Static displays - NYIAS 2013

Photos by the author.

You should go to an auto show with the understanding that you'll have more questions than answers by the time you're done. Actually, I think that's the point.

You don't go to have your curiosities be really satisfied; you go to have them sharpened, to enhance your considerations and fill in some details without ever being able to arrive at a well-informed conclusion - unless it's something that strikes you wrong and prompts a dismissal of some sort.

A car show is about three things, two tangible and one intellectual. You go to see vehicles as physical three-dimensional objects, either up close or at a respectful distance. In certain cases you check out the interface, try it on for size as if it's a shoe, to see how it most immediately suits your body's dimensions. Then, in the background the whole time, you're wondering just what's going on and how these pieces go together and what can be deduced from what is in front of you.

Yes, there are hard, tactile - if superficial - conclusions. The new Golf looks excellent, feels comfortable and refined, and is a serious contender for Best Car In The World. The Corvette Stingray is flat glorious. The Jaguar F-Type is shorter and maybe bulkier than photos suggest. The Cadillac CTS may have a hard time against the 5-Series, but it looks the business and will be great to see on the street. Wonder how the Subaru WRX will turn out. The Mitsubishi Mirage is apparently aimed at people who don't think they deserve something as nice as a Fit or an Accent or a Yaris. Lincoln's MKZ deserves much more than merely being the underconsidered highlight of a struggling division.

A pretty, if slightly chubby, kitty.

And there are more personal ones: I bonked my head on the roofline of a CRZ as I was getting in. I finally sat in an FR-S, which fits my large frame and big feet perfectly. I can't understand why GM puts the brake pedal two inches higher than the accelerator on its pickups so that you have to move your entire leg up and onto the pedal to brake instead of just twisting your foot over to it. The front of the Cherokee isn't as jarring in real life as it is in pictures, but it is still a bit too avant-garde to make sense. Yes, the grille on the Aston Martin Rapide really is too big now, but is that enough to ruin it?

As much as you stare at and sit in and generally contemplate the wares on display, you only rarely are sucked in enough to get past that fact that this is a really big production inside a really big building, and you are more or less constantly surrounded by a really big bunch of people. And sometimes those realities are just as interesting - or unavoidable, in some cases - as the cars.

Consider the constant cliched babble of the booth professionals; the ones at the Honda and Acura displays were somehow more irritating than the rest. Louder? Worse scripts? Connection to often-bland products? Don't know, would prefer not to think about it.

Yes, we know.

Nissan actually had scent dispensers - little automated aerosol spritzers - built into its stand. The chosen fragrance was a mix of cleaning product essences that would not have been out of place in the men's room and which gave me a quick headache.

Sometimes the entertainment comes from overhearing the half-truths and knowingly pronounced misinformation of fellow showgoers. Take the guy at the McLaren display talking about the MP4-12C's Mercedes engine. Or the other gentleman over on the Mercedes stand itself, mentioning something about the CLA's V-4 engine and R-Class package.

Don't cover your ears, though, because you'll miss some genuinely intriguing things in passing. Consider the two middle-aged linebackers, easily 300 solidly built pounds apiece, the one straight telling his friend about how Kias are the best-looking cars on the road. (Think about it. This is not a ridiculous statement. Kias are getting serious street cred.)

Other elements of reality state their presence. In a few ways, attending a show at a barn like Javits is a bit like preparing to go on a day hike: choose comfortable footwear, drink plenty of fluids in preparation, wear layers because temperatures inside may have nothing to do with those outside. Understand that you probably won't see absolutely everything, especially given the crowds. Try to have a level head about things.

Given that level head, what can we understand about this year's NYIAS? There didn't seem to be any grand sweeping themes, except maybe the continuing development and proliferation of tech but that's hardly new. The lower end of the market may just be getting a bit more love lately. Wagons are coming back. (Yay!) Crossovers may have reached saturation; very pleasing to see the emphasis that GM in particular is putting on sedans.

And we get to call judgement on all of this without having driven anything.

I still feel a bit uneasy about the GT-R post from the other day because I was trying to call out something without specific firsthand experience. This is basically the approach that auto shows attempt to induce in every attendee - or at least enough of the same to set a hook and make a dealer visit a near-necessity.

You go to an auto show to see, to feel, to be dazzled to a degree, to think about a few things. You can develop some ideas. You don't really go to experience what a car is or can do. That can only come later.

Cybernetics

Photos: Nissan Motors Corporation, USA

Four committed car guys standing around at a party at a the Classic Car Club in downtown Manhattan, relaxed, pleased to be among their own kind, idly chatting. Off to one side sits a gunmetal-gray-metallic Nissan GT-R.

Unbidden, one of the quartet says, "Y'know, I've just never warmed up to the GT-R."

Three heads nod knowingly. This is not a controversial opinion. It is common, understood, innately correct.

It is also slightly frustrating and difficult to justify. Somehow you'd think that car deserves better, but it doesn't really make the right connections.

No one can dispute the fact that the GT-R is disturbingly fast and capable. This isn't even something to be qualified by its relatively low price tag; it's an absolute. This thing accelerates hard enough to perform noninvasive surgery on your internal organs and the driveline manipulates torque outputs with a delicacy and accuracy to invoke a snit fit in a prima ballerina. In many many ways it's a magnificent machine.

And it never seems to deliver the goods in a way that allows it to sit in the pantheon of greats where the numbers would say it belongs.

What's wrong here? If I could draft a letter to GT-R project manager Kazutoshi Mizuno, how would I explain why I respect this creation but have no real desire to own one? And how should these concerns be heard by the greater automotive design and manufacturing community?

I'm admittedly living on the described impressions of others here - I've never driven a GT-R. I would love to try one for a few days (word to Nissan press relations: let's talk, seriously), but for now I have to accept the word of many respected and trusted authorities, who have been consistently unanimous in both their praise and criticisms.

So what should I theoretically say to Mizuno-san?

Well, first and simplest, it's far from the most exciting shape on the road. It's not unappealing - it's no Juke - but it really doesn't provoke a major emotional response. It's a solid, somewhat bulky, pretty generic modern GT car. The Infiniti G37 coupe has far more art to its lines. Even given the platform's significant size, there's no reason why the body can't be much more appealing. (Nissan's styling in general is kind of uninspired right now, but there's no excuse to not make an extra effort for the flagship.)

The interior is nothing to make anyone fall in love, either. It's well-equipped, rational, and utterly inelegant in its presentation and ambiance. If you love buttons you're at home here, but otherwise it lacks - and in a different and less likable way than the old traditional German no-nonsense approach. Maybe it's those buttons.

Once you get into the specs, a few things stand out: Aside from the family-sedan dimensions, this is one heavy machine. Manufacturer's stated curb weight is 3829 pounds. Yes, it manages that weight extremely well, and pure mass is not a reason to dislike a car, but a well-balanced heavy sword is still a heavy sword - lots of impact but not the easiest to wield, especially in certain situations, and subjectively at a disadvantage to something more innately manageable.

Why the weight? Probably the massive complexity of every mechanical system in the car. If you love sports and racing cars, you usually have a healthy respect for tech in many applications - but you also prize simplicity and directness. The GT-R features neither of those traits.

Instead, you get the most complex driveline this side of a Bugatti Veyron, and even then it's close. (Six driveshafts?) The purist concerns about the paddle-shifter transmission are rapidly fading, but the rest - all those computer-monitored clutches, all those torque measurements, all that manipulation and assistance and interference - stands in contrast to accepted enthusiast canon through the ages, where it's been all about the ability of someone's right foot to fully command the situation without excessive second-guessing.

And that is only one system. Add in the DampTronic suspension (awful name, by the way) and yet another loathsome three-way "mode" selector and VDC and the rest and it approaches voice-recognition-system levels of disconnection and alienation.

It's like driving via Turing test. In getting to its fantastic numbers the GT-R replaces so much of the pure involvement and enjoyment of good fast driving with processing and interpretation and management to the point where a lot of us are just turned off by the whole thing.

This isn't about some stereotypical take on Japanese products being soulless, which is as outdated and inaccurate a prejudice as exists in the automotive world - and which happily seems to be fading into oblivion as we fully accept CRXs and Miatas and NSXs and Z32 300ZXs and first-generation RX-7s and S30 240Zs, among others, as indisputable classics.

I want the GT-R to be more like an NSX - simpler, lighter, more direct, less couched in binary processing and willful complexity. More elegant in its violence. Forcefully fast, yes, of course, but with a bit of an edginess and clarity that the current one lacks. Give it some style, drop some (well, lots of) weight, find a way to live with half of the buttons. Think 560-horsepower AWD FR-S and you're most of the way there.

Maybe the GT-R as it is needs to be reconsidered and repackaged. Maybe instead of a raw performance car all those systems should be used to create some sort of indomitable Grand Touring machine, with impeccable furnishings and exquisite lines and four comfortable seats. That would be close to the ultimate cross-country runner, something to make the Germans truly feel inadequate.

Instead, right now, it's a 911 Turbo competitor without any spirit or charm, which is a lot of what makes the 911 so lovable. The heads respect the GT-R, but most don't want it. And that's a shame - but it computes.

Urban discipline

Photo: Sergey Shpakovsky

This is the last time I will apologize for the irregular nature of my posts, or more specifically the large gaps that sometimes occur and will likely occur again. Hopefully things will be better integrated towards productive ends here in the future, but reality has some pretty harsh dictates regarding time and priorities for me right now. Such is life and the decisions we make, as if I need another reminder. Please bear with me; hopefully the collective you will continue to find these writings to be of some value or interest when they appear, and I do very much appreciate your reading. (Just to make sure: Comments are welcome, by the way.)

That said, the ability to let thoughts mull and recombine for a while is an often-underappreciated privilege in the Web age and one for which I remain thankful, but which is valuable only up to a point. It's wonderful to be able to mull over a consideration for an extended period of time, but thinking about something for too long can be counterproductive - which is why I just binned a massive two-part magnum-opus-in-progress about what we saw back at Geneva, as my concerns about how everything introduced there relates to technology and driving and humanity was rapidly facing a complete logical unraveling. Plus, have to clear the boards before the local show later this week. Wish I could have scored a press pass, but wasn't even sure I'd be here for it until about this past Thursday.

Anyway, in place of those two encyclicals, quick notes on what was important a month ago: 

• The McLaren P1 is technically intriguing, although it somehow seems overdone and strangely irrelevant and to me is less desirable than the MP4/12C. Could partially be my personal issues with the hybrid thing.
• The LaFerrari is much the same except with a greater historical burden and a far worse name. 
• I wish the Rolls-Royce Wraith had lived up to the teaser images. The world needs a great grand motorcar; it also needs said motorcar to be styled alluringly.
• The Lamborghini Veneno is nothing but a pure and complete Lamborghini - it could be nothing but a Lamborghini - and thank almighty God for that, even if they're only building three of the damned things.
• I'm actually okay with the 991 911 GT3 being PDK-only. The loss in connectedness is marginal, it's in step with a broad movement, and once you get to seven gears I think I prefer a less fussy way of shifting anyway. Bigger worry: A 911 with messed-up steering feel is just classically wrong. Still want one, though.
• I am not surprised that the one car that won unanimous praise from the scribblers was the Golf GTD. Not that writers have all that much real influence - as indicated by the multitude of diesel AWD wagons with manual transmissions on the American road - but it really does seem like the Complete Solution.

So we get to the edge of the New York show, my hometown gig, and I go from the lofty heights of contemplating the LaFerrari's place in the metaphysical order to the very abrasive concrete of my own neighborhood.

Photo: Luca5

I gave up my car, a rapidly decaying '87 Prelude Si, when I moved to Brooklyn back in 2002. Literally. I could not sell a car that dangerous and decrepit to another human being in good conscience, so I donated it to some Chemung County charity with the hopes that they'd part the whole thing out (rusty gas tank and all). Since then I've been an active observer of the peculiar breeds of car culture that exist here in lieu of, I guess, actually being part of one. I occasionally feel like a part of me is missing.

First thing to know: New Yorkers don't hate cars. There is no end of personal transportation present in the everyday, and in many cases cars and SUVs and the like get used just like they get used in every burg and suburb in the rest of the country. This is especially the case in Queens and the Bronx.

Even so, cars in NYC suffer an accelerated entropy hard to duplicate elsewhere. The vehicular environment - the parking situation, the road conditions, the nature of traffic - is just harsh. Cars don't last much longer than ten years here. Theft isn't the massive issue that it was years ago, but my friend who used to own a Fox Mustang will attest to the fact that it's still a reality. The costs and risks of parking alone are enough to dissuade many from ownership; for the rest of us, the near-necessity of real bumpers means that some hardcore favorites (Alfa 105 GTV, Lotus Elise) are much less appealing than they would be elsewhere.

Past that, the mix on the road is a bit different; we don't have many pickup trucks, for example. We do have plenty of SUVs. There are preferences - when I worked for two (miserable) months at a local dealership back in 2009, the two most common requests from people entering the used car lot were for a Charger or an Altima.

You would think that Subarus would do well here: tough, capable of handling our increasingly ridiculous weather, relatively affordable, profoundly reliable (WRX/STi head gasket issues slipped under the rug for the moment). They don't exist in numbers. You will see two dozen Camrys before you see two Subarus.

The lot experience and the Subaru shortage point up some huge truths about cars here: the great majority of buyers tend to be very trendy and selfconscious, they go for the most predictable options, they don't stray too far from self-reinforcing socially acceptable choices.

The tendency for those of means to buy mostly to impress others and fit within accepted codes is reflected in the hegemony of the three big German sedan and CUV makers and the paucity of anything classic or sporty or remotely eccentric. Yes, one can see the occasional Italian exotic, but given the amount of money that floats around the dull predictability of high-end traffic in its logo-obsessed insecurity is a bit depressing. People buy to be seen, seeking a sort of bland "I have money and acceptable tastes" approval. Or else they just completely lack individuality and character. Maybe it's the same thing.

About what you can expect here. Photo: Raging Wire

Same trend idea with street kids - Nissans are accepted (Maximas have a lot of cred) and thus consistently do well, and Infinitis are a common aspirational item. There's some natural overlap on the upscale SUV and German-machine front. Sports cars? Huh? Maybe an M3, but I'll venture that it's more the badge and the positioning in the line than anything about skidpad numbers. Back the street culture off to the great masses, and you see the definition of normalcy: four-door sedans and crossovers, lots of Toyotas and Hondas and Fords.

The sad mutation process that took the city's art and bohemian culture scenes and converted them into hipster fashion-show zones showed a lot of the once-significant weird-car love there to be a recessive trait. Occasionally you'll see something interesting in Williamsburg or south of 14th Street, but I suspect that unless it's something really impressive that it just might be another case of ironic-pose-centric accessorization, too.

So, again, it's not that people here hate cars. It's that they mean something different, something far removed from classical ideas of backroad driving or cross-country running. A car or CUV or whatever is, too often, another boutique shopping bag, a clothing logo, a lifestyle statement - and that's about it. It's a bit depressing, but we live with it.

Maybe it's just that those of us here who understand just aren't in a place to fight back against the trendiness and dreariness often enough. But the belief does exist; resistance to that status quo gets lots of love. Dear God, you should see people react to Raphael's Baja Bug like it's the highlight of their day.

Maybe it's not an attitude that one sees day-to-day, but people here do understand.

Photo: CarSpotter

Tribal affiliations

I've gone on record as saying that the Jeep XJ Cherokee is the only SUV I've ever seriously considered owning - which is still true - so I feel compelled to weigh in on the new Liberty replacement bearing that most dignified name which was revealed yesterday.

Disregard the nose for a few minutes. (Seriously, just try. Please.) Like a craft-minded actor, start with intention. The great success of the XJ was that it took the off-road paradigm and made it work splendidly in everyday life while avoiding both excess and compromise. It was a practical box on wheels that could go literally anywhere capable of supporting its not-immodest weight. It was a Land Rover Discovery or Mercedes Geländewagen brought to the masses, a wonderfully functional and unpretentious vehicle that remains one of the great designs of the Eighties, and it enjoyed a well-deserved long production run. It was the perfect evolution of the Jeep ideal and has deservedly eclipsed its large and clumsy predecessor in the popular mindset. Nothing has ever really replaced it.

Photo: Bryce Mullet

It still stands in stark contrast to the less ambitious products from other makers which would gradually evolve into what we now call crossovers. Take the libertarian ruggedness of a proper SUV and domesticate it for suburban desires and you end up with...well, kind of a strange creature that does a lot of things fairly well but does nothing with any kind of greatness.

This is my biggest worry with the new Cherokee. Given that it's allegedly based off the Giulietta/Dart platform, is it going to be capable of real off-road duty in the same way that the XJ was? Will it even try to retain the kind of tool-like honesty and sincerity that goes with the name? Is that even still possible in this market?

On a very superficial level it looks like it's going to line up against such hardcore safarimobiles as the Honda CR-V and Ford Escape and Hyundai Santa Fe in the wilds out at the corners of the mall parking lot during Christmas shopping season. The hallmarks are all there: moderate body cladding, posh interior, alloy wheels with M+S tires, trendy silhouette (aft of the front fenders, at least), a distinct sense of domestic normalcy winning out over the kind of focus and intensity that gets Outward Bound alumni up in the morning.

I don't know if these impressions will turn out to be happily wrong, but for now it's not a good vibe. Something to ponder as we get to the styling issue.

Right.

First, I'm not totally rejecting the idea out of hand, but having Jeep be a style leader is like having Barbour revamp their line with tech fabrics and annual color adjustments. This was the company that got endless brickbats for changing to (horrors!) square headlights on the Wrangler. The whole point of a Jeep is that it does what few if any other vehicles can do, and it does so without a lot of fuss or cosmetic silliness. The Wrangler is still one of the most amazing and wonderful vehicles available to the public, even though it is still visibly a development of a primitive machine created over seventy years ago.

Yes, I know I'm sort of avoiding the issue, but I need some time here. Really, I somehow feel bad saying this: As much as I appreciate that Jeep is doing something creative and ambitious, that is just one horribly ugly front end.

This is just such an unbelievable case of what and why and huh? Really: This is a Cherokee?

If this is all as it will truly come to pass, I wish they'd retained the Liberty name instead. The XJ was something great in its directness and capability. If a paleface is allowed to say this, it did justice to its namesake people. This is something very, very different, and I don't see it living up to a very noble reputation.

Time will tell. For now, I am sadly unimpressed.

Ill chill

An ideal environment in more ways than one. Photo: Tesla

I'm glad I'm not forced to take a side in the whole Tesla vs. New York Times gripefest going on right now, because I can definitely see where both sides have their points - and I don't think anyone has done anything at all wrong.

We all know the story by now: NYT's John Broder drove a Model S from Washington DC to Norwich, CT, and back to NYC - and suffered from serious battery-charge issues through most of the drive. When the story ran, Tesla founder and head Elon Musk had a conniption, accusing the Times of faking the story and worse. Many bad vibes remain in the air.

A couple things: No, I don't think that the Times set out to disparage or smear the Model S. They put the car through a fairly normal test and took notes on what happened and what could have been done differently (making it very clear that some better information would have made a difference). Also, I do understand Musk's outrage; even if he's coming off as a bit thin-skinned and snappish, Tesla is his baby and it has to hurt hard to see his efforts, from the car to the Supercharger network, portrayed so negatively.

I really like the Model S. It looks fantastic, it's supposed to be great to drive, it is a massive step forward for electric cars in general. That said, this episode highlights two very important points: First, EVs are still a new technology with some understandable limitations. They will likely improve significantly even in the near future, but for now they're still more or less a work in progress.

Second, and this isn't just about EVs: Driving in winter sucks.

The view from home, Saturday, February 9, 2013

It's more of a case with EVs, to be sure, because the cold plays hell with battery storage. But in general, winter weather and enthusiastic driving do not mix well.

Fine, go turn your favorite parking lot into a donut shop for a while. Past that, you run into all kinds of concerns beyond comfort levels for us wimpy cosmopolitan bourgeois types. (And no, I've never really had a standing need for seat heaters.)

Start with snow. A little bit is okay; it's not a major inconvenience, it's fun to feel things slide a bit at normal speeds, it's a good way to learn some control skills. Get much over half a foot and things start to get difficult in a hurry. One of the most disillusioning and depressing things I've seen in the past few years was an Audi A4 Quattro hopelessly stuck in snow up to its bumpers along 33rd Street, waiting for a pull from a Jeep. All-wheel drive is nice; ground clearance is maybe more important. And if you live your life on two wheels, whether motorized or pedaled, at this point you're probably stoking the fire and pouring a drink and finding a good book because ain't no way you're going out in this. Especially knowing what comes next.

After the snow, inevitably, you deal with ice, and that's when things get nasty. Grip is nonexistent. Surfaces can be very hard to judge. An object in motion tends to stay in motion because the ability to act upon it has just been severely limited or removed entirely. And consider how cars are weighted unevenly, which brings its own dynamic thrills and chills. Rear-engined cars (Raphael's Bug, Mom's old Porsche 912) do okay on snow; on ice, they're the worst.

Then you face the changes that the cold causes independent of precipitation. Tires don't warm up right. Neither does the rest of a car, from recalcitrant starting onward. It can even cause weird changes in the vehicle itself; Dad once said that when it got really cold cold his Saturn SC2 had a totally different set of body-panel rattles than it did during the rest of the year. (He apparently found this oddly endearing.) Corvette owners might understand this.

Photo: Cam Riley

Or at least the Corvette owners that drive their fiberglass missiles in the chill and ice know this, which of course brings up the most blatant point: A lot of really wonderful machines manage winter weather about as well as they do rock trails. I used to have a running list of worst possible snow cars, which tended towards three headings: exotics, especially Italians (Countach, F40, 930); American V8 hot rods (Cobra, early big-block Camaro); and affordable roadsters (Spitfire, Seven, Spiders both Fiat and Alfa Romeo). I eventually stopped contemplating that category when I realized that it basically meant that most of the cars I wanted to own were grossly unsuited to my continuing life in places that had real winters. As noted, this is especially true regarding motorcycles.

Which likely plays into some greater truths about the automotive marketplace as a whole. Not everyone who buys an SUV or crossover does so with considerations about winter driving in mind, but for a lot of folks it's definitely a part of the decision. (If it isn't initially, the friendly salesperson will doubtless be happy to remind the prospective buyer of the advantages of this higher-profit - I mean, higher-capability vehicle.) And the fact that sports cars remain a small cult movement in much of the country may be due in significant part to this as well. (Although maybe the success of the Subaru WRX/STi and Mitsubishi Evo ironically owe something to this.)

Not that a monster lumbering SUV or mallmobile crossover is necessary to handle frozen precipitation. Best snow car I've ever driven without qualification is a 2005 VW Passat sedan with the 1.8 turbo 4 and autobox driving the front wheels and standard Continental WhateverContact tires. (This would be Anna's mom's car, for what it's worth.) Not sure how much more advantage 4Motion would provide, because it has so far proven to be unstoppable. Yes, it's bigger than I'd prefer and kind of boring on an everyday basis, but in snow it is well-balanced and brilliantly effective. And I wonder if the blunt numbness of a lot of older American cars isn't the flip side of creating something that can handle whatever crazy conditions North America cooks up. (Addendum: See also Volvos.)

I guess instead of just succumbing to the dreary lure of a big barge truck derivative, I'd rather spend my time finding common ground between the longing for speed and the realities of snow and ice. The Evo and STi have some potential if not much ground clearance. Water-cooled VWs have their appeal. (Also, earlier A1 platform cars are renowned for having one of the all-time great heater systems, as if almost to compensate for a perennial concern of the air-cooled cars.) And even if they aren't totally invincible, Audi Quattros have their following for a reason.

Maybe it's best to just get what you want and face the consequences as bravely as possible. Sometimes a really good car can surprise you. Right after I trudged past that stuck Audi a few years ago I cheered an NC Miata going by on a plowed but still slick 1st Avenue. And I've heard whispers about how great a 308/328 is on dedicated snow tires.

Photo: ADELSTIIN

Then again, maybe that Jeep isn't such a bad idea.