New Car Reviews

Unexpectedly, This Opposite Attracts Back in 2007 when the Fiat 500 was launched, I was unrepentantly nuts about the thing. From the first time my eyes clapped on the Nuevo Cinquecento at the Geneva Motor Show that year, I wanted one. Since there were no plans for a North American model at the ...

A Really Hot Little GT Plants The Seed For A Better AMG Mercedes-Benz has AMG on an impressive growth curve these days, the official name of the effort being Performance 50. By the 50th anniversary of AMG in 2017, the Mercedes performance division will produce 30,000-plus units per year, up from ...

Squirrelling Away In Motown With British Royalty As far as unexpected encounters with wild animals go, squirrels don't normally rate. The furry little nut-smugglers are omnipresent fixtures in my neck of the woods – literally – so a chance meeting doesn't warrant caution the way a ...

Raptor, Excursion, Texas And Hennessey Each of those words are synonyms for big and bold – combine all four and you've got one of the largest, most powerful and robust street-going sport utility vehicles in the world. John Hennessey is a Texas-based tuner known for creating some of the ...

The Act And The Exclamation The 2013 BMW M6 is a rolling obscenity – one that begins with the capital letter "F." It is both the act and the exclamation, the curse and the encouragement. It courts no logic. It is all want and no need, and it is unbecoming of the BMW roundel. Whereas the ...

Is the Best GMC Truck Ever Made Good Enough? We've got a bright aluminum Airstream camper hitched to our rear bumper as we head up Southern California's coast because GMC says that 60 percent of all full-size pickup owners will use their trucks for towing. Rather than forcing us to absorb its ...

Chevy's More Manageable Micro Machine Minicars have yet to really catch on in the US, and while the reason for that is probably at least partially because of our addiction to big crossovers and SUVs, we have a feeling that some of the indifference toward these tiny cars is the lack of functional ...

Secretary Trim, Evolved There was a time not so long ago when opting for a base Ford Mustang meant getting little more than some sheetmetal, an anemic four-cylinder engine and what may very well have been the world's most disappointing automatic transmission. During the Fox Body years, Ford ...

We're going to skip the joke – because this isn't one – and get straight to the punchline: If the forthcoming 2014 Mercedes-Benz S-Class looks like it will lead the segment in interiors, the 3.0-liter turbodiesel in the 2014 Audi A8 L TDI takes the head of the table when it comes to ...

Despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise, I think I'm finally getting too old for this car. I remember the days when I would go ga-ga over the winged Subaru WRX STI sedan, my inner boy racer caring only about its turbo thrills and not taking into account things like price, packaging ...

Refreshed, Not Refreshing I'm probably ill-suited to accurately and fairly take the full measure of a vehicle like the 2013 GMC Acadia Denali. This is a machine conjured around the express notion of corralling and then herding a brood of rafter-swinging hatchlings to and fro in relative comfort, ...

Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo, otherwise known as Seat, started becoming a part of the Volkswagen universe of companies way back in June of 1983, and it has taken right up until its latest generation of models for all the benefits of the VW Group empire to come to ...

Ready To Battle Others Of Its Own Kind To the casual van observer, there are likely three seminal categories of big-box hauler. 1) The white Ford Econoline. 2) The decades-old conversion vans made by various manufacturers, with a porthole, an angel and a unicorn floating in an airbrushed ...

GT Stands For "Generous Trunk" If ever there were an award for the most bastardized label in the automotive world, the Gran Turismo/Grand Touring/GT moniker would be an easy frontrunner. Once reserved solely for sporty coupes, the GT letters have taken a big hit over the years, but things got ...

Shelby is a name as synonymous with the Ford Mustang as marshmallows are with campfires. But unlike the short-lived sugary confection that is prepared on a stick, the late Carroll Shelby's name on the placard means added performance and exclusivity. Launched in 1965, the automaker's celebrated ...

Refinement Rather Than Revolution Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the 2014 Acura MDX, let's pause for just a moment and talk about the current, still-sitting-at-dealerships 2013 model. It's a pretty good machine. Perhaps guilty only of falling to the backburners of our minds in ...

The Audi RS5 is a bit of an odd duck in the brand's US lineup. At the moment it is one of only two RS models – the other being the TT RS – atop a pyramid of A and higher-performing S models. It is not, however, the brand's flagship performance model – not even close – that ...

In With The (Slightly) Old And The (Sort Of) New Though the S-Class is the profit-per-unit world champion, Mercedes' stalwart E-Class is still the company's most reliable producer of profits. The latter tends to represent the model that most humans on Earth think of when they think of ...

BMW's Best 1 Series Gives Back What You Put In Every once in a while, I find myself, despite my solitary leanings and inherent modesty, working out in some kind of class setting. The tone and tenor of these classes ranges wildly – from the quiet, follow-the-leader variety, to those with a ...

The Ultimate Crossover Having grown up in Michigan, I spent the entirety of my early adult life riding whatever powersport machine I could get my hands on, be it snowmobile, dirt bike, four-wheeler or personal watercraft. Pretty much, if it has an engine, I've ridden it. On Memorial Day weekends ...