Taking a Nap with Natalie Portman: Breaking in our Long-Term Nissan GT-R

Should you be fortunate enough to be passed by a Lamborghini Aventador at speed, the exhaust note alone will practically shake the ground, though that may just be the shiver it sends down your spine. The Ferrari 458 was the only one of our 2011 Best Driver’s Car participants to send harmonic proof of its existence to the pits, regardless of what turn it was devouring at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Seeing an Audi R8 5.2 launch from a standstill defies all preconceived notions of what 3900 pounds of metal can look like when not moving, then moving very, very quickly. From behind the lens at Motor Trend, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to photograph some of the most magnificent machines in existence. But more often than not, our busy schedules and all-too-brief time with the cars usually only allows me time to admire them through my viewfinder whilst the writer-types reap the bulk of the seat time. Imagine my delight then when new boss man Ed(itor-in-Chief) Loh texted me on a lazy Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, “u want gtr?”
Ed was talking about our so-new-it’s-still-practically-hermetically-sealed long-term 2013 Nissan GT-R, and yes, I did want it. The timing could not have been better. I care as much about the Super Bowl as much as HBO cares about horses, and since I’m mostly alone in that sentiment, the roads would practically be empty. Just me, the road, and the car that reigns supreme in the eyes of the PlayStation Generation from which I hail. This all seemed a little too good to be true, and something called a break-in period proved that it was.
Our Pearl White GT-R Black Edition was still a long way from the 1200-mile odometer reading that dictates when it’s ready to be driven hard. The 368 miles on the clock were a digital stop sign that translated to: No rapid acceleration in gears 1-3, don’t go over 3500 RPM, no hard or unnecessary accelerating or cornering, and drive in Comfort mode for 900 more miles. So in the third-fastest-accelerating production car for sale to the general public, I couldn’t launch harder than I would in a Nissan Leaf. The old Nissan GT-R was capable of a Bugatti Veyron-besting, very God(zilla)-like 1.05 lateral g in our figure-eight testing, and I couldn’t take it past speeds that would conjure up more lateral g than falling out of a chair. In short, it would be like climbing into bed with Natalie Portman, only to find she is fast asleep and not to be disturbed. An awesome experience, sure, but so much for taking that ride I’ve really been longing for… in the car, I mean.

A Late Boomer and Friends Try Out the Acura ILX

I was born in the penultimate year of the baby-boom era, so I realize my impressions of the 2013 Acura ILX are not germane. This Acura is designed to appeal to hip faux-hawked and tattooed Gen Y-ers who have somehow managed to get themselves off the couch and out of the coffee shop long enough to amass the kind of wealth and income it takes to lay down roughly 30-large on a car. So when it came time to pair up for the ride-n-drive, I latched on to the youngest guy in the room — 22-year-old Joe Gustafson of Bullz-eye.com (full disclosure — Joe’s hair is normal, and no tattoos show, wearing normal clothes).
Right off the bat, Joe expressed reservations over the car’s pleasant but ho-hum exterior design. His generation likes to draw some attention with its wheels (and hairdos and body art, presumably), and this one didn’t seem to be drawing any. Not that it matters, but I’m right there with him on that assessment. The interior’s buttony center-stack and traditional forms didn’t move our gee-whiz meters much either — especially when rendered in monotone black. More manufacturers are taking risks with interior design, and cars aimed at youthful audiences are the canvasses on which to try such new things (see the 2013 Dodge Dart). This made us wonder if the youth-marketing target was baked in from the start or added on during the car’s roll-out.
We started out in the ILX Hybrid and were both disappointed in the way the Acura’s engine impersonated some far less happy mill, moaning under the whip. The only real hyper-miler coaching aid provided is a little green ball display between the gauges, whose diameter varies with pedal position — great big for good-boy coasting, a virtual pinpoint when at full moan. Even with the much-ballyhooed extra sound deadening and dual-rate amplitude-sensitive shocks, small inputs generated a loud report that may have tricked our ears into thinking the car rode rougher than it did. Our test car included the $5500 tech package (heated leather seats, a bunch of amenities, plus navigation and the ELS stereo), which brings the price to $35,295. That struck Joe as a total no-sale. Me too.

Wall to Wall: It’s a Tough Job, but Somebody Has to Do It

From the front cover to the last page, our June 2012 issue of Motor Trend is stuffed with the kinds of cars whose pictures kids would tear out of magazines and pin to the wall, back when kids read magazines and pinned actual pictures onto real walls.
It wasn’t easy to capture all the exotic hardware you’ll find throughout this issue. We sent crews out of town, across the country, and around the world to gather photos, video, numbers, and driving impressions. We logged hundreds of hours in the air, on the set, and behind the wheel. Were all the early call times, 14-hour days, connecting flights, and time away from loved ones worth it?

Well, you could ask John Carey, who traveled all the way down to Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to be teased with a drive of the World’s Fastest Roadster. You could question Paul Horrell, who jetted to Nardo, Italy, to bear witness to the birth of Porsche’s next-generation supercar. Nate Martinez and Mike Shaffer have an answer as well. They dropped everything to sprint to across the country to catch five hours with a Motor Trend exclusive: BMW’s all-new Spyder concept.
You could ask every member of the crew involved with the hectic, epic week that brought the stunning new McLaren MP4-12C to our office, alongside a Porsche 911 Turbo S and Nissan GT-R. The most mind-bending part of that week wasn’t the incredible numbers all three put down at the test track, but how they looked standing stock still, in a rundown warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, next to the blood-red reptile that dominates this month’s cover.
Scott Evans can tell you all about it. He went on a 10-day sports car bender that started at the 2012 Geneva auto show, where he and I (along with Angus MacKenzie and Todd Lassa) witnessed the official reveals of the world’s fastest roadster and the most powerful Ferrari ever produced. After that, Evans jetted to the South of France to fling around the all-new Porsche Boxster. The day following his return, he and Jonny Lieberman met up to carve some canyons in the aforementioned 911 and GT-R. The very next day, he was back on a plane to the Motor City for details on the Viper. Yeah, whew!

Is Top-Down Motoring Enjoyable in the 4500-pound 2013 BMW M6?

Two of the great things about living in Southern California — as we often point out — are the plethora of easily accessible driving roads and weather almost always suitable for taking advantage of them. In a way, it almost takes some specialness out of the exercise of ‘going for a drive’ to the point that it takes a special car for me to get off my ass and spend part of my weekend up in the mountains. A car like the 560-horsepower BMW M6 Convertible.
The operative word here is convertible. Were it the M6 coupe, I probably would have stayed home or instead taken my motorcycle out for a quick run up Angeles Crest Highway. Why? Because the new M6 is fat. Yes, BMW shoved a twin-turbo V-8 good for the aforementioned 560 horses and 500 lb-ft of torque, but the laws of physics are what they are. Automakers may be able to bend them when it comes to performance test results — this M6 can run a proper-quick 3.9-second 0-60 mph sprint, dust off the quarter mile in just 12.3 seconds, hold an impressive 0.98 g on the skidpad — but when it comes to the driving experience, 4500 lbs is 4500 lbs. That said, open-top motoring is open-top motoring and it’s not something I get to do that often, so off I went.
My final destination was probably my favorite road in Southern California, Route 33 north of Ojai. My first, destination, however, was Malibu’s Decker Canyon Road. The autocross-tight road proved a challenge for the big BMW, and its often oddly-cambered pavement sent the Bimmer’s traction control haywire in many a turn (I wasn’t adventurous or foolish enough to turn it off), but it’s hard to focus on that when your view of the scenic mountains is only obstructed by the A pillars and the temperature is, well, absolutely perfect for driving around with your top off — especially since, unlike on a motorcycle, you’re not spending most of your energy concentrating on your continued survival and can actually take a moment here and there to enjoy said scenery.
Decker dumps you into the 101 in the suburban city of Thousand Oaks. From there, you have the choice of a direct or highly indirect route to get to Ojai. The direct route involves the 101, the indirect involves Highway 23 and some rural backroads. Given I had plenty of time, I went with Option B, though the main advantage of these is that they’re not the freeway. The fun started once I got past Ojai’s tourist district and to Highway 33 proper. Well, it would have been if the M6 were a fun car.

Detroit 2009: A Pivotal Moment

 This is a remarkable Detroit show; one that 10 or 20 years from now may be seen as a pivotal moment in the history of the automobile. At Detroit 2009, the electrification of the automotive powertrain moved from being a technological sideshow to the mainstream. For the first time ever, the most of the star cars of an American auto show were not powered by internal-combustion engines.

Detroit 2009: America Reinvents the Compact Car

I bumped into Ford design chief J Mays in London last summer, just outside the Bluebird Restaurant on the chi-chi Kings Road. J lives nearby, and we strolled a half a block or so to grab a couple of coffees and sit in the bright summer sun and talk cars.
As we watched the traffic stream past, every second car seemed to be a Mini Cooper or Mini Clubman. Ford had recently announced it intended to bring the new Fiesta to the U.S. But would Americans, I wondered, be really interested in buying a relatively expensive, high style small car that wasn’t a Mini?

Best of the 2009 North American International Auto Show

DETROIT – Strip away the glitz and glamour of gimmick press conferences, brightly lit, unrecyclable displays, burnout-ready rear-wheel-drive V-8s, and what do you have? The 2009 Detroit show. The good thing here is, without all that glitz, one tends to notice the cars. And we ink-stained wretches get more or less the same show that the public gets beginning Saturday. A few of the things that stand out:



Best concept: Cadillac Converj. A coupe that’s so good-looking, you’ll want it whether you love or hate the idea of extended-range electrics.

Best concept detail: Blue lights along the 2+2 center stack of the, yes, Cadillac Converj that lights up “reverse waterfall” style, from back to front, as you start up the car and light up the battery pack placed under the center console. Cool.

Best of show: Cadillac Converj. See above.

Best contrasts: Both Cadillac’s and Lincoln’s concepts are front-wheel-drive models on c-segment platforms.

NAIAS 2009: Congresss Car Show

As press days for the 2009 NAIAS wind down it occurs to me that this year’s show was scripted perfectly for congressional consumption. You want future tech? We’ve got full-electric vehicle announcements (Ford’s 2010 commercial vehicle and Dodge’s Circuit plus Toyota’s FT-EV and the Mercedes E-Cell), and we’ll show you more plug-in EVs than you can shake a Con-Ed bill at. Ethanol? That’s so 2007. Fuel cells? Their Right Honorablenesses are skeptical that’ll pay off before the loans come due. Diesel? Wheredya think ya are, Eur’p?

Jaguar XFR/XKR Tech Donors: Vette ZR1, Ford Fusion

During the 2009 North American International Auto Show I had the opportunity to chat up some engineers and get a deeper dive on the technology that helps Jaguar’s new supercharged 5.0-liter V-8 develop its astonishing 510 horsepower and 461 pound-feet of torque.

First and foremost there’s the Eaton Twin-Vortices Series compressor, which is identical in concept to the ones pressurizing the Corvette ZR1 and Cadillac CTS-v, using four-lobe screws with considerably more twist in them than most of the old three-lobe blowers had. The design is 20 percent more efficient, and a redesigned air intake resulting in a more direct airflow path reduces flow losses by 30 percent. As a result, this supercharger consumes less energy to produce 510 hp than the existing engine uses to produce 416, and virtually delivers the efficiency of a turbocharger without the lag. Pressurized air flows out through a pair of intercoolers, each of which can remove 28 BTUs’ worth of heat per second.

2010 Detroit: Sporty Hybrids – Go Fast or Suck?

Take the temperature of the auto industry right now, and you’d find that it’s green. Or blue. Or whatever color you happen to associate with fuel efficiency and environmental consciousness.
So far, not a single automotive press conference has gone by without mention of some sort of new gas sipping vehicle, emissions reducing technology or campaign to save the whales. Just look at the vehicles announced at this year’s show; of the twenty odd major reveals, seven involved either hybrid or electric vehicles. From the Audi e-tron to the Hyundai Blue-Will, BMW ActiveE and Volvo C30 BEV (battery electric vehicle) – the message is clear: green is the new black.

The Electrics Are Coming! (But will anyone care?)

To walk the NAIAS show floor one imagines that the gasoline supply is practically gone and the world will be plugging in to get around any day now. There’s a whole “Electric Avenue” area on the main floor, a big display featuring several electric competitors vying for the $10 million Progressive Automotive X-Prize, and a driving loop in the basement. Below are highlights of the some of the more intriguing exhibits, and you can read our postings on the Commuter Cars Corp. Tango and Green Vehicles Triac. But is there really a market for these cars?
But before the NAIAS opened the Boston Consulting Group addressed the Automotive Press Association to present its research into the challenges, opportunities and outlook for electric cars over the next decade. They are not bullish. Barring unforeseen breakthroughs in chemistry, lithium-ion battery costs will drop by only 65 percent or so, to around $360/kilowatt-hour. Most assumptions for volume adoption of electric cars are predicated on a $250/kWh battery price (and Boston Consulting reckons $215 is required for total cost of ownership to break even with combustion after three years). Further cost reductions are limited by a floor in commodities that comprise a quarter of the battery pack. Manufacturing in third-world countries doesn’t help either, because the intellectual property costs are higher than the manufacturing costs, and shipping costs eat the savings. That means that total cost of ownership may break even with combustion engines in 1-5 years–but only if current incentives are extended. It’ll take 9-15 if they’re phased out. External factors that would change that horizon include: Continued incentives of $7700, $375/barrel oil, or a 210-percent gas-tax hike. Failing any of that, Boston pegs EV penetration at no more than 10 percent of the market by 2020.

2010 Detroit: Best of the North American International Auto Show

DETROIT – A grizzled veteran who attended all of the 2010 North American International Auto Show press conferences here Monday and Tuesday says he lost count of automakers’ use of the word “sustainable.” That much hasn’t changed — it’s been the word of the show since at least the mid-’00s. The difference, this time, is that while electric vehicles grabbed much of the headlines, the big news this year is small cars.
Consider the new Ford Focus, perhaps the major star of the show, judging by press day coverage, or the Chevrolet Aveo RS “concept” car, the 1.4-liter turbo four-door hatchback headed for production late this year. The Aveo’s only concept elements may be the 19-inch wheels and center dual exhaust pipe, which Chevy hopes the sport compact tuner crowd adds to the suddenly interesting subcompact.
So let’s call that the theme of the 2010 NAIAS. I didn’t attend all the press conferences, because Motor Trend has a full staff covering this show, and we split them up, but I saw pretty much everything:
Best in Show: Unlike previous shows, even last year’s, there are no big standouts. Rather, the show was filled with good, solid product, most of it quickly headed for production or lightly disguised future production models. That said I’m going to award the Audi e-tron Detroit concept because the German automaker continues to extend its design leadership to a rather pie-in-the-sky electric sports car. Updated from the Frankfurt ’09 e-tron, the crystal-blue Audi combines R8 styling in what looks more like a TT-sized coupe. The two rear motors provide 201 horsepower and 1955 lb-ft of torque (that’s not a typo — that’s apparently Audi’s multiplied torque number) to the rear wheels only (no quattro). What I like best, though, are the rear sail panels flowing into horizontal taillamps that give the car a mid-century “Jetsons”-era look. Sublime.

2011 Detroit Show Underdogs—the Little Guys

Detroit is back to maybe 80 percent of its original glitz and glamour, but with Nissan and a few other mainstream makers absent there was room on the main floor for some decidedly un-mainstream players in a dimly lit corridor between the swanky Chevy and Volvo stands. And these small companies that I had never heard of purport to be taking orders for cars you can buy now, or very soon.Coolest looking of the bunch is the Mach 7 Motorsports Falcon, a Corvette-powered mid-engine exotic hailing from Holly, Michigan, a small skiing hamlet north of Detroit. This company, best known for making body modification kits for Dodge Vipers, is trying its luck with a 200-mph, $200,000 American exotic, but most of the purchased components come not from the Viper, but from its archrival Corvette. Engine choices include your choice of a 500-horsepower LS3 or a supercharged 640-horse LS9 small-block, the frame is a hydroformed tube chassis employing mostly Corvette suspension pieces, upgraded with an adjustable KW coil-over spring/damper kit. The body and interior are completely custom made (those sinister looking headlamps are aftermarket replacement units for a Dodge Avenger, shrouded a bit). And a Targa-style roof panel lifts off for open-air motoring. Performance is quoted at 3.5 seconds to 60 for the top-dog version. The company hopes to build 15 per year. We wish Mach 7 all sorts of luck–Michigan could certainly use another profitable car company–but considering that the official Falcon web site doesn’t load on the day of the press conference, we caution you not to fork over a hefty deposit in giddy haste without a thorough read of the refund policy.

2011 Detroit: Our Take on the Good, Bad and Ugly from This Year’s Show

DETROIT – Two years after being left for dead, Detroit’s auto show has lived to see another day. Last year, Chrysler’s dank, dark display looked like something out of the Gulag Auto Show, and it left Chrysler division CEO Olivier Francois depressed over his brand’s complete lack of new product.
This year, Chrysler’s display is bright, full of new 300s, Dodge Chargers, Jeep Grand Cherokees, plus facelifted Chrysler Town & Countrys, and Sebrings magically turned into relatively tasteful 200s. Those 200s are short-timers, designed to help Chrysler’s midsize lineup limp along for another couple of years.
Amidst all the glowing bright lights, are very few concepts at this year’s Detroit show. No, the paucity of concepts isn’t the sobriety of an auto industry that only wants to show realistic, near-production cars. The “dream” cars will be back in a year or two. This is the budget-cut hangover. The Detroit Three, especially General Motors and Chrysler, laid off so many designers and engineers and put so much future product on hold that it’s paying for it this year.
Nevertheless, there’s plenty of reality and near-reality to love and hate at this year’s show. Here’s what Team Motor Trend thinks of this year’s 2011 NAIAS. Be sure to click here for our complete look at everything from the 2011 Detroit show floor.

Rulebreaker: New Cadillac ATS is GM’s Most Radical Car Since the Volt

“We broke a lot of our own rules,” says Dave Masch, chief engineer of the highly anticipated 2013 Cadillac ATS, Cadillac’s new 3 Series fighter. He’s a GM lifer, and that term carries a lot of baggage — GM lifers are supposedly dull, plodding, buttoned-down company men who worship system and process over product. They follow the rules that gave us the Olds Alero, Chevy Aveo, Pontiac Aztek, and dozens of other forgettable pieces of automotive dross. But here was Masch showing me around the new baby Caddy and pointing out all the stuff GM’s product development rulebook would never have allowed. And he was loving every minute.
The ATS might look relatively conventional — the exterior and interior are predictable evolutions of the current Cadillac design language — but in truth this is arguably the most radical new car from GM since the Volt. As you will have read in “Trend,” this Caddy is basically the size of an E46 3 Series BMW, and weighs about as much as a new BMW 135i. That doesn’t sound like rocket science, but getting the ATS built with those attributes intact required a fundamental mindset shift within GM’s product development teams.
The decision to optimize the new Cadillac’s exterior design and chassis engineering around 18-inch wheels is a case in point. Bigger wheels and tires look cool, but are heavy. By taking them off the table at the beginning of the development program, not only could the ATS designers finesse the styling to suit, but Masch’s engineers didn’t have to overengineer suspension components to cope with the extra unsprung mass. Instead, they were able to focus on their core deliverable: making the ATS feel as light and agile and fun to drive as an E46 3 Series. Besides, as Masch points out, even on 18-inch rubber, the car still has the same rim-to-road ratio as a Corvette ZR-1.
But Masch’s team went further than the obvious stuff like right-sizing the new Cadillac’s wheel/tire combination. “Our mantra was ‘every part, everybody, every gram,’” he says. And to do that, they tore up large sections of the GM product development rulebook, the one Bob Lutz colorfully rails against in his book “Car Guys vs. Beancounters”:  “…we engineered for an extreme situation…and alienated literally thousands of customers…on a daily basis.”

2011 Detroit: Choose Your Own Edition

By now you’ve seen a ton of our 2011 Detroit auto show coverage.  Our team attended all of the sneak peaks, press conferences, reveals and receptions and exhaustively profiled all of the concepts and production models made their debut. Now, it is time for YOU to make your picks.
I’ve walked the show floor and put together six match-ups based on vehicle class, price, exterior design, and just because it seemed like a good idea. Some of the pairings are obvious, while others are semi-ridiculous.  Click on the links if you need more information or to see more pics – or just go with your gut. In the comments section below, let the world know which one you’d rather have in your garage.  Time starts now.

Porsche 918 Spyder and GT3 R Hybrid

Porsche takes the plug-in hybrid concept and adds an F1-style steering-wheel button for a push-to-pass power boost (when that 500-plus horsepower V-8 alone isn’t quite enough) and a pair of torque-vectoring motors on the front axle to get enthusiasts onboard with going green. Porsche claims its plug-in hybrid 918 Spyder is quicker around the Nurburgring Nordschleife than its Carrera GT forebear–just under 7:30.

And for even more extreme duty, the endurance-racing-optimized GT3 R Hybrid mounts a twin-electric-motor drive unit at the front axle, with each motor capable of delivering 80 horsepower to its wheel, with more going to the outside wheel in a turn (torque vectoring). But to enable these motors to recover a lot of braking energy very quickly–way more than it would be possible to feed into a chemical battery–the recovered energy is used to spin up a flywheel. Yes, Porsche is planning to put the flywheel energy storage device on the track. You’ll recall that Chrysler tried to power a LeMans prototype racer with a flywheel and met with disastrous results, but that was a very large flywheel storing many orders of magnitude more energy storage capacity. This one is compact (it fits on the passenger side floor), low mass, and spins at 40,000 rpm. Its mass is easily contained within its ribbed aluminum housing. And if something does go awry, the flywheel stops, and all energy is dissipated–this isn’t always the case with electric batteries. The Porsche system provides 6-8 seconds of E-Boost at a time. Porsche plans to run the car at the 24-hours of Nurburgring on May 15-16. We’ll be cheering for the flywheel.

Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid

Behold the hybrid, as conceived on the altar of lightweight. This Chevy-Volt-style series hybrid shaves mass by using a dedicated three-cylinder range-extending engine with an aluminum monoblock that integrates the block, head and exhaust manifold in one casting. The engine weighs just 187 pounds and runs on gasoline, ethanol, methanol, or any combination of the three.; Acceleration to 60 mph is claimed to take less than 4 seconds. Electric-only range is quoted at 35 miles, with hybrid range at 307. One of the coolest tech tricks here is the “HALOsonic” Internal and External Electronic Sound Synthesis system which offers four driver selectable engine sounds–a V-6, a V-12, a futuristic sound (think Tron bike) and a combination of the futuristic one overlaid on the conventional engine. The system, designed in conjunction with Harmon International, grew out of a noise-cancellation effort (which will also be employed to mask the monotone of the range-extender when it kicks in). Steering wheel paddles direct HALOsonic and the power controller to simulate the sound and feel of accelerating with a seven-speed twin-clutch. Using them during acceleration will blunt acceleration a bit (it has to taper torque slightly before each shift to give you the up-shift shove in the back), but it’s quite useful for providing precise control of the regenerative braking during deceleration.

Ferrari 599 Hy-KERS

This concept is still in its infancy. The show car was just completed and will commence dyno testing upon its return to Italy. According to Franco Cimatti, Concept Engineering Manager, the net weight increase of the hybrid system is 176 pounds, which shifts the weight bias by a welcome two-percent toward the rear. Only 44 pounds of that comes from the lithium-ion battery pack, which is divided into two one-inch thick aluminum-sheathed units packaged beneath the floor in openings cut in the underbody tray. They’re as smooth and flat as the aero tray, and the air cooling saves the mass of a battery cooling circuit. The batteries store 3 kWhrs, enough for about 10 km (6 miles) of Euro city-cycle range or 10-12 seconds of auxiliary thrust with the hammer down. The 80-kW (107-horsepower) electric motor powers the dual-clutch transmission’s odd-gear shaft, but by selecting neutral on the odd gears and closing the odd-gear clutch, it also powers the car when even gears are selected. (This works because Ferrari’s exceptionally robust triple-cone synchronizers can engage and disengage way quicker than most.) A separate motor in the front runs the accessories. Many other opportunities for weight savings and driving dynamic improvements may prove possible as development continues. For example:
Use the electric motor’s regenerative capabilities to rapidly slow the engine for faster gearshiftsUse the electric motor to smooth the resonance vibration peaks that naturally occur in the transmission during hard accelerationEliminate reverse gear and drive the car backward electrically
It remains to be seen how customers would react to a silently accelerating Ferrari, and Cimatti is opposed to adding weight for external speakers generating synthetic noise, but concedes that in-vehicle speakers could serenade the driver with faux V-12 music. It’s also unknown how one might jump-start the car if the entire battery system discharged (a voltage converter supplies 12 volts for ancillaries, and only a tiny 12-volt battery is used to power the radio preset memory and energize the car for startup). We’ll be keeping a close eye on Maranello’s hybrid efforts.;

Geneva 2010 Tech Highlights

 It seems as though every auto show for the past six or eight years has attempted to out-green the last one, but the 80th annual Geneva show featured more electric, hybrid, and fuel cell cars than I can ever remember seeing on one show floor. Not counting the boutique company stands, it was a struggle to find anybody in Geneva that wasn’t touting some manner of electric drive. The good news for us enthusiasts is that this technology is now being used for evil as well as good–if you consider using that electrification to boost performance as the evil side of green. Below are highlights of these and a few other technologies I encountered on the show floor.