Jaguar XF Supercharged

Today is Jaguar's last chance to make a splash in the luxury sport sedan arena before the automaker is packed up and sent to live with its new family. Yes, Ford has thrown in the towel after seventeen years of - to be kind - spotty management of this storied marque. Rather than belabor the sorry procession of bad corporate decisions and compromised products that marred Ford's tenure as keeper of the Big Cat, let's just be here now, sliding for the first time behind the wheel of the new Jaguar XF.

Even as time has run out for Ford, the Jaguar design renaissance has begun to take root. What caught our imagination in the sensuous XK coupe and convertible is about to be proved out in this controversial, new-wave sport sedan conceptualized by Ian Callum, one of the world's great classic sports car designers. "The XF is a stage in a personal journey for me," he explains in his gnarly Scots burr. Callum's journey includes being inspired by the Jaguars of his childhood to become a car designer, a dream that led him from the Royal College of Art to Ford, to Ghia's design studio in Turin, and to TWR Design, where his most famous projects were the Aston Martin DB7 and DB7 Vantage. He landed at Jaguar - his dream job - in 1999, smoothed a couple cars in the pipeline, then had his first smash hit with the XK. There is nothing more important to Callum than building on that success with the XF: "It has always been my career goal to return Jaguar to its rightful place as a leader in automotive design. Cars like the original XJ6 left a lasting legacy, and my ambition has been to create something as seminal. The XF is that car."

His opinion isn't universal. The blogs have been barking since the curtain was pulled from the XF in Frankfurt last fall; a spirited back-and-forth has filled the car mags, including this one, alternately blasting the XF for not being a Jaguar and slavering over its luscious modernity. Hate the front, love the rear? Well, shades of the XK's design debate at launch. But if the arc of the XK's design acceptability and then dominance is anything to go by, the XF will indeed triumph, and Callum will rule once again.

Our money's on Callum.

We came to Arizona prepared to judge the XF out in the real world, where all cars should finally be judged. Parked in front of Paradise Valley's elite Sanctuary Resort & Spa on Camelback Mountain, surrounded by the Benzes, Bimmers, and Audis of the well-heeled clientele, the XF stopped traffic, turned heads, and looked the freshest, the most chic, the most dramatically and dynamically elegant of anything on its wavelength. Perhaps you think this sounds lame, but photos don't begin to do the XF's complex shape justice. It's longer, sleeker, and snarkier in person, with wide, high haunches taut with unreleased energy. The windshield and the C-pillar are impossibly raked, giving the XF the profile of a sport coupe and contributing to a low 0.29 coefficient of drag. At the Sanctuary, the XF proved eminently worthy. The XF is one of the most gorgeous five-passenger sedans on the market today, although long-legged riders will want to call dibs early on the shotgun position, or they'll find themselves negotiating with the front-seat occupants for legroom. There is no dearth of trunk space, however, especially when you flop down the rear seats and expand cargo space into near-infinity.

The Brits will be the first to tell you that they do luxury cabins better than anyone. We'll be the second. The XF breaks some pretty heavy ground in this respect. If you've seen a Motorola Razr phone, you'll recognize the inspiration for interior designer Alister Whelan's aluminum-finished dials, Tungsten-colored switches and buttons, and "phosphor" blue halo lighting throughout the cabin. What you'll undoubtedly notice first, though, is the pulsing red engine-start button. You'll push it and watch a large, knurled knob in the narrow center console - looking every bit like BMW's dreaded iDrive controller - rise up and present itself. As you realize that it's a rotary gear selector, the parked vents on the dash will be rolling open and a seven-inch touch screen will blink to life.

Two things. First, the touch screen controlling the navigation, audio, temperature, and other car systems is much faster than it is in the XK. It works very well and is backed by a bank of redundant button controls. Second, the gear selector is less stupid than it seems at first blush. It quickly and neatly selects a gear and, being fully electronic, takes up so little space (just above an equally electric and tidy half-moon parking brake switch) that the bulk of the center console is left for massive cupholders and a storage bin (which has a power outlet, plus USB and iPod hookups). If you're like us, you'll be using the wide Formula 1 - style, steering-wheel-mounted paddleshifters to manage your own gear changes anyway.

This is the fine wood and leather club lounge of British legend, but freshly executed by a relatively youthful team. Your choice of wood trim merely accents a more prominent swath of aluminum. The padded leather cowl is low and tight, with double stitching that matches soft, lovely, leather seats. When you sit behind the wheel, with your elbows on the high center console and the door-mounted armrest, it feels as if you are commanding the road from your favorite reading chair. If your chair could do four-wheel drifts, that is.

Mike Cross, Jaguar's chief engineer, greeted us not only in person but also on the flat-screen TV in the hotel room on our arrival. The Jaguar public relations team had thoughtfully in-stalled a DVD starring handling wizard Cross at the wheel of an XF executing endless heroic four-wheel drifts on a wet, twisty track. Provocative stuff to be showing a bunch of journalists before letting them take your cars into the Arizona hills for a day. Thank you very much.

We chose the top-of-the-line Supercharged XF for our tour. (Something about that extra 120 hp over the Luxury XF's basic 300-hp, 4.2-liter V-8, yes?) Not that the richly trimmed Luxury base model, at $49,975, skimps on features. It's nicely appointed but has eighteen-inch instead of twenty-inch aluminum wheels and less aggressive rubber, not a bad thing if you're going for a magic-carpet ride. Also, a few of the more exotic luxuries that are standard on the Premium Luxury ($55,975) and Supercharged ($62,975) XFs cost extra for Luxury customers. Tops on the list of desirable options must be the Supercharged XF's standard 440-watt, fourteen-speaker Bowers & Wilkins surround-sound audio system. It will make you incontinent.

Our drive route led us north out of Paradise Valley through rain on Arizona 87, a fast and twisting climb to Payson. Quiet and composed in town, the XF Supercharged was in its glory when it hit the highway. We like this blown V-8 in both the S-type R and the XKR, and it is as enticing in the XF - a full second quicker than the normally aspirated engine, at 5.1 seconds from 0 to 60 mph, with a 155-mph governed top speed. It's moving a big car - more than two tons - which makes those 5.1 seconds fly by. The real joy, though, is found in its healthy 408 lb-ft of torque, which peaks at 3500 rpm.

The ZF six-speed automatic transmission with paddleshifters - found in all XF models - is improved from its launch in the XK, with an instantaneous connection between transmission and engine. The XF's (and XJ's) chief program engineer, Mick Mohan, insists that it's "one of the quickest responding transmissions on the market today." It may very well be. There are three shift modes, the first being the everyday Drive automatic setting. Rotate the selector one notch to S, and the automatic mode becomes more responsive, with adaptive shifting to more aggressive driving. When you're really pushing it, though, you can shift yourself. Holding the upshift paddle for two seconds resets the transmission to Drive mode.

The Supercharged also has its own dynamic stability control mode, in addition to the standard stability control mode and a winter setting, which allows some wheel slip when you need it in low-traction conditions. Dynamic mode gets your driving party started by permitting full manual upshifts, late upshifts, and early downshifts, and it lets you know where you are with a big, amber shift indicator as you near redline.

The XF is a quiet and serene luxury cruiser when you don't want to be a driving hero. And then it leaps into action when the right piece of road finds you in the right frame of mind. The rain had lightened after lunch, and we shot back down on the more rough-and-tumble Highway 188 past the Roosevelt Dam to Globe, giving the XF a thorough workout. With a unibody based on that of the competent S-type, a suspension using the XK's setup front and rear with Computer Active Technology Suspension (CATS) damping, the XK's vented disc brakes, and the magic ministrations of Mike Cross and his crack development team, the XF was bound to be brilliant to drive. It carved those canyon roads with precise inputs from the thickly padded steering wheel. A bit of lift throttle helped nudge the front-heavy XF Supercharged through tighter turns, while it rode all the while with amazing grace, even on its twenty-inch wheels. Gotta love those Pirelli PZeros - 255/35YR fronts and 285/30YR rears.

After our six-hour day behind the wheel, we were ready to drive the XF home to Michigan, which is exactly how all good Jaguars feel. We're also confident that the XF will prove to be the seminal design that Ian Callum believes it is. Moving on from the XK and this new XF, Callum's string of pearls grows with a striking new aluminum-bodied XJ, due in 2010.

"The last ten years have been fairly traumatic, as you know," says managing director and thirty-two-year Jaguar employee Mike O'Driscoll, who has been through all of it and wants to stay on. "When we get things right, we get them terribly right. There's a real camaraderie at Jaguar - a sense that we're all in this and we're going to make it work." As of today, things are looking terribly right.

We're thinking that Tata is looking pretty smart for its reported $2 billion offer. The time is right for a new company to give Jaguar its best shot.

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Subaru Forester

Of the modern-era Subarus, the Forester has been the model that most closely reflects the character that the brand was built on: inexpensive, capable, utilitarian, slightly unconventional, and unconcerned with appearances. A Subaru among Subarus, this grungy earth child has been happily chugging along on the crunchy fringe of the compact SUV market. For 2009, the Forester has undergone a redesign that has made it larger, more SUV-like, and, well, more normal. And although the new Forester looks a lot different from the previous model, it manages to retain many of its predecessors strengths while expanding its appeal.

With its all-new body, the Forester goes from mutant station wagon to mainstream compact crossover. Its significantly longer, wider, and taller.

All of that makes for additional cargo space (enough for 4590 granola bars with the rear seats up!) and a much roomier cabin. The 3.6-inch-longer wheelbase helps alleviate the formerly cramped rear seat, and access is much improved. The previous models low cowl is gone, but otherwise Subaru managed to preserve the Foresters best-in-class outward visibility, particularly to the rear. A navigation system and dealer-installed Bluetooth join the options list, while side curtain air bags, stability control, panic brake assist, and an auxiliary audio input are now standard.

As much as the Foresters looks have changed, its driving demeanor really hasnt. The most noticeable difference is that the car seems a lot quieter on the freeway. The output of the base 2.5-liter boxer four is altered only slightly (its down 3 hp, up 4 lb-ft of torque), and the available turbo engines numbers are unchanged, although its torque curve is flatter.

Despite the new cars 100-to-150-pound weight gain, the base engine is still up to the task of moving it along, and the turbo once again provides welcome and well-integrated extra urge for the Forester XT. Both engines could use an extra gear (or two) for their automatic transmission, which is only a four-speed. The base engine at least can be paired with a five-speed manual; the turbo cannot.

The chassis, which is related to the new Imprezas, switches from struts to control arms in the rear suspension. The new layout no longer impinges on cargo space, but we didnt find any great dynamic benefits, as the Forester understeers readily. It also could use firmer damping and more precise steering. The new Forester has a bit more ground clearance than before (now 8.7 or 8.9 inches, depending on the model), which emboldened Subarus PR team to have us take a run up a steep, rutted dirt road covered with loose rocks. Sure enough, the Forester churned its way to the top, while a Honda CR-V bogged to a halt halfway up.

Often, adolescence brings a physically gawky stage, but in the case of the Forester, which just turned eleven years old, the opposite is true. With this redesign, the Forester has finally shed its dorky appearance and donned a handsome (if somewhat derivative) new suit of sheetmetal. Evidently, Subaru was tired of swimming outside the mainstream with its lower, smaller, more wagonlike entry, watching the CR-V and the Toyota RAV4 run away from the Forester in sales. Size and styling were two major factors keeping people out of the Forester, and Subaru has effectively addressed both. At the same time, the company has added standard safety gear yet lowered the price. It ought to be enough to move the Forester out of its granola-chomping niche.

Chevrolet HHR SS

Chevrolet's little retro wagon, the HHR, has been given the SS treatment, with a turbocharged engine and a firmed-up chassis, plus some tuner-style body modifications and interior upgrades. The resulting car may be a little hard to take seriously, but at least there's now a lot more substance beneath the HHR's candy-coated shell.

That shell, with its pleasingly rounded styling and practical wagon layout, has been netting the HHR 100,000 sales per annum, but the Cobalt mechanicals underneath mean that those buyers are unlikely to be driving enthusiasts. Now General Motors' in-house tuner crew has imbued the HHR with newfound power and poise.

The HHR SS benefits from the latest thinking at the GM Performance Division. That means turbocharging rather than supercharging for the 2.0-liter four, which also is treated to direct injection. The benefits are twofold. First, the turbocharged engine meets 2008 emissions standards that the supercharged 2.0-liter could not. (Which explains why the Cobalt SS Supercharged has disappeared from the lineup.) Second, the 2.0 turbo makes a lot more power: 260 hp versus 205 hp, and 260 lb-ft of torque versus 200 lb-ft.

To get all 260 ponies, you need to opt for the manual transmission; the engine in the automatic-equipped car is detuned to 235 hp, in deference to the four-speed automatic's fragility. For the SS, Chevrolet has shortened the manual's shift throws and moved the shifter both forward and up so it isn't such a far reach. Unfortunately, the five-speed's shift action is pretty notchy. Chevrolet quotes 0-to-60-mph times of 6.3 seconds for the manual and 7.5 for the automatic, but the gulf between them feels greater. Whereas the 235-hp car feels responsive but nothing more, the stick-shift SS is fast; the car doesn't shoot out of the hole, but its acceleration swells as if on a wave. Stay with it, and it will carry you all the way to 150 mph. The turbo's power delivery doesn't really lag, but it does build, with a faint, telltale whistle in the background. Mostly, though, what you hear is the cacophonous noise of the direct-injection engine, with some gearbox whine tossed in. You won't mistake it for a Honda VTEC engine.

When we say that the HHR SS doesn't blast away from a stop, we should qualify that statement by explaining that this is without using launch control. Yes, just like the Porsche 911 GT2, the HHR SS has a launch control mode. Switch the traction control to the competition setting, and the car is ready for launch control at any stop. Floor the throttle and the engine holds 4100 rpm, so the turbo is spooled up when you release the clutch. The result isn't a smooth launch - in fact, it feels like you're going to snap a half shaft - but it is a quick one.

Chevy also makes much of the "no-lift shift" feature in the HHR SS. The engine-management software's programming allows you to keep the accelerator planted during upshifts. The revs rise to 6200 rpm - just shy of the 6350-rpm redline - and turbo boost doesn't drop during shifts (as you can see by checking the A-pillar-mounted boost gauge). Again, this is mostly a parlor trick to impress your friends - particularly those who will thrill to the exhaust backfire that accompanies each shift.

More so than managing engine revs, a front-wheel-drive car with 260 lb-ft of torque needs to manage torque steer. Here, Chevy has done a better job than you might expect, particularly if you've driven a supercharged Cobalt SS or the HHR's closest domestic competitor, the Dodge Caliber SRT4. Chevy engineers point to the revised roll-center height, new steering knuckles, and different antiroll-bar mounting points, which they claim help exorcise the front-wheel-drive demons. When pulling out of slow, tight corners, torque steer never raised its squirmy head on dry pavement. We also took a turn in the 235-hp car in the rain, during which we did feel tugging at the wheel, but the car didn't dart off in all directions. In all, it was a commendable performance.

In fact, the chassis tuning overall is very well done. The HHR SS gets firmer springs, dampers, and antiroll bars, which keep body lean in check. The 225/45R-18 Michelin Pilots really hang on, and the recalibrated and quickened electric power steering does a convincing impression of a hydraulic system. We'd only wish for a bit more rebound damping, as cresting a sudden rise causes the HHR SS to momentarily lose its composure. In the spring, Chevrolet will offer a further chassis upgrade in the form of Brembo front brakes with larger rotors packaged with a limited-slip differential.

The mechanical enhancements to the HHR SS have been successful, but we're not totally down with the cosmetic changes. We like the eighteen-inch wheels, but the new fascia gives the car a nose-heavy, front-wheel-drive look, and the flared lower body cladding seems out of place and is annoying to step over. Inside, there are nice, suede-like inserts on the seats, but only the driver gets the more supportive, sport bucket seat (the non-matching, standard-style passenger seat preserves the fold-flat function). There's also the aforementioned boost gauge and a smaller-diameter steering wheel.

The HHR might seem to be an odd car to get hot-rodded, but the work is certainly well done. This pint-size son of yesteryear's Suburban can now take you into the past faster than ever before.

Got Boost?

Turbocharging has replaced supercharging as the preferred horsepower helper for GM's Ecotec four. The direct-injected, 2.0-liter turbo debuted in the Pontiac Solstice GXP (followed by the Saturn Sky Red Line). There are lots more cars to come:

NOW
HHR SS

APRIL
Cobalt SS
Turbocharged coupe

JUNE
HHR SS Panel

FALL
Cobalt SS Turbocharged sedan

Dodge Challenger

Dodge rolled out the 2008 Challenger SRT8 in Chicago, but saved the complete 2009 Challenger line for the New York Auto Show. R/T models feature the new generation 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 with 370 hp and 398 lb-ft of torque while SE models utilize a 3.5-liter V-6 that produces 250 hp and 250 lb-ft. Dodge expects the R/T model to be the volume seller.

Buyers who opt for the six-speed manual transmission will get a slight upgrade in power: the 5.7-liter Hemi is tuned for 375 hp and 404 lb-ft when mated to a manual transmission. This is the first application of a manual transmission in an LX car, but we're hoping it won't be the last. The slight bump in power means owners will be asked to burn premium fuel, but the addition of variable valve timing and dual ignition net the 5.7-liter V-8 an estimated five percent increase in fuel economy.

Dodge adds hill start assist for manual Challengers, so drivers in hilly areas will have an easier time taking off from a stop. A new limited-slip differential helps keep drive wheels hooked up during hard acceleration. Thankfully, SRT8 buyers will be offered a six-speed manual option for 2009.

An impressive collection of Mopar accessories are available to enhance your Challenger right at the time of purchase. Upgrades range from basic air intake systems all the way up to revised camshafts, cylinder heads, and forged crankshafts. A coil-over suspension kit drops the ride height by 1.625-inches and should improve ride quality. Most of the performance parts are for the Hemi engines, but the interior and exterior upgrades can be fitted to any Challenger model.

The Challenger R/T and SE retain the SRT8's lines, but will offer a slightly softer suspension and less aggressive tires. With correspondingly lower prices, the less-powerful Challengers will make this pony car more accessible to the masses.

Pontiac Solstice Coupe

The Pontiac Solstice wowed 'em at the 2002 Detroit auto show. Of course, a sexy set of twins will do that. As you may recall, the Solstice was shown as both a coupe and a convertible. But while the roadster was fast-tracked for production, its hardtop sibling was left behind.
"We were all about the roadster, then all the things that came after," says chief engineer Bruce Kosbab, who heads development of GM's small, rear-wheel-drive Kappa platform. He claims that when the Solstice was being engineered, no thought was given to eventually adding a hardtop variant. But about a year and a half ago that changed, and work began on the car you see here, the Pontiac Solstice targa, which should reach dealers next spring.
"We originally wanted to do it as a coupe," says Jim Fleming, who oversaw the car's design. "But there are a lot of legal ramifications to taking a convertible and making it into a fixed hardtop. It would be much more involved, because you'd have to change all your front header structure, windshield, and all those pieces. We'd have to look at roof-rail air bags, pieces like that, and that gets into a big technical challenge. So as we started working on the program and what it would take to do it, a targa became the natural choice."

Therefore, all Solstice hardtops will be targas, with a lift-off center section. That panel weighs approximately thirty pounds, thanks to a relatively lightweight materials mix of SMC (sheet-molding compound) over a magnesium frame. The entire rear roof section also is made of SMC, and it neatly replaces the rear-hinged deck lid of the roadster. Otherwise, the hardtop and the convertible share all exterior body sheetmetal-including rear quarter panels-and fascias.
Despite those constraints, the designers were able to fashion a treatment that stays true to the original coupe concept created by designer Franz von Holzhausen (now at Mazda).
"We started with the 2002 concept vehicle," says exterior designer Jose Gonzalez, who is well-versed in the Solstice, having done three SEMA-show concepts of the car: the single-seat SD-290, the GXP-R, and the Club Sport Z0K. "But we wanted a more contemporary DLO [side-window opening]. So we got rid of the [external] B-pillar and stretched it all the way back."
The designers were able to retain the concept's beautifully shaped hatchback window glass, which is emphasized by a crease that starts above the A-pillar and runs back, down around the bottom of the rear glass, and then back up the other side. "That spline gives the car a more aggressive feel," says Gonzalez. Fleming ads: "The original concept was very British-roadster inspired, and when we were working on this, we wanted to be a little bit more racy, a little bit more aggressive."

The coupe may look aggressive, but the addition of a hard top won't significantly alter the Solstice's on-road demeanor. Kosbab estimates that the two cars' structural rigidity is pretty much the same and that the weight difference between the two is only about twenty pounds. Thus, the suspension is essentially unchanged, as are the powertrains: a 173-hp, 2.4-liter four-cylinder in the base car and a turbocharged, 260-hp, 2.0-liter engine in the GXP.
Although it's mechanically identical to the roadster, the coupe is a bit more practical. Peek under the deck lid of a Solstice roadster, and you'll find the folded fabric top and a large mound under which lives the fuel tank and its evaporative canister. What you don't find is much actual storage space. There was no folding top to worry about for the coupe, so the evaporative canister could move, meaning the cargo floor could be flattened and lowered to the point where it might actually accept a piece of luggage. Not a big piece, but something, and there are a few cubbyholes built into the floor as well. (In all, there is about 5.6 cubic feet of space in the trunk.) Unfortunately, one item that can't be stashed back there is the targa top. To make amends, Pontiac will offer an optional Lotus Elise-style canvas top that can be collapsed and stored onboard.
We hope the success of the minimally invasive surgery that created this shapely coupe from the Solstice roadster entices GM to further experiment with the Kappa platform. Kosbab is mum about future Kappa variants-except to say that there will not be a Saturn Sky version of this car. That's OK; but how about something along the lines of the sleek Chevrolet Nomad concept? That would be pretty cool, too.

Kia Optima

Kia's often-overlooked Accord and Camry competitor gets a mid-cycle freshening and a New York auto show debut. A new grille and headlamps give it a bit more of the emerging Kia family look that we see in the hot Kia Koup concept that took center stage for Kia in New York.
The Optima shown at the 2008 New York auto show is in SX trim, marking the first time that Kia has affixed that badging to the Optima; it signifies a sportier tune. Turn signals that are now integrated into the side rearview mirrors; new taillights and deck lid; new standard Sirius satellite radio; and a new three-pod instrument gauge cluster round out the changes for the face-lifted 2009 Kia Optima. It goes on sale this fall.

Kia also announced today that, beginning January 1, 2009, all Kia cars sold in America will come standard with Sirius and a three-month subscription.

Honda Fit

Honda isn't offering the full scoop on the 2009 Fit just yet, but we have the official images and a few tidbits on the all-new B-segment star. Honda will offer a satellite navigation system with voice recognition for the first time in its subcompact and iPod integration is now standard on the Fit Sport.
The Fit is still motivated by a 1.5-liter four-cylinder, but the engine is new. No specific power figures have yet been released. Honda promises the best mix of power and fuel economy from the new engine, but that mix will clearly be skewed towards fuel economy. Transmission choices include a true manual and an automatic with optional wheel-mounted paddle shifters. Both the automatic and manual transmissions feature five forward gears.

Engineers worked hard to enhance the Fit's sporty image by tightening up the suspension, increasing body rigidity, and revising the steering system. We don't have specific information on how these components were changed, but that information will be available closer to the car's launch this fall. Rim size has been increased to 15-inches for the Fit and 16-inches for the Fit Sport.

Safety enhancements are always important in the B-segment, and the Fit delivers. Honda's Advanced Compatibility Engineering body structure is now built into the Fit along with active head restraints. Electronic stability control is optional for 2009. The usual mix of advanced airbags, anti-lock brakes, and electronic brake force distribution round out Fit's safety features.

Lotus Seven -Sevens Rule

Mazda Ebrahimi is ruggedly handsome, unfailingly affable, remarkably generous, extraordinarily clever, and certifiably insane. A software engineer by trade, he's also a mad scientist who's crammed a honking Chevy LS1 V-8 that he picked up on eBay into a tiny, open-wheeled, kazoo-shaped kit car loosely based on the spindly Lotus Seven. That alone isn't evidence of lunacy; in fact, it's pretty much par for the course on a steamy July morning in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where the owners of nearly sixty Lotus Sevens, Caterhams, and LSiSs - Lotus Seven-inspired sports cars - have congregated for today's 7-7-7 celebration (July 7, 2007, get it?) of the fiftieth anniversary of Colin Chapman's beloved "four-wheeled motorbike." No, the proof that Ebrahimi ought to be institutionalized is his inexplicable willingness to let me drive his beast on the Tail of the Dragon, a notorious section of U.S. Highway 129 that probably features more picturesque twists - 318 in eleven miles - and vehicular mayhem than any other public road in the country.

My butt is wedged against the aluminum floorboard of his so-called Rotus because the cockpit is too cramped for me to manipulate the pedals with the seat installed. The engine bay and transmission tunnel are throwing off so much heat that I feel like a sausage cooking on a charcoal grill. As we lug along behind a pair of Harleys hogging the sun-dappled, tree-lined two-lane, I sneak a peek at the digital instrument panel - it looks like something out of Microsoft Flight Simulator - that Ebrahimi has fashioned out of a castoff police-issue touchscreen. My goal is to fill the bar graph that displays throttle position on a percentage basis, thereby sampling all of the modified motor's 440 horses. With a good launch, Ebrahimi figures that the Rotus should roar from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds.

When we hit a rare straightaway, I punch the throttle and hurtle past the bikers. The rear suspension is buckboard-stiff, and the tail lurches violently as the colossal rear tires - 305/35YR-18s from an old Corvette Z06 - claw for traction. I grab third gear. The acceleration is almost disorienting. Am I in a street-legal road car or a rocket ship leaving the launchpad? Wind whips so fiercely through the bathtub-style cockpit that I can feel the skin of my neck flapping like the sail of a tacking sailboat. "You got full throttle that time," Ebrahimi shouts. This, I suspect, is his polite way of alerting me that the next corner is signposted at 20 mph, and if I don't clobber the brakes pretty soon, we're going to end up in Tennessee. In lots of smoking, disconnected pieces.

Like Ebrahimi, I've caught a bad case of what another sufferer calls Sevenitis. It's a rare disease, but it's making the rounds here in North Carolina. The 7-7-7 confab at the Tail of the Dragon is the largest collection of Lotus Sevens and LSiSs ever amassed in this country. It's also the motliest collection, with a mind-boggling array of factory-built and DIY chassis and engines ranging from an antique Datsun and obsolete, British-spec Fords to a Vauxhall race motor and blown Honda S2000 twin-cams making north of 300 hp. (In a car that weighs a tick more than 1300 pounds, this translates into a power-to-weight ratio that's half again as good as a Dodge Viper's.)
As I watch the unfendered front tires of Ebrahimi's Rotus rise and fall on the A-arms he designed after modeling them in a computer program he wrote himself, I find myself wondering whether Chapman is dancing a jig in sports car heaven or spinning in his grave faster than the 12,500-rpm redline of the Yamaha R1 motorcycle engine powering the Locost - and, yes, that's a marque, not a typo - fashioned by Paul Brocious and his father, Terry, out of square tubing, the dregs of an '87 Mercury Cougar, and seats from a Pontiac Montana.

Chapman was a freethinker whose iconoclastic genius underpinned watershed designs such as the Lotus 25 (the first monocoque Formula 1 car) and the Lotus 78 (which heralded the ground-effects age). But the Lotus Seven, the bare-bones production version of a kit car designed while he was working as a civil engineer, was the ultimate expression of his famous dictum: add lightness. Featuring an ingeniously triangulated tube frame, the Seven was essentially a road-going formula car with crude two-seat bodywork, which made it perfect for road racing and spirited motoring. The car debuted in September 1957, and in one form or another, it's been in production ever since. "It's the ultimate sports car," says Scott Nettleship, who owns a 1970 Series IV finished in traditional Lotus livery, "and it's utterly impractical for anything other than having fun."

For Chapman, the Lotus Seven was just the beginning. As he raised his aspirations - to F1, to exotic cars, even to boats and airplanes - he lost interest in the homely, low-buck, no-tech Seven, which was, in many respects, the polar opposite of the glossy engineering sophistication that Lotus came to symbolize. After developing four iterations over sixteen years, he was ready to toss the car on the junk heap. And there it would have rusted were it not for Graham Nearn of Caterham Cars, the patron saint of the Seven. In 1973, Nearn bought the rights to the car, and while no components are carried over from the Lotus years, Caterham remains the "official" manufacturer.

But the Seven is as much a concept as it is a car, and the template for a long-hood, short-deck roadster with cycle or clamshell fenders and exposed headlights has taken on a life of its own. Although Caterham zealously guards its intellectual property - it's gone to court almost as often as Law & Order prosecutor Jack McCoy - dozens of small firms have sprung up to pursue their own vision of what's sometimes referred to as the Se7en. LSiS manufacturers are all over the map in terms of geography and resources, and with production numbers ranging from a few dozen a year to one a century, design, engineering, and build quality vary widely.

If authentic Lotuses and Caterhams are at the top of the food chain, then the accurately named Locosts are at the bottom. Based on plans published by Ron Champion in his subversive classic, Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250, Locosts tend to be shade-tree specials that reflect the talents, or lack thereof, of their builders. Mark Rivera and Jeff Underwood engineered their cars - fitted with a turbocharged Miata and a Yamaha R1 engine, respectively - primarily for autocross duty, and both of them go like stink. But Jon Winterhalter's principal goal was building a car for less than $2000, and he and his son, Andrew, managed this unlikely feat by doing their own metalwork (hence the lumpy aluminum nose-cone) and cannibalizing as much as they could from a junkyard BMW 320i. "I call it redneck engineering," Winterhalter declares in a parking lot filled with pristine Sevens, loudly wondering why anybody would spend ten, twenty, or even thirty times as much as he did.

Sponsored by the marque-inclusive USA7s Club and organized largely by the indefatigable Al Navarro, 7-7-7 has drawn numerous "mainstream" LSiS manufacturers to the Dragon, and Westfield, Birkin, Brunton (Stalker), World Class Motorsports (Ultralite), and Deman are represented with cars that feel rock-solid. I drive a lovely orange Westfield that evokes memories of my Spec Miata, but with half the mass. Meanwhile, a Deman powered by a turbo-charged SR20DET - the JDM fave of the drift crowd - and a Super Stalker motivated by a supercharged Pontiac V-6 are both wild enough to cause my head to slam off the race seat with every upshift.
Each manufacturer offers its own selling points. Generally speaking, Caterhams are the priciest models on the market. They're beautifully finished, often trimmed in carbon fiber, with narrow lines and trim dimensions. The most common modern engine choice is the Ford Zetec, which makes anywhere from 150 to 230 hp. A hot-rodded Caterham will traverse an autocross track faster than anything short of a formula car packing JATO rockets. You want power oversteer? Tickle the throttle. Neck-stretching stopping power? Hammer the brakes. In switchback sections, the car changes directions quickly enough to make your eyeballs spin.

But you really don't need much power to get your groove on in a Seven. Chapman's original formula - minimizing weight and maximizing mechanical simplicity - adds up to a remarkably pure car that raises the prosaic act of driving to something approaching a religious experience. I take a spin in Tim White's Birkin, which is fitted with a 1.5-liter Datsun four-banger with a pair of mesh-covered SUs peering out from the aluminum hood. It's not stunningly quick, but all the inputs are so direct, and the bark of the exhaust sounds so good, that I don't want to give it up after a run over the Dragon. "It is an absolute hoot to drive," White confirms. "And you don't have to be hauling ass to have fun."
Other than having fun, there's no sensible reason to own a Seven. And unlike a Ferrari or a Porsche, it doesn't come with much cachet: Owning a Seven won't impress your neighbors; it'll just convince them that you're weird. As with any cult, there's a certain appeal to being part of a select group of cognoscenti. But as I chat with owners, I realize that Sevenitis isn't a sickness. It's a passion, not so much for the cars but for what the cars allow them to do, which is to drive con brio, whether it's slicing through the esses at Road Atlanta or motoring briskly along the undulating roads crisscrossing the Carolina foothills.

"I drive it almost every day, unless there's snow or ice on the road," says electrical engineer Cherik Bulkes, who drove his 1999 Caterham - which has 68,000 miles - to the event from his home in Wisconsin. "My personal cutoff is 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Your question shouldn't be, 'Why did I drive my car here?' It should be, 'Why did the others trailer their cars?' Why on earth would anybody miss an opportunity to drive such a wonderful car?"
On Saturday evening, the Se7ens gather for a group photo that's both a postcard image of sports car nirvana and a documentary record of group psychosis. Afterward, the cars slowly peel off, carrying their owners to dinner or a last blast over the Dragon, until only one car is left. Fittingly, it's the oldest participant at 7-7-7, a right-hand-drive 1958 Series I, chassis number 487 - the model run began with number 400 - built in the original Lotus works in Hornsey, England. The green paint is chipped, and the aluminum hood bears the patina of a half-century of energetic use. A tent and a sleeping bag are bungee-corded to the rear deck.

The owner, James Wilson, is a graphic artist with a white beard and genteel manners. Back in the day, he raced Austin-Healey Sprites, Formula Fords, and Sports 2000s. Now, he satisfies his jones with his largely unrestored Series I. "It embodies everything I fell in love with when I was a ten-year-old kid," he recalls. "It's friendly. It's quick enough to be interesting. It's timeless. It's the quintessential sports car."
At the moment, I'm driving a 2007 Lotus Elise, which is as close as you can come to a modern take on Wilson's classic. The Elise is a wonderful machine - wicked fast, reasonably comfortable, a paragon of utility compared with the Seven. But I doubt it will be venerated, much less still in production, fifty years from now. And as I watch Wilson motor off, with the fading light glinting against the spokes of his wire wheels and the blatty exhaust of his low-revving four-pot Ford echoing among the hickory and magnolia trees, I realize that as long as people drive cars for pleasure, there will always be a place for Lotus Sevens and their derivatives. And come 7-7-2057, I wouldn't be surprised if dozens of survivors reconvened at the Tail of the Dragon to mark the centennial of Chapman's four-wheel motorbike.

FOUR ENGINES, ONE SEVEN

TWIN-CAM FORD 1600The engine of many early hot-rodded Sevens, this classic street/race motor gives Viviani's Caterham plenty of pop along with authentic period feel.

NISSAN SR20DETThis turbocharged beast, commonly found in drift machines, puts out nearly 500 hp and reportedly propelled Bob Drye to 60 mph in 2.7 seconds.

DATSUN A15Longtime Datsun junkie Tim White fitted his Birkin with a 1.5-liter engine out of a Datsun 210. Fuel delivery is controlled by a pair of SU carburetors.

HONDA F22CThe engine powering Chuck Spera's Ultralite is normally found in a Honda S2000. Supercharged, in Kevin Boulton's screamer, it makes 300 hp.
Miata + Kit = FM Westfield
Dropping a Japanese four-banger into a Lotus Seven - style chassis is hardly a new concept, but using the steering gear, suspension, brakes, final drive, and even the instrument cluster from a first- or second-generation Mazda Miata to get the vintage Lotus experience is. The gang at Flyin' Miata in Grand Junction, Colorado, sells a kit - sourced from Westfield in England - for about $17,000 that allows you to build a Lotus Seve - inspired sports car using cannibalized Miata bits. And even if you don't own a clapped-out Miata that you want to use as the sacrificial lamb, you can buy all the Mazda parts you need to complete the Westfield kit for as little as $2800. Flyin' Miata will assemble the kit for about $5000, or you can do it yourself.

The result is a car that causes grown men and women to giggle like school children. At 1310 pounds, the FM (Flyin' Miata) Westfield weighs an impressive 1000 pounds less than a Miata, so, even when fitted with a stock 130-hp Mazda engine, the FM boogies to 60 mph in less than six seconds. As for top speed? We only saw about 100 mph because, at that rate, it felt as if the turbulence was pulling our brains out through our ears.
Clearly, the FM is not a car for the casual enthusiast. A Lotus Elise is about thirty times more refined (and about thirty times quieter). That said, the Westfield's simple, lightweight design helps give it a decent ride despite its modest structural rigidity and dampers that aren't tuned for choppy road surfaces. Naturally, it's on a racetrack where the Westfield really shines. Push through the initial understeer, and this featherweight assumes a perfect, slightly tail-happy cornering attitude that is easily adjustable with a wiggle of your big toe or a flick of your wrists. After driving the FM for a few laps around Waterford Hills Raceway near Detroit, it seemed like every other car we flung around the track was as overweight and sluggish as a fat man ambling up for his fourth helping at Old Country Buffet.

Tesla Roadster

The future of the automobile comes into sharp focus as I shiver on the shoulder of a damp road in Northern California, waiting for technical editor Don Sherman to make his first 0-to-60-mph pass in a Tesla Roadster - a preproduction version of the svelte, $100,000 electric two-seater powered by 6831 laptop-computer batteries and the collective enthusiasm of an intrepid band of Silicon Valley engineers and green dreamers the world over.
Sherman puts the car in gear and mashes both the brake and accelerator pedals. Unlike conventional reciprocating engines, electric motors make maximum torque at zero rpm. With 211 lb-ft straining against the firmly clamped brake rotors, the Tesla emits a weird mechanical groan, a cross between a mortally wounded ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean and the prefight keening of a kung fu master in a cheesy chop-socky flick.
When Sherman releases the brake, the gracefully rounded rear end of the Tesla squats and the fat rear tires spin on the slick pavement. The car leaves the line sideways, launching like an Indy car slithering out of the pits. Then I hear another unexpected sound - the puny squeal of the horn, which Sherman is squeezing inadvertently as he slaps on an armful of opposite lock. ("I was hanging on for dear life," he reported later.) Finally, the tires hook up, and Sherman rockets past 60 mph - and past 100 mph, for good measure. And as he dematerializes into the fog, I find myself thinking, "Sweet!"

The Tesla Roadster isn't going to save the planet. It's not going to redefine the automobile. The earth won't spin off its axis if and when the first cars come off the production line as scheduled later this year. I mean, we're talking about a projected 2008 model year run of 600 units. Toyota cranks out that many Corollas in a morning. So this isn't an electric Ford Model T. It's more like a glorified science project. A tree-hugger's wet dream. A geeky curiosity to display next to the solar-powered toothbrush and organic Twinkies, right?
Wrong. As wrong as a Toyota Prius on a Formula 1 grid. Or Ed Begley, Jr., channeling Steve McQueen in a remake of Le Mans.

Not only is the Tesla the first genuinely eco-friendly vehicle to deserve a spot in any self-respecting car guy's fantasy garage, but it's also the first car to make a plausible case for all-electric personal transportation in the not-too-distant future. Oh, sure, the haters will tell you that the Tesla Roadster is powered mostly by hype, that nothing with a top speed of 125 mph deserves to be called a supercar, that it's merely a high-voltage version of the Lotus Elise built by an underfunded start-up masquerading as a grown-up car company.
So here are a few things you ought to know about the Tesla: With the equivalent of 248 hp and 211 lb-ft of instantly available torque, the car we tested surged to 60 mph in 4.7 seconds - in damp conditions. Al-though it is, in fact, based on the Elise, the highly modified Tesla is more refined in every way. And despite the addition of the 1000-pound battery pack, the Roadster is everything a sports car ought to be - agile, responsive to driver inputs, and rewarding at speed.

But best of all, it's right here, right now. This isn't a piece of Silicon Valley vaporware or a show car made out of balsa wood and duct tape. Sherman and I flogged a pair of Teslas - prototypes 19 and 20 - around the twisty roads between San Jose and San Francisco for the better part of a day, and neither car missed a beat. The experience made a believer out of me. And I'm convinced that it'll do the same for any car enthusiast who gets a chance to drive one.
Does this mean you ought to start shorting stock in companies selling conventional cars? Hardly. The Tesla's range is limited to about 220 miles - less if you plan to play hooligan. The battery packs are outrageously expensive, and longevity is an open question. Starting at $98,950, the Roadster is obviously too pricey to change the world. And while Tesla is developing a sedan to compete with the BMW 5-series and the Mercedes-Benz E-class, the company isn't merely a minnow by automotive standards. It's an amoeba.
"Getting to this point has been a remarkable achievement," says auto analyst and consultant John Casesa. "But the viability of the company has a lot to do with economies of scale, brand development, and distribution networks. And assuming that their technology doesn't turn out to be completely proprietary, then they're going to come up against a lot of the traditional automobile companies. In addition to maintaining its intellectual and technological leadership, the company is going to face some large industrial challenges."

Electric cars have been coming off the drawing boards - and dying in the marketplace - for more than a century. In fact, most of the conference rooms in Tesla's offices in San Carlos are named after failed electric car companies. (Irony or hubris? You make the call.) In recent years, of course, the most notorious failure was General Motors' EV1, which was killed not, as filmmaker Chris Paine and conspiracy theorists maintain, by a greedy, shortsighted car company but by batteries - first lead-acid and then nickel-metal-hydride - that compromised its range. But the development of more potent lithium-ion batteries, commercially available since the early 1990s, offered new hope to electric car devotees.
Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. After striking out with venture capitalists, they found a sugar daddy in multi-millionaire Elon Musk, cofounder of PayPal and CEO of the space exploration firm SpaceX. (To date, he's provided $37 million of the $105 million raised by the company.) Their first major hire was chief technical officer JB Straubel, a young engineer who'd independently started developing an electric vehicle powered by thousands of lithium-ion laptop batteries.

Tesla is in business not to make a statement but to make money. So instead of pandering to hair-shirt environmentalists with a bland, anemic, painfully practical piece of minimalist transportation - what the company calls "a punishment car" - they opted for an aspirational vehicle designed to be an object of desire. To speed development, Tesla based the Roadster on the Elise and hired Lotus to build it at its plant in Hethel, England. Inevitably, the Roadster looks a lot like an Elise. But Musk gets irritated when I suggest that the Tesla is just a glorified kit car. "Only ten percent of the parts come from Lotus," he insists. The exterior design is more conventionally handsome than the insectlike Lotus. The chassis is two inches longer and stouter, primarily to accommodate the battery pack, and the doorsills are lower to make it easier - "easier" being a relative term - to get into and out of the car. Although still tiny and light on amenities, the cockpit is roomier and better-appointed than a Lotus, with leather upholstery and a carbon-fiber center console replacing the molded plastic found in the Elise.
After levering myself inside and wedging into the driver's seat, I start the car. (Traditional terms such as "crank the ignition" and "bury the throttle" don't apply.) A Technicolor display of warning lights briefly illuminates the screen. Then . . . nothing. No sound. No vibration. No signs of life whatsoever. Very spooky.
"Is it on?" I ask Darryl Siry, Tesla's vice president of sales, marketing, and service, who's riding shotgun.
"Just put it in gear," he tells me.
Getting into gear - literally - has been Tesla's biggest headache. The electric motor is torquey enough to get by with a single-speed transmission, but a one-gear-for-all approach won't produce the sort of gaudy 0-to-60-mph numbers that cause enthusiasts to drool. So early on, Tesla opted for a two-speed transmission, which posed a vexing engineering challenge when mated to an engine redlined at 13,000 rpm. The huge gap between ratios has created an intractable problem, and Tesla is already working with its third gearbox vendor.

Unfortunately, the car I'm driving (as opposed to the car Sherman tested) is fitted with an old transmission, so first gear isn't an option. As I ease out of the parking lot, I get an unmistakable golf-cart vibe. Not good, I think. Who the hell wants to pay $100,000 to feel like they're scooting across a fairway at Leisure World? But when I put the hammer down, the Roadster leaps forward. I wait for the motor to run out of steam so that I have to grab another gear. But it just keeps on pulling and pulling and pulling, feeling more like a jet doing a takeoff roll than a dragster doing a quarter mile.
The other big surprise is the sound. I'd expected the car to be silent. And sure enough, it's quiet enough that I can make out squeaks and rattles as the chassis flexes. But under power, I also hear the electric motor, and the whine gets pretty annoying at elevated rpm. "We had to ask ourselves, what noise should the car make?" says Malcolm Powell, VP of vehicle integration. Even if Tesla could fake it, the canvas-ripping shriek of a Ferrari V-12 wouldn't make sense for an electric car. Who knows? A generation from now, the high-pitched drone of an electric motor at redline may be music to the ears of car enthusiasts.
Not this one, however. And at the risk of sounding like an old fogy, I have to admit that I'm nonplussed by the one-speed transmission. Intellectually, I understand that it's easier than a conventional multispeed job. But I like shifting gears. Blipping the throttle on downshifts and heel-and-toeing under braking are two acts that connect us to our cars and enhance the driving experience. Maybe this won't matter to kids who grew up playing Gran Turismo on their PlayStations and watching in-car video from paddleshift F1 cars. But old-school sports car aficionados ought to be forewarned.

On the other hand, my fears that the weight of the massive battery pack would compromise the character of the car turn out to be unfounded. At 2700 pounds, the Tesla is one-third heavier than the Lotus, and it lacks the Elise's feral ability to claw down to apexes. But the unassisted steering is nicely weighted and gratifyingly direct, and the car corners with the aplomb of an authentic sports car. Granted, the ride-and-handling engineers have dialed a fair amount of understeer into the suspension, but with 65 percent of the weight at the rear and no stability control, this probably isn't a bad idea. Light as it is, the car stops reasonably well (and charges the battery during braking).
But for all of its sporty characteristics, the Roadster is by no stretch of the imagination a track-day car. In fact, the air-cooled motor and power electronics will quickly overheat and lose power if the car is used for this purpose. Unlike the Elise, which was created to replicate the Schuey-does-Silverstone experience, the Tesla is tuned for a grand touring ride, and the compliant springs-bars-and-dampers package means that it could be driven comfortably for hundreds of miles at a time - except, alas, that the batteries would run out of juice before you got nearly that far.

Tesla claims an anticipated range of 220 miles. But that is very much a best-case scenario. According to a digital readout to the left of the steering wheel, the charge plummets each time I nail the accelerator for an extended stretch. If you plan to use the Roadster to see how close you can come to getting your license revoked, then don't expect more than 180 miles of primo performance. Of course, if worst comes to worst, you can score an emergency refill - with the optional mobile charge kit - by plugging into a three-prong household socket. The quickest charge takes between three and three-and-a-half hours when connected to a 70-amp, 240-volt circuit.
Gearbox woes notwithstanding, batteries remain the biggest technical question mark about the Tesla. At the moment, nobody knows how long the battery pack will last, and replacement costs - currently in the neighborhood of $20,000 - are bound to be expensive even if, as expected, prices drop dramatically. Service is another thorny issue. History suggests that there will be plenty of squawks with a brand-new boutique car, especially one incorporating so much new technology, yet Tesla stores will be few and far between.
Thus far, Tesla has been a happy-face avatar of the brave new world of green machinery and a darling of the environmental set. (George Clooney and Matt Damon are among the A-list celebrities who've ordered Roadsters.) But this past year has brought negative publicity in the form of production delays and downgraded speed, range, and redline benchmarks. Then, in December, Eberhard was booted out of the company he'd founded. His successor as CEO, Ze'ev Drori, a semiconductor pioneer and club racer, is an intriguing choice who plays to Tesla's strengths. Still, some observers think the decision to go with a Silicon Valley icon rather than a car-industry veteran reflects a dangerous cocktail of naïveté and arrogance, and it's not hard to imagine executives in Detroit rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of seeing this fledgling know-it-all pull a De Lorean.
The car industry is a tough business, and it has ground up and spit out companies that were much larger, more established, and better financed than Tesla. But even if Tesla turns out to be history before too long, the future is now for electric vehicles, and anybody who thinks otherwise will be convinced by a few minutes of seat time in the Roadster.