The King Of Crossover Comfort
We like luxury crossovers. They ride nice, handle better than their big brothers, pack all the latest luxury goodies and can transport the whole clan through Mother Nature’s worst all the way to grandma’s house. Lexus likes luxury crossovers too. Mostly because they invented the segment with the 1998 RX 300 and have since infiltrated American suburbia with more than a million of them. But maintaining volume like that gets harder by the day and the RX has had to fend off increasingly tough competition in recent years, so Lexus set out to reset the bar with their thoroughly re-engineered 2010 model. Does the Crossover King still sit on the throne or do those ambitious new members of the court from Audi, Cadillac and BMW have a chance at claiming the big seat? Without a proper comparison test we can only answer that question with speculation, but we can tell you the new RX is ready to defend its title. Read more…
Debunking the Diesel Stereotype
Diesels have intrigued me from the time I was old enough to make basic automotive observations. Much to my delight, on family road trips my parent’s diesel 1978 Olds Custom Cruiser would fill up alongside the big-rig trucks. This fascination was bolstered by an uncle who owned a yellow diesel Rabbit in the ’80s followed by a diesel Ford Tempo, complete with the secondary battery mounted in the trunk. When it came time to find a light duty long distance tow vehicle I purchased a ’92 Chevrolet C2500 Silverado with a 6.5L turbo diesel. For all of their actual and perceived faults, each of these vehicles were compelling in some significant way. And yet diesels remain merely a niche in America’s automotive market. What is the reason for this? Is this simply due to undeserved stereotypes that won’t die, or a deficiency in the vehicles themselves? Read more…
More Power Never Hurts, Except For When It Does
We love the Mazda3. In 5-door or sedan form, with an automatic or a manual, it has been among our favorite small cars since its debut as a 2004 model. No surprise then, when Mazda added another 100 hp and almost doubled the torque in the MazdaSpeed3 model we were big fans of their hot hatch. And even though they tried to ruin the latest 3’s front end by duplicating the styling of a Baleen Whale, there’s still no denying it’s a winner. So we expected our latest go in the second-gen MazdaSpeed3 to result in a review that read like a love letter to Mazda. Read more…
Hyundai Shakes Up The Midsize Sedan Segment With Style
Shoppers weren’t kind to Hyundai’s Sonata in 2009. After convincing almost 150,000 people to pick one up in 2007, Hyundai saw sales drop to 120k last year. Sure, the new car market sank like Lindsay Lohan’s career during the worldwide meltdown but you must remember through it all Hyundai actually increased its sales and set a company record in 2009. Of course, if you’re a regular reader you’re enlightened enough to know the previous Sonata was about as competitive as Tiger Woods post-scandal. If you stumbled onto the site thanks to our friends at Google allow us to inform you. The Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima, Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Malibu rule the mid-size sedan segment and sell a bazillion cars annually because they are all varying levels of good. The Sonata, even after some substantial improvements in ’09, just couldn’t compete at the same level. But Hyundai has set a course for automotive world domination, and after driving their reborn 2011 Sonata, we don’t expect them to be caught with an uncompetitive product again. Read more…
This Is How You Make A Sports Sedan Better!
Wagons are not the most popular body style in these United States of America. But there was a time when station wagons as large as barges and covered in an acre of faux wood ruled the highways. They were powered by V8s and used a body-on-frame, which meant that you could haul the family, their stuff, and tow a trailer to grandmother’s house simultaneously. That all changed when Chrysler introduced the world to the minivan in 1984. Ever since, car designers’ pens rarely draw the formidable 2-box shape of the station wagon. Stare as one might at the ink blots that are the tall-roofed SUVs and jellybean-shaped crossovers, these are not true wagons. But just as all hope was seemingly gone, Cadillac of all marquees has come to the rescue and delivered us a long roofed version of the popular CTS. Is it all we could hope for and more?
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Traversing the Chasm Between Station Wagon and Suburban.
As Senior Editor Muxlow readied himself to depart with my Olds Custom Cruiser wagon, I gently reminded his infant son that ‘this is not your father’s Oldsmobile’ just to be sure I would actually get it back. The logistics of delivering a test vehicle often require a vehicle swap among editors, so when Muxlow dropped off a Red Jewel tintcoat (think maroon) 2010 Chevrolet Traverse LTZ, I offered up the trusty wagon in trade. Considering these two family vehicles are separated by nineteen model years, the Chevrolet Traverse had me asking the question, “How did we get here?”. The Traverse is a V6-powered, front or all-wheel drive crossover with uni-body construction. Isn’t this configuration the combination of the worst of the car and truck worlds? Surely a vehicle with the construction of a car and the high center of gravity of a truck is a recipe for mediocrity. But to fully understand the answer to this question we must back up a few years. Read more…
This Is The ML You Want
Yeah that ML550 and its 382 hp V8 may be calling your name from across the showroom, but we urge you to resist. There’s a better ML tucked over in the corner that we think most people will fall for after a single test drive—even though it’s wearing badges that few consumers recognize. To tell you the truth, we wouldn’t have a clue what BlueTEC meant either if we didn’t spend our days reading press releases. But based on our experience with the new-for-2009 powertrain, all you really need to know is anything wearing BlueTEC badges is powered by Mercedes’ best diesel engine ever. And considering the praise we heaped on this engine’s predecessor in our 2006 review of the E320 CDI sedan, that’s saying something. Read more…
Bringing Value and Efficiency to Midsize Crossovers
Five years ago we reviewed the first-gen Equinox and had mostly good things to report about Chevy’s first crossover. Sure we noted a few ergonomic foibles and suggested that something closer to 250hp would earn more praise than we were willing to lavish on the 185hp mill in all Equinoxs at the time. But the general consensus around here was the Equinox was a nicely sized people mover that looked good and topped out around $30k. That market has proved a popular place among automakers since almost every one of them now offers a vehicle that we could sum up the same way. And as they were introduced they all put the Bow Tie offering a little further behind the curve. But at the 2009 NAIAS GM decided it wanted to lead the crossover pack instead of follow and debuted the 2010 Equinox with the right hardware to get it done. A few months later GMC dropped in as a player in the segment with its mechanically identical Terrain. Sure, the numbers are impressive, but how do they drive? We spent time in several versions to find out. Read more…
A Minor Refresh Makes A Major Difference
The movers and shakers inside Ford had a great idea once upon a time ago. They decided they were going to make a family sedan that was sporty. What could go wrong? They had experience fashioning family sedans such as the Taurus, and sports cars like the Mustang. Surely they could graft the two together. After all, they were starting out with a Mazda6, an astoundingly thrilling car to drive considering it is propelled via the front-wheels. Oh sure, the result was a nice car. They made it bigger so you could stretch out. They made the suspension softer so the bumps wouldn’t fling the contact lenses from your eyes. And they made it heavier by adding fluffy foamy stuff so you can’t hear the engine noises. They made it boring…
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Let The Good Times Roll
My second car was a 1994 Pontiac Firebird Formula with T-Tops and a lumbering LT1 small-block with enough torque to bring a smile to my face anytime I pulled away from a stop. Of course the steering was lifeless, the handling was nonexistent and the brake pedal felt like an air mattress foot pump. But none of that mattered because it looked good and went fast and it, along with its Chevy Camaro twin, hailed from the glory days of the Muscle Car. Both Living Legends to a young male with a horsepower fetish. So I was as sad as anyone when the F-Body was retired after 2002. But practically as soon as the last car rolled off the assembly line fans started to assume we’d see a new Mustang competitor soon. Several years passed until GM, keen to prove it was in the midst of a design renaissance, rolled a new Camaro concept onto the stage at the 2006 NAIAS. Personally I might have preferred a reborn Firebird, but this extroverted modern muscle car looks so retro right I couldn’t wait to get my hands on one. And now I have—two actually. Read more…
