First Drive Reviews

It's been ten years already, but if you still haven't absorbed the reality of a Porsche SUV, brace yourselves. There's a second one--and it's probably the best crossover SUV we've driven. Let us first-drive you into reality with the 2015 Porsche Macan Turbo, the vehicle that will cement Porsche's...

Is the 2015 Subaru WRX STI worth the $8k premium over the WRX? And does it remain one of the most capable performance cars on the market, short of exotic-car compromises (and price tags)? Those questions seemed straightforward enough. But after spending most of a day with the new STI, first over...

An autocross run doesn't have to be long, or wide, to turn into a breeding ground for envy. Make it short, make it quick, whatever. Just bring out a whiteboard to document lap times. All of the sudden, the Italian in everything and everyone comes out: Piloti, Brembo, Borgia, Machiavelli. Then bring...

How quick is the new Bentley Continental GT V8 S? How powerful? If this were the Bentley of the past, when it was intertwined with Rolls-Royce, the deflective reply to such questions would be “Sufficient.” And it would be left up to us to agree. A quarter-century ago, when the...

We've just had our first drive of the 2015 Volkswagen Golf R—even though it's about a year ahead of the time it arrives to the U.S. Oh, and there's one other little asterisk attached to any claim of this being a full review: We really only drove it on ice—up near the Arctic Circle, in...

The 2014 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid offers all-weather traction and V-8-like performance, with the fuel-efficiency of a four-cylinder. That's one way to sum up this tech-loaded luxury flagship, which will begin reaching Acura dealerships next spring. But after spending a few hours driving it, we can...

The 2015 Subaru WRX may be the most perfect shelter ever ginned up for Internet trolls. We're already super-familiar with their super-tired take on the new turbo all-wheel-drive sedan. To paraphrase: "This car, which is not substantially changed in feel or intent, and which I do not own, is...

Some cars just draw looks, and the Volkswagen Scirocco R is one of them. From two utility workers stuck in traffic in their work van to a guy in an old compact crossover on the highway, we got stares, smiles, thumbs-ups, and questions. Everyone wanted to know what the sleek, stylish coupe was. It's...

The Aston Martin Vanquish Volante is probably the sexiest car in the planet--the Internet says it is so--but what good is it in winter? If you're in the third of the country currently buried under a soul-crushing blanket of ice and snow, the only transportation you really want right now is a...

We might even choose the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Convertible over the Coupe. There, we said it—and it feels a bit like a confessional. To those who haven't been religiously reading car magazines (and following Motor Authority) for years, it's worth pointing out that, with the...

Florida's the home of the bucket lists, for obvious reasons, our national Last Chance Saloon. So this week, I took "driving, Florida-style" off mine. Here's how: First, I drilled an Aston Martin V-12 Vantage S up to 143 mph in a straight line andthenIhitFULLPANICBRAKE, yanking it and me into a...

'Video-game-like' is how we've heard the Nissan GT-R driving experience described on many occasions. The description is apt, especially when you're out on the track. This is a car that's so astonishingly fast—0-60 mph in 2.7 seconds for the current 545-hp version—that you can become...

It looks roughly like a black Honda CR-Z with a mesh grille--at least until you get up close. Then you notice that the doors seem much shallower, and that it has strange little glass panels in the roof. But what you're looking at is no ordinary CR-Z hybrid two-seater. Instead, it's a one-of-a-kind...

We only had two laps on the high-speed oval at Honda's main R&D center in Japan. We didn't get performance figures for the prototype Honda Civic Type R fitted with the company's new 2.0-liter direct-injected and turbocharged four-cylinder engine. But they were two very memorable laps. DON'T...

If Monte Carlo had a sister city, would it be Sin City? Glitzy condo canyons, matte-red Italias parked in no-parking zones, lots of places named "Palace," and an ample supply of two-name celebrities like Roger Moore, Gina Lollobrigida, and Ringo Starr--yup, it all kind of hangs together there...

BMW enthusiasts have had several years to get used to the tradition-breaking SUVs and crossovers which infiltrated the once sedan-only range, but electric cars are a different proposition altogether. Particularly short, upright electric cars like the 2014 BMW i3, the firm's first true production...

Chevrolet told us... We were told that the automaker would only bring back the Z/28 moniker if there was a car that warranted the badge. You can't simply slap together a few performance bits, gather some marketing folk to drum up a cliche-laden press release, and then shove a poorly thought out...

The Mercedes-Benz S Class is all new this year, and with it, we get an all-new S63 AMG with 4MATIC all-wheel drive. If there is such a thing as diamond icing on a platinum cake, this is it. First things first: this isn't a driver's car, at least not in the way a BMW M3, or a Ferrari 458 Italia, or...

Is the Audi SQ5 a bona fide performance model, or is it a great pretender? We've wondered about the SQ5's credentials ever since the brand confirmed this performance version of the Q5 crossover, its 354-horsepower output, and its 5.1-second 0-60 time. And in the absence of established head-to-head...

Zooming upward on a ribbon of road, along a cliff wall, between tight hairpin curves and breathtaking views in the mountains of Southern France, I goose the accelerator from about 2,000 rpm and hear a series of sounds that’s entirely foreign, especially in a Volvo: the wail and whine of a...