TTAC's Best and Brightest have spoken. You provided us with 81 nominations for our Ten Best award, from the Aston Martin Vanquish to the HUMMER H2. From this cornucopia of cars, our ever-eager writers selected the short list of 20 finalists. As you might expect, the final list leans heavily towards vehicles notable for their performance and driving excellence. Half of this year's contenders were also finalists last year [indicated by an asterisk]. So here they are, along with some of your more "colorful" comments. Once you've had a look, please step into the e-voting booth and choose TTAC's Ten Best.

“Hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum!” I don’t know exactly what that means, but it was that hot in North Texas the afternoon I picked up my 2008 Scion xB. How appropriate that the old Flying Circus reference should flash through my mind; the xB looks like something out of a twisted Terry Gilliam animation. Now that Graham Chapman resides in an urn, all of the Pythons could fit in the xB, although 6’4” tall John Cleese would be uncomfortable in any seat.  But the newly redesigned boxy Scion is more than a surreal comic sketch. Or is it? And now for something completely different…

This website has long argued that automakers should spend the majority of their resources nurturing existing autos. Introducing new models on a regular basis, constantly reinventing the wheel to follow fads and fashion, is an inherently expensive and dangerous game. Nissan's 350Z proves the point. It's a four-wheeled personification of not fixing what isn't broken. Better yet, it's a proper Nissan sports car at a price that shames the Ebay-adjusted, oversexed GT-R. Thankfully, the Z is still crazy after all these years.

Selling an SUV in today’s market is financial suicide. Residual values have dropped by double digits— and that was just last week. Buyers who somehow managed to complete the SUV exodus better watch out for the next auto da fe: fully-loaded versions of entry-level whips. Expect a serious depreciation hit for these luxury econoboxes at trade-in time. Still, checking the options list wisely works wonders for your driving pleasure. To wit: the lame duck Ford Focus.

Ten Best Nominations Are Now Closed

The truth hurts. But not always. Sometimes the truth about cars is the key to genuine insight and automotive ecstasy. This is one of those times, when TTAC's Best and Brightest select their annual Ten Best automobiles. In other words, this is your chance to help the wider world discover genuine automotive excellence, and reward those who produce it with a much-deserved hat tip. The name of this collective endeavor changes, but the rules remain the same: you nominate the cars, our writers narrow your selection to 20, then you get the final say on the Ten Best [more details below]. But before we get stuck in, here's a recap of last year's winners…

Growing up, I thought the Porsche 911 was hideous. Its bug eyes and lumpy lines made me wonder if the designer had accidentally knocked modeling clay off his drafting table and submitted the splatter. This notion persisted until I drove one. Some 130 mph later, I considered the 911 the most beautiful automotive form on earth. Driving the all-new 2009 Honda Pilot EX-L kinda sorta triggered the same type of perceptual realignment. Call it Zen and the art of "challenging" design.

Gourmet restaurants and McDonalds both serve salads. Both establishments offer greens, vegetables and some kind of dressing. Setting aside Mickey D's portion-controlled, polymer-intensive presentation, I doubt anyone would confuse the two salads based on appearance or taste. But what of a "proper" premium sedan and the Kia Amanti? It's an intriguing idea: an upmarket midsize sedan at a family sedan price. Cutting out a badge-related price premium is always tempting… but seldom worth it.

Engineered like no other car in the world. At some point in the 90's, Mercedes dropped their longstanding ad campaign. And no wonder. The promise had become a snigger-worthy ironic joke. That said, it stopped being funny when it started being you making regular pilgrimages to your local dealership. Mercedes trumpets its new C-Class as a return to the legendary, over-engineered cars of Mercedes-Benz's past. Heading straight to the very bottom of the range, will the cheapest and most basic of all "true" Benzes right 15 years of wrong?

A couple of weeks ago, grainy images portending GM's bright, small-car-driven future "leaked" onto the Web. "All hail the new Cruze!" shouted the GM Kool-Aid Klub, apparent fans of intentional misspelling. A compact come-to-Jesus from the higher-ups quickly followed, delivered by GM's Design Chief. "In North America, we never did a good small car," Ed Welburn mea culpaed. So things will be different this time, right? Just like they were going to be different three years ago, when the Cobalt was released? The Cobalt I rented this weekend? Bah, humbug, I say.

When I reviewed the '07 Altima 3.5 SE, I concluded by posing the question, "Why in the world would anyone buy a Maxima?" Why indeed. The Pen-Altima far surpassed its big brother in power, handling and styling. Nissan had neglected the Maxima into a noisy Toyota Avalon with a cheap interior. Pity, because the nineties' version was a sort of lower-case-m-5: Japanese bento-box-styling with three tubes of wasabi squirted under the hood. Now Nissan's thrown the old Maxima blueprints out the window of a Nürburgring-blitzing GT-R. Four-door-sportscar? We'll see about that.

America has the hots for hybrids. On the flip side of high gas prices, the value of any vehicle with fuel economy below 20 mpg has collapsed. Brand new "gas guzzlers" sit on dealer lots collecting incentives, rebates, finance deals and dust. The price of used fuel-suckers has dropped by 25 percent in the last four months, and THEN the rest. This is the perfect time to shop for a twin-turbo twelve-cylinder behemoth.

Full disclosure: I really like Audis. I own two of them: an A4 Avant and an A4 Cabriolet. So when Audi offered me the chance to review a Q7, Ingolstadt's answer to "how late can you be to an SUV party and still not wonder why you bothered to show up in the first place," I said game on. After all, it's an Audi. What's not to like? 

In 2002, my friend Patrick threw a glass ashtray at me in a bar in Boston. “Berzerkowitz!” he barked, celebrating the successful hit right in the middle of my forehead. That’s how he said hi. The next morning, once he sobered up, and my face still hurt like a sonofabitch, we went for a ride in the car he rented for the weekend. “It’s the most generic car I have ever driven,” Pat told me from the driver’s seat of a Hyundai XG350L.

There I was, minding my own business on the Internet, when HUMMER sauntered up and threw me against a locker. “Alpha stole your virtual girlfriend. And your real one,” grumbled the ever-subtle brand’s banner ad. Okay, HUMMER, I’ll bite (so to speak). Who’s Alpha, what’s he got that I haven’t? And— most importantly— how is this going to delay the inevitable fizzling of your fifteen minutes?

I lusted after Infiniti’s “Bionic Cheetah” from the moment I saw the renderings in a buff book (remember those?). After climbing behind the wheel of the first-gen FX, I knew that if I ever needed an SUV without cargo space or off-roadabilty, the FX45 was the truck crossover for me. For one thing, it was carved from a block of sex. For another, the stiff-legged handling was righteous. But there's a new sheriff in high center of gravity town: the FX50. Can Infiniti’s new model match the moves, let alone the lines, of it's much admired (by me anyway) predecessor? Well, lemme tell ya…