Gadgetory

no more pressing your nose against the glass of the Lamborghini dealer performance tech wants only found in super cars now is found in some rental cars I'm Brian Cooley with my top five forms of performance tech that trickle down from the cars you couldn't afford to the ones you can number 5 is launch control this was long the domain of million-dollar f1 cars with so much power that only a computer could get maximum acceleration without spinning the wheels but lately it's trickled down to some high-powered vets and Shelby Mustangs that have the same problem you can even find it now on a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X not a terribly expensive car although I don't know if this one ever gets real popular because most of us aren't too worried about getting out of the hole in the shortest amount of time number four adaptive suspension a suspension that reads the road in real time and adapts to it first showed up in big volume around 1990 on the original infiniti flagship the cue 45 though you'd hardly know it since their first TV spots were infamous for telling you almost nothing about the car anyway today adaptive suspension can be found in European market VW golf's Opel Astra's although it remains stubbornly upmarket in the u.s. coming down not much further than say an Acura MDX or a Buick Lucerne number three the dual clutch gearbox this self shifting dual clutch manual transmission sprang from the realization that let's face it a computer can work a clutch and gears way better than you ever will hence the first production dual clutch gearbox was in the 2002 volkswagen golf r32 a very rarefied model but today it's come down to Ford Fiestas and dodge darts with often crappy results in my opinion but also in the mid cebiche Lancer Evo which around $38,000 is perhaps the best dual clutch equipped car I've ever driven and not that pricey number two the turbocharger turbos have been around since 1905 or so well they didn't really arrive until 1975 with the Porsche 911 Turbo all of a sudden this forced induction technology was a household word even though the car that made it that way cost like 100 of grand in today's dollars today you go car shopping and you trip over turbo engines all the way down to up $19,000 Nissan Juke and a bunch of others small and affordable cars that use them as much to achieve efficiency as performance so today saying you've got a turbo under the hood is no longer a brag number one has got to be push-button start this most ubiquitous and sometimes dumbest of technology's got its start in Formula One and other race cars cars that have no keys obviously then it was a Ferrari thing where it showed up as a key part of their Formula One inspired manettino steering wheel all of this suggesting subtly that hitting a button is how you really get a hot car going and save a second that might help you win a race well today that's found in a rav4 or a Chevy Malibu we're almost every single car that I review it says high-tech without actually being so for more on high-tech cars and modern Drive go to CNET on cars comm i'm brian coulis