Best Driver’s Car
2020 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe First Test: The Sports Car of SUVs
Porsche Cayenne Full Overview The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio comes close. The BMW X6 M does, too, but no other SUV drives as “small” as the Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe does. More than one of our editors who whipped the Cayenne Coupe on sinuous mountain roads listed this as one of its defining qualities. Features editor Christian Seabaugh echoed our group sentiment when he said, “Every Porsche manages to drive similarly, from the 718 on up to the Cayenne Coupe, and it’s a remarkable achievement. This, as silly as it sounds, feels like a 911.” It’s not as if Porsche uses exclusive hardware to build the brilliant Cayenne Turbo Coupe. Its twin-turbo V-8, ZF-sourced eight-speed transmission, and torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system aren’t unique...
Here It Is! World’s Greatest Drag Race 10
Gone was any option for using those velvet-smooth, 3.0-mile military runways. Thus, our three-year stint at Vandenberg Air Force Base came to a close. But where to go instead? Our original site for WGDR—the decommissioned Marine Corps Air Station El Toro—has become so degraded over time that we didn’t dare to take a field of supercars on it for high-speed runs. And most private airfields within reach of Los Angeles weren’t long enough to handle what has gone from a crazy idea to the expected: a half mile run to determine the ultimate winner. (Note for the uninitiated: It takes a lot of real estate to slow down a two-ton supercar doing 170-plus mph.) Enter an undisclosed test track in the California desert. The generous entity that donated its track has asked to remain anonymous...
2020 Chevrolet Corvette Z51 Pros and Cons Review: Great Bones
Chevrolet Corvette Full Overview The mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette feels like other exotic cars, which is a new sensation for anyone familiar with the Chevy sports car. Hopping from Ferrari to Lamborghini to Chevy, the Corvette affirms that we made the right choice last year when we named the C8 our 2020 Car of the Year. Let’s be clear: The mid-engine Corvette Z51 is a car designed around the driver. Yes, it’s easy to look at the strip of Chiclet-sized HVAC control buttons separating the driver from the passenger and make fun. But once you’re actually behind the C8’s funky steering wheel, you’ll realize that the controls you need as the driver are the easiest to get to, and you’ll thank the car gods that they’re physical buttons, not buried in a to...
2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S Pros and Cons Review: Just Shy of Perfection
Porsche 911 Full Overview Pros Absolute magic on a back road Wonderful GT car Insanely quick Cons Magic replaced by cold competency on the track Street tires only We thought it was gone. Banished. We believed the good people of Stuttgart, with a bit of help from Weissach, had finally cured the Turbo’s one remaining weakness. Charging valiantly into our 2020 Best Driver’s Car field, though, the 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S revealed that its Achilles’ heel remains. It’s easy to see why we’d think so. In two back-to-back comparisons earlier this year, both the coupe and convertible annihilated their challengers. McLarens and AMGs couldn’t hold a candle to the new Turbo S on the road. And frankly, things weren’t much different this time around. Just a few ...
2020 Lamborghini Huracán Evo Pros and Cons Review: More With Less
Pros Amazing engine Absolutely planted Outrageous handling Cons Body structure issues Infotainment UX No room for stuff Let’s be honest, the Huracán itself is just a gussied-up Audi R8, right? Sure, when Sant’Agata makes an all-in move with the likes of a Performante, it can win. But just a regular production car? In bocca al lupo. We probably should mention, however, that the Evo does get the Performante’s 630-hp humdinger of a V-10, which screamed loudly enough to break the sound meter at Sonoma Raceway even though we were at Laguna Seca. I kid. A little. We also had a nice demonstration of what a Performante with the ALA removed performs like. This year, our resident racer Randy Pobst went 2.85 seconds slower per lap in the Evo around Laguna Seca than he did in the Per...
2020 Ferrari F8 Tributo Pros and Cons Review: Thrills and Chills
Pros Missile acceleration Quick cornering Bumpy-road mode Cons Wooden brakes Too-light steering feel Looming snap oversteer In reviewing the 2020 Ferrari F8 Tributo with proper clarity, there is a need to go back a few years and admit with mild chagrin that our 2017 Best Driver’s Car–winning Ferrari 488 GTB might have been a ringer. This goes beyond Ferrari sending four factory techs to work day and night to be sure everything ran perfectly. (By contrast, Porsche traditionally sends Frank the PR guy, who watches the Italian antics with mild amusement.) Rather, the 488‘s testing numbers we posted were more akin to what the 661-hp GTB would have produced had it been chipped to 800 hp. And well-placed sources with deep connections say that might indeed have been the case. Bu...
2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Pros and Cons Review: Ultimate Track Tool
Porsche 718 Cayman Full Overview Pros Supreme balance Fantastic teacher Great track tool Cons Jittery suspension Tire noise Underpowered This car has all the makings of a Best Driver’s Car winner: engine mounted in the proper place directly behind the driver and revving to a glorious 8,000 rpm, a delightful manual shifter (unique this year), unflappable carbon-ceramic brakes with excellent pedal feel, and sticky Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires. This is a sports car that punches way above its 3,127-pound featherweight status. The 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 lapped Laguna Seca quicker than a Ferrari 458, AMG GT 63 4Matic+, and various flavors of Nissan GT-R. Like any Porsche I have ever driven, I can tell it’s a Porsche in the way all of its controls have matched efforts and responses. N...
2020 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe Pros and Cons Review: Defying Logic
Porsche Cayenne Full Overview Pros Supercar performance Well-hidden weight Great fun to drive Cons Sick-pumpkin appearance High price It’s an SUV “How do you explain it?” I asked the Porsche PR man standing along the K-wall at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Legendary wheelman/human lap timer Randy Pobst had just finished his hot laps in the 2021 Porsche Cayenne Turbo Coupe during our 2020 Best Driver’s Car, and something had gone, well, not quite right. Quite wrong some might even say. See, Porsche is owned by the Volkswagen Group, as is Audi, and Audi owns Lamborghini. At our 2019 BDC, Lambo’s Urus had set the SUV lap record at Laguna Seca, at 1:40.90. You maybe see where this is going. The Porsche, which stickers for $82,559 less than the Lambo, beat the U...
2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Pros and Cons Review: Lunch Money Stealer
Ford Mustang Full Overview Often, history is made simply by breaking a cycle. Sounds easy enough, but sometimes a thing hasn’t been done for a good reason. The GT500 has never been the best Mustang, just the one with the biggest engine. Not anymore. The 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 has changed history. “This car is the ultimate expression of what the American pony car can be,” pro racer Randy Pobst said after only driving it on the street. After driving it on the track: “God, that thing pins you to the seat running from corner to corner. It hooks up very, very well. That impresses me tremendously. Ford Performance has done a terrific job of setting up that chassis to put down power. I’m in love with the car.” “Now, this is what a proper Best Driv...
MotorTrend Best Driver’s Car 2020: The Contenders!
Well, 2020 has been different, that’s for sure. As a result, the MotorTrend Best Driver’s Car is a bit different, as well. Having to work around a pandemic, we had to shrink our field of contenders and the number of judges. That said, those cars we cut likely wouldn’t have cracked the upper echelon of vehicles we kept. And those cars (and one SUV) that remained were such a closely knit group that picking a winner might have actually been more difficult than it would have been otherwise. So here you have them, the 2020 MotorTrend Best Driver’s Car contenders, with this page updated with a fresh batch of links to each one until we announce the winner on December 30. Be sure to click through, as every story features video of that car’s hot lap put down by our on-...
