Car Reviews

I’ve said it before, but I’m getting old. Rather than comparing daycare centers, I’m visiting colleges. I’ve actually purchased cars in the past for less than I just spent on a prom dress for my eldest daughter. My wife and barber tell me that my hair is thinning.

And I ache. While any leg pain I attribute to an old football injury really dates to a drunken fall over a coffee table while watching the Super Bowl, my daily intake of ibuprofen is considerable. So I’m finding that when shopping for a new fun-to-drive car, a manual transmission isn’t necessarily a must-have. Might as well start fitting me for a tennis-ball-clad walker and pants hitched up to my nipples.

A CVT, however, has never been atop my list of favorite transmissions. They seem to suck all the enjoyment out of driving. But when this 2022 Subaru WRX appeared sans third pedal, I had to do a double take. I suppose the flat-brim-cap wearing, vaping, skater bros have to grow up, too. Did their car of choice grow up with them?

Cheap speed is almost always welcome, even if there are sacrifices made.

Such is the case with the 2022 Toyota GR86 – it’s a blast to drive, but you make sacrifices for the sake of fun.

The 2022 Ford Explorer Timberline is aimed at a very specific audience – and if you aren’t part of that audience, other Explorer trims will better suit you.

If you are in that specific audience, this Explorer can do a few things that the other trims likely cannot.

This trim is the perfect example of how use case can dictate vehicle purchase decisions.

The idea of a compact, sporty entry-luxury crossover is appealing.

It’s a sort of a “have your cake and it too” proposition – you get the utility of a crossover, but it’s also fun to drive and at least a little bit upscale. Sure, it’s expensive, but perhaps not out of reach for the upwardly mobile young (or youngish) urban professional.

The Toyota Prius has pretty much always been focused solely on fuel economy. The design was driven by the desire to maximize MPGs. Driving dynamics took a back seat to fuel economy. If you bought a Prius (or leased one) you likely bought it for fuel economy – or maybe because it was affordable.

The redesigned 2023 Toyota Prius is supposed to change all that without sacrificing all that fuel-economy stuff.

Does it? Well, for the most part, yes. But is that good enough to lure in those who have long disdained the car as a wedge-shaped penalty box that existed only to lengthen the time between fill-ups?

The Toyota Crown may wear a well-known nameplate, but we haven’t seen it in the U.S. since the early 1970s. Now it’s back, replacing the venerable Avalon as the brand's full-size sedan.

And it’s … well, the 2023 Toyota Crown experience is just a bit different than what the Avalon offered.

Ford has spent a lot of time touting the electrification of its venerable F-150. But what was it like to actually live with the thing for a week?

Conversation icebreakers and clickbait listicles often start with a similar conceit - a hypothetical question meant to get you thinking and talking. The listicle, of course, answers these questions in a way alternately designed to enrage the reader or to promote whatever crap is being sold by the shady owners of the website that week, but it’s a great method of encouraging conversation.

As I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge for the third time, thanks to Google Maps failing at its one primary job (more on that later), I realized I’d be quite late for lunch. No matter, I thought, since I’d get more time with the 2024 Mazda CX-90.

It should surprise very few of my readers that I’m not what one would call a trained journalist. Perhaps my tendency to write in the first person should be the first clue. But I’ve tried to stick to typical conventions of journalism wherever possible whilst writing reviews here, all while maintaining the more conversational tone expected by the Best and/or Brightest.

It’s in the nature of auto writing, however, that one can’t help but encounter other opinions about one’s subject before, during, and after testing a particular vehicle. TTAC doesn’t get invited to every new vehicle launch, after all, where select writers might only briefly discuss and hone opinions over martinis before racing to get the copy out right at embargo time. No, we get a new car shuttled to us each week - one that’s been poked, prodded, and farted (Ed. note -- sorry bout that) in by dozens of other reviewers before and after - and sometimes we will see (and read) those reviews.

Like much of the world over the past three years, we’ve been finding ourselves planted in view of our television a bit more than in the past. Streaming services have supplanted broadcast shows by offering episode after episode ready for gluttonous consumption. One glutinous show has taken over our screens in particular - The Great British Bake Off.

You may have already seen the first ad for the 2023 Dodge Hornet – it’s a spoof of disaster-movie trailers and it includes a man standing in a city, arms wide open, shouting “let me feel your sting!”

I felt the Hornet’s sting during a day of driving through North Carolina. And I didn’t even need an EpiPen.

I know there's IndyCar racing today, and I think some XFL games, and college hoops, and NASCAR...but if you need a break, take a trip back in time with us.

Try as I might, I don’t review cars on a full-time basis. Blame two kids and a mortgage. That means that my rather unusual hobby is a natural subject of discussion whilst engaged in my usual nine-to-five, where I’m interacting with customers all day long. 

There has been much handwringing lately among us keyboard warriors that the entry-level end of the new-car market isn’t well covered.

Overall, this is true – there are fewer cheap wheels than there used to be. But there are still some options for the first-time buyer or those with shallow pockets. Sometimes, though, there’s another kind of price to pay for snagging a bargain.

Welcome to another Drive Notes, where I compile some quick notes on the car I am driving or just returned to the fleet.

Today's vehicle -- the 2022 Lincoln Navigator Black Label.

Today's TTAC Rewind takes us back a few years to 2016 when Jack wrote up a rental review of the 2016 Chrysler 200.

Last week, our TTAC throwback was a 2012 model. This week, we're staying in that era and bringing you a minivan instead of a sports sedan. Remember the 2011 Nissan Quest?

Those who have suffered through reading my works here and elsewhere over the past seven years likely have suspected - I’m merely using this second career as an automotive reviewer and journalist as an extended test-drive opportunity while I sort out what the next car that I purchase for my own use might be. It’s a happy accident, of course, but a financially-prudent one considering the drastic turns we’ve seen in real-world transaction prices and in interest rates. Not having had a car payment for myself (only for my wife’s car) has been helpful as we squirrel away cash for the pair of teens careening in the general direction of college.

Today's throwback for your midday enjoyment is a 2012 Buick Regal GS.

It’s really easy to love a sporty entry-luxury sedan that has all the right handling moves and doesn’t totally break the bank.

It’s a bit less easy to love a car with Audi badging that seems to be short of some luxury features, features that you no doubt could have – if you just spent a little more.

It’s also a bit less easy to love a luxury car when there are a bit too many interior reminders of the mainstream brand it shares its platform with.

That’s the 2022 Audi A3 Quattro sedan I drove in a nutshell.

As goes General Motors, so goes the nation. Apocryphal or not, the above statement dates to the Eisenhower era when The General was indeed one of the largest influences on American lives. From Dinah Shore to the shores of wherever a GM-built military vehicle might be carrying a GI, Chevrolet and the other divisions once played an outsized part in our world. 

Even in the Nineties as the corporation rebounded from its malaise-era nadir, GM took chances and pushed boundaries. The EV1 drew attention as the first legitimate mass-produced electric vehicle. But the EV spotlight - and Wall Street glory - has been seized by a demagogue and a merry band of followers, making a funky-looking EV genuinely mainstream.

The Bowtie isn’t taking this lying down, but the approach is somewhat novel. Rather than targeting big money from luxury sedans and the like, the volume sales EVs from GM are the pair of Bolts, including this 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV. Deliberately aping the ever-popular crossover market, the Bolt EUV brings something unusual to the EV space - a total lack of weirdness.

Take a gander at Robert Farago's 2004 Ford GT review over your morning coffee. If you're anything like me, you will be jealous.

It’s the beginning of the new year as I write this, and we are being bombarded by easy-to-pen yearly listicles in the “hey, remember this B-list celebrity that died in February?” Like most, I’ll read one or two of these in my downtime out of sheer boredom, and will occasionally notice a critical reappraisal of someone’s supposed genius that wasn’t properly appreciated until they had passed. 

Like people, of course, consumer products have life cycles. And while very few might shed a tear for the untimely demise of a particular flavor of dishwashing sponge, the same can’t be said of automobiles. Even the least popular mass-produced car or truck has thousands of owners across the country, and certainly, some feel a sort of kinship to the model. So even though it seems forever destined to remain in sixth place on the full-sizer sales charts, the 2023 Nissan Titan PRO-4X is worthy of reassessment. 

I’ve long been a fan of Subaru’s plucky WRX compact sports sedan. But as you’ll see when our next podcast drops, I found the 2022 Subaru WRX one of my most disappointing cars of the year.

“Disappointing” doesn’t mean “bad”, to be clear. The WRX is still a joy to drive and would still be on my shopping list if I was buying in this class. But it’s lost a step compared to the competitive set, in part because the newest version makes its flaws a bit more visible.

Ford’s Maverick small truck has been highly reviewed, including by yours truly, so when two (one of each powertrain) arrived at my door within weeks of each other earlier this year, I was curious if my original take would hold up.

Hold up indeed it did, and I came away even more impressed with the truck – though I’d still lean towards the gas engine over the hybrid in most cases. If fuel economy or a few other factors matter more to you, then go for the hybrid. Otherwise, take the gas. But we’ll get to that.

One note: I’d normally do a separate review of each model, but aside from the powertrain differences, the two trucks weren’t significantly different. Yes, one was the nicer Lariat trim, so that changes the feature mix and interior materials a bit – but otherwise the two versions are similar enough in terms of user experience that I’d just be re-writing my own copy for 80 percent of the text if I did separate reviews.

Making a massive brick-shaped object fuel efficient is a hell of an exercise in engineering, I’m certain. There are certain laws of physics that must be accommodated - mass, friction, and aerodynamics all factor in the equation of turning energy into propulsion. Reducing mass, improving aero, and limiting resistance losses from the tires are all ways one might make a truck use fuel more effectively.

Recovering some of that energy used in propulsion is another method - which is what birthed the hybrid vehicle. Toyota has been the leader in hybrids for decades now, which is why it’s rather surprising that it’s taken so long to bring some Prius magic to the full-size truck market. But here we are, with the 2022 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro - an off-road focused, top-of-the-line package that can only be had as a hybrid. But does a simple battery make this three-ton brute a hypermiling champ?

Standing around outside the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last week, I noticed a bunch of fighter jets taking off and landing from the nearby Nellis Air Force base. It must be unbelievable to feel the G forces when those things accelerate, I thought to myself.

I spent the past few days behind the wheel of a 2023 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe.

Notes? Oh, I have notes.

Standing in the lobby at Mitsubishi’s suburban Nashville headquarters last week, I looked out the window and saw Nissan’s own HQ just down the street. Even though Mitsubishi tells me that it’s just a coincidence that the two offices are that close to one another, the two companies are part of a larger alliance that also involves Renault. Even if it’s not intentional, one can feel the corporate synergy.

Yeah, I know. That title is clickbait. Especially as we’ve told you time and again that there are no self-driving cars, and there likely will not be any self-driving cars for quite some time. Every vehicle on our roads today needs a driver.

But not all of them want to be driven.

While digging up this week's rewind, I saw it surface from one of our own partner forums. So in the interest of corporate synergy, you can take a look over there.

Or you can, you know, just click the link below

Today's drive notes centers around a car I won't review because this loan is short -- just a couple of days, since I am traveling. It's too bad I am not getting a full week with this 2022 Mercedes-Benz C300 4MATIC, but I am enjoying this car. Well, mostly.

There may come a time when this fine publication will need a name change lest we fall behind the times. News articles dutifully report that automakers continue to research autonomous driving technologies designed to keep people safer by entrusting the speed and direction of our personal mobility devices to fallible sensors and algorithms designed by the lowest bidding mathematician. 

Like it or not, the big crossover is here to stay. Three rows of seating that would really be better suited to a minivan or - dare I say it - a wagon shall be jacked up slightly so drivers can feel somewhat at ease when surrounded by all of the other tall wagons, pickups, and eighteen-wheelers clogging our roads. 

Just because the words Sports and Utility are theoretically in the definition of the vehicle segment doesn’t mean that sport needs to be part of the equation. We’ve seen many a big crossover that should never see anything more rugged than a dirt path to a youth soccer field - and many a rugged SUV that never actually sees anything more rugged than that same dirt path, so it doesn’t matter much anyhow. These are comfortable family vehicles with easy step-in heights - no more, no less. That hasn’t stopped automakers from tossing the classic luxury playbook at these vehicles, however. Leather, wood and metal trim, big wheels, and the usual advanced tech features abound on the upmarket trims.

The 2022 Infiniti QX60 Autograph is a noble effort from Nissan’s luxury division for this particular market. Light on the ruggedness, heavy on the plush - can the QX60 find a path to sales success?

Today's TTAC rewind for your late afternoon perusal is about a decade old. Former TTAC'er Jack Baruth was in sunny SoCal and got his hands on a 2012 Nissan Sentra rental.

Hi there, this is take two of our new series in which I give you short notes on something I am driving or have driven recently. It doesn't necessarily mean a given car will or won't get a full review in the future -- it's just a chance to hit some highlights sooner since it can take some time before a full review gets published. And some cars don't get full reviews, anyway.

Today's ride: The 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid.

Enjoy your Sunday evening with a look at the 2018 Lincoln Navigator Black Label, words courtesy of our own Chris Tonn.

Step back in time with me to the Seventies, and imagine being in a boardroom in Highland Park, Michigan. The marketers and advertising copywriters of Chrysler were, at the time, reacting to the personal luxury vehicle trend with the Cordoba. Ricardo Montalbán had worked everyone up into a rich Corinthian lather, all but assuring buyers that good times and sexytime were simply a signature away at the local Chrysler dealer. 

In another room, the Dodge truck folks were trying to compete with crosstown rivals. Adding accessories and other fripperies to the D-series pickup created what was known as the “Adult Toys” lineup - including the black/gold Warlock model, as well as the smokestack-equipped Li’l Red Express. These factory customs acknowledged that people were buying trucks not just for work - and anticipated in part the explosion of the truck market that was to come.

But Khan himself could have never foreseen something like the 2022 Ram 1500 Rebel - a four-wheel drive, five-passenger truck that rides better than the nicest Chryslers and Imperials while handling truck duties better than any Dodge of the disco era. 

Today's TTAC Rewind for your Sunday afternoon perusal takes a few years back to 2017.

I suppose I can be an occasional automotive Luddite. I’m mentally throwing wrenches at the twenty-year-old German project car in my garage since it’s not nearly as straightforward to repair as the thirty-year-old Japanese project car right next to it. More than once I’ve pondered the possibility of adapting carburetors to both.

Hello there and welcome to the first edition of the TTAC Quick Drive. This is basically a short version of a car review that we will apply either when a test vehicle doesn't really need a full review (perhaps its a mild refresh and mechanically unchanged) or we didn't get a lot of miles on a car (perhaps we drive a vehicle at an event for only 15 minutes). We may also use this to preview the full review of a vehicle that will publish later.

Today's rewind is a bit different than the usual car review.

In the beginning, God created the dinosaurs. He saw that they would eventually decompose into petroleum, and said this is good. And God said let there be bitchin’ V8 engines.

And God said Oh Crap, I didn’t kill off enough dinosaurs to feed these hungry V8 engines. So on the seventh day, he left it to someone else to create EV charging stations way too far apart in sketchy parts of everything that he had made, and he rested.

We are well beyond the book of Genesis when it comes to electric vehicles - we no longer look to an EV as simply an efficient urban runabout not suited to the open road. Witness the big two-letter badge on the decklid of this 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E GT - yes, there is a healthy dash of grand touring within Ford’s sporty EV. And, should you wish, a touch of sports car joy.

Today's TTAC rewind is a capsule review of the 2015 Subaru WRX.

For your perusal this fine fall evening, we present a first drive from the autumn of 2018.

Part of becoming a parent is making compromises. Instead of a weekend in Vegas with some friends, you spend your vacation money taking the kids to visit a rat in a Florida swamp. Instead of enjoying a variety of interesting meals each night, it’s chicken fingers with boxed mac and cheese night after night after night.

Hello again! Today's TTAC Rewind takes us back only a few years.

We heard them before we saw them.

Our merry band of journalists and PR folks were walking to dinner in Bozeman, Montana on the second night of the 2023 Jeep Wagoneer/Grand Wagoneer L press launch when we crossed paths with a bunch of college-aged folks who were walking the opposite way shouting “hi-ho, hi-ho, fossil fuels have got to go!”

If only they could lay eyes on this particular Jeep, which caused one colleague to tweet out a reference to The Simpsons' Canyonero.

Hello and welcome to another edition of TTAC Rewind.

Ever since the late David E. spaketh his missive and/or advertorial on behalf of a sports sedan, a pair of German brands have been the symbols of having made it...or at least being on a clear path to making it. Audi, on the other hand, was the third wheel - occasionally gaining respectability, but too often finding itself fighting against the memory of a vengeful Sunday evening “news” program.

Lately, however, Audi has been cutting their own path, with a distinctive style unlike any other automaker. The four rings within a gaping black grille are being recognized and appreciated as genuine markers of a fine luxury automobile - and not, as once was the case, as simply a nicer Volkswagen.

It’s hard to come up with a better hot hatch than the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R. Unfortunately, it’s also hard to build such a sublime vehicle and also make it a bargain.

If you’re on a budget, VW will happily sell you a GTI and you’ll get about 80 percent of the Golf R’s performance. On the other hand, if you have the scratch, the Golf R is worth it.

Those who have known me for a while - or have been reading the words I’ve been spewing on this and other sites - know that I’m a minivangelist. I’ve owned several (I’ve lost count) of these unrestrained vehicular symbols of virility and/or fertility, and have appreciated their presence in my driveway every time I had to bring home a dishwasher from the big-box store, or shuttle a few stray children about town. There is no vehicle type better suited for suburban families than a minivan.

But nobody wants ‘em.

Hey, Editor Tim here -- we're trying something new. Keep an eye out each Sunday morning for a review from the past, chosen more or less arbitrarily, for you to peruse over your morning coffee.

The consensus, at least among us shrimp-sucking keyboard warriors who get paid to review cars, is that the Jeep Wagoneer is a bit of a flop, mostly due to an oddly-proportioned exterior design.

Sure, the overfed journo writes between bites of shellfish, the Wagoneer has a nice interior, an excellent stereo, and an unobjectionable, if unremarkable powertrain. But its looks frighten small dogs.

One could be forgiven for worrying that when Honda updated the Civic, it would muck things up. Make a good thing worse. Especially when it comes to the enthusiast-oriented Si trim.

The eleventh-generation car debuted last year as a 2022, and the Si version followed soon after. As most of you no doubt know, the Si is the hopped-up performance version of the Civic, though it’s not the highest-performance trim. That would be the Type R, which is currently on hiatus for the moment – the 2023 Honda Civic Type R will bow soon.

Nissan finally updated the Frontier mid-size pickup for 2022, thus finally bringing an aging truck current.

But staying up to date isn’t always enough. Did the Frontier suddenly become a much stronger competitor?

Extremes are easy to write about.

Just as sportswriters would prefer to cover either contending teams or basement dwellers instead of those that win about as much as they lose, most auto writers find it easier to describe sexy sports cars or to lampoon rolling failures.

This is why writers who are itching to show you how well they can use a thesaurus are almost as happy to see a Mitsubishi Mirage arrive at their home as they would be a Ferrari. Almost.