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Before wind tunnels carved perfection and data dashboards translated bravery into graphs, a young woman from the south of France traced her own line through the most dangerous years of rallying. Michele Mouton didn’t arrive as an exception so much as a proof: that commitment at the wheel made no distinction. Her story isn’t a legend embroidered into folklore; it’s a trail of exhaust, dust, and timesheets, marked by the shriek of turbochargers and the curt cadence of pace notes. Across Alpine passes, Mediterranean streets, and a Colorado mountain with no guardrails, she shifted the balance in a sport that had long convinced itself it was closed to her.
I used to tune idle by ear. You could hear a misfire in a V8 the way a watchmaker hears a tick out of step, feel a worn cam through the screwdriver pressed to the valve cover. Now half my diagnoses start with a laptop and end in a quiet test drive where the loudest sound is gravel in the wheel well. People ask me if I miss the smell of fuel. I do. But I’ve also learned the smell of hot dielectric grease, of coolant after a fast charge, and the click of a contactor that tells me a high-voltage pack just woke up. The road shifted under our feet, and I stayed on it, slow at first, then with both hands on the wheel.
We spent three days comparing three fresh-faced luxury sports coupes on the same loop of mountain switchbacks, a freeway commute, and a short circuit. The brief: blend speed with daily civility. Our contenders span hybrid-boosted precision (Porsche 911 Carrera GTS), all-wheel-drive muscle (Mercedes-AMG GT 63), and rear-drive theater (Aston Martin Vantage).
We spent two weeks evaluating a 2024 Subaru Forester Premium in sustained cold, from powder to refreeze glaze, to gauge snow traction, cabin heating, and cold-weather reliability in real-world commuting and unplowed backroads.
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To Be Continued ...
When a daring night-time theft strikes Ferrari’s Maranello facility, Interpol agent Patrizia “Pat” Robbiani is pulled from her father’s Modena restaurant and into a chilled corridor of humming laboratories and nervous engineers. Dressed in bold red and armed with a dry wit, . . .
CHAPTER 1 - The Red Gate at Midnight
The writers
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London
Temperature: 15°
Rain: 0.11
Wind: 6 m/s
Clouds: 75%
