Until relatively recently, three has never been considered a crowd when it comes to automobile engines. In fact with rare exceptions such as the number of seats in a McLaren F1, three was generally considered deficient when talking cars. Recently however, Ford has sought to change that perception with the introduction of a 1.0-liter three-cylinder EcoBoost engine and I had the chance to spend a week with this powerplant under the hood of a new Fiesta.
Back in the spring of 2010 when Ford announced that it was finally going to euthanize its Mercury division, the company also announced a renewed commitment to restoring Lincoln to its former glory. Part of that included refreshing, redesigning and expanding the Lincoln lineup including a new C-segment model. At the time, most of us assumed we would get a production version of the 2009 Concept C, but four years later what we got instead was the 2015 MKC crossover.
The 2015 Mazda6 represents an endangered species. Don’t worry, Mazda is in no immediate danger of going defunct, in fact it’s currently in a real renaissance period. What makes this particular car a dying breed is the fully manual gearbox.
For the 2015 model year, the number of midsize sedans available in America with a three pedal layout has dropped by nearly half. Both the Ford Fusion and Hyundai Sonata have lost their stick shift options as a result of extreme customer apathy, leaving only the 6, the VW Passat and the Honda Accord.
Watching the evolution of the American pickup truck over the past 25 years has been a fascinating experience. Some time I recently spent with a 2015 Chevrolet Silverado demonstrated clearly just how far these most utilitarian of vehicles have come.
When I got started in the auto industry as an engineering student in the late 1980s, technology and trucks were two words that simply didn’t go together. Also not part of the truck equation were driving dynamics, braking performance, refinement or any kind of sophistication.
“Deceptively quick.” That’s a phrase often used to describe cars so quiet and refined that you find yourself self going faster than you planned sooner than anticipated. There is absolutely nothing nothing deceptive about the Nissan GT-R. In fact, aside from the Lotus Exige, this may be the most brutally honest car I’ve ever driven.
Brutality is utterly fitting for a car known to its fans around the world as Godzilla. Like the Exige, the GT-R offers exceptionally rapid acceleration and amazing handling. Yet despite certain similarities in character that I’ll come back to, these two sports cars couldn’t be more different in execution.
For 2015, the Cadillac ATS and the rest of its siblings have abandoned the wreath surrounding the crest
Paraphrasing one of the last tag-lines from the now defunct Oldsmobile, “the 2015 ATS is absolutely not your father’s Cadillac, and that’s a very good thing.” In fact this ATS is the antithesis of what Cadillacs were when I was growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Back in those days, Caddies defined the term land yacht. Actually aircraft carrier might have been a more apt description. When I was high school in the early-1980s, a friend of our family stopped by our house one day to show off the new Caddie that he had bought himself as a retirement gift after putting in his 30 years in one of the local steel mills.
When Chrysler unveiled the new 2015 200 midsize sedan at the Detroit Auto Show last January, the team from Auburn Hills was clearly trying to expunge the final remnants of the company’s lost decade under first Daimler and then private equity ownership. Chrysler’s new mainstream family sedan was certainly a huge leap forward from its disappointing predecessor in the aesthetic department, but could it compete with the class leaders from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and Ford? The only way to find out was to drive one.
2014 Nissan Leaf SV
Somehow in the eight years since I started writing about cars I’ve driven lots of electric vehicles but have never managed to spend an extended period with one until now. Having now spent a week with a 2014 Nissan Leaf SV, I can say that it’s a very good car regardless of how its propelled. That doesn’t mean it’s the best car for everyone in search of a compact hatchback, but for those whose lifestyles overlap with the limitations of today’s battery technology it’s a great choice.
2014 Nissan Rogue SV AWD
Back in the mid-1990s when Toyota kicked off the modern compact crossover utility segment with the original two-door Rav4, these machines really were compact. But as with most vehicle segments, every succeeding generation seems to get bigger until a hole is created that enables yet another smaller segment to emerge. At first glance this seems to be the case with the redesigned second-generation Nissan Rogue that debuted last year as a 2014 model.
2014 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT Blacktop
There is absolutely nothing wrong with utility. After all, at least two major classes of vehicles, SUVs and crossover utilities claim the word as a middle name. Despite that, SUVs and CUVs are in fact far from the most utilitarian vehicles on the road. That claim belongs the classic minivan, including the progenitor of the class, the Dodge Grand Caravan.
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