<b>Car Review</b>: 2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible | Driving |
- <b>Car Review</b>: 2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible | Driving
- 2015 BMW i8 <b>review</b>: The first eco-friendly supercar | ExtremeTech
- <b>Car Review</b>: The affordable, fun hatchback | fox13now.com
| <b>Car Review</b>: 2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible | Driving Posted: 29 Sep 2014 11:16 AM PDT Overview Drop-top V8 muscle with 2+2 seating The very first Hot Wheels ever made, styled by Harry Bentley Bradley and released in 1968, was a Chevrolet Camaro. Part of the original run of sixteen model cars, you could get the 1/64th scale Camaro in a number of brightly-coloured Spectraflame finishes, and line it up against the Mustang that was also released around the same time for pint-sized table-top pony-car show-downs. Also Read: Our review of the 2014 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Pretty much the same thing was happening on a full-scale level on dragstrips and street courses all across North America. Ford had a three-year lead on Chevy, but General Motors came back in a big way, stuffing their biggest engines under the hood in an ever-escalating horsepower war. Even as the gas crisis took the wind out of most performance cars, the Mustang and the Camaro would volley back and forth, their fans taking sides in what essentially turned into trench warfare. Either you were with the Blue Oval or the Bowtie. The kids who grew up with those Hot Wheels stuffed into their pockets soon had the chance to put a full-sized version of their favourite in the driveway, and while the Camaro rode the bench from 2003-2009, it came back all angular and angry just in time for the second decade of the third millennium. Ford may be firing off the confetti cannons in celebration of a half-century of Mustang, but Chevy's pony car isn't about to lurk in the shadows. Here it comes down that orange strip of plastic at full speed, dressed in waspish yellow and wearing the war paint of twin matte-black rally-stripes.  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible If you grew up with "Boneshaker," "Beatnik Bandit," "Twin-Mill," and all the other wild-and-woolly Hot Wheels customs, then the Camaro's in-your-face styling works just fine. This yellow and chrome wheels combination does tend to highlight some of the more questionable styling details – the faux gills on the rear haunches, for instance – but the few tweaks GM introduced last year look good. The narrowed grille and conventional taillights give the car a still-fresh look, and if like me you're secretly still eight years old, the giant functional vent on the hood is just plain cool. Inside, form dictates function. If you wanted to look good in your bowtie muscle car, then that base is covered; if you wanted to see well, um, not so much. Forward visibility is akin to the M4 Sherman tanks that were once tested at GM's Milford proving grounds, and this convertible version has large three-quarter blindspots. The rear seats will do for smaller children, but headroom up front is relatively tight. Oh, and the trunk is usable for smaller items, but might present a challenge to weekend getaway luggage. What's more, the Camaro's interior now lags behind the refreshed Challenger and all-new Mustang introduced this year. Fit and finish were actually pretty good, but it's plainer in here than in either competitor, and less fluid than the Challenger's well-executed retro design. It also looks less upscale than the Mustang's interior.  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible However, the new gauge cluster introduced last year is easier to read than previously, and the brightly-lit heads-up display even includes a lateral g-meter. You get easy to use knobs for the air-conditioning and heating, and a large touchscreen display for the infotainment. Chevy's MyLink is an easy to use system, and the navigation screen looks good, although it's set a little low in the dash to be easily readable. Less good are the twin rows of buttons flanking the screen, which occasionally fail to register a touch. Happily, the voice commands work well. But all these quibbles fade into the background as soon as you drop that top and unleash that beast of a 6.2-litre V8, right? Well, sort of. This particular bumblebee came with slightly less sting in its tail than usual, with a rating of 400 horsepower at 5,900 RPM and 410 lb.-ft. of torque at 4,300 RPM. Reason? It's coupled to GM's six-speed automatic transmission. Manual Camaros get an extra 26 horsepower and 10 lb.-ft. of torque.  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Crank up the all-aluminium V8, and the first reaction is "Gee mister, why's your car so quiet?" This Camaro has an engine the size of an old-school AMG product, but where there's grumble and drama from the Teutonic muscle, the Camaro only purrs softly. Slotting the shifter – big enough to be a leather-wrapped bedpost – into drive, we ghost off the line with barely a burble. This is not a comment on refinement, but rather on the spirit of the car: with the automatic, the SS feels a bit like a Mercedes SL. The ride is much busier of course, and the buffeting a little more invigorating, but overall the car is smooth-shifting and well-composed, with a sense of great mass and deeply comfortable seats. Oh sure, the latter have large bolsters, but they feel made for long-distance touring rather than slicing up the apexes. The transmission shifts up early to take advantage of the low-end torque, resulting in five-cycle fuel economy ratings of 13.7 L/100 kilometres in the city and 8.3 on the highway. Premium fuel is recommended for best performance, but not absolutely required. Leaving the highway and finding a mountain road to uncork the V8 a little, it's really only up in the range that the Camaro's heartbeat starts to pound. If you walk on it off the line, there's a pause thanks to the considerable inertia of 1,909 kilograms worth of curb weight, and then the power comes on in a rush that has the numbers on the heads-up display dialling upwards with abandon. But there's not much in the way of drama, just speed.  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible Ditto if you flick the paddle-shifters down a gear and zip the Camaro through a corner. The g-meter (you should really be keeping your eyes up rather than watching this) records a high-score, but the overall experience is just weight and composure. The steering is good, there's not much in the way of cowl shake as the drop-top has been stiffened to make up for cutting off the roof, and the considerable mass of the car works with the well-tuned suspension. The Camaro takes a set into the corner and gets you through at silly speeds with little fuss. For all its eye-searingly yellow paint and shouty stripes, this big Chevy is a pussycat of a car. It's a bit too large to be fun and nimble, but it's got plenty of grip and considerable thrust if you poke the bear under the hood a bit. However, I can't feel like there's a little something missing. Take a look at the key which you use to start this car up. It's a real, regular key attached to a key fob, the latter converted from a switchblade style key by simply removing the metal part. This is in response to GM's ignition woes, and is a quick fix for a massive recall involving a key fob that could pop out of the lock if a driver's knee hit it.  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible After freight and PDI, this muscular behemoth costs just shy of $58,000 and it has a key that looks like a patch job rather than a device to unlock the beast you've been dreaming about since your youth. It's like shaking hands with Hulk Hogan and finding out he's got a grip like Steve Urkel. In a coupe with the manual, the Camaro would have some serious performance chops to take on the Mustang, and in the supercharged ZL1 and stripped-out Z28 it has a brace of halo cars that promise uncompromised performance. However, the balance in the pony car wars is about to shift again in favour of the fresher Mustang, at least on the mid-range cars, and it's up to Chevy to come up with the counter-punch. They've got the ingredients – the ATS's Alpha platform, that mighty LS3 engine – now let's see what recipe they come up with. If you've been watching what the new Stingray is doing, it's hard not to get excited about what might be in the pipeline. In the meantime, if you grew up with a Hot Wheels Camaro in your front pocket, then putting the keys to this modern, automatic, drop-top version in the same spot isn't going to feel quite as special. The optional dual-mode exhaust or an aftermarket muffler to let that V8 grumble out might do the trick, but in factory form, this particular Camaro isn't the blister-packed hot rod you'd be reaching for first. The Specs Type of vehicle Rear-wheel-drive two-door convertible  2014 Chevrolet Camaro SS Convertible
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| 2015 BMW i8 <b>review</b>: The first eco-friendly supercar | ExtremeTech Posted: 02 Oct 2014 07:30 AM PDT  Meet the 21st century supercar: the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid. It's insanely fast despite having three cylinders, not eight or twelve. On country roads you cruise in supreme comfort and quiet. The first 20 miles of your trip come from electric power. The i8 employs electric motors front and back, the gas engine in back, two transmissions, and lithium-ion batteries running through the middle of the cockpit. The body is all-carbon fiber, the fibers coming from BMW's own hydro-powered factory. The BMW i8 is a Chevrolet Volt on steroids. It is a sports cars with an environmental conscience. The i8 wins our Editors' Choice award as the best of the new breed of supercars.
Driving the BMW i8: Yowza!The toughest part about driving the BMW i8 is getting in: You have to climb over a door sill virtually even with the top of the seat cushion, while ducking under the low-slung scissor doors. To paraphrase mama, "Always wear good underwear. You never know when you're going to the hospital, or getting out of an i8." Once aboard, the cockpit is surprisingly roomy for a sports car other than the front-to-back tunnel that houses 217 pounds of lithium-ion batteries. It's also very BMW-like: pushbutton start, a freestanding 8.8-inch LCD display atop the center stack, the eight programmable buttons that tune your favorite stations or call home, the beer tap-looking shifter, the Eco-Normal-Sport rocker switch, and of course iDrive. Press the button and … nothing much happens once the instrument panel lights up. No V12 engine roaring to life a foot from your ears. That's because the i8 starts each day as an electric car. But it moves off swiftly. After 20 miles on the 7.1 kWh battery, sooner if you tromp the throttle, you are in gasoline-and-electric mode and aboard a rocket ship. Zero to 60 mph happens in a shade over 4 seconds. Yes, there are old-fashion supercars with 0-60 times under 4.0 seconds, but they aren't getting 75 MPGe and they're paying a congestion surcharge to enter megacities. In London, there's a weekday congestion charge of £11.50 ($18.75); EVs, PHEVs, and ultra-ultra-low emission vehicles are exempt.
Choose economy, performance, some of each
Some plug-in hybrids such as the Chevrolet Volt won't charge the battery while under way because it's inefficient compared to recharging using electricity. BMW gives you that choice because in sport modes you need the electric motors to act as turbochargers. Even BMW can't make a three-cylinder gasoline engine alone shove 3,300 pounds to highway speeds in 4-5 seconds. In performance modes, brake regeneration is turned way up and the car slows dramatically the moment you lift off the throttle, the same as when you're karting, or aboard a riding lawn mower for that matter. If you hammer the throttle — tsk, tsk — and you're in electric mode, the gas engine kicks in, but there's a lag that feels like a second before all power sources are present and accounted for. Next page: Analyzing the BMW i8′s hybrid drive-train
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| <b>Car Review</b>: The affordable, fun hatchback | fox13now.com Posted: 06 Sep 2014 01:10 PM PDT Car guy Brian Champagne test drives the hatchbacks Nissan Versa and Mitsubishi Outlander. Brian looks at their affordability and their different features. Watch the video above for the full review. |
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