First Drive Reviews

How does a $23,000, 201-horsepower Hyundai Veloster grab you? Great, right? You'd be surprised how challenging it is to other front-drive fans. It sounds silly, even ridiculous, to those who bow to the old school of hot hatchbacks. But it has to worry them, too. Sign up: Get our best headlines...

If there's a poster car for the 'One Ford' mantra, it might just be the new 2013 Ford Focus ST. Without Ford's initiative to consolidate global development for same-sized vehicles under single development teams—and models that will work in all major markets—it's likely we'd never have...

The vehicles may change, and as the saying goes, the off-roading is never the same twice. The overlords at HQ even get hot-swapped every decade or so. Still, the quintessential Land Rover experience remains the same. Clamber into a plushly lined, regally poised off-road specialist, and proceed to...

With a stylish new look and improved performance, there's not much to criticize on the new 2013 Lexus GS 450h.

Updated: Upon further consultation with Simon Crellin of the Isle of Man TT press office and Subaru of America's Dominick Infante, some of the statistics acquired from my previous sources have been called into question. Where there is a conflict between official TT facts and figures not available...

If you're at all familiar with chili peppers and the zing they bring, you know that a little heat's a good thing, but too much spice can completely numb the senses—or bite back. It's how we couldn't help but feel about the new 2012 BMW M6 Convertible, top down, in one of its many Sport-mode...

“Keep it simple” is a siren song for driving enthusiasts and weekend racers who love a certain kind of sports car. And if you hear that as meaning lightweight, rear-wheel-drive, relatively inexpensive, inherently well-balanced, and not overwhelmed by electronic controls—and...

Climbing into the XTS for a drive, it was hard to not think of all that Cadillac officials had cautioned us the technology-focused 2013 Cadillac XTS isn’t. It isn't a new flagship model for the brand; it isn’t intended as a performance-oriented model; and it isn’t expected to be...

No respectable dictionary would define a neologism like "ridonkulous" just yet. And even if they did, they probably wouldn't do it with a picture of a Mercedes SUV blowing through a water trap like it had lost all common sense and all ability to tread lightly on anything, whether it be terra firma...

With better looks, more power, better gas mileage, and improved handling, the 2013 Porsche Boxster is the best luxury roadster you can buy. Yep, I said it: don't bother with the BMW Z4 or the Mercedes-Benz SLK. This is the roadster you want. The last Boxster, the 986, was a bit rough around the...

To understand a car—okay, especially one that’s perhaps a little removed from our own fiscal reality—it helps to peer into the buyers’ mindset for a stint, and to go where they might go. And when the place happens to be the French Riviera, and the car is the 2013...

This car is the real deal. Really. Shod in crappy European Prius tires (seriously--that's the standard tire), loosed in the hands of a dozen journalists, and ham-fisted silly for hours on track, the FR-S never once failed to impress the assembled host. In fact, it took its licks and asked for more...

Hey, that's one fancy Civic there! Calling the 2013 Acura ILX a gussied-up Civic is, in many ways, completely fair, but in truth, Acura has come up with a mix of near-luxury style and feel crossed with a sporty-ish sensibility that is almost completely missing from the market at the moment, and...

First off, we have to tell you that the new 2012 Volkswagen Golf R is worlds better than the last Golf 'R' to be sold in the U.S. That's the 2008 R32, which was comfortable and faster than the GTI, but not much faster, and all too heavy and luxury-laden—more like a grand-touring hot-hatch...

If you've driven the previous Acura RDX, you know the definition of compromise. While it was, in many ways, ahead of its time, the RDX was rough, balky, and awkward as much as it was peppy, fun, and high-tech. Times have changed. The 2013 Acura RDX doesn't look all that much different from the last...

The region around Portland, Oregon, offers some truly great backroads for driving enthusiasts; and while they might be perfect for testing out sports cars in the summer and fall months (the dry season), always-gray mid-March perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate place to preview the 2013 Ford...

Whenever I land in a strange place for one of these first drives of a new car, the first task at hand is to keep moving. Get off the plane, off the shuttle, and get out of the hotel room before jet lag lures me for "a short nap" and proceeds to take the rest of the day--the rest of the...

Las Vegas, if you haven't been lately, kind of sucks. Everything is twice as expensive as it should be, good blackjack tables are nearly extinct (even at $100 a hand), and traffic is bad enough to make trekking on foot seem like a good idea even in the summer desert heat. But fortunately, I wasn't...

Nissan's 2013 GT-R is an improvement over last year's model, which itself upped the bar considerably from earlier models.

It takes a degree of self-control to drive not one, but two diesel examples of Jaguar's XF, before finally getting behind the wheel of the high-performance XFR. There was method behind the madness, of course. With a power output on the fun side of 500 horsepower, stepping foot in the XFR before...