Lexus should include a PlayStation 3 with every GS350 they sell the public, so the new owners can take their new vehicle for a spin around the Nurburgring in “Gran Turismo.” That way they’d be able to safely enjoy their new Lexus and not waste a single penny in gas. Either way, the driving experience wouldn’t change much.
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Luxury sport sedans have a lot of boxes to tick. In a segment where high price points have not prevented a a crowd of competitors from gathering, every contender must develop a unique identity that sets it apart from the pack. This means a combination of performance, character, quality and feel that makes the car’s priorities evident, and speaks to the tastes of its well-heeled driver. Instead of picking a specific formula, the M35x tried too hard to check all the boxes, leaving it almost completely without distinguishing characteristics. The upside is an almost utilitarian soullessness, an anonymous competence that defines much of the front-drive luxury market. In this group though, we’re looking for more than that. The Infiniti’s driving experience comes across as a pastiche of other, more memorable cars, and this lack of identity drops the M to last place.
When my dad hit middle age in the ‘70’s, his first reaction was to park a Mercedes in our garage – a ’75 450SE, which my mom nicknamed “Heinrich.” The Mercedes sedans of that era weren’t beautiful cars, but damned if Heinrich didn’t turn heads – it was obvious that someone important was driving it. By the time I learned to drive in 1979, mom had inherited Heinrich, and we had another German blitzkrieg machine – a BMW 733i. The two cars couldn’t have been more different – on the winding roads around my house, the BMW was a jock, but Heinrich was a Panzer tank of a car that sternly replied “nein” if you tried to force him into back-road calisthenics. But Heinrich always impressed the general public – only dedicated gearheads did a double-take when they saw the BMW, while Heinrich was still getting looks into the late 1980’s. Flash forward three decades, and little has changed: the BMW in this test is still an athlete with no fashion sense, while the all-new E350 is an imposing power suit of a car.
Fifty-three thousand dollars! I’m tempted to say it again! Fifty-three thousand dollars! What are the chances that any American-branded sedan could be worth this kind of money, particularly in our newly cost-conscious era? Mr. Farago has repeatedly pummeled the “MKTaurus” on these pages, and that was before the price of Lincoln’s big sedan cleared the fifty-K mark. Before we can even get a handle on whether or not the MKS is a good car, it’s critical that we take the competition’s temperature and see just how unjustifiable the pricing is.
“The company’s survival depends on the success of this car.” Though regularly trotted out, this statement is almost always BS (not to be confused with the Bertel kind). Typically when the hyped new car fails, the company seems to somehow scrape by. But the 2010 LaCrosse might just warrant such an extreme statement, at least with regard to Buick’s survival outside China. GM has been on a brand-killing spree lately, and this car will test whether or not Buick is beyond saving in the U.S. The Enclave has proved that American car buyers are open to a Buick crossover. But a Buick sedan, with more baggage to overcome, poses a greater challenge. So, does the new Buick LaCrosse–and the brand that’s banking on it–deserve to succeed?
The “Z-car” has been with us now for forty years, but let’s be honest: most of those years were fairly disappointing. The original 240Z was a fabulous car that richly deserves its place in history, and the 1990 300ZX Turbo was a singular statement of high-speed style, but the story of the Z is too often a story of bloat, questionable visuals, and dismal V-6 engines. So it was with the 2003 350Z. As with Volkswagen’s New Beetle, adapting show-car style to an oversized platform-variant production model took a horrible aesthetic toll. The interior was dismal and the driving experience was too clearly that of a short-wheelbase G35. A ten-minute test drive six years ago was all I needed to cross the porky Zed off my personal list permanently, and not even the rather stunning-looking Nismo run-out model was sufficient incentive to change my position on the matter.
I’m anything but a Trekkie, but a recent drive in the Tesla Roadster made me think of the Starship Enterprise. To be more precise, the Enterprise a second after warp speed has been deployed. Imagine for a moment that your brain is Captain Kirk and the “gas” pedal is Scotty. When Scotty receives the warp factor order and flips the fast switch, something very weird and very breathtaking happens. On the Starship, as in the Tesla.
Hyundai’s on a roll. It wasn’t too long ago that the only things its cars generated were pollution and repair bills. Today, however, Hyundai cars are generating awards, increased sales, and most importantly, opinions. Read the comments section of any post on anything Hyundai, and people will have something to say. Many have good things to say, some do not. In either case, Hyundai has changed something: people care enough about its cars to have an opinion.
It’s difficult to put a price on cynicism in this day and age, but allow me to make a suggestion: $13,900. Four years ago, the newly-introduced Porsche Cayman 3.4S retailed for $58,900. The mechanically similar Boxster 2.7 was $45K flat. That nearly fourteen-grand price difference would have purchased a well-equipped Hyundai Elantra, but at Porsche it got the Cayman buyer a hardtop, which costs less to manufacture than the Boxster’s soft top, and a bored-out engine, which costs exactly the same to make as the small-bore variant.
With my previous Chevrolet Cobalt XFE encounter in mind, visiting three dealerships in search of an XFE tester came as no surprise. Ironically, the dealer formerly associated with “Mr. Big Volume” (a.k.a. Bill Heard) had one XFE-badged Cobalt that survived last month’s Cash For Clunkers shopping spree. Like the surprisingly respectful staff at this once-infamous storefront, the XFE was a refreshing breath of recirculated air. It’s still a Cobalt, but it’s the most fuel-efficient car, battery laden Hybrids notwithstanding. Which turns a rental car special into something…well, something more special.
I’m old enough to remember when Mercedes used the tagline “engineered like no other car in the world,” and no one questioned it. When the 1986 W124 E-Class was introduced, Car & Driver proclaimed it “the best car in the world.” In the quarter-century since, Mercedes’ position in the automotive pecking order has become less certain. Lexus came out of nowhere, and BMW has managed to successfully expand upward from the 3-Series and to become a provider of luxury as well as sport. For 2010 Mercedes has totally redesigned the E-Class. Any chance it’s 1986 all over again?
The year was 1997. As a bright eyed, recently minted med school graduate, I had two glorious weeks in Europe before the torture of internship began. One very memorable moment was in the parking lot of the MB museum in Stuttgart, where I spotted a prototype 1998 E50 AMG sulking behind a security gate. That thing looked evil, hunkered down on its 17″ alloys. It was so far removed from my Opel Astra rental car reality that I could scarcely imagine unleashing the 350 HP AMG-fettled V8 on the ‘Bahn at 170 mph in the latest heir to the Hammer.
Once upon a time, in the free-wheeling era where Herr Bertel Schmitt was busy hiring rogue helicopter pilots and causing untold mischief in the European auto-advertising business, the major players in the German market each knew how to stick to their knitting. Mercedes-Benz built staid automobiles for taxi drivers and decent people. BMW offered a limited range of square-and-sporty sedans, Audi built avant-garde streamliners for the traction-avant set. Porsche, meanwhile, held an unspoken but very real franchise as the only volume producer of German sports cars.
4/5 Stars 
For accountants, there are two certainties: golf and taxes. Together, both are tedious enough to make me want death. Unfortunately, I knew I’d be hearing a lot about both of these moribund subjects at our firm golf tournament. I was in the parking lot that morning, praying to the heavens for divine intervention when I heard my boss’ 1976 Corvette growling and lazily pulling up. As soon as I saw the ‘Vette, I decided to cash in the goodwill I’d earned by working 300 hours of overtime between November and March. “Fifteen minutes – no more,” he said. Score.
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