In A World Of Unleaded Regular, This One Is Premium
It isn’t often that a car in our fleet is referred to as brilliant. Nor is it often that we sing the praises of one that is deemed “entry-level”, featuring an automatic tranny, front-wheel drive, and merely a four-cylinder engine. But the A3 brings out the best in all of these descriptions. Read more…
Hoping To Raid The Midsize Truck Market
“Sure thing, drop it off, gotta go!” I exclaim to the Mitsubishi PR guy as quickly as I can while trying to hammer out the final details of an important business meeting as I am walking into it with two colleagues.
“What was that all about?” one colleague inquires.
“We get a Mitsu Raider for the weekend, so if we…” Read more…
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.
