First Drive Reviews

Dear truck makers, Enough already! Your trucks are big. I get it. Can we stop with the bigger is better mentality? City boy I spent last week with a 2017 Ford F-250, a mega truck not exactly suited to the urban confines I call home. Ford updated its Heavy Duty pickups for the 2017 model year...

Feel. It's what makes us fall in love. It's what drives our passions. And it's what made auto enthusiasts revere BMW's M cars for years. But even as it got faster around a racetrack, the BMW M5 lost some of its magical feel in its last two generations. The M5 is redesigned once again for 2018, and...

Burnt coffee, unlined trousers, post-Achtung Baby U2. Life is rife with mild disappointments. With four fewer cylinders under its hood than its W-12 cousin, does the V-8 Bentley Bentayga deliver another? Math with us here for a moment. A W-12 Bentayga with 600 horsepower lashes out at 60-mph runs...

I’m barreling down the longest straight at The Thermal Club’s South Palm Circuit at over 100 mph, and I’m thinking this isn’t right. The 2018 BMW X2 isn’t made for a racetrack—it’s especially not exciting after driving several laps in the new M5—but I...

“Best RACE Experience With Shifter in Manual.” That message flashes across the instrument cluster after I twist the drive mode selector past Dynamic and into Race in the 2018 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. I dutifully oblige, slotting the electronic shift lever left from Drive and...

I’m frustrated. The Arizona desert roads Audi picked for me to drive its track-bred coupe on were picturesque and open, but I found nary a sharp corner to attack. So, I’ve called in a favor and borrowed a Nardo Gray 2018 Audi RS 5 for some extra drive time. Now I'm in search of twisty...

There are only two ways a third-generation Audi S6 Avant makes it to the U.S. It’s either a blackmarket car that was imported here and federalized at a completely absurd cost that isn’t worth it to make it street legal, or, it was custom-built. This 2007 S6 Avant is the latter...

Jeep crows about its Wrangler being the standard for off-road driving. As my colleague Andrew Ganz found in Arizona, the 2018 Jeep Wrangler is a dynamite car in the dirt. While the 2018 Wrangler, a JL to all the fans, certainly will be a fixture on trails and in mud bogs, it's also the vehicle that...

It was a bright, sunny February afternoon in Chicago when I picked up the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. Still, with temperatures in the 30s, the conditions weren't ideal for such a performance beast. No matter really. I wouldn't be taking this 707-horsepower SUV to a track anyway. I'd just be...

Cape Town, South Africa - The South African landscape is unusually parched. Late January is midsummer here, and the country is in the throes of a drought that threatens the water supply. Day Zero is April 16, about a month before the rainy season that could stave off this water crisis. It's an...

The afternoon sun in Corsica melts into the 2018 Jaguar E-Pace’s sumptuous lines. The E-Pace needs a lot of light. After all, it’s instantly familiar. Its shapes raid Jaguar’s closet and wrap them around a compact crossover—none of this is a bad idea. The running gear has a...

Subaru’s STI division has a recipe for more fun. Add liberal amounts of better handling, a dash more power, then bring the heat. In the case of the $50,000 2018 Subaru WRX STI Type RA, the recipe is fully baked. After spending a day with this special edition model—limited to only 500...

The Infiniti brand is difficult to pin down. Its struggle to introduce a cohesive brand identity and driving character and hide Nissan underpinnings overshadows impressive interior materials and exterior aesthetics. Few premium brands have had to prove their credentials so often. With the 2019...

The Subaru BRZ has been focused on handling and fun since its introduction in 2011. Dynamic drivability comes naturally in a lightweight sports car, after all. For 2018, the STI-tuned Subaru BRZ tS sharpens its handling further—nearly to the point of leaving bare the car’s power...

Walk up to your Byton and an exterior camera knows your face. The door unlocks and you open it. The car boots up and it knows your name. It knows your health data, reads your blood pressure, checks your schedule, and streams whatever video was on your smartphone. It even knows where you need to go...

The 2018 Infiniti QX80 is a frustrating vehicle. It's (finally) attractive. There's a charming powertrain moving it along. And this big truck does luxury well, with beautiful leatherwork and a quiet cabin. But these attributes aren't enough to to overshadow the QX80's age. At the very least...

Rip out the heart of a C7 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, shove it into a four-door luxury sedan, and what do you get? The 2018 Cadillac CTS-V. With far more horsepower than anyone truly needs, loud noises that will instantly put hair on your chest like a Chia Pet, and a chassis that should be a dynamic...

With anticipation comes expectations. Before venturing to Tucson, Arizona, to experience the 2018 Jeep Wrangler, we assumed that it would be more refined, more livable, more comfortable, more efficient, and more feature-laden. And it delivers all those superlatives. But what we also expected was...

Matthias Erb, the engineer tasked with turning VW’s North American operations from car importer to full-on development office, isn't able to relax for long. Last year, VW finally got competitive in the American crossover market with its redesigned Tiguan and new Atlas. This year, it’s a...

Volvo is reinventing itself with fresh products, the latest technologies, new 4-cylinder and electrified powertrains, and ground-up platforms faster than most believed it could. Now that it has successfully captured the automotive world's attention with the flagship XC90 and S/V 90 models, it's...