Home//MotorTrend/December 2005
Motor Trend is the world's automotive authority. Every issue of Motor Trend informs and entertains with features on the testing of both domestic and import cars, car care, motor sports coverage, sneak peeks at future vehicles, and auto-industry news.
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Departmentsdiesel does itHERE IN AMERICA, diesels power Peterbilts. In Europe, they're a way of life. In some countries, diesel-engined cars account for more than 60 percent of sales. If you don’t have a four-cylinder turbodiesel among your powertrain options, then you simply ain't a mainstream player in the European market. And diesels are now de rigueur in the automotive smart set, too: more than half the Mercedes-Benz S-Class models currently sold in Europe are diesel-powered, for example, and high-performance turbodiesel V-6 and V-8 engines are now a must-have for any self-respecting European luxury carmaker.When you're paying the equivalent of six dollars a gallon for gas, a fuel-efficient diesel makes sense, no matter how much money you spend on a car. But that’s not the whole story. Diesels are also great to drive.I…4 min
DepartmentsGM’s do or die SUVsGM MUST be hoping history doesn’t repeat with the launch of its do-or-die GMT-900 sport/utilities. When Gas Crisis sucker-punched the Big Three in 1973, GM’s U.S. market share was more than 43 percent, most of it based on big gas-guzzling cars. Now it’s in the mid-20s. Some 33 years later, General Motors says big SUVs sell nearly 750,000 units annually, with 6.5 million owners total, and that it owns 62 percent of the segment. But the GMT-900s, rushed to market six months early, arrive just as Hurricane Katrina has walloped our oil supply and driven gas prices up to $3.50 per gallon and to the top of mind among anxious consumers.Against this background, even the most optimistic GM insiders must be concerned that the troubled giant’s future hinges largely on…3 min
DepartmentsJaguar XK convertible ready for DetroitLOW WEIGHT and a stiff body structure distinguish the 2007 Jaguar XK convertible, which will make its public debut at the Detroit show. Despite the mechanism for the traditional cloth top and the Volvo SIPS-derived pop-up rollbars (which breaks through the rear glass if the top is up), the XK convertible weighs just 88 pounds more than the 2007 coupe’s 3516 pounds.Design chief lan Callum began working on the convertible eight months before the coupe, which he sees as an edgier, sportier car that'll appeal to Porsche 911 buyers, whereas the convertible will continue to appeal to traditional Jaguar owners. And Jaguar portrays its six-speed automatic with Sequential Shift as a better alternative to a sequential manual gearshift. The system is standard on both body styles, uses steering-wheel-mounted paddle shifters,…3 min
DepartmentsMT CONFIDENTIALCAN MARK FIELDS and Phil Martens work together? That question reverberated through Dearborn when William Clay Ford named Fields veep for North American operations, Fields came from Ford of Europe and PAG, where he’s credited with turning around much of PAG (but not Jaguar, yet) and Mazda. He’s also known for stepping into shoes that used to belong to product guys. That’s where Martens comes in. He’s Ford North America’s product development veep. One insider says the two get along well. But they’re both known for their egos, and Ford headquarters has only so much room. Martens is a trained engineer, and engineers rarely make it to the top at Ford… You ever read the words “Chevrolet Malibu” and “stunning design” in the same sentence? Not since the 1960s, we'd…2 min
DepartmentsBangle belts one out of the ballparkDESIGN CHIEF chris Bangle’s “flame surfacing’ finally has hit its stride with BMW’s Z4 Coupe." This is still a concept car, a study,” company chief Helmut Panke said at the Frankfurt show, but he added,“We will be building a Z4 Coupe.” There’s no reason to believe it won't look like this, save for its satin-primer gray finish (called “Glacier Silver”). The 19-inch aluminum wheels, by the way, use what BMW calls a “most elaborate casting technology.” The Z4 Coupe’s design nicely marries the Z4 roadster’s lower body with a 6 Series-like top and rear spoiler. The flame-surface scallop extending from the front fender to the back of the door melds perfectly into the flared rear fender. We expect the Z4 Coupe to launch at the same time as a facelifted…1 min
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