Cruisin’ With Toyota: The 2007 FJ Cruiser

Carmaking’s retro design craze has now spilled over into the truck and SUV market, and Toyota has decided to leave its competition in the dust with their 2007 FJ Cruiser. The company already has one of the largest truck and SUV lineups in the automotive universe, from the sporty [...]

2006/2007 Mercedes-Benz E350 4MATIC: Improving Upon Perfection

The product portfolio at Mercedes-Benz has proliferated rapidly in the last few years. New models from the C-Class Coupe to the savage SLR have kept the brand abreast of the niche-market trend. Still, there is no other model that so inherently defines Mercedes than the E-Class. Buttering the Benz [...]

The 2007 Volvo C70: As Safe As Summer Fun Gets

A convertible Volvo? In “Passion Red” paint? We know; unexpected to say the least. And yet, it isn’t at all incongruous. When the spanking-new Swede showed up in our fleet, we’d already heard the major talking points: folding metal roof, T5 motor, manual transmission, marginally affordable sub-$40K pricetag. All [...]

2007 Mercury Mariner Hybrid: Having Your Green and Eating It Too

Although almost identical to the Ford Escape Hybrid by most measures, the Mercury Mariner Hybrid somehow rates hardly a fraction of the attention its sibling enjoys. This neglect may not seem startling, but compared to the acclaim lavished upon both the Toyota Highlander Hybrid and Lexus RX400h gas-electric SUVs, the [...]

New Porsche Cayman starts for less than $50,000

We knew it was coming but we didn’t know it would come this soon. Today Porsche announced the Porsche Cayman (without the S) will be available soon. Probably the best news is that Porsche will begin marketing the new Cayman for under $50,000.

Full press release from Porsche AG follows:

On the [...]

2007 Mazda CX-7 First Drive

At first, we weren’t particularly interested in the announcement of an all-new crossover SUV–the 2007 Mazda CX-7. A new car-based ‘ute is about as rare as a Hollywood wedding. Mostly, they’re ungainly, unexciting vehicles that trade the stability and light weight of a car for extra cargo room and [...]

2007 Bentley Continental GTC Preview

Upper-crust, Anglophile auto-lovers were initially introduced to the ragtop version of Bentley’s immensely popular Continental GT (the GTC-clever, no?) at the 2006 Chicago Auto Show. Even from the pictures, it was easy to fall in love. However, now that the New York Show has come and gone, we’ve had our [...]

2007 Infiniti G35 Preview

Infiniti, the once-underdog Japanese luxury brand by Nissan, finally showed us the long-awaited revamp to the BMW-challenging G35 sports sedan. After being teased with various sexy coupe concepts, then, can we be forgiven when the four-door production model is finally final but we can’t see much difference?

We don’t intend to [...]

2007 BMW Z4 M Coupe Preview

Recalling the good-but-not-so-old-days of the Z3 hardtop’s unexpected debut, BMW “surprised” us in New York (and Detroit and Chicago and Geneva and so on) by “unveiling” a fixed-roof version of the funky Z4 roadster.

Well…yeah. Even if BMW didn’t claim that they never planned to build it, we saw this coming [...]

2007 Mazda CX-7-First Look

Mazda has released details on the new CX-7 crossover SUV, a 2007 model which should be in dealerships this spring. Production of the CX-7 began last week in Hiroshima, Japan. Pricing will start at $23,750, making the curvaceous newcomer a quite comely competitor in the small SUV segment—where style [...]

2007 Porsche Cayenne: Spy Shots

Coming to us from the Southwest are these spanking-new spy shots of the upcoming next-generation Porsche Cayenne. Undergoing hot-weather testing in mild disguise, this appears to be very close to the production SUV we can expect to see in dealerships in 2007. Not messing with a good thing–the Cayenne has [...]