New Car Review: 2014 Kia Cadenza

Credibility.  It's a big deal.  Especially when you're trying to get people to embrace a new concept.  Like Kia making a different type of car.
                                                                                                                                                                 


And that's where details matter.  Kia wants you to believe they've built an extraordinary near-luxury sedan. They want you to believe the woman driving the car is going to her 20th high school reunion.  Which would make her 38. Two years shy of 40. Her name is Teresa Moore, she's a supermodel and she's a lot closer to her 20th birthday than to her 20th high school reunion. There's a reason you didn't notice her in high school. She was across town in day care.

There's another version of the ad that uses mainly the night driving shots and blurbs from reviews including one from CNET that says "The Cadenza proves Kia can do luxury."  Okay, CNET said that (at least in the headline of its review).  But it's hype.

Both those things are small in the world of advertising, but it's especially a shame to see them related to the Cadenza because the Cadenza should be viewed and promoted as what it is...an amazing achievement in large family cars, a compelling competitor to the new Chevrolet Impala, Toyota Avalon, Ford Taurus, Nissan Maxima and Hyundai Azera.

New Car Review: 2013 Honda Crosstour

About six weeks ago, we raved about the 2013 Honda Accord and made mention of how it was evidence of Honda recovering.

The Crosstour is what the Accord is recovering from.

Don't let the Honda-supplied images throw you. The Crosstour is nowhere near that sleek and svelte.  It's a last-gen Accord pulled and stretched and jacked up and.....

New Car Review: 2013 Lexus IS350 C

If you want proof positive that Lexus is serious about building more exciting, involving automobiles for enthusiasts, this is a good place to start.  See the picture above? That's the 2013 Lexus IS350C, a retractable hardtop.

What's so great about it? Well, Lexus chose to make its retractable hardtop using perhaps its best drivers' car...the IS.  And that's an improvement because last time around, Lexus gave us the SC430.  Go ahead, click that link. You'll get a visual reminder of the car that found its way onto Top Gear's "Worst Car In The World DVD", along with a list of the areas in which the long-running SC missed just about every target.

No such worries for the IS, though.  A car that already is so good that non-believers say "This is a Lexus?", the ability to take the top down and enjoy some open-air motoring is just icing on the cake.

New Car Review: 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport

The original idea behind the crossover SUV was to get people from huge trucks to carlike sport-utes...eliminate some of the bulk and achieve some efficiencies in both packaging and fuel economy. For the most part, it's worked. But there's one thing the Suburbans and Tahoes and Expeditions whetted an appetite for that's not going away...and that's the third row of seats.

Many manufacturers have simply crammed in a final row at the expense of cargo room. Others are making their crossovers bigger to accommodate the extra seating. Hyundai, on a roll lately, came up with what looks to be the intelligent solution...keep the Santa Fe at its current size as a five-seater and offer a new, slightly larger model with three rows of seats.

The only confusion is, to capitalize on the equity in the Santa Fe name, that's what they're calling the new three-row crossover. What was the Santa Fe last year is now the Santa Fe Sport. But it's been re-designed, refined and just plain made a lot better.

New Car Review: 2013 Lexus GS350 and GS350 F SPORT




The 2013 Lexus GS350.

The styling of the all-new Lexus GS350 promises so much. It's a study in aggressive angles, a clear and direct contrast to the soft shapes of the GS that Lexus produced up until this year.




The 2013 Lexus GS350 interior.

The promise continues when you slide behind the wheel. The GS, so old-fashioned as recently as 2010 to have sported a cassette tape player in the dash, now has an utterly contemporary interior in which to do business, including a gargantuan video display in the center of the dash (clearly inspired by BMW).

The specs are promising...3.5 liter V6, 306 horsepower, 277 pounds per foot of torque...six-speed automatic with paddle shifters, 17 inch 9-spoke alloy wheels and the usual assortment of Lexus luxury and safety items for a base price of $46,900. Thanks to the six-speed automatic, that brings with it EPA estimated mileage of 19 city/28 highway.

New Car Review: 2013 Ford Mustang V6 Coupe



The 2013 Mustang V6 Coupe.

Way back when....a few months shy of 49 years ago, the Ford Mustang was the originator of a segment called "Pony Cars". Never mind that the other cars in the segment were named after a fish (Barracuda) and, well...nothing that actually existed (Camaro). The Mustang was the standard, with a formula that allowed owners to option the three body styles that eventually were available in the first model year (coupe, fastback and convertible) from, as Ford literature put it, "mild to wild".

In fact, in year one (model year 1965), there were six-cylinder engines making as little as 105 horsepower and V8s delivering 271, allowing for some room between the Pony Car and Muscle Cars like the Pontiac GTO, which in 1965 offered a choice of 335 or 360 horsepower (from the Tri-Power engine, which had three 2-barrel carburetors).

Throughout its life, even as Shelby GT 350s, GT 500s, Mach 1s, Boss 302s, Boss 351s and Boss 429s were brought into the Mustang corral, there was always the "mild" option.

It's not so anymore. For while it looks like a small number in the shadow of the 2013 Mustang GT's 420 horsepower, the 2013 Boss 302's 444 horsepower and the 2013 GT 500's 650 horsepower, the most basic, humble Mustang you can now buy packs 305 horsepower.