All Entries Tagged With: "Automobile Magazine"
Automobile’s Ace: Georg Kacher
CAR plenipotentiary Georg Kacher
By Gunnar Heinrich | IMG Automobile
I have a subscription to Automobile Magazine. Notice I didn’t use the active voice – it would’ve rang as a full hearted endorsement of the auto rag and I just started getting my monthly feed by snail mail this past January.
So far, so good.
Most times I just skim the copy, chuckle a bit over Ezra Dyer’s sarcastic take on this or that random aspect of the world’s automotive story, read a road test or two, and drop it – ne’er to pick it up a-Gain.
But Automobile‘s editors have given me added incentive, I’ve discovered.
Georg Kacher of CAR is making his presence known in this all-American mag. The British bits of his prose are carefully scrubbed out so as not to lose the wider part of the mag’s Stateside audience who, to paraphrase the Big Lebowski, have never seen no Queen in her damned undies.
And yet despite the Yank filter, we still get Mr. Kacher’s unique character.
The stories he chooses to tell (or is assigned, as the case may be) are splendid. And there’s something gently humorous, chidding even, about the carefully framed shots of his pseudo-serious, stiff-upper-lipped mug that find their way into each of his articles like a well timed Hitchcock cameo.
Automobile has a seasoned character in its cast that might just steal the show.
Certainly, his words do sing on the page. Consider this opening tract of verbal expanse on the Audi R8 5.2 that Mr. Kacher wrote in this month’s issue.
“…the 5.2 liter V-10-powered R8 is the new leader of the pack. That’s the inescapable conclusion after a memorable day in which even losing my driver’s license ten times over would not have dimmed the sparkle in my eyes.”
Sigh.
Whether this involvement with Automobile is a long term commitment on Mr. Kacher’s part or merely just the diplomatic, Trans-Atlantic good will act of a visiting officer from a friendly foreign navy, remains to be seen.
Just the same, I’ll keep looking for Mr. Kacher’s words in the next month’s issue.
On That Famous Q&A With Bruno Sacco
By Gunnar Heinrich
WHEN asked what he thought were his favorite designs, Bruno Sacco, the Italian cornerstone of Mercedes-Benz design for the 20th Century’s last quarter didn’t miss a beat.
“The 1980s W126 S-class, the 1990s R129 SL, the CLK, the SLK, and the W220 S-class that debuted in the late 1990s. But my favorite is the Mercedes-Benz 190 [W201] because of its importance to Mercedes.”
Marc Noordeloos’ (Automobile) Q&A with Mr. Sacco has now taken on reference-text like status for plenty of Benzophiles around the globe. It’s linked everywhere, most notably by 560SEC fans who are thrilled that Mr. Sacco himself drives one years after he penned it.
In 10 straightforward questions, Mr. Sacco validates his own conservative ethos (he references the need to establish a balanced design theme), does a mea culpa on the W140 S-Class, praises Cadillac and puts down (gently) BMW design.
It’s been linked here before, but I think it’s worth a rehash. Because like classic automotive design, the sage insights from an artist of Mr. Sacco’s caliber never age.
[Linked: Automobile]
Driven To Distraction By In-Car Displays
By Gunnar Heinrich
YESTERDAY, I picked up an Automobile back issue.
I don’t usually read Automobile or American car mags, in general. As far as US car mags go, I used to be a Road & Track and Car and Driver guy (as it happens both are owned by the same parent corporation which will make for an interesting tale when both auto rags have to merge inside the next five years).
That said, I do enjoy reading Ezra Dyer’s column (he widely appeals to us gear heads in the 18-36 demographic) periodically as he’s less bound by editorial tape in Automobile than he is in the Times‘ broadsheets.
In this past issue, Mr. Dyer discussed hybrids and posed the question to would-be green drivers, “Do you pay fetishistic attention to your little-miles-per-gallon video display?”
Yes. The answer, I was surprised to find myself say, was and is yes.
I’ve been driving a number of cars with really attention grabbing displays lately.
- Cadillac CTS with pop up touch screen nav. display and real-time traffic map.
- Cadillac XLR-V with in dash nav. screen.
- Toyota’s Highlander Hybrid with in-dash battery-engine monitor display (doubling as reverse camera screen).
- BMW 335xi coupe and a M.Y. 07 525xi both fitted with iDrive.
- Mercedes-Benz (W220) S500, SL500, and S550 (with Benz’s superior interpretation of iDrive)
- Nissan Altima with instant economy gauge bar graph.
Fitted with CVT, I drove a Nissan Altima north last weekend to Montreal. On I-91 it poured most of the way through Massachusetts and Vermont which with weekend traffic should have captured my total attention.
But it didn’t thanks to this little bar graph just below the speedometer that instantly measured the car’s fuel economy.
Like some orange pixel screen from a Pinball machine and as quaint as Homer’s little sippy bird featured in The Simpsons, the graph encouraged me like some zealous used car dealer to SAVE! SAVE! SAVE!
When the line touched the far right corner it teased me into dreaming that we could make the 400 mile journey on just six gallons (@ 60+ mpg) rather than a full tank of $4 per gallon unleaded.
Trouble was the moment I pressed the gas pedal as much as a millimeter the gauge would retreat to 20 mpg. And just to confirm, I felt as though I had to constantly check the graph to make sure that I was reaching my full mileage potential. It became a game.
And that’s the trouble in a nut.
Despite the various warnings of the more sophisticated systems and even some nanny measures – Cadillac’s XLR-V wouldn’t allow you to adjust course until the machine was in park – these displays are truly distracting.
And on the course to distraction…
There’s none I’ve test that was more so than the CTS with pop up nav display. When the display was raised above the dash making it slightly less than eye level, something in my subconscious felt like kicking back and watching my own progress on TV – even if that progress led me to an I.O.E. (involuntary off-road excursion).
Mercifully, that didn’t happen. But it could have. Which is why I had the screen retracted more often than I had it raised.
And again, the point. With the increase of what I’ll call “gimmetry” – the apt blend of gimmickry and gadgetry – comes an increase in the fetishistic attention to other things beside vehicular control.
So yes, Mr. Dyer. The answer still is yes.
The Turbo X Spectacular! Part I: The Talk In Herb’s Garden
By Gunnar Heinrich with Photos by Kevin Kusina
OVERSHADOWED by Herb’s own multi-story BMW dealer on the right and squeezed by a parking lot brimming with new Bimmers on the left, the largest Saab dealer in these United States proved a so-so location to talk Turbo X.
Symbolizing just what GM is pitting Saab’s halo car against, Automobile plenipotentiary Ezra Dyer made a showy arrival in BMW’s latest M3 sedan. Indeed, as the morning wore on and the automotive press talked and was talked-at, alternatively, the name “BMW” would surface time and again.
Starting off at 8:30 AM, GM staff held an all-business presentation on Saab’s showroom floor that set the tone for performance expectations.
GM’s G.M. for Saab, Steve Shannon (formerly Buick’s Roadmaster manager) made fleeting reference to his background and Saab’s.
“We’re much more NPR than Fox News,” said he, who also spoke of the quality rather than the quantity of Saab customers.
Mr. Shannon, armed with PowerPoint, directed the group’s focus on the new “cross wheel drive” system that Saab bought from Swedish engineering firm Haldex.
For some inexplicable reason, as I watched the presentation of power-to-wheel transfer diagrams, Subaru’s tagline kept playing in my head: “From the wheel that slips to the wheel that grips!”
Competing notions of “brand” identity aside, the Haldex system proved to be nothing less than a revolution for Saab performance (I’ll expound in Part III) and Saab is set to make the system a lineup-wide option.
Following the talk we shuffled from showroom to garage where Saab’s staff had a Turbo X hoisted on a lift. Swedish engineer Tommy Sundin ducked low and explained the engineering wizardry behind Haldex’s technological tour de force and the challenges that, “putting a new system into an old car,” presented.
Mr. Sundin reminds us that the Turbo X is based on the agèd Epsilon platform that the jet black halo car shares with an ’02 Opel Vectra and an ’04 Chevy Malibu, among others.
Following the engineer’s remarks, we made a break outside to drive off in Saab’s latest and greatest.
[Linked: Trollhattan Saab]
