reviews

2016 Buick Cascada – A Lovely Smooth Road Summer Cruiser

This entry was posted in Buick Carmakers cars convertible reviews and tagged 2016 Buick Cascada car review car reviews convertible on by (updated 3027 days ago)
2016 Buick Cascada

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.

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2016 Honda Civic Touring

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2016 Honda Civic

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.

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2016 Toyota Prius Three – Still The Mileage Champ

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2016 Toyota Prius - 1 of 23

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.

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2017 Hyundai Elantra Limited – Rising Star In a Shrinking Market

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars Hyundai reviews and tagged 2017 hyundai elantra car review car reviews cars fuel economy hyundai on by (updated 3066 days ago)
2017 Hyundai Elantra Limited

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.

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2017 Kia Sportage SX AWD – All Grown Up

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars crossover Kia reviews SUV and tagged 2017 kia sportage car review car reviews crossover on by (updated 3069 days ago)
2017 Kia Sportage SX

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.

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2016 Lexus RC-F – Sometimes More Isn’t More

This entry was posted in Carmakers Lexus luxury reviews and tagged 2016 2016 lexus rc-f car review car reviews cars coupe sports coupe on by (updated 3081 days ago)
2016 lexus rc-f

2016 Lexus RC-F in Molten Coral

We’re coming up on nearly a decade since Lexus first officially announced its attempt to take on the Ms, AMGs and RSs of the automotive world. Toyota’s premium brand selected F as its official designation for performance-oriented variants of its well-built but staid vehicles. Until the arrival of an LC-F at some future date, the RC-F can arguably be called the current Lexus performance herald.

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2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-road – And Off-road is Where it Belongs

This entry was posted in Carmakers reviews Toyota Trucks and tagged car review car reviews review toyota toyota tacome trd on by (updated 3089 days ago)
2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD

2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD

The idea of the off-road vehicle is by no means new, but it used to be that people that wanted to go bouncing around in sand dunes, crawling through canyons or racing through the desert would basically have to build their own. Aside from the Jeep Wrangler and its predecessors, almost no factory-built truck had real serious off-road capability. However, in the past decade we’ve seen automakers go from building hot-rod trucks like the Chevy Syclone, Ford F-150 Lightning and Dodge Ram SRT-10 to more serious off-roaders like the F-150 SVT Raptor and this Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road.

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2016 Hyundai Sonata Plug-in Hybrid – Handsome Efficiency If You Can Find It

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars electric Hybrid Hyundai reviews and tagged 2016 hyundai sonata plug-in hybrid car review car reviews cars electricvehicles EV hybrid phev review on by (updated 3096 days ago)
2016 hyundai sonata phev

2016 hyundai sonata phev

If you’ve been following along over the past year or so, you’ve probably noticed that I’m quite enamored with the current generation Hyundai’s midsize sedan, the Sonata. Since early 2015, I’ve driven the 1.6-liter turbocharged Eco, the 2.0-liter Hybrid and now the newest member of the lineup, the Plug-in Hybrid. The Sonata PHEV is the first Hyundai-branded model sold in North America with a plug and it’s one of only two plug-in hybrids in the midsize family sedan segment, the other being the Ford Fusion Energi.

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2016 Lexus RX450h F Sport – Adding a Touch of Cayenne

This entry was posted in Carmakers crossover Hybrid Lexus luxury reviews and tagged car review car reviews cars crossover hybrid review reviews on by (updated 3103 days ago)
2016 Lexus RX 450h F Sport

2016 Lexus RX 450h F Sport

For most of its nearly two decade history, the midsize RX crossover has been the best seller in the Lexus lineup by a fairly wide margin. Like other Lexi prior to the current generation, it also had generally inoffensive, but uninspired design. That all changed in 2015 with the debut of the fourth-generation RX including the hybrid RX450h F Sport that I recently drove. Whether you like the new design direction or not, this latest RX is at least less likely to get lost in a crowd.

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2015 BMW i8 – A Plug-in Hybrid Spaceship From Munich

This entry was posted in BMW Carmakers cars electric Hybrid reviews and tagged BMW car review car reviews cars EV i8 phev plug-in hybrid on by (updated 3117 days ago)

2015 BMW i8

A good rule of thumb when attending an auto show is that the more radical looking a concept car is, the less likely it is to ever make it to production. Virtually every major brand is guilty of producing pieces of rolling sculpture that end up doing little more than introducing a couple of new design cues that end up on more mainstream models. When we first saw BMW’s Vision EfficientDynamics concept at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, it seemed to fall squarely into this category. Nevertheless, five years later something very much like that concept emerged as the first-ever i8.

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