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What’s the one objective attribute all cars can be measured by to separate the good vehicles from the great ones? Speed! At its core, a lap time encompasses more than just the ability to go fast. It also encapsulates a car’s cornering, braking, and accelerating ability and embodies a car performing at its peak limits—all bundled into one neat little metric. This is precisely how we evaluate Lightning Lap contenders each year to determine which vehicles rank ahead of the pack. As you may know, we divide the cars into five classes, LL1 through LL5, based on price to evaluate the vehicles in the fairest way possible. Then it’s time to hit the track.Most Recent ResultsComing October 19For the past 17 years, we have taken on the 4.1-mile, 24-turn Grand Course configuration at Virginia International Raceway, one of the U.S.’s most challenging tracks, to conduct this ultimate test of speed. This year, we’re offering our readers the opportunity to join us at VIR and see everything that goes into Lightning Lap testing firsthand. Mark your calendars for Thursday, October 19, because you won’t want to miss this! Car and DriverObserve editors trackside as they go for the best lap times, chat with editors about the testing process, get a close-up look at the Lightning Lap contender vehicles, enjoy lunch at the clubhouse, and race go-karts on VIR’s 5/8-mile, 24-foot-wide paved kart circuit. For a taste of what to expect, take a look back on the results of every Lightning Lap testing since its inception in 2006. 2024 Lightning Lap results will be published in the February/March 2024 issue of Car and Driver, but attendees who join us at VIR will get a sneak peek at lap times months before the issue is published. Spots are limited for this exclusive editorial experience, so don’t wait to register. We hope to see you at the track this October.For more ways to experience Car and Driver editorial testing, check out our invitations to Car and Driver’s 10Best, plus Road & Track’s Performance Car of the Year. REGISTER HERE More

The light and nimble Lotus Elan was the embodiment of founder Colin Chapman’s design philosophy. This refurbished 1972 example is powered by a 1.6-liter engine paired with a five-speed manual transmission.This Bring a Trailer online auction ends on Wednesday, July 19.Car and DriverNo company exemplifies a philosophy of Less Is More the way Lotus does. When its tiny Elan launched in 1962, it was Jaguar E-type money, for which you got a small-displacement four-cylinder engine and a featherweight chassis. But where the Jag was muscular and beautiful, the Lotus was mongoose-agile and hard to catch.Related StoriesUp for auction on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is a late-model example of that Lotus magic touch. It’s a 1972 Elan Sprint, fitted with a five-speed manual for a little more livability, and painted in colors that recall the Gold Leaf-sponsored Lotus F1 racing team of the late 1960s.Bring a TrailerThe 13-inch wheels are fitted with 185/70 Avon tires, and behind them lurk disc brakes at all four corners. A limited-slip differential helps get the power down out back, and the cabin has been cosmetically refreshed (despite the small size, the Elan is surprisingly roomy inside).The Elan wasn’t the first roadgoing Lotus, but it remains one of the best of the breed. Certainly, Mazda’s engineers thought so, as the original Miata is very nearly a modernized clone of an Elan.Bring a TrailerBut even a Miata looms over this Lotus. Measuring just under twelve feet long and with a curb weight of around 1500 pounds, the Elan is all about cutting every gram. For instance, the fiberglass hood doesn’t even have hinges, but rather just slots into place.Under that hood in this case is a 1.6-liter four-cylinder twin-cam engine good for a claimed 140 horsepower. When new, this engine was rated for 105 horsepower, and an Elan would sprint to 60 mph in a little over seven seconds, so this car should be very quick. The five-speed manual is from a later Elan 2+2 and should make highway cruising a little calmer.Bring a TrailerBut it won’t be boring. The light weight of an Elan means that it has hardly any inertia to overcome when accelerating, braking, or turning. It flits and flickers over a winding backroad with its buzzy four-cylinder engine on the boil, an internal-combustion hummingbird. The closest driving experience to it is its descendant, the Lotus Elise, which ceased production in 2021.The brand’s most recent product, the all-electric Eletre, has strayed far from this ethos. It’s as fast as you like with up to 905 hp, but it’s also the size of a Honda Pilot and tips the scales at 5500 pounds.Here’s your chance to rage against the dying of the lightweight. Per pound, the Elan may look fairly expensive when the dust settles. But as a prime example of Colin Chapman’s “Simplify, and add lightness” maxim, it’ll be worth every penny.Bring a TrailerContributing EditorBrendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. More

If you’re buying a car with resale value in mind, a bright color might be the way to go. According to some number-crunching by iSeeCars, three-year-old used cars depreciate the least if they’re yellow. Gold, though, depreciates the most.Those are the results for the used-car market as a whole. When you look at segments, different colors depreciate the least. Beige pickups, for example, hold their value the best.The most common vehicle colors—white, black, silver—depreciate at an average rate because they’re considered a safe choice. There’s a world of difference between yellow and gold. In the world of used-car sales, a vehicle’s color plays a noticeable role in determining the resale value. It turns out that yellow cars suffer the least depreciation, while gold vehicles sink like bullion in the sea. According to research by iSeeCars of the entire three-year-old used-car market, a used vehicle with yellow paint has a 13.5 percent depreciation rate, the best of all the colors. Yellow is followed by beige (17.8 percent) and orange (18.4). The overall average depreciation rate is 22.5 percent, but at the bottom of the list we find gold, with a 25.9 percent depreciation rate after three years.2018 Toyota Tacoma.Toyota/Michael Engelmeyer Common vehicle colors depreciate roughly the same as the market average. White used cars lost 21.9 percent, while silver and black both lost around 23 percent, just right to put them at 10th and 11th place, respectively, on iSeeCars’ 13-color ranking. “Notice how two of the most popular colors, silver and black, rank near the bottom of the list,” iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in a statement. “Many consumers and dealers likely consider these colors ‘safe’ in terms of widespread acceptance, but they’re too common to help a car hold its value.”2023 Jeep Gladiator in High Velocity green.StellantisTwo-Tone, Bright Colors on the ReboundWhite and silver have been at or near the top of the color popularity list for what feels like forever. Back in 2009, PPG, a global paint and coating supplier, noted that silver was the most popular car color globally. White took over by 2011 and remained on top in 2014. In 2021, PPG’s Automotive Color Popularity Report found that two-tone finishes are making a comeback, and personalized colors are becoming more popular. PPG said that it found grays, blues, greens, and violets are popular colors today. Even so, white and black will continue to be the most popular colors for new vehicles worldwide. In 2021, 35 percent of all new cars were white, and 18 percent were black. Roy Ritchie|Car and DriverHyundaiTo determine the depreciation rates mentioned above, iSeeCars.com analyzed more than 1.6 million model year 2020 used cars, adjusted for inflation and then aggregated by color and body style. Not all colors depreciate at the same rate across vehicle segments, iSeeCars found. For example, the truck color with the lowest depreciation rate is beige, followed by orange and green. For sedans, brown models have the lowest depreciation. For minivans, it’s green. But this is obviously only one of the ways in which your new vehicle will depreciate and we have to put in our vote for getting whatever color you like best, even if (as is likely) it’s not beige.This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Contributing EditorSebastian Blanco has been writing about electric vehicles, hybrids, and hydrogen cars since 2006. His articles and car reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Automotive News, Reuters, SAE, Autoblog, InsideEVs, Trucks.com, Car Talk, and other outlets. His first green-car media event was the launch of the Tesla Roadster, and since then he has been tracking the shift away from gasoline-powered vehicles and discovering the new technology’s importance not just for the auto industry, but for the world as a whole. Throw in the recent shift to autonomous vehicles, and there are more interesting changes happening now than most people can wrap their heads around. You can find him on Twitter or, on good days, behind the wheel of a new EV.  More

Have you ever wondered how editors conduct testing for Car and Driver’s 10Best? This year, for the first time, we are offering the public a chance to get the insider story and experience 10Best testing like an editor. Will you come along for the ride? Coming on September 8On Friday, September 8, 2023, we’re heading to North Star Reach camp in Pinckney, Michigan, to test a noteworthy crop of new vehicles, as we’ve done for the past 40 years. For some background, we will be evaluating cars plus trucks and SUVs, with the editors’ scores deciding which will make our 10Best list for 2024. To qualify as a 10Best contender, each vehicle must be on sale by January 31, 2024, have a base price of no more than $110,000, and be either new or significantly updated—with the exception of our inviting back the prior year’s winners to defend their spots on the list. We’re evaluating based on value, mission fulfillment, and how fun each vehicle is to drive. 10Best attendees will get a chance to get an up-close-and-personal look at the contender vehicles, learn about the 10Best evaluation process, and engage in one-on-one conversations with editors. Then, they’ll buckle up for ride-alongs on the test route and experience the cars in action as they zip through the back roads of Pinckney. Afterward, they’ll swap notes with editors and fellow enthusiasts and cast their votes for the Car and Driver 10Best Reader’s Choice Award. We’ll also have fun offerings along the way, including a lunch from local favorite Zingerman’s Delicatessen at the Car and Driver base camp and gift bags filled with Car and Driver gear. 2024 10Best Cars results will be published in the January 2024 issue of Car and Driver and 10Best Trucks results will be published in the February/March 2024 issue, but attendees who join us will get a preview of the vehicle lineup months before the story is live. Spots are limited for this exclusive editorial experience, so don’t wait to register. We hope to see you there in September.For another chance to experience Car and Driver editorial testing, you can also attend Car and Driver’s Lightning Lap, plus Road & Track’s Performance Car of the Year. REGISTER HERE More

Reeves Callaway, founder of Callaway Cars and a legend in the Corvette world, has died. Callaway Cars confirmed in an email that he passed on Tuesday after injuries sustained in a fall in his Newport Beach, California, home. He was 75.Ely “Reeves” Callaway III was born in November 1947 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and raised in Darien, Connecticut. His father, Ely Callaway, founded the Callaway golf company, one of the world’s premier manufacturers of golf clubs. He raced go-karts as a kid and, in 1973, won the SCCA Formula Vee championship. By 1976 he was an instructor at the Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving.After his professional racing career didn’t pan out, he turned his attention to modifying cars. His first product, a turbocharger kit for the E21-generation BMW 320i, generated enough interest to lead Callaway to start Callaway Cars from his garage in Old Lyme, Connecticut, in 1977. Soon he began offering performance kits for other cars.Callaway Cars”We don’t call ourselves a tuner,” Callaway told Road & Track in a 2017 interview. “A tuner takes an aggregate of parts that already exists, bolts them on the automobile, and calls it a customization. Everything we make is made specifically for the car. And we manufacture it ourselves.”Callaway ArchivesQuickly, his work attracted attention from major automakers. Alfa Romeo was the first, commissioning a turbocharger kit for the GTV6 that debuted in 1983, then it was GM. Callaway developed a twin-turbo kit for the Chevrolet Corvette, which became available through Chevy dealerships in 1987. At the time, a standard Corvette offered 240 horsepower; Callaway’s twin-turbo Corvette upped that to 382 horsepower, making it one of the most powerful cars on sale at the time.The 254.76-mph Callaway SledgehammerCallaway CarsEver faster Corvettes followed, perhaps the most famous being the Sledgehammer, a C4 Corvette with low-drag aerodynamic bodywork and an 898-hp twin-turbo V-8. The Sledgehammer hit a top speed of 254.76 mph and forever linked Reeves Callaway and the Chevrolet Corvette. DW BurnettWhile Callaway Cars worked with many other automakers, Aston Martin and Land Rover among them, its strongest association was with the Corvette. Callaway also built Corvette race cars, starting with the SuperNatural that made appearances at Le Mans in 1994 and 1995, finishing 2nd and 3rd in that year’s GT2 field, and culminating in a GT3 racing version of the C7 Corvette that still races globally to this day. A notable recent highlight was the C7 Corvette AeroWagen, which featured a body kit that turned the coupe into a stylish shooting brake. Today, Callaway Cars’ offerings consist of upgrade packages for a variety of GM vehicles, including a supercharger kit for the new C8 Corvette.Callaway Cars”Thanks to Reeves’s visionary entrepreneurial spirit, Callaway Cars will continue to innovate and grow in the 21st century, inspired by his unique, extraordinary vision and by his personal example of integrity, resourcefulness, and leadership as our founder,” said his son Peter Callaway, Callaway Cars president, in a statement. “Dad’s passion for making beautifully designed and crafted machines can be seen in each and every project, and we remain devoted to executing to the highest standards, in true Callaway fashion. He was rarely found doing anything other than working towards the next milestone for the company. He was a charismatic leader with a sense of humor that we will all remember through various ‘Reeves-isms.’ I feel fortunate to have grown up working with him and the company.”He is survived by four children and two grandchildren. Senior ReporterA car enthusiast since childhood, Chris Perkins is Road & Track’s engineering nerd and Porsche apologist. He joined the staff in 2016 and no one has figured out a way to fire him since. He street-parks a Porsche Boxster in Brooklyn, New York, much to the horror of everyone who sees the car, not least the author himself. He also insists he’s not a convertible person, despite owning three. More

Alfa Romeo has released U.S. specs and pricing for the updated 2024 Giulia and Stelvio.They both benefit from new headlights and a digital gauge cluster inside.Prices are down by $1800 across the lineup.Alfa Romeo sales are down through the first half of the year, but perhaps a price cut will help pick things up for the 2024 Giulia and Stelvio. Alfa’s sporty sedan and SUV models benefit from styling and technology updates for the new model year but cost $1800 less than the 2023 models.The 2024 Giulia now starts at $44,075 for the base rear-wheel-drive trim with a 280-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four. The Stelvio starts at $46,370 for the rear-wheel-drive Sprint trim. The two Alfas are also available in Ti, Veloce, and Competizione trim levels. All-wheel drive is a $2000 option on the Giulia and the base Sprint version of the Stelvio, but comes standard on all other versions of the Stelvio.Both models receive new cool-looking LED matrix headlights with a “3+3” arrangement, along with revised LED taillights. Inside, a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster is new and standard across the board.Giulia and Stelvio QuadrifoglioThe high-performance Quadrifoglio versions don’t benefit from the same price cut, as they carry the same starting prices as 2023. That means $81,855 for the Giulia QF and $87,770 for the Stelvio QF.The only update is a newly available 100th Anniversary package that brings special styling touches. For $5400 extra on the Giulia and $7000 extra on the Stelvio, this appearance upgrade includes special logos, gold accent stitching, different graphics for the screens, carbon-fiber trim pieces, and gold brake calipers. It’s available in red, green, or black.More on Alfa RomeoSenior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More

The 2024 GMC Hummer EV SUT will provide up to 381 miles of range, per GM’s estimate.That estimated range is for the electric truck’s 3X trim with the biggest battery, which previously was rated at 355 miles—a 26-mile increase.Equipped with the Extreme Off-Road package, the ’24 Hummer EV SUT will go 30 miles more than before at an estimated 359 miles per charge.GMC claims the 2024 Hummer EV SUT will be able to go farther on a single charge. Whereas the previous model year had an estimated cap of 355 miles, the new model year gains an extra 26 miles, with the electric pickup truck now topping out at a claimed 381 miles of range on a full charge.In order to take advantage of the increased distance, customers must opt for the EV3X trim level with the bigger 24-module battery pack (GMC doesn’t list its net capacity). That estimated range drops to 359 miles when the Hummer EV SUT is outfitted with the Extreme Off-Road package that includes 18-inch wheels on 35-inch tires, extra skid plates, and other off-road-oriented upgrades. While that’s 22 miles lower than the truck without the kit, GMC says it’s 30 miles more than the previous model year.GMC will also offer the cargo-bed-toting Hummer EV3X with a smaller 20-module battery as standard. However, that pack’s range estimate is currently unknown. That figure and more should be revealed before the 2024 Hummer EV SUT goes on sale this fall to current reservation holders. Final pricing remains to be seen, but the top-level 3X trim will start around $108K.Other Hummer EV StoriesThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorEric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual ’97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a ’90 Honda CRX Si. More

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating a door weld problem that could affect more than 345,000 2020 and 2021 Ford Escape and Escape Hybrid SUVs.According to more than 100 complaints filed with the safety agency, the door can come open suddenly or not stay closed.The decision to recall the vehicles has not yet been made.The Ford Escape is under scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration because of an issue with a front door weld that could cause a door to open suddenly while the vehicle is in motion. The problem affects 2020 and 2021 Ford Escape and Escape Hybrid SUVs, and any recall could involve 346,071 vehicles.The agency’s Office of Defects Investigation has received 118 complaints describing the spot welds’ failure in the door’s arm. In interviews with owners, NHTSA learned of 25 “minor injuries” and 1 report of “minor property damage.” Some people have reported a popping noise when the door comes open and say that the door can be unable to latch when closed or can suddenly come open when it had been closed. According to the safety agency’s investigation document, the problem is believed to be faulty spot welds in the check arm attachment points on the doors.As one example, an owner reported to NHTSA that “The driver side front door made a creaking sound, could not be opened, and the window would not go down. The internal weld to the door failed.”A decision about a recall has not yet been made, but Ford Escape owners can check the NHTSA recalls site for updates.Other Recent RecallsSummer Editorial InternAlessandra Kaestner, a Chicago native, has always been interested in journalism. She remembers listening to NPR every day before school with her parents and trying to race her dad to get the New York Times from the front door. Alessandra continued her passion for journalism by working at her university’s newspaper during her first year and into her sophomore year: the Cornell Daily Sun. She is majoring in psychology and philosophy and wants to explore law and journalism. Although she does not have a lot of background in the world of cars, Alessandra is interested in expanding her knowledge and gaining experience. She could not be more excited to work with so many talented people at Car and Driver. More