Winding Road Magazine
List: The Top 10 Most Futile Formula 1 Teams of All-Time
Ross Brawn—former technical director of the highly successful Ferrari Formula 1 team and last year’s Team Principal at Honda F1—announced last week that he had bought out the former Honda team, restyling the outfit as the Brawn GP team.
List: Ten Great Concepts from Geneva Motor Show History
With the Geneva Motor Show opening its doors to the press for the 79th time this week, we thought it appropriate to compile a list of some of our favorite cars from the show throughout the decades. Geneva’s reputation for being a styling showcase has lead to some fascinating launches through the years, with production and concept cars that are at the bleeding edge of European design.
Driven: 2008 BMW 123d
America would really like this car. The BMW 1-Series is a fantastic little creature, and we like it so much that it earned the honor of being one of our favorite cars in 2008. Furthermore, the American automotive marketplace is in dire need of more fuel-efficient vehicles, and we’re slowly starting to see clean diesel cars trickle into our pond from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen. Looking past the oil-burning powerplant, the 1-Series hatchback configuration is incredibly more useful than the lonely coupe and convertible options that we have currently. Americans are finally starting to warm up to the idea of hatchbacks and small wagons—it’s now a well-known fact that SUVs are not the only useful tool for $200 grocery loads. What’s more, we think America would find much more to like about a small, useful five-door than the seemingly unnecessary BMW X6 or even the upcoming 5-Series GT, which don’t provide much in the way of space or utility, and carry ultra-premium price points.
List: Ten GM Performance Cars That Will Never Exist
The news has already broken that GM is putting all of its high-performance vehicles (save the Corvette) on an indefinite hold, so don’t expect to see anything new with an SS or V badge on it. That’s right — all SS-badged Chevys, V-series Cadillacs, and eight-cylinder Colorados are being suspended until further notice, leaving GM to instead focus on fuel-efficient offerings and bringing up the overall quality on its bread-and-butter models.
List: The Legacy of “Maximum” Bob Lutz in Seven Parts
With the recent announcement of Bob Lutz’s impending retirement from General Motors as Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, we thought it would be time to take a look at a few of the things for which Maximum Bob will be remembered.
List: Top Ten Most Beautiful Subarus (In No Particular Order)
“Beautiful” may not be the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Subaru vehicles throughout history. If you’re like us, though, these cars have some sort of affinity that reaches beyond mere looks. Whether one defines beauty as physical or, well, something else, we at NextAutos agree that these are the Ten Most Beautiful Subarus (in no particular order).
Driven: 2009 Nissan 370Z
Downshifting from third into second for an especially tight right-hander, Nissan’s 370Z makes a soaring, rev-matching howl that radiates through the desert like thrown-stone ripples in a quiet pool. It’s the sort of bellicose and randy whine that alerts motor-minded schoolboys to prick up their ears, setting the would-be racer’s heart to flutter. The uninitiated might assume that the sonorous growl of a lone sports car in the desert may simply evaporate into the vast distance, but our tour of the stark, southern Nevada moonscape in the newest Z proved that to be untrue, with the hard scrabble surfaces acting more like an echo chamber for the roaring V-6 and a sonic lodestar for anyone within earshot.
List: A Dozen Movie Star Corvettes
Most of us will agree that Chevrolet’s Corvette has been an automotive star since day one. That stardom has been borne out in Hollywood over the years, where filmmakers have chosen to give Corvettes prominent roles in their films for upwards of fifty years. Thanks to the twin magical resources of the Internet Movie Database , and the too often overlooked Internet Movie Car Database , we’ve been able to compile a list of a dozen notable Vettes as seen on the silver screen. Our list is by no means complete (as we’re sure you’ll point out) but it’s a pretty entertaining browse at any rate. Click through the gallery above to relive the memories and then tell us what you think, in comments.
Driven: Honeywell BMW X5 3.0d
It’s no secret that we American automotive journalists are anxiously awaiting the arrival of BMW’s new U.S.-spec diesel offerings, the 335d and X5 xDrive35d. In the meantime, however, the folks at Honeywell (who specialize in turbo technologies) provided us with a Euro-spec X5 3.0d for a week in order for us to experience BMW’s current diesel offerings.
Driven: 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt SS Coupe
When General Motors introduced the first Chevrolet Cobalt SS for 2005, it was praised within the sport compact scene for its supercharged power and relatively cheap price point, though the car didn’t really have the overall refinement to make it something extra special. Thus, Chevy has gone back to the drawing board and come up with something it can really be proud of. This latest addition to the Cobalt lineup was tuned and tested on Germany’s Nürburgring and finally has the power and poise to be taken seriously as a true performance car.
List: Five Cars that Should/Could Be Better with New Parents
With great cars sometimes being products of an inspired idea, a singular vision, or a focused effort from a few dedicated people, it’s far too often that we see mismanagement or a loss of focus dim an otherwise bright star. For those vehicles (or sometimes whole brands) we can’t help but imagine what they would be like under more synergistic management conditions.
Driven: 2009 Ford Focus SES Coupe
While the second-generation Ford Focus debuted last year, FoMoCo has gone and given the car some tasteful updates for the 2009 model year. A revised front end, larger wheels, and some minor chassis tweaks are enough to make this new Focus a bit better than last year’s car, though it might struggle when faced with the best of the import competition. Still, we were pretty pleased with our Focus’ behavior during its two-week stay in our test fleet.
List: The Five Most Muscular Cars You Can Buy
When it comes to getting customers interested in a vehicle of a performance oriented nature, one of the sexiest numbers an automaker has at its disposal is the horsepower figure. The other end of the power equation, that deliciously shadowed figure measured in foot-pounds, is too often obscured. So when engines like the free-revving unit in BMW’s M5 (for instance) make eye-popping 500 horsepower numbers, we tend to forget that their smaller displacement, frenetic characters also mean that torque (383 pound-feet in the M’s case) is in shorter supply.
Driven: 2009 Saleen Dark Horse
For one reason or another, the Winding Road and NextAutos fleet has been graced with a whole lot of Mustangs over the past few months. Whether it be a simple GT, a stock Shelby, or a tuned up Roush, we’ve driven them all. However, nothing seems to compare to our latest Mustang iteration: the Saleen Dark Horse. This car boasts 620 horsepower, 600 pound-feet of torque, and a sub-four-second zero-to-sixty time, making it the baddest Mustang we’ve driven to date. Still, with a limited production run of only twenty-five cars, the Dark Horse will only be experienced by a select few, and we’re happy to have been part of that lucky group.
Driven: 2009 Land Rover Range Rover Sport Supercharged
The Range Rover Sport is a vehicle that can go anywhere, do anything, and look trendy in the process. No, it’s not going to win any awards in within the Green crowd, but for the consumers who actually pay out for one of these (especially in Supercharged trim), it won’t matter. In our week with the Range Rover Sport, we found it to have more than ample performance, relatively good handling (for an SUV), and a pretty luxurious interior.
List: Top Ten 300 Horsepower Cars for Under $10,000
Not so many years ago, cars that produced 300 horsepower or more were considered rather rare and desirable things. Generally only the top tier of sports car or the very most posh boulevardiers had engines that could muster such prodigious output, and the price tags of the vehicles reflected it.
Driven: 2009 Toyota Venza
When any manufacturer, but particularly an industry titan like Toyota, rolls out a new vehicle that they say is “in a new class”, well, the hairs on any journalist’s neck stand up a bit. That was certainly the case as we listened to Toyota’s executives and engineers roll out the new Venza. But after a couple of days of driving it, talking to Toyota about it, and reviewing the data, we think they have a point. It’s a subtle point, but a point nonetheless.
Driven: 2009 Roush Stage 3 BlackJack
Since the dawn of the Shelby GT500 in 2007, the exclusive, supercharged Mustang experience is no longer just for the dedicated enthusiasts willing to shell out some extra cash to aftermarket performance manufacturers. Ford now offers 500 horsepower right from the factory, and with the Shelby’s starting price of around $43,000, some enthusiasts might find it hard to justify shelling out $56,000 for a Roush BlackJack—a special edition of the company’s Stage 3 treatment limited to just 100 cars for 2009. But for those who aren’t battling in a horsepower war, we think the Roush offers a bolder appearance and a bit more driving pleasure. Conveniently, it just so happened that we had a GT500 in our test fleet during the same week that we tested the BlackJack, and after driving them back-to-back, some of us would rather have the Roush, regardless of price.
List: Ten Cars That Looked Better Before Their Makeovers
Most of the time, when an automaker completely overhauls one of their models, it’s a good step forward for not only the car, but for the brand it represents. However, there are other times where the design teams make some questionable decisions and the new products end up looking worse than their predecessors.
Driven: 2009 Mazda RX-8 GT
The Mazda RX-8 continues to have us puzzled as to why more of these aren’t on the road. No, the rotary engine isn’t four-season friendly, and neither is the car’s rear-wheel-drive, but when the weather is right, the RX-8 really shines. For 2009, a re-worked exterior sports a slightly more aggressive fascia, and while our Grand Touring model doesn’t have all of the beefy visual add-ons found on the R3 (a new model for ’09), we still had a lot of fun throwing this Mazda into bends and revving the twin-rotor engine way up past 8000 rpm.
Driven: 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution MR
Over the past couple of years, we’ve noticed a trend that more and more performance cars are steering away from traditional manual transmissions in favor of high-tech dual-clutch setups. For 2008, the top-dollar Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution MR features a six-speed paddle-shift transmission, and while some of us would rather have a stick and a third pedal, there’s no denying that this tranny is really, really good. Still, at nearly $41,000, some of us would rather just stick with the softer Evo GSR, which has the same performance specs but at a lower cost.
