Henry Payne

Toyota’s midsize Camry is the reigning segment leader but the Chevy Malibu has had an extreme makeover for 2014. (Toyota and GM)

When I think midsize sedans, I think fast-food hamburgers.

The burger is America’s meal. From state to state, the humble patty is never flashy, always decent. It comes in different styles – McDonald’s round, Wendy’s square, Burger King’s flame-broiled, Hardee’s jumbo — and it’s always cooked, tasty and safe. Get it wrong — remember Jack in the Box’s undercooked patties E. coli crisis in the 1990s — and your brand will fall faster than January temps in Escanaba. The same holds for America’s midsize car market.

More sedans are sold in this segment than any other, and every major automaker wants a piece.

Cost of entry: All must deliver a reliable, no-fuss product. Busy Mrs. Soccer Mom is in no mood for surprises. Ford lost my wife in the 1990s after two Taurus models and too many repair shop visits. Toyota’s midsize Camry burger is the reigning segment leader — call it McCamry — delivering a product that satisfies most tastes with less hassle. Toyota (with Asian brethren, Honda and Nissan) stole the segment’s top spot after years of unreliability from Detroit manufacturers.

Now, the Detroit Three are on the comeback trial, with Ford’s flavorful Fusion winning raves and Chrysler tickling taste buds with this year’s much-anticipated 200. But the car most like the Camry is Chevy’s Malibu. If the Fusion aims for a richer taste — think char-grilled beef — the Chevy competes with the Toyota with the same, nothing-fancy formula.

How is the GM product doing? I conducted a taste test: McCamry vs. McMalibu.

Reliability

Reliability is the coin of the midsize realm.

Back in the Dark Ages — circa 1990 to 2000 A.D. — Detroit automakers could compete with the Japanese only by undercutting them in price. Quality was that bad. At century’s turn, the Chevy Malibu tallied a distant 65 score (on a scale of 1-100) in Consumer Reports’ testcompared to Camry’s 78 and Honda Accord’s 79. That it outscored sibling class clowns Impala (39) and Saturn (38), and the slothful Ford Taurus (51), was small consolation.

So GM hit the books and the results have been dramatic.

“The 2014 Malibu is catching up quickly,” says Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for Consumer Reports, after it scored an 84 compared to Toyota’s 88 (the Honda Accord still wins class brain at 90).

Like Cadillac — which earned my Car of the Year vote for its more-German-than-the-Germans, third-generation CTS — Chevy has committed to putting in the long hours to catch up. When its mid-cycle 2013 refresh failed to impress customers, Malibu went back to the plastic surgeon, emerging with a face-lift just months after launch.

“The turning point for Malibu came when they didn’t have to sell cars at tens of thousands less than their Japanese competition. That has changed,” Fisher says.

Indeed, the $29,900 Malibu 2LT I drove is more expensive than a similarly equipped $28,000 Camry SE.

“Malibu is right there at this point,” Fisher adds. “There are just a couple of things holding them back.” Those couple of things are significant for the much-improved Chevy — after all, you have to knock out the champion to get noticed, not just extend him to the 15th round.

Exterior

Beauty has never been a strong suit in the Chevy family, but in a segment where average looks have been the norm that never seemed important. Times have changed.

Cars such as the Ford Fusion, Mazda6 and Hyundai Sonata have raised the bar, and the homely Camry and Malibu look dated. When you’re blessed with the Camry’s quality reputation, you can afford to be complacent. Not so the Malibu.

No. 2 must try harder. Give Chevy credit for the 2014 model’s Extreme Makeover. But the Chevy SS-esque face is hardly a head turner. I blame the brand’s split-grille theme which looks bold on big pickups and aggressive on wee Sparks. But on well-proportioned four-doors like Cruze and Malibu sedans it looks odd. Two grille openings is one too many — like your six-year-old put too many mouths on Mr. Potatohead.

Why should the Chevy Impala get all the good looks in the family? Give ’Bu big brother’s handsome smile to match its new, family-themed tail lamps (courtesy of sexy siblings Camaro and ’Vette).

Then buyers might slip inside where Chevy has the details right.

Interior

Open the Camry and Malibu doors, and it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Both are handsomely wrapped in dark plastic with premium trim, and the interiors are comfortably equipped. Everything is market tested: Comfy seats, good backseat legroom, clear instrumentation, cup holders, and USB ports where you need them. Feels like home.

Get comfortable, however, and Chevy’s details win you over. Begin with the center console, one of the best in the business. Organized on one sloped plane, the flush buttons and large knobs are intuitive, complementing the MyLink touch screen. “Knobs still matter,” says Mark Meyer, Malibu group leader. That’s a telling comment from an engineer whose colleagues at Cadillac have ditched knobs in their CUE system much to the confusion of customers.

The Malibu’s shifter beats McCamry’s clunky gates and its interior is library quiet, the product of body panel insulation and double-laminated windows. In an age when federal mpg nannies are forcing manufacturers to adopt inherently rougher 4-cylinder engines, such measures are welcome.

But my favorite Malibu detail is the windshield washers.

In most cars, including McCamry, nozzles dump their fluid in puddles in the middle of the screen and then expect the wipers to distribute the cleaner via multiple sweeps. Not the Malibu. Toggle the steering stalk (did I mention the stalks are crisp as an Audi? Another nice detail) and the washer team spits a fine mist across the entire windshield, necessitating just one wipe (maybe two) from the blades to finish the job. That’s teamwork. And much appreciated in a Detroit winter in which I’ve gone through gallons of fluid to stave off a muck assault from platoons of interstate-plying semis.

Performance

Malibu handling — though shy of the Mazda-Ford segment leaders — bests the Camry. Give particular credit to the Chevy’s mature stability control in icy conditions. Both vehicles come with peppy, fuel-efficient 2.5 liter engines. This is where the Malibu’s attention to detail again pays dividends. With engine stop-start technology standard, the heavier and more powerful Malibu still bested the Camry in EPA mpg rating, 29 to 28.

Safety systems in both cars are superb. Example: Leaving downtown on a hazy, darkened Lodge one night, a tail-lightless car limped along in the center lane. Without the Malibu’s collision alert system – FWEEEE! went the flashing red light on my dash – I might have rammed it.

In sum, objects in Toyota’s rear view mirror are closer than they appear. Chevy has caught up. Score some outright wins in the looks and quality — best-in-class windshield wipers aren’t enough — and McMalibu can be the new standard.

In President Obama’s Year of Action, the EPA levied another unilateral tax on America’s struggling economy Monday with expensive new sulfur standards. The new mandates will cost the energy industry an estimated $10 billion, impact small refineries most, and goose gas prices by 6 to 9 cents per gallon.

And all for no benefit to human health.

“The benefits far outweigh the costs,” claimed EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. “These standards will reduce pollution, they’ll clean the air we breathe and protect the health of American families.” There’s no evidence to support that statement.

“It’s made up science,” says Steve Milloy, a regulatory scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and publisher of JunkScience.com, of the restriction on gasoline’s sulfur content — part of EPA’s so-called Tier 3 rules.

EPA administrators justify the reduction of smog-inducing PM2.5 particulates to 12 micrograms (from 15 mcg) because they say there is no safe level of PM2.5 exposure. That is absurd. In fact, the EPA routinely funds lab tests that expose humans to diesel fumes containing PM2.5 particulates. The air Americans breath today is clean. Our worst metropolitan areas rarely exceed 15 mcg a day — as compared with the estimated 10,000-40,000 mcg that a smoker inhales from a single cigarette, says Milloy.

“Saying that there is no safe exposure gives EPA carte blanche to regulate whatever they want,” says Milloy.

That regulation inflicts real pain. Higher gas prices hurt low-income Americans most. And EPA regs have made the U.S. refinery business a regulatory thicket — resulting in the closure  of over 100 refineries in the last 40 years — mostly small businesses that can’t afford the regulatory costs. So much for White House claims that it backs the little guy.

The EPA’s rule pitted refineries against Big Auto, which had lobbied hard for the costs to be borne by the energy sector to help autos meet their own stringent government mandates. “This rule’s biggest impact is to increase the cost of delivering energy to Americans,” protested Bob Greco of the American Petroleum Institute. “But it will provide negligible, if any, environmental benefits.”

“This rule is all pain and no gain,” says House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.). An apt summary of the Obama presidency.

Businessman-politicians often pretend that they are above politics, but they do so at their peril.Take the fine budget mess Michigan Republican governor Rick Snyder has gotten himself into.

In an otherwise impressive first term, Snyder’s refusal to compromise on tax reform in 2011 has come back to haunt him.

Flush with a landslide victory in 2010 that also blessed the former Gateway Computer CEO with a Republican-controlled senate and house, Snyder introduced a sweeping reform of Michigan’s broken tax code that flattened the business rate to 6 percent and closed special-interest loopholes, including a tax exemption for pension income (which existed in only two states).

But by freezing the individual income tax at 4.25 percent — rather than allowing it to drop to 3.9 percent as previously negotiated by Senate Republicans (in a rare victory over taxaholic Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm) — Snyder needlessly exposed himself to charges that he was handing out tax breaks to his business pals while balancing the budget on granny’s back.

Typical of his style, Snyder’s strategy was to please both Republicans and Democrats by balancing tax hikes (the income-tax surrender) with spending cuts (to the pensions jealously guarded by powerful public-employee unions). But cooperation with Democrats in Michigan — as in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin — is a pipe dream, and he got little in return for meeting unions halfway. By sacrificing boldness for the center, Snyder marooned himself without allies.

Pleased with his economic math, accountant-turned-pol Snyder ignored his own party’s appeals for political sanity. Republicans ultimately capitulated to their honeymooning GOP governor’s plan, but political insiders warned of the consequences.

“By asking lawmakers to impose new taxes on voters’ pensions while minimizing the inevitable confrontation with public-employee unions,” wrote Leon Drolet, head of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, in the Michigan View, “our new governor has invested too much of his political capital into the impossible — and not enough into confronting reality.”

Three years later, Snyder is getting a cold bath of reality: Democrats have made his “granny tax” to pay for “Big Business tax cuts” a centerpiece of their longshot campaign against his reelection. (Snyder holds an eight-point lead over opponent Mark Schauer, a former Democratic congressman, in recent polls.)

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Snyder’s adept management of the state’s budget has left a nearly $1 billion budget surplus — unthinkable just four years ago under Granholm’s fiscal chaos. But instead of further reducing tax rates or using the money to repair the state’s crumbling roads, Snyder is stuck fighting the tax-reform battle of three years ago.

Having made a hash of politics and running scared of the Democrats’ “candidate of the rich” label, he’s had to offer a strained olive branch to those making less than $60,000 a year, a new tax loophole called the homestead property-tax credit.

Huh?

The proposal, which restores a tax-refund loophole that Snyder had trimmed in his 2011 tax reform, has been mocked by Democrats as too little, too late while alienating Republicans, who are still smarting from the broken promise to reduce the individual rate to 3.9 percent. “I understand it,” GOP senator Jack Brandenburg says of Snyder’s proposed tax credit. “But go knock on a guy’s door and try to explain it.”

Snyder the Simplifier has become Governor Loophole. He could have trusted taxpayers with their own money. He could have lowered the tax rate for individuals as he did for business.

He could have listened to his party’s conservatives in the first place.

The #0 DeltaWing Racing Cars DeltaWing DWC13 driven by Andy Meyrick, Katherine Legge, Alexander Rossi and Gabby Chaves races during practice for the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway on Jan. 23, 2014, in Daytona Beach, Fla. (Jerry Markland/Getty Images)

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140301/AUTO03/303010019#ixzz2ukH0f1LzAsk driving ace Katherine Legge her favorite racing memory and she’ll tell you her first start at the Indy 500 … and her massive crash at Wisconsin’s Road America in 2006. Come again?

“My rear wing came off at and I instantly lost 1,000 pounds of down force on my car. I hit the wall at 180 mph,” she says about an incident immortalized on YouTube. “I still feel lucky to have walked away from that crash.”

Legge is one tough cookie.

A rare lioness among the lions of professional auto racing, the British-born Legge is one of America’s Big 3 female drivers along with NASCAR’s Danica Patrick and IndyCar veteran Simona De Silvestro. “As a woman you develop a very thick skin,” she told a room full of high school students at the girls-only Detroit International Academy this week, part of the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix’s promotional tour before the May 30-June 1 race weekend. Unlike many jockeys in the expensive world of motorsport, she rose from modest roots.

Her resume includes top drives in Europe, but America — where she got her first big break in ChampCar in 2006 — is her professional home. This year, the Indianapolis-based racer is behind the wheel of the radically-designed DeltaWing prototype car in the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship (which will be part of the Belle Isle race weekend). She sat down with me to talk about Danica, DeltaWing, and Detroit pickups.

HP: What do you like about the Detroit Grand Prix?

Legge: I like the atmosphere. It’s obviously very special to the fans. It’s definitely one of the bumpiest tracks.

HP: How is the Delta Wing different to drive?

Legge: To look at it’s very unusual, very futuristic, and ground-breaking. But to drive? It drives like any other race car, which is very strange. Before I got in it I called Andy Meyrick, my co-driver, and said: How do I drive this thing? Because you look at it with its little tires and you think, how is it going to turn?

HP: There are so few women drivers. You, Danica Patrick, and DiSimone De Silvestra are the best known female drivers in U.S. racing. Is there a sorority there? Are you in competition with each other?

Legge: No, there’s no competition. We get on fine, but we don’t stick together really because we’re all trying to forge our own careers. Maybe if we were in the same racing circuit we’d hang out more. But we’re not, so we don’t. It’s circumstances. We were in different series. Danica was in IndyCar while I was in ChampCar so it was a rival series. We’ve maybe said hi to each other three times in my life.

HP: When you were in Europe you raced an Audi A4 sedan …

Legge: It’s not really an Audi A4. It’s based on the Audi A4 but (European Touring Series cars are) the most phenomenal type of race car in terms of how much technology and resources go into it. It’s second only to Formula One in terms of how much money they spend. The amount of money is eye-opening how much Audi — and BMW and Mercedes — put into it. It’s the European version of NASCAR.

HP: What do you drive on the street?

Legge: I drive a truuuuck (effecting an American southern drawl). I’m an English redneck. I can get everything in my pickup truck, I just love it. I listen to country music sometimes, I have embraced the American way of living 110 percent.

HP: You came up through English racing, but you got your big break here in the U.S. How is America different as a racing culture?

Legge: It’s very different. When I came over here 10 years ago, European racing just wasn’t as open to having a woman driving as over here. Things have changed now. But I got my opportunity here because of people like Lynn St. James., Janet Guthrie, Sarah Fisher who had opened the door. It’s always been very different. But you think that Formula One races in places like the Far East where women aren’t even allowed to drive, so a lot of their money comes from those places as well, so it’s difficult politically for them even though they now have token female drivers. The world is not as developed as it is in America. You’ve got a lot more female CEOs and business owners, etc. and that doesn’t happen to any extent in some countries.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140301/AUTO03/303010019#ixzz2ukGeCoEL

You know the Subarus. The sensible Japanese clan of safe, reliable, all-wheel-drive vehicles like the Forester and Impreza that nature lovers drive through burbling streams for picturesque views of Lake Michigan. But like many perfectly stable families, Subaru has a wild child. Chrysler fathered the Viper. Chevy the Corvette. VW the Golf R. Subaru has the WRX STI.

This turbocharged, turf-gnawing, all-wheel-drive hellion with flashy wing bling is the terror of the weekend track crowd. I for one am sick of seeing STIs in the mirror of my dynamite, 330 horsepower, 8,000-rpm, straight-six E46 BMW M3 at Pontiac’s Waterford race track on public track days. They eat me alive. So when Subaru offered a new 2015 STI carnivore for a test-drive at California’s famed Laguna Seca racetrack, I jumped at the chance.

First, a briefing on Subaru’s family tree. Late last century, Subaru’s marketing team decided its granola brand needed some performance cred. The idea sprang from their heads like a pair of devil’s horns. Subie tackled the World Rally Championship, the most demanding sedan test in all racedom — and one that perfectly suited the brand’s AWD architecture. To win the WRC, the WRX was born.

Based on Subaru’s popular compact $19,000 Impreza AWD sedan, the base $27,000 WRX is plenty of sport sedan. Subie engineers outfitted the Impreza’s reliable four-cylinder, 148 horsepower BOXER engine with a turbo, turning up the wick to 268 horsepower. But for another 5 grand, the 2.5-liter STI is the real deal.

Fans from everywhere

This 305-horsepower band saw is the Tasmanian devil of sports sedans. Its flanks bulge with wheel flares. Its hood scoop gulps air for the hungry turbo intercooler within. Its huge functional rear wing dominates the rear end like a scorpion’s tail. The STI screams rally racer. It practically reeks with musk.

And it attracts motorheads from miles around.

At the staging lot for our California testing, STI-philes appeared from nowhere. “These test STIs have the short-throw gearboxes, don’t they?” said one fan swarming our vehicle. How did he know that?

Serious grip

The STI gains its cult status honestly. This car is epic.

It begins with the AWD system that vaulted the STI to three straight World Rally Championships from 1995-98 and first-in-class in the 2011-12 Nurburgring 24-hour. Subaru calls it Multi-Mode Vehicle Dynamics Control stability and traction control system. You can just call it serious grip. With electronic sensors constantly adjusting steering angle, throttle position, rpm, lateral-g, yaw, ABS and wheel speed, the STI corners on rails. No wonder my mere rear-wheel-drive M3 is on its lunch menu.

For the 2015 model, Subaru’s engineers have added Active Torque Vectoring, which applies brake pressure to the inside front wheel to facilitate more neutral cornering, thus erasing the inherent cornering push of AWD systems. The result is .98 g skid pad cornering that nearly matches the ferocious Porsche 911’s 1.0 g. With concentrated use of high-strength steel and structural reinforcement at the A pillars, the 2015 STI boasts a 40 percent increase in torsional rigidity over the last generation. That translates into less body roll than M3s and Porsche Caymans that cost $20,000 more.

Performance plus

On track, I could rotate the 3,444-pound sedan into Laguna Seca’s fast roller-coaster turns with nary a hint of front-end push. Only in the track’s slowest corner, the hairpin Turn 11, would the car push, a condition soon remedied by my size-15 right foot feeding all four wheels more power.

The best-in-class 305 horsepower (class? Only the VW Golf R is a worthy competitor) comes without compromise — look ma, no turbo lag — so that you can mash the pedal with abandon. Even turbocharged four-bangers lack low-end torque, however, so I navigated the track using only gears 2-4 in order to maximize rpms between 3,000 and the 6,700 redline. The STI was as happy as a puppy in a Purina bag. Only the aforementioned short-throw shifter disappointed as it often felt vague and rubbery, particularly in second-to-third gear shifts.

How capable is this heat-seeking missile? Pro instructors throw Laguna’s 1,400-pound Skip Barber Formula racers around Laguna in 1 minute, 41 seconds. Veteran sports car pro — and Subaru test jockey — Bob Bowman ticked off a 1.45 with the STI. After just a half-hour of driving, your club-racer scribe got down to a 1.48. That’s serious swag from a sedan.

I dwell on Laguna specs because you shouldn’t buy a car this capable unless you plan to explore its limits on track … after you’ve terrorized the neighborhood first, of course.

Rule Woodward’s stoplights with 5.1-second, 0-60 mph launches. Mock Detroit roads with a quick 13:1 turning ratio that transforms potholed asphalt into Olympic slaloms. Laugh at Old Man Winter with snow-shredding AWD and ice-defying ABS-tuned Brembo brakes.

‘A raptor’s stare’

Inside the STI’s office is the familiar Impreza layout with handy console control knobs and a dash-mounted cowl featuring — not a clock — but a STI-specific turbo-boost monitor. Wild thing, I think I love you. “The money goes into the oily bits,” says Subie communications chief Dominick Infante, explaining why the interior differs little from its much-cheaper sedan sibling.

The STI’s red leather trimmed Alcantara-fabric seats, however, are worth special notice — for what you don’t notice. In a car this violent I emerged from a day on the track — and subsequent 55-mile assault on twisty Carmel Valley Road — with no back or hip discomfort. Even fellow drivers who complained of loose dental fillings after riding the bronco’s stiffened springs complimented the seats.

Further enhancing driving comfort, the STI Limited package comes with a Harman Kardon stereo system, so you can crank up Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as you mercilessly descend on your prey. And the ’Ru entices unsuspecting rear seat passengers by expanding the rear door opening by 6 inches and interior leg room by 2 inches. Rear seat barf bags not included.

Ultimately, though, the STI is about its exterior.

I drove the STI “launch edition” — painted signature STI blue with gold-BBS wheels. Even without this garish wardrobe, the Subie’s Red Baron rear airfoil, hood scoop and narrow headlights — “designed to evoke a raptor’s stare,” to quote STI press materials — advertise the ’Ru as trouble. This is not a subtle car. No quiet, M3-like hood bulges. No artfully flared, Mercedes AMG-like nostrils. The STI comes in full war paint ready for battle.

If that’s your style, the STI is your car. On sale this spring, the Subaru family’s bad seed has accomplished its purpose by winning races — and winning over some of the most demanding car buyers in the business.

Detroit — At the height of his powers as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in October 1991, Representative John Dingell (D., Mich.) was feted by 800 Washington lobbyists — representing Morgan Stanley, AT&T, Merck, and more — who laid out $600,000 to honor the ruthless congressman nicknamed “Torquemada.” I was a young journalist in D.C., and the glitzy Washington Hyatt Regency event was called a “Tribute to John Dingell.” Any other town might have called it a shakedown.

On Monday the 88-year-old Dingell announced his retirement. His media and political allies celebrate him as a populist man of the middle, but the reality of who he is couldn’t be more different. Over his record 57 years in Congress, Dingell has been one of the key architects of centralizing regulatory power in Washington to the benefit of big-business lobbyists — and to the detriment of the little guy.

If you’re one of the thousands of coal miners who lost their jobs to EPA emissions edicts in recent years, or if you are one of the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance because of Obamacare, John Dingell deserves some of the thanks. His 1990 Clean Air Act, passed in defiance of Congress’s own environmental findings, laid the groundwork for today’s job-killing EPA power grabs. A longtime advocate of socialized medicine who introduced a nationalized-health-care bill every term that he was in Congress, Dingell was at Barack Obama’s left hand when the president signed the 2009 Affordable Care Act, the darling of Big Hospital and Big Pharma. The ACA has ripped through Americans’ health coverage like a tornado.

A decade after my first encounter with Dingell, I landed at the Detroit News and since then have frequently crossed his path. Also nicknamed “Big John” for his once-imposing 6′3″ frame (he has become stooped in later years, relying on a cane for support), he is a soft-spoken, engaging man with a quick wit. When it comes to federal power, however, he has been a single-minded bully.

From emissions mandates to the mother of all regulations, Obamacare, Washington’s powerbrokers now rule vast swaths of America’s economy thought unimaginable when Dingell took office in 1955. In 1990 he led revision of the federal Clean Act At, which brought new controls over coal-burning utilities in the name of reducing acid rain. The legislation defied the scientific conclusions of Congress’s own ten-year National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) study, which found that claims of lake acidification were overblown and that the proposed regulations to reduce it were excessive.

Ignored by Dingell’s committee and his champions in the press corps, the study was shelved, and the expensive regulations passed anyway. Ironically, Dingell has lately lamented the EPA’s use of the same Clean Air Act to unilaterally regulate carbon dioxide, a measure that comes at enormous expense to his backyard auto industry. But the seeds were planted by Dingell himself, as were the roots of today’s massive lobbying apparatus.

Many of those lobbyists come from Dingell’s own staff, part of the permanent government of influence peddlers who then return to influence him. Dingell’s legend was that he regulated “anything that moves, burns, or is sold.” And so, at the Dingell tribute in 1991, Merck bought a table for $7,500 because few could do more than Big John to destroy Big Pharma.

“The pashas of the Ottoman Empire protected their subjects in return for the right to claim all that they owned,” wrote Paul Gigot in the Wall Street Journal in 1991. “A true congressional pasha doesn’t need to enrich himself, since he never faces a competitive election. Instead he has his favorite charities. Mr. Dingell’s ‘tribute’ was a fund-raising benefit for the Center for National Policy,” a Democratic think tank.

Washington power and gerrymandered districts have given rise to congressional dynasties. Dingell succeeded his father and will likely be succeeded by his wife, Debbie, whom Dingell met when she was, yes, a GM lobbyist.

There is no better example of Washington’s centralization of power than the Affordable Care Act, perhaps Dingell’s most enduring legacy. President Obama honored the socialized-health-care advocate with a prominent role in his Oval Office signing of Obamacare, a bill written by the health industry’s biggest players. The ACA has wreaked havoc in Dingell’s home state, costing thousands of jobs at Stryker, a medical-device maker, forcing a move toward part-time workforces in venues as diverse as fast food and city governments, and forcing the cancellation of tens of thousands of insurance policies. “It’s affordable, quality health insurance made available to everyone,” Dingell wrote in a recent constituent e-mail even as the non-partisan Office of the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has concluded that premiums will increase for two-thirds of American small businesses.

A credulous Detroit Free Press reported this week that Dingell was stepping down because of his frustration with Washington partisanship. “The words ‘compromise’ and ‘conciliation’ should not be considered dirty words in Washington,” Dingell says. Yet his precious Obamacare was rammed through on a straight partisan vote. It’s a fitting Washington legacy for a self-declared populist dealmaker who has overseen a Washington that is more partisan and more tilted to special interests than ever.

Chevrolet unveiled the 2014 Chevrolet SS on Thursday that will pace the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Daytona 500 on Sunday at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Harold Hinson / Chevy Racing)

This Sunday, a Chevy SS pace car will lead an all-Chevy SS front row to the green flag for the start of the 56th running of the Daytona 500.

The Chevy what?

If the Corvette was the 2014 North American Car of the Year then the four-door SS was the Stealth Car of the Year. This mild-styled wild child of Chevy’s product lineup hides its true nature with a typically understated Chevrolet grille. But behind that inscrutable face are jaws of steel — the same 6.2-liter stump-puller that powered the previous generation, C6 Corvette.

Ummmm, Dad, can I have the keys to the family sedan?

Eager to publicize its muscle-bound sport sedan, Chevy has made the SS its NASCAR brand (replacing the Impala). It’s a good fit. Despite general outward appearances — well, the grille designs are similar — NASCARs share little with the production cars on which they are based. Not body panels. Not engines. Not steering wheels. Heck, even the headlights aren’t real. They’re decals (sorry to break it to you, kids. And Santa Claus isn’t real either). NASCAR is a strict spec series with standardized V8 engines and body templates.

But at least the Chevy SS and NASCAR SS share the same basic architecture. Both are rear-wheel drive. Both use push-rod engines technology. Both engines are based on a Chevy small block engine. The same can’t be said for the NASCAR Ford and Toyota entries. Ever seen a rear-wheel drive Camry V8?

When front-row qualifiers Mark Truex, Jr. and pole-sitter Austin Dillon finish their 500 miles around Daytona’s tri-oval Sunday, their SS steeds will go right into the trailer. But that SS pace car? She’s street legal and good for another 350 miles on a full tank of gas.

Or less, depending on how heavy your right foot is. Don’t let the wrapping fool you. This milk carton is spiked with moonshine.

Idling at the curb, the 2014 Chevy SS I test drove recently wouldn’t turn a head. Unlike the last Impala-based SS that Chevy produced in 1996, the 2014 model gets its own look. Pity the designers didn’t do more with the opportunity. Developed by GM’s Australian brand, Holden — the same mad geniuses that brought us the late, great Pontiac G8 sedan — the car’s lines are unremarkable and might be mistaken for a Malibu. Only the shark gills behind the car’s front fenders — and the chrome tipped dual exhaust — hint at the beast within.

Maybe that’s the way Chevy wants it. Stealthy. A ’Vette in sheep’s clothing.

Turn the key, and the car’s cover is blown. The snarl will raise goosebumps on your back. Hair will sprout from your forearms. Your eyes will glow red. This family carriage is pulled by 415 crazed horses capable of 415 pound feet of torque.

Nail the throttle and you’ll wake the dead. Zero-60 goes by in a just 4.5 seconds. The car’s Brobdingnagian Brembo brakes — concealed behind forged, 19-inch aluminum wheels — will bring the rocket back to earth before the local fuzz can figure out where that thunderclap came from.

What, is there a sports car behind the big sedan?

The stealthiness extends to the SS’s quiet, leather interior where you can listen to Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 even as you trail sonic booms. GM’s capable MyLink system is voice-activated so you can call your business associate and tell him you’ll pick him up at the airport in the four-door sedan … um, the Malibu-like car … the — aw, heck: he’ll know it when you rev the engine.

Muscle-car shoppers will note the Dodge Charger SRT8 comes with a bigger, 6.4-liter, 470 horsepower power plant. But the SS sacrifices brute power for surprising nimbleness. It eases effortlessly through back-road switchbacks, its power always on tap. Like its Corvette cousin, it benefits from perfect 50-50 weight balance and its 3,900-pound girth is a full 400 pounds lighter than the Charger. The result? The SS’s eye-popping .95 lateral G’s in a Car & Driver road test blows away not just the Charger but also the Audi A6 and BMW M5.

All this performance comes wrapped in a $45,770 base price — one more pleasant SS surprise. No leather markups. No thousand-dollar, accessory add-ons. Projecting SS sales of 3,000 units a year, GM hopes the halo super sedan brings spectators to Chevy showrooms after the SS race car brings shock and awe to the track.