First Drive Reviews

The 2019 Volkswagen Arteon delivers good performance and impressive utility in a stylish package.

With the 2020 XE, Jaguar puts its compact sport-sedan hopes in simple turbo-4 power, excellent handling, and a best-in-class warranty.

After almost 500 miles behind the wheel of the 2019 Audi A8 L, we share some things we like and don't like about Audi's flagship sedan.

We drive the 2019 Jaguar F-Pace SVR, and find the 550-hp, V-8-powered performance SUV brings new meaning to the words "performance SUV."

Pulling out of the 123-story Lotte World Tower into the crush of Seoul’s morning traffic in the 2020 Hyundai Sonata, the striking symbolism isn’t lost on me. The 1,819-foot tower is new, the fifth-tallest building in the world, and the tallest in Korea. This engineering marvel...

The swoopy four-door AMG coddles passengers in luxury and delivers V-8 power with 6-cylinder consumption.

The 2020 Jeep Gladiator brings all the right hardware to the mid-size pickup truck fight. It’s even dressed for battle. Pundits might argue that the 2020 Jeep Gladiator is a Wrangler with a pickup truck bed, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Gladiator shares its retro design that...

The Tail of the Dragon sits at, or near, the top of any list of great driving roads in America. This 11-mile ribbon of U.S. Highway 129 between Tennessee and North Carolina entices enthusiasts with more than 300 turns and 1,000 feet of elevation change. Unfortunately, it also attracts...

“Sweaters and lunch,” my co-pilot points ahead. The flock of sheep being herded across the road ahead can’t tell the difference between our Range Rover Evoque and the grass they crop. Their herder smiles at our SUV, waves, and keeps his charges off the broken pavement while we...

Somewhere on the interstate between Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina, it finally clicks, like the incessant drops of rain on the glass. We’re not getting any decent weather on this first drive of the 2019 BMW X7. No useful turns, either. The descent into Low Country evaporates all hope...

Ask me if I consider luxury crossovers to be vital to the human experience, and I’d say probably not. Ask me again on icy roads, in the middle of a blizzard, on an interstate in the middle of Colorado, while being massaged in my seat? Different answer. Luxury SUVs have a time and place and...

Coachella is a town, not a thing. For the 356 days a year when Boy Pablo and Childish Gambino aren’t in residence, it’s a prosaic farm community, where highlighter-pink and yellow signs hawk Medjool dates, shaken fresh from the trees that tower over checkerboards of agri-business green...

If it can’t climb up the hill, it’ll just pull itself over the hill. That’s life for the 2019 Ram 2500 Power Wagon. For 2019, the Ram 2500 Power Wagon loses some weight, gains some useful technology, refines its edges, but loses zero capability. I flew out to Las Vegas to put the...

Among the hottest toys of the 1970s were the Kenner Super Sonic Power (SSP) race cars, which employed a central spinning wheel that propelled them over jumps, down the stairs, and into furniture legs in houses everywhere. The utter ubiquity of these toy cars led to innovations, such as a spark...

“Digital detox.” That’s what Bentley design director Stefan Sielaff promises in the 2020 Continental GT Convertible, and the opportunity sounds appealing. We are so inescapably immersed in the digital, the synthetic, and the artificial that a retreat to reality and authenticity...

Twenty minutes from my front door is nowhere. And that’s somewhere I want to be. That’s true for many of us who live in Denver. It’s probably true for the 30 people who will move to Denver today, the 30 people who will move here tomorrow, and the next day, too. The greatest lie...

The sun bathes Lulea, Sweden with light for less than eight hours during the middle of the winter. It rises over the Gulf of Bothnia and its small, frigid islands and sets behind the charming and colorful town scattered with red, yellow and white buildings. As pretty as this small city near the...

Italian cars are known for four things: beauty, speed, noise, and a special feel. Fail on any of these and the car feels authentic like ravioli from a can. Maserati’s Levante is the Italian automaker’s first crossover SUV. It’s beautiful, but base models weren’t fast...

North Georgia roads bustle in the spring but crowds thin when browned leaves and cool north winds arrive. It’s just warm enough to keep the windows down and the tires warm. In other words, it’s perfect NSX weather. The 2019 Acura NSX doesn’t veer far off the course Acura plotted...

The 2019 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen doesn’t look much different than the boxy SUVs from each of the 40 years preceding it. Typically, if a vehicle is indistinguishable from its predecessors, that’s a bad thing. The Mercedes-Benz G-Class is anything but typical. I went to San Diego...