I ended up with a turbo 3 in my driveway last year because I wanted a nice, smaller car. The closest competition to the 3 is the upper-trim midsize sedans, as they offer similar levels of luxury and performance to the 3, while not being as aggressive as the sport compacts are. A fancy Accord was the runner-up to the 3 in my search, because I didn't need the extra rear legroom and trunk space that the Accord offered enough to spend the extra $5,000. The infotainment works a lot better if you live in CarPlay or Android Auto. When your phone is connected, the voice control button on the steering wheel maps to your phone's voice assistant. No need to fight the scroll wheel when you can just use Google voice search, or your phone to punch in a destination. The shortcut buttons make it easy to hop in and out of nav and audio, though I still wish there was a touchscreen for panning around the map. The two big pain points are that the seats took a year to break in, and the combination of AWD and the turbo murders the range. I can go 200 miles in the city, and 300 miles on the highway before I have to stop for gas. I think I'll end up keeping the 3 for a while, because I'd have to spend a lot more money to get something truly better. ... View more

If we're throwing tuners into the mix, the EA888 in the GTI can go to 300 HP with a call to APR. But then you'd have to live with a Mk8 GTI, which has had all the money taken out of the interior, whereas Honda put money into the interior of this new Civic. ... View more

For the first time in a long time, I can say that the Americans are doing a big luxury car better than anyone else in the world. Took us long enough to get our act together after watching the Germans, the Japanese, and the Koreans beat us at this game over the last 30 years. The Model S, while on a decade-old platform, has a powertrain that will match a Bugatti Chiron step-for-step to 100 MPH. The Lucid Air is a modern take on the Lincoln Continental. The German options feel like they're too married to what a car was and not taking full advantage of the packaging benefits of an EV. At the same time the Germans have lost sight of what makes an interior good to live with, as their immediate response to Tesla devouring their customer base has been to cram their cars with last-gen screens and fake buttons. ... View more

Engineering was able to convince marketing that they wouldn't be able to hit certain range numbers without the car looking like an egg for aero reasons. ... View more

Those fender flares look like the AliExpress specials guys stick onto their F-150s to pretend they have Raptors. ... View more

I've found the evolution of the CUV into the EV era interesting. The current electric CUV shape is an optimization for consumer preferences, aerodynamics, and current packaging constraints around EV platforms. (For an example of the last point, look at the Polestar 2, which looks like a lifted sedan in the same way that the D3 Lincoln MKS did.) But the basic shape you get from this optimization just looks wrong. So automakers have to try all sorts of visual tricks to make a more visually appealing vehicle, similar to how a smartphone does loads of post-processing to get a good-looking image out of a tiny sensor. I think the most successful automakers so far at these tricks have been Hyundai and Kia with the Ioniq 5 and EV6 respectively. ... View more

I do enjoy that my Mazda is stubbornly Japanese. Heck, I'd say that the Soichiro Honda spirit of "to hell with everyone else, we're gonna do it our way" is more present in modern Mazda than it is in modern Honda. The Japanese heritage is still present in Lexus as well, though it's less pronounced in their very American best-sellers, the ES, NX, and RX. ... View more

It usually takes time for us to appreciate such vehicles. I smile now when I see a modified first-gen Forester or CR-V around in a way that I didn't 15-20 years ago when they were incredibly commonplace. ... View more

The issue I see with targeting Lexus is that Lexus customers are more loyal to Lexus than any German car customer is to their brand. The reliability you noted is the big reason why. Genesis would also have to deliver a sales and service experience in the neighborhood of Lexus, which is difficult when a Genesis customer would have to share the waiting room with a 2013 Sonata owner waiting on a new engine, and the Genesis salesperson is used to selling Tucsons and Elantras. ... View more

The last-gen 3.3TT V6 in the G70 I test drove last year made that car move. The added weight of the GV70, coupled with Hyundai not using as fancy metals as the Germans to cut costs, must dull the responsiveness of the new 3.5TT V6 in the GV70 you drove. While Hyundai have made good-looking cars for the last decade, there's something special with these new Genesis cars and SUVs. For example, I am a person commenting on a car review on the internet, and thus wouldn't be caught dead in something like a BMW X5 or Mercedes-Benz GLE. I saw a Genesis GV80 in the parking lot after a walk this month, and I could see myself in one of those. ... View more

I know this is a SEMA build so quick and dirty is the name of the game, but man is that Mach-E interior a bummer here. ... View more

The big question that looms over the C8 Z06 is reliability. The Voodoo in the Shelby GT350R drinks oil like I drink water, and I don't think Corvette owners would like the prospect of Ferrari-like engine out and rebuild services. If anyone can build a reliable flat-plane crank motor for the street, it'll be General Motors, the kings of the V8, but we'll have to wait a few years to find out the answer. ... View more

Because BMW will slap an M badge on vehicles that are slower than a Honda Civic today, you've gotta go with the loud, exclusive colors on a full M car to let people you know that you have a full M car. I'd go with an AMG E63 in this class, because it celebrates the experience of the internal combustion engine in a way that this M5 doesn't seem to. Celebrating the experience of the ICE is key, because we may be in the twilight of the ICE, and the experience of the ICE is one advantage it has over an EV like the Tesla Model S Plaid. The AMG E63 being only an 11-second car is a very solvable problem. ... View more

The Z06 looks better than the stock car, but I can't tell if that's due to the wider stance, the angle of the picture, or the wheels, which are a massive improvement over the current factory C8 wheel options. ... View more

"'We build these cars for our discerning customers in the United States,' a VW chief operating officer said" TRANSLATION: "We build fat cars for fat Americans." ... View more

FWIW I don't think Toyota is especially motivated to win conquest sales from the Big 3. The Tundra has sold a steady 100K units per year to Toyota Guys since the Great Recession, and Toyota doesn't need the Tundra to pay the bills like the Big 3 need their trucks to do so. ... View more

Funnily enough, Infiniti's business model today is leasing their cars out for mainstream prices. Nissan is too broke to properly refresh Infiniti's lineup, and Infiniti hasn't figured out how to remix what's left in the fridge to make something good like Dodge has, so this is what Infiniti has to make do with. It's successful enough as a survival strategy judging by the number of Q50s and QX60s I see on the road now. But "the cheapest luxury car" is a tenuous position when the Germans are racing to the bottom, and mainstream brands are making more luxurious vehicles today. ... View more

The Blackwood and the Mark LT were the right idea, but under the wrong brand. It turned out that the market for this vehicle refused to step inside a Lincoln dealership. ... View more

I sympathize with all the Subaru people I know who are pissed at this new WRX. They wished for a Crosstrek WRX, and somewhere a monkey's paw curled. The WRX used to punch above its weight, challenging Audi S4s and Nissan 350Zs. This new WRX is slower than a 20-year old WRX. The Recaros and the adaptive dampers are locked to the CVT, which just seems insulting. ... View more

What, Exclusive First Drives that are more tightly supervised by the automaker than your average first drive event, and that feature more commentary on watches than criticism of the car aren't enough for you? /s I thought for a split-second that cars could mount a comeback with this electric revolution, given that efficiency is at a premium, and electric SUVs are oddly proportioned, sexless things. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case. But hey, if Steely Dan can experience a renaissance among young listeners today, the car can do the same in a generation or two. ... View more

It still amazes me that the Corvette team was able to deliver a car that accurately benchmarks a Ferrari 458 for the price of a BMW M340i. ... View more

My inner tinfoil hat suspects that Porsche quietly funds the alt-Porsches (Magnus Walker's stuff, the Safari 911s) to distract from the fact that Porsche Guys are now the same as Corvette Guys, but of a different social milieu. An entry-level Porsche sports car would help Porsche from being entrapped by rich bores. I was watching Jason Cammisa's lovely video on the 924 yesterday, and the thing that stuck out to me the most was how cheap those cars were even adjusted for inflation. The modern equivalent, the 718 cars, are not cheap. I could tolerate a Porsche that sounds like a Subaru, with about as much equipment as a Toyota Corolla, for the price of a Mustang GT, but not at the price of a C8 Corvette. ... View more

That decision reeks of cost-cutting. I'd rather go for a Mk7 GTI, which you can still buy new, and lean on the extensive VW aftermarket to close the gap between a Mk7 and a Mk8 GTI from the factory. ... View more

Expectations are a reason why a Mk7.5 GTI is not in my driveway currently. I thought about buying a new GTI this year because I could smell the cost-cutting in the Mk8 Golf from across the ocean, the GTI comes highly recommended, and I figured by now VW has ironed out all the bugs on that platform. Yet the GTI did not live up to expectations. The GTI just felt like a nice, faultless car that would acquit itself well on a good road, not the 4-door sports car I was expecting it to feel like. Between that, and the fact that you have to have a sunroof - the Achilles heel of the Mk7 Golf - if you want the nice interior, I crossed the GTI off my list. ... View more

Now is a great time to trade in your vehicle, but only if you have a good idea of what to trade it in for. While this tip won't help the LW, the new car market is much friendlier than the new light truck market. The Honda dealer offered me an Accord at invoice, and I bought a Mazda 3 Turbo for $4K off MSRP. ... View more

How was the noise and vibration from the engine? I've heard that the new Toyota 2.5, while a marvel of efficiency, is a bit Metal Machine Music when you ask for power. Adding proper power in the form of a mini-amp + DSP, such as a Kicker KEY, can really wake up these poor stock stereos for people who don't want to pay the luxury brand tax for a decent stereo. My Optima went from sound quality that was worse than those earbuds Apple used to pack in with iPods, to passable when I added more power for the stock speakers. ... View more

The basic idea of a Caterham, which is to be a sports car so committed to the idea of light weight that it's miserable to drive every day, is one that won't survive the electric revolution. EVs make sense for most cars, such as your average 4-cylinder Chevy or Kia, but not this type of car. It's why I'm of a mind to buy a new 86 or Miata in the next decade. ... View more

The Telluride with its panache is the one vehicle that would make me think twice about taking the Toyota pill in an otherwise dreary segment. The 6-cylinder Hyundai/Kia engines have also been pretty reliable, unlike the 4-cylinders. I also think the Kia dealers - which are the one real demerit against the Telluride - have finally stopped marking up Tellurides too. ... View more

C4s are cheap because the C4 was a transitional car that doesn't get any respect. The C5 at least has the LS motor, and road-racing pedigree even if every conversation about a C5 begins with "sure, the interior's terrible." And the Miata has 30 years of the automotive world singing its praises, i.e. Miata Is Always The Answer. Because of this, and C4 sellers not having the brain damage that C5 sellers have, you can regularly get a nice 1989+ C4 for under $10K. ... View more

I think what got enthusiasts hopping mad about the Mk5 Supra wasn't just that Toyota, an automaker as large as General Motors and Volkswagen, decided to outsource the development of their most iconic sports car. It was who Toyota outsourced that work to: BMW. I can't think of two traditional automakers whose core values are more diametrically opposed than BMW and Toyota. If the Mk5 Supra had been based on say, Mazda's new RWD platform and inline-6 that Toyota is likely throwing some money behind, enthusiasts would have been far more accepting of the new Supra like they are of the 86. ... View more

I get the Ranger being bigger today, as it's in a fundamentally different size class. Still, that size class sucks. There's not enough interior room to be useful for things like child seats, but just big enough to be unwieldy to park. Something I've noticed is that heavy-duty trucks have become much taller in just one generation. Some new HD trucks with their factory 4x4 packages are too tall to tow a fifth-wheel trailer, which is the raison d'etre of an HD truck. ... View more

I don't think GM would've done anything better with the Bolt money if they didn't have anything to spend it on, because the story of GM for the last 40 years is a company that fails to make the most out of their resources. The Bolt would've failed on the market if it had a regular engine. It looked like a dorky European mini-MPV, it was smaller than even a VW Golf which is explicitly designed with the size constraints of European city centres in mind, and the interior, especially the seats, was a classic example of GM cost-cutting. What modern GM shows us is that a car is more than its powertrain and chassis. If that's all that mattered (which according to Car & Driver that is all that matters) everyone would be driving around in Camaros instead of Mustangs and Challengers when in reality, the opposite is true. ... View more

The competition the Golf R really needs is a Civic Type R with an Acura badge that doesn't look like a gamer laptop on 4 wheels. I'd be far more bullish about the new Golf R if Audi hadn't vetoed the RS3's very special 5-cylinder engine from going into the Golf R. The new Golf R is pushing $45K, which is very close to a TTV6 Genesis G70, or a Model 3 Long Range. Both of those cars don't have the baggage that the Mustang GT or Camaro SS have (all the Golf R owners I've known vetoed those cars from the start), and are something more than the incremental progress the Mk8 R seems to represent over the Mk7 R. ... View more

There may be bigger gaps in price, but I don't think there's a bigger gap in quality in any showroom than the one between this $100,000+ Grand Wagoneer, and a $22,000 Jeep Compass. ... View more

I understand how you've arrived at this point with your old 911 as to everything there is a season. The season of the Porsche is over for you, but you still have to be its caretaker as it will kickstart a new one in your son's life. Unfortunately I have a feeling the new buyer of your 911, if that's the path your son chooses, won't drive the hell out of it like you did. Now that 911s are worth real money, they don't get driven because "muh value." To get a great new 911, i.e. a GT3, you have to establish a relationship with your dealer, which is the most nauseating thing to me. It's sad as 911s especially were meant to be driven, not a part of your investment portfolio, or a discussion topic to namedrop when you have friends over. ... View more

I could be sold on the idea of an electric convertible, even if part of the point of a convertible is to better hear the engine. Sometimes you don't want to draw attention to yourself. But this isn't it. This looks like the European T-Roc SUV convertible, which isn't good-looking to begin with, and it's saddled with those ugly EV wheels that the Germans insist putting on their EVs. ... View more

The $60K starting price for a V8 Grand Cherokee L is what popped out to me. IIRC that's $15-$20K more than what the V8 starts at today. $60K is also where the Genesis GV80 and Lincoln Aviator live, and those are seriously impressive SUVs. I think this upmarket push will work because Chrysler can build legitimately nice interiors these days, but it's still surprising to me to see a regular, non-performance Jeep at that price point. ... View more

Good on Lexus for making the car we've all wanted Cadillac to make for a decade. ... View more

Correction I meant to type QX50 instead of QX60. Stupid alphabet soup. ... View more

This has unintentionally showed the decline in NASCAR's product over the last decade. At least with F1 it's 2 hours or less, and I get a soap opera in exchange for putting up with hearing the British anthem followed by the German anthem after every race. The last generation of NASCAR drivers I cared about are now in the booth or in management, and the current product isn't compelling enough for me to spend 4 hours watching every Sunday. ... View more

The big question for this vehicle is why would I buy it instead of a Kia Telluride? The newest Infiniti product, the QX60, has a woeful tech experience, and the interior ambiance isn't that much better either. The way Infiniti currently moves QX60s is leasing them for the same price you can lease a Highlander for. But this probably won't work with the new QX60, as it's not on a fully amortized platform like the current QX60 is. ... View more

I'm glad that marketing was able to get a third pedal added as an option for these cars. The CT4-V Blackwing will likely win the comparison test between it, the Audi RS3 and BMW M2 but it feels like an also-ran because of that V6. It's a letdown when compared to the Audi's 5-cylinder and the classic BMW straight-6. ... View more

I feel like the only people who bought mild Golfs in the US bought diesels. Once Dieselgate killed the diesel in the US, so went the mild Golf. ... View more

I get the feeling. My desire to own a fancy watch evaporated when I came across the online watch community, which is an insufferable world governed by Worthington's Law. ... View more

While depreciation is generally held against the Genesis vehicles, I've seen that the G90 trades at a higher price on the used market than a similar CT6 or Continental. In addition to outshining the American pretenders, the G90 also bests the latest Lexus LS. The G90's interior space and user-friendly controls are a marked difference from the latest LS. I remember sitting in the driver's seat of the LS500, and marveling at how Lexus made such a big car with so little interior space. And I have no idea how the traditional LS buyer would be able to operate the GPS, or turn on the seat heaters with how fussy the controls are in that car. You can also get a V8 in the G90, which is unavailable at any price in the LS anymore. It makes sense that I've seen about as many G90s on my local roads as I have LS500s. ... View more

The ride and handling balance sounds like a reflection of VWoA's philosophy to design and tune vehicles for the American market. This vehicle might make sense to lease in California, where federal and state incentives will make this vehicle cheaper to lease than a CR-V, and you get an HOV pass. Still, it's a difficult sell because you can't count on non-Tesla charging networks, meaning that this vehicle works best with single-family housing. And if you can afford a single-family home in California these days, you can afford a Tesla. ... View more

At least it sounds like there's a uniformity to driving standards in the GTA. There is no such uniformity in driving standards in Florida. I've dealt with hyper-aggressive drivers imported straight from a Caracas rush hour, to senior citizens who believe they have a divine right to go 20 under in the left lane. The footage from my dash cam looks like a mirrored version of those Australian dash cam videos. Florida's extremely lax roadworthiness standards, which while a boon to classic car owners, means there are some real **bleep**boxes on the road that even Finnegan and Freiburger wouldn't be caught dead in. Speed traps are seemingly ever-present on the good stretches of straight road, and the closest curvy road to me is Sebring International Raceway. Florida: a great place to own a car, but not to drive one. ... View more

Before you buy a service manual, your local library may have the Chilton manuals online for free. In my car's case, the manual Chilton has is the official service manual! ... View more

The Hellcat cars and trucks are very alive, albeit in a different way than a Miata. And the Hellcat makes sense in many parts of these United States where the only curved roads are race tracks. ... View more

The Solstice and Sky were British Leyland cars for the 21st century: clever engineering and design that couldn't overcome a sclerotic bureaucracy. For example, look at Bozi's article here that outlined how GM made owners pay to remove the shipping spacers for the sports suspension on these cars. A 2nd generation of these cars based on the Alpha platform would've been very interesting. GM almost always needs a second try to get things right. The Alpha platform's biggest weakness - its poor packaging - doesn't matter in a 2-seat roadster. You might've also been able to see out of an Alpha Solstice because it wasn't handcuffed to the past in the way that the Camaro's design is.  ... View more