Picking the Best Hurts So Good - The Lohdown

Your browser, , is out of date and not supported by www.motortrend.com. It may not display all features of our site properly and could have potential security flaws. Please update your browser to the most upated version. Update Now To the outsider, I bet our annual Best Driver's Car cover story seems like a massive pain in the ass. Like any major undertaking, we start planning early, first by locking down venues 6-8 months in advance. Then comes the courtship, where we cajole top-tier automakers to give up their latest and greatest performance cars for a test in which they stand a good shot at losing. This year, we managed to convince 10 manufacturers to send 12 cars to our headquarters in El Segundo, California. We added another 13 vehicles to support a crew of more than 35 editors, video producers, photographers, drivers, and production assistants, and all the computers, cameras, tripods, dollies, bounce boards, tires, tools, luggage, and ice chests needed for the eight-day, multi-stop ordeal. The logistics of getting this team on the road are not even half of the story. Permits, road-closure notifications, and the assistance of three CHP officers are the basic requirements for our first stop, the glorious California Highway 198. Then there's our stint at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Two days might sound like a lot of time to lap 12 cars, especially when we start with a sunrise photo shoot and end with another at sundown, but the demands of the test, photo, and video teams mean that not a minute can be wasted. Each vehicle goes out for several lapping sessions -- at least once for Randy Pobst to set his time, another for him to talk to camera, and at least one more with cameras mounted inside and out, followed by runs for an editor or two. There are static and action shoots for photo and video, group shots, rig shots, blow-bys, and corner-by-corner drift sessions. Rinse and repeat, for each car -- while trying to grab a slice of pizza in between. Then we roll back down to our SoCal test facility to gather any missing data on the hero cars. With the time left over, we film this little ditty we call the "World's Greatest Drag Race" -- and I don't want to talk about that headache. So why do we do it? Why devote the cover and 31 pages of the issue to finding the best driver's car in America? Why produce 19 videos, including a 77-minute masterpiece, our longest film yet? Why go to all the trouble to create this content, and then put it out there free of charge on MotorTrend.com and our YouTube channel? Because we love performance cars as much as you do. And, to paraphrase that old saying, when you love something, turn off the traction control, set it free on a closed course, and don't come back until the brakes are on fire. When it comes to performance-car comparos, this year's Best Driver's Car is our magnum opus, the be all, end all, the very best you'll ever see, bar none -- until we do it all again next year. View the original article here