Automotive Trends

2003 Chevrolet Cheyenne concept at the 2003 NAIAS.

2004 Jaguar XJ at the 2004 NAIAS.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

      There’s something magical about listening to Hank Williams when you’re driving a pickup truck. It’s like the two were meant to be together. They just feel right.
     And when you’re driving a Nissan Titan, listening to Hank Williams via satellite radio feels just as fitting. Hank’s twang and country drawl inspire the feelings of good-ol’-boy America, but you know there’s something different about the delivery — something high-tech, fresh and foreign. Read more…

Making It Even Easier To Hear That Sound

    When we reviewed the Mustang coupe this past summer, we told you one of its best features was “that sound”. More specifically, the unabashed noise that pours from the stainless steel dual exhaust every time you step on it, and makes you question aloud how this thing could not be breaking every noise law in the book. It’s the sound of power. And now that we have driven the drop-top ‘Stang, we can report one thing with utter certainty: power has never sounded better. It’s true, our convertible tester’s voice was slightly less brazen than our pre-production coupe’s, but its V8 answered plenty loud and you can be assured that when cruising town on a perfect summer night there’ll be a lot of eyes on you. And it’s in that same scenario that you’ll notice something else too; the new Mustang convertible is pretty good. Read more…

Some Important Products Blow Into The Windy City

   Below we’ve broken down what made news in the Windy City and why. Read more…

     There’s a renaissance going on at Nissan.
     After teetering on the brink of obliteration in the late 1990s, the company is coming back in a big way with amazing cars like the 350Z and impressive trucks like the Titan and Armada. The change couldn’t have been more dramatic.
     And now the turnaround is showing more than ever in a variation on Nissan’s venerable, bread-and-butter Altima, a four-door sedan that has played second fiddle for years to the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. Read more…

2004 Ford Shelby Cobra concept at the 2004 NAIAS.

    It’s generally not an ideal practice for any party when a journalist’s first exposure to a new vehicle is a drive in the hot-rodded, top-of-the-line model, because all of the lesser models will appear, well, lesser. Yet, this is exactly the scenario we found ourselves in with regards to Audi’s extensively revised A4 lineup. Our first test car was a fully optioned S4 with a sticker north of $55k. As you might expect, we used adjectives like, “hot” “gorgeous” and “astounding” to describe its V8, 18” rubber, and Recaro seats. So it surprised us as much as it will you, to report that those same praises kept creeping into our conversations during our week with the “base” A4 2.0T. It might have been the slick 6-speed, or the stunning Quartz Gray Metallic sheetmetal. Whatever it was, we liked it. A lot. Read more…

      When you test drive a new car every week, sometimes you set yourself up for heartbreak — like when you trade the keys to a Porsche for the keys to a cheap economy car.
     That hurts. Read more…

The (Rich) People’s Car

     Who would have ever thought that in the same showroom as the iconic, smiling, affordable Beetle, would someday sit a behemoth luxury sedan casting a shadow of nearly 204 inches? And not only is this land yacht uncharacteristically big, it’s expensive too. Before the 2004 model year, a check in either of those two categories would disqualify a vehicle from wearing the Volkswagen badge flat out. But when the silk sheet dropped off the first Phaeton, all long-held stereotypes of what Volkswagens were, dropped with it. The Phaeton was charged with taking VW upscale, and way up scale, at that. To that end, it could be called a success. Volkswagen now offers a lineup that spans from $20k Golfs to $100k Phaetons. Unfortunately, for Volkswagen, it turns out nobody wants a six-figure car that shares a badge with Herbie. Actually, that’s not entirely true, they did sell 64 last month. But a report on subconscious buying habits, this is not. We’re all about the iron here. To that end, we loaned a Phaeton V8 for a week to see for ourselves where it ranks on the luxury sedan scale. Read more…