Carmakers
2016 BMW 340i 6MT – Still the Leader of the Pack?
For more than four decades, one nameplate has represented has defined the sports sedan segment – BMW 3 Series. Whenever an automaker enters the compact premium sedan segment with a model that has even remotely sporting pretensions about it, the first question asked by reviewers is inevitably, “is this finally the 3 series killer?” As good as the competition has become over the years, the 3 series is still here, still widely regarded as the class benchmark and I just got to spend a week with 340i variant.
2016 Cadillac CTS 2.0T AWD
2016 Cadillac CTS 2.0T AWD
When the original Cadillac CTS debuted 14 years ago, it represented a turning point for General Motors’ premium brand. GM had decided to invest billions of dollars to remake the faded brand once known as the “Standard of the World” to try to make it competitive in the 21st century. The original CTS was built on a new dedicated Cadillac architecture with a new design language. Two years after the debut of the third-generation CTS, I had a chance to drive it and make my own judgements about whether the plan has succeeded.
2016 Chevrolet Cruze Premier – Cadavalier No More
2016 Chevrolet Cruze
A decade ago if you looked deeply in General Motors sales results, you find that the company was selling huge numbers of Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac Sunfires, but it wasn’t actually making any money on them. That’s because if you traveled and had to rent a car, chances were pretty good that you’d find row upon row of these cars populating the lots at Hertz, Avis, Budget and Enterprise. Then in September 2008, just before the financial collapse and subsequent bankruptcy, GM introduced a small car that consumers might actually want to buy, the Cruze. It would be two more years before the Cruze would hit American streets, but it actually did pretty well and in June 2015, Chevrolet revealed an all-new second-generation Cruze which I just had a chance to drive for a week.
2017 Mercedes-Benz C300 Coupe – The Real Thing With Only 2 Doors
2017 Mercedes-Benz C300 Coupe (photo credit: Sam Abuelsamid)
When Mercedes-Benz introduced the CLS four-door coupe in 2003, the first car company seemed like it had delivered the coup de grâce to the true two-door coupe. Fortunately, that hasn’t quite panned out and we still have stunners like the 2017 C300.
2016 Buick Cascada – A Lovely Smooth Road Summer Cruiser
2016 Buick Cascada
Buick hasn’t offered very many convertibles in the past several decades. In fact the last one was the short-lived Reatta that went away 25 years ago. Open-air Buick driving is finally back thanks to the fact that the brand is now sharing most of its lineup with Opel, General Motors’ European division. The Opel Cascada launched on the continent in 2013 and Buick dealers have been selling them since early this year. I got a chance to spend a week with the Buick Cascada during a mid-summer Michigan heat wave.
2016 Honda Civic Touring
2016 Honda Civic
It’s been more than three decades since I took driver’s ed in a 1981 Honda Civic hatchback. In the intervening years, every segment of the car market has grown progressively larger, heavier and more powerful in response to tougher safety regulations and expanding customers. Last fall, Honda launched the ninth-generation Civic on an all-new global platform that was deemed worthy of being awarded the 2016 North American Car of the Year. After a short but impressive drive last fall, I recently got to spend a longer period of time living with the new Civic.
2016 Toyota Prius Three – Still The Mileage Champ
It’s not often that a single automotive nameplate becomes virtually synonymous with a powertrain technology. Yet over the course of almost two decades, that’s exactly what has happened with the Toyota Prius. When you think hybrid electric, Prius is likely the first and probably only name that comes to mind. Late 2015 brought us an all-new fourth-generation Prius with some of the most substantial changes to date and I finally got an opportunity to drive it recently.
2017 Hyundai Elantra Limited – Rising Star In a Shrinking Market
2017 Hyundai Elantra Limited
As an engineer at heart, I can’t help but be excited by the technology that is likely to transform the transportation ecosystem over the next couple of decades. But as someone that actually likes to drive, the move toward autonomy is kind of depressing but realistically, that’s unlikely to affect me much for many years to come. On the other hand, the market shift away from cars toward utility vehicles is much more concerning right now. Some automakers are already scaling back their car development efforts in favor of utilities a number of the car nameplates on sale today will not be replaced at the end of their lifecycle. Fortunately, most automakers haven’t given up on cars just yet, among those is Hyundai which has just launched an all-new version of the Elantra compact.
2017 Kia Sportage SX AWD – All Grown Up
2017 Kia Sportage SX
When Steve Ballmer left the CEO’s office at Microsoft, he went and spent a good chunk of the fortune he had amassed buying the Los Angeles Clippers. If instead, he had chosen to become an automotive marketing executive, I could picture him stomping around the stage at a dealer meeting in a sweat drenched shirt shouting “Utilities! Utilities! Utilities!” As consumers increasingly opt for either traditional SUVs or more modern crossover utilities, automakers are scrambling to add more nameplates. For Kia, 2016 seems like the perfect time to launch an all-new version of the oldest continuous model in its lineup, the Sportage compact crossover.