High gasoline prices, foreign wars in oil producing nations and fears of global warming have made fuel efficiency the new patriotism. Yet many Americans reject clown-sized economy cars and suppository shaped CUV’s and minivans. They cling to the outdoorsy lifestyle and the go-anywhere freedom embodied by rough-and-tumble SUV’s. In a second attempt to address these shifting values, Jeep has unveiled the Patriot. It's an SUV for gas conscious Americans! Actually, never mind all that. Please, oh please, just let it be better than the Compass.

The planet Saturn is a giant ball of gas. When it comes to selling cars to enthusiasts, GM’s “like never before” division is also full of hot air. In 1999, Saturn said their Opel-sourced LS sedan would be fun to drive. It wasn’t. In 2003, Saturn made similar noises over the ION Quad Coupe. Strike two. In 2004, the ION Red Line was supposedly da bomb. Pistonheads lined up none deep. But was the Red Line really at fault? Or was it sabotaged by Saturn’s nebulous image and boy-who-cried-wolf marketing?

Eight years ago, when giant SUV's roamed this fair country virtually unchallenged, The Blue Oval slipped the Ford Focus into the American market. Now that gas prices have U.S. consumers thinking small, you'd think that FoMoCo would be battling Fits, Versas and Yari with an updated version of their Eurobox. Nope. As far as Ford’s engineers and PR department are concerned, the Focus has fallen off the face of the earth. Which might just work in your favor.

Herbie Hancock is a jazz pianist with a lesser known passion for all things electronic. After trading his sublime Steinway for some cutting-edge synthesizers, Hancock’s musical career Rockit-ed into interstellar space. It’s unclear why Honda reversed Hancock's career path for their eighth generation Civic. Here we have a machine that harkens back to the time when funk-fusion hit the airwaves and flying wedge concepts littered the world's design studios. What’s up with that?

I once drove off the road, screaming, at 80mph. Why? I was in love. When love turns blind, men do irrational things. As far as healthy, loving relationships go, the one presaging my off-highway excursion was a malignant tumor wrapped in an iron lung. I imagine that owning a Pontiac Solstice GXP is a similar affair. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury; the prosecution calls her a “femme fatale on wheels.” I ask you: how could something this beautiful be so damn dangerous?

There I was, having fun, fun auf die autobahn, when nature called. Somewhere southeast of Stuttgart, I took the wrong exit and found myself outside the gates of Audi’s Neckarsulm factory. A large sign proclaimed the brutally Bauhaus industrial complex ground zero for the German automaker’s R8 supercar. I was immediately convinced I was destined to park one in my garage. Of course, by then I’d been chasing R8 ownership for over three years. So, do good things come to those who wait?

Twenty-six summers ago I arrived in San Antonio, Texas. I quickly surmised that the pickup truck was River City residents’ favored mode of transport– preferably with an occupied gun rack. These pickup-driving Hill Country Texans worshiped at the altar of one of two churches: Chevy or Ford. Since those simple days of my youth, the rules of the game have changed. That community, so steeped in American pickup truck tradition, is now the production site for the all-new 2007 Tundra. Question: is Toyota’s big rig good enough to pry the keys out of the hands of F150, Silverado, and Ram-loving Americans?

The Big 2.5 have always struggled with vehicles of the four-cylinder persuasion. A series of broken nameplates dating back to Omni, Vega, and Pinto highlights Detroit’s longstanding fear and loathing of Thinking Small. Now the 0.5 is attempting to renew its ardor with the Caliber, branding it a “world car” and exporting it to Europe. Unfortunately, the Caliber shows that bad Detroit habits are hard to break, firing blanks in this latest battle of the econobox wars.

News flash! The 2007 MINI looks like the 2006 MINI. As there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the “old” model, BMW’s decision to leave things well enough alone shows welcome restraint. Well, almost. BMW’s added two extra inches to the new MINI– and we all know how meaningful two extra inches can be for guys (legroom!). But you’d be hard pressed to see any exterior effects– good or bad. So is it still all systems go for MINI’s V2 rocket, or does the new model (codenamed R56) prove that more is less?

The Ford F150 is America’s best selling vehicle. The domestically produced full-size pickup truck is generally recognized as the class of the field. Unfortunately, nothing else Ford sells stateside achieves that standard– and Ford’s “showroom of the future” offers little hope. No wonder the company’s camp followers have turned their gaze upon FoMoCo’s European operations, where the S-Max people mover won the coveted Car of the Year award. Should The Blue Oval Boyz switch on their tractor beam?  

Coupes should be firm flagships and style vanguards: the best of a brand. Where does that leave Lexus, a marque best known for… reliability? With the Lexus SC430. The folding-roofed Lexus coupe is the second oldest model in Lexus' portfolio of pomp. For a company [relentlessly] pursuing perfection, that would make the SC430 the most imperfect car Lexus sells.

Since its introduction in 2004, the fifth gen Maserati Quattroporte has been a sedan poised on the brink of greatness. Its fatal flaw: a clunky automated manual transmission ill-suited to the model’s luxury mission. Unlike some propeller-badged Germans we could name, Maserati’s Italian parent heeded the catcalls directed at its high tech gearbox. FIAT sourced a ZF six speed fully automatic transmission to cure the problem, subito. So, are we there yet?

Californians designed it. Italy’s glass blowing artisans lent it their name. A Franco-Japanese alliance headed by a Brazilian CEO builds it in a Japanese factory. The Murano is a twenty-first century multinational mutt. Introduced in 2002, this strange beast has faithfully served owners in the great melting pot of America’s sprawling suburbs. In dog years, the model’s now 67 years old. And the CUV market has suddenly become more crowded than a backwoods puppy mill. So has Nissan’s crossbreed aged well, or is this old dog ready for the vet’s needle?

Back before gas prices scared SUV owners sensible, most CUV’s were “cute utes.” As the SUV exodus gathered pace, several abandoned truck makers figured SUV refugees were a bit half-assed not fully committed to downsizing. They built CUV’s that are only slightly smaller than their SUV’s, only without the towing capacity, off-road ability and, most importantly, extreme thirst. Never one to miss a trick, the transplants have been growing their CUV’s to nibble away at the same market. Case in point: the Hyundai Santa Fe.

To capture maximum market share, does a car company have to forget how to have fun? Toyota seems to think so. The Japanese manufacturer has spent the last ten years purging its product line of irrational exuberance. It scrubbed the Supra in 1998, canned the V6-and-a-stick Camry CE in 2002, and wasted the Celica and MR2 in 2005. In that same year, another anomaly slipped through the cracks, a car that’s still with us today (at least for a while): the Toyota Corolla XRS.