These are the new car models that will be huge in 2017
If the fashion world dominates newsstands in September, car enthusiasts get to spend the month of October curling up in their garage with their favorite glossies. With the 2017 models of most sedans just now starting to roll out of the factories, there is a lot to gawk at in next month’s pages for consumers and car connoisseurs alike.
Motor Trend
If you’re planning to buy a new truck or SUV in the coming months, you can’t go wrong with Motor Trend, which reviews 136 of the 2017 and 2018 models. For space-efficient New Yorkers, the magazine also ranks the latest offerings of mid-size compacts. The 2016 Honda Civic EX takes the gold here, boasting a better drive and engineering. “It’s got special sauce — the X factor — this thing is magic in spades,” the mag writes. But, despite a letter from Editor-in-Chief Edward Loh in which he thanks the Camaro for teaching the masses about speed, there’s relatively little in the magazine for true car enthusiasts. The little bit of personality is hidden in the advertisement-heavy pages,, which makes the magazine feel more like a catalog.
Car and Driver
Car and Driver also offers reviews of the 2017 models, but it packs thoughtful reads and photo spreads for those already in the know. Editor-in-Chief Eddie Alterman pleads with readers to keep the sedan relevant despite the growing popularity of crossovers. The appeal to sedan owners is repeated in a 20-question spread about what the car industry will look like in 2017. The writers offer only five “acceptable” crossovers. (Mazda’s offerings are No. 3 and No. 4 and Audi Q7 is No. 1.) Econ wonks will also delight in this issue as there are repeated comments about what low gas prices and near-zero interest rates have meant for auto sales. Subprime loans now account for 20 percent of auto loans. When that bubble bursts, it will choke the market, but not to the extent of the 2008 housing crisis. If that’s too much of a buzzkill, turn to page 52 to marvel at a stunning $2.6 million Bugatti Chiron in electric blue.
Automobile
While the other mag covers show what’s new, Automobile celebrates the classics with Editor-in-Chief Mike Floyd offering “brand-new vintage cars blissfully free of newfangled tech” in the magazine’s 106 pages. The same, however, cannot be said of motorcycles, as there are five electric bikes ranging in price for $8,500 to $77,000 displayed on the next page. Automobile also pays homage to the evolution of of the Camaro, including the brand’s ill-fated decision in 1993 to mimic the Corvette instead of the sticking close to the Mustang. Readers and purists will delight in the pages upon pages of classic models including the DeLorean DMC-12, which is slated to be reproduced in 2017. Also, millennials, prepare to feel old: The 1992-93 Acura Integra GS-R is now considered a classic.
Road & Track
In light of new technology, much of the “driving” appears to have been removed from driving, laments Road & Track Editor-in-Chief Kim Wolfkill. While Wolfkill is not one to eschew technology, he notes that fundamentals are still important to design, which is why the staff went to the Skip Barber three-day racing school. Flipping through this month’s pages reveals a deep love for Italian cars, whose design sometimes emphasizes “passion over logic.” This is a magazine for people who love cars, which is evident in the passionate ode to the V-8 engine on page 62. Also, check out the sleek new Aston Martin DB11, featured on page 77, which is waging a war between tradition and innovation.
New Yorker
Speaking of appearance over substance elsewhere on the newsstand, the New Yorker’s “style issue” delivers a profile of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard that’s as puffy as one of its puffer jackets. Chouinard was “right up there with Jack Kerouac and Jimi Hendrix on my list of great Americans,” Nick Paumgarten writes, recalling his sentiments as he took a job at Patagonia right out of college. We get endless anecdotes and half-facts about Chouinard’s generosity and supposedly simple lifestyle, interrupted only by a passing admission that “he’s probably worth hundreds of millions” after decades of charging stratospheric prices for ski bibs. We also get a profile of Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, who found authorities “surprisingly permissive” as he staged a punk-rock fashion show at Westminster Abbey.
The Economist
The Economist devotes its cover to the “Art of the Lie,” and of course the chief target here is Donald Trump. The editors are definitive in their rejection of Trump’s “post-truth” pronouncements on, say, President Obama’s birth certificate, or the notion that he founded the Islamic State. What’s more interesting is that it points to the “anger” of working-class voters who “feel let down and left behind” while elites have thrived, and call it a “corrosive force.” Needless to say, the question of whether the elites themselves are a corrosive force — or, for that matter, the Economist, which has reliably peddled the virtues of globalization for decades — isn’t much discussed. That’s an omission that we, as The Economist likes to say, find “worrying.”