2009 Motor Trend Best Driver's Car - Best driver's car competition
The past two years, we've engulfed and entertained you with Motor Trend's "Best-Handling Car," an exhaustive multipage feature replete with in-depth analyses and qualitative data on the year's most imposing crop of high-performance machines. We've spent hundreds of hours driving an array of curve-carvers along challenging public roads and, with a little help from pro racers Max Angelelli and Randy Pobst, around the infamous 2.3 miles of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. We've not only recorded such standard MT stats as lateral g and figure eight, but also utilized a bevy of contraptions, sensors, and measuring devices to calculate such dynamics as step steer, swerve stability, and ride quality -- all in our best efforts to quantify optimal handling. In order to narrow down the field to the Best-Handling Car, we examined, filtered, and hotly debated over all the objective and subjective bytes. While no magazine had ever attempted testing this detailed, we knew there was room for improvement.
Enter 2009's test. For this go-around we addressed a shortcoming that now seems obvious to us. In our efforts to ascertain the best-handling car, we overlooked some vital data: our expert subjectivity. Sure, we'll continue to keenly heed every observation made by Pobst, who graciously joins our team again, but this year we're going to listen to ourselves more, considering such nuances as a car's ability to induce driver confidence and its prowess at enveloping our judges in ergonomic delight. We even deemed it important to examine not only steering feel but also steering-wheel feel: That's right, how well does the shape of the helm satisfy the fingers? These and other criteria are all scrutinized in the following pages.
2009 Motor Trend Best Driver's Car - Best driver's car competition - Motor Trend
Enter 2009's test. For this go-around we addressed a shortcoming that now seems obvious to us. In our efforts to ascertain the best-handling car, we overlooked some vital data: our expert subjectivity. Sure, we'll continue to keenly heed every observation made by Pobst, who graciously joins our team again, but this year we're going to listen to ourselves more, considering such nuances as a car's ability to induce driver confidence and its prowess at enveloping our judges in ergonomic delight. We even deemed it important to examine not only steering feel but also steering-wheel feel: That's right, how well does the shape of the helm satisfy the fingers? These and other criteria are all scrutinized in the following pages.
2009 Motor Trend Best Driver's Car - Best driver's car competition - Motor Trend
