Car and Driver - USA (2020-01)

10

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JANUARY 2020 ~ CARAND DRIVER

I

need to start this letter by admitting that I’m not a superstar

when it comes to arithmetic. But it didn’t take me too long in the

new job to determine that our 10Best contest was a bit of a lie.

With one 10Best list for cars and another for trucks, SUVs, and

vans, we actually have been coming up with 20 10Best vehicles.

This is not one of those internet math tricks. It’s true. Pull out

your trusty TI-86 calculators and check my math, if you must.

Separating cars and trucks made our lives easier, but we

couldn’t live with the lie any longer. So this year, we decided that

we’d combine all vehicles and choose only 10. We invited back last

fRN_μ`dV[[R_`N[QNYYaUR[Rd\_`VT[V¼PN[aYfb]QNaRQcRUVPYR`a\

arrive at 93 contestants competing for 10 spots. As in years past,

we shook down all of them from our base camp at a Boy Scouts

facility in rural Michigan.

It wasn’t easy to pare down our list of favorites. There were plenty of

comments, impassioned arguments, and desperate pleas for votes:

“If the Kia Telluride isn’t on your list, consider a new career.”

“I swear I’ll quit if the Jeep Gladiator is a 10Best winner.”

“These doughnuts are stale!”

After driving our 10Best loop in Michigan for two weeks and giving each

car the same level of scrutiny we always do, we arrived at a list that feels

like a nice cross section of all the things we love to drive and would buy.

Listen, I can already hear your complaints. There’s no need to go buy

N`aNZ]S_\ZaUR]_V`\[P\ZZV``N_fa\¼_R\ßN[N[T_fUN[Qd_VaaR[YRa-

ter. I know. We are Car and Driver,

not SUV and Truck and Driver. But

guess what? Most Americans are

really, really into SUVs and trucks.

We’d be ignoring a huge chunk of

our audience if we pretended tradi-

tional cars were the only choice and

unequivocally superior to their top-

heav y brethren for every task.

And I get it. Change is hard. Take

a couple deep breaths, squeeze your

stress ball, and then turn to page 25

to take a look at what we believe to be

the best of what’s for sale right now.

And then there

were (actually) 10

Editor’s Letter

hideously restyles its iconic

grilles to suit China’s market,

Chevrolet badly clones the

Acura NSX, and Porsche slaps

the Turbo name on a car with

no engine at all. Apocalypse, if

not now, then very, very soon!

—M. Winter

To ro nto , O N

As a longtime subscriber of Car

and Driver, I have noticed that as

the years have passed, especially

in this century, more and more

articles in the magazine have

concerned not cars as historically

defined, but trucks and various

categories of SUVs. And now,

as noted in your October issue,

we’re faced with an unprece-

dented list of discontinued cars.

—Tyler Thompson

Little Rock, AR

We’re still upset about the

death of the Grand Marquis

and our inability to joke

about the availability of the

de Sade package—Ed.

Anybody else think the new

Volkswagen Passat’s nose

looks like the one on a mid-

1970s AMC Matador sedan?

—Michael Melton

Hobbs, NM

Pedro Romero killed some

5600 bulls in his 28-year

career as a matador—Ed.

Well, well, well! What have we

here? Seems the comprehensive

“New Cars for 2020” article has

an echo chamber, what with

the Silverado HD’s description

repeated word for word with that

of the Sierra HD, save for the

substitution of the truck names.

Sure, we know the trucks are

carbon copies; badge engineer-

ing, I think it’s called. Still, a wee

bit of verbal creativity would

have been welcome. Some of

us oldsters still do read, after

all. Oh, did I mention one tiny

SHARON SILKE CARTY

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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