THE CARS THAT BLEW US AWAY
Here are five excellent vehicles that performed far beyond our expectations in 2017
Throughout the year, your friendly auto experts here at Driving put our butts in a lot of cars. And while we all keep open minds about performance before we actually start turning a wheel, there are certain givens that we know to be true: supercars are fast, pickups can haul and subcompacts are thrifty on fuel.
But every so often, we come across a vehicle that, after a bit of time behind its wheel, has us shaking our heads in wonder in a never-saw-that-coming kind of way. From 2017, here are some of the ones that really took us by surprise.
JEEP GRAND CHEROKEE TRACKHAWK
Sport utes weighing more than 2,400 kilograms shouldn’t be this fast. Sure, Jeep’s Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is essentially a Hellcat for the 4x4 crowd, with a 707-horsepower, supercharged 6.2-litre V-8 stuffed under the hood, but still, being pinned to the seat as the beast blasts to 100 kilometres an hour in 3.7 seconds is beyond reasonable expectations. This is sports-car fast!
More to the point, 2,400-kg SUVs shouldn’t be able to tackle race circuits, especially one with four kilometres of fresh tarmac, 15 turns and an elevation change of some 80 metres, which just happens to describe New Hampshire’s Club Motorsports, a private facility that just recently opened.
With way more finesse than expected, the $110,000 uber-Jeep blasted along the pit straight at about 200 km/h.
As Turn One loomed, I nailed the brakes — 15.75-inch, two-piece vented rotors with six-piston calipers up front and 13.78-inch vented rotors with four-piston calipers at the back — released and then clipped the apex. The Trackhawk took the proper line like a champ and then asked for more. The other 14 turns were more of the same.
On the road, the Trackhawk is both surprisingly docile and stylistically restrained. But, as I said after the drive, this Jeep is a 45-gallon drum of whoop-ass just waiting to be released. Brian Harper
HONDA CIVIC TYPE R
It wasn’t the fastest, certainly not the loudest, nor the most expensive car I drove all year, but the Honda Civic Type R was definitely the biggest surprise.
Perhaps my expectations were too low, because so many auto writers suspected the Type R wouldn’t be much more than a quicker Civic Si. But 30 seconds into a drive at Circuit Mont-Tremblant, it became clear the Type R was indeed a special Honda Civic: light on its feet and able to rip up a race track just as well as performance cars costing twice as much.
The bigger delight was just how much fun the Type R was to drive fast, its strong Brembo brakes, rev-matching downshifts, accurate steering and excellent handling only encouraging me to go far faster than Honda’s corporate officials would have liked.
That Honda approved a car like this for production, and was able to bring it to market for $40,000, is a testament to some genuine performance blood that had been missing from Honda for a long time. Well done, everyone. Derek McNaughton
BMW M760LI XDRIVE
When given the opportunity to strafe the mountain passes of the Alps, an extended-wheelbase limousine isn’t the first car to come to mind for those harrowing hairpin corners.
And yet, there I was in this big Bimmer, and not at all regretting passing up a perfectly good M6 on offer.
Four-wheel steering and air suspension, among other tidbits, help the 5,248 millimetre long, 2,326 kilogram M760Li take corners like a smaller, lighter coupe, so much so that it was difficult holding myself in the supple leather driver’s seat around tight bends on steep declines.
With virtually no understeer, sharp, controlled swings of the rear end around corners, and brakes equally up to the task of hauling this luxury leviathan down from speed, the entire handling package was, to say the least, unexpected.
And if the handling was unexpected, the acceleration was downright shocking. You get that with a 600-hp V-12 nestled in between the front wheels.
Powering out of a turn brings you, with an almost terrifying pace, on to the next sharp corner. Brake hard, steer, give ’er gas and repeat.
And back down on the Autobahn in Germany? Officially, the M760Li is listed with a 3.7-second zero-to100km/h time, but we were almost blowing the doors off the M2s and M6s that were accompanying us on the drive.
Who knew that a car with options such as a champagne cooler and a perfume atomizer could be so much fun to drive? Neil Vorano
JEEP WRANGLER
I probably shouldn’t be so surprised that the 2018 Jeep Wrangler in hard-core Rubicon guise can perform otherworldly offroad feats, but when strapped in and crawling up a boulder-strewn incline with a small army of “spotters” guiding you every inch of the bone-jarring way, it’s hard to imagine you’re driving an “out of the box” production vehicle.
And despite this new Wrangler’s improved on-road civility, the 2018 Rubicon is actually more capable in extreme terrain. It gets more ground clearance, better approach and departure angles, a tighter turning circle, new 33-inch allterrain tires and 76 centimetres of water-fording capability.
It takes a bit of prep to get the Rubicon two-door (starting $46,345) ready for all this. First, you have to take the doors off and flip the windshield forward. Okay, you don’t have to, but really, how cool is that?
A button on the dash electronically disconnects the sway bars for ultimate axle articulation (now heavier duty Dana 44 front and rear), and there’s still a good oldfashioned lever for engaging the Rock-Trac 4:1 transfer case with an improved 84:1 crawl ratio. Another toggle locks the front and rear differentials, and you’re good to go. Peter Bleakney
LEXUS LC 500H
Okay, so the new Lexus LC 500h is good looking. Very good looking, actually, and pictures don’t do it justice. It’s one of those cars that looks flat and distorted in two dimensions, and yet is all liquid and sinewy and startling in real life, to the point that it almost overcomes that weird Lexus “spindle” grill stuck on its nose.
The interior is the same — not that flashy in photos, but when you get in, that cockpit curves around you, the seat hugs your butt, and everything just feels spectacular.
It’s a hybrid, and although that’s certainly not unknown among sports cars, its 354 horsepower is nowhere near supercar territory. And then you get in, and start it up, and hit the throttle, and holy crap.
This thing is seduction on a stick. It’s fast. It’s smooth. It obeys your steering like it’s reading your mind. It’s perfectly balanced, it’s flat on the corners, it’s strong on the straightaway.
Of course, it starts at $101,600, and for that it darn well should be good, but it really lives up to its promise. Jil McIntosh