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SEPTEMBER 2016

VOL . 68, NO. 2

T H E F E AT U R E S

30 THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

CHEVY CORVETTE GRAND SPORT

46 THE COMPARISON

AUDI R8 V10 PLUS vs. McLAREN 570S

THE ADVENTURE

THE 24 HOURS OF LE MANS

MOTORSPORT

THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

Leaner than the Z06 and meaner than a Stingray, this crossbreed may be the perfect Corvette.

The most expensive Audi and the most affordable McLaren battle for the supercar middle ground.

Racing, trespassing, and boozy crepes. Up all night for the 84th running of the French classic.

Toyotaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heartbreak at Le Mans, as witnessed by a photographer embedded with the team.

BY JASON H. HARPER

BY JACK BARUTH

BY SAM SMITH

BY JAMEY PRICE

COVER PHOTOGR APH BY ANDREW TRAHAN

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AS IMPRESSIVE AT 0 AS IT IS AT 60. With daring c ur ves, a commanding race -inspired stance, and handling so responsive it feels like t he car is an extension of you , t he Q60 is beautiful to behold and even more ext raordinary to drive.

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S TA N D A R D E Q U I P M E N T

DRIVES

THE BOOT

FROM THE ARCHIVE: KURT WÖRNER

2017 FIAT 124 SPIDER............................. 78

COLLECTION............................................ 10

2017 VOLVO S90...................................... 82

SPLIT-WINDOW CORVETTE STING RAY ...... 93

SHOPPING WITH COLIN

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2017 NISSAN GT-R .................................. 84

DRIVER’S ED STABILITY SAVES ..................... 96

LETTERS PARITY PUNISHES FANS ............ 20

2017 JAGUAR F-TYPE SVR.................... 86

DISSECTED GROOVY WELDING BITS ......... 98

EDITOR’S LETTER BE THERE ..................... 22

THE MAN

SMITHOLOGY I KNEW HIM WHEN ...............26

GO LUTZ YOURSELF CADDY’S WOES ... 106

84 8

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ROAD TEST SUMMARY CORVETTE EDITION .............................. 100

AN ICON JUST GOT LARGER

THE NAVITIMER 46 mm

C A P T U R I N G T H E L I F E AT S P E E D

THE KURT WÖRNER COLLECTION German photographer Kurt Wörner was on track and behind the scenes during the most dramatic epoch of European racing history. Obscure rallies and motorcycle races, prewar tests of Silver Arrows, winged Chaparrals—he was seemingly everywhere, capturing it all on film. His life’s work, hundreds of thousands of rarely seen images, is part of the Road & Track archives. Here’s a glimpse.

Above: The pit board at the 1956 Nürburgring 1000-kilometer race was in constant flux as a young Stirling Moss took on Juan Manuel Fangio. Moss would ultimately prevail, crossing the line 26 seconds ahead of his mentor. 10

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24 Hours of Le Mans, 1954: Mechanics work on the class-winning Porsche 550 RS Spyder driven by Johnny Claes and Pierre Stasse.

SIDECARS AND SIDE DISHES A sit-down meal for the Auto Union team in the grassy paddock of a 1937 motorcycle race in Schleiz, Germany. With the onset of World War II, competition halted and production of competition rigs such as the DKW UL 600 pictured here was discontinued. Only one known example survives. A postwar sidecar rider fearlessly throws her weight into a turn during a 1947 championship race in Bavaria. 12

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O P E N S E AT I N G Spectator safety has come a long way since the early days, when fans went to ridiculous and often reckless lengths to get a better view.

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MAKING DO A view from the paddock at the 1000 Kilometers of Nürburgring, 1953 (opposite). Porsche 906 Carrera 6 atop its VW transporter (below), 1967, Germany. Wrenching in the rain on Jack Brabham’s BT26 at Spa in 1968 (bottom). The car retired after only six laps.

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Government 5-Star Safety Ratings are part of the National Highway Traffi c Safety Administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (NHTSAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) New Car Assessment Program (www.safercar.gov). Tests include driver and passenger front, side and side barrier and pole tests.

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Letters AS THE CAR WORLD MOVES FORWARD, YOU SAY, TURN BACK.

Dear R&T,

You simply aren’t allowed to build a better race car anymore. The Ford GT and Corvette C7.R get 22 pounds added to them after doing well [“Road to Le Mans,” June]. This is, to me, revolting. This NASCAR-esque, let’s-have-everybody-nose-to-tail-on-the-last-lap stuff makes appreciation of different marques useless. Officialdom in the whole upper echelon of racing should be done away with, period. ANATOLY ARUTUNOFF, TULSA, OKLAHOMA

I really enjoyed the heroics behind Ford’s new GT program. And yet, IMSA’s Balance of Performance regulations remain the issue. All of the cars are so developed and advanced that regulations restrict them to racing well below their potential. Is it really racing? Who knows, but it’s certainly a game. Sadly, Ford vs. Chevy or Ferrari or Porsche or BMW is a bit artificial no matter how close it looks. When the procedure is to penalize success, we’ll never have to worry about anyone developing a dynasty that demonstrates their mastery and expertise. TIM KEMMIS PLYMOUTH, WISCONSIN

I was at the 12 Hours of Sebring this year and can attest to the dissonant noise produced by the Ford GT. It sounds very much like one of those tiny, one-lung, piston-port diesel model-plane engines. I’d say somewhere around 0.29 cubic inch spinning at full chat. If Ford plans on selling GTs for street use, they sure have their work cut out for them. ROBERT GOSSELIN RACINE, WISCONSIN

While stationed in Germany, I had the privilege of watching the 1966 Le Mans from a position overlooking the Ford pits. I was filled with national pride to see the three GT40s cross the finish line together, although it was a big disappointment to see the win given 20

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to Chris Amon and Bruce McLaren on a technicality. Ken Miles obviously deserved to win. BOB WAGERS MOORESVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

In 1966, Ford finished first, second, and third overall at Circuit de la Sarthe. Ferrari, the man and the company, were properly humiliated. A few years later, the Pinto and the Mustang II happened. Ford, the man and the company, were properly humiliated. BRAD TAYLOR COLOGNE, MINNESOTA

FEARS AND FANS I pray that we will not get to L4, or complete, automotive autonomy in my lifetime [“Future Man”]. Consider, as drivers become dependent on L-whatever, the odds they will be even remotely aware of the situation if, in a moment of desperation, the car asks for

a handoff. If 95 percent of auto fatalities are driver-induced, then maybe, just maybe, that number could be reduced more quickly and at much less cost by improving the quality of drivers. WES BURCH LYNN HAVEN, FLORIDA

When did the motorists of the world, who take pride in honing their skills, who enjoy the driving experience, ever ask to give it all up in exchange for dronelike uniformity? I fear the worst. DENNIS JAMES CAPOLONGO POTOMAC, MARYLAND

It is reassuring to know the man heading the self-driving Google car is a car guy! I also appreciate the way Sam Smith pressed John Krafcik, asking him if driving cars in the future would still be fun, or even possible. I, too, have my doubts, but if we are lucky, there will be a golden period where self-driving cars maintain the lane discipline found on the autobahn and thereby allow us car guys to have fun in the left lane, safely. MICHAEL YAM YONKERS, NEW YORK

Robert Kerian’s photo on pages 62–63 [left] is the most compelling evidence why sports cars mean so much to us enthusiasts. The picture made me smile as much as Sam and John were. ROBERT KRAMS HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

Letters CONT.

GOT HOOKED ON TRACK LIFE AT AN EARLY AGE. A big chunk of my formative years in the mid-Seventies was spent crammed in the back of some European sports car, driving to races up and down the East Coast—Camel GT, Formula 5000, IndyCar, NASCAR, and even local dirt tracks. I couldn’t get enough. Regardless of what was competing on any given weekend, I was thrilled to see my favorite drivers and cars up close, get to know a few of them, and above all else, feel a part of the action. Recent trips to a pair of the world’s great motorsport events—the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans—reminded me again why there’s still no substitute for actually being trackside. Sure, there’s the tradition and pageantry never captured by TV cameras, but it’s the human drama, the unexpected emotion, the physical presence of these spectacles that leave unforgettable impressions. The results themselves are often the stuff of both dreams (Alexander Rossi’s surprise Indy 500 win) and nightmares (Toyota’s heartbreaking loss in the final minutes at this year’s Le Mans), yet it’s that common in-person experience with thousands of others that resonates like no broadcast can—the grandstand’s collective gasp at an aggressive pass, shared frustration folMotorsport fans (and even lowing a botched pit stop, and universal relief when a driver regular car enthusiasts) owe it away from a big wreck. to themselves to close the laptop, walks When Porsche swept to get off the couch, and go watch its 18th overall win after the leading Toyota broke within a race in person. sight of a historic victory, 250,000 spectators shared in the disparate emotions of those two teams. It meant something more because they’d seen these protagonists up close during the Friday pit walk, then watched their cars streak by lap after lap, hour after hour. No broadcast could simulate that connection, that physical and emotional investment. At a time when so much knowledge is literally at our fingertips—livestreams of the weekend’s races, reviews of the latest cars, access to news as it happens, it’s become routine to live our lives with eyes glued to the nearest screen. The upside is 24/7 access to near-limitless information, which certainly helps us better observe our world. The downside is the risk of not actually stepping out and living it. With this idea in mind, and to save him from yet another round of next-usedcar Craigslist shopping, we sent Sam Smith to France for his first-ever 24 Hours of Le Mans to experience it as every newbie should—by staying awake for the entire race. His entertaining account of endurance spectating starts on page 66 and serves as a pointed reminder of why motorsport fans (and even regular car enthusiasts) owe it to themselves to close the laptop, get off the couch, and go watch a race in person. ■

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STU HEINECKE SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

The Acura Legend was so popular, more customers knew it as a Legend than as an Acura. This bothered the carmaker so much, they dumped the name of their best-selling car and went instead to RL. Ford, too, had a great-selling family sedan in the Taurus. You could argue it kept the brand afloat in the Eighties and Nineties. Then some genius at Ford decided all models should begin with F (Focus, Fiesta, Fusion, etc.) and replaced the Taurus with the Ford Five Hundred. Sales tanked. Seems familiarity with the name trumps alliteration. Who knew? Contrast this with Honda’s Civic and Toyota’s Camry, still going strong after many years. CHRIS CORE CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND

TREE TALES I may be going out on a limb, but that cedar car has the biggest trunk I’ve ever seen [Pioneer Cedar Rocket]. GREG VERSEN HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA

Email us at letters@roadandtrack.com. Include your full name, city, state, and daytime telephone number for verification. We unfortunately cannot answer every inquiry, and we reserve the right to edit letters. Editorial contributions are considered only if guaranteed exclusive. Materials are subject to Road & Track standard terms, and the vendor must retain a copy. Photographs should be released for publication by the source. Road & Track is not responsible for unsolicited materials.

R I C H A R D PA R D O N

EDITOR’S LET TER BY KIM WOLFKILL

NAME THAT CAR Bob Lutz’s piece on the perils of naming cars [Go Lutz Yourself] was interesting, but he never quite got to the good stuff. Everyone’s heard of the Chevy Nova’s failings. (“No va” translates to “no go” in Spanish.) But what about Ford’s follies in Latin America, where they released the Pinto (translates to “small male member” in Portuguese) and the Fiera truck, which Spanish speakers took to mean “ugly old woman”? RollsRoyce was once intent on naming a model Silver Mist. That is, until they discovered that “mist” means “manure” in German. I’d buy one in a heartbeat, just to be able to brag that I drive a Rolls-Royce Silver Sh**.

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Rookie Move OUR KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE.

T’S LONG PAST MAY, which means this is weird. Weird to be talking about the 2016 Indy 500 in a print magazine that sees mailboxes in August. Weird to know that this country turned a car race into a bona-fide media event. Both ideas we abandoned years ago. But that’s what happens when Indy kicks off for the hundredth time. You get to pretend for a bit. This year’s 500 was a sellout—the first in more than two decades. Three hundred and fifty thousand people crammed into the oldest working speed temple we’ve got. Reserved seating evaporated weeks out, general-admission shortly after. It felt, for a moment, like motorsport mattered again. You’ve likely heard all this. Heard about the rookie winner, Alexander Rossi, a 24-year-old Californian and Formula 1 reserve driver who had never been on a big oval. What he did (alternately led, ran last, and set fastest lap) and how he did it (razor-sharp driving and strategy, coasting over the line on fumes). He’s famous now, or at least as famous as non-NASCAR drivers get in America, a place that thinks Kim Kardashian is a human celebrity and not some alien rumpus robot created to give lingerie designers fits. Three years ago, nobody knew Rossi. We hung out. Road & Track took a 1967 Lotus 49 and a Corvette ZR1 to Circuit of the Americas, in Texas. We wanted to parse this country’s relationship with F1 and speed, through the coolest machine of the sport’s golden age and the greatest sports car America had then built. Rossi was the only American with an active F1 license, so we put him on the cover, May 2013. Senior editor John Krewson wrote the story. I went with him to COTA, because Rossi seemed interesting. But also to share air with a running 49, because Jim Clark and Colin Chapman were Jim Clark and Colin Chapman. What a strange moment. Rossi had never driven a formula car with a manual gearbox or old-school, yaw-happy tires. The footage is still on YouTube: The Lotus was flung and loose, simultaneously in its element and visibly uncomfortable. The first lap was a drifty jumble as the guy got friendly with the thing. As he figured it out. A jarring reminder of how the sport’s rhythm has changed over time, and of the difference in learning curve between an amateur and a pro trained since childhood. In the pits, he lifted his visor. Happy, surprised eyes. “It’s quite quick!” I remember thinking, What else would it be? And then I heard a suppressed chuckle. As if he wanted to appear professional but just really liked the old crate and had to let it out.

The knockers say Rossi is hard to know, unfriendly, too softspoken. More like quiet and possibly too mannered—this is a driven guy who’s worked his whole life for one slippery goal. Not that this sort of thing is unique, in the era of kindergarten karting and obsessive sports parents. The backlash was predictable: Who cares about another privileged, overtrained white dude? Only he never had gobs of money, and in a sport where talent is second to cash, he somehow stayed in the picture. Or kept clawing his way into F1 cars without a gilded benefactor, which is the same thing. Like a lot of modern drivers, Rossi went to IndyCar as fallback. The few motorsport journalists left in this country seemed

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impressed that he dove in with both feet, thrilled for the opportunity. If that doesn’t seem special, remember that modern drivers are rarely sympathetic characters. The Europeans too often read as petulant and dull. The Americans are frequently media-weary, tired of nonexistent crowds and moron reporters who treat them like morons. Too many A-listers of either breed turn to drywall in front of a camera. Not all who land in Indianapolis are happy about it. Rossi didn’t seem different, at first. But in Texas, we took him to dinner, and something thawed. He warmed gradually, as anyone would, but there was an odd charm rarely seen on the edge between success and failure. Over the last few years, watching his career unfold, I couldn’t help thinking on how we ILLUSTR ATION BY DREW BARDANA

J O E W I N D S O R-W I L L I A M S

I blurted unintelligible joy at the television. That crowd, the surprise of his win, the heartbeat when the race seemed huge again.

process opportunity. Wondered what it was like to reach base camp on a figurative Everest and just kind of hold, unable to summit. Sportswriters are warned against becoming fans of athletes, but I say phooey—at this point, racing needs all the help it can get. Indy marked Rossi’s first time in a 220-mph corner and the most shocking, successful rookie weekend in recent memory. He settled into that hoary man-eater as if it were an old couch. Rare, even with a great car and a killer team. At the end of the race, he sat in his car, helmet off, for a bit. Cameras, that famous bottle of milk, all waiting. “It was all I could do,” he said, “not to cry on TV, in front of millions of people.” Watching at home, I blurted unintelligible joy at the television. The crowd, the surprise of his win, the heartbeat when the 500 seemed huge again, on its own merit. That afternoon, I found a picture from COTA, Rossi and the R&T crew, grinning in the pits. I tacked it to my office wall as a reminder: to never underestimate circumstance, and to hold on to the faith we make as kids, no matter how alone that possession makes you feel. A few hours later, I went to the grocery with my friend Ben Thongsai, visiting from out of town. As the cashier rang us up, she looked over. “How’s your day going?” “Not bad,” I said. A laugh. I turned to Ben. “You know what I almost said? What I want to tell everyone? ‘This guy I kinda sorta know just won the Indy 500! How f***ing cool is that?!?’ ” ■ Sam Smith is an editor at large for R&T. He loves yaw-happy anything.

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THE ROAD & TRACK TEST | 2017 CHEVROLET CORVET TE GRAND SPORT

A FINE BALANCE A SUMMER DAY IN THE NEW CORVETTE GR AND SPORT. BY JASON H. HARPER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW TRAHAN

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THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

NE PERFECT DAY IN A VETTE.

It begins as a notion and turns into a mission. The brand-new 2017 Grand Sport is Chevy’s latest interpretation of the Corvette, and one is being shipped from Detroit to New York for R&T to test. And so an idea forms. A sunup-to-sundown romp at the onset of summer, in what is, potentially, America’s greatest modern sports car. A chance at the perfect driving day. As a yellow Corvette Grand Sport with a seven-speed manual and the Z07 package is being loaded onto a big truck heading east, planning begins. The summer solstice is only a few days away, so it will be possible to spend 14 hours behind the wheel without ever snapping on a headlight. My local track in the Catskills, the Monticello Motor Club (MMC), is expecting me and the Grand Sport early in the morning. They promise as many unfettered laps on the 3.6-mile course as one could desire. From there I’ll head west, to the Delaware River and the border of Pennsylvania and then on to the Poconos and a suite of semisecret, Corvette-worthy roads in the wooded backcountry. I’ll be limited only by the soft, slick rubber of the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s and my own behind-the-wheel fortitude. Planning perfection is pure folly. It’s spitting rain when I wake up; traffic over the George Washington Bridge is clogged, and I don’t dare keep up with the flow of 65-mph traffic on New Jersey’s 50-mph Palisades Parkway, a notorious speed trap. Which would you pull over, a dull-silver Corolla or a glintingyellow Corvette? Then there’s the question of the Grand Sport itself. My hopes are high, as the GS is born from two cars we know and love, the C7 Stingray and the Z06. But it could prove less than

No, not a Z06 in bright-yellow skin. That’s a Grand Sport, sighted in the wild of New York. 32

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THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

the sum of its parts. Or, more pessimistically, it could be the worst kind of parts-bin car, without the anima of either parent or any personality of its own. The car is essentially a Z06 with a Stingray engine. Or, as a cynic might say, a Stingray with bolted-on Z06 parts. The Grand Sport certainly looks like the Z06, with wider rear bodywork and a whole lot of venting. The optional stripes and fender hash marks are a nod to the 1963 Grand Sport race cars and the fourth-generation Corvette variant of the same name. The key elements to the car are on the underside. Suspension tuning mimics the Z06’s, but the Grand Sport gets its own springs, anti-roll bars, Magnetic Ride Control tuning, and electronically controlled rear differential programming. The LT1 6.2-liter V-8 is the same naturally breathing engine found in the regular car, with 460 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque. Essentially, the GS is designed to be meaner than the Stingray and leaner than the Z06. “The cooling content is as uplevel as the supercharged Z06, which is pretty phenomenal for a naturally aspirated car,” says Alex MacDonald, the lead development engineer. “The Grand Sport cooling systems and brakes can handle heavy track duty. I promise you that your lap time will not be limited by the equipment.” Corvette chief Tadge Juechter, who has been with General Motors since 1977 and worked on Corvettes since the C5, says he expects the Grand Sport to become the volume model. “The body, brakes, and tires were originally designed for the Z06, but they work astonishingly well for this car.” He laughs when asked if it took the engineers a long weekend to throw it all together. “Even though it looks like plug-and-play, you can’t just stick on the Z06 parts and call it a day. You have to do all the normal tuning of springs and bars and all the calibration work. The chassis control is custom, and the weight distribution is different, with less than 50 percent up front. You can take a bunch of great hardware, but unless it’s well integrated, the driving experience isn’t going to be great. We live and die by this stuff.” The Grand Sport will start at $66,445 for the coupe and $70,445 for the convertible, a $5000 premium over the Stingray Z51. It will also be offered with the Z07 package, a $7995 option that nets the Cup 2 tires and carbon-ceramic brakes over the regular Brembos. The Stage 2 aero package is included, although the Stage 3 with the tallest rear wickerbill is not an option. According to JuechYou won’t find things to complain about in this ter, it would overslow the GS with its interior. Or in the ready smokiness of the tires. smaller output.

My hopes are high, as the GS is born from two cars we know and love, the C7 Stingray and the Z06. But it could be the worst kind of parts-bin car, without the anima of either parent or any personality of its own.

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THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

Still, says Juechter, “We’re not holding back on all of the aggressive stuff. This is pretty close to the last-gen ZR1.” Chevy claims the Grand Sport’s lap time at GM’s Milford Road Course outside Detroit is less than a second slower than the ZR1’s, and that on a racetrack the GS can hold up to 1.20 g’s of lateral grip in Z07 form. We measured 1.18 g on a 300-foot skidpad.

HE GRAND SPORT FEELS, WELL, FAMILIAR.

The cockpit, with its short-throw manual, cares only for the driver, and the baritone V-8 sounds even better without the supercharger. I arrive at Monticello with muddy fenders, but the rain has stopped. Despite those slick Cup 2s, the Corvette is calm around wet corners. MMC is private and pristine, and the course includes a three-quarter-mile-long straight, a lovely uphill carousel, and several off-camber twists that can lure a less-capable chassis into calamity. As the pavement dries,

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I transition the Grand Sport from Sport to Track mode and then cycle through the subsets: Wet to Dry to Sport 1, Sport 2, and then Race. This tried-and-true system premiered on the Stingray, an example of the C7’s gimlet-eyed engineering. It gives you exactly what you ask, with more yaw and less interference with each rung up the ladder. Still, the interface is a pain: Twist the control to Track, double-click the button, then twist through the submenus. Juechter once told me they made it difficult on purpose so novices wouldn’t be tempted to get in over their heads. I’ve driven both the C6 ZR1 and the current Z06 at MMC, and they were well suited to the fast straightaways and sweeping, momentum corners. But the tendency to power hard into corners was less ideal in the tighter, technical sections. The ZR1’s nose once got away from me on an off-camber righthander and I came close to having an unfortunate moment. There is a lot of tire under the Grand Sport, and its widehipped stability allows for an easy 150-mph sprint down the

THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

The Grand Sport goes from the Mr. T brutality of the high-speed straight to Fred Astaire flair with odd, almost unnerving ease.

straightaway before you clamp down hard on the carbon-ceramics. You get only the tiniest of wiggles from the rear under hard braking. The long straight is followed by a short, steep hill and one of the slowest corners on the track, one that speaks to the Grand Sport’s abilities. There’s a serpent-quick left-to-right turn on top of the crest, the curbs are tall and chassis-rattling, and the transition demands fast hands followed by a slow and conscientious unwinding of the wheel as you power out. It’s a kink that’s magic in a Miata but gives heavier cars conniptions. The Corvette goes from the Mr. T brutality of the high-speed straight to Fred Astaire flair with odd, almost unnerving ease. I exit the corner more quickly than in just about any car I’ve ever driven at MMC. I can feel seconds drop off every lap. I keep pushing but feel like the GS will continue 38

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extending the envelope. Crazy for a car that costs about $75,000. But, maybe, it is too easy? Yes and no. It is easy to go fast, but not in the passive way a Nissan GT-R can feel out here. This is no video game. The GS is familiar and accessible in the right way, like listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony live. The tune is familiar and you already expect the grandeur of those sawing violins, but it’s still a surprise as you hear it unfold. So, too, is the experience of rocketing around a track in the Corvette Grand Sport. It’s a grand culmination: The parts in the bin are working together beautifully. The modern Corvette represents many generations of engineering thoughtfulness at General Motors. The wonder that is the small-block V-8, of course, but also smaller innovations like magnetorheological

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THE ROAD & TRACK TEST

A winding route above the dampers and a head-up display. All those engiif pulled by a tide. They circle, getting closer, and Delaware River. The Corvette neers, working over all those years, waking up I call them in. takes to it like catnip. in the middle of the night with eureka moments. “The car sounds amazing when you power Forget all the awful nonbolstered seats and the gaps in the down the straight,” says one. Another sticks his head inside and fiberglass bodies. What remains today is a car that’s shed the I invite him to sit shotgun. “Would it run with my California?” missteps but kept the good stuff. You can pummel around he asks. I just give him a look. “About half the price, too,” he Monticello, downshifting perfectly, while the tires and chasmurmurs. Less, I say. More like a third. Then he gives me a look. sis allow you to carry maximum rolling speed, and the headSorry, man. up display provides the information you need to shift at the COULD DO MORE LAPS. A lifetime of laps, actually. But proper rpm. The Grand Sport has the Stingray’s rev-matching a perfect driving day can’t just be one note. Besides, the paddles and the Z06’s Stage 2 aero package. (Which truly open roads—or more likely the curving roads—of Amerworks on places like the uphill carousel. The faster you go, the ica are where the Grand Sport will live, the pride of better it sticks.) You can concentrate on only two things: the thousands of people who save and save and then go for it. car and where you’re placing it. To them, I’d say: You probably don’t need the Z07 package. I sidle back to the pits after a cool-down lap. A New Jersey– The stock Michelin Pilot Super Sports will last a lot longer based Ferrari club has arrived, mostly driving California and than the optional Sport Cup 2s, and the claimed 1.05 g will still FF models. The members are following the Grand Sport with change your world. And if you’re going fast enough to feel the their eyes. I kill the engine and they drift toward the Vette, as

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aero on a curve, you’re probably going fast enough to land in jail. The happiness of the Grand Sport is in the bang-it-turns suspension and the man-it-pulls engine. Four hundred and sixty horses are more than you’ll often use, and you can still touch 100 mph in third gear. I know all this because I’ve left my house at 6 a.m. and by 3 p.m., I’ve barely exited the car. I feel like I’m only now getting to the best part—rolling through a series of my Greatest Hits. All the roads that make me happy, in one fell swoop, one after the other. (I’ve also filled the fuel tank twice and made lunch of gas-station ice-cream sandwiches.) There are the open sweepers that rise and fall over the hills and make the Corvette feel like a schooner in heavy Atlantic swells. And the miraculous pavement built high on the cliffs above the Delaware River. And a private hill climb that a friend dubs “G-Force Road.” I click off the traction control with a single stab of an index finger and choke the rear tires with smoke as the diff gamely locks and I grind up a perfect switchback.

The balance. The proportion of chassis to power. It’s those elements that you keep coming back to. Only a contrarian would term this Corvette underpowered, and the overengineered Z06 brakes and chassis allow supreme confidence on real roads, come what may, like the albino squirrel who darts out or the tree limb lying in your lane when you round a bend. It’s my final Greatest Hits road, just before the gloaming. A 14-mile stretch of bending and elevation-changing asphalt between me and the place in the Poconos where I’ll finally rest my head. Fabulously devoid of traffic. A mist hangs just above the asphalt, shaded golden as the sun falls. I hold the car in third gear the entire way, settings in Sport, the V-8 pitched high and happy. Any worries I had of a Corvette without personality are gone. The Grand Sport is familiar but also revealing, given life and passion by professionals who love the tune just as much as we do. The Grand Sport will give you a chance at the perfect driving day. Day after day after day. ■ ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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OFFICIAL PERFORMANCE TEST REPORT

2017 CHEVROLET CORVETTE GRAND SPORT

SCALE: 10 IN. DIVISIONS ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BARKER © ROAD & TRACK/HEARST MAGAZINES

SPECI F IC ATIONS PRICE BASE ....................................................................$66,445 AS TESTED ..........................................................$93,215

LAYOUT ................................................ front, longitudinal CONFIGURATION .......................................................... V-8 INDUCTION ........................................ naturally aspirated MATERIAL ............................aluminum block and heads VALVETRAIN ......................................pushrod, 16 valves DISPLACEMENT ...................................................6162 cc BORE x STROKE ..................................103.3 x 91.9 mm COMPRESSION RATIO ...........................................11.5:1 REDLINE ........................................................... 6500 rpm FUEL DELIVERY ........................................direct injection 500

400

460 465

300

PEAK HORSEPOWER (SAE) @ 6000 RPM

200

100

LB-FT PEAK TORQUE @ 4600 RPM RPM

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

TRANSMISSION DRIVEN WHEELS ..........................................................rear TYPE ........................................................ 7-speed manual FINAL-DRIVE RATIO ...3.42:1, limited-slip differential GEAR ..................... RATIO ...................MAX SPEED (RPM)

1 .............................2.97:1 ....................51 mph (6500) 2 .............................2.07:1 ....................73 mph (6500) 3 .............................1.42:1 ................106 mph (6500) 4 .............................1.00:1 .................150 mph (6500) 5 .............................0.71:1 .................170 mph (5225) 6 .............................0.57:1 .................170 mph (4200) 7 .............................0.48:1 .................170 mph (3525)

STEERING ASSIST ..................................................................... electric RATIO ............................................................12.0–16.4:1 TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK .................................................2.5 TURNING CIRCLE .....................................................37.7 ft

6-piston sliding calipers

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4-piston sliding calipers TIRES......................................Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 SIZE ..................... f 285/30zr-19, r 335/25zr-20

BODY & CHASSIS CONSTRUCTION....................................... body-on-frame MATERIALS .............. composite body, aluminum frame LENGTH ................................................................. 176.9 in WIDTH ....................................................................... 77.1 in HEIGHT......................................................................48.6 in WHEELBASE .........................................................106.7 in TRACK F,R.....................................................63.5, 62.5 in DOORS/SEATS ..............................................................2/2 EPA CLASS ............................................................ 2-seater CARGO CAPACITY ..................................................... 15 ft3 DRAG COEFFICIENT X FRONTAL AREA ....................... —

WEIGHT CURB WEIGHT....................................................... 3452 lb DISTRIBUTION FRONT/REAR .................... 49.5/50.5% WEIGHT-TO-POWER ........................................... 7.5 lb/hp

FUEL EPA CITY/HWY ...................................... 17/29 mpg (est) CAPACITY ...................................................... 18.5 gallons RANGE .......................................................535 miles (est) RECOMMENDED FUEL GRADE ........................... premium

TEST NOTES

• Unbelievably strong brakes. The 60-to-0-mph

distance matches the 2001 C5-R Le Mans racer. TRACK NOTES A. You can feel the aero kit work on Monticello Motor Club’s uphill carousel. B. Straightaway is 3/4-mile long, and the GS easily pushes past 150 mph. C. Carbon-ceramics bite just before uphill right and chassis-twisting kink.

0–60 MPH, SECONDS

12.1

0–1/4-MILE, SECONDS @ 117.0 MPH

170 TOP SPEED, MPH (EST)

1.18 g

ROADHOLDING, 300-FT SKIDPAD

ACCELERATION 1 FOOT (ROLLOUT)....................... 0.2 sec 60 FEET .......................................... 1.9 sec ROLLING START, 5–60 MPH .... 4.3 sec 1/4-MILE ...................................... 12.1 sec

@ 117.0 mph 0-10 MPH........................................ 0.3 sec 0-20 ......................................................... 1.0 0-30 ......................................................... 1.5 0-40 ......................................................... 2.1 0-50 ......................................................... 2.7 0-60 ......................................................... 3.7 0-70 ......................................................... 4.6 0-80 ......................................................... 5.9 0-90 ......................................................... 7.1 0-100 ...................................................... 8.5 0-110 ...................................................10.6 0-120 ...................................................12.7 0-130 ...................................................15.3 0-140 ...................................................18.5 0-150 ...........................................................– TOP SPEED (drag-limited, est) ................ 170 mph

BRAKING 60–0 MPH ........................................... 96 ft 80–0 MPH ........................................ 167 ft FADE ..................................................... none

HANDLING

SUSPENSION FRONT AND REAR ........................................ control arms

BRAKES & TIRES FRONT ..........................................15.5-in vented rotors, REAR ............................................15.3-in vented rotors,

ENGINE

3.7

T E S T R E S U LT S

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ROADHOLDING.............................. 1.18 g BALANCE ........................................ neutral

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THE COMPARISON | 2017 AUDI R8 V 10 PLUS | 2016 MCL AREN 570S

BATTLE OF SHENANDOAH

TWO MID-ENGINE MIDDLEWEIGHTS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD IN THE HILLS OF WEST VIRGINIA. BY JACK BARUTH | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW TRAHAN

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THE COMPARISON

HE MUCH-FEARED FOCKE-WULF

FW 190 had a takeoff speed of approximately 112 mph, according to Royal Navy captain Eric Brown, who flew a captured example in 1944 and detailed his impressions in his well-regarded postwar book Wings of the Luftwaffe. Compare this with the Audi R8 V10 Plus, which has a slightly higher takeoff of 121 mph. That’s what the ultramodern, 12.3-inch “virtual cockpit” instrument cluster was displaying right before I hit the infamous “ski jump” at Summit Point Motorsports Park’s Shenandoah circuit. For most drivers, in most cars, the ski jump is a nonevent. If you’re driving a Miata or a Civic, you’ll probably hit it at about 85 mph or less. You’ll notice a brief sensation of free fall as the suspension unweights. Try the jump with a five-liter Mustang or a C7 Corvette, you’ll see perhaps 110 and get the front wheels off the ground for a fraction of a second. The steering will go completely light in your hands. When that happens, take a deep breath and hold the wheel absolutely straight. If you don’t, you’ll finish your lap in an ambulance.

This Audi, painted Ara Blue and festooned with carbon-fiber trim that adds an air of purpose to the menace of its blunt face, can do better than that. It rockets flat-footed through Turn 11 with the kind of grip that can’t be had from common sports cars. Part of that is due to the mid-engine layout, and part of it is due to the optional 305-width Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires in back. No Focke-Wulf ever turned with more alacrity or accelerated with more fury. The R8 is so fast, attempts to put it into perspective with runof-the-mill track-day cars end up sounding like the worst kind of bench-racer smack talk. Here’s an example: Imagine the best Spec Miata ever built, with the best SCCA driver of all time at the wheel. Put it next to the R8 at the start/finish line. (If you’re a street-car guy, feel free to replace that Spec Miata with a new Mustang GT; they turn about the same lap time.) Wave the flag and watch them go. After one lap, there will be a thousand-foot gap between them, in the Audi’s favor. After five or six laps, the R8 driver would have enough time to stop the car anywhere on the track, get out, check his tire pressures, get back in the car, unpair his iPhone from the Bluetooth-enabled stereo, pair a different iPhone, start it up, and drive away, without losing his lead. This is what it means to be a supercar.

As blisteringly fast as the Audi is, however, it might not be the faster car in this comparison test. We’ve also brought a McLaren 570S, which is waiting patiently in the paddock for its chance to rip around the track. McLaren now divides its lineup into three distinct ranges. The Ultimate Series contains the 903-hp P1 hybrid hypercar.

which is preparing to thunder up the straight at Shenandoah. The instant you get the steering properly unwound at corner exit, it’s time for the 5.2-liter V-10 to put its 610 hp to work. It is naturally—let’s say defiantly—aspirated in this me-too-turbo era. You’ll reach the 8700-rpm redline three times on your way up the hill, unleashing a guttural wail that rattles the track’s bridge as you blast underneath it. Ah, here we are, all systems go, lined up on the track’s left edge. Ready to fling over the crest and down to the long braking zone before Shenandoah’s other notorious feature: a replica of the Nürburgring’s concrete-banked Karussell turn. The car’s virtual cockpit, which can display the Google Earth view of a racetrack while you’re on it, also offers a tiny speedometer. It’s swinging past 120, almost all the way to 125 mph. This would be a good time to make sure your hands are at 9 and 3 on the wheel and to ensure that your seatback is all the way up. Actually, you don’t have a choice about that; the V10 Plus has fixed-back racing buckets. Hope you like the seating angle. And that’s where I was, in the moment that it all went very

The R8 is so fast that attempts to put it into perspective with run-of-the-mill track-day cars end up sounding like the worst kind of bench-racer smack talk. The Super Series consists of the 650S and the 675LT. The 650S is a product-improved version of the MP4-12C that launched in 2011; the 675LT is a track-optimized version of the same that adds power, subtracts weight, and optimizes the aerodynamics for grip in high-speed corners. Below the Super Series is the Sports Series, of which the 570S is the first to hit our shores. It’s meant to be a more relaxed, more affordable entry to McLaren ownership. As we’ll see, both “relaxed” and “affordable” are relative terms. For now, however, let’s return to our blue Audi R8,

It’s a bird, it’s a plane. No, it’s a supercar.

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THE COMPARISON

wrong. It was my fourth lap in the Audi. I’d figured I’d need between six and 10 laps to extract my best time from the R8, but it was so damn easy to drive quickly that my third lap was already good enough to print in the magazine. The only place I saw possible improvement was over the ski jump; I lifted just a hair near the top to hit it at 117 mph, which sent the R8 four-wheels-up for about 60 feet. This time I was determined to take it flat. When I did, the R8 leaped from the ground. And it yawed in midair. Nothing to do for the moment but let my hands and arms relax in anticipation of the landing, which was going to be somewhere between hairy and unrecoverable. Photographer Andrew Trahan was stationed on the far side of the hill. He saw the Audi tilt and dip in flight before the left front wheel touched down, maybe 85 feet after takeoff. What happened next is a blur in my memory. I was threshold braking and furiously hucking the steering wheel back and forth, trying to fix an oscillation that at one point had me looking at Shenandoah’s Karussel through the driver’s-side window. When the speed was down to about 65 mph, I gave up, took my foot off the brake, and landed in the concrete banking hard enough to bottom the suspension on all four corners and ring the Audi’s unibody like a cathedral bell. Then I was back 50

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on the throttle and hustling uphill toward Big Bend and the start/finish line. The time: 1:37.239. [See track map, page 56.] Good enough for me. I was in no mood to try it again.

HUS WE MEET THE NEW R8 IN THE AIR, but Audi, like McLaren with the 570S, would rather you meet it in the middle. The market for six-figure sporting cars has a wide spectrum of intensity. On the relaxed, long-wavelength side, we have frontengine contenders from Aston Martin and Maserati. Bentley, with its Continental GT, and Porsche’s 911 Turbo. These are the cars you see heading into Manhattan on Monday mornings. They are compatible with parking garages, full-size duffel bags, and the lifestyle of a hedge-fund manager. Over on the ultraviolent, excuse me, ultraviolet end of the spectrum, you’ll find the track-day specials, the Nürburgring record holders, and the utterly uncompromising. The Ferrari 458 Speciale was a perfect example of the genre, but the McLaren 675LT also belongs there, as does the Viper ACR. Not all of these cars have radios or air-conditioning. Pampered bankers need not apply.

Both cars take different The original Audi R8, with its 4.2-liter V-8 and The McLaren 570S, on the other hand, represents approaches to style and spacious and impeccably detailed cockpit, was defiprecisely the opposite idea. The people in Woking function, but it’s the McLaren’s doors that nitely an infrared kind of supercar. Fast, but not started with the platform that underpins the 650S draw a crowd. too fast. Dramatically proportioned, but easy to get and its 675LT sibling, widely regarded as the purestinto and out of. A few years ago, Audi gave the R8 a V-10 in an blooded supercars south of a million bucks. Then they made attempt to move the car’s needle toward the center of that calma series of profound and nontrivial changes to optimize this to-manic spectrum. We were not convinced. lower-priced Sports Series car for daily use. The new one? Convincing. Engine and chassis: borrowed from Although the 570S retains the carbon-fiber structure of its the stellar Lamborghini Huracán, itself a solid contender in that more expensive stablemates, and its outrageous dihedral doors, the sills of those doors are cut lower for easier entry and exit. Every recent McLaren has a narrow center console, which allows the seats to be mounted closer together for a lower polar moment of inertia. The 570S replaces it with a control panel that cascades from the dash in a fashion that will be familiar to any owner of a European subcompact. The resulting extra space supercar middle ground. Visual aggression: cranked up. Where between the seats is given over to no fewer than three cup holdthe first R8 was insouciantly sleek, this one is square and stout. ers. This, in a two-seat car. You can’t say McLaren doesn’t have No longer beautiful, but undeniably purposeful. In Plus form, it’s at least a mild grasp of what commuters want. the most overtly sporting R8 yet, radiating aggression from every There are a few more concessions to everyday use. The activepore and backing the visuals with a drivetrain and chassis that aero system from the 650S, most notably the pop-up airbrake, can effortlessly cash every check written by the styling. is gone. Also gone: the deliberately offensive high-mounted

One gets the impression that McLaren’s idea of “everyday usability” is something like Liberace’s idea of “restrained and tasteful.”

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dual exhaust of the Super Series cars, replaced by conventional exits under the rear bumper that won’t deafen passengers or burn bystanders. What’s left: 3189 as-tested pounds of supposedly sensible supercar from Woking, England, powered by a 562-hp, twin-turbo 3.8-liter V-8. In our testing, it obliterated the quarter-mile in 10.6 seconds with a trap speed of 133 mph. One gets the impression that McLaren’s idea of “everyday usability” is something like Liberace’s idea of “restrained and tasteful”; you can only understand it in the context of the firm’s other products. Even in Plus specification, which bumps the power from 540 to 610 hp, the Audi can’t quite match the McLaren in a straight line, breaking the quarter-mile beam in 10.8 seconds at 129.5 mph. The undeniable traction advantage of Quattro is more than offset by a 495-pound weight penalty compared with the 570S, but on a less than perfectly prepared surface, the tables might turn. We’re talking fractions of a second here. As a supercar enthusiast since early childhood and a great fan of bench racing, your author could discuss the staggering numbers attached to these vehicles all day long. Did you know, for example, that you can get “stealth” exhaust finish on your 570S for the low, low price of $510? Or that the R8’s V-10 doesn’t 52

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reach its torque peak until a stratospheric 6500 rpm, just shy of the C7 Corvette Stingray’s redline? In the real world, however, there are only two numbers that matter. They are $192,450, the base price of the R8 V10 Plus, and $187,400, the base price of the 570S. The most expensive Audi and the least expensive McLaren sold on these shores. That makes them natural enemies, just like the Luftwaffe’s FW 190A and the RAF’s Spitfire Mk IX. We have a dogfight on our hands, which means there can be only one winner.

O GIVE BOTH OF THESE VERY DIFFERENT supercars a chance to properly display their talents, I convinced this magazine’s former editor-in-chief, Larry Webster, to join me on a series of twisty roads across Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, followed by two short evenings at the Shenandoah road course. I expected that Webster and I would arrive at this comparison with sharply opposing preconceptions and loyalties. He’s always adopted the pure racer’s mind-set to high-performance cars, prizing low weight and chassis agility above all else, even when it comes to a daily driver. I’m from the other school of thought, with two Volkswagen Phaetons, an Audi S5, and a

THE COMPARISON

Lincoln Town Car in my recent ownership history. The McLaren knifes ton, then muddle through a set of vague options that, I through the esses I thought the original R8 was flawless as an everymight add, all disappear through polarized sunglasses.” after climbing from the 20-degree bowl day supercar, power and lap time be damned. From Webster looked at me like I’d spent the last three of the Karussel. the moment he arrived at our rendezvous point and minutes explaining my preference for a particular recunfolded himself from behind the McLaren’s $5960 racing ipe of quiche. “Let’s just get in the cars,” he said. seats, Webster wasted no time confirming my suspicions. I’d scouted a roller-coaster two-lane that rises and falls, hun“You can’t get out of that thing without looking like an idiot,” dreds of feet at a time, through the Green Ridge State Forest he noted, pointing at the 570S, “but otherwise I think it’s perat the border of Maryland and West Virginia. I’ve driven this fect. What a brilliant combination of ride and precision. Feels road in everything from an F-250 to a Corvette Z06, and where like a landmark car to me.” I think the McLaren is actually it really shines is in its long, steep uphill curves. Even a strong pretty easy to enter and exit—the key is to make both of your sports car can feel breathless trying to maintain, let alone feet the first thing to leave the car and the last thing back in— increase speed in these conditions, but after an hour, it was but I wanted to take the R8’s side for a moment. plain that neither the R8 nor the 570S were bothered. “Well,” I responded, “you can’t deny that the Audi beats it in I’m partial to the Audi’s progressive rush of power from everyday use. The stereo, for one thing—” about 4000 rpm all the way to redline. This is truly one of “Stereo’s fine in the McLaren,” Webster interrupted. history’s great sports-car engines, combining massive power “It most certainly is not,” I replied, and I could feel a flush in with a seeming lack of rotational inertia. On public roads, it’s my cheeks. “Not by my standards. The R8 provides a brilliant just too much: too much power, too much wickedness in the soundstage that wouldn’t disgrace a set of Larsen 8s. The conway it whips the speedometer into the go-to-jail zone without trols feel like they were machined individually from billets of so much as a hiccup. polished stainless steel. Don’t even get me started on the climate But you can also grab the T-handled shifter, an unfortunately control. To adjust it on the 570S, you have to press the fan butprosaic piece that isn’t worthy of the R8’s otherwise bespoke ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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THE COMPARISON

The Audi’s superior grip interior, toss it from “S” to “D,” and let the car ease still too obviously an Android tablet with a unique allows it to shake off the into commuter mode. That 91-decibel bellow at font, but it’s a real improvement over the flickery McLaren through corners, full throttle becomes a mild rumble. With a press but the 570S reels it back in center stack in the 650S. The dashboard, made of on straights. of the Drive Select button on the steering wheel, three angled screens instead of the electromechanyou can choose Comfort and let this mid-engined supercar do ical setup in the more expensive models, is bright and legible. its spot-on imitation of an A8 sedan. Then you can enjoy the Before I knew it, we passed a sign that says “High Incidence Bang & Olufsen stereo, the outstanding visibility in all direcof Motorcycle Crashes Next 8 Miles.” Without warning, Webtions except those blocked by the large sail panels behind you, ster disappeared from view, following a banked curve around a and the fuss-free manner in which the drivetrain mimics an massive rock, the Audi’s V-10 roar echoing inside the McLaren’s electric motor. impressively quiet cabin. I gave chase. It’s relaxing, so much so that I failed to notice I was still doing In the short straights between turns, the 570S has the ability outrageous speeds. I seemed to have left Webster behind. We to claw the R8 back, maybe one car-length per five seconds. But met up at the next gas station and changed mounts quickly, not under braking and in midcorner, the Audi seems to shed that before exchanging a few sharp words about the Audi’s seats. I weight differential, and on corner exit, it’s murderous, slingthink they’re terrific, but he hates the lack of adjustment, pointshotting out without a whisper of wheelspin. Meanwhile, I was ing out that these cars are awfully expensive to not have some fighting the McLaren’s ECU. Instead of delivering power to the sort of power seatback tilt. He knew about a real demon of a rear wheels and letting a brake-based traction system sort it road up in the mountains, so we headed that way. out, the 570S waits until it thinks conditions are right before I have had a fair amount of seat time in the 650S and 675LT, so allowing the turbos to spool. This is good in the sense that it this Sports Series McLaren was familiar territory. First impreswill no doubt prevent a lot of inadvertent throttle-on spins in sion: I really dig all the changes. The touchscreen and more logthe hands of inexperienced drivers, but it handed back all the ical control layout may not match the Audi for usability, and it’s advantage I’d gained in each straight. 54

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TRACK NOTES & L AP TIMES

SUMMIT POINT MOTORSPORTS PARK | SHENANDOAH CIRCUIT S U M M I T P O I N T, W V | O P E N E D 2 0 0 5 | 1. 9 M I L E S | 1 8 T U R N S

Turn 18 big bend

sTarT/finish

Turn 1

AUDI

1:37.239

T3 Turn 4 The hammer

sec

MCLAREN

1:36.561

T10 T11 bridge sTraighT Turns 16-17 corkscrew

Turns 7-8-9 range esses

karussel esses ski jump

Turns 5-6 The hook

Turn 12 karussel

A. Audi completes the lap at 127.2 mph; McLaren, 133.3, accounting for most of the lap-time advantage. B. It’s easy to spin the McLaren here on this off-camber hairpin. Throttle discipline is vital. C. Both cars hit 75 mph at corner exit. The McLaren is faster in midcorner, and the Audi much better from midcorner to exit. D. Both cars get above 120 mph for the ski jump. McLaren’s a peach; Audi’s a problem. E. The 570S won’t accelerate hard out of the concrete Karussel unless you disable stability and traction control. The Audi is a rocket ship here. F. The Audi is calm and composed at corner exit; the McLaren’s very nervous.

sec

THE COMPARISON

For maybe 15 miles we played cat and mouse up the mountain, pitting the R8’s traction against the McLaren’s marginally superior straight-line speed. Amazingly, the brake pedal was getting a little soft despite the fact that our 570S was equipped with carbon discs and massive Brembos at all four corners. Blame the 95-degree heat, but our pace was also about as much as you could possibly extract in these conditions. At that kind of pace, individual seconds stretch into tangible objects, observed every which way by a mind furiously calculating closing speed and maximum corner velocity. We couldn’t have been on that road for more than seven or eight minutes. Yet in that time, I found myself captivated by the McLaren, despite the indifferent stereo and generic interior. I believe the phrase for it is pur sang. Pureblood. Yes, it’s the discount model. But in the space of moments, you can feel the direct kinship to its more expensive siblings, all the way up to the almighty P1. All the corners cut and all the costs reduced are merely peripheral, a $99 H&M suit worn by an Olympic decathlete. By the time I closed the gap on the R8, I was a true believer. I thought that our little drive might have reconciled Webster to the Audi’s merits; his sheer joy in flogging the thing was obvious in his take-no-prisoners approach to each corner entry. No such luck. When we came to a halt, he was caustic: “That is a luscious motor that makes exotic noises and big power without turbos. We should give it props for that alone. But the car feels devoid of emotion. Did the designers or builders have any passion in the thing?” You can’t argue against the Audi as a day-to-day proposition, in this company at least. It has the same fully realized feeling, and that same milled-steel solidity, as the A6 and A8 sedans with which it shares a showroom. “Inarguably the more livable car,” Webster noted. “The dashboard is brilliant. I couldn’t stop looking at it. And it’s plenty quick. I just don’t get worked up over it.” I noticed, however, that like me, he gravitated to the Audi’s clear engine cover during our talk. For a moment, we both just stood there and looked at the heart of the machine. The V-10. It’s one of the finest engines I have ever experienced. And we may not see its like again. I wonder what the 570S would be like if you could replace the powerful but slightly anodyne twinturbo V-8 with this strong, subtle, and exhilarating Audi-viaLamborghini motor. I’m sure it would upset the weight balance. I’m not sure I’d care. At Shenandoah that evening, the 570S was seven-tenths faster than the R8; looking at the data, that’s almost entirely due to the power-to-weight advantage. But it’s a bit scary. From the midcorner to the exit of Shenandoah’s fourth-gear Big Bend, I struggled to get the power down without inducing life-changing oversteer. Maybe that’s good. It’s hard to value anything that comes without effort. You could be justifiSummit Point built ably proud of getting the maximum out of a dimensional replica of the Nürit. It takes more than a checkbook to fully burgring’s famed Karussell (left). experience this automobile.

AWKER HURRICANE. MESSERSCHMITT BF 109. Supermarine Spitfire. Focke-Wulf FW 190. Great Britain and Germany, locked in combat over the skies of London, the English Channel, Normandy, Berlin. Stunningly powerful and graceful machines pushed to the maximum, no quarter asked or given. How many generations of children have imagined diving out of the sun with cannon blazing, dispatching an opponent with a flawless split-S or chandelle, then waving ruefully as they parachute to the ground?

There is something both magical and visceral about those final piston-engined fighters. They became nearly perfect, and then in a flash, they were obsolete. Yet it is worth nothing that people still spend unjustifiable sums of money to restore and fly those warbirds, while the blunt-nosed jets that succeeded them stand abandoned and forlorn in aviation graveyards. Consider these two cars, the R8 V10 Plus and the McLaren 570S, as their spiritual and automotive successors, perhaps the last generation of completely piston-engined, gasoline-powered supercars. We could easily make a case for the superiority of either vehicle, depending on driver skill, intended use, and how sensitive one is to things like interior quality or in-flight stability. As compromise supercars, bridging the wide gulf between everyday luxury cars and no-compromise track-day specials, both machines succeed admirably. The R8 really is fast; the 570S is truly livable. The fact remains, however, that purchases of this nature are primarily, and justly, driven by emotion. Desire. This is where the Audi, extraordinary as it is, stumbles. At its heart, the R8 is a Huracán with all of that car’s willful ridiculousness—from the flip-up start-button cover to the inexcusably massive and sunstroke-inducing windshield—sanded over. What’s the point? Where’s the fun, the passion, in that? The 570S, on the other hand: It might be tamed for the street, but it has the bones, and the heart, of a proper racer. The doors are ridiculous. The interior is lamentable. Visibility isn’t great. But you’d never stop wanting to drive it, never stop thinking about it, never stop smiling when you fall into the buckets at the end of a long day. It’s the less reasonable of our pair, and that makes it the only reasonable winner. In this twilight of the traditional supercar, the McLaren truly shines. ■ ROADANDTR ACK .COM

S EP TEMBER 2016

SCALE: 10-IN. DIVISIONS ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BARKER © ROAD & TRACK/HEARST MAGAZINES

OFFICIAL PERFORMANCE TEST REPORT

2016 MCLAREN 570S

2017 AUDI R8 V10 PLUS

SPECI F IC ATIONS MCLAREN 570S

BASE AS TESTED

..........................$192,450......................... ..........................$199,925.........................

..........................$187,400 ......................... ..........................$219,770 .........................

................ 40-valve dohc V-10 ............... .....................mid, longitudinal .................... ............aluminum block and heads........... ............................5204 cc ........................... .....................84.5 x 92.8 mm .................... ............................. 12.5:1............................. .......................... 8700 rpm.......................... .............. direct and port injection..............

....... 32-valve twin-turbo dohc V-8....... .....................mid, longitudinal .................... ............aluminum block and heads........... ............................3799 cc ........................... .....................90.0 x 69.9 mm .................... ............................... 8.7:1 .............................. .......................... 8500 rpm.......................... ........................port injection .......................

.................................. all.................................. ....... 7-speed dual-clutch automatic....... .....1, 4, 5: 4.46:1, 2, 3, 6, 7: 3.59:1.... ............... limited-slip differential............... GEAR ....... RATIO ..........CALC MAX (RPM) 1.............. 3.13:1 .........50 mph (8700) 2.............. 2.59:1 .........76 mph (8700) 3.............. 1.96:1 ......100 mph (8700) 4.............. 1.24:1 ......127 mph (8700) 5.............. 0.98:1 ...... 161 mph (8700) 6.............. 0.98:1 ......200 mph (8700) 7.............. 0.84:1 ......205 mph (7650)

.................................rear................................ ....... 7-speed dual-clutch automatic....... ..............................3.31:1............................. ..................... open differential .................... GEAR ....... RATIO ..........CALC MAX (RPM) 1.............. 3.98:1 .........53 mph (8500) 2.............. 2.61:1 .........82 mph (8500) 3.............. 1.91:1 ......111 mph (8500) 4.............. 1.48:1......144 mph (8500) 5.............. 1.16:1 ......183 mph (8500) 6.............. 0.91:1 ......204 mph (7425) 7.............. 0.69:1 ......204 mph (5625)

...................electromechanical .................. ..............................15.7:1............................. .................................2.1 ................................ ..............................36.7 ft .............................

..................... electrohydraulic..................... ............................. 15.0:1............................. .................................2.5 ................................ ..............................40.7 ft .............................

...........control arms, control arms ...........

............... 15.0-in vented rotors,............... 6-piston fixed calipers ............... 14.0-in vented rotors,............... 4-piston fixed calipers ............Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 ........... ....f 245/30zr-20, r 305/30zr-20 ...

............... 15.5-in vented rotors,............... 6-piston fixed calipers ............... 15.0-in vented rotors,............... 4-piston fixed calipers .................. Pirelli P Zero Corsa.................. .... f 225/35zr-19, r 285/35zr-20 ...

.........................space frame ........................ ...............174.3 x 76.4 x 48.8 in.............. ............................104.3 in ........................... ........................64.5/63.0 in....................... .................................2/2................................ ............................ 2-seater ........................... .............................. 8.0 ft3.............................. ............................... 0.36............................... ..............................21.6 ft2 .............................

.........................space frame ........................ ...............178.3 x 84.5 x 47.3 in .............. ............................ 105.1 in ........................... ........................65.9/63.7 in ....................... .................................2/2................................ ............................ 2-seater ........................... .............................. 5.3 ft3.............................. ............................... 0.35............................... ........................ 20.5 ft2 (est) .......................

............................ 3684 lb............................ ............................ 42/58% ........................... ............................6.0 lb/hp...........................

.............................3189 lb............................ ............................ 42/58% ........................... ............................5.7 lb/hp ...........................

......................... 15/22 mpg ........................ ............................ 19.3 gal............................ ............................. 425 mi............................. ............................ premium............................

......................... 16/23 mpg......................... ............................ 19.0 gal............................ ............................. 437 mi............................. ............................ premium............................

ENGINE CONFIGURATION LAYOUT MATERIAL DISPLACEMENT BORE x STROKE COMPRESSION RATIO REDLINE FUEL DELIVERY

TRANSMISSION DRIVEN WHEELS TYPE FINAL-DRIVE RATIOS

STEERING ASSIST RATIO TURNS LOCK-TO-LOCK TURNING CIRCLE

SUSPENSION FRONT, REAR

BRAKES & TIRES FRONT REAR TIRES SIZE

BODY & CHASSIS STRUCTURE LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT WHEELBASE TRACK, FRONT/REAR DOORS/SEATS EPA CLASS CARGO CAPACITY DRAG COEFFICIENT FRONTAL AREA

WEIGHT CURB WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION F/R WEIGHT-TO-POWER RATIO

413

LB-FT PEAK TORQUE @ 6500 RPM

0–9000 RPM

MCLAREN 570S

562

PEAK HP (SAE) @ 7400 RPM

443

LB-FT PEAK TORQUE @ 5000–6500 RPM

0–9000 RPM

T E S T R E S U LT S AUDI

0 –1/4-MILE ,

MCLAREN

2.8 2.8 10.8 10.6 205 204

0–60 MPH, SECONDS..........

........

SECONDS .... @ MPH ............... @ 129.5 ......... @ 133.0

top speed, mph ..............

....

ROADHOLDING, G ....

1.00 1.05 ......

ACCELERATION 1 FOOT (ROLLOUT) ........ 0.2 sec...............0.2 sec ROLLING START, 5–60 MPH................. 3.5 ..................... 3.8 0–10 MPH ............... 0.2...................... 0.3 0–20 ........................ 0.6.................... 0.8 0–30 ........................ 1.1.................... 1.3 0–40 ........................ 1.6.................... 1.7 0–50 ........................ 2.1.................... 2.3 0–60 ........................ 2.8.................... 2.8 0–70 ........................ 3.5.................... 3.4 0–80 ........................ 4.3.................... 4.2 0–90 ........................ 5.3.................... 5.0 0–100 ...................... 6.4.................... 6.1 0–110 ...................... 7.7.................... 7.2 0–120 ...................... 9.1.................... 8.5 0–130 ................... 10.9..................10.1 TOP SPEED .... 205 mph...........204 mph (elec ltd, mfr) . (drag-ltd, mfr)

BRAKING 60–0 MPH ................... — ....................— 80–0 MPH ................... — ....................— FADE.......................... low...................low

HANDLING ROADHOLDING ... 1.00 g.............1.05 g BALANCE .................mild .................... mild

understeer understeer

FUEL EPA CITY/HWY FUEL CAPACITY FUEL RANGE RECOMMENDED FUEL

610

PEAK HP (SAE) @ 8250–8700 RPM

0–700 HP/LB-FT

AUDI R8 V10 PLUS PRICE

0–700 HP/LB-FT

AUDI R8 V10 PLUS

ROADANDTR ACK .COM

S EP TEMBER 2016

TEST NOTE

For instrumented testing, the R8 rode on Pirelli P Zero tires.

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THE ADVENTURE | THE 2016 24 HOURS OF LE MANS

THE ALL-NIGHTER

FORDS, TOYOTAS, AND BR AIN-WARPING SLEEP DEPRIVATION IN WHAT WILL FOREVER BE KNOWN AS THE YEAR YOU HAD TO GO. B Y S A M S M I T H | P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y M AT T T I E R N E Y

THE ADVENTURE

THIS WAS THE YEAR. The year that Ford went back to the great endurance race, absent since a string of wins in the 1960s. The year Porsche defended its first overall win in more than a decade. The year Toyota took the fight to the Germans, came within inches of victory—after years of defeat—and coasted to a halt with three minutes left. What’s been called the most gutting Le Mans finish in ages. This story is not about any of that. You can, and should, read the news reports on what happened during the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans. This is something fuzzier. A bright-eyed look at a 93-year-old spectacle. Notes on the ground from a 35-year-old writer who had wanted to see the place since fourth grade. And maybe a hint, as racing struggles to stay relevant, at why a long day in France remains one of the best things on earth. PARIS | CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT

My plane lands from the West Coast. Didn’t sleep in the air. Wandering Charles de Gaulle, I decide to stay awake for the entire race. In the fog of jet lag, having never been to Le Mans, it seems like the only reasonable option. In the annals of sport, Le Mans stands alone. Amateur privateers and factory professionals, in some of the fastest race cars on earth, for 24 hours. An 8.5-mile, nine-decade-old course made partially of closed public roads. The track itself has been tweaked for safety, but the race still pours a quarter-million spectators into a small French town two hours from Paris. An event that once boasted virtually stock street cars now features million-dollar prototypes and purpose-built, production-derived machines. The top class, Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1), offers pro drivers in experimental, 900-plus-hp hybrids like the V-4 Porsche 919 and the V-6 Audi R18. Those cars are spaceships, packed with secret tech, short enough to trip over. They run alongside amateur drivers and factory-backed pros in everything from lesser prototypes to Ford GTs, Porsche 911s, and Corvettes. THURSDAY, 8:00 A.M.

2:00 P.M. I catch a TGV, France’s high-speed train, to Le Mans.

It’s common to hate how the French run motorsport. Too many rules, an ironic lack of joie de vivre. For one reason or another, a country with few world-conquering race teams now controls both European motorsport, through the FIA, and Le Mans specifically, through the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO). TGVs can cruise at 200 mph. Somewhere outside Chartres, 68

ROADANDTR ACK .COM

S EP TEMBER 2016

in a reclined, overstuffed chair in a silent cabin, I’m lulled into a daze by the whufwhuf of overpasses. It occurs to me that the French are not wrong about everything. LE MANS | GARE DU MANS STATION 5:00 P.M. Funky, changeable weather. Blue sky, then clouds, then blue again. Spitting rain, as if the weather wants to be polite but also just wants you to go home. The crowd at the train station is a cartoon. Stray dogs that manage to look both extremely French and like ordinary stray dogs. A troupe of primary-school girls dressed like disco 20-year-olds and jabbering dramatically through stinky cigarettes. A hundred Brits, walking quickly. As in Paris, every other woman wears heart-stopping pants. Unlike in Paris, almost all of them smile. Outside, under a large wooden shed, a man sells brown eggs and soft cheese. My taxi pulls out of the station and immediately comes to a halt in a line of other cars. Le Mans traffic on race weekend is a Manhattan tunnel on a summer Friday. Many roads are closed because they’re either part of the track or intersect with it. Every third corner holds a billboard advertising Porsche or the Ford GT. Then you crest a rise and almost fall into the town airfield, in a lowland next to that famous front straight. The Dunlop bridge sits in the distance. The scale of the place means you see no more than one or two corners at a time. I have been up for over 24 hours and Le Mans is already the only place in France.

LE MANS | CATHÉDRALE SAINT-JULIEN

DEAN TREML/RED BULL (2)

Coneheads roam the track; Porsche LMP1 driver

LE MANS | CIRCUIT DE LA SARTHE

SATURDAY, 10:30 A.M. Hitch a ride to the track with The drivers parade through Brendon Hartley and fans at the drivers’ parade; grid town in convertibles. I mill around near a masAaron Robinson and Mike Duff of Car and Driver. girls and guys head to the sive Gothic cathedral while parade guest Jackie The motorway is a parking lot. Sleep-deprived, I start; tricolor flyover. Chan waves at crowds from the back of an Excaliask Mike, an Englishman, about French drivers. bur. The French are very excited about Jackie Chan. (Parade He drops into a tour of English insults. (Collective favorite: announcer: “ZhhhackieChan!”) “feckin’ twunt melon farmer.”) We discuss European cultural At dinner that night with Ford people, we listen to British differences vis-à-vis a German woman attempting to illegally driver Andy Priaulx. pass our car on the shoulder. (“Aaron, they can’t just take what “You’re doing 180 mph, and then you’re back in the motor they want anymore! Don’t let her have your Sudetenland!”) home, putting the kettle on,” he says. “At 2:00 in the morning, 2:00 P.M. The teams are lined up on the grid, flag girls and pomp. someone shakes you and says, your stint, 15 minutes. And you’re French paratroopers skydive in to deliver a flag. Brad Pitt will back on the Mulsanne again, thinking, Why am I doing this? start the race. A Jumbotron shows him, Jason Statham, Patrick “Long straights, lot of time to think, to lose concentration. Dempsey, and Jackie Chan gathered with officials. It’s like Chip [Ganassi, the Ford team chief] says—you’ve got to After a parade lap, the skies open. Raining so hard it hurts. drive everyone else’s car, too.” Teams scramble to change to full-wet tires on the grid. Brad Pitt The race starts Saturday, at 3:00 in the afternoon. I sleep scrambles not at all, because Brad Pitt don’t scramble. four hours that night and can’t explain why. FRIDAY, 6:00 P.M.

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Rain wreaks havoc at the rain gets worse. For the first time in 6:00 P.M. I get lost in the track’s fan village. start. A glimpse of honorary history, due to standing water on the track and Among thousands of people: starter Brad Pitt behind the tricolor. Stands are packed atrocious visibility, Le Mans starts under a safety • A Jumbotron showing the race broadcast, no with fans young and old. car. Pitt stands in the middle of the straight and sound. A crowd sits in front, utterly silent. waves a French tricolor. The passing cars shoot up waves of • A drunk Frenchman actually yelling “Vive la France!” spray, soaking his clothes. This is oddly satisfying. • A middle-aged Englishman wearing a shirt that says, in capital letters, “WILL I ALWAYS RIDE FAST 3:53 P.M. The race finally has some sense of speed. It’s still rainMOTORCYCLES?” And below that, “DOES A SPIDER CRAB ing, so you hear the pace instead of see it, cars cracking into the HAVE A WATERTIGHT ARSE?” (Not being an expert in crab chicanes and barking around off-line. anatomy, I can only assume the answer is “yes,” or perhaps I wander the grandstands in a stupor. There are more obvi“maybe, but he’ll reconsider when he has children.”) ous fans of American cars here than you see in most of Amer7:10 P.M. Private jets climb out from the nearby airport, banking ica. Blue Ford Chip Ganassi shirts line the fences. Japanese over the stands. Because of course you would go home from Le tour groups wander the grounds in yellow Corvette shirts. Mans for the evening if you had a jet—Paris, London, wherever. My friend Josh Welton, here as a tourist, meets me at the The main straight is surprisingly narrow. It sits at the bottom Ford chicane. of a man-made canyon, the pit garages on one side and steep “I’m actually excited for tonight. For it to be 2:00 in the grandstands on the other. I try but can’t make my eyes reconcile morning. For no one to be here.” 70

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P I T T: M A R C P I A S E C K I / W I R E I M A G E

3:00 PM: The

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history with that pavement: Porsche’s 917 and 956, Ford’s GT40, longtail McLaren F1s, the magnesium-bodied Mercedes that catapulted into the crowd and killed 83 spectators in 1955. Almost on cue, a Ford GT goes snarling up the straight. F-OR-D on the windshield, that thin Sixties font. The white in its livery is gray with dirt. Edsel Ford II is here with his sons. A recent picture of him in the garages, looking pensive, went out on the wire earlier, from Ford. Edsel last visited Le Mans in 1966, with his father, Henry II. The first year Ford won, after spending half the money in Detroit to do it. It’s hard to look at that picture, or a modern GT, without feeling simultaneously giddy and a little manipulated. So you focus on the giddy, because you’re not nuts, and sometimes manipulation is okay, and sweet 40-inch-high Christ, those are Ford GTs at Le Mans.

doing something stupid—usually trying to get out of the way. It always looks like magic. And is just another illustration of how the race is a giant dice roll. The old line holds that you don’t win Le Mans, the track lets you win. You can’t spend your way to the podium here, because you can’t outspend chance. There’s just too much to go wrong, for too long. 9:45 P.M. As if to emphasize the point, Scottish driver and Le Mans vet Marino Franchitti plows the No. 67 Ford GT into a wall at the end of the tree-lined Mulsanne straight. It’s hard to watch—people call the Fords steamrollers, despite the fact that they’re a new, unproven car run by a new, unproven team. Steamrollers aren’t supposed to hump the pea gravel. The Mulsanne has two safety chicanes, installed for the 1990 race. For the 67 years prior, the nearly four-mile straight—normally a narrow highway leading to the town of Mulsanne—was the ballsiest road-racing asphalt on earth. Cars ran a sustained 200 mph there in the 1960s and topped 250 in the 1980s. Last year, Mark Webber hit 211.4 mph in a Porsche 919. Which could be seen as slow. If you’re insane.

The old line holds that you don’t win Le Mans— the track lets you win. You can’t spend your way to the podium here, because you can’t outspend chance.

8:30 P.M. The paddock is a maze of trucks and quick-fab compounds, each team hiding behind a liveried, two-story partition. Walking past the Risi Competizione Ferrari team (from America!) I hear Radio Le Mans over a speaker: “. . . one of the best Le Mans 24s in recent memory.” Not unbelievable. The race appears astonishingly even, or at least managed into evenness by the ACO. The French equalize lap speeds through artificial, in-season regulation of curb weights and engine output, according to a team’s success. The process, called Balance of Performance, is widely loathed but brutally effective. Still, great racing is great racing, so it’s hard to gripe. Lap times of the Audi, Porsche, and Toyota prototypes are separated by tenths. The slower GT cars fight and screw with each other constantly, all while being passed by prototypes. Imagine if the World Cup were played on one field, and they played all the games at once, and all the fans sat there and watched until it was all over. Dan Gurney once told me that, 50 years ago, you either conserved a Le Mans car by driving under its limits, or you broke before the end. Great leaps in durability mean the race is now essentially 24 hours of qualifying—every lap a blitz.

10:05 P.M. I head to the track’s media center to do some research. A chair, out of the elements. Relaxing. 10:06 P.M. An Italian journalist from La Gazzetta dello Sport approaches the next desk over. He gestures indignantly and spits rapid-fire Italian, which I do not speak. I have apparently stolen his chair. I did not steal his chair. I stay put on principle. More gestures. He shrugs every time I say something in English—doesn’t understand. Moves a cup of water onto my desk dramatically— up, over, down. This is supposed to tell me something.

9:00 P.M. In the Porsche hospitality center, I watch in-car video from the marque’s prototypes on two large TVs. Every minute or so, a 919 will get caught in the setting sun, washing out the camera. You see bugs and oil on the windshield, a blaze of opacity, and you know that the sunset lasts for hours here, and you also know that the drivers must drive into the sun without slowing and cannot see a thing. On a two-lane road, running so fast the TV helicopters can’t keep up. Every hour, a camera shows a pro somehow avoiding an amateur driver who is ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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THE ADVENTURE

Tired, I relent. He does a little bow and returns to his laptop. I glance at the screen. There are English words on it. 11:00 P.M. There is something so impossibly professional about racing at night. No headlights can keep up with 200 mph; no spotter can erase the speed differential between a purpose-built prototype and a Porsche 911; no group of people is predictable when they’ve been up for most of a day. None of it seems natural. Which, paradoxically, is why Le Mans feels normal at night, its own little world. The cars become neon: fluffy exhaust flames. Brake rotors glowing orange. Traces on your eyelids when you blink. 11:15 P.M. Exhaustion is changing my brain.

The atmosphere improves with context—knowledge of the stories at play. But even without, the place inflates and carries a rare air. A circus crossed with a royal wedding and the Olympics. The feeling of being on some kind of forced exhausting holiday with a quarter-million of your closest friends. It’s amazing that we haven’t ruined it. Not through ill intent, but because humans are so rarely able to see when our progress has screwed something up. Well-meaning changes that diminish the spectacle. Chicanes in the Mulsanne. Adding slow corners near the Dunlop bridge, where it used to take balls and trust to go fast. And yet the glory persists. Maybe the well is just too deep to drain.

The cars become neon: fluffy exhaust flames, orange brake rotors. Traces on your eyelids when you blink.

A kind of dyslexia sets in—the sign across the Ford chicane reads AUTOMOBILE CLUB D’LOUDEST. The cars are somehow louder and sexier and faster in the dark. Even the people seem lit and shiny. There is an entire team of German drinkers wearing plastic Viking helmets. They yell unintelligibly and ride around on small, noisy go-karts. Fifteen feet away, a few Frenchmen stand quietly at a trailer selling crepes. World War II suddenly makes a lot more sense.

11:30 P.M. Everyone and their brother is in the garages. Audi, Porsche, Aston. Cars are coming apart, broken parts or crash damage. Another journalist calls the pits a “simultaneous f***fest.” I briefly try to picture a nonconcurrent f***fest. The garages are organized panic—zip-tied bodywork, crew running everywhere, men fixing problems on the clock and occasionally glaring at TV cameras when they get too close. SUNDAY, 1:00 A.M. The stands are nearly empty. Toyota and Porsche are engaged in a titanic battle for the lead, racing as if it were noon—sliding and spitting around the track, air over curbs, nose-to-tail at 200 mph.

2:00 A.M. Le Mans has a fair midway with games and a Ferris wheel. You can see at least 25 percent of the track from atop the wheel. I go up in the wheel because it’s there and because I’m falling asleep on my feet and want to stare at race cars on the ground. It turns out I have a significant and previously undiscovered fear of heights. 4:15 A.M. I meet with Matt Tierney, R&T’s art director. We drive his rental car to the Mulsanne and traipse through the woods. This may or may not include mild trespassing, jumping a small creek, and armed police. Then, boom: Armco at the edge of a dark office park. A flash of yellow whomps down a nearby road. Huge, booming noise. No one in sight save a few race marshals in a cherry picker. My head does a quick kind of early-morning math: Race car plus yellow plus boom plus Le Mans. Pratt & Miller Corvette. The Chevy’s headlights form a flickering tunnel in the trees. I walk through tall grass to the fence. One of the Audi prototypes whistles by, the Vette still audible in the distance. I think two things: This is impossible. And I want to stay here forever. 4:30 A.M. Someone following my Twitter account asks which car outshouts the rest. I find the words in my notes: “Corvettes are still the chicken dinner.” 5:04 A.M. For the record: The Chevrolets are rolling, cracking weather fronts. The Astons are nasally Corvettes, more tea. The Fords are tenors, snarly and ugly under closed throttle. The hybrid P1 cars sound like grumbling. The 911s echo off the grandstands in this funky, atmospheric whoop, like the forest speeders in Return of the Jedi. 5:09 A.M. I visit a crepe trailer. Still dark out, but there’s a glow on the horizon. You get a choice between plain, Nutella, fruit jam, and Grand Marnier. The Grand

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C H A S E D O W N Y O U R PA S S I O N.

N E V E R H A L F WA Y.

RHYS MILLEN PRO RACER Limits are meant to be tested. ItÕs the only way progress is made. Some prefer to pace themselves, while others choose to floor it.

Marnier is a Le Mans cliché, but I order it anyway: boozy suede breakfast candy. The Nutella one tastes like Nutella, which is to say that, if you are human, you want to smear it on your face and fall over happy and dead.

Le Mans at night becomes a Disney-like dreamland of a Ferris wheel, catnaps, and headlights. Smith, upper right, ponders crepes. Corvettes and Porsches battle.

5:30 A.M. People trickle back into the circuit. The sidewalks get

crowded again. Colors go pastel in the sunrise. For 15 minutes, the landscape is a Monet.

The Toyota mechanics do group calisthenics in their garage—metronomic, fully suited in safety gear. They look ported from a 1960s B-movie about robot space invaders and the busty women who love them. The dawn produces a second wind. I could go forever. 7:21 A.M.

7:22 A.M. Legs weak. Race doesn’t end for seven and a half hours. Body is shutting down. 74

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7:30 A.M. Find the espresso machine in the media center. Drink two and pour a third into a small bag of Haribo gummy candy. (The media center hands out bags of Haribo.) Eat the bag.

7:31 A.M. Arms are made of cotton. I type notes on my laptop. After five minutes of staring at the keyboard, I realize my fingers are indexed one key off—S instead of A, semicolon instead of L. 7:45 A.M. In the media center, a stern-looking woman in a Porsche Motorsport jacket walks around distributing press releases. They’re filled with finely detailed updates of race happenings: One of the factory 911 RSRs got a new steering assembly in five minutes, etc. No other team makes a rep go desk-by-desk to journalists, but then, no other team has won here 17 times. I’m reminded how Porsche has this odd ability to be both underdog and indomitable titan. Also, seriously: Five minutes to change a power-steering

THE ADVENTURE

system? What did they do, jack up the horn button and drive a new car underneath? 9:21 A.M. I sit down on a curb. My eyeballs register the lack of forward motion and give up. They detach from my optic nerves and walk across the room. 1:00 P.M. The back half of the field has been a Yakety Sax crashfest since morning. Cars in the gravel. Cars in other cars. Cars spinning off behind cars that are themselves spinning off. Men out of their damn minds on fatigue toxins. I would be homicidal on a bicycle right now, and they’re being told to push. In America, Fox Sports—the country’s only Le Mans TV broadcast—switches to golf. 1:48 P.M. Toyota leads LMP1, Porsche 32 seconds back. Ford is ahead of Ferrari by about a minute, but that gap seems highly fluid. Failure details are trickling out of the garages: Over the last 22 hours, the Audi pit has dealt with failing brake rotors, a broken turbocharger, a door falling off a prototype. One of the 919s lost a water pump around midnight. Toyota has seen contact damage but little else. Toyota’s prototype is new this year; the Porsches and Audis are older. Porsche won overall in 2015. Audi has won overall 13 of the past 16 years. After 22 hours, no one will put money on the finish. I run into Aaron Robinson: “It’s like that guy in The Matrix: I know this is all fake, but it tastes great and I love it.” 2:00 P.M. Porsche gives a few journalists a quick garage tour. They bring 30 engineers—three oh!—to the race. The two prototype garages are each only slightly larger than a family sedan. Small hand tools are magnetized to overhead scaffolding. When a car comes down pit road, it echoes into your pockets. We visit Porsche’s 919 composites tent, across the paddock. Three sets of bodywork, flight cases everywhere, a pile of skid plates. A spare chassis, four spare engines, four front gearboxes (919s are all-wheel drive), four rear gearboxes, 60 wheels. Porsche and Audi are part of the same company. The first year that the two battled each other at Le Mans, the combined effort was said to cost $500 million. Two hundred and fifty million dollars, funneled through a space the size of two Camrys.

Frank-Steffen Walliser broke into tears at the pre-race press conference. Months of stress and frustration, a guy pushed to the bounds of tolerance.) A lone Toyota leads LMP1—and overall—in the closing hour, having spent most of the night drawing blood to stay ahead of the second-place 919. In the penultimate lap, the Toyota loses a turbocharger connection. It goes into limp mode on the back half of the course, the Porsche close enough to smell blood. The Toyota dies in front of the start/finish stands, one lap to go. The air pressure seems to change, as if a quarter-million people just instantly deflated their lungs. The Toyota’s driver, Kaz Nakajima, sits in the car, powerless. (Radio Le Mans announcer John Hindhaugh: “Oh no . . . It couldn’t have happened on the Mulsanne, where he could have cried his little head off by himself.”) His team is either draped on the wall or in the garage, ashen. Porsche is gifted with a win. The marque’s 18th, and a lastminute surprise. Because their cars kept going, because they were in the right place at the right time, because they fought like dogs for 24 hours. The team had boxes of T-shirts reading “Finally 18!” but those boxes were put away when Toyota appeared to have the race locked. The pits erupt. After the race, a few members of the Toyota team quietly enter Porsche hospitality. Eyes low. The Germans notice. There is a standing ovation.

WOKE UP THE NEXT DAY, in a hotel near the Paris airport, and stood in the shower for 45 minutes. I’d been walking or standing for almost 37 hours. I let the soap run into my eyes because there seemed to be dirt there. Real life seemed a slower, cleaner place than Le Mans. A good, long race that cannot be predicted or shaped to fit a narrative or even fully understood by the people who love it. And the irresponsible, wasteful, happy jazz of it all. Standing in the Mulsanne grass in the middle of the night, watching men try to prove something at 180 mph. When the whole world comes down to a moment that couldn’t be anywhere else, just dark and noise and staggering light, between quiet office parks and stands of trees. ■

3:00 P.M. It is impossible to avoid the race ending. Ford wins the GTE Pro class, but not without drama: Their pace was much quicker than in practice, and everyone whines that the GTs sandbagged, then were “allowed” to be too fast. By contrast, the factory 911s, in the same class, were uncompetitively, almost comically slow, likely due to the Balance of Performance. (Porsche motorsport head After a stunning finish where the leading Toyota breaks down on the last lap, the podium: Porsche, Toyota, and Audi LMP1 teams, 1-2-3. After 24 hours, sunset and sunrise. ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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MOTORSPORT | THE 2016 24 HOURS OF LE MANS

HEARTBREAK I WAS THERE WHEN LE MANS SLIPPED AWAY FROM TOYOTA.

WRITE THIS STILL IN A STATE OF SHOCK.

I can’t bring myself to believe Le Mans ended the way it did. Let me back up. I had the honor of working alongside Toyota Gazoo Racing’s team photographer James Moy at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans. I am well acquainted with the team, having stood in for James last year at the 6 Hours of Shanghai. I can tell you without hesitation—and with no disrespect to teams I have worked with previously—that the moment you walk into the Toyota garage, you are family. It is rare that photographers are given such exclusive access. James and I spent Le Mans week eating, drinking, talking, laughing, and as it turns out, crying with them. We were privy to race and pit strategy that Porsche and Audi would have paid good money to know. We felt part of the effort, part of the race, part of the team. The day before the race, we rode to the drivers’ parade with the six LMP1 drivers for Toyota’s two cars. The chemistry among the drivers is special. None are high profile, like Porsche has in Brendon Hartley or Mark Webber, but together, they make up one of the strongest teams currently racing sports cars. There’s Anthony Davidson, who always has a funny story to tell. Always laughing. Always joking. Sébastien Buemi is quiet but has a big personality when he lets it come out. He spent the ride into the Le Mans city center making funny Snapchats with Anthony. Kazuki Nakajima is reserved,

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with a quiet sense of humor. Stéphane Sarrazin is all business. He is a supreme racing driver but doesn’t let his emotions show what he’s thinking and feeling. Mike Conway, a Brit, is polite and serious, always bantering with one of his teammates. And then there’s Kamui Kobayashi. The guy lives in a world of his own. And his world is awesome. He does what he wants, when he wants to do it. He oozes personality. Saturday morning. Most racegoers expected a 24-hour war between Porsche and Audi. But in our briefing room, Toyota was preparing its own assault. The top brass from Japan was there to cheer on the team. A rousing speech, translated to English, implored the mechanics and drivers to fight from start to finish. The race began in the pouring rain, under caution, at 3 p.m. The safety car released the 60 cars 53 minutes in. A few laps later, Toyota took the lead from Porsche. The battle was on. Hours ticked by. I spent most of the short summer night (it was only truly dark from 11 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.) on the famous Mulsanne straight, capturing long exposures of the cars blasting their way through the forest-lined public road at 200 mph and keeping tabs on the action via my 10-euro Radio Le Mans headset. As morning broke, Toyota led the field, narrowly. I plopped down for a nap on the floor of the media center, still wearing my fire suit. When I awoke, Toyota was still in front. As the hours counted down, James and I both started to realize this was real, it was happening. Each time we went into the garage, we were met with smiles and handshakes from the mechanics, drivers, and management, everyone thinking that the dream could in fact come true. After multiple attempts

J A M E Y P R I C E / T OYO TA

BY JAMEY PRICE

to win at Circuit de la Sarthe, Toyota might finally beat the Germans. One hour remaining, we put our plan together for the podium. The two cars had been nearly flawless all day. The No. 5 car had run without issue and had been beating the Porsche No. 2 contender fairly and squarely around the circuit. Standing outside the garage with about 35 minutes to go, James and I photographed the final pit stop for both cars. It was perfect, as they had been all day. The chief mechanic raised the lollipop, and No. 5 raced off with a whoosh of its electric motor, silent as an owl hunting at night. The final minutes. James was to be with the team on pit wall to cover the celebration. I would be in front of the podium to snap the drivers as they came down the pits, bathed in cheers. The waving Japanese flags. The victory we felt the team so deserved. Waiting with the other photographers for our chance to run to the podium, I heard the yells, screams, and curses. I looked up at a TV and saw Toyota’s dream turn into a nightmare. The leading car, the No. 5 Toyota, was crawling through the Ford Chicane and eventually stopped at pit wall in front of the main grandstand. In the last three minutes of the 24-hour race, the air-line connector to the turbocharger had failed. The No. 2 Porsche streaked past the stricken Toyota to take the win. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. James told me later that all the engineers could do was stare at the car with blank expressions.

The podium at Le Mans is one of the most exciting places to be. A 24-hour race is brutal. Grueling. It takes enormous energy to cover one. You usually feel drunk, beaten, bullied, exhausted, but grateful to be there. This time, I felt nothing. Shocked Porsche drivers stood atop the podium. They were accompanied by the Toyota team, which had finished second in its No. 6 car. Audi, which had come in a distant fourth, inherited third place when the No. 5 Toyota was disqualified for not completing the lap within the time limit. I barely wanted to photograph the podium celebration. It all felt wrong. I know the sayings: “You don’t win Le Mans. Le Mans lets you win” and “To finish first, first you must finish.” But I think I speak for many who saw the race in person and on TV when I say Toyota deserved to win. Audi driver Oliver Jarvis even said he wished he could give his podium spot to Toyota. I should have photographed the team’s reactions in the aftermath of the loss, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t point my lens at the people I had come to care so much about over the past week as they cried and hugged and stared at the floor. Helmets were thrown, tears were shed. It was hard to witness. But that’s racing. ■

One hour remaining, we put our plan together for the podium. This was going to happen. We couldn’t believe it.

Jamey Price is a leading motorsport photographer whose work has appeared in these pages often. This story was originally told at petrolicious.com. ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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T H E F I R S T D R I V E | 2 0 1 7 F I AT 124 S P I D E R

ROADSTER ENVY FIAT WANTED A SPORTS CAR. MAZDA HAD ONE. IT WORKED OUT GREAT FOR ONE OF THEM.

HE CAR ON THESE PAGES IS A MAZDA MIATA . It is built in the city of Hiroshima, at a Mazda assembly plant; it has a small four-cylinder driving the rear wheels; it has a top that goes down in a blink and a curb weight barely higher than what you get from a Lotus Elise driven by a fat guy. Only it’s not a Miata. It’s a Fiat. Inasmuch as you can make a Fiat by dropping a Fiat engine and bodywork onto a Miata platform and then retuning the whole shebang. Also adding a nose badge so large it can be seen from space, which is not a sign of lineage insecurity, no, of course not, vaffanculo, I shrug my shoulders at you expressively and with great passion. The original Fiat 124 Spider was built in various forms from 1966 to 1985. That car was a decent seller but no firecracker, a sort of Alfa Romeo for people who thought Led Zeppelin would have really gotten somewhere if Jimmy Page had only turned his guitar down a little. The modern 124 is intended to be a same-price Miata for people who drink less coffee, or who maybe think Mazda dealerships smell too much like an old Walmart. The Mazda-Fiat looks vaguely like a Sixties 124, in that it has flattish flanks and trapezoidal taillights and the mouth of a happy fish. It also looks much better in pictures, where you lose the lumpy curves and stop missing the Miata’s clean lines. The interior screams Mazda, right down to the identical knobs, satin finishes, and sans-serif Japanese fonts. The seats are new, and softer. The instruments have been redesigned and now look slightly more like a loud wristwatch. There’s more leather

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and soft-touch plastic, plus a thicker rear window, more sound This engine is shipped fully assembled from Italy to Japan, deadening, and an acoustic windshield. Fiat says the car is 5.5 where it is bolted into a platform originally designed to be as inches longer, all in overhang, and around 100 pounds heavier transparent and responsive as a good pair of shoes. The result than a base Miata. The last Miata we tested weighed 2313 is odd, if you know the Miata. (Cue Lloyd Bentsen–Dan Quayle pounds, which is relevant mostly because no one jokes: “Senator, you are no Miata.”) Turbo lag in history has ever looked at that car and allowed makes the throttle annoyingly sleepy below 2000 as how it should eat something, there’s no meat rpm; past that, it’s less irritating but still a tick 2017 Fiat 124 on those bones, your nonna’s worried about you. behind your right foot. You rarely rev the four to Spider Classica Regardless, the big difference is under the redline, because shove falls off noticeably above price $25,990 hood. The Mazda’s 2.0-liter, 155-hp four is gone, five and a half. The engine sounds far from spepowertrain 1.4-liter turbocharged i-4, replaced by a 1.4-liter, 160-hp turbo four from the cial, just thrummy and quiet. You get a Miata’s 16o hp, 184 lb-ft; rwd, Fiat 500 Abarth. That engine is mated to either straight-line speed, minus the giddy laughter after 6-speed manual the six-speed transmission from an NC-chassis snapping the driveline through a perfect shift. weight 2450 lb on sale now (2006–2015) Miata, or a six-speed, torque-conSuspension differences follow the pattern. The verter Aisin automatic. The Fiat motor makes 36 main thing you notice is the Fiat’s slower pulse—it lb-ft more torque than the Mazda and does so from just 2500 doesn’t twitch when you sneeze or pivot when you blink. Pleasrpm (the Mazda’s torque peak is 4600). Redline is 6500 rpm, ant enough, as sports cars go, but without the nervy, tame-humbut peak power comes at 5500 rpm, to the Mazda’s 6000. Partly mingbird vibe of a Miata. The overall vibe is more stereotypically because of all this, the Fiat manual offers slightly wider gearing American. Unsurprisingly, the 124 feels more complete with the and a taller, overdrive sixth to the Mazda’s 1:1 cog. automatic, which blunts some of the engine’s perceived lag and 80

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IF THE MIATA DIDN’T EXIST AND THE 124 DID, THE STAFF OF THIS MAGAZINE WOULD BE DOING CARTWHEELS. AND THAT’S THE RUB: THE MIATA DOES EXIST, AND THE FIAT MOSTLY SERVES TO REMIND YOU HOW GOOD THAT CAR IS. makes you relax a little. It’s occasionally slow when shifted manually, but if you’re buying a Miata-ish car and didn’t pick a clutch pedal, you probably don’t care about that anyway. Not that there aren’t pluses. An optional Abarth trim fixes the noise—a quad-tip exhaust adds a growl like a Ferrari with a head cold—and sharpens the suspension a bit. (The exhaust and a retune produce an extra 4 hp.) In any trim, the new sound deadening makes a difference, as does the extra length. Freeway conversations with a passenger are no longer difficult, and the trunk is usably larger. All told, this is a great car made into a good one. If the Miata didn’t exist and the 124 did, the staff of this magazine would be doing cartwheels. And that’s the rub: The Miata does exist, and the Fiat mostly serves to remind you how good that car is. Perhaps this makes you ask yourself what kind of jerk moans

about another rear-drive roadster on the market. But when you shave off the focused edges of a special, thoroughly considered car, you end up with something less than special. Albeit unique. The media launch program for the 124 was held in San Diego, near Carlsbad. This is relevant only because Carlsbad is perhaps the most culturally homogenous town on the planet. Charmingly, in the closing stages of the Fiat’s press presentation, a company rep used the words “Italian craftsmanship.” In a program for an Italian restyle of a Japanese car retuned for this country by Americans, working for an American firm that’s owned by an Italian one. On my way home, I found myself doing the math for payments on a Miata. And wondering how much trouble it would be to take delivery in Japan. Which has been wonderful every time I’ve visited, and has only ever felt like itself. —SAM SMITH ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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T H E F I R S T D R I V E | 2 0 1 7 V O LV O S 9 0

A DIFFERENT DRUMMER VOLVO WANTS TO COMPETE WITH THE GERMANS, ON ITS OWN TERMS.

AKING ON GERMAN LUXURY SEDANS is a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. Just ask Cadillac. Yet here we are on a Spanish mountainside, driving at attack speed in a four-door Volvo. In its sights: Mercedes-Benz E-class, BMW 5-series, and Audi A6. Heady company for a Chinese-owned brand many Americans think of as an alternative to Subaru. Is Volvo overreaching? Not by the looks of it. The S90 has stately proportions— long hood, short deck, minimal overhangs—despite riding on a front-wheel-drive platform. It’s about the size of its German

rivals but comes across as leaner. Clever adornments, such as “Thor’s hammer” lighting accents (Mjölnir to all you Norse mythologists), complement rather than detract from the overall form. Perhaps the only oddity is the shape of the taillights. Volvo, naturally, credits its taste to Swedish design and has PowerPoint slides of sleek furniture to prove it. We’re reminded of Peter Schreyer–era Audis, which confidently tacked away from competitors without forsaking luxury-car conventions. Volvo is also staking out new ground inside, where simple design and a clever mix of materials make the S90 more

welcoming and peaceful than the German sedans. No less busisoaked up bumps that would jar a 5-series. Yet it had no problem nesslike, just not as demanding. A nine-inch touchscreen is orisquiggling and dipping its way down a one-and-a-half-lane road. ented vertically, like in a Tesla, and is easy to operate after just a All-wheel drive, standard on the T6, keeps the car balanced few minutes of familiarization. Nicely sculpted front seats look under throttle. If you don’t order the air suspension, Volvo gives and feel supportive. Six-footers should have no problem sitting you a composite transverse leaf spring. Yo, Corvette. This allows in back, and climbing in and out isn’t a chalfor more trunk room in the S90 and cargo-carlenge despite the low roofline. rying capacity in the (sensational-looking) V90 The S90 confusingly carries on the trim station wagon than would a conventional coilVolvo S90 T6 scheme from previous Volvos. The T5 actually spring and multilink setup. AWD Momentum employs a 250-hp turbo four-cylinder rather Volvo sees the Germans’ advances in safety price $53,945 than Volvo’s old inline-five. The T6 combines tech and raises them with a standard semipowertrain 2.0-liter turbo- and supercharged the turbo with a supercharger, for 316 hp. The autonomous system that can take control on i-4, 316 hp, 295 lb-ft; awd, engines lack the guttural growl that comes well-marked roads. Straight from Sweden 8-speed automatic with more cylinders but don’t whine like comes “large animal detection,” which can weight 4250 lb on sale now fours of old. In either configuration, the S90 note, “Yikes, it’s a moose,” and nail the brakes. matches up fine against competitors, who are Does the Swede equal the Germans? We’d mostly employing four-bangers. A plug-in hybrid is on the way, say yes. And it does so without imitating them. That distincas is—praise heaven—a Polestar version. tiveness, along with a brand still known for quality and safety, The S90, no surprise, is tuned a touch softer than the typimight help the S90 succeed where other excellent also-rans, like —JOHN LAMM cal German sedan. Our test car had rear air suspension and the Cadillac CTS, have struggled.

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T H E F I R S T D R I V E | 2 0 17 N I S S A N G T- R

ANGER MANAGEMENT

THE GT-R IS STILL A BRUISER, BUT IT’S LEARNED SOME MANNERS.

HE GT-R TENDS TO POLARIZE PEOPLE. Dual-clutch gearbox, all-wheel drive, digital everything. Acceleration so glorious, they should name a constellation after it. Get all crossed up, and the chassis will do computerized handstands to save your bacon. Haters call it cheating, even cowardice. Badge loyalists make the Branch Davidians seem apathetic. Ostensibly, this year brings more of the same. The base model, called Premium, gets revamped engine software (more boost pressure, Nismo-spec fuel and ignition maps), good for an extra 20 hp and 4 lb-ft of torque. Additional chassis reinforcements at the A-pillars and trunk increase torsional rigidity. Spring rates are unchanged, but dampers are softer and the anti-roll bars are stiffer. New front and rear bumpers improve cooling and aero. Nissan graciously attached tow hooks to both

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prior to my arrival at the car’s media launch. Said event was held at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps during a torrential rainstorm. Even on summer tires, the car was basically unflappable. The extra power is spread evenly across the rev band, and the softer damping worked beautifully on the wet track. The exhaust, now titanium, sounds boomy, if lacking in character. Hydraulic power steering remains (medium feedback) but has been slightly retuned and requires appreciably less input at high speeds. Otherwise, the GT-R feels the same as ever. Still a bruiser, still unnaturally adjustable midcorner and relentlessly fast. You don’t drive so much as mediate a hairpulling, crotch-kicking brawl between five million data points and the inconveniences of physics. Maybe that appeals to you. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, this is probably the fastest pointand-squeeze car around.

The difference is how it drives slowly. For 2017, Bob Laishley, the car’s program director. Nissan GT-R the interior is refreshed with better-quality “My predecessor felt that race-car theatrics Premium leather and a new eight-inch touchscreen. (Merwere very important,” he told me, referring to the cifully, the number of physical buttons is halved.) GT-R’s creator, Kazutoshi Mizuno, who abruptly price $111,585 powertrain 3.8-liter There’s extra insulation, electronic noise-canleft three years ago. “But now an entire generatwin-turbo v-6, celing, and an acoustic windshield. Also active tion has come up knowing this GT-R, and they’re 565 hp, 467 lb-ft; awd, exhaust valving, which is a claimed 10 decibels getting more mature.” 6-speed automatic weight 3900 lb quieter when closed. It seems believable, and the Evidently, the original car’s mechanical harsh0–60 mph 2.7 sec (est) drivetrain is noticeably smoother, especially at ness was largely by design. According to Laishley, top speed 196 mph on sale now low speed. The sounds, as always, recall a rallyMizuno-san even went so far as to strategically prepped cement mixer. But the transaxle is no remove sound deadening to enhance gearbox longer vengeful at less than full thrash, just irritated. Hardwhine. It’s clear the GT-R isn’t that car anymore; Nissan doesn’t ware changes amounted to a revised flywheel damper and want it to be. This year’s model is inarguably a better grand tighter gear tolerances to reduce lash. Mostly, it makes you tourer, and at no detriment to performance. Whether that sti—MAX PRINCE wonder why the GT-R hasn’t always been this way. So I asked fles its charms is simply a matter of opinion. ROADANDTR ACK .COM

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T H E F I R S T D R I V E | 2 0 1 7 JA G UA R F-T Y P E S V R

SOUND OF SPEED THE LOUDER, LEANER, 200-MPH F-TYPE.

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Optional carbon-fiber roof looks cool, sheds weight. Active rear spoiler, which deploys at 60 mph, and myriad other aerodynamic tweaks help the first-ever SVR Jaguar hit 200 mph.

The SVR gets extra aero bits, including a flat underbody and an active rear spoiler, allowing for a claimed top speed of 200 mph. Opt for carbon-ceramic brakes and carbon-fiber packages and the SVR is 110 pounds lighter than the R. And yes, it’s louder, a real feat considering the R’s psychedelic howl. The SVR surfs along a wave of omnipresent sound, the result of a new, lightweight, four-pipe exhaust constructed of titanium and an alloy called Inconel. There are race cars with straight pipes that are less intrusive. You couldn’t get it within five miles of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and its draconian noise restrictions. Chuck most of that aside, however, because the changes that matter are less obvious. The SVR was a chance for Jag engineers to rectify issues with the F-type R, namely its punitively harsh ride and maddening understeer. The R is a binary car: Feel free to brake, turn, or accelerate, but don’t try to blend any of those operations. “The target was to improve turn-in performance and take out understeer, allowing you to manipulate the car with the throttle, rather than just staying off of it,” says Jaguar vehicle dynamics specialist David Pook. He says the front anti-roll bar was softened and the rear, stiffened. New shocks and lighter wheels were fitted. The all-wheel-drive system was also reworked to reduce the amount of torque ARRAGONA, SPAIN. I’ve been kicked out of my going to the front wheels. The SVR gets wider tires than the R, car. I’m no longer rocketing through the Span265/35 front, 305/20 rear, specially formulated by Pirelli. “We’ve ish high country in a Jaguar F-type SVR. Instead, moved the balance rearward, making the rear tires work harder,” I’m kicking a stone down a lonesome road, playing Pook says. Between the chassis tweaks and new rubber, the team poor-man’s soccer. A colleague said he wanted to also coaxed out extra comfort. The ride is smoother. “You need to take solo photos of the car, but I suspect he just be able to access the huge performance. But it also wanted extra seat time in the Jag. needs to be safe and confident, and you should be A blackbird wheels around a high bluff above, able to drive it to the shops.” 2017 Jaguar F-type and a castellated village shimmers atop a hill in The proof of those changes is found on the SVR Coupe the distance, but otherwise all is still. Like, 16thSpanish back roads. I shove aside my colleague, price $126,945 century still. drop into the driver’s seat, and pummel down powertrain 5.0-liter superAnd then an announcement shears through the narrow, jagged lanes best suited to a Porsche charged v-8, 575 hp, air like the archangel Gabriel and his horn trumCayman. The front of the car no longer feels like 516 lb-ft; awd, 8-speed automatic peting the arrival of Judgment Day. The sound it’s taken a hit of novocaine, the Pirelli P Zeros weight 3800 lb bounces off rock walls and crashes down canyons. tucking it into corners far more willingly than o–60 mph 3.5 sec The SVR is on its way back. the R. You can balance the car with the throttle top speed 200 mph on sale now If, somehow, the 550-hp F-type R is too meaand accelerate out of corners earlier. Still, given sured, too quiet for your tastes, the first series its weight (3800 pounds) and love of straight-line production Jaguar from Special Vehicle Operations is louder— speed, the SVR is just this side of a muscle car. far louder—and even less subtle. The coupe and convertible In the end, the balance and suspension adjustments are the both make 575 hp from a supercharged 5.0-liter V-8. The coupe most welcome changes, although the little bit of extra sound —JASON H. HARPER has a $126,945 base price, a $20,550 premium over the R. never hurts either.

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SHOPPING W ITH COLIN

1963 CHE V R O LE T CO RV E T TE S TIN G R AY LIVING WITH A LEGEND.

hort of burning our flag, disliking the Corvette is probably the most un-American thing you can do. As a good American boy, I really like Corvettes, and I’ve been fortunate enough to own some great ones. A fuel-injected 1957 with the legendary cold-air intake (a.k.a. an “Airbox Car”). A slew of midyear, high-horsepower big-blocks. A few L88 427s. Even a 1963 Z06 “Tanker” (so named for its competition 36-gallon fiberglass fuel tank option). Any of these would be the holy grail for a fanatic who has studied any Corvette book and highlighted the “best” models. But I’ve had enough high-spec Corvettes that will run only on race gas. I wanted an old Corvette I could actually live with. To me, that meant it had to be a 1963 C2 split-window coupe—the year when the Corvette evolved from a nice-looking car on a trucklike chassis to a world-class sports car—with the high-horse, carbureted 327-cubic-inch V-8. That’s right, I said carbureted. GM’s Rochester mechanical fuel injection was rated at 360 hp, making it the top of the option list, but remains imperfect

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and difficult to live with. The solid-lifter, carbureted 340-hp 327 engine was right below the Fuelie and offers essentially the same eager performance and sound without the complexity or elevated care and feeding requirements. Beyond that, I wanted a car with a good history and all its original parts. Easier said than done with Corvettes, which have long fed a cottage industry of engine restampers, fake-tag manufacturers, and patina creators. This Ermine White ’63 I happened upon at a friend’s shop hit the bull’s-eye. It was sold new at another friend’s dealership in 1963 and serviced at the same shop for almost its entire life, with a glove box full of receipts as proof. And its second owner was looking to sell. How much better could the story get? Other than an older repaint, it was unrestored, and it was optioned the way I would have ordered it new: 340 hp, four-speed manual, sintered metallic brakes, “off-road” exhaust, and a 4.11:1 Positraction differential. This level of rightness comes at a premium, but I happily paid it, knowing that it’s always cheaper to buy the best

PHOTOGR APHY BY ANDREW TRAHAN

WHAT TO LOOK FOR impostors The art of building bogus Corvettes was perfected decades ago. So, how do you avoid getting stung? Research. Track the ownership history and contact previous owners. Have an expert verify paperwork and parts stampings, as experience and technology can help detect foul play. Check the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s Corvette shipping records, which have recently been made available through the National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS), to determine where the car was delivered new. If the owner claims the car has won prizes, get in touch with awarding organizations to verify. And if the car looks right, but you just can’t prove it? Walk away. chassis Fiberglass doesn’t rust. The steel underneath it does, though, especially the frame corners just forward of the rear wheels. Also look closely for accident damage. One test: Open the fuel-filler door. If the gas cap isn’t centered in the opening, there’s a good chance the chassis was tweaked in an accident. body You want the fiberglass to be original. Among other things, look for factory bonding strips between panels as well as other “typical of factory production” identifiers. An NCRS judging manual can help you spot important details. puppy mill Every auction seems to have ultrarare Corvettes, like black 1967 427/435-hp cars with red stingers and side pipes. That’s because they’re still in production—just not from Chevrolet. As the joke goes, only 8500 of the 3754 1967 L71 cars GM sold are left. maintenance Once you find the right Corvette, the rest is easy. There isn’t a part you can’t order with a phone call, and there isn’t a decent shop that can’t keep a Corvette in top condition. However, remember that original parts will always command a premium. For example: a set of original knock-off alloy wheels can be worth $25,000, while a reproduction set is less than $2500. priorities Why do you want a Corvette, and how will you use it? If you just want a cool old car to have fun with, don’t be ashamed to take the substantial discount on an “incorrect” car.

up front. An honest 340-hp coupe will trade in the $100,000 to $175,000 range, depending on history and condition. A 360-hp Fuelie? Figure 30 to 40 percent over that. And one of those “Big Tank” Z06 Split Windows? Around a half million bucks. All three offer a nearly identical visual and driving experience. As for my Split Window, I haven’t needed to invest much beyond general fettling and simple bolt-ons to improve the driving experience. Radial tires, a larger front anti-roll bar, and one added in the rear. Also Bilstein gas shocks, a good alignment, modern brake linings, and a more highway-friendly 3.31:1 rear end. It is now a fantastic road car I enjoy often. Of course, every drive reminds me why Zora Arkus-Duntov hated the split window and succeeded in eliminating it after 1963, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. Poor rearward visibility is a small price to pay for one of the most iconic sports cars of all time. Colin Comer is R&T’s chief vintage-car guru. Reading his column is one of the most American things you can do.

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D R I V E R’S E D

R E S PEC T YO U R N A NN Y DON’T TOUCH THAT STABILITY-CONTROL BUTTON.

HEN I WENT ON MY FIRST (and last) skydive, I didn’t see anybody ostentatiously throwing their reserve chutes in the garbage. When I went zip-lining, I didn’t see anybody who refused to clip their second carabiner to the steel cable. And yet, I’d say three out of four novice drivers I coach flick off stability control as soon as they climb into a car. It’s a puzzler. If you are going onto a racetrack—or anywhere— driving your own car for which you are financially responsible, and risking your own neck for which you are entirely responsible, why the hell would you turn off a system that is designed to prevent you from spinning the car and causing all sorts of mayhem? In my experience, the reasons include misinformation, ignorance, and pride, all in equal measure. The truth, contrary to what you’ve heard (or read in a car magazine), is that a flashing stability-control light usually signals the hard work of a car’s development engineers reacting to your incompetence. Say you go into a turn too fast and then steer under braking, overwhelming the front tires and upsetting the chassis. The ESC light signals like a Morse code device in the hands of Eddie Van Halen. You might blame the computer for the resulting understeer. In fact, the computer has turned potentially disastrous human error into a slow but straight corner exit. Yes, some of the early traction and stability systems, like the ASC+T fitted to 1990s Bimmers, can be overactive and kludgy. But they’re the exception, and most modern cars are very smart when it comes to keeping themselves on the straight and narrow. Many newer performance cars can be directed to loosen the reins via a competition or track mode. I don’t let my inexperienced students use those modes, however, because they are designed for drivers who know what they are doing. To the extent that stability control is an impedance, it’s probably the least of your worries. Most cars come within a few seconds of their best time with all the systems turned on; the average novice track rat can be 30 seconds a lap or more off the pace. Even experts find there are times to let the electronics do their job. When driving a street car on a wet racetrack, I typically leave all systems on. I’ve had to drive thousands of wet

laps in race cars that didn’t even have anti-lock brakes, and I’m grateful for a system that keeps me from having to use a feather touch on the accelerator at the exit of 12 turns every minute and a half. Formula 1 drivers are the best drivers in the world (save it, NASCAR and rally fans, you know I’m right), and yet race teams used to move heaven and earth to install secret tractioncontrol systems. If Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton can benefit from computer intervention, so can you. Stability control doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t get distracted thinking about the next lap or the day job or the girlfriend or the after-track-day dinner. It doesn’t get freaked out by a car sliding in front of it, and it doesn’t misjudge available traction because it failed to see a bit of water shine on a corner entrance. When I see that my students have deactivated stability control, I ask them to turn it back on and explain how and why it helps. I tell them the day will come when they can drive a car with no computer help at all, like a Spec Miata, on a racetrack, and that on that day, they’ll wish they had some of that intervention back. You can use the ESC warning light to train yourself to go faster. When you see it flash, ask yourself what you did to upset the car’s balance and fix it the next time. Most of them are willing to do as I ask. The ones who aren’t? Well, they have to sit out the session until another instructor is willing to take my place. There’s enough risk in this hobby without introducing unknown factors to make it worse. I’ll end with a cautionary tale. I had a student once, a really quick kid. Over the course of a few years, he got to the point where he could drive very powerful cars very close to their limits. He was usually within a few seconds of me. Last month, while I was riding Razor scooters in the cul-de-sac with my son, I got a call from him. He’d made a mistake on track. A big mistake. Totaled a $50,000 car, the one he uses to get to work. When I pressed him on the circumstances, he admitted that he’d turned stability control off to shave a half second from his lap time. His crash, a spin that put his car into the concrete barrier backward, might have been prevented by the electronics. This kid has talent. He has guts. And now he has a concussion that doesn’t seem to want to go away. He can accept his mistake, if it helps others. Be smart. —JACK BARUTH Don’t touch that button.

When you see the stability control light flash, ask yourself what you did to upset the car’s balance and fix it the next time.

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ILLUSTR ATION BY ADAM MCGINN

DISSECTED

CU R R E NT E V E NT

SPOT WELDING CHARGES INTO THE NEW CENTURY.

Road & Track® (ISSN 0035-7189), (USPS 570-670) VOL. 68, NO. 2, September 2016, is published monthly, with combined issues in December/January and March/April, 10 times per year, by Hearst Communications, Inc., 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Catherine A. Bostron, Secretary. Hearst Magazines Division: David Carey, President; John A. Rohan, Jr., Senior Vice President, Finance. © 2016 by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks: Road & Track is registered trademark of Hearst Communications, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Editorial and Advertising Offices: 1350 Eisenhower Place, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. Subscription Prices: United States and possessions: $13.00 for one year; Canada, add $10.00; all other countries, add $28.00. Subscription Services: Road & Track will, upon receipt of a complete subscription order, undertake fulfillment of that order so as to provide the first copy for delivery by the Postal Service or alternate carrier within 4-6 weeks. Mailing Lists: From time to time, we make our subscriber list available to companies who sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such offers by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or an exact copy to Mail 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 e-mail. Road & Track assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. None will be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Permissions: Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Back Issues: Back issues are available for purchase in digital format only from your app store of choice. Reprints: For information or reprints and eprints, please contact Brian Kolb at Wright’s Media, 877-652-5295 or bkolb@wrightsmedia.com. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL AND MILITARY FACILITIES: Send address corrections to Road & Track, P.O. Box 37870, Boone, IA 50037. Printed in the U.S.A. CANADIAN IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT: Canada Post International Publications mail product (Canadian distribution) sales agreement no. 40012499. Canadian Registration Number 126018209RT0001. CUSTOMER SERVICE: Visit service.roadandtrack.com or write to Customer Service Dept., Road & Track, P.O. Box 37870, Boone, IA 50037 for inquiries/requests, changes of mailing and email addresses, subscription orders, payments etc.

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JOSH SCOTT

pot welding has been the predominant method of stitching cars together since the Thirties, largely because it requires little thought: Melt metal panels with electric current, then repeat. But as automakers focus more on aluminum construction to save weight, the spot weld has lost traction. Aluminum is a lousy welding base for a number of reasons, including conductivity (spot welding relies on the heat generated by electric resistance), low melting point, and the material’s tough, oxidized skin. Rivets and screws work fine but can require costly retooling. So for the first time in decades, carmakers are rethinking the process. This robotic welder has a grooved bit developed by General Motors that breaks through surface oxides. It delivers shorter bursts of current at higher intensities to generate the heat necessary to mate aluminum with aluminum or steel. The result is lighter cars at lower cost—everything we want, nothing we don’t.

150 195 225 283 290 315 375 425 300 350 300 390 250 250 210 700 210 220 200 205 230 345 245 380 245 390 245 300 475 330 345 345 385 610 350 400 505 436 505 638 505 505 638 460 650 460

11.0 8.7 7.3 5.7 6.6 6.6 6.3 5.7 5.9 7.7 8.4 7.0 7.2 7.4 8.1 6.2 6.8 6.6 7.9 7.1 6.6 5.0 6.0 4.9 6.6 5.1 6.2 5.7 5.0 5.2 5.2 5.3 4.6 3.5 4.9 4.5 3.9 4.3 3.4 3.3 3.6 4.0 3.4 3.8 3.3 3.7

106 117 129 132 128 128 138 136 121 128 132 144 124 124 — 221 132 115 1 125 137 1491 178 1581 172 155 1 191 1 — 1631 1931 1651 1651 1701 1711 157 1721 1861 1981 1901 193 2051 198 190 2052 1851 186 1701

L D IN G , G

6 0 –0 M P

— — — — — — — — — — — — 178 129 160 123 155 142 150 133 136 133 135 132 130 123 137 122 115 121 123 125 123 96 134 110 109 119 111 106 103 108 105 105 105 96

ROADHO

B R A K IN G

SEC @ M

18.0 @ — 16.5 @ — 15.7 @ — 14.3 @ — 14.5 @ 96.0 14.2 @ 98.0 14.4 @ 99.0 14.1 @ 103.0 16.0 @ 86.5 15.6 @ 92.0 16.0 @ 82.0 15.0 @ 93.0 15.5 @ 94.0 15.8 @ 92.5 16.5 @ 87.0 13.9 @ 128.0 15.5 @ 92.5 15.6 @ 91.0 16.1 @ 84.5 15.5 @ 88.0 15.0 @ 91.0 13.7 @ 104.0 14.6 @ 95.5 13.4 @ 108.5 14.8 @ 96.5 13.4 @ 107.5 14.8 @ 97.0 14.1 @ 102.0 13.2 @ 111.5 13.7 @ 105.1 13.6 @ 105.7 13.6 @ 107.3 13.0 @ 110.5 10.3 @ 136.0 13.4 @ 101.1 12.8 @ 114.5 12.2 @ 120.7 12.6 @ 115.7 11.7 @ 123.7 11.4 @ 125.5 11.7 @ 124.1 11.9 @ 120.9 11.4 @ 129.7 12.2 @ 117.0 11.5 @ 124.8 12.1 @ 117.0

TOP SPE

¼ -M IL E ,

H, SEC

0 –6 0 M P

IG H T, L B

2890 2880 2980 2880 3020 3080 3050 3260 3160 3260 3505 3740 3520 3490 3610 2885 3540 3655 3425 3200 3280 3430 1 3330 3530 1 3340 3400 1 3340 3330 3495 33501 3220 3120 3115 26501 32301 3290 3150 3285 3190 33251 3310 3475 3395 3444 3536 3452

ED, MPH

223 260 270 290 290 295 360 415 360 360 360 500 285 285 255 620 255 260 285 290 330 465 340 370 340 562 340 330 414 340 350 350 385 570 375 400 470 428 470 604 470 470 604 465 650 465

CURB WE

TORQUE,

WER, SA

3.9L I-6 4.3L V-8 4.3L V-8 4.6L V-8 4.6L V-8 4.6L V-8 5.4L V-8 6.5L V-8 5.4L V-8 5.4L V-8 5.7L V-8 7.4L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 7.6L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8tt 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8tt 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 5.7L V-8 7.0L V-8 5.7L V-8 6.0L V-8 7.0L V-8 6.2L V-8 7.0L V-8 6.2L V-8s 7.0L V-8 7.0L V-8 6.2L V-8s 6.2L V-8 6.2L V-8s 6.2L V-8

HORSEPO

TESTED

$3760 $2901 $3120 $4098 $4017 $3872 $5581 $5185 $4824 $5516 $6392 $6773 $7513 $6869 $7605 $35,000 $10,431 $12,505 $23,721 $25,0001 $27,493 $50,8651 $34,034 $50,000 $41,191 $66,424 $37,389 $38,564 $78,5751 $45,390 $51,848 $38,4871 $45,8701 $440,0001 $48,9361 $53,545 $71,595 $56,185 $79,595 $117,000 $101,760 $91,320 $125,295 $67,915 $105,210 $93,215

L B -F T

C1 Corvette Roadster 3 (6/54) Corvette 3 (7/55) Corvette (7/56) Corvette (8/57) Corvette (1/59) Corvette (1/61) C2 Corvette Sting Ray (12/64) Corvette Sting Ray (8/65) Corvette Sting Ray (2/67) C3 Corvette (1/68) Corvette Stingray 3 (6/69) Corvette 454 Stingray 3 (9/70) Corvette LT-1 Coupe (6/73) Corvette Convertible (2/74) Corvette Stingray (3/76) Super Corvette Race Car (3/76) Corvette Stingray (6/77) Corvette 3 (4/79) Corvette 3 (11/82) C4 Corvette Z51 3 (3/83) Corvette Z51 (12/84) Corvette by Callaway (10/86) Corvette Z51 (2/88) Corvette ZR-1 (6/89) Corvette L98 (8/89) Corvette by Callaway (5/90) Corvette L98 (5/91) Corvette LT1 (1/92) Corvette CR-1 by Callaway (2/93) Corvette Grand Sport (2/96) C5 Corvette Convertible (7/98) Corvette (9/98) Corvette ZO6 (8/00) Corvette C5-R Race Car (6/01) Corvette 50th Anniversary (8/02) C6 Corvette Coupe (3/05) Corvette ZO6 (12/05) Corvette (1/08) Corvette ZO6 (5/08) Corvette ZR1 (2/09) Corvette ZO6 (4/12) Corvette 427 Convertible (10/12) Corvette ZR1 (10/12) C7 Corvette Stingray (9/13) Corvette ZO6 (2/15) Corvette Grand Sport (9/16)

E N G IN E

(ISSUE DATE)

P R IC E A S

GENERATION MODEL

CHE VROLE T CORVE T TE EDITION

H, F T

R OA D TE S T S U M M A RY

— — — — — — — — — — — — 0.73 0.73 0.75 1.20 0.73 0.80 0.83 0.90 0.88 0.91 0.89 0.94 0.89 — 0.91 0.89 — 0.88 0.92 0.91 1.00 1.44 0.89 0.98 0.99 0.93 0.99 1.10 1.07 1.02 1.08 1.07 1.17 1.18

LEGEND For ENGINE TYPES, I is an inline design; H is a horizontally opposed, or flat, design. V, VR, and W describe cylinder configurations; the number following the letter is the number of cylinders. An additional letter, a “t” or an “s,” designates turbo- or supercharging; “tt” is twin turbo; “qt” is quad turbo; “d” designates diesel;“h” designates hybrid. “FC” designates fuel cell; “EV” designates an electric vehicle. YELLOW = new entry. RED BOX = leader in that category. 1estimated; 2 electronically limited; 3automatic/automated transmission. ACCELERATION is measured with one foot of rollout subtracted. TOP SPEED is typically as reported by the manufacturer, but we occasionally measure or estimate it. BRAKING distances are measured from the beginning of pedal depression to a complete stop. ROADHOLDING is the average cornering grip measured around a full skidpad lap in each direction. DATA APPLIES TO THE MODEL AT THE TIME (ISSUE DATE) OF TESTING. R&T OFFICIAL TEST RESULTS ARE MARKED IN BLUE.

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How Does Harbor Freight Sell GREAT QUALITY Tools at the LOWEST Prices? We have invested millions of dollars in our own state-of-the-art quality test labs and millions more in our factories, so our tools will go toe-to-toe with the top professional brands. And we can sell them for a fraction of the price because we cut out the middle man and pass the savings on to you. It’s just that simple! Come visit one of our 650+ Stores Nationwide.

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FloorLiner™ Provides “absolute interior protection™” Laser measured to perfectly fit your vehicle Has channels to carry fluids and debris to a lower reservoir Material provides soft touch top, rigid core strength and bottom surface friction Available in Black, Tan and Grey

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THE LAST AIR FILTER YOU’LL EVER BUY! K&N AIR FILTERS

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Factory Five Mk4 Kit Price: $12,990

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GM’S FORMER CAR CZAR ON WHAT’S WRONG WITH CADILLAC.

It would be hard to find a more vocal supporter of the Cadillac brand than me. I was greatly in favor of the massive investment Cadillac made to reinvent the brand in the late Nineties and early aughts. The resulting products, the CTS sedan, the SRX crossover, even the low-volume XLR roadster, received excellent media reviews and were favorably compared with their German competitors. The following generations of V-series were exceptional values, outperforming just about any other sedan or coupe on the road. All was on track for America’s luxury-car buyers to rightfully put Cadillac on their shopping lists. Only, it stubbornly refused to happen. The enthusiast still bought the M5 (“I’d never stop explaining why I’m no longer driving a BMW”) and the run-of-the-mill buyer, not given to discerning minute differences in brakes or handling, stayed with the first-tier German luxury

sound long-term move, but things remain quiet at Cadillac dealerships. So, what can the problem be? First, we are witnessing what is probably a terminal trend away from cars to crossovers. And Cadillac only has one, the new XT5, which I predict will be Cadillac’s number-one nameplate. Second, the marketing strategy continues in the failed “lifestyle” wet-dark-alley-in-some-dirty-city mode. Unshaven dudes glide about while “daring greatly.” There is never a claim of product superiority; no reason to prefer it over other choices. Third, the design theme: I’m not saying it’s bad, but it isn’t resonating with the target market of wannabe upscale Americans who can barely budget a $350 lease payment. Lastly, the huge investment in a unique rear-wheel-drive architecture is not bearing fruit. Cadillac’s best entry, the second-generation SRX and its successor, the XT5, are both frontwheel-drive-based, and nobody cares. Meanwhile, the Germans are softening their orthopedic ride and handling and finding ever-greater acceptance among

Cadillac became the “bargain” luxury brand. It was a road to nowhere.

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buyers. Beating the Germans in vehicle dynamics has proved to be possible, but it’s totally irrelevant. That isn’t where the market is. Can it all be fixed? Only Johan knows for sure. For now, the brand should be thankful for its accidental flagship, the all-conquering, no-excuses, nothingelse-comes-close Escalade. ■ Bob Lutz has been The Man at several car companies. Ask him about cars, the auto industry, or life in general.

SUBMIT QUESTIONS TO BOB AT ASKBOB@ROADANDTR ACK .COM OR VIA FACEBOOK

JOSH SCOTT

brands as well. It’s a choice that’s safe. So, Cadillac became the “bargain” luxury brand, putting lots of cars into rental fleets and moving the rest with heavily subsidized leases. The resulting glut of nearly new Cadillacs— resold daily rental and two-year offlease units—depressed used-car values, driving up lease cost and diminishing the brand. It was a road to nowhere. Johan de Nysschen, Cadillac’s new president, rightfully stopped these brand-damaging practices. It was a

A TORQUE STORY WITH A TWIST.

ZOO ZOO} } -ZOO} -ZOO

I NTRO D U CI N G TH E ALL- N E W MA ZDA CX- 9 Some people think that to get more power out of a three-row SUV, you need a bigger engine. But at Mazda, we donÕt think like most people. So we gave the all-new Mazda CX-9 a new kind of four-cylinder engine: the SKYACTIV® -G 2.5T turbocharged engine. To start with, it delivers a massive 310 lb-ft of torqueÑwhich you get at just 2,000 rpm. With its new Dynamic Pressure Turbo engine, a first of its kind, turbo lag is virtually eliminated. And because itÕs a four-cylinder, itÕs lighter and more fuel-efficient than a larger engine.

At low rpm, the Dynamic Pressure Turbo engine system spins the turbine faster with an accelerated stream of exhaust gas.

Effortless, linear acceleration from the moment you step on the pedal. Best-in-class EPA-estimated combined MPG.1 And less weight. Making the all-new Mazda CX-9

more agile and responsive. ThatÕs a story worth telling.

DR IIV V IIN N G M ATTE AT T E R RS S® 1

Based on comparison of 2016 model year non-hybrid, FWD/AWD, 3-row mid-size crossover SUVs and EPA estimates for 2016 Mazda CX-9 FWD model, 22 city/28 highway/25 combined MPG. Signature model with standard AWD shown, 21 city/27 highway/23 combined MPG. Actual results will vary. Source: Model Year 2016 Fuel Economy Guide, dated February 24, 2016 (www.fueleconomy.gov).