First Drive Reviews

The 2014 Lexus IS is here, and it has a serious set of challenges ahead of it: Taking on the BMW 3-Series, Mercedes-Benz C Class, Cadillac ATS, and the upcoming Infiniti Q50. Can it hang? This group is one of the most highly competitive in the entire industry, with luxury, performance, and style...

We take the 2013 Bentley Continental GT Speed Convertible on a long and treacherous winter drive through the mountains of California and Nevada. Along the way we find some surprising characteristics of this hyper-luxury, super-performance drop-top.

It may seem like the life of a traveling auto writer is all unicorns, rainbows, and thumping V-8s (or V-10s or V-12s), but track-testing a new car can be tough. You have to learn a new track as you learn a new car, typically in a very short period of time and in a limited number of laps. In...

Construction workers working to the left, Ferrari dealer to the right. Real, actual bustle. Barcelona does not act like the rest of Spain, which is probably why it has two cell phones and is maybe "going out with the girls" on Friday night. Just a few hours earlier, we'd been wedged in the fab...

Puerto Rico probably isn't the first place you think of when you think about great driving roads--or driving at all for that matter. Beaches, beer, sun, sand, and time away from work and the daily stresses of life--that's what Puerto Rico is usually about. But not today. No, today it's about the...

After a day of blasting through otherworldly Saguaro cactus forests of Southern Arizona, much of it on dusty, unimproved gravel backroads—on the way to hot-lap time at the track—we can't exactly say that we put the new turbocharged 2014 Subaru Forester 2.0XT through the kinds of...

The area surrounding Lamborghini’s factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, is mostly made up of rustic farmland; the tranquil ambience interrupted only by a passing tractor every now and then. You start to wonder, this is where one some of the world’s most ferocious supercars are born?...

Bobbing and weaving through the vineyard-dotted hill country around Napa, windows down on a perfect fall day, the sun settling just behind the nearest ridge, a massive 8.4-liter, 640-horsepower V-10 growling out an atonal bass note to complement the music flooding out of the stereo, it's easy to...

Like it or not, autonomous cars are coming. But with any new technology, especially one that’s particularly groundbreaking, the introduction of self-driving technology in cars is being done gradually, with each introduction merely a stepping stone to the next facet of the technology. First...

Acura may not quite have the prestige or the cachet of longtime luxury marques like Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, or even Lexus, but it does have top-drawer access to the most innovative powertrain and chassis engineering developments from Honda. And with Acura’s upcoming flagship sedan, the 2014...

There are many reasons why the friends of those of us lucky enough to write about cars profess to hate and envy us. Most of them are completely valid. Driving a passel of brand-new 2014 Audi R8s, including the new V10 Plus model, on track in northern Italy and over the Alps is just one of the...

Four-door coupes are all the rage these days, so it seems logical to us that Audi would opt to introduce an S version of its popular A7. Like the all-new-for 2013 Audi S6, the S7 rides on the Volkswagen group’s MLB platform and benefits from a new 4.0-liter, twin-turbo V-8 engine mated to a...

While European carmakers are slowly coming around to the concept of releasing their best products in the U.S., there are still a few cars denied to American customers. One of these is BMW's latest hot 1-Series model, the M135i from its expanding M Performance range. Available only in three- and...

The previous generation of the Audi S8 was a bit odd among the full-size performance sedan crowd, though it was odd in a way we liked. Power came from a high-revving 5.2-liter V-10 whose design was derived from the unit in the Lamborghini Gallardo supercar, and its rating was an...

Handed the crystalline key fob to a 565-horsepower, $280,000 car with the steering wheel on the wrong side, then loosed about the narrow, broken roads around Newport Pagnell--to drive on the wrong side as well--I shook off my jet lag, smiled, and acted like it was nothing. Of course, it was...

BMW has caught a lot of flack for its latest generations of M Division cars, including the soon-to-be-replaced M3. People calling themselves purists deride them as heavy, soft, too luxurious, and unfocused. One thing they rarely call them, however, is slow. That's because, wherever you stand on...

That recurring dream, the one that scares the whee out of even 50-year-olds, unfurls from my brain and falls right into my lap as soon as I plug in Audi's jaunty little USB jump drive into the black box. Is there a test this morning? 'Cause I forgot to study last night, and there's no way I'm...

When you think about luxury sports sedans, the Audi A4, Mercedes-Benz C Class, and BMW 3-Series all come to mind.. But Volvo says the S60 should also be a contender in that list, and for 2013 it has updated the powertrains to better compete. Full Disclosure: Volvo flew me out to Utah and gave me my...

The 2013 Cadillac ATS is off its media embargo, and not a minute too soon. Since late June, we've been waiting to spill all we know about the new compact sport sedan, and frankly, we've been expecting that some other outlet would break the mutually agreed-upon curfew. It's a small miracle that...

Our colleague John Voelcker got some time behind the wheel of the 2012 Model S in New York City.