It growls, almost as if it’s chewing up the road ahead. And then when you shift gears, it gives a kind of a cough, the way a turbocharged engine does. When you hear this engine, you can almost see the blue rally cars coming toward you through the trees. It makes us think of WRC [...]

It growls, almost as if it’s chewing up the road ahead. And then when you shift gears, it gives a kind of a cough, the way a turbocharged engine does. When you hear this engine, you can almost see the blue rally cars coming toward you through the trees. It makes us think of WRC [...]

Word doesn’t travel fast when you’re a small-time player, but the 2010 Suzuki Kizashi has been a labor of love some four years in the making. It is by far the most important car Suzuki has ever launched in the United States.
Although compact cars rule most parts of the world, midsize sedans will make or [...]

Why We Bought It
Durability
Performance and Fuel Economy
Retained Value
Summing Up
Lap after lap we’ve failed to shake them. As if fused to our doors, the 2008 BMW 335i and 2002 BMW M3 keep pace with our 2008 BMW 135i. We pour into the turn dead even, but the M3 beats us to the exit. Flat out on [...]

Click here for 2010 Ford SVT Raptor Track Video
You don’t need a flat-billed hat or limbs covered in tattoos to appreciate the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, but they help. If nothing else, such items will help you pass muster with the rest of the crowd that will buy this truck. Really, though, all [...]

Given all the praise heaped on the BMW 3 Series over the years, we can’t blame you for thinking there’s more to the story. We’ve heard all the conspiracy theories, most of them involving checks in large denominations from Munich.
This might seem believable to a certain segment of the population, but there’s a far less [...]

Sacrilege in the car business used to be so simple. It was bad. Bad, bad, bad and people wouldn’t spend their money on it. Remember the Cutlass Calais-based Olds 442?
But today, Sacrilege, like everything else, is more complicated. Today, it turns out, there’s Good Sacrilege and there’s Bad Sacrilege. And it has been proven that [...]

Why We Bought It
Durability
Performance and Fuel Economy
Retained Value
Summing Up
Since the invention of the internal combustion engine, our society has found itself dependent on oil. We burned through the black stuff like there was an infinite supply, so a movement toward conserving this non-renewable resource has been inevitable. The initial murmur of protest was muffled by [...]

Click here for the 2010 BMW X5 M Track Video
After driving the 2010 BMW X5 M, there were numerous subtitles for this story bouncing around in our head. Because it was only a handful of years ago, when BMW introduced the 2004 X5 4.8is, that it said, “There will never be an M version [...]

The 2010 Vauxhall Astra couldn’t have had a tougher gestation. Developed as GM hurtled toward bankruptcy and launched just as Opel is being sold, it nevertheless carries hopes of a brighter future.
The Astra is hugely important in Europe. This car is likely to become the U.K.’s number-one seller in the next 12 months, where one [...]

Don’t let the fact that the 2010 Audi S4 says “V6T” on its quarter panels confuse you. This alphanumeric soup has more to do with Audi’s marketing department than it does with anything going on under the hood of the new S4.
Rest assured, the 3.0-liter V6 in the 2010 Audi S4 cranks out 333 supercharged [...]

All of 17 miles into the photo shoot for this 2010 Volvo XC60 T6 AWD, a new addition to our long-term fleet, our photographer sighs and gives up. “Does this silly crossover even have navigation, or is Volvo just trying to screw with me?” he says. But it turns out that Kurt Niebuhr’s sense of [...]

Viewed through the lens of the past, modern SUVs are simply station wagons in drag. And it turns out that station wagons serve the majority of the modern driving public’s needs better than the original, old-school truck-based SUVs.
Kia has been paying attention. While the Kia Sorento is currently a trucky body-on-frame SUV with a [...]

“Remember: This 2010 Chevrolet Equinox LT2’s competitors are the Honda CR-V and Nissan Rogue,” he tells us.
We kept repeating the words of the Chevrolet spokesman like a mantra while we were driving this compact crossover. We had a couple of good reasons.
First, the compact 2010 Equinox looks and feels as if it actually belongs in [...]

Having, just prior to this drive of the 2011 BMW X1, spent so much time in the very challenging (on so many levels) BMW 5 Series GT, we’re grateful to have been brought back to our preferred BMW comfort zone with another example of the Ultimate Driving Machine.
After we had our initial privileged go at [...]