Cadillac CTS

A handsome car with the chassis BMW should have put under the 5-series.
Cadillac’s CTS fended off multiple Audis, Benzes, and BMWs to win its 10Best berth. While we are (still) big fans of the twin-turbocharged, 420-hp V-6 that powers the Vsport model, it’s the handling that sets the CTS apart from the competition. To determine how GM sharpened the CTS’s reflexes to cuff the Germans, we returned to the scene with Cadillac’s executive chief engineer, Dave Leone.
Turns out that Leone and his development team know these byways—located only 30 miles from GM’s proving grounds—as well as we do. “We’re here every month to check our progress tuning new models and to assess competitors,” Leone explains. “The bends, bumps, and abrupt elevation changes challenge any car’s integrity, so this loop is an excellent ­supplement to our Milford Road Course and Nürburgring work.”

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

A great platform, but an even greater engine

When the first Corvettes rolled out of the primordial postwar haze in 1953, they were far from fully evolved. By all accounts, the shoddy, fiberglass-bodied “sports car” was headed for extinction just as quickly as its meager six-cylinder engine and two-speed automatic transmission could carry it. But then Chevrolet installed its first small-block up front. Thusly and successfully mutated, the Corvette’s genetic code has remained stable for 60 years. With few exceptions, the venerable Vette has always been a powerful V-8 plastic-wrapped with only whatever additional engineering was necessary. 

The LT1 V-8 in today’s Corvette Stingray displaces 6.2 liters and makes 460 horsepower and 465 pound-feet of torque when paired with the performance exhaust or Z51 packages. Other engines may make more power or have more exotic designs, but there is no engine that feels closer to a living, breathing entity than the Corvette’s pushrod V-8. It is close to sentient, shutting down half its cylinders to conserve fuel and granting the Corvette a 29-mpg EPA highway rating. But the LT1 is no goody-two-shoes; it reminds you constantly of its presence, just on the other side of the fire wall behind the axle centerline. At idle, the Corvette vibrates to its pulses, urging you to uncoil the tension in the p­edals and shifter.

Ford Mustang GT

Imagine an enormous pyramid of glass spheres, perfectly balanced. Pull just one of those interdependent orbs from the base of that pyramid and the entire thing comes crashing down. In any complex system, a ­single change can have devastating consequences. 

Or it can send things in the opposite direction. During the development of the 2015 Mustang, one move set off a chain reaction that irreversibly altered the Mustang for the better. Granted, it was a big change: swapping out the old solid rear axle for an independent one. Partially derived from the ­­aluminum and steel components supporting the tail of Ford’s Fusion sedan, the Mustang’s new inde­pendent suspension brings unprecedented refinement—unprecedented for a Mustang, anyway.