bad companies, but SPACs give this one unusual feature to the business-model evaluation, which is different from IPOs: You can project five years out.

“An IPO says, ‘Here’s what I’ve done in the previous five years. Here’s my track record. Now, please, can I go public?’ SPACs do it the opposite way. They say, ‘Here’s a company we might merge with, it’s private, and here’s their projection for what they’re going to be able to do in the next five years.’ Anybody can imagine, given that contrast, there’s a lot of wiggle room for the people who state their fiveyear projections, many of which I don’t think would withstand much cross-examination. So SPAC sponsors have brought some of these companies to market that maybe shouldn’t be public.”

Toyota pickup with a secondhand Nissan Leaf motor swapped in. The subject itself of an SEC investigation, Lordstown—which counts General Motors, with 7.5 million shares, as a notably large shareholder—has been accused (like Nikola) of overstating the solidness of its orders for its pickup, ironically dubbed the Endurance. Once again, it seems, the General has stepped on his tie.

No stranger to SPACs, Lordstown Motors founder Steve Burns had previously launched another electric-truck start-up called Workhorse. It will probably be remembered most for its bid to supply the U.S. Postal Service with electric vans—a failed effort that caused it to quickly shed $2 billion in share value—and the cantankerous lawsuit it filed against the USPS, since withdrawn, when it lost.

Another gambit out there is one that swept China—not overpromising on what a company will deliver but rather lying about what it already has. In the world’s most populous nation, lavish gov ernment subsidies have led several manufacturers to overstate their EV sales, sometimes wildly, to accumulate government incentives. The Chinese government has sought to curtail this practice.

One casualty of the clampdown might be the start-up Byton, whose M-Byte electric SUV— revealed at Frankfurt in 2019, with production slated to begin in 2020—has gone off the rails with its maker. After a seemingly bacon-saving deal in early 2021 with Foxconn, assembler of iPhones, to bring the M-Byte to production fizzled, Byton was reorganized. Control has now fallen to China’s FAW Group, an established manufacturer of cars, trucks, and buses. Now Byton may never happen.

D

That could be an understatement. Among SPAC-titioners that have come a cropper is Lords town Motors, which promised to be supplying Americans with electrified versions of the big ol’ pickups they love, to be built in General Motors’ old Lordstown plant and on sale by September 2021. Hopes were high in the once-prosperous, high-unemployment Ohio area. But it hasn’t come to pass. The hastily organized, SPAC-fueled company notched a high-profile failure in early 2021, when a prototype being tested in Michigan burned up, and another when a preproduction vehicle in a 243-mile Baja EV race failed after only 40 miles. It had been outperformed by an ancient

To be fair, that type of good old-fashioned lie about what you did do—as opposed to what you will do—is available not just to grifting electric carmakers. Stellantis predecessor FCA got busted for it as recently as 2019, when it was fined $40 million for inflating sales reports in a scheme that involved paying dealers to overstate their volume for the appearance of an unbroken string of consecutive monthly sales gains with the intention of ginning the share price. Caught red-handed, it was forced to restate five and half years of sales figures. And the day after the fine was levied, FCA agreed to pay a civil penalty for covering up its diesel emissions à la Volkswagen. More recently, such conduct has seen federal criminal charges filed against FCA’s successor corporation, Stellantis. FCA had already agreed (in 2020) to fork over $9.5 million in civil penalties to the SEC for misleading investors about the diesel-emissions scandal.

So in the end, two takeaways stand out. First, while cars and their underlying technology may change, the act of fudging the truth in service of financial gain is a durable through line; elec tric propulsion has changed nothing. And second, if you’re an EV start-up with a charismatic blowhard at the helm and a SPAC to peddle, call General Motors.

A look back at five vehicles from the last half-century that predicted (or defined)the current automotive landscape.

Lamborghini Countach

That the Piedmontese word countach translates roughly to “holy shit!” tells you all you need to know about the impact of this quintessential Lamborghini. Unlike earlier supercars, whose sensuousness was often compared to reclining nudes, designer Marcello Gandini’s brutal masterwork looks more like a deadly weapon, a flying ax-head. This is the Countach’s legacy: It defined a level of outrageousness against which all future supercars would be judged. But the Countach itself is defined by its mechanical packaging. Mounting the radiators at the sides meant the nose could plunge to a honed edge. The huge, longitudinally oriented V-12 faced rearward, its transmission pointed toward the front, centralizing the car’s weight and pushing the passenger compartment forward, inverting the typical sports-car proportions. Also, in the post-Countach era, a supercar without silly-opening doors is no supercar at all.

1976 COUNTACH LP400 “PERISCOPIO” COURTESY OF CANEPA

Range Rover

There were a few fancy sport-utility vehicles before the Range Rover. In fact, gilded and wood-paneled versions of the Jeep Wagoneer existed long before the term “sport-utility vehicle.” But the Range Rover, which officially arrived in the U.S. for 1987, was the first real snob-utility vehicle. Land Rover has held five royal warrants, after all. No vehicle in that market combined European appeal, genu ine off-road ability, and clean, spare styling quite like the Range Rover. But the Range Rover, particularly the first-generation version, wasn’t a luxury vehicle. It was a premium vehicle, the first example of what would become known as a “lifestyle car.” It paved the road that Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Porsche, Maserati, and virtually every other high-end automaker would travel over the following decades.

1987 RANGE ROVER COURTESY OF JAGUAR LAND ROVER

Mini

For its tiny dimensions, the original Mini carries an absurd amount of cultural weight. Consider this: From an engineering standpoint, the Mini is vastly more influential than the Volkswagen Beetle. Just look at any generation of the Beetle’s successor, the Golf (specifically, the GTI): tidy, understated body; transversely mounted four-cylinder; front-wheel drive; irrepressible joie de vivre. Even today’s GTI is a modern projection of the paradigm defined by the Mini Cooper S seen here. And it’s not just VW: The Mini’s basic layout has become the standard for nearly every passenger car in the ensuing decades. Only, most of the vehicles that follow that basic pattern still fail to meet the space and efficiency goals designer Alec Issigonis set for the original Mini—a full 80 percent of the car’s overall space is dedicated to its passengers. And there isn’t another automobile that transcended the budget-car realm to become such an icon.

1967 AUSTIN MINI COOPER S COURTESY OF RUDY AND CAT OUZOUNIAN

What is the oft-derided left-lane lounger of the Aughts doing in these pages? The first-gen Prius might not be typical of the cars we normally feature. But it was the first mainstream car to success fully introduce electrification to everyday buyers, launching a movement that dominates today’s auto industry. With its awkward stance, gawky proportions, and alien details, the Prius was never a triumph of design. But its hybrid powertrain and distinctive look made it an obvious badge of environmental consciousness. Hybrid-powered cars may prove to be a transitional step on the road to EV dominance, but the Prius catalyzed that movement. And watching the Leonardo DiCaprios of the world flock to a nerdy, budget-minded Toyota certainly inspired other automakers: Without the Prius, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Tesla.

2000 PRIUS COURTESY OF TOYOTA MOTOR SALES

Toyota Prius

Porsche

If one vehicle could stand as the blueprint for nearly every modern-day supercar, it would be the Porsche 959. It was all here, way back in 1986: programmable all-wheel drive, electronically controlled dampers with adjustable ride height, a twin-turbocharged engine, and a body made of cutting-edge lightweight materials. (To date, though, nobody else has adopted the rear-mounted horizontally opposed engine.) The 959 defined a technical test-bed approach to high performance— a paradigm shift in an era when most top-tier performance cars were merely detuned versions of a company’s racing machines. The Porsche 918 Spyder, the Nissan GT-R, the Bugatti Veyron, the Ferrari SF90 Stradale—they all share a common ancestor in the Porsche 959.

1992 959 COURTESY OF CANEPA

HERE COMES THE SUN

AMONG GREEN-CAR ENTHUSIASTS, THE SOLAR-POWERED APTERA MIGHT BE THE MOST ANTICIPATED VEHICLE IN THE WORLD. WILL IT EVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY?

Chris Anthony, co-founder and co-CEO of Aptera, is sitting at a desk talking loudly over the sound of grinding metal coming from just beyond his office door. We are in Aptera’s San Diego headquarters, and it’s exactly the kind of frenzied atmosphere expected for a tech start-up circa 2021. A few yards from where we are sitting, rows of youthful engineers (most recruited from the aerospace sector) stare intently into computer screens. Others are fabricating bits using machinery that defies identification. Behind Anthony, a whiteboard running the length of the room is covered in mathematical equations that look like they would stymie Einstein.

“The mission is to create the most efficient product in history,” Anthony says, “not just auto motive product, but any product. Usually, a company starts with a segment. Say, ‘We want to build the greatest sports car in history’ or the greatest anything. Nobody has ever tackled transportation strictly from the viewpoint of efficiency, above all else, from the ground up. So you do a hell of a lot of math.” You study fluid dynamics and shed any preconceptions about what an automobile should be. “You end up with something that looks very different from what people are used to,” he says.

At this moment, three Aptera prototypes sit inside the shop, two complete and a third on its

way. The two completed vehicles are distinctly anthropomorphic, according to Sarah Hardwick, Aptera’s chief marketing officer. There’s Noir (painted black), who Hardwick says is sexy and badass. There’s the ivory-white Sol, whose personality is more about earth consciousness. Sol is the one we will be cruising in this afternoon.

It resembles an airplane more than a car. In fact, the company’s name means “wingless” in ancient Greek. The most frequently asked question from people who see the vehicle: Does it fly?

Aptera’s goal is ambitious, audacious, and awesome: a solar electric vehicle that requires no charging for most daily use but can be plugged in to reach a claimed 1000-mile range. Covered in mostly inconspicuous solar panels, it can deliver about 40 miles’ worth of sun-powered driving per day. Most drivers could get through a workweek on free solar miles.

Skeptics are justifiably dubious, but Aptera has attracted an impressive fan base. Already, it claims more than 12,000 orders. Hardwick says Aptera is building not a company but “a movement.” The events about to unfold on this very afternoon will suggest she is right.

The quest to build a solar car dates to 1955, when an inventor working for General Motors created the Sunmobile. It worked nicely, but it was only 15

inches long. In 1980, Israeli engineers built one of the first full-scale solar cars. Then came the World Solar Challenge, a contest for solar-powered cars that resulted in some engineering triumphs but nothing resembling a production car. In recent years, major automakers have toyed with the idea, but none have succeeded.

Aptera didn’t start with any existing platform, the way traditional auto companies often would. From day one, the founders came at the problem with a clear mission and a passion for radicalism.

Co-founders and friends Steve Fambro and Chris Anthony began pursuing their dreams in 2005. Both had recently cashed out of other businesses. Anthony sold a boat company called Epic Boats and had also founded a lithium-battery company, while Fambro had been working with a biotech outfit called Illumina, making robots that made DNA materials for lab researchers. Neither had an automotive background; Anthony comes from finance, and Fambro from electrical engineering. The idea was to completely reimagine what a car could be.

Analyzing the fluid dynamics of an average car shape, they concluded that 60 percent of the energy is used just pushing air out of the way at highway speeds. So, a car shape that theoretically brought drag coefficient down to zero would instantly be that much more efficient. They developed a shape

A. (Previous pages) Sol, Aptera’s solar-powered front-wheel-drive autocycle prototype, out on a test drive in San Diego.

B. Aptera founders and co-CEOs Chris Anthony (left) and Steve Fambro at the start-up’s headquarters. Neither comes from an automotive background.

C. The vehicle’s small electric motors are housed inside the wheels, and flexible solar panels are built into the body.

B C

they believed would generate almost no resistance. They made a small model using Play-Doh and toothpicks, then sent it to a computer-aided design (CAD) specialist. The resulting CAD files were shipped to NASA.

“It cost us $17,000 for NASA to do this study,” Anthony recalls, “which was a little ridiculous because we had no company. It was just me and Steve, and we had to write that check.”

NASA ultimately verified the duo’s intel. Anthony and Fambro thought they had come up with an idea that would sell itself and could change the world. With his background in finance, Anthony raised capital. By 2008, they had a fullscale prototype, the Aptera Typ-1, a three-wheeler with a striking form that drew tremendous publicity. Popular Mechanics wrote: “The Aptera Typ-1 might look like something straight out of George Jetson’s garage, but it’s a real car. And it’s a real look at our possible future when it comes to emissions-free transportation.” The Aptera even got a cameo role in the 2009 Star Trek movie.

But now the company had to manufacture the thing. “We had a board of directors,” Anthony says, “and they wanted to get really aggressive with growth rates. They said, ‘You know who knows high-volume production? These Detroit guys.’”

Aptera was hiring young California-based

engineers, and when the Detroit guys came in, it was oil and water. But the real problem was that in 2009, the world wasn’t ready for this kind of car. The battery technology wasn’t there. The solar technology didn’t exist. The wheels fell off this venture quickly, and it was liquidated in 2011.

Then something interesting happened. In 2019, Anthony and Fambro relaunched Aptera. “Because of the pace of battery and solar advances,” Anthony says, “now we are able to do so much more with the design than we were able to do a decade ago.”

They hired a new staff, opened a new shop, and started building prototypes again. When Road & Track showed up in mid-September 2021, the new Aptera had created vehicles with much more promise and plausible functionality.

Which brings us to Sol, the white Aptera sitting in the shop. Time to go for a ride.

Meet Daniel Morris, a 26-year-old engineer trained at UC San Diego. Because Sol is a prototype, R&T is forbidden from the driver’s seat. Morris will drive today. He’s been with Aptera for about six months, he says, which makes him one of the longest-serving employees.

We climb in under the gullwing doors and head out the garage door. Even before we leave the prem-

ises, the plot thickens. Three “freedom seekers”— Aptera’s term for customers who have put down a deposit on a car—are mulling around in the parking lot. These Aptera superfans have come from afar to see the latest iteration. One guy, a retired airline pilot who arrived unannounced on a Royal Enfield motorcycle with North Dakota plates, explains that he can’t wait to get his Aptera because he wants to live in it—the two-seater has enough room under its weird rear hatch for a sleeping adult.

“I’ll plug in a little skillet so I can heat up my Hot Pockets,” he tells me. “I can be completely off the grid.” The other two freedom seekers come from Yuba City, California, and Reno, Nevada. They are what Aptera calls ambassadors, those who are actively promoting the brand already because they love the car and what it stands for.

Off we go, Morris and me, onto the streets of San Diego in Sol. The vehicle is a preproduction prototype. Its joints squeak and moan. The seal on the hatch door isn’t lined up. The front wheel covers wobble. Still, the vehicle is impressive, cornering confidently under acceleration and braking efficiently at stop signs. Early in our drive, Morris hammers the throttle into a fast curve, with a Jeep Cherokee speeding toward us in the other lane. All of Sol’s weight is loaded on the left-side front sus pension. If it fails, we’re dead. But it doesn’t. Accel

A

A. Inside Aptera’s busy San Diego shop. At left is a new prototype named Luna. R&T is the first media outlet to photograph it.

B. Sol in Aptera’s parking lot. The company claims it’s received more than 12,000 orders from nearly 90 countries.

C. Some of the car’s body-mounted solar panels. Aptera says the vehicle can soak up a 40-mile charge each day. If you have a short commute, you can be fully sun powered.

eration is brisk, giving off a spaceship whoosh. I pepper Morris with questions while we go.

Suspension? “On a basic level, the rear suspension is a single swing arm, like on a motorcycle,” he says. “The front is more like a double wishbone that you’d find on an open-wheel racing car.”

Because Sol is a three-wheeler (technically an autocycle), it can skirt many federal regs that fourwheeled cars must heed, Morris says. However, Aptera intends to put its autocycle through full four-wheeled testing anyway, to prove it’s safe.

All-wheel drive? “Yes, but not on this particular car,” Morris says. “This is two-wheel.” Which leads to an important point: Part of what makes the car unique is the placement of the electric motors— inside the wheels themselves, so the car can come as a two- or all-wheel-drive machine. Aptera has a contract with a third party called Elaphe to build the motors.

Traction control? “Not yet,” Morris says. He demonstratesbydoingamini-burnoutatastopsign.

All the while, the reaction on the faces of San Diegans makes the ride a bit of a circus act. Pedestrians’ jaws drop in disbelief.

The Aptera is promising, but it’s still got a ways to go. Solar panels need surface area, and a low-drag design is only as good as the frontal area and body size. Our brief carom only hints at issues such as ride quality, durabil ity, HVAC effectiveness, and thousands of other details. Buyers will expect an Aptera to be a fully realized car no matter how different it looks. Aptera’s co-CEOs have answers for all the questions I can muster. Will there be a dealership network? Probably not. They’re looking at more of a Carvana delivery-service kind of operation. A service infrastructure? They envision more of a Tesla-type thing, where trained technicians make house calls to fix stuff without storefront overhead. Also, with far fewer moving parts, electric motors typically don’t need as much servicing as internal-combustion engines.

Will there be different trim levels? Yep. The base-level two-wheel drive will start at $25,900, and there will likely be a federal rebate to bring the price down. A high-performance Aptera, the company promises, will knock out a 3.5-second 0–60 time.

Finally, when will Aptera actually come up with a customer car?

“The schedule is aggressive,” Anthony says. “COVID has not made our life easy. But we hope to build 5000 vehicles in 2022, and we believe that is feasible.”

If Aptera can build it, the freedom seekers will come—hopefully with money.

B C

DOSSIER: 2022 TESLA MODEL S PLAID THE BONKERS VERSION OFTHECENTURY’S M O S T IMPORTANT CAR.

B

The innovaTiveness of the Tesla Model S had nothing to do with technology. Since around the time Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, most of us have been carrying around lithium-ion batteries everywhere we go. Putting them in a car? Not a huge leap. Benjamin Franklin contemplated electric motors way back in the 1740s. The first car Ferdinand Porsche designed, in 1900, was an electric-gas hybrid. Electrics held all the earliest land-speed records. There was nothing new about the Tesla Model S except that . . . people wanted it. And since it went on sale in 2012, Tesla has built the world’s best charging network around it. Some cars are classics because they’re brilliant and sold in tiny numbers. The Tesla Model S is already a classic because it has sold well and changed the world.

Then there’s the new Model S Plaid. It’s nuts.

Elon Musk often speaks in exaggerations. “Tesla cannot die,” he told Kara Swisher of Vox’s Recode back in 2018. “Tesla is incredibly important for the future of sustainable transport and energy generation. . . . The fundamental good that Tesla provides is accelerating the advent of sustainable transport and energy production.” Hyperbole and truth can coexist in one boast.

What Tesla figured out, even before Musk became chairman in 2004, was that for an electric car to succeed, it had to be something other than a reimagined econo–penalty box. The market has treated the Nissan Leaf, the Fiat 500e, the Volks wagen eGolf, and a dozen other small electrics largely with disdain. Few people, it seems, want to pay about $40,000 for a vehicle that looks like the first car you buy after graduating from UC Irvine. Instead, the Model S took the form of a five-seat luxury sedan. And that made the Model S an icon of both environmental virtue and conspicuous prosperity—which, it turns out, is a stunningly effective marketing combination.

The Plaid marks an almost complete break with Musk’s original mission for the Model S. Back in the spring of 2009, when the public first saw the Model S prototype, it was positioned as a BMW 5-series or Mercedes E-class competitor. The base configuration then was a single electric motor

A. The attentiongrabbing yoke is the biggest change to the Model S interior. Unfortunately, it is less useful and comfortable than a steering wheel.

B. The Model S was an early entrant to the premium-grade four-door hatchback market.

C. In the days before Tesla, seeing barren landscape outside the window of your EV would trigger acute range anxiety.

Prophecy Fulfilled

Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, talks about looking ahead.

The skill of prophecy is not in having the vision, but in interpreting it.

Martin Eberhard didn’t see the future in one blinding insight. But in the early Aughts, he recognized its direction—in the rechargeable cells of e-book batteries, in complex calculations on energy efficiency, and in wealthy neighbors’ driveways, where sports cars sat side by side with trendy Toyota hybrids. The cards and bones and tea leaves all said, “The future is electric.”

It was 2003. Eberhard was an entrepreneurial engineer and saw possibility in the auto industry’s recently abandoned attempts at electric vehicles. “I wasn’t an electric-car enthusiast,” he says. “I wasn’t even a car enthusiast. I was just interested in finding out what was going to follow fossil fuels.” He dove into research on alternative fuels and came away convinced that electricity alone was the cleanest, quickest way to power transport.

“I’m enough of an engineer to believe that the most efficient path will be the one that ultimately wins. But why did

all the previous electric cars fail?” The answer, Eberhard believed, was that every attempt at an EV had been aimed at the entry-level mass market. “When a new technology comes along, whatever it might be, it never comes in at the low end and tries to compete on price. People wanted to save the world and make electric cars everybody could afford, but that’s just not the way products work.” Instead of trying to make a cheap EV, Eberhard decided to concentrate on an EV that would beat gasoline cars on performance.

Eberhard would be out at Tesla before the Ludicrous modes and sub-two-second 0–60 times, but the idea that an electric car could be fast and stylish changed the whole auto industry. Eberhard, however, doesn’t think that building a high-performance electric car before anyone else is proof of any prophetic ability.

Where Eberhard does acknowledge foresight is in how Tesla chose to power its first car. Free from the limitations of affordability, Eberhard was able to look at tech-

nologies that hadn’t been used in production cars before—most notably, the lithium-ion battery, which Eberhard knew from his experience with e-book development. “People from the auto industry told me lithium-ion batteries would never be used in cars. They were just too hard to control and too dangerous,” he says. Eberhard had faith in the batteries, but he was also practical. “I could’ve tried to invent my own battery. It would’ve been insane. I would’ve never got it working in time,” he says.

These days, Eberhard works as an advisor to start-ups working on energy creation and storage. “Right now we make our electricity mostly with fossil fuels, but an EV doesn’t care where the power comes from. We’ll see new options in the next 10 to 20 years.” In the meantime, does he believe he accurately saw the future in 2003? “Of course. We knew it when we were doing it. Name a major car company anywhere in the world today that is not making EVs.” elana scherr

rated at 300 kW. That’s a bit more than 402 hp. Powerful, but not overwhelming. And if you factored in a projected $7500 government rebate, the base price would be $49,900. Not a cheap car, but nowhere near a very expensive one. And that was just about half of what Tesla was then charging for its two-seat, Lotus-based Roadster.

“The Roadster hurts us in Washington,” Musk was reported by the New Yorker to have said before a 2009 coming-out party for the Model S. “We don’t want to give the sense that this is about toys for rich people.”

The Plaid is a toy for rich people.

The motor count on the Model S Plaid is now three. And together, while computer-configured for ultimate ludicrousness, Tesla rates them at a combined 1020 hp. Tesla’s performance claims include a 1.9-second 0–60 time, a 9.2-second quarter-mile at 155 mph, and an even 200-mph top speed. Astonishing for any car, but particularly so for a sled that weighs about 4800 pounds. Oh, and the base price is now $131,190 before accounting for government inducements. Call it $130,440 if you live in California, or maybe $129,690. Your state’s, county’s, municipality’s, utility’s, and moment’s bribery can and will vary.

When the first Model S finally went on sale as a 2013 model, the Signature Performance version carried a single 416-hp motor that was capable of launching the 4785-pound car to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds. Its top speed was governed to 134 mph. The base Model S went on sale at the price Musk promised. But practically no one bought the stripper. Signature Performance models could easily break the $100,000 barrier.

The Plaid is not the car Musk was promising in 2009. It’s not even really the car that went on sale in 2013. It’s so much more. And so much more money.

Tesla has a tempestuous relationship with the automotive press and rarely makes its vehicles available for evaluation. So R&T rented one through Turo for three days at about $500 a day.

Twelve years after its first appearance, the Model S still has presence. Even in Southern California, where it’s at least as common as Range Rovers and Botox, it’s still somehow special and

A. This handsome and familiar sedan is also one of the quickest cars in the world.

B. Tesla has improved its fit and finish in recent years. But this misaligned window trim is a reminder that there is still room for improvement.

C. One of the few giveaways of this car’s top-shelf status in the lineup is the small “Plaid” badge.

The Tesla faithful will notice.

handsome with an aggressive countenance. It’s a badass with a socially conscious halo.

Sitting on graphite-colored wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, the Plaid is firmly grounded. The word “Plaid” in small letters on the tail is the only hint that this is not merely another status symbol. Tesla has been deservedly criticized for its assembly quality, and this example has one fairly egregious window-trim misalignment. But after nearly 10 years of production, the company is definitely better at screwing together its brutes.

Besides the introduction of the Plaid model, the big evolution for the Model S during 2021 has been a new interior. And the most apparent change is the adoption of a steering yoke in place of the steering wheel. The yoke is a joke, the sort of silly change for change’s sake that gets dreamed up after many bong hits and Knight Rider marathons. It’s apparent from the first time merely pulling into traffic that the yoke impedes vehicle control.

A Formula 1 car can work fine with a yoke because the steering is freakishly quick, less than one turn lock-to-lock. But road-car steering must be slow enough to function in daily use, and as radical as the Plaid is, it’s still streetbound. At low speeds, that means reaching for a top loop that isn’t there. Parking becomes a daunting steering challenge. It’s a needless distraction.

Beyond that, Tesla has redesigned most of the car’s basic controls. The Model S steering column, including the turn-signal and shifter stalks, came out of a Mercedes C-class. Now the turn signals are operated by buttons on the yoke that are counterintuitive to operate and a bitch to find when your hands are crossed up making a turn. And shifting from forward to reverse now means using the ginormous 17-inch center touchscreen. That’s ridiculous.

With all of that in mind, the new interior is a big step up in elegance and quality. The seats are great, and although that signature center screen is still tasked with too many functions, they all work well. Tesla’s reluctance to include separate controls for various items is even more frustrating than Porsche’s determination to use a separate button for everything. In at least this small way,

A. Having already changed the world, the Model S is the same as it ever was, except with more power and range.

B. With heavy regen, the Plaid can be driven without using this beautifully rendered brake pedal.

C. The Plaid’s prodigious power means low-rolling resistance tires would not do.

High-performance Michelins keep power and weight in check.

B C

A. With the effortless, overwhelming thrust available, we can’t imagine ever achieving the Plaid’s 396mile estimated range.

something like the Kia K5 strikes a better balance than either.

All of those concerns vanish as the Plaid finds a road where it can open up. The 0–60 time is a standard reference, but it’s the acceleration from, say, 50 to 120 mph that’s breathtaking. And that’s not some Muskian hyperbole; the torque strangulation is so intense that autonomic respiration becomes impossible. You have to remember to breathe.

With batteries lining its floor, the Model S carries its weight low, and that helps with flat corner ing. Steering feel at speed is excellent. The brakes could stop the entropic dissolution of the universe, and the ride quality is firm. Of course it’s quiet. It is, after all, an electric car.

Tesla has pared the 2022 Model S down to two models: The $89,900 Long Range puts out 670 hp and has a claimed 405 mile range; the Plaid

will supposedly go 396 miles between charges. Yeah, there’s no way anyone driving the Plaid will go that far without giddily indulging in some battery­draining wackiness. Taking the Plaid out of its most ripping mode is blanching the flavor out of the fruit.

Lunacy, though, isn’t why the Model S matters. The importance lies in the notion that the Model S has validated electric vehicles in the minds of millions, only a tiny fraction of whom can afford one. The Model S is the first electric car in more than a century to capture the imagination of people who have never cared about electric cars before. It’s an object of desire. That makes it, so far, the most important car of the 21st century and the most likely harbinger of the future.

And the Plaid is the Model S with psychotropic enhancements.

WE’VE REINTRODUCED THE WORLD TO TYPE S PERFORMANCE. IN CASE YOU FORGOT, THE S IS FOR SPEED, AND THE TLX TYPE S HAS BEEN SCULPTED FOR JUST THAT. SUPER HANDLING ALL-WHEEL DRIVE™ AND A 3.0L TURBO V-6 THAT PUMPS OUT A POTENT 355 HP THROUGH THE EXCLUSIVE QUAD EXHAUST OUTLETS PUTS IT IN A NEW LEAGUE OF POWER AND PERFORMANCE. A SPORT-TUNED ADAPTIVE DAMPER SYSTEM AND HIGH-PERFORMANCE CHASSIS BRACING MEAN ALL THAT POWER CAN BE DRIVEN WITH RADICAL PRECISION.

DRIVER’S OFF-ROADER

Don’t think of Rivian as a truck company. Sure, the brand’s first production vehicle, the R1T you see here, is a four-door pickup truck. And next to launch will be the R1S, a three-row SUV based on the R1T. And then there’s the cartoonish RPV, an electric delivery van with up to 900 cubic feet of cargo space. Amazon hopes to have 100,000 of these rigs in service by 2030.

Trucks, all of them. But when founder RJ Scaringe launched his company—in 2009, in his twenties, having just finished engineering school— his dream was to build a mid-engine hybrid sports car. And if you want to understand Rivian, you have to think of it as a sports-car company.

The evidence sits snug on the centerline of the R1T’s chassis: four electric motors, one driving each wheel. The Rivian is the first mass-produced four-motor EV—even Tesla’s top-tier Model S Plaid has just one motor for the front axle. With each wheel driven independently, the Rivian can do legit torque vectoring, with all the instant adjustability and response that make electric motors so tantalizing. It’s what you’d build if your drivetrain department were run by club racers and rally hoons.

It’s also a great way to put immense power to the ground. Right now Rivian offers one drivetrain setup: 415 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque at the front axle, plus 420 hp and 495 lb-ft at the rear. Factor in the reduction gearing inside each motor (a roughly 12:1 ratio), and that comes out to well over 10,000 lb-ft of torque at the tires, good for a claimed 3.0-second 0–60 time and a governed top speed of 110 mph. The 135-kWh battery provides an EPA-estimated 314 miles of range, and Rivian says the rig can tow up to 11,000 pounds.

At Rivian’s launch event in Breckenridge, Colorado, those numbers were easily believable.The R1T weighs 6950 pounds but accelerates ferociously, withnowheelspin,evenon34-inchPirelliall-terrain tires. The truck rides on height-adjustable air suspension; even its lowest ride height still offers nearly 10 inches of ground clearance.

And it corners dead flat. The R1T tackles sweeping mountain back roads like a sport sedan. The battery weight is all underneath your feet and between the axles for an enviably low center

of gravity. But the real magic is in the adaptive dampers. They’re hydraulically linked across the axles: When you go around a left-hand curve, the passenger-side dampers compress, forcing fluid into the bottom of the driver-side dampers, compressing the suspension on the inside wheels to counteract body roll. This eliminates the need for conventional anti-roll bars. Roll stiffness is controlled via the valves and accumulators that link the dampers, adjusted on the fly based on the driving mode you choose. It’s similar to what’s in McLaren’s most advanced supercars. Coincidentally, Rivian employs a few McLaren veterans.

So there’s no anti-roll bar to disconnect when you’re headed for the trail. You simply engage offroad mode—which raises the rig to nearly 15 inches of ground clearance—and go. Rivian’s demonstration route had us spending most of the day on a steep, technical trail that took us above the tree line past 12,000 feet of elevation, a narrow path we traversed at mostly single-digit speeds.

The R1T has four-wheel independent suspension with upper and lower control arms. The inboard motor placement keeps driveshaft angles to a minimum. The motors themselves are barricaded behind the truck’s perfectly flat belly, the full length of it clad in bashproof panels. Hard-learned habits suddenly become irrelevant: You don’t have to worry about smacking your front differential or snagging a crossmember on a rock or a stump.

The shortcomings of internal combustion are most apparent when you’re rock-crawling. A gas-burning engine needs a brace of gear ratios

A. The R1T’s interior is gorgeously finished, with huge swaths of contoured wood. But nearly every control is operated by touchscreen, a strange choice in a vehicle meant to get dirty.

B. The dashboard vents are beautifully designed, but you change their aim via the touchscreen, a maddening overcomplication.

C. The Rivian logo is meant to evoke the four points of a compass.

D. With the R1T’s no-joke off-road capability and zero tailpipe emissions, Rivian hopes to attract affluent, eco-conscious outdoorsy types.

D

to stay in its ideal rpm range—plus locking differentials (or complex, laggy electronics to simulate a locker) to maximize traction. Any off-road excursion is a constantly changing math problem, picking the right gear to get the right rpm to carry the right amount of speed to trundle through without spinning tires or bogging down.

The R1T asks you to do precisely none of that. You never wonder whether to downshift for power or stay in a higher gear for gentler throttle response. You never need a running start to conquer a steep climb. You can thread a hairpin turn without fighting locked-diff axle hop. The instant torque and split-second reactiveness mean you’ll never get caught uselessly spinning a wheel that’s dangling in the air. The calibration is spot-on; off-road mode gives you gentle response from a long accelerator pedal, perfect for minute adjustments as you power over obstacles. Through frame-twisting transitions, over loose rocks, and up steep, whiteknuckle climbs, nudging the R1T along was blissfully easy. And silent: The only sounds during our climbs and descents were the crunch of rock under tire and ambient tones of undisturbed nature.

It’s hard to overstate how revolutionary this feels. This is what off-roading should have always been—it’s just that, until now, we’ve had to compensate for internal combustion’s shortfalls on every trail ride.

Rivian isn’t the only automaker pursuing off-road-capable EVs. The R1T will soon be joined by electric four-by-fours from a bunch of legacy automakers, and more start-ups are sure to follow.

But while many upcoming EV off-roaders bring a cargo hold full of macho corniness (hello, new Hummer), the R1T is packed with stuff a true outdoor adventurer would love—like a bed-mounted air compressor (good for 150 psi), a cable-lock system (for keeping your mountain bike or kayak or whatever safe), and, yes, the Camp Kitchen.

Witness the Gear Tunnel, a full-width storage chamber nestled below the back seats and in front of the rear wheel wells, accessible from either side. It’s big enough to contain one six-foot automotive journalist but is better suited to stashing duffel bags or dirty outdoor gear. For $5000, you can spec your R1T with the Camp Kitchen, which slides out of the Gear Tunnel complete with a two-burner induction cooktop, a four-gallon water tank with pump, a pop-out sink, a four-person tableware set, and a full coffee-making setup. The whole thing draws power from the Rivian’s main battery; running both burners full blast for an hour should eat up only a mile or two of driving range, according to the company. Is it a party trick? Sure it is. During our two days in Colorado, Rivian’s team prepared every meal for more than a dozen people on one truck’s cooktop.

The R1T isn’t perfect. The interior is stylish but too sparse, a victim of touchscreen temptation. Adjustments for sideview mirrors, steering-wheel tilting and telescoping, and A/C vent direction all hide deep within submenus. Aside from the window switches and steering-column stalks, there isn’t a single button or knob on the dash. That lends the R1T a glass-encased futurist aesthetic but leaves you fumbling for the simplest tasks. The same tech reliance extends to the exterior: Every enclosure, from the front trunk to the door handles to the Gear Tunnel, tailgate, and tonneau, is electronically operated. In a hard-core off-roader, this seems like an invitation for malfunction. Then again, the whole truck is powered by electrons.

Overall, though, the R1T is a knockout. It’s more capable and competent than it ever needed to be, on the road or off. It’s a triumph of thoughtful engineering, designed by people who wanted a vehicle for both their hobbies and needs. Just like the best sports cars.

A. The Camp Kitchen embodies Rivian’s whole approach: Solve an outdoor adventurer’s most drudgerous task with playful design and fastidious attention to detail.

B. Front tow hooks are beautifully finished yet fully functional for off-road extraction.

C. Trail rides into the deep wilderness may seem foolhardy in an EV. Rivian plans to address that by building charging stations near state parks and other outdoor-recreation destinations.

D. The R1T’s shape makes its size hard to gauge. Minus mirrors, it’s nearly two inches wider than a Ford F-150, but it’s also nearly eight inches shorter than a four-door long-bed Chevy Colorado.

QUEEN OF THE DESERT

AUDI’S RS E-TRON GT IS ONE OF THE BEST GRAND TOURERS EVER MADE. IT’S ALSO ELECTRIC.

It’s a hot, dusty, dry California morning. Really hot. Fry-an-egg-on-my-belly hot. I’m driving up out of the miasma of Los Angeles, past the crowded, toppling wood-frame houses that line Laurel Canyon—past the Houdini Estate, past Canyon Country Store, where a young David Crosby used to buy rolling papers and coconuts for Joni Mitchell in the months before Manson. I turn right onto the rising, winding ridge of Mulholland Drive.

The radio is blasting Jimi Hendrix: “Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland?”

I don’t know if I have been to Electric Ladyland. Hendrix—who has, I suppose—was working around the question of whether or not you’re groovy, whether you peer into the vastness and love what you see. Whether you get it. While I’m probably not groovy, the car I’m driving, the 2022 Audi E-Tron GT, is both electric and groovy. It has been to Electric Ladyland.

If you want to buy an electric grand tourer because it’s electric, you’re missing the point. There are going to be plenty of very practical EVs on the road in the next few years—the Rivian R1T (page 138), the Ford F-150 Lightning, the Kia Niro, the Nissan Leaf, et al. Some are affordable, some have longer range, some offer lots of stowage.

However, the purpose the Audi E-Tron GT serves comes with distinct and fanny-whacking benefits. The first is the simplest. When you lay your right foot into the throttle, you experience— immediately and at all times—a sensation that an internal-combustion engine can offer only after some coaxing: peak power.

This is a definitive sort of swagger, the type of acceleration that must be experienced to be believed. According to that old literary saw, speed is the only truly modern sensation. This kind of speed is absolutely a sensation of the future, and Tesla has certainly used its hair-raising straightline acceleration to make headlines. (The Tesla Model S Plaid, with its plausible 1.9-second 0–60 jump, is stupid, stupid, stupid quick. Just be careful slowing down.)

But Tesla doesn’t make the best EV grand tourer. That accolade would probably go to the mighty Porsche Taycan or its fraternal twin, the

A. (Previous pages) The interior is gorgeous without relying on electric-car styling contrivances.

B. Mechanically, the E-Tron GT is all but identical to the Porsche Taycan, but the speedy silhouette is unique to Audi.

C. Every Audi EV model wears the E-Tron name. The addition of the letters RS elevates the experience significantly.

Audi E-Tron GT I’m driving out to an old converted airstrip near the Mojave Desert. These two slinky four-doors were developed side by side, each built around a radical 800-volt propulsion architecture that—according to Audi— allows for exceedingly rapid charging and keeps performance consistent through a wide range of ambient temperatures. An innovative two-speed transmission enables breathtaking launches, and the E-Tron GT’s dual electric motors generate a total of 590 hp in the RS version I’m driving. That rises to 637 in launch mode, making this the most powerful Audi ever built—surpassing even the vaunted V-10-powered R8.

But the takeoffs in the E-Tron aren’t what interest me in the Angeles Crest twisties that lead out of L.A. The acceleration gets you in the seat, but the driving dynamics are what keep you there and what, at the end of the day, keep you coming back.

A

From the driver’s seat, there’s no evident compromise to its propulsion system, no cheap plastic parts to reduce weight or cost, no gimmicky EV styling in the dashboard. Every inch is elegant.

That’s not to say there aren’t any compromises in this grand tourer. The frunk ahead accommodates 18.7 gallons, which feels paltry, and the trunk in the back feels like it should be a hatchback. I had the same complaint with the Taycan.

Space for rear passengers is not vast, but the individual bucket-type seats look very nice, particularly when trimmed in Cascade gray herringbone tweed, and this car’s panoramic roof alleviates any sense of claustrophobia. The front seats are attractive, and the Alcantara microfiber that covers the steering wheel is a tactile delight. Walnut inlays along the dash would have been seen as frumpy not so many years ago, but here they look modern and, confusingly, rather cool while also adding warmth. The standard interior is entirely free of animal products and, combined with the exterior, creates an overall design that’s attractive bordering on stunning, recognizably Audi. Best yet, it doesn’t scream “I’m electric!”

The rear doors are light and hardly seem as though they belong to a 5139-pound car. On the

road, weight is as much a mirage as the squiggly cities on the Mojave horizon. The GT is composed, lithe, and well balanced. The extraordinary speed that passes to the tires catches you on some turns—especially those first few arcs at the edge of Mulholland—but the chassis never loses its poise. The steering is a touch too light, and the way my inputs translate to the 21-inch Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5s is immediate, if a little jumpy.

Rear-wheel steering is optional on the base GT (a roughly $100,000 car), though it comes stand ard on this $143,000 RS version. The brakes are 16.5-inch tungsten-carbide-coated discs up front and 16.1-inchers in the rear.

There is no electric car as beautiful as the E-Tron GT. It has sculpted lines and a profile that is more athletic than the somewhat puffed-up Porsche Taycan. Its dramatic presence outplays anything in the family of Tesla burner-phone cars.

For all the old-school joy I derive from taking the E-Tron up in the hills, it has one fatal flaw that will inhibit it in the market. Driven normally— which is to say, in the most conservative of the three available driving modes (Efficiency, Comfort, and Dynamic)—it provides just 232 miles of range. In my opinion, that’s plenty. Few drivers in the U.S. would cover that ground in a single trip more than once a year (the average distance an American drives every day is less than 30 miles).

But the reality of our driving behavior is beside the point. The American consumer feels range anxiety, and that’s something Tesla, with models that offer over 400 miles of EPA-verified range, is more than happy to capitalize on.

The counterargument—that the concept of a road trip is an edge case, that it’s uncommon driving behavior—doesn’t hold water in a grand tourer. This Audi is built for a drive along a winding highway in its most exciting, least efficient mode. A perfect day is materially impacted by its limited range.

On the other hand, it’s one of the best EV GT cars so far. Some day, the engineers at Volks wagen—the same ones building the Taycan and the nascent Rimac-Bugatti EV hypercar—will solve the E-Tron’s range issue. When they do, perhaps then we’ll have been to Electric Ladyland.

B

A. Our photography vehicle was equipped with Audi’s optional napa-leather interior, but the cloth option is no less impressive.

B. Outside or in, the RS E-Tron GT has the stately, striking presence of a swift and capable grand tourer.

C. That sneaky little RS badge is one of few visual cues that you opted for the car with 637 hp.

INTHENAMEOF THEFATHER

Ferrari isn’t that into Pininfarina anymore. So what does Pininfarina do now? The name has been around since 1930. The only car ever sold under it was the pokey 102-hp Azzurra Spider, an old Fiat the famed Italian design house kept around to stay busy in the Eighties. But now it’s created a new company to build a $2.4 million, 1877-hp, two-seat, all-electric, all-wheel-drive supercar. Is that enough?

The Battista literally vibrates in anticipation of a journey. Pininfarina has equipped it with speakers that constantly hum a musical chord for character and drama. This adds a vibrato resonance to the carbon-fiber structure but goes unnoticed at speed. It’s simultaneously menacing and reassuring, depending on whether you’re inside or outside the car. A 4400-pound road rocket that can reach 217 mph shouldn’t be too quiet. Within every existential crisis lies an opportunity.

With money from India, a headquarters in Germany, Swedish CEO Per Svantesson, and plenty of help from Croatia’s Rimac, what Automobili Pininfarina has decided to be is embodied in this carbon-fiber ogre named after the design house’s founder, Battista “Pinin” Farina.

To be clear, Carrozzeria Pininfarina is the oldschool design firm. Automobili Pininfarina is the new car company leveraging the recognizable name and design tradition. The Pininfarina design studios are still in Cambiano, Italy. Meanwhile, Automobili Pininfarina is in Munich.

The Battista has the familiar form of a midengine supercar. That, however, is a comforting sop to convention. An electric motor drives each wheel, and a massive T-shaped battery pack fills most of the nooks and crannies. If form strictly followed function, it might not look like this at all.

Faux mid-engine it may be, but it’s not built to dominate racetracks. “We decided to stay away from the Nürburgring because, basically, it’s not a venue suited to us,” explains Georgios Syropoulos, chassis dynamics manager and chief test driver for the Battista. “This is not a car we’ve pushed to market as a lap-timing product. But we are using another venue that’s actually probably equally—if not more—prestigious when it comes to supercar

JOHN

development. That’s Nardò. To a certain extent, it’s even more challenging than the Nürburgring. It’s a very high-speed place.” Okay, but the Ring is the standard. Southern Italy’s Nardò track, well, doesn’t carry the same cachet.

Ours was a brief adventure—just a few miles on roads above Palm Springs, California, and a couple of laps around the 2.68-mile desert road course at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in a close-to-production prototype. Keep these impressions within that context before making a purchase decision.

Like a proper supercar, the doors don’t just open, they fly upward. The cockpit isn’t lavish or particularly luxurious; it’s stark in a tailored Armani way. The driver faces three flat-screen displays, the middle one an iPhone-sized speedometer. The steering wheel is thick rimmed and flattened at the top and bottom. In the footwell are beautiful cast-aluminum brake and accelerator pedals and a dead pedal to brace against. Much of the interior is finished in the raw carbon fiber that makes up the passenger tub.

The Battista’s interior lacks the insane detail of the Bugatti Chiron’s. And while it’s handsome overall, it’s not quite astonishing like a Lambor ghini’s. For a car that wears the name of the company that drew so many beautiful cars for other brands, the Battista seems a bit generic. The gazillionaire hypercar market is specialized and small. Zany and daring aren’t necessarily character flaws when the production run only extends to 150 units.

Because there’s virtually no insulation between the carbon fiber and the driver’s body, the Battista has a true mechanical feel. Computers modulate everything—the torque-vectoring dance between the four motors, the steering assist, the brake feel, that sound—but Pininfarina engineers have decided to keep the Battista’s occupants fully aware of the physical sensations that all of that computing power is containing. The driver feels the Battista’s insane exploration of physical limits.

It’s unlikely the ultrarich owners will wait around for all 6960 lithium-ion cells to fully charge. Let the help worry about charging. The worker bees will appreciate the 310-mile claimed range under EU regulatory testing or 230 miles using

B

A. A rendering of Battista “Pinin” Farina’s signature on the steering wheel of the Pininfarina Battista.

B. The interior is sparse for weight savings, but what little upholstery there is demonstrates delightful attention to detail.

C. The Battista’s dashboard is as high-tech as you’d expect in an EV supercar, but there’s no getting around the fact that it looks like two tablets and a smartphone.

D. Of course this carbon-fiber supercar bears a strong resemblance to modern Ferraris: Pininfarina was the supercar maker’s go-to styling house for more than half a century.

U.S. EPA standards. According to Pininfarina, the Battista can replenish its batteries from 20 to 80 percent in 25 minutes on a 180-kW charger.

The driver won’t care about any of that because, dear God, does this thing entertain.

Climbing up and out of the city, chasing a Tesla pace car, the achievement here is steering feel. While some assist comes from the torquevectoring algorithm, the electric power steering is precisely mapped to counter any overboost. Credit also goes to the Rimac team that conjured up the drivetrain and developed the core controlling soft ware. There’s a lot of Rimac Nevera in the Battista, and discovering how they differ in final character and performance will take prolonged exposure to both. Here’s hoping that happens soon.

Velocity arrives with blinding suddenness. Pininfarina claims a 1.8-second 0–60-mph time and a top speed of 217 mph. The Battista’s overwhelming torque has the driver involuntarily constricting their diaphragm to avoid drowning in pound-feet. Its thrust recurves spines. It is utterly

astonishing. And terrifying. And intoxicating.

On this brief track exposure, the Battista’s limits seem out around Neptune. Maybe there’s a way to explore this car’s edge on a long track like Monza, but on a tight course like Chuckwalla, forget it. It has traction like a rocket-propelled salamander climbing an endless strip of flypaper. Pushed just right, the tail will wag like a happy husky’s, then tuck back in under the slightest correction. It’s as entertaining as hell’s own multiplex.

And yet, despite so many computers at work, it doesn’t feel like a moderated machine. A Ferrari V-12 makes more vivid sounds, a supercharged General Motors V-8 is more brutally engaging, and virtually any internal-combustion engine is more of a challenge (after all, gears are involved). But there’s a lot of fun to be had when the batteries are charged and the road ahead is worth dominating.

The Battista should be delivered to its first buyer early in 2022. How relevant, how cutting edge, how thrilling it will seem amid so many other supercars is open to speculation. Or daydreaming.

2022 Pininfarina Battista

TURN YOUR TESLA MODEL S INTO A TRACK MACHINE

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR CONCEPT OF PERFORMANCE EXTENDS BEYOND THE QUARTER-MILE.

So you got your handS on a Model S Plaid, the 1020-hp top of the Tesla food chain. You’ve grown accustomed to the sternum-crushing acceleration, and you’ve embarrassed all challengers in straight-line feats of speed. Now you want to dominate the racetrack.

Hot-rodding an EV isn’t quite the same game as hopping up a dinosaur-burner. We spoke with Ben Schaffer, CEO and co-founder of Unplugged Performance, a Tesla tuning shop in Hawthorne, California, to find out what it takes to make a Plaid into a track monster. Unplugged is the shop that built “Dark Helmet,” the modded Model S Plaid that holds the EV lap record at Laguna Seca.

“One of the greatest strengths of the Plaid is its tremendous power. Traditionally, you want to add more, but in this case, you don’t really need it,” Schaffer says. “And I know that’s sacrilegious.”

The challenge is the car’s weight. The Plaid clocks in at nearly 4800 pounds, a ludicrous number for a track car. “No one’s ever had to stop a car of that weight from these speeds,” Schaffer says. “We’re talking about lap times comparable to nimble, lightweight cars—McLarens, Lamborghinis. It’s a new category in terms of the physics.”

So the name of the game is grip and braking. Schaffer walked us through a four-step plan to get your Tesla to turn as well as it accelerates.

1. This much weight pushed by this much power is a recipe for brake fade. Start with high-temp brake fluid and more aggressive brake pads. If you’re going for, say, a Laguna Seca lap record, step up to superlightweight carbon-ceramic brake discs (more than half an inch larger than stock but saving 25 pounds of unsprung weight) plus huge six-piston calipers.

2. If you want cornering grip, you need lots of front camber. Unplugged ran almost 4 degrees of negative camber on Dark Helmet for the Laguna lap record. Adjustable front upper control arms, plus adjustable rear camber arms and toe links, open up suspension settings that were never possible with the factory setup. Unplugged even offers a quick-

change front control arm, so you can run aggressive settings at the track without destroying your tires on the drive home.

3. “For tracking a Tesla, the biggest front tire you can fit on the car with a matching rear is always the best strategy,” Schaffer says. On Dark Helmet, that meant 310-section-width racing slicks. And that’s not even the ceiling—Unplugged puts 315-width tires on Model 3s for track duty. “You want as much front grip as you can throw at the car,” Schaffer says, “and we haven’t found that limit yet.”

Lightweight billet machined wheels in a funky 19-by-10.9-inch size match those foot-wide tires and help shed rotating mass. Unplugged can even etch the customer’s name into these custom-made

wheels or finish them in just about any color.

4. If all of the above still doesn’t have you going fast enough, it’s time for some race-car tricks.

On Dark Helmet, Unplugged fabbed up a high-downforce rear wing and a matching front spoiler, and reshaped the factory

front fenders with new air-extraction ducts and flared openings to cover those super-sticky tires. The Model S is a large, heavy sedan, so the aerodynamic devices need to be properly burly: Schaffer says you can stand on the front splitter without damaging it.

TRAVELER

“Now, what in tarnation?!” you can almost hear the man atop car No. 26 exclaim from the tufted-leather club chair of his race car. The source of his confusion? The competitor to his immediate left, who has clearly arrived from the future to pose for this 1903 photo. Lined up against the era’s clattering contraptions, No. 999 resembles a belly-tank saltflats racer, even though belly tanks, and the planes that carried them, wouldn’t arrive for decades. But that’s no time traveler; it’s just Walt from down the street.

Walter Baker—seen here peeping from the Torpedo Kid, his electric-powered speed-record car—was proprietor of Baker Motor Vehicle Company, maker of then-popular electric cars. They looked nothing like the Torpedo Kid or Baker’s earlier electric streamliner, named the Torpedo. At the dawn of

the automotive age, electrics held every top-speed record. In 1902, Baker, at the wheel of his firs t Torpedo, almost certainly traveled faster than any human had before, likely over 80 mph and possibly 100.

But his run didn’t count, because partway down the course in Staten Island, New York, he lost control and killed two bystanders. Baker and his co-driver were not seriously injured thanks to seat harnesses, a real novelty then. Undeterred, the luxuriously mustached Baker built two new electric racers, the Torpedo Kids. These single-seaters were smaller, lighter, and motivated by less powerful production-car motors. But after a Torpedo Kid went into another crowd in 1903 (with no serious injuries), Baker called it quits. He never held a speed record, but he did live to age 86. daniel pund