car review

2015 Ford Edge Sport – An Actual Sport Utility Vehicle

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars crossover Ford reviews and tagged 2015 ford edge sport car review car reviews crossover ecoboost ford on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2015 Ford Edge Sport - 4 of 33

Two decades ago when the sport utility vehicle was really taking off as a segment in the in the American market, the Ford Explorer was the hottest ticket in town and they were selling as fast as Ford could churn them out. Despite the name, there really wasn’t anything particularly sporty about these truck-based wagons and there was no pretense to actual high-performance or even decent handling. As the 1990s turned into the 21st century, the market shifted from old-school SUVs to car-based crossovers and even sports car stalwarts like Porsche got into the action. Somehow, in 2015 we’re now in a place where despite its high-riding stance, many CUVs can be considered serious performance machines including the all-new 2015 Ford Edge Sport.

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2015 Kia Soul! – It’s Not Just for Hamsters

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars crossover Kia reviews and tagged 2015 kia soul car review car reviews cars crossover kia soul ev soul on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2015 Kia Soul! - 1 of 1A few weeks ago I spent a week with the 2015 Kia Soul EV and came away very impressed by what the South Koreans had achieved. It wasn’t that long ago that Kia was known as a brand that built cheap and frankly not very good cars and SUVs. I liked the first-generation Soul when I drove it several years ago and was even more impressed with the new battery-powered version. There’s just one problem, if you live outside of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Texas or Georgia, you can’t buy one. But fear not, there is a Soul for the rest of us that is still powered by internal combustion of gasoline.

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2015 Ford Focus SE EcoBoost – Good Luck Trying to Buy One

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars Ford reviews and tagged 2015 ford focus car review car reviews ecoboost ford focus ford focus ecoboost on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2015 Ford Focus SE ecoboost - 1 of 27

Back in 2012, two years before launching an updated Fiesta powered by a tiny new 1.0-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine, Ford first showed off this powerplant to American journalists with a fleet of European-spec Focuses. Despite it’s small size, the engine shocked almost everyone who drove it with its performance. Earlier this year, Ford finally started shipping the updated 2015 Focus in volume and if you search really hard, you can even buy one with a three-pot engine. I managed to get my hands on one for a week in a metallic grey Focus SE sedan, came away puzzled by Ford’s efforts.

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2016 Scion iM First Drive – The Only Corolla for Enthusiasts to Consider

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars reviews scion and tagged 2016 2016 scion iM car review car reviews first drive scion toyota on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2016 Scion iM - 4 of 11

 

The second of two new cars coming from Toyota’s entry-level Scion division this fall is the iM, a compact five-door hatchback that has the likes of the Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf in its sights. For those that pay attention to Toyota’s European lineup, the iM will be familiar since it’s essentially a rebadged Auris. The iM effectively replaces Scion’s now defunct cube car the xB in the lineup, but the question is can it move the needle on the segment?

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2016 Honda HR-V EX-L AWD – The Fit Grows Up

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars crossover Honda reviews and tagged 2016 honda hr-v car review car reviews crossover honda honda fit on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2016 Honda HR-V EX-L AWD - 9 of 29Crossover utility vehicles are rapidly taking over the American automobile market. Even as the market as a whole grows, sales of cars are actually in decline. Meanwhile trucks including pickups, SUVs and CUVs are growing. The biggest growth is coming at smallest end of the market with subcompact crossovers going from nonexistent just a few years ago to more than 110,000 in 2014 and 107,000 in the first six months of this year. Several new and very promising small crossovers have just arrived at dealers in the last month or two and are expected to push the numbers way up by the end of the year. Among the new entries are the Jeep Renegade, Fiat 500x, Mazda CX-3 and Honda’s entry into the segment, the HR-V which I just spent a week with.

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2016 Scion iA First Drive – Just Walk Up From Behind and Get In

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2016 Scion iA - 4 of 23

A dozen years after Toyota launched the Scion brand as a way to attract younger customers into the fold, the world’s largest automaker is hitting the reboot switch. After some initial success with the first-generation xA and xB, the second-generation xB and the xD that replaced the xA never really caught fire with consumers. While the tC coupe and the FR-S have done reasonably well for their segments, Scion is about two launch two new bread and butter models, the C-segment iM and the B-segment iA which I’ll discuss here.

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2016 Hyundai Tucson Quick Spin – A Stylish New Compact Crossover 1

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars crossover Hyundai reviews and tagged 2016 hyundai tucson car review car reviews crossover tucson on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2016 Hyundai Tucson First Drive - 8 of 23Smaller crossover utilities are the fastest growing segment of the American auto market in the last few years and Hyundai America CEO Dave Zuckowski hopes that the all-new 2016 Tucson will take advantage of that and rekindle the brand’s growth. The first batch of some 9,000 Tucsons has arrived in port from South Korea and are currently going through final quality checks before being shipped out to dealers across America for sale starting August 15. While those are being inspected, I got the chance to spend a couple of hours in a pre-production model on rural roads west of Ann Arbor.

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2015 Hyundai Sante Fe Sport – Plenty of Utility, Not So Much Sport

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2015 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport 2.0T - 4 of 31

It should come as no surprise when you check Hyundai’s monthly sales report to find the midsize Santa Fe crossover as the brand’s third-best selling model trailing only the Elantra and Sonata. Americans have fallen head over heels in love with crossovers with the segment seemingly absorbing the station wagon and taking more and more of the minivan’s sales. Now in its third-generation, the Santa Fe has grown from the compact original to a midsizer and it’s now made in two sizes. A larger three-row variant has replaced the defunct Veracruz while the shorter two-row version now has a Sport suffix. I recently spent a week with a 2015 Santa Fe Sport learning whether the badge fits.

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2015 Lexus LS460 AWD – No Longer Just a Pretender to the Throne

This entry was posted in Carmakers cars Lexus reviews and tagged 2015 lexus ls 460 awd car review car reviews lexus ls luxury on by (updated 3142 days ago)

2015 Lexus LS460 AWD - 1 of 31

Through the 1970s and early-1980s, three Japanese companies, Toyota, Nissan and Honda upended the American automotive industry. With the help of lower manufacturing costs in Japan and favorable exchange rates, they entered at the low end of the market and offered consumers, affordable, higher-quality and more efficient cars than they could get from Detroit. After gradually filling in their lineups from the bottom up, by the end of the decade, all three were ready to expand into more premium offerings.  After Honda launched Acura in 1986, Toyota and Nissan brought us Lexus and Infiniti three years later. Thanks mainly to the flagship Lexus LS sedan, the premium car market has never been the same and I recently spent a week with the latest edition of the LS460 AWD to see how it has progressed in 25 years.

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2015 Lexus NX300h – A Surprisingly Dynamic Hybrid Crossover

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2015 Lexus NX300h - 1 of 27In the mid-1990s the original Lexus RX kicked off the wave of luxury utility vehicles that has now infected pretty much every premium brand short of Ferrari and McLaren. In time, Lexus added rebadged versions of the Toyota Sequoia and Land Cruiser large SUVs and has now fleshed out the lineup with the compact NX crossover. The addition of the NX has inflated Lexus utility sales to the point where they have nearly overtaken car sales, a promise that will likely be completed when the new RX hits the streets this fall. While we wait on the 2016 RX, I got to spend a week driving it’s little brother, the hybrid electric NX300h.

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