First Drive Reviews

Cape Town, South Africa - I'm at the wheel of the 2017 Porsche 911 GTS at Killarney Raceway behind 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Marc Lieb and I'm frustrated. Lieb, in the even more powerful 911 Turbo S, is setting a leisurely pace and I want to pass him. It's not because I'm some world-class...

How do you make an old car new again? If you’re Dodge and your Challenger's structure hasn’t significantly changed since it was released for the 2008 model year, you add an all-wheel-drive system from an existing product, slap a new model name on it, and call the all-season muscle car...

If you're still complaining about the Subaru BRZ's lack of turbo, you probably don't quite understand how Subaru--with help from Toyota--developed this sports car. From the beginning, the point was to save as much weight as possible, and that doesn't change with a 2017 update. Subaru has given the...

Cape Town, South Africa - The 2018 Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid is an enigma wrapped in the sheet metal of a four-door 911. It’s a car with incredible power, a lightning quick 4.4-second 0-60 mph time, and a ridiculous top speed of 172 mph. Yet, it’s a plug-in hybrid that can run on...

BMW’s middle child has always had identity issues. Iterations of the 5er have had their moments, but it’s always worn hand-me-downs from the 7-Series and, quite frankly, we would’ve rather played with the 3-Series on a Saturday afternoon. You can imagine how hard this 2017 BMW...

Sports cars are great at going fast around corners, but you know what they can't do? They can't rip across the desert, they can't crawl over rocks, and they can't perform glorious jumps over sand dunes. You know what can? This beast can. It's the Ford F-150 Raptor, and for 2017 it's here for a...

SEVILLE, Spain--If you remember the very first days of Lexus, you remember the clever ads: the champagne glasses on the hood of the car, the ball bearing rolling down its hood, the "relentless pursuit of perfection." Forget it all. Now Lexus is chasing after world-class luxury and performance with...

It's time to come clean, friends. Don't worry, You're in a safe space here. Just admit it. You're power-hungry. But just how much power will it take to get your fix? 300? 400? 500? How about 603 horsepower—stuffed into the latest, greatest version of the Benz E-Class? Works for us. We're just...

Even among big SUVs, it's the little things that make all the differences. One-touch windows, real radio knobs. Yeah, that's the good stuff. This machine? Its little things are a lot different. How about a custom-made picnic basket, 115 paint colors, and a $170,000 watch stuck in the dash? Sounds...

Sometimes, familiarity breeds discontent. Such was not the case with the Audi Q5, however. Though it first hit the market all the way back in 2008, the German automaker resisted updating its compact crossover until now—and that seemed just fine with its audience, which has snapped up around...

The Soul hatchback has been very, very good to Kia. Where some car companies believe in their most expensive products to exemplify their respective brand identities, Kia has turned to the chance popularity of its compact hatchback to embody the image of a brand in transition. The way Kia explains...

The 911's flat-6 engine has been one of its greatest strengths. The naturally aspirated boxer engine, in displacements ranging from 3.4 to 4.0 liters created great sounds, and put out linear, tractable power that somehow delivered than its power figures would indicate. For 2017, however, Porsche...

It's a question we've been asking ourselves since the 2017 Audi A4 and the 2017 Jaguar XE first rolled into our driveways: which one's better, and can either of them ascend to the 3-Series' old slot as the top compact sport sedan? We find no shortage of irony that the staid British luxury brand is...

Supercars give automakers a chance to show off the fullest extents of their design and engineering capabilities. They use lightweight materials, advanced powertrains, and state-of-the-art suspension technologies to create the fastest, best handling, and most exotic automobiles on the planet. But...

Being low man on the totem pole isn't always so bad. Two of our finalists for the Motor Authority Best Car To Buy 2017 award, the 2016 BMW M2 and 2016 Ford Focus RS, started life at or near the bottom of their respective lineups. The Ford Focus’ platform dates back to 2011. It’s a...

Cracking off shifts of the ZF 8-speed automatic with the column-mounted aluminum paddle shifters, the 505-horsepower turbocharged 2.9-liter V-6 snarling like a staked pitbull, and railing up the fast, heavy g-loading of Turn 1 at Sonoma, the 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio tucks in and rotates...

It must be tough to be Lincoln. As the brand has learned, time and again, there is a difference between image and reputation. The most tired trope among those who care about cars is to anticipate the reemergence of the world-beating American luxury brand, which has moved quietly to the sidelines...

Ford couldn't have released the Focus RS at a better time. The Mitsubishi Evo is officially dead, and the Subaru WRX STI is getting long in the tooth. The most recent generation of the STI is only offered as a sedan, and an Evo hatchback was never offered in the U.S. While other automakers are...

The Porsche Boxster and Cayman are brilliant sports cars, but they're not so different as the names might suggest — they’re basically the same car, aside from that minor roof thing. So why different names? Indeed. This year, Porsche's debugging that situation by adding a new prefix...

The 2017 Infiniti Q60 tells no lies. In top trim, Q60 Red Sport 400, the Q60 delivers on every one of its promises: It’s one better than the Q50 (from which its related); there is in fact, a red S (which is also part of Infiniti’s even more confusing nomenclature now); and every bit of...