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CHAMILLIONAIRE
MAYBACH 57 S
PRICE: $376,250 (as tested)
ENGINE: 6-liter v12
POWER: 604 hp
What would Satan drive? He might opt for a Maybach 57S: The nineteen-foot-long, 6,000-pound sedan just looks evil, from its low-slung roof to its massive twenty-inch wheels. At nearly $400,000, it proclaims that you're obscenely rich. And the car's 11 miles per gallon states that you simply couldn't care less about the environment. Chamillionaire, the latest hot rapper out of Houston, is duly awestruck. "This is gangsta!" he says, sliding into a driver's seat the size of a hot tub. "A car like this makes you feel powerful."
He wastes no time revving up the 604-horsepower engine, steering us onto Manhattan's West Side Highway and popping his chopped-and-screwed major-label debut, The Sound of Revenge, into the twenty-one-speaker sound system. A rain shower keeps us from even attempting the car's alleged top speed of 172, "but this car just feels fast," he says.
Chamillionaire favors big, speedy rides like the 1969 Chevy Impala he owns in Houston, which "fits three across in the front seat." The Maybach seats only four altogether, but there's enough leg room to comfortably sleep inside. As you'd expect of an A-list land yacht, the cabin is marked by a dizzying array of bells and whistles. Fortunately, riding with us is Chamillionaire's acquaintance Christine, who's intimately familiar with the Maybach. She demonstrates how to use the climate control and the DVD player, and then pops open the rear's center console to reveal a minifridge and two silver champagne flutes. "Here," she says, handing one to Chamillionaire. "This is your pimp cup."
Soon after, we search in vain for our final destination, Wall Street. We punch the navigation button, and a voice informs us that Wall Street is ten miles away, which would put it somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Chamillionaire points to a glowing-red SOS button near the rearview mirror. "We're in trouble," he says. "Better hit that." A guy with a better grasp of road maps comes on the line. It turns out we're two blocks away.
As Chamillionaire readies to leave for a Manhattan studio to work on his follow-up, Ultimate Victory, he gives the car a final look, shaking his head. "Now we've got to go back to reality," he says. L.C. SMITH
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RISE AGAINST
TOYOTA HIGHLANDER (hybrid)
PRICE: $35,290 (as tested)
ENGINE: 3.3-liter V6
POWER: 268 HP
Rise Against are the long-haul truckers of punk. The Chicago hardcore outfit spent the summer traversing the U.S. as well as hitting the charts with its fourth collection of shout-along anthems, The Sufferer and the Witness. This month, the quartet will kick-start another cross-country trek headlining its own tour. So it's no wonder three of them own SUVs that double as equipment trailers. "Our guitar player made the mistake of trading in his old Highlander for a Mini Cooper, because it gets better mileage," says bassist Joe Principe. "Now he can't move any of our gear."
Perhaps he should have waited. The Highlander hybrid is the latest in a series of eminently practical gas/electric rides. With its two back seats folded down, the Highlander is roomy enough to haul drums and Marshall stacks, while the SUV's engine gets a passable 27 miles per gallon on the highway. Drummer Brandon Barnes takes the wheel on an L.A. side street and nails the accelerator. "Wow," says Barnes, startled by the car's 268-horsepower engine. But those horses are remarkably polite -- thanks to the car's electric motor, which, unlike a gas engine, hits full throttle the instant you press the pedal. "It's like driving a glider," says Barnes appreciatively.
He and Principe have just flown into L.A. to hook up with bandmates Chris Chasse and Tim McIlrath for KROQ's Inland Invasion concert the following day, and the two are beat. "I think we could get a better handle on this vehicle if we pulled into a Starbucks," says Barnes. As we prowl a maze of minimalls in search of caffeine, Principe messes with the car's funky center console, the only outward sign that this is indeed a hybrid. The navigation screen includes nerdish touches such as an "energy monitor" that diagrams how the engine stores juice during braking. Principe eyes a button next to the bulbously phallic shift knob. "Heated seats," he says. "Nice."
Barnes ponders this for a moment, then offers a bit of jet-lagged logic: "If you had a frosty drink on your lap, and you were freezing your balls off, the seat would counter the freezing." ANDREW VONTZ
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BEN KWELLER
VW GTI
PRICE: $24,435 (as tested)
ENGINE: 2-liter turbo
POWER: 200 hp
Ben Kweller is perhaps the pop star least likely to pant for Volkswagen's slick GTI. The singer-songwriter admittedly favors safe, nerdy rides like his gray Volvo, which he bought ten years ago and hasn't had the heart to sell. "She's an old lady of a car," says Kweller, pointing to the sagging four-door parked outside his Brooklyn apartment. "I named her Annabelle."
Yet not even Kweller is immune to this alluringly remade "pocket rocket." With its honeycomb grille, cherry-red brake calipers and huge hatchback, Volkswagen's newest version of its twenty-three-year-old classic more closely resembles a well-fed Audi than a sports compact. "It's a good-looking car," says Kweller. "Hell, yeah. I dig it."
With that, Kweller is off, pointing us toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Turning onto the on ramp, he tries to outgun traffic when the car suddenly kicks into high gear, abruptly sending the rear wheels sliding before he rights them with a flick of the three-spoke steering wheel. "Holy crap," he says. "That's some Lethal Weapon stuff right there." Indeed, the car is notoriously twitchy. It's not unusual for the turbocharged 200-horsepower engine to jerk you back as if you're being yanked by the hair.
"We need to find someplace where we can open this thing up," says Kweller with a yawn. It's been an exhausting few months for the singer, between greeting a new baby boy, Dorian, and teaching a recently assembled band all fifty-two of his songs before they hit the road in support of Kweller's new disc. We slip it into the CD changer, and the car's ten speakers boom to life. "This is a good driving song," says Kweller, turning to "Penny on the Train Track," a shiny nugget of Seventies-era pop. "A driving song should mention the landscape. It should make you want to go out cruising."
Today, the expressway's congested landscape proves less than inspiring, so Kweller heads back to Brooklyn. Underneath an elevated subway track, he maneuvers behind a sixteen-wheeler backing into a warehouse. "That was a dumb-ass move, wasn't it?" he says. "If you're going to test-drive a car, you have to see how it is for dumb-ass drivers, too."
Back in front of Kweller's apartment, I ask what he would name the GTI.
"Johnny," he says without hesitation. "Young, fast, good-looking -- it's definitely a Johnny." L.C. SMITH
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KATHERINE McPHEE
SMART CAR
PRICE: under $15,000 (as tested)
ENGINE: 699 CC
POWER: 60 hp
It is fortuitous that the former American Idol star taking today's test drive in Manhattan is not Ruben Studdard. It would have been impossible for him to fit in the tiny, Swatch-designed, Mercedes-engineered orb known as Smart ForTwo (as in "two seats"). Luckily, today's Idol is Katharine McPhee, this year's runner-up and a petite twenty-two-year-old who could fit comfortably in the car even if she were triplets.
It's curious that Smarts haven't taken off with urbanites the world over. It is the perfect automobile for the city: small, fuel-efficient (more than 40 miles per gallon city and highway) and inexpensive (price starts under $15,000). Although the Smart has undeniable cachet in Europe, the company sold less than 50,000 globally last year. Now, in the wake of megaselling microcompacts such as the Mini and Honda's new Fit, Smart hopes that Europe and the U.S. are finally ready for the ForTwo. The model that goes on sale here in '08 will be a bit larger and faster.
McPhee hops in and surveys the interior, looking over at her passenger. "I forget that we're in a tiny car," she says. "You're a tall guy. You could be six inches taller and you'd be fine." The Smart works a weird kind of voodoo. From the outside, it looks impossibly small. But from the inside, it feels full-size, as if you are piloting a regular sedan -- until you end up next to an actual sedan, and its occupants point and coo as if a baby carriage full of puppies has just pulled alongside.
"This is gnarly, yo!" says the L.A. singer, slicing between a delivery truck and a phalanx of cabs. "It feels so good to drive." Today is her first day away from the American Idols tour in weeks. The night before, they played Syracuse, New York; tomorrow it's Hershey, Pennsylvania. When it's over, she'll head back to California and record an album due by Christmas. What will it sound like? "You'll be surprised."
On Eleventh Avenue, McPhee marvels that the car -- propelled as it is by just 60 horsepower -- actually keeps up with traffic. (Though she didn't attempt it, its top speed is said to be 85 mph.) "It drives like a regular car," she says. Soon after, McPhee's publicist notes that Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw would probably drive a Smart. McPhee isn't so sure. "I'm a little high-fashion for this car," she says. "I'd like it with tinted windows, in case people didn't think it was cool." JOSH DEAN
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TAPES 'N TAPES
FORD SHELBY GT500
PRICE: $45,000 (as tested)
ENGINE: 5.4-liter V8
POWER: 500 hp
Josh Grier, lead singer of the Minneapolis indie-rock quartet Tapes 'n Tapes, and keyboard player Matt Kretzmann both drive Nineties Japanese econoboxes. If you were to combine the power of those two vehicles, they would not have half the muscle of the orange monster sitting before them at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
The Shelby Mustang GT500 is a 500-horsepower steroidal machine boasting a supercharged V8 that was initially designed to run a full-size truck. Its eighteen-inch wheels are stopped by brake rotors the size of Frisbees. A silver cobra -- the signature of designer Carroll Shelby, who created the classic first-generation Cobra in the 1960s -- is curled up on the grille, both front fenders and on the steering wheel. The car is an awesome sight to behold. Grier and Kretzmann are taking a break from a dizzying trip that saw the Tapes go from an unsigned band in March to this year's critical sweethearts. Today, bassist Erik Applewick has opted to stay home, and drummer Jeremy Hanson is traveling. Thus, says Grier, "We're the lucky ones."
On the freeway, Grier flicks the wheel, attempting to lay some rubber. I point out that, because of its heft, the car is notoriously squirrelly, and so traction control is best left on. "Screw traction control," he says, and pushes the plastic tcs button sunk in the plastic dash. Inside the Mustang, in fact, plastic abounds. You could recycle the interior and supply enough beer cups for an entire season of Chicago Bears home games. "It's pretty trimmed down," Grier notes. "I guess you're paying for the engine."
At $45,000, you're actually not paying much. The Corvette Z06, previously the cheapest 500-horse car on the market, is a good $20,000 more. Heading back to the airport, Grier fires it up out on the highway. Each time he revs a gear, an orange light on the console flashes and the car beeps at him. None of us know what this means. "That's the 'you're going too fast' light," Grier says.
Above the road, an electronic sign reads "O'Hare, 18 minutes."
"Easy," says Kretzmann. To which Grier replies, "Let's do it in four." JOSH DEAN