First Drive Reviews

In recent years, Hyundai has surged toward the top of the sales charts because it plays so strongly to value-minded shoppers. It’s done well in sensible metrics like reliability, resale value, and satisfaction; achieved good safety ratings; and offers a strong list of features for the money...

If you’ve driven a Nissan Leaf, you’ll agree that while the near-instantaneous torque provided by its electric motor system from standstill can be intoxicating in itself at first, the Leaf is SO not a performance car. With soft, Prius-like dynamics and Prius-like looks, the Leaf appeals...

BMW has given the 3-Series its most radical set of changes in many years, and because we—and sport-sedan owners and enthusiasts in general—so often use the 3-Series as a benchmark, maybe even the archetype for sport sedans, it’s time to take note. Which is what we did this past...

I have a confession to make. Sitting at the lunch table after thrashing the 2012 Camaro ZL1 on track—unrestricted, an opportunity offered to only a few of us at Firebird International Raceway, home of the Bondurant Racing School—I made a spontaneous association and foolishly blurted it...

The 2012 Cadillac SRX seems at least in one respect to be going against the grain. As a number of luxury vehicles have had engines downsized—and even the BMW 5-Series is going four-cylinder, for instance—Cadillac has instead swapped a larger engine, with slightly worse gas mileage, into its SRX...

The insults are common and predictably gender-biased: the hairdresser's car, the chick car, etc. But the 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLK, especially the SLK 55 AMG, throws off those epithets with abandon, rising instead to deliver a combination of sport, speed, style, and comfort anyone could love--even...

You could natter on endlessly about how the 2012 Porsche 911 is or isn't like the Ur-911s of yore, but after the gin has run dry and the first rays of sunlight are glinting off the ocean, you'd be no closer to understanding what the 991 really is. Instead, it's far more informative to approach the...

Not too long ago, when Buick and Pontiac (and farther back, Oldsmobile) occupied a vague middle ground that was more premium (or sportier-flavored) than Chevrolet but not as luxurious as Cadillac, it seemed that many Buicks were merely thinly disguised, cosmetically different versions of what you...

“A four-cylinder? It's fuel-efficient? How much power? Nice!” That's the sort of reaction we found from several middle-age suburbanites who momentarily interrupted their community-center fitness group to ask us some questions about the new 2012 Range Rover Evoque—all the while...

Croatia doesn't sound like anything familiar to Americans, but Europeans have been calling it the "new Tuscany" since they turned their timeshare-building, economy-hyperinflating attentions away from the last "new Tuscany" in southern Spain. We're still puzzled about what was wrong with the old...

There are at least two ways to look at the arrival of the 2012 MINI Cooper Coupe: "Yay! Another MINI to love!"; and, "Another MINI? Why?" Whichever camp you fall into, the MINI Coupe shouldn't be called just another MINI, despite the fact that it very much is. Before we can make sense of that...

It's been nearly two years since we took you along for a first drive of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG gullwing, live from Laguna Seca. We were the first to call it Mercedes' Viper, summing it up thusly: "It's partly American in its tendency to speak out, part Italian in its cool-first aesthetic, and...

The venerable BMW inline six-cylinder is, and has long been, one of our favorite engines. But for 2012, it's being replaced, in naturally aspirated guise, with a turbocharged four-cylinder. Blasphemy? Sorry, no. Not at all. That's right: The turbo four-cylinder in the 2012 Z4 sDrive 28i is a worthy...

The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is still a fresh, frenetic memory, but I've spent the last two days driving some of BMW's newest hardware up and down California's central coast. Between clipping canyon apexes and whirring along in high-tech quietude, it became clear: the new 6er coupe is about...

It may be the weekend when all of the classic-car world preoccupies itself with Pebble, Laguna and Quail, but on a slightly less rarified level, the Monterey classics celebration also serves as a launching pad for new luxury vehicles, this year from Infiniti, Lexus and Cadillac alone. Hyundai's...

Buick has been transformed, and in automotive terms, it's a towering achievement. It took Toyota three generations to get its full-size trucks right. It took three decades for Mercedes to realize its cruise-control stalks were ergonomic gotchas. Buick's taken just four years to get from the days of...

We drive the 2012 Chrysler 300 SRT8

We drive the 2012 Dodge Charger SRT8.

We drive the 2012 Dodge Challenger SRT 392.

We drive the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8.