Badge-engineering. You know the drill: take a run-of-the-mill bog standard plain Jane vanilla sort of car, add some external bits and internal pieces, tweak the ride, slap on a more prestigious badge and jack-up the price. More specifically, the "new" Lincoln Zephyr is a Ford Fusion with a modified grill, wood trim, floatier ride, Lincoln logo and an inflated sticker price. So rather than badge engineer my Ford Fusion review, I'm going to tell you what Ford– sorry, Lincoln, should have done with this car.

The obvious answer is nothing. Lincoln needs a front-wheel-drive mid-size sedan like Hummer needs a camouflage SMART (unless they use it as an H2 escape pod). Even if we ignore Lincoln's illustrious past– first betrayed in 1936 by a funny-looking car called a Zephyr– the brand's recent history sets the standard. Exhibitionist A: the Lincoln Continental Mark IV: a huge, thirsty, poorly-built, foul-handling beast from a time when jeans had bells at the bottom. While the infinitely smaller [modern] Zephyr is so safe and reliable it Hertz and boasts twice as much everything room than the old Mark, Lincoln's '70's luxobarge holstered a 7.5-liter V8 with more swagger than Ludacris at a Kapp Alpha Theta. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

The Range Rover Sport arrived just as Britain's Parliament banned fox hunting. Call it fortuitous happenstance. At the precise moment Britain's shotgun-wielding aristocrats lost their main motivation for chasing each other over hill and dale, the Ford subsidiary came plying more on-road aggression. If these frustrated followers of British blood sports looked upon the new Landie Sport as an opportunity to blow off a little steam in less mucky surrounds, it's a goal they share with America's wealthier PTA MILFs. So, does the Sport have what it takes to get the blood pumping for aristocrats on both sides of the Pond?

The Land Rover Sport HSE looks like a top-shelf Range Rover with its hair slicked back. The Sport shares the exact same two-box profile with its big brother– complete with Rover's trademark 'floating' cantilevered roof. The more rakish Sport's canted greenhouse (both fore and aft) is the model's main distinguishing feature, and its only real attempt at a skosh of street cred. In the name of differentiation, Gaydon's designers replaced the Rangie's classy aluminum front-fender vent slat with a more traditional aperture, and substituted some overly ornate taillights in place of the bigger Rover's refined rounds. Details aside, the Sport remains the very picture of 21st-century shooting brakedom, albeit one rockin' a set of air suspenders.

The power of love is a curious thing. It makes one brand weep, another brand sing. Change a bug into a little white Dub. More than a feeling; that's the power of love. Yes, I know it's old News, but Volkswagen's Beetle still gets a lot of love. You would've thought a retro reissue of Hitler's people's car would've fallen down the same rat hole that swallowed-up the mustachioed Plymouth Prowler, Chevrolet's WTF SSR and Ford's turkey T-bird. But no. Eight years after its re-introduction into the US market, VW's self-titled "New Beetle" is still here, people still adore it, and I still don't get it.

Admittedly, I'm not gay. While I do enjoy a well-formed six-pack, and consider myself a far better interior decorator than that stuck-up Connecticut con artist, I can't understand how anyone could find VeeDub's Bauhaus Bug "cute." I reckon J Mays drew the St. Louis arch over a Kohler bathtub and called it good. All the superb detailing that gave the 60's version its cutesy-tootsie cartoon character has been replaced with generic post-modern jewelery. To my eyes, the slab-sided minimalist Beetle is about as emotionally engaging as a Braun razor. The '06 facelift offers rounder headlights, more tapered wrap-around air dams and flat-edged wheel arches. It looks like… a slightly newer Braun razor.

Growing up in Southern California, I never understood the whole Swedish car thing. SoCal drivers need an all-weather automobile like tacos need herring. Although a Volvo wagon was the left-wing equivalent of a Ford F250 and a Saab was a cap and gown on wheels, speed-crazed Angelinos found Nordic transportation about as exciting as farm machinery. Then Ford bought Volvo and GM scarfed Saab. Suddenly, performance, handling and luxury were piled onto the Smorgasbord. To freshen-up its range, GM instructed Saab to reengineer an Opel Vectra and call it a 9-3. In this guise, the new Saab 9 – 3 Aero joins German rides in the land of palm trees and lip-injections. Perhaps the General was on to something…

Saab's decision to ditch their traditional hatchback for a three-box sedan raises immediate and uncomfortable questions about the intersection of corporate ownership and brand identity. The Aero attempts to distract the faithful with a rear that looks like a hatch (but isn't) and sporting cues. The Jay Leno chin spoiler certainly grabs your attention, and the dual pipes poking out from the blackened derriere make all the right noises. But the 9-3 is too narrow for such deep cladding and there's an excellent chance parking lot rampage will hammer the low-slung ground effects. The Aero's profile is its best viewing angle, projecting European rakishness. Even if Saab newcomers don't catch a Trollhattan vibe, at least they'll know they're not in Kansas anymore.

Maybe it's because my father's Canadian, but I always pull for the underdog. Right from the start, I wanted Nissan's upstart Infiniti brand to kick Lexus's polished derriere. And so it did. The Z — make that G — 35 made the original IS250 look like an over-stressed poodle. Where Lexus offered an overwrought interior (ahoy there diving-watch gauge cluster) and under-cooked mechanicals, Infiniti served-up a four-door Camaro. The G35 dispatched the IS, yawned and started hunting Germans. When Japan's 'other' luxury brand (not counting Acura) re-launched its 5-Series fighter, I thought right; here we go. Round two…

At first sight, all bets were off. Why would Infiniti produce such a fat, unsightly beast? Up front, the sedan's massive chrome grill clashes with the body's not-so-svelte proportions, and the brash headlights are just plain wrong. The M's obese hind quarters are more offensive than a cartoon of the Prophet lounging by the pool. I'm not saying the M45's taillights are garish, but they'd look huge on a school bus. From the side, the M45's not a tragedy, but that's only because you might mistake it for the more comely G35 at twenty paces. In all, the M45 is only vaguely alluring, like a post-partum Britney.

Anyone who looks at the new Audi A3 3.2 DSG and sees an overpriced economy car should not be allowed to play with Rottweiler puppies. While Ingolstadt's diminutive four-door may seem like a hatchback for badge snobs willing to sacrifice size for breeding, it's actually a four-wheeled fiend, a beast born and bred to take a bite out of the time – space continuum. Everything else about the A3– the foot on the Audi ownership ladder thing, the four-wheel-drive peace-of-mind shtick– is nothing more than a glossy coat on a vicious little monster. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

The A3's aesthetic dissonance should tip off neophytes that something wikkid this way driveth. Calling the little Audi "ungainly" is like saying a Saab stretch limo lacks a certain finesse. The unconscionable gaping maw that is Audi's house snout never looked as hideous as it does here, attached to a car whose creators seems to have given up around the halfway mark. I presume the A3's sloping rear roofline was designed to distance Audi's $35k 'entry level' hatchback from the traditional econobox. At best, the A3 looks like a dwarf station wagon. At worst, it joins Mercedes' SLK as another petite whip suffering from Peter North syndrome.

Five grand.  Depending on options, incentives and fire sales, that's the difference between the cost of a Saab 9-2X Aero and a Subaru WRX Sport Wagon. Underneath, there's not much in it: same platform, same bag of tricks.  No wonder auto industry wags have taken to calling the Saab 9-2X Aero the 'Saabaru."  Now that GM has sold its share of the Japanese automaker and relocated Saab's badge-engineering department to Opel's German digs, the time has come to ask a simple question: Why God, why?

The Aero's exterior offers the best justification for its existence. The WRX has always been a visually challenging automobile.  Not to belabor the point: the '06 WRX Sport Wagon refresh is still ucking fugly. Thanks to its nose graft, the Saab 9-2x Aero is a far more handsome sled than its Japanese half-sister.  As Saab proved with its brand-stretching Trailblazer into 9-7X trick, their house schnoz gives even the most awkward beast a handsome, vaguely European vibe.  Although the Aero's C-pillar is as Swedish as unagi, at least Saab removed the Scooby's roof rails, making the Aero seem lower and sleeker, and added some black cladding around the exhaust, slimming the bulbous butt. If only they'd taken a blowtorch to those tortured side sills… 

While it's often said you can't be all things to all people, someone forgot to tell Toy Yoda. While GM, Ford and The Dodge Boys are still trying to gentrify their rough-and-ready SUV's into cultured outdoorsmen (before urbanites abandon their automotive Wellingtons), the Japanese automaker took a light saber to traditional SUV demographics, sliced them into pieces and built a vehicle appealing to every single [up]market segment at the same time. No question: the force is with this one. Powerful it is too.

Ironically, the RX 400h is not Lexus' most cohesive design. From head-on it resembles a baby elephant: all legs and a tiny, short body. From the side, the strangely kinked C-pillars and double quarter-windows are a self-conscious attempt to give the standard SUV box some sedan-like horizontality. The blacked-out rear roof spoiler proclaims sport, while the nanodetailed LED taillights say insect. The RX 400h's aesthetic appeal resides in the details, like the gorgeously crafted adaptive headlights and backlit company emblems in all four doorsills. And, lest we forget, there's the ultimate badge of honor: the little 'h' on the boot badge proclaiming your intention to use less fossil fuel, keep the globe cool and avoid red meat (providing there's a suitable salad option).

The SUV is dead. Long live the sedan on stilts! Yes folks, Chevrolet has transformed their Tahoe from a cheap and cheerful workhorse for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms, to a deluxe cruiser for environmentally insensitive soccer Moms. The change is so well executed, so completely earnest in both scope and scale, you almost feel sorry for the beast. Like the Wild Things watching Max sailing back to his bedroom (already regretting his rumpus at the pumpus), the new Tahoe cries out to departing SUV buyers "Come back! We love you so!" What say you, America?

The new Tahoe is certainly a more alluring monster than the big bland boring box it replaces. Bob Lutz– the GM executive who once dismissed a passel of motor show concept cars as "angry appliances"– will be delighted with what Chevy's American Revolution has wrought: a happy appliance. The Tahoe's sheetmetal displays all the subdued modernism, implied practicality and aesthetic solidity of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, right down to the sleek door handles– I mean "pulls". The Tahoe's hood is as perfectly creased as an Armani suit. The SUV's bowed nose and tail, the gently curving C-pillar, the side mirrors' blacked-out bottoms – every detail reflects an entirely successful attempt to give the Tahoe's exterior a contemporary kitchen's supercool coherence.

There are three basic markets for any car: price, value (price plus quality) and quality (price no object). Automobiles aimed at the top and bottom of the food chain are relatively easy to produce; price-oriented manufacturers can let things slide, quality-oriented carmakers can afford perfection. Value is a bitch. Automakers in this arena have got to do it all, do it right and do it at a price. One false step and competitors on either side of the financial divide reach down or reach up and snatch your bread and butter. In short, the new Hyundai Azera is something of a miracle: a car that hits the value bulls-eye with supernatural precision.

Novice violin students using the "Suzuki method" aren't allowed to touch their instruments for months. Aspiring musicians who aren't driven insane by repeatedly fingering cardboard cutouts often go on to make beautiful music, once allowed. Too bad Suzuki doesn't practice Suzuki; we could have all avoided the underpowered and funny-looking last gen Grand Vitara in favor of the infinitely more accomplished 2006 model. Despite obvious improvements since the Vitara's dress rehearsal, the question remains: is the new Grand Vitara finally ready for Avery Fisher Hall?

To make the Grand Vitara a headliner, Suzuki's engineers stripped their mid-sized ute to the frame and started afresh. While the new Grand's exterior is a radical departure from the old two-toned, plastic-clad and dimpled Subaru wannabe, it's still a deeply conservative design. Super-spy stealth touches — sleek rails that rise ever so slightly from the roof, black-trimmed wheel wells, black side gills on the hood — add a welcome touch of aggression. Sure, some clunkiness remains. The side mirrors are a dress size too big for the cute ute, and the huge tail lights give the rear end a decidedly dated demeanor. But they're the only flat notes in an otherwise harmonious composition.

Getting old is not for sissies. Aside from a general degradation in motor skills, sensory perception, memory and earnings, the 401K set is prone to health complaints that are both fantastically expensive and endlessly annoying. Fortunately, there are compensations: grandchildren (kids free from a no-deposit, no-return policy) and the Mercedes Benz E350 4Matic. I'm not saying the E350 was specifically designed to salve the fading sensibilities of the blue rinse brigade, but any car this numb, beige and expensive is clearly aimed at Baby Boomers who are wealthy as Hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Unless you ask nicely.

The E350 is a polite request on wheels. While Mercedes' product developers have been busy performing bizarre genetic experiments in pursuit of The Next Big Thing– carbon fiber supercars, mutant crossovers, four-door chop tops, re-imagined Nazi staff cars– their mid-sized model remains reassuringly bland– I mean, conservative. On the downside, the E still suffers from the swoopy dorkiness of its oval headlights, which make the grill look small, which denies the E350 get-out-my-way gravitas. And it continues to share far too many family traits with the lower-priced C-Class to please the legions of status conscious Mercedes buyers.

A lot of the car industry's heavy hitters are busy talking up small cars. Audi, BMW, Chevy, Ford, SMART, even the Chinese are betting that America's collapsing SUV market will lead to a rebirth of the whole "small is beautiful" shtick. According to this theory, millions of dinky-sized city cars will soon be plying a city street near you; burning less gas, sweetening the air and taking-up less space. Meanwhile, check out the Dodge 2500 Mega Cab 4WD Laramie Cummins Turbodiesel. This sumbitch is BIG, and it don't apologize to no one for nothin', anywho, anyhow.

The Mega Cab's size earns/demands instant respect, but there's more than simple bulk at work. Most of today's pickups are a riot of awkward configurations: quad cab short beds that look ungainly, stepside trucks with misshapen haunches and girlie-man taillights; Heavy Duty Fords with mismatched low bedside height. The Mega Cab is perfect. Its rear doors' extended length combines with the extra C-panel width to create a sublime balance between cab and bed. Add in the obligatory macho design cues (crosshair front grill, flared wheel arches, optional roof lights) and the Mega Cab is a trucker's dream if I ever did see one.

On a recent episode of Jeopardy, none of the contestants could identify the company responsible for the motoring miscarriages known as the Aztek and Grand Prix. Seems GM's 'excitement' division has some heavy brush to clear. Despite the paddles-to-the-chest prospects of the new Solstice, the marque's main hopes for financial salvation lie with the Torrent. It's unfortunate that the name of the re-badged Chevy Equinox (or is it the other way around?) is commonly associated with the phrase "of abuse," because the little SUV doesn't deserve it. Well, maybe a trickle…

The Torrent excels in a sport in which most American cars don't even place– styling. Given the Torrent's only-a-cataract-eyed-mom-on-tranqs-could-love predecessor (What is an Aztek, Alex), Pontiac's gold medal in the sheet metal sculpting event is a Miracle on Ice-caliber result. Although the Torrent's sharp lines and tailored creases are standard-issue cute-ute, the SUV is one of the more cohesive-looking vehicles in GM's truck-heavy lineup. The Torrent's both perfectly proportioned and elegantly detailed. Even Pontiac's signature "butterfly" twin-port grille looks like it finally found a happy place.

When I saw a mustard-colored Bentley GT rocketing towards my all time favorite highway exit, I knew lunch was served. Paddling from seventh to third and pressing go, I closed the gap between the M5's voracious prow and Bentley Boy's behind before the adrenalin could hit my bloodstream. As we entered the ramp, the Bimmer's heads-up display assured me I had enough rpm-age to blow-off anything that wasn't built out of carbon fiber and/or jet-powered. When the off-ramp widened for a few yards, I dove inside and dusted Bentley Boy into a fine powder. Despite my obvious, riotous supremacy, nothing changed. BMW's uber-sedan was not my friend.

Supercar scalping in a family four-door is a terrific way to kill an afternoon, but the original M5 earned its place in automotive Valhalla as the consumate all-rounder: a car that can schlep, thrash, coddle, cruise, potter and impress with equal aplomb. Make no mistake: while the M5's accelerative aggression and Nürburgring-fettled handling got the headlines, the uber-Bimmer's core appeal lay within its relatively humble origins, daily practicality and circumspect sheet metal. No other car– at any price– offered such a potent blend of ability and humility.