Test Drive

How do you like the sleek new nose? The longer, lower, wider 2014 Kia Forte EX Sedan is cheap to own and run, but comes with a lot of extras. Kia photo

The notion of high-value small cars has slowly been catching on here, where small used to mean cheap, and bigger was always better. At one time, a fancy VW Rabbit would have been an oxymoron right up there with “airline food,” but today an entire generation of Americans lusts after the Golf GTI. Some of these small cars are fairly expensive right out of the box—the Mini, Audi’s A3—but most, like the GTI, are tarted-up models of cars that first established their bona fides in the economy class. This all-new 2014 Kia Forte EX Sedan is a good example of the latter.

It’s a capital-S Sedan because there are two other versions: the hatchback 5-Door and the fetchingly named Forte Koup, with two doors and a sloping roof. The first hint that something was different—besides the sleeker, less-frumpy styling—came when I approached the car and its wing mirrors unfolded themselves with a whirr, as if to say, “Hi, boss!”  Then, when I sat down and stabbed the ignition button, the seat motored ahead into the ready position (like a Lexus). So, with the Monroney sticker in hand, I took a good look around.

There are plenty more goodies: Power sunroof. Leather seats, heated in front, and the driver’s adjusts electrically (and can remember two settings) and has a cooling feature as well. Dual-zone automatic climate control. Two 12-volt outlets. Heated outside mirrors. AM/FM/CD/MP3/satellite audio with six speakers and Bluetooth. Satnav and a 7-inch screen, on which we can see the tricycle we’re about to back over. A smaller digital screen just for the driver, with crisp graphics. LED taillights and high-intensity headlights. One-touch signaling. (I like that.) A steering-wheel heater. Lots of controls in the steering wheel.

None of these features is new, but we’re not used to finding all of them (and more) on such an inexpensive car. A base Forte LX starts at $15,900; an EX starts at $19,400; ours was equipped with 17-inch wheels ($350) and both option packages, Premium and Technology, but the total was still just $24,600.

The interior isn’t as upscale as a GTI’s or a Mini’s, but it isn’t a slum, either. And if the new Forte’s rear seats are not as commodious as those cars’—a better comparo here would be to the Forte 5-Door, with similarly roomy hindquarters—they’re still comfortable, and behind them lies a trunk that is bigger than expected.

Driving this Forte Sedan was something of a pleasant surprise too. The EX’s 4-cylinder engine is rated at 173 horsepower (LX models get a smaller 145HP four), which is sent through a 6-speed automatic transmission with manual shifting. As RPM climbs, the motor sounds more and more thrashy, but there’s enough acceleration, and at cruising speed the noise level is fine. All Fortes have front-wheel drive, with the usual trade-off in ultimate cornering versus traction, and the balance between ride comfort and handling seems well-thought-out also.

The EX has Kia’s Flex Steering, which lets the driver choose between Normal, Comfort and Sport settings, to vary the quickness of the steering. We might select Comfort for a long drone down the interstate, then Sport for a blast through a mountain pass. It’s a unique feature at this price, but the differences are subtle and I forgot about it.

At an average of 65 MPH, we achieved 33.4 miles per gallon on the highway. In town, the averages dropped to 22 MPH and 23.3 MPG. Had I discovered Active ECO mode sooner, the city number might have been higher.

The Forte EX mixes economy of ownership and operation with some of the comforts and conveniences of much more expensive cars. If Kia added a bit more refinement (quieter engine, a cabin color other than flat black), this car would feel almost luxurious. As it is, after a few hundred miles, a horrifying thought creeps into the brain: Isn’t this really all the car any sane person truly needs?

Quite possibly. I have to go lie down now, and hum Tantric chants till my mind clears. And pray that some bahn-burning, insanely expensive supercar arrives soon to restore my mental balance.

In an LS460, the neighbors will see you coming. Lexus photo

What trumps an executive jet that seats six? Well, how about one that takes 10 passengers? For some people, bigger is always better. Houses, boats, wristwatches, cheeseburgers, cup sizes, computers . . . a few extra feet, millimeters, layers, letters or gigabytes make all the difference. This is what I ponder when driving a Lexus LS460, especially so soon after falling a little bit in love with the company’s exquisite—but smaller—GS450h sedan. (Even if it is a hybrid.)

The status-y LS four-doors sit atop the Lexus range; they’re 10 inches longer and an inch and a half wider than the GS models; there’s also a stretch version of the LS that’s five inches longer yet. So an LS is seriously bigger than a GS—on the outside. Inside, however, front and rear passenger spaces are almost the same on both cars, including the stretch model, to within an inch or so in all dimensions. Curious. Fit, finish and materials are equal also. Aha, the LS driver’s seat adjusts 16 ways while the GS driver has to live with just 10 adjustments! But wait—the standard GS stereo has 12 speakers while the LS’s has only 10! And this LS has an 8-speed automatic transmission—but the GS450h comes with a continuously variable transmission that has an infinite number of “gears.”

Rather than go cross-eyed sifting through the specs, let me call out a few more-telling numbers instead: First, every variant of each car will sprint to 60 MPH in six seconds or less and cruise at speeds that will get us jailed without parole. Second, this hulking LS460 AWD—with its 4.6-liter V-8 tuned for 360 horsepower (386 in the rear-wheel-drive model)—averages about 18 MPG while the GS hybrid goes fully 10 miles farther on a gallon. Finally, the big car costs $72,000 to start, and the smaller one $48,000. (Comparing hybrid to hybrid, the LS600h gets 20 MPG and costs $120,000; the hybrid GS starts at just $59,000.)

So is bigger still better? Not in my world, at least when it comes to Lexus sedans.

This is true from behind the steering wheel as well. I’ve been in cathedrals that weren’t as hushed and serene as this LS460, but driving it amounts to aiming between the white lines. The car doesn’t misbehave in any way—it doesn’t float or bounce, sway in corners or nose-dive under braking—it’s just that there are layers of gauze between the driver and the road. If driving is your time to review voicemail while sipping coffee and touching up your lip gloss, this may be a good thing; you won’t be distracted. After all, thanks to the active and passive safety gear that Lexus packs into these cars, we hardly need to pay attention any more anyway. (Right?)

So the LS460 isn’t a full-on autobahn-stormer; but it is a fine place to be. Our example was modestly outfitted with just $10,000 worth of options (backup camera, power rear sunshade, blind-spot and cross-traffic monitors, upgraded wheels, leather and stereo, and assorted cold-weather goodies to go with the AWD), so it lacked the self-adjusting air suspension, but it was still a technological tour de force. And the more I use Lexus’s unique Remote Touch computer mouse-type controller, the more I like it—and the more I appreciate the two large display screens, too.

Back to actual driving: Even this “stripper” LS offers a choice between Snow, Eco, Normal and Sport settings, which mostly alter how quickly the throttle and transmission respond to the driver’s foot. The differences from one mode to the next are subtle, but I adopted Sport because it seemed to strip away one of those layers of gauze, at no cost in passenger comfort.

An $82,000 stripper? Yes, and a few carefree moments with the order form—as you consider the Ultra Luxury Package ($4,800), the Executive Class Seating Package ($7,555), the Advanced Pre-Collision safety system ($6,500) and the F Sport handling upgrade ($8,350)—can easily drive the price into six figures.

Which boxes you tick will depend on whether you’re the driver or you have a driver. But if you’re one of those bigger-is-better people, it hardly matters. The LS is simply 10 or 15 inches more better than the next sedan in the Lexus family, end of discussion.

There’s something about a Lexus that makes me want to shower and put on a suit before I fire it up—or, in this case, energize its circuits—and go for a drive. Lexus photo

Somewhere on the continuum between Toyota’s Prius C and the new million-dollar gas-electric hypercars from Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari (really), there’s a zone that separates hybrids as economy transportation from hybrids as ultimate speed sleds. We know that electric motors can help small internal-combustion engines stretch a gallon of gasoline from, say, 30 miles to 50 or more, at least at low speeds. But for big gas engines, add-on electric motors are now providing extra wallop—carving a second or two off the 0-to-100 MPH sprint, for example. The GS450h sits in the zone that divides these types of hybrid cars; it enjoys some of both benefits.

There are in fact two extra electric motors buried within this Lexus. One under the hood largely services the batteries; it’s the second one, built into the differential, that feeds more oomph to the back wheels. The gas V-6 up front makes 286 horsepower; the electric motor at the rear can jack that up to a combined total of 338 HP. Lexus doesn’t publish torque figures, but the electrics provide an impressive shove of acceleration.

There’s another surprise here too: a CVT, or continuously variable transmission—something usually found only on economy cars and riding lawn mowers. Lexus, however, calls it a controlled variable  transmission, and its stellar behavior justifies the new name. Not till I tried to get frisky with it in manual mode did I realize it wasn’t a normal transmission with distinct gears. The point of a CVT is to keep the engine in its best operating range, and this one does a good job here as well. We averaged 27 miles per gallon overall and the GS450h’s 34 highway MPG rating for 2013 seems realistic. These are very good numbers for a large and sumptuous sedan that can dust off slower traffic—and also creep through a mall parking lot under electric power only.

Despite its quickness and the capable handling of its adaptive suspension, this isn’t a sports sedan. (For that, you’ll want the lighter, less-expensive and more nimble GS350 F Sport.) It’s an updated luxury cruiser for today’s congested and connectivity-obsessed highway culture. The GS450h is as comfortable tied up in city traffic—where the engine shuts itself off, to save gas and cut exhaust emissions—as it is flying serenely across the great plains on I-80.

Lexus also has done a fine job of submerging the unpleasant parts of a driving a hybrid. The engine stop-start feature is now barely discernable and response is immediate; the throttle doesn’t feel like it’s on a rubber band; the brakes bite down in linear fashion; and the car’s balance is not upset by the addition of several hundred pounds of electric motors and batteries.

The GS450h is a complex and highly sophisticated piece of mechanical, electrical and ergonomic engineering, but Lexus has boiled everything down to apparent simplicity. (For instance, in normal mode, the big dial next to the speedometer simply indicates “charge,” “eco” or “power.” But selecting Sport mode not only amps up the electric drive motor, it also magically converts that dial into a tachometer.) The unique mouse-type computer controller is easier to operate than many other luxury cars’ “user interfaces,” and the split-screen computer monitor is among the largest and most readable out there.

Overall, the instrument and control panels are so elegant that they’re both non-intimidating and downright attractive, and the redesigned cabin is as tasteful and comfortable as we’d expect from Lexus. The optional blond bamboo trim contrasts beautifully with rich, dark-toned leather and synthetics. I don’t recall gripping a bamboo steering wheel before, but it’s highly agreeable.

At $59,000 to start and here optioned up to a full $70,000, the 2013 GS450h isn’t just good “for a hybrid,” it’s a good car, full stop. In fact, it’s a good deal more than just good. If I were shopping for a luxury sedan with less than Powerball money, the GS450h would make my personal short list—even though it’s a hybrid.

Rectification. Last week’s column about the good-news, bad-news Enclave drew a quick response from Buick: “All Enclaves are assembled in Lansing. It is exported to China. We do not build or assemble Enclaves in China.” There you have it; shame on me—and my source.

Yes, but: For every one of its strengths, the Buick Enclave has a corresponding weakness. Buick photo.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back to Detroit, after the hard lessons carmakers learned in the Great Contraction, along comes the Buick Enclave. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s a new car—the Enclave debuted as a 2008 model, which explains a lot—but that it already needs a pavement-up makeover.

The good news, early in ‘08, just before Capitalism collapsed, was that the Enclave was a modern unit-body, three-row, front-wheel/all-wheel-drive crossover vehicle that managed its great bulk pretty well. (It replaced obsolete Buick SUVs that had been based on minivans and pickup trucks.) The bad news was that the world then changed almost overnight, leaving the Enclave as either the first of the new breed from Detroit or the last of the old school.

Still, the Enclave has been a big hit in the US and also in China, where Buick is a brand that the newly affluent aspire to. Enclaves are now built in Michigan and in Shanghai.

Here at home, however, the Enclave now seems huge (six feet tall and wide, and almost 17 feet long) and heavy (2¹/₂ tons with AWD). The good news? Six, seven or even eight people can sit in comfort, if we banish the kids to the third row. Our sample Enclave had two adjustable “captain’s chairs” in the second row, with an aisle inbetween to row three. Fold all the rear seats down, and the Enclave can pack a Smart ForTwo Electric as a spare.

More good news: From day one, the Enclave has had a thoroughly up-to-date 6-cylinder engine, now tuned for 286 horsepower and abundant torque. The bad news is that this motor is as thirsty as a V-8. The EPA predicts 16 to 22 miles per gallon, city and highway; we got 17 overall. And while other cars are getting 7-, 8- and even 9-speed transmissions, the Enclave has six speeds—but the transmission shifts cleanly and always seems to be in the right gear. (It also can be shifted manually by thumb, via a rocker switch in the side of the shifter knob.) The Enclave sails the highways smoothly and quietly, although with the numbest steering since canal barges went from poles to tillers.

The spacious, airy cabin is nicely laid out, but the trim is that eye-searing chromed plastic that appeals to magpies. The Enclave Premium has a computer screen and a full suite of safety and convenience features—everything from automatic multi-zone climate control to lane-warning and cross-traffic alerts—but the information appears in that squared-off, electroluminescent green type last seen in Mercury space capsules. Furthermore, I sprained a finger learning how to stab the control panel just right—after I’d flipped back and forth through the manual just to figure out how to reset the mileage.

Lighting up the motor requires sticking a metal key into a slot and twisting it. Old-fashioned, and then the key fob is in the way of your right knee. But we don’t have to hold the key till the ignition catches—just make the contact and let go. Again: One foot in the past, one in the present (but hardly the future).

OK, final example: The good news? The Enclave may be old-school, but it is competent; a buyer can say, “It’s not a car, it’s a major household appliance—I need the room, it gets the job done, it’s comfortable, I’ll dicker on the price and it’ll have a warranty.” If Enclaves cost $35,000, there’d be little or no bad news here at all. But the starting price of this Premium AWD model is $47,625—and the sticker on our sample (sitting down, are we?) is $53,155. Good lord. Do you know what else you can buy for that kind of money?

We all want to root for the home team, and some of the new-generation Buicks—the Regal and LaCrosse sedans, for instance, and the chubby little Encore—are huge improvements over Buicks of yore, but this one . . . well, let’s be charitable and ask GM please to re-do the Enclave, and soon. This should be Detroit’s answer to the Audi Q7, not a parade float.

If your shareholders won’t let you buy a jet, one of these might be an acceptable alternative. Planes don’t have Quattro all-wheel drive, either.

As much as I like to drive, and as dynamically brilliant as this car is—except for one or two little hiccups—the best seat in the house is in the back. This is the “L” variant of Audi’s flagship A8 sedan, longer by 5.1 inches. That doesn’t sound like much, but those inches were applied behind the front seats. The rear of the A8 was hardly cramped to begin with; now there’s room back there to land a hang glider.

With the Rear Seat Comfort Package, both back seats are independently adjustable as well as heated and cooled. Furthermore, the front passenger seat can be controlled from the back, so the CEO can motor it forward—maybe squeezing her executive V-P a bit in the shotgun seat, but gaining that much more space behind. Keep on ticking the option boxes and the rear seats become more and more luxurious, topping out with recline and massage features, power sunshades, a fridge and dual 10-inch computer screens.

By now we’ve spent the price of an economy car in the back seats. But the pilot’s seat of an A8L is a nice place to be too. Not only is it adjustable (18 or 22 ways), heated, cooled and massaging, it also provides access to what’s under the hood: A silky twin-turbocharged 4-liter V-8 that squeezes out 420 horsepower and 444 pounds of torque. All the torque is available at just 1,500 RPM, so a mere dip of the driver’s toe accelerates this cruiser like a sports car. (A hushed and serene sports car.) The swell of power flows through an 8-speed transmission that shifts almost seamlessly, while the adaptive air suspension and the Quattro all-wheel drive absorb bumps and straighten out corners just as we’d expect them to.

Mere performance, comfort and refinement are no longer enough to impress the well-heeled, however, and so Germany’s Big Three are locked in an arms race to overwhelm us with techno-tronics. BMW has iDrive, Mercedes-Benz has COMAND, and Audi calls its computerized control system MMI, for Multi Media In your face—sorry, Interface. It’s a dial/buttons/screen combo that adjusts most of the car’s functions, from suspension and steering to the five distinct movable parts of each front seatback, and accesses the array of connectivity features. Audi has now fed Google Earth into its satnav, to provide zoom-in maps—alongside traffic, weather and news alerts as well as AM/FM/XM radio, all under manual or voice command. An A8 is even a mobile WiFi hotspot.

MMI can cause heart palpitations among seniors, but anyone comfortable with a smartphone should be able to cope. Furthermore, once everything is set, we’re left with easy one-click operations to toggle between Normal and Sport driving modes, pick radio stations, and work the windshield wipers or seat heaters.

Given what Audi has invested in digitalism, I’m almost abashed to complain about something so humdrum as driving, but let’s go back to the snags I mentioned: From a full stop, the A8 sits for a moment before it responds to the throttle. I thought this might be the fuel-saving engine stop-start feature, but disabling it didn’t solve the problem. I suspect the lag is programmed into the transmission to allow the motor time to restart—even if it isn’t needed. Annoying. I’d also like a bit more self-centering in the steering as the car comes out of a corner—a slight lack that might be due to the longer wheelbase, or even the four-season tires on our car.

Audi A8L 4.0T prices start at $87,200. Our sample came with extra driver assists (active cruise control with automatic stop & go, various alert sensors and a 360-degree, top-view camera) plus LED lights, a panoramic sunroof, front and rear Comfort Packages and other options, but the sticker was still slightly below a hundred grand. It can, of course, go well north of that. (A8s also come with 333HP V-6 or 500HP W12 engines, priced accordingly, and there’s an S8 sport model too.)

If you’re wondering how to fit such a vehicle into your budget, here’s a suggestion: Get rid of the company jet, lay off the pilots and cancel the maintenance contract, and then order one of these stretch Audis. What the heck, get two of them! Even with a full-time chauffeur, and even if you fly first class when you do need a plane, you’ll save 20 or 30 million bucks and be more comfortable too, especially in bad weather.

Toyota & Subaru have recreated the sports car: light, nimble, quick, fun, sharp-looking and barely $26,000.

Most of what Toyota builds is “product.” Very good product, to be sure, but—from the Camry to the RAV4 and even the out-there Prius—Toyotas are mainstream: solid and reliable, nearly invisible and generally non-aspirational. We don’t lust after Toyotas; we buy them by the millions because we need Toyotas to get through life.

Yet here is the Toyota FR-S, as in Front-engine, Rear-drive Sport, a brand-new niche vehicle that was jointly hatched by Toyota and Subaru. Maybe to distance itself from such a fringe item, Toyota sells its version of the car as a Scion, the brand it invented for Gen-Y types who don’t see themselves as boring old Toyota owners.

(The plan is, Get ‘em young with Scion, then move ‘em into a Toyota when the offspring arrive, with Lexus waiting as the prize for career success.)

Subaru owners who look under the hood of an FR-S will find a familiar flat-four engine, its cylinders set horizontally, two on each side, instead of in a vee or an upright row. Such a low-profile “boxer” motor helps drop a car’s mass toward the pavement, which improves the handling. This one is tuned for 200 horsepower and 151 lb-ft of torque—which may not be all the power we think we want, but in a car that weighs only about 2,800 pounds, it’s plenty.

Another benefit of light weight is economy. After a day of whooping around on corkscrew back roads, we were astonished to find that we’d averaged 28 miles per gallon of gas. (Toyota claims as much as 34 MPG on the highway.) We also realized that the FR-S could handle more power without getting twisted out of shape or over-running its excellent brakes. So it’s just a matter of time before one or both makers sticks a turbocharger onto this motor and offers an uprated “R” model.

Our FR-S came with the optional 6-speed automatic. Say what you want about slushboxes in sports cars, but this is a good one. It has three settings—snow, normal and sport—and can be shifted manually with the stick or with paddles on the steering wheel. As an automatic, it’s rarely in the wrong gear; in M mode, it doggedly holds each gear until the driver calls for the next one, and a rev-matching blip of the throttle comes with each downshift. The quick, high-effort steering wants both hands on the wheel, so the paddles are useful. Just pretend it’s a sequential racing transmission—or get the 6-speed manual gearbox and learn to use a clutch.

As one might expect, the FR-S’s ride is hard—we feel every ripple in the pavement—but it is reasonably composed, so potholes don’t knock us unconscious. The payoff comes in sharp turn-in, lots of control through fast corners, and occasional feelings of heady self-congratulation.

One might also expect mild claustrophobia, but the cabin turns out to be comfortably wide, deep and roomy, at least up front. There are back “seats,” complete with belts, but at best they are padded repositories for your tablet and your lunch. Fold down the rear seatbacks, however, and a snowboard fits under the trunklid.

Just like boring cars, modern sports cars have to meet all sorts of safety standards, so tell your parents that the FR-S is stuffed with airbags and all the electronic nannies—ABS, VSC, TRAC, EBD, BA, SST at al.—found in Mom’s Camry. They’re there when we need them and unobtrusive otherwise (and if you wish to indulge in anti-social behavior, the stability control can be switched off). The FR-S is also quite up-to-date in other ways, with features like LED tail lights, halogen reflector headlamps and all the hands-free connectivity stuff that you Gen-Yers can’t live without.

Whatever your definition of a sports car—front-engine, mid-engine, rear drive, clutch or clutchless, hardtop or softtop—there is one thing that a sports car absolutely must deliver: that sense of being hard-wired directly to your butt. After many gratifying miles in the FR-S, I believe a small portion of my jeans is still stuck to the driver’s seat, and not just because of the clingy upholstery in those form-fitting buckets. The FR-S is a proper sports car—even if it is a Toyota (or a Subaru).

With a bit of ironing out, the handsome XTS could become a proper Cadillac flagship.

Cadillac’s penchant for inscrutable model names—SRX, CTS, ATS, XTS and, soon, ELR—leaves us confused. What happened to traditional American car names, like Impala, Riviera, Mustang, Seville? I, for one, would be happy to call this car a . . . Milano! No, that’s a cookie. Right, let’s call it the Argonaut. The Wensleydale.

Well, maybe not. But this new sedan is making a real stab at elegance, and “XTS” just doesn’t deliver the message. Look at those lines; someone bought the stylists at Cadillac their first French curve! From every angle, the car is sculpted, almost sensuous, yet masculine and commanding. It’s only four inches shorter than an S-class Merc, but sleeker and much less bulky. (It seems even smaller from the cockpit because the hood drops away out of sight.)

In the modern automotive idiom, the XTS has a 304-horsepower engine, but it’s a six, not a V-8. Front- or all-wheel-drive is available. The automatic transmission has six speeds and a sport setting, and also can be shifted manually with paddles behind the wheel. The steering is light but precise. The suspension is supervised by Cadillac’s Magnetic Ride Control, which adjusts the shock absorbers near-instantaneously to varying pavement conditions. It transmits plenty of road feel to the driver—sometimes a bit too much. The front brakes are from Brembo, the Italian company that supplies most of the world’s supercar stoppers.

The cabin, especially in this $62,000 Platinum AWD edition, is a fine place to be. With each new car, Cadillac’s interiors inch closer to good taste and real luxury. Design-wise, there are only two goofs here: The badge on the grille is way too big—it looks like a bolo tie on a tuxedo—and the electronic instrumentation is better suited to a Vegas pinball machine.

The XTS is stuffed with active and passive safety features—make a wrong move or get too close to anything larger than a chipmunk, and something flashes or beeps or even vibrates one or another of your butt cheeks. It’s like a particularly clumsy pickpocket going for your wallet with a joy buzzer in his hand.

In some areas, Cadillac is trying too hard. For example, the new CUE—Cadillac User Experience—touchscreen and the various command systems in this car are capable of many tasks, but I had to get out the manual just to reset the odometer. Sure, owners will get used to these things, but Cadillac is being too clever by half here. (To be fair, almost every luxury carmaker is guilty of this to some degree. It took BMW years to civilize its notorious iDrive controller.)

Cadillac also has been trying hard with the ride, handling and performance of its cars. With the CTS and ATS and the SRX crossover, it seems Cadillac wants to out-German the Germans, even going so far as to brag about their lap times at the Nürburgring racetrack. After all the ill-handling, poorly made land yachts of yore, this is an enormous improvement, but not all Cadillacs need to be so hard-edged.

A flagship Cadillac should be a refined, large sedan capable of purring down 5^th Avenue in high style and then blitzing serenely from Manhattan to Boston in two hours flat—with the CEO and the chairman of the board swapping grandchildren photos on their iPads in the back. The American Rolls-Royce, as it were, but at a quarter to one-fifth the price.

The XTS comes closer to this mark than any other present Cadillac save possibly the giant Escalade—but that’s an old-school SUV long overdue for a remake. So let’s tune the XTS’s ride for a little more suppleness and add a bit more isolation; chip the engine for at least another 50 pounds of torque; swap this transmission for one of the new super-smooth, highly responsive 8-speed boxes; and tone down the digital readouts. While you’re at it, Cadillac, how about a stretch “L” model with another six inches of leg room in the back? Oh, and find a proper name.

The XTS is a good start. Now let’s finish the job—even if the price climbs by a few grand. Nobody wants a fake Mercedes-Benz; we want a real Cadillac!

Elegant, yes? The view from other angles is just as pleasing. Hyundai’s 2013 Azera is as pretty as sedans get, and the beauty is more than just skin-deep.

To gaze upon Hyundai’s shapely Azera is to realize how few cars today are truly pretty. In a market that values fuel economy, luxury, green-ness, low lease payments or whatever, “pretty” evidently doesn’t cut it any longer. Even Ferraris look a bit grotesque these days. The Azera, though—that’s pretty. No gaping grille, no swollen goiters, no painful angles; it is thoroughly harmonious.

But, as mother used to warn us, pretty is as pretty does. As it happens, though, the Azera does quite well, thank you.

Till the Genesis appeared, in ‘08, the Azera was Hyundai’s flagship, its most expensive car. Then both were upstaged by the luxury-liner Equus, and the Azera became merely a “premium” car, albeit one that gets close to 30 MPG on the highway.

Today Hyundai offers us 13 models with two, three, four or five doors at prices that stretch from $15,000 to $60,000. Most of them are aimed at families, students, young professionals and Capitalists—automakers’ prime quarry—but now Hyundai has a Boomers’ blue-plate special. The Azera is for grownups who no longer have expense accounts, but still have expense-account tastes.

The Azera backs up its looks with a creamy V-6 tuned for 293 horsepower and connected to a 6-speed automatic transmission that can be shifted manually. Suddenly dumping this much power into the front wheels inevitably causes torque steer, but Hyundai has engineered the mad zigzagging down to a mild, easily controllable pull. (We retirees rarely open the throttle that quickly anyway. Unless we’re vintage racing.) Furthermore, understeer—the tendency of a nose-heavy FWD car to plow through tight corners—is non-existent, at least in public. On the interstate, the Azera holds its speed and line effortlessly; in town and on secondary roads, the handling, steering, launching and stopping become invisible.

With its spacious charcoal-and-cream interior, the Azera is as satisfying and as “premium” inside as it is outside. No one should be stymied by the controls on the steering wheel and the center console, or by the satnav. The seats are excellent. In the front, the headrests can be adjusted fore-and-aft; rear passengers get two semi-bucket seats plus reading lights, soft-touch grab handles, a fold-down armrest and ample foot and leg room. Driving or simply being driven in the Azera is an exercise in comfort and serenity.

Then we tried something different: I sat in the car with the spec sheet in hand and mentally deleted all the added features. The 19-inch wheels became standard 18s; the dual-pane skyroof with its electric shade was replaced by featureless headliner. The audible backup sensors disappeared, along with one of the driver’s-seat adjustments, the seat memory, the 3-stage cooling in the front seats and the powered tilt-and-telescope on the steering wheel. The rear-window shades went away. So did with the mood lighting, the carpet floor mats, the higher-grade stereo, the Xenon headlights and the iPod cable. The sticker price dropped by $4,100.

Was the “stripper” Azera still a premium car? Was it worth $32,250? For that matter, was the loaded car worth $37,225?

There’s no denying the desirability of some of those extras—I’m partial to the huge sunroof and the high-intensity headlights—but what remained was impressive. If the parking sensors are gone, there’s a still a backup camera. The computer screen and GPS stay. The sound system now has seven speakers instead of 12, but all the wireless connectivity remains. The front seats are still leather, still heated and still adjusted via Mercedes-style controls. The HVAC system is still automatic and still has two zones. The self-dimming Homelink rear-view mirror is there too, as are the automatic high beams, the push-button ignition and the auto-unlocking doors. The air-bag count remains at nine. So it seems that the answer to all three questions above was “yes.”

The Azera doesn’t break new ground in performance or technology. What it does is come up behind the establishment in this segment—Toyota’s Avalon, Nissan’s Maxima, a Honda product or two, various Buicks, Fords and such—and hip-check them aside.

Dancin’ in the rain: The all-wheel-drive 365HP 2013 Taurus SHO is Ford’s affordable all-weather fighter-bomber.

Everything old is new again. Fortunately, with a few exceptions, “new” invariably beats “old,” at least in automobiles. Ford’s revival of the SHO variant of its Taurus sedan is a case in point. When the original SHOwed up, way, way back in MCMLXXXIX, it had front-wheel drive, a 5-speed manual gearbox and a V-6 rated for 220 horsepower—enough to motivate a 3,300-pound car relatively well. Over the next 10 years the SHO was updated twice, but it never got beyond 235 horsepower.

SHO stands for Super High Output, so that was a bit of hype even then; a 1989 M5 sedan, by contrast, was good for 310 horsepower. (The BMW cost twice as much as the Ford, but never mind.)

The SHO disappeared for a decade and then returned a few years ago as this fourth-generation model. At 365 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque, its output still isn’t “super high” (the new top-end Ferrari makes something like 900 HP), but this engine has to lug around only 12 pounds per horsepower instead of the first SHO’s 15. And the improvements go far beyond power-to-weight ratios. In every way the 2013 SHO is parsecs ahead of the original, although it has gained a whopping 1,100 pounds.

How? It’s a much bigger car, for starters—six inches wider and taller and more than a foot longer, and with an absolutely enormous trunk. The modern SHO’s all-wheel-drive adds weight too, but AWD erases the torque-steer and understeer that plague powerful FWD cars, and it makes the SHO an all-weather fighter-bomber. For 2013, Ford has upgraded its anti-spin electronics too; if the genie believes the car is headed seriously off-axis, something called Curve Control steps in to slow one wheel or another to help straighten it out.

This new SHO also has bigger brakes and brake master cylinders. The car stops hard and true, and its brake pedal is easy to modulate. (The emergency brake is a foot pedal too, so stop fantasizing about handbrake turns.) All Tauruses now have electric power steering; the SHO’s is specially tuned. It feels accurate and lively, if a bit numb. The SR1 suspension, with its SHO-only springs, shock absorbers, bushings and stabilizer bars, gets high marks as well. Our SHO was also equipped with a new Performance Package that includes bigger wheels and better tires, a slightly firmer suspension and even stouter brakes, a true “off” switch for the stability control, and shorter final-drive gearing for extra acceleration.

In a 70/30 mix of interstate and in-town driving, our SHO averaged 21.3 miles per gallon. Thanks to turbocharging, direct fuel injection, that electric steering, grille shutters that close at speed (to improve aerodynamics) and other fuel-economy wizardry, this might climb as high as 25 MPG. But who buys a SHO to save a few bucks at the pump?

Ford puts variations of this twin-turbo EcoBoost V-6 motor into a number of its upper-end models; in the SHO it’s hooked up to a 6-speed automatic transmission with shifter paddles on the wheel. However, the transmission needs no help from the driver, especially in Sport mode.

SHO upgrades aren’t limited to athletic prowess. Ford has liberally sprinkled the contents of its toy chest throughout: heated leather seats with available massage; voice-activation for music, telephone, climate control, navigation, news and incoming texts; a rear-view camera and backup sensors; adjustable pedals; blind-spot and cross-traffic alerts; and interactive cruise control with collision warning.

Altogether, the SHO has evolved from a cult car into an unusually well-rounded package that is a pleasure to drive and be driven in. The car feels beautifully planted and controllable on any pavement, and sometimes so quick that it’s hard to believe there’s “only” 350 pounds of torque on tap. The SHO is still well off the M5’s mark—now 560 HP, plus tons of technology and luxury—but it also still costs less than half the German dreadnaught’s $90,000-plus.

Is the BMW more than twice as good? Doubtful; and it’s still only rear-wheel-drive. Now we’re thinking that if Ford built a flashy body around this platform and sexed up the cabin a bit, they’d have a Lincoln that could run with the new generation of Cadillacs.

Infiniti M-series sedans turn heads. Now there’s a stretch version too, but only for China, where big back seats and chauffeurs are the rage among the new Capitalists.

After decades of scoffing at it, I have become not just a fan but a connoisseur of cruise control. This stems from an encounter last July between two Maine state troopers, one in a Ford Interceptor and the other overhead in a Cessna 182, and me in a 470-horsepower Chrysler 300 SRT8. It was friendly and even semi-humorous, but now my driver’s license has a blot on it.

Which means no more, “Sir, I see you have no violations so I’ll let you off with a warning.” Which in turn means tiptoeing down the interstates more carefully than ever. (My insurance is high enough.) The best way to stay under the radar, literally, is to set the cruise control at something barely permissible—I like 78—and then clear the left lane so the dudes doing 85 or 90 can blow by and attract the heat.

So far, so good. With proper cruise control, it isn’t even that boring; and the one in the Infiniti M35h may be the best I’ve tried.

Here’s how modern interactive/adaptive cruise control works: Turn it on. Toggle up or down to set the precise speed. (MPH appears in a little window.) Adjust the interval (approximately two, three or four school-bus lengths behind the car in front). Withdraw foot from throttle. The genie maintains the set speed until it “sees” traffic ahead; then it slows your car to the same speed and holds the pre-set gap. If the obstruction isn’t moving, or it stops, cruise control should bring you to a stop too. (It can’t yet swerve you into an empty lane.)

However, few CCs do this with the smoothness of a human brain processing distance and speed and fluidly adjusting throttle, brakes and steering. Faced with an obstacle, many such CCs just freak out—chop the throttle abruptly, then get back onto the gas only agonizingly slowly after you’ve nosed your car to the side. But not this Infiniti; its ICC, Intelligent Cruise Control, really is. The transitions are smooth but positive and relatively quick; braking and acceleration are pretty much what most of us do. ICC lacks only a “tailgate” setting—to impress upon the hellspawn clogging the passing lane that it’s high time to move over—but Infiniti has (probably wisely) resisted this.

ICC can slow the M35h to a crawl and then recover—even from toll booths, at least if you have E-ZPass. The system flawlessly negotiated I-95 from Massachusetts through Connecticut and right across Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge with no human inputs beyond steering. At the GW, however, we learned that once the Infiniti comes to a complete stop, ICC shuts down and has to be re-booted.

Why, you’re wondering, the lecture on cruise control? Because the rest of the M35h is so compromised.

It’s not the cabin or the comforts and conveniences, which are every inch what is expected from a $66,245 sedan loaded with Technology, Deluxe and Premium packages. (Although the satnav did go into an endless Groundhog Day loop in metro DC, complete with an unfinished highway on-ramp.) Nor is it the advanced suspension, which produces a refined and controlled ride.

No, the compromise is in the M35h’s hybrid gas-electric drive, which on the one hand is quite fuel-efficient but on the other suffers from horrid lag whenever the computer has to choose between the two. At a stop, the genie sits and thinks, OK, what’s it gonna be . . . ? while the driver’s foot sinks ever farther toward the floor. And then a rush of torque catapults the car ahead like a demented rabbit. When we lift off the throttle in surprise, the car sags back into the wet sand again. Not even the multi-mode, adaptive 7-speed transmission helps; the Sport setting just amplifies the abruptness, and don’t even try Eco unless you’re just morbidly curious.

Fortunately, once it’s up to speed, the M35h stays there with considerable aplomb and even fuel economy. Thirty MPG at 78 MPH in a luxury car is commendable, but this particular good deed does not go unpunished. Infiniti, get the h out! Or tune it up to restore the sweet harmony between man and machine—as in your other M sedans, the 37 and 56.

The three-bar grille tells us that this is the shorter of Hyundai’s two distinct Santa Fe lines, the 5-passenger Sport.

If by chance the BMW X1 (discussed here recently) isn’t your cuppa but you’re still hunting for a small and stylish crossover SUV with all-wheel drive, this just might soak your tea bag: the updated 5-passenger Hyundai Santa Fe Sport. The 190-horsepower model is down 50 ponies from the 4-cylinder Beemer, but it costs $6,300 less to start—just $26,200. Jump up to the turbocharged Santa Fe Sport 2.0T and you gain 74 horsepower (a respectable 264 in all, and 269 lb-ft of torque) for $29,450.

Now you’re only 36 HP less than the hotter X1, the 6-cylinder, but the difference in starting prices has shot up to $9,150. And the more boxes you tick on each option sheet, the greater the price difference gets.

We can hear the outrage already: How dare you equate a Hyundai with a BMW? Oh, but we’re not done yet. The new Santa Fe is arguably as good-looking as the X1 on the outside and possibly nicer inside. In every dimension these two vehicles fall within a few inches of each other—and of the Honda CR-V, Ford Escape, Toyota RAV4, etc.—but the Korean is a critical bit roomier than the German, especially in the back seat and the cargo area. More, however, on Santa Fe roominess to come.

Yes, the 4-cylinder X1 has a vanilla-smooth 8-speed automatic transmission while the Santa Fe makes do with a slightly clumsier 6-speed. And, thanks some very sophisticated technology, the BMW may travel a mile or two farther on a gallon of gas. However, in 70/30 highway/city driving we averaged 24.4 MPG in a Santa Fe Sport AWD 2.0T. (Hyundai has cut weight by switching to new, higher-strength steel and this engine is fed fuel by direct injection, for a bit more efficiency.)

The Santa Fe’s default mode is front-wheel-drive instead of the X1’s RWD, with varying amounts of torque sent to the rear wheels as needed, but it has a classically BMW-style suspension. Depending on slippage, the Santa Fe’s torque also can be automatically adjusted, “vectored,” from side to side.

We wouldn’t be surprised if the BMW was more composed at 110 miles per hour. But that’s on the autobahn; here, the Santa Fe Sport meets or exceeds all expectations for stopping and going, as well as for comfort, quiet and convenience.

Our impress-the-press sample Santa Fe Sport was equipped with most of the optional toys. The “standard features” column on the spec sheet is long and, as usual, lists items that once were found only on really posh cars. However, one standard feature is unique, at least in this category: DSSM, or Driver-Selectable Steering Mode. This changes the steering effort and response from Normal to Sport to Comfort. In daily use the differences are almost unnoticeable—but the steering-wheel heater, part of the $2,900 Technology Package, is very noticeable and, in late winter, welcome.

That’s over on the “added features” side of the sticker, which is where we also find the leather trim and front and rear seat heaters, the dual-zone automatic climate control, the GPS navigation and the rear-view camera, the digital connectivity features, the 12-speaker sound system and a host of other goodies, including window shades. We want for nothing. Well, except better headlights, please.

Now let’s go back to roominess: This Santa Fe Sport has two rows of seats for five people (four comfortably). Not enough? Meet the Santa Fe GLS, with two more seats in a third row. If you didn’t see the GLS next to a Sport, you’d be hard-pressed to tell that it’s 10 inches longer. The stretch Santa Fe has a bigger motor too, a 290-horsepower V-6, and a starting price of $28,350. With a choice of three engines and front-wheel or all-wheel drive in two different sizes and at prices that start in the mid-20s, the Santa Fe has become an unusually versatile vehicle.

Mr. or Ms. Average Driver who has just traded in his or her 10-year-old (average) beater on a 2013 Santa Fe is going to drive home in blissful happiness, marveling at how much cars have improved.

The Jeep Wrangler Moab Edition is most at home in the rocks, and that’s probably where it should stay. But as a daily driver, it puts a little excitement back into life.

A group of auto writers was standing around in the garage recently, eyeing this four-door Wrangler. Awful, isn’t it?, someone said. General agreement. But I sure like it, he continued. General agreement again—enthusiasm, even! This is the Wrangler Conundrum: As an automobile, it’s dreadful; but as an authentic “character vehicle” it’s almost embarrassingly successful.

Jeep can’t build Wranglers fast enough and many dealers have waiting lists. Wranglers are cash cows, too—the sticker on ours read $43,220. Granted, it was the Unlimited Moab Edition with 12 grand worth of add-ons, but still—yikes. The basic development costs of this thing must have been amortized before I was born.

Today, a short-wheelbase, two-door Wrangler starts at $22,195 and the stretched four-door Unlimited version at $25,695. Jeep has done a good job of packaging these basic models, offering many variations on the two themes. The Moab Edition is a new one that slots between the top-line Rubicon off-roader and the “downtown” Sahara. (Moab, in Utah’s red-rock desert, is a magnet for mountain bikers and 4X4 zealots and the site of an annual Jeep get-together.) Some of the distinctions between various Wranglers are just decals, trim and wheel styles, but beneath the cosmetics all of them are essentially semi-domesticated military vehicles. The frame rails look like they came off the Brooklyn Bridge. Wrangler “stylists” like 90-degree angles and flat surfaces, and prefer skid plates to, say, cabin insulation. And traction? This is no wimpy part-time slip-and-grip system, but true 4-wheel-drive that’s either on or off, with a low speed range for rock-crawling and two differentials that can be locked to keep the wheels churning in all conditions. Just yank the lever in the floor and push a button.

This Moab had the optional 5-speed automatic transmission with Hill Descent Control. Our greatest driving challenge last week wasn’t mud, rocks or ravines; it was snow. Thanks to ground clearance and long throttle travel that helped feed the torque to slippery surfaces, the Jeep easily churned through it. Wranglers are powered by Chrysler’s Pentastar V-6, tuned for 285 horsepower and 260 pound-feet of torque. Fuel-economy ratings run from 16 MPG in city driving to 20 or 21 on the highway (not that owners care).

Like every carmaker, Jeep is legally obliged to protect its customers from themselves and each other, so Wranglers have airbags, anti-lock disk brakes, electronic stability control and now tire-pressure monitors. Ours also boasted car-like conveniences (cruise control, power door locks and windows, A/C, a map lamp) and a long list of options. These included hardware such as rock rails, tail-lamp guards and heavy-duty bumpers, plus a slew of decadent upgrades: cushy leather seats (heated in front), a computer with a touchscreen, Bluetooth and Voice Command, satellite radio and navigation, and more.

But the cabin is cramped and shows a lot of painted metal. Driving faster than a crawl on a potholed road will scramble your brain. Cutting a corner with any sort of precision depends on luck. Tire roar and wind noise are deafening at speed. Speaking of speed, don’t even think about an emergency lane-change on the interstate. Today’s Wrangler is more sophisticated than ever, but only so much can be done to civilize this machine before it becomes something less. A Wrangler is as limited in its function as the Mustang, the Corvette and the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, but just as broad in its appeal.

Maybe these Jeeps awaken memories of a freer, less anxious age, when kids rode bicycles without helmets, grownups smoked cigarettes and drank whiskey, and “unmanned aerial vehicles” were model airplanes, not drones. Even Europeans love them. In 1943 the Wrangler’s great-granddaddy waded ashore in Sicily, to help settle the big war; in 2009 Jeep was one of the main reasons for Fiat’s purchase of the Chrysler Group.

The Toyota FJ and the late Hummer H3 are more road-worthy than any Wrangler, and Mercedes-Benz’s G-wagen is much more posh. Sure, and a Yamaha Star rides better than a Harley and Meryl Streep is a better actress than Scarlett Johansson and everyone knows that double cheeseburgers are bad for us. Tell it to the target demographic and see if anybody gives a hoot. Heck, even we like the Wrangler.

The 2014 Forester still looks a bit like an enclosed shopping cart, but a very roomy one, and the Forester is better equipped than ever.

You probably don’t remember when October was new-car month in America: Next year’s models were delivered in the dark of night and dealers covered up their showroom windows until the big reveal. Come in for coffee and doughnuts and see the new ‘63s! And we did. It was a big moment.

That was then. This is now—late February 2013, and a 2014-model-year Subaru sits in my drive. Do they care about making me feel prematurely older? Of course not; Subaru wants to impress us with its new technology. Such as its Driver Assist package with the EyeSight system. But that debuted last year, way back in 2013. Wait a minute . . . OK, you see the problem. Last year is really this year.

Whatever the calendar says, this new, fourth-generation Forester measures improvement by inches and degrees. As it did with the new Impreza, Subaru has gone over the Forester very carefully, massaging everything for safety and efficiency. The changes amount to evolution, not revolution, but no need to fix something that wasn’t broken.

The Forester has outgrown the compact class and it’s now a midsize crossover. Even so, it’s astonishingly roomy inside, nearly the volume of a biggish SUV without the mass and bulk. Our $33,220 Forester 2.5i Touring is also loaded—it’s got most of the features of a luxury car without the decadent interior or price. That’s not to say the cabin is low-rent; the Forester is comfortable—the seats get better all the time—yet pleasantly utilitarian. It is a Subaru, after all, and by reputation Subies have always been practical, thrifty and long-lived.

Equally to the point, they are probably the least-expensive and least fuelish all-wheel-drive vehicles around. Forester prices begin at about $22,000; all models are rated for 23 or 24 miles per gallon in city driving and up to 32 on the highway. This particular one has a 2.5-liter flat-4 motor connected to Subaru’s Symmetric all-wheel drive through a CVT, a stepless (no gears) continuously variable transmission. The default mode is front-wheel drive, but as soon as any loss of traction is detected an electronic clutch automatically shunts some torque to the back wheels.

The 170-horsepower 2.5i engine is gutsy enough, but the CVT occasionally makes it sound as though it’s straining harder than it really is. Forester 2.0XT models get a turbocharged motor good for 250 horsepower. BTW, if you are one of the few Americans who still want a clutch pedal, a 6-speed manual gearbox is available on Forester 2.5i and 2.5i Premium models.

About that EyeSight system: The “eyes” are a pair of cameras, one on each side of the rearview mirror, that look through the windshield in binocular vision. They scan the road ahead, noting other cars, bridge abutments, pedestrians, deer and even lane dividers. The information is fed into a busy little computer that supervises the Subaru’s every move and then intervenes to keep it from running into things. (In the days before smart phones and cupholders, drivers used to do this.) Eyesight also manages the adaptive cruise control and the hey-you’re-wandering-out-of-your-lane alert.

There’s satnav, a rear-vision camera, voice-activated controls, a Bluetooth link and lots of things to do with iPods, iPhones, iTunes, USB, SMS, MP3s and all that, plus a Harmon-Kardon sound system with way more speakers than I have at home. Plus a power liftgate, tire-pressure monitors, high-intensity headlights and, well, space is limited and we do need to talk about driving the car.

Thanks to a hair-trigger throttle, fairly quick steering and a suspension set just on the bouncy side of comfortable, the Forester drives as though it’s perpetually on its tippy-toes. Even the cabin seems to trying to keep us aware. The information screen’s graphics are large, bright and crisp. The various chimes are loud. Slide open the shade on the 40-acre sunroof and crank the driver’s seat up to harvester-combine height, and you’ll feel like you’re sitting in a greenhouse—an unusually light-filled greenhouse, at that. Altogether, it’s as though someone back at Subaru HQ said, “Right, let’s wake our customers up!”

OK, we’re paying attention. Now keep up the good work.

This is the Powder Ride Edition of the X1, BMW’s pavement-eating snowmobile for well-heeled young couples or empty-nesters.

Are you young, hip and “active”? How about forward-thinking and green? Reasonably well-heeled? Do you shower before you go to work? If so, the Bavarians are targeting you for their new “sporty, sophisticated and eco-savvy” X1 sports-activity vehicle. And what is an X1? Think of an X5 or an X3 that was left in the dryer a bit too long. The X1 is a couple of inches smaller than a Toyota RAV4 or a Ford Escape.

The blizzard of demographic desirability that BMW has brewed up for the X1’s American debut is impressive. Even more impressive, however, was the X1’s ability to deal with a real blizzard. Some of the credit has to go to the Pirelli Cinturato P7 All Season tires on our car, but the X1 easily got us through a long night of thick snow and stiff winds. It turned what was evidently traumatic for other drivers—the ones in the ditch or creeping along with their flashers blinking—into an enjoyable romp. The linear throttle and the adaptive transmission manage the power very smoothly; the brakes and steering are equally hooked up and communicative; the suspension perfectly walks the line between comfort and control; and the electronic anti-spin, anti-slip guardian angels are always present to help avert disaster. There was more than enough bite at both ends to put all these assets to work, so I felt like a Finnish rally ace when we got home. Heck, I wanted to turn around and go do it again. My wife rolled her eyes and ran into the house.

BMW offers three versions of its new (to the US) little ute, each in three trim lines. The 240-horsepower 4-cylinder 28i can be had with rear-wheel or all-wheel drive. Our car was the third variant, the xDrive35i, which has a potent 300-horsepower 6-cylinder motor and all-wheel drive. BMW’s “intelligent” AWD system is rear-wheel drive most of the time, but it seamlessly and near-instantaneously sends power to the front wheels when needed.

The two X1 28i models come with dual-mode 8-speed automatic transmissions; the more-powerful 35i has a 6-speed, also with normal and sport settings. All X1s have a host of fuel-saving features both overt (automatic stop-start) and covert (direct fuel injection, using the brakes to generate electricity, optimizing climate control, etc.), which promise up to 34 miles per gallon. Your own mileage may vary; ours certainly did, but we were wrestling with snow, wind and bitter cold.

Top-dog German cars like to lure in buyers with reasonable-sounding base prices and then slaughter us with a menu of costly add-ons. The RWD 28i starts at $30,800 and the xDrive35i at $38,600 (plus delivery). This is upper-end RAV4 and Escape territory. But BMW threw the entire catalog at our car, which maxed its sticker out at $48,095. However, if you restrain yourself to, say, just the M Sport package and uprated paint and trim, the tab for a highly satisfactory and deluxe X1 35i with AWD rises only to $44,000, including four years of maintenance. This works out to a three-year lease at $450 a month, or just four days of lift tickets at Vail.

Speaking of which, BMW has also ginned up a Powder Ride Edition X1. Along with all available luxuries, it comes with wild artwork, special floor and cargo mats, a color-coordinated rooftopper for skis and boards, and a price tag of $48,000 for the 35i or $44,400 for the 28i. Oh, and you also get a pair of matching K2 Powder Ride skis!

We prefer a slightly roomier vehicle for our ski junkets, which involve four adults bulked up in ski and snowboard gear. (There’s always the bigger, much more expensive X3 and X5.) But no one can fault the X1’s winter chops. It bears out my theory that a car that excels in the dry has a built-in advantage when things get ugly. Taut handling and highly manageable power are useful anywhere, anytime—provided there’s also a bit of ground clearance, that is.

It has to be said that, at least when it’s not crusted with snow, the X1 is almost unendurably cute, a twee little crossover ute that could have been made by Santa’s elves. But beneath the lovable-puppy sheet metal beat the heart and chassis of a lion. It is a BMW.

The Ford Flex casts a big shadow and has a unique look and mission.

Wouldn’t you expect a cushy, eye-catching 7-passenger Ford family hauler to puff up our collective pantsuit and sell well? Me too. But, except in California, the Flex has never achieved the success that it deserves. Part of the problem may be that no one’s ever figured out exactly what it is. A van? A sport-utility vehicle? A station wagon? Truly, it’s about equal parts of all three. It’s got the square corners and flat roof of a van but the two-box silhouette of a wagon—and, at almost 17 feet long and six feet wide and tall and with spacious seating for five plus two, it’s as roomy as a full-size SUV. The Flex can be had with all-wheel drive too, although it lacks the high stance and crow’s-nest driving position that people like in a sport-ute.

But that’s a plus. Sitting as low as it does, the Flex doesn’t sway much in the corners and it’s more aerodynamic. (Still, our SEL model with the 285-horsepower Duratec V-6 only got about 18 miles per gallon overall. That’s fine if you’ve moving six people around, but it’s painful for doing errands.)

Then there’s the name: “Flex” makes some people think it’ll run on corn oil or pork drippings along with gasoline. Nope. Other people expect a wildly configurable interior layout with bunk beds and a fireplace. Sorry, no—although it is, well, flexible.

Name and stance aside, the Flex was also a victim of plain old bad timing. Ford proudly rolled it out in early 2008 just in time for the Great Pucker, when sales of everything, especially large and thirsty cars, shut down. Flex numbers finally began to improve along with the economy, but never to the levels that Ford predicted.

Credit the company, however, for not giving up on a capable machine. For 2013 the Flex got a smoother, more tucked-in front end along with a bit more power, a bit more braking, and some dashboard and cabin upgrades to keep pace with newer Fords. As well, the list of available options (not short to begin with) got longer. If you’ve been waiting for power-fold wing mirrors or a thumb-shift button on the 6-speed automatic transmission, now’s your time to buy a Flex.

If these improvements are underwhelming, it’s because the Flex was already a good package before. Short of a diesel engine and an 8-speed transmission, which might boost fuel mileage into the high twenties, I’m not sure what Ford can do to draw more attention to the Flex.

In fact, its chopped-and-channeled, factory-hot-rod style gets plenty of attention already. Richard Gresens, who designed the Flex, is a connoisseur of vintage Electrolux vacuum cleaners, the horizontal canister types of days gone by. He added wheels at the corners, windows at the sides, and voilà—a neo-retro Ford.

Slip behind the wheel and fire it up, and the conundrums go away. The Flex makes no difficult demands. The door openings are large and squared-off; getting in and out require no awkward bending. The windows seem huge. The seats sit high but not out of reach and they’re surrounded by plenty of space for feet, legs, hips, heads and shoulders. Even clambering into the third row is fairly easy. Both sets of rear seats can fold flat, to accommodate a major kitchen appliance, and way in the back is the usual bay for groceries or gear. The tailgate opens and closes easily, and power assist is an option. Want reclining, heated bucket seats in row two? Check. A built-in fridge? Check. Then there’s Sync voice-activation and a system that can parallel-park this behemoth when no one else wants to try.

Active and passive safety features abound also. To name just three examples, a blind-spot monitor with cross-traffic alert is an available extra, as are Ford’s unique inflatable rear seat belts; and the cruise control can be upgraded to an adaptive, radar-guided version that includes collision warning and braking support.

Sticker prices start at about $32,000 for the SE model and proceed well past $40,000 for a Limited with all-wheel drive, a twin-turbo V-6 and the top-shelf entertainment and luxury packages. Along that continuum the Flex gradually evolves from a family workhorse to an executive car-pool express. Quite flexible, the Ford Flex.

Within the 2013 Ford Taurus’s bumped-up hindquarters is the biggest trunk you’ve ever seen.

There are still herds of ancient Ford Tauri from the 1980s and ‘90s roaming the American hinterlands, their once-daring, worn-bar-of-soap styling looking more and more like the automotive Lava Lamp. That original Taurus took Ford into front-wheel drive and better, more fuel-efficient aerodynamics and became a best-seller. But by the naughts Ford—perhaps distracted by the profit margins of pickup trucks and SUVs—was alternately ignoring its bread & butter sedan or brutally slashing its costs, content and, ultimately, value. The Taurus became a rental car and then went all but extinct.

Today’s Taurus is a different beast. Maybe the old name provides comfort and familiarity, but underneath the badge is a highly credible biggish car—comfortable, roomy, modestly chic, and not even unrewarding to drive. Today’s Taurus could serve as the default American sedan, the price-value yardstick against which others are measured. So if your new autobahn-bred import costs twice as much, it had better be twice as good.

There are four Taurus variants. The standard engine in three of them—SE, SEL, Limited—is a V-6 now tuned up to 288 horsepower and 254 lb-ft of torque. Optional is a smaller turbocharged EcoBoost 4-cylinder engine rated for 240HP and 270 torques (on premium gas). EcoBoost 4 drivers won’t feel undergunned off the line, yet they should gain about three more miles per gallon, to 22 MPG in city driving and 32 on the highway. This with front-wheel drive only; AWD is not available with the 4-cylinders.

The enthusiast’s Taurus, the $40,000 SHO (Super High Output), gets the EcoBoost V-6—365HP, 350-lb-ft—plus up-rated suspension and brakes and a lot of toys. This is more power than Ford wants to route through the front wheels alone, so the SHO is all-wheel-drive only.

Ford has tweaked its stability-control electronics to what it now calls Curve Control, and made this standard on all Tauruses: If the car decides its speed is too great for a particular corner, Curve Control automatically cuts the throttle and, if necessary, squeezes the brakes. All Tauruses also get the latest in fuel-economy wizardry: shutters behind the grille that automatically open, to allow cooling air to the engine, or close for better aerodynamics at speed.

Our example was a mid-range SEL with the standard V6, all-wheel drive and a sticker price of $34,445. It was equipped with a good but basic suite of features that included projector-beam headlights and bright, fast-reacting LED taillights, dual automatic heating and cooling zones, a compass and trip computer, wide-angle inserts in the (heated) side mirrors, pushbutton ignition, and radio and cruise-control switches on the steering wheel.

Unlike most press cars—usually stuffed with pricey gadgets—it was equipped the way a thoughtful and cost-conscious buyer might do it. The sole add-ons were heated leather seats for $1,495 and Equipment Group 202A ($3,795), which adds Sync voice-activation for music, telephone, climate control, navigation, news and incoming text messages; a rear-view camera and backup sensors; and adjustable pedals, a computer touchscreen and pushbutton remote starting.

I would have ordered two more options that I’ve come to appreciate: blind-spot monitors—Ford’s now can also detect traffic crossing behind the car as it backs out of a driveway or parking slot—and interactive cruise control. (Basic cruise control won’t automatically adjust its speed in traffic.)

The standard 6-speed automatic transmission has a Sport setting and a manual shift button, but they’re hardly necessary. This particular SEL fairly shouts “company car!” As such, it is a quiet, relaxing place to do business and the miles pass by almost unnoticed.

For many years, much Detroit iron left the clear impression that the makers were trying to enhance the corporate bottom line by delivering as little value as possible for the buyer’s dollar. We know how that worked out. For this 6^th-generation Taurus, however, it seems the design and engineering teams got together and decided to build something they were proud of and we’d be pleased to own. Every car (and nearly every SUV) now wearing the blue oval feels like a solid check mark in the plus column.

Elegant, hardly; useful and entertaining, certainly: Nissan’s 2013 sport-cross JUKE.

When Carlos Ghosn took over as CEO, more than a decade ago, Nissan was bleeding cash and a lot of its products were forgettable, me-too copies of various Hondas and Toyotas. Since then Mr. Fix-It—as he became known—has overhauled Nissan from top to bottom. Now Nissans are praised for delivering value-for-dollar and generally fine driving dynamics, and the company makes lustworthy cars for motorheads (the 370Z, the GT-R), Capitalists (the entire Infiniti range) and even eco-philiacs (the all-electric, zero-emissions Leaf).

There’s a dark lining to every silver cloud, though, and for Nissan it’s the urge to build cars for the tattooed hordes whose ball caps have flat brims and who call me “dude.” Thus Nissan also makes the two most unsightly vehicles this side of the former Eastern Bloc: the cube (no capital letter) and this, the JUKE (all capitals). Every time I see it I think of a rhinoceros calf. Then I climb in and drive away and am reminded that rhinos are unexpectedly agile animals. And their babies are actually sort of cute, or at least endearing.

No question that the Juke is right-sized for today’s new reality, at least for drivers who don’t schlep Little League teams around or tow horse boxes. (The Juke is the same length as a Mini Countryman.) These rear seats are tolerable for two adults, so long as they’re not NBA forwards, and you can stash a week’s groceries inside the tailgate without having to fold them down. The back seats, that is. By the way, the Juke does have rear doors; the latches are up there by the windows, where you can’t see them.

Fuel economy that averaged only in the mid-20s was disappointing in a vehicle this size, even with all-wheel drive. (On the interstate we never even came close to the 30 highway MPG claims for the Juke.) All Jukes have a turbocharged 1.6-liter, 4-cylinder engine tuned for 188 horsepower and 177 torques. These numbers make the Juke pretty lively. Dipping into the throttle squirts the car through traffic, while sensors and microprocessors keep a close eye on wheelspin and others kinds of slip & slide. We’ve gotten accustomed to AWD systems that change the division of power between the front and rear wheels as needed, but this Nissan can also “vector” it from side to side, at least at the back wheels.

In hard cornering or acceleration we can feel the car settle down under the grip of the AWD; then the Juke corners nimbly and with less understeer than expected. The steering itself is quick enough to contribute to this deftness. The 2WD Juke is, of course, only pulled around by its front wheels, and it lacks independent suspension at the rear.

A 6-speed manual gearbox is available. The standard automatic transmission is a continuously variable type (no distinct “gears”) with Sport and Eco modes. Nissan says these settings also tweak the steering and throttle behavior. I can’t tell the difference, but the CVT does perform well—certainly better than in some other cars, and there’s no annoying whine as the car accelerates up to cruising speed. Like all Nissans, the Juke has a safety feature that lets the brakes electronically override the throttle if the driver mistakenly pushes both at the same time.

For 2013 Nissan offers three lines of the Juke, which it calls a “sport-cross” vehicle: S, SV and SL. Suggested retail prices start at about $21,00, $22,700 and $25,600, respectively, with shipping, for cars with front-wheel drive and automatic transmissions. Ticking the box for that torque-vectoring AWD adds a grand or so to the price. Naturally, each model level comes with more gizmos, from a pushbutton moonroof to leather trim, Bluetooth and a USB port, push-button starting, stereo and cruise-control switches in the steering wheel and a good deal more. Sport ($1,350) and Navigation ($1,170) packages are also available.

It’s not a joke, it’s a Juke. As the old saying has it, when you’re behind the wheel, the ugly pretty much goes away. And when you’re behind the wheel at night, the orange lights atop the front fenders make you think you’re piloting a shuttlepod from the USS Enterprise.

From the job site to the opera, Dodge’s Durango is a splendid workhorse.

This year’s Durango is little different from the 2012 model, but Dodge has been smart, not lazy. As the saying goes, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, and last year the all-singing, all-dancing, all-new Durango netted a boatload of rave reviews and honors from such diverse outfits as Parents Magazine and MotorWeek, the Texas Auto Writers Association and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Even I joined in, just two weeks ago. My Best & Worst of 2012 column fingered the Citadel model of the Durango lineup as the year’s top utility rig: “Big, solid, powerful, good-looking, four-wheel-drive and all the comforts, but still down-to-earth. The dog can throw up in it and the kids may track snow, mud and peanut butter everywhere.”

Truly, what’s not to like? If, indeed, you need a brawny three-row, size XL ute in the first place and are willing to pay the price of 12 to maybe 23 miles per gallon of fuel—gas, not diesel—to have one.

Despite its size, along with being comfortable, quiet and composed, the Durango drives small. Glance in the mirror and you may be surprised to see how much vehicle is following you down the road—but an optional rear-view camera makes squeezing into curbside parking non-stressful. Overall, the Durango is a highly competent workhorse that is pleasant to operate, pleasant to ride in, and even pleasant to look at. (It has some subtle creases in its sheet metal that look particularly handsome in black or silver.)

Yes, the third-row seats are a squeeze for hefty adults, but it’s these seats that put the Durango on the map for families with more than 2.4 children and half a dog. Access to that third row is easy, but there isn’t much room behind it. Plan on a rooftop luggage bin for long trips with the whole family.

One of the few tweaks Dodge has made to the Durango for 2013 is to offer bucket seats—“captain’s chairs,” a $695 option, with armrests and a center console—in the second row. They cut the Durango’s people capacity from seven to six, but passengers can get from the second to the third row between them. Another $300 buys a bigger center console with more storage space plus cup holders, a USB jack and a 12-volt outlet.

Mechanically, little has changed. All four Durango models are available with rear-wheel or all-wheel drive. They include the SXT ($30,000 with RWD), the Crew ($37,000 with AWD) and the Citadel shown here, which starts at about $42,500 with AWD. Each comes with a 6-cylinder motor—rated for 290 horsepower and 260 pounds of torque—and a 5-speed automatic transmission, plus ever-longer lists of neat stuff.

The fourth Durango, the $39,000 R/T, gets a “Hemi” V-8 good for 360 horsepower and 395 pounds of twist plus a 6-speed automatic transmission. Four of the V-8’s cylinders shut down when they’re not needed, for a slight boost in efficiency. R/T stands for road/track; this model not only rides a bit lower, it also gets “performance” steering, a load-leveling sport suspension, and dual exhausts.

The 6-speed box also has a transfer case between the front and rear axles with high and low ranges—although this is normally for off-road driving, not bahn-burning. Both transmissions let the driver lock out the higher gears, which can be helpful when pulling a trailer up a long grade. Dodge says the Durango can be set up to tow loads up to 7,400 pounds.

Our test vehicle was a Citadel with most of the boxes ticked, so it had a “Media Center” and satnav and many other nice things. Nine different Durango options packages include everything from digital connectivity to a power liftgate and a steering-wheel heater; the Durango can be a working vehicle, but no one says it has to be Spartan.

From the key fobs to their drivetrains, there’s much commonality between the Durango and the Grand Cherokee. (Dodge and Jeep are both Chrysler brands.) Seats, switches, and many of the options are shared. Still, they’re different vehicles. The Durango, even the tarted-up Citadel, lacks the Grand Cherokee’s sophisticated off-road hard- and software and tauter handling. It’s the solid older brother who went to a state school, while the Jeep—sharper-looking, more athletic, and clearly Mom’s favorite—got the Ivy League scholarship. The Jeep is more refined; the Dodge is bigger and just as comfortable, but less expensive. Again: What’s not to like?

Best Gadget: Honda’s LaneWatch shows us (on the dashboard monitor) the entire right side of the car and whatever we’re about to cut off.

Each December my In box fills up with email from one carmaker after another, reminding me of the awards that public-interest groups, the media, pollsters or the Carmelite nuns have bestowed upon them—for crashworthiness, economy, green-ness, strategic vision, design, engineering, utility, brand identity, luxury, near-luxury, value, appeal, connectivity and that outdated notion, performance.

Not to be left out, I’ve reviewed the 50 or 60 cars I drove in 2012 and humbly submit my own picks & pans. Everyone who writes about cars is asked, “What’s the best?” or “What should I buy?” Beats the heck out of me. But here’s what rose to the top in the past year.

Coolest Little Wagon: BMW 328i Touring. The hard-hat dude who rented me a pressure washer helped load it into the car, then stepped back and said admiringly, “Now that’s what I call a sport-utility vehicle.”

Top 4X4 (tie): Jeep Grand Cherokee and Range Rover, whichever you can afford. Perfect for the opera and then if you take either one truly off-road, you’ll be shocked, amazed & delighted. Only a rental car can take more abuse.

Preferred Snowmobile: Infiniti G37xS coupe, sort of a snowshoe by Prada. Dazzling in the slippery stuff; its power, response, balance, looks, comfort, refinement, luxury, quality and toys come with no trade-offs.

Best Car in which to Lose Your Nürburgring Virginity: Porsche Boxster. On your first lap—12.94 miles and 73 corners plus bumps, hills and 200 MPH straights—you want a car that inspires confidence. Also on your next lap and all the ones after that.

Best Digital Racer Come to Life: GT-R. Nissan’s ferocious AWD two-seater can erupt from 0 to 60 in three seconds and then storm up through the gears in a way that will have your passenger shrieking in disbelief. Or terror.

Best Over-the-Hill Sports Car: Corvette. Bought only by men age 60 and up, who recall the one their older brother’s friend had in 1965. Too bad, because it has evolved, over geologic time, into a world-class performer.

Best Car to Send a Kid to School in: Subaru Impreza 5-door. It’s got room for their stuff (outbound) and a semester’s laundry (inbound) or a couple of friends (3:00 AM trips to Dunkin’ Donuts); it’s AWD; they think it’s cute; and it hasn’t got all that much motor.

Biggest Shocker, Good: Cadillac ATS. An all-around player that’s crisper than any 3-Series BMW short of the M3, even with a 6-speed automatic as the only transmission. Also Best American Car of 2012.

Biggest Shocker, Bad: Eos, the runt of Volkswagen’s otherwise admirable litter. Evidently created by engineering interns from VW’s folding-lawnchair division.

Best New Gadget: Honda’s LaneWatch. Signal for a right turn and the entire starboard side of the car plus the lane you’re about to veer into appears on the computer screen. Perfect for commuters slaloming through traffic while talking on the phone.

Car I’d Drive Across the Country Tomorrow: BMW 640i.

Then there’s the BMW M6: outrageously heavy, outrageously fast, outrageously complex and pricey—impossible to ignore, but how to sum it up? For all its outrageousness: the Lady Gaga Award.

Best Cheap Fun: Fiat 500. It zips around like a water beetle and can be driven flat-out without dire consequences. A reminder that it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

Best Sport-UTE: Dodge Citadel. Big, solid, powerful, good-looking, four-wheel-drive and all the comforts, but still down-to-earth. The dog can throw up in it and the kids may track snow, mud and peanut butter everywhere.

Best SPORT-Ute (tie): Porsche Cayenne and Infiniti FX50. These all-weather demon “trucks” are short on cargo room, but they can outrun sports cars and are as plush as luxury sedans.

Sexiest Car: Jaguar XJ, the poor man’s Bentley. Gorgeous, posh, fast, agile and vastly appealing, and not even that stupidly expensive. Yes, the XJ is a sedan. Maybe it’s my age.

Best Value in a Capitalist Dreadnought: Hyundai Equus. At $65,000 it puts a huge hole below the waterline of the automotive establishment; 6-figure price tags are so pre-Recession.

Best Car No One Else Seems to Like: Volvo C30. Am I the only one who thinks this impeccable 3-door mini-wagon is the knees of the bee? How come no one’s buying it?

Car of the Year (my year, anyway): Bentley Continental GT. Phenomenal performance, bite-your-hand looks, regal comfort and bespoke tailoring, all for only a quarter of a million bucks.

Bring on 2013!

Get used to it—variations of the GS 350’s snout are appearing on all Lexus cars.

Twelve months ago Lexus slipped a few pre-production examples of this car out the back door and handed them around as sneak peeks of a new 2013 model they were proud of. Last February I wrote—

Late last night, about 200 miles into a 300-mile flog, I realized I was having one of those ecstatic automotive experiences, a drive where time and distance telescope, leaving just the sensation of boring weightlessly through the night into a tunnel carved by powerful headlamps. It was a mostly interstate romp, and even big pickups fled the left lane before me. Steering and throttle seemed to be wired to my brain; slingshotting past traffic took the merest thought, accompanied by surging revs and a distant engine snarl. The suspension might have been connected to the seat of my jeans. Brakes? Never touched them till it was time to exit.

The finish was 35 miles of empty, winding country two-lane. By then it was snowing and the tarmac was turning white. Worried? Not with all-wheel-drive grip on top of everything else.

At the house I sat for a moment, reveling in what we’d just done: Knocked off a long and normally arduous trip in one compressed blast, in complete comfort and safety and with no drama at all. I could have reversed out of the driveway and done it all over again.

Such periods of motoring Zen are rare reminders (in our traffic-choked, speed-repressed, cupholder-obsessed highway culture) of what driving can be. So was this a Porsche? An M-sport BMW? An Aston Martin or a Maserati? No, no—it was a Lexus, that anodyne brand favored by One Percenters who regard driving as a chore.

On paper the GS 350  is not remarkable: a 306-horsepower V-6 and a 6-speed automatic, a posh and oh-so-tasteful cabin, stereo and computer systems better than what most of us have at home . . . that’s standard for upper-shelf sedans from Japan. But while several Acuras and Infinitis might have pulled off this midnight ride of the Valkyries, no previous Lexus cars that I am familiar with could have done it so well. They’d have been too squishy or too wooden.

Last year Toyota executives began to fret publicly that Lexus was a product that aroused no passion. Coincidentally or not, Lexus had earlier unwrapped its carbon-fiber V-10 supercar, the LFA, and set some record at the Nürburgring, that merciless track in Germany where carmakers go to bash their way to way to marketing glory. It’s a long reach—about $330,000 and 250 horsepower—from the LFA down to this GS 350, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some shared genes. (Lexus hasn’t loaned me an LFA, so I can’t say for certain.)

In town, however, the GS 350 has no better reflexes or maneuverability, or trickier features, than any other upper-end sedan. Inside, anyone who has suffered the proliferation of gadgets in luxury cars is soothed by the GS’s comparatively simple array of buttons and knobs. I can deal with this! But start it up and you’re whacked in the eyeballs by a high-resolution computer monitor that’s more than a foot across. It’s a split screen, and the information overload is intimidating. Then you discover the computer mouse-like controller in the center console. At first it seems way too sensitive, especially for use in a moving vehicle, but you do learn the touch. You gingerly begin to feel your way through the computer menus, and decide it’s not so bad after all. You can do it without a 14-year-old co-pilot.

The car is now filthy with long speed-streaks of road grime. I don’t want to wash it because they remind me of last night’s dash through the elements. Mechanical perfection without soul is boring, and with the GS 350, Lexus finally offers some pepper to go along with its well-refined salt.

That was then. This GS 350, with a proper owner’s manual in the glove box and a window sticker (with a price of $55,407), is the production version. Without the benefit of a long midnight romp for comparison, it leaves me wanting to drive its two newer siblings, the GS 350 F Sport (starting price $52,590 and also available with all-wheel drive) and the GS 450H, a higher-performance, rear-drive-only gas-electric hybrid that runs about 10 grand more.