Automotive Trends

The Best F-150 Ever Isn’t Even A Ford

    That’s right. The best F-150 you can buy wears a Lincoln badge, and, for some reason, is called the Mark LT. Actually, the Lincoln folks won’t like that statement, but we call ‘em as we see ‘em here. If it looks like an F-150, sounds like an F-150 and drives like an F-150, then logic would dictate it must be Ford’s bread-and-butter pickup. But logic doesn’t always find a home in the automobile business, and that’s why Lincoln can add a little chrome—ok, a lot of chrome—to an F-150, and charge a premium for it. Neglecting the fact that you and I both know this is little more than a trim level on the work-a-day F-150, how did Lincoln’s second attempt to crack the luxury truck code turnout? Read on for that answer. Read more…

      Welcome back, all you journalism fans. It’s time for the lightning round in America’s hot new game show, “How to Review a Mercury.”
     For the first question, pick how you’d describe the 2006 Mercury Milan.
     Choice A: “It’s the best car Mercury’s made in years.”
     Choice B: “It’s an overpriced Ford Fusion.”
     Choice C: “Is Mercury still around?” Read more…

Who Needs A V6?

    The Passat used to be Volkswagen’s entry in the affordable family sedan market, but the past few years have seen the once affordable German sedan drift upwards until the current V6, and especially the former W8, landed firmly in entry-level luxury sedan territory. Add in the luxo-liner Phaeton and the plusher-than-ever Jetta and it looks like VW has forsaken its history as a builder of affordable transportation. Read more…

     For a long time, there was nothing grand about Suzuki’s Grand Vitara.
     This small, ugly vehicle was the red-headed stepchild of SUVs, constantly getting one-upped by the Ford Escape, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Jeep Liberty and other great competitors. The only good reason to buy it was the price, and even that was coming under attack as competition among mini-SUVs reached a white-hot frenzy, translating into dirt-cheap prices for vehicles that were much better than this one. Read more…

The Fusion Is Good, Are The Milan and Zephyr Better?

     We have driven the Ford Fusion and formed a generally positive opinion about its fresh styling, 6-speed automatic and surprisingly good road manners. It’s a competitive car at its price point and they’ve been selling well-a rare piece of good news at Ford lately. Because we liked the base model so much, we skeptically asked ourselves why people would want to pay more for the Mercury or Lincoln version of the same car. We ordered up a sample of each and gave each car a week to convince us why it’s worth the premium. Read more…

     Isuzu is bound to be leaving America soon.
     How else could you explain the company’s totally unimaginative, unoriginal lineup of trucks and SUVs? It’s as if everyone at Isuzu threw up their arms and said, “Enough already! We give up! Let’s just forget about this ‘create new cars’ thing and let General Motors do all our work.” Read more…

The Chevrolet Camaro concept debutes at the 2006 NAIAS.

Har(d)ley-A-Davidson F-150

    There is a hitch about special-edition vehicles: They have to keep getting more special or the latest attempt risks being showed up by an earlier version. This commonsense lesson is taught on the first day of Special-Edition Vehicles 101, but Ford must have been asleep in the back row, or at the very least, sketching GTs instead of notes. All of this is relevant because it explains our disappointment with the 2006 Harley-Davidson F-150. In short, we’d rather have a pre-owned 2003 edition in our garage than this latest “greatest” version. Let us explain. Read more…

Bad Badging

    The Sunburst Orange Chevy Cobalt in our fleet was wearing the two most revered letters in GM performance history, but we weren’t fooled. You see, Chevrolet actually offers two Cobalt SSs and one of them is worthy of the legendary designation and the other is little more than an appearance package. The subject of this review is the poseur. It may have SS badges glued to an attractive coupe body, but this was no Super Sport. Read more…