You gotta love Audi. Despite its rivals' explosive growth, The Boys from Ingolstadt have resisted the lure of sudden intended niche acceleration. While questions about reliability and resale value have shadowed the brand's progress like a pack of predatory wolves, Audi keeps on plugging away with a limited line of luxury limos, waiting for their turn to fill US owners' heated garages. As always, the A4 is both the point man and the mainstay of Audi's long march. Does the latest evolution finally signal the beginning of the end of the beginning?

From a sheet metal standpoint, the A4 is perfectly positioned to enjoy a rare window of unopposed conservatism. BMW's once-staid products have been turning Japanese (I really think so), Mercedes has renounced their discreet design heritage, Jaguar has overexploited theirs, Cadillac continues to live on the edge and the Asian brands are stuck in Pasticheland (save Infiniti). Aside from its inappropriately voracious snout– perfectly designed to make US license plates look ugly and stupid– the A4 is the ideal choice for drivers who believe discretion is the better part of showing off. It's old money on wheels.

You can no more assess a PT Cruiser Convertible based on its acceleration, ride and handling than you can rate a Harley Davidson Softail on its ability to keep pace with a Honda Blackbird. As a "cruiser", the PT Convertible can only be judged by one metric: its feel good factor (FGF). Do owners run out of milk at odd intervals? Do they name their cars? Do they lower the lid in winter? Yes, cubed. The PT drop top has all the car-isma cruisers crave– and then some.

First and foremost, it's a four-seater. The rag-top cognoscenti know that a convertible's FGF increases arithmetically with each additional passenger. If the rear seats are spacious, the pleasure generated is almost inconceivable. Try. Imagine stashing a couple of best buds in your Chrysler top-down two-door and heading for the beach; sucking on an ice cold Coke and blissing on Ban de Soleil as your crew sing along with the latest Black Eyed Peas hookfest. If that's not a peak automotive experience (and an example of unpaid product placement), I don't know what is.

Listen up guys: size matters. Not your penis; your testicles. Testicle size determines your level of sexual desire and stamina. By the same token, a minivan's interior is not the ultimate measure of its worth. While minivanistas love to boast about their whip's cubic capacity and cranny count, all MPV's can stow the better part of an NFL specialty team with air-conditioned ease. No, the true gauge of a minivan's basic appeal is its engine. All true pistonheads know that there's not a vehicle made– including minivans– that can't be improved by a large capacity, free-revving powerplant. Luckily, the Nissan Quest's got a big one.

Nissan's people mover holsters a detuned version of the Z-car's 3.5-liter six, with all the usual tricks of the trade (DOHC, variable valve timing and intake, multi-port fuel injection, drive-by-wire throttle, platinum spark plugs, etc.). In other words, this behemoth books. Well, OK, "browses swiftly". Empirically speaking, the Quest accelerates from zero to 60 in 8.2 seconds. The stat may not be stunning in these days of Hemi-engined Jeeps, but the Quest's 240 horses are a mighty frisky herd. The minivan bolts from the starting gate with a vigor that belies its looks, genre, size and age.

An electrical relay sitting in the front windscreen's rain gutter. Headliner that looks like mouse fur. Soft touch plastics that aren't. If you look closely at the new BMW 3-Series you'll see considerable evidence that Mercedes isn't the only German brand cutting corners at the low end of their lineup. But there's a difference: BMW says they let the whole obsessive compulsive construction thing slide so they could enlarge the 3-Series' performance envelope whilst holding the line on postage. In other words, they amped-up the driving dynamics rather than sweating the small stuff.

The new 3's helm justifies the justification. For far too long, BMW has pandered to America's [alleged] predilection for steering with all the feel and feedback of a Novocained bicuspid. Now, finally, The Boys from Bavaria have installed a rack-and-pinion tiller that rewards elbow grease with information. Whether you're giving it some mid-corner or jinking around a Volvo, the wheel tells you where you are in the pivoting process and what's happening underfoot. It makes driving, wait for it, fun. (Anyone who opts for Bimmer's anesthetic– I mean, active steering system loses all pistonhead privileges.)

Without any prompting whatsoever, my 11-year-old daughter took one look at the new Subaru B9 Tribeca and said 'ew'. And there you have it. Scooby's first-ever SUV is an irredeemably gruesome beast whose design should have been aborted a femtosecond after conception. While Subaru would like to convince us that "ugly ass" and "dynamic styling" are synonymous, even a pre-teen knows that repulsive is not, and never will be, the new cool. In the race for SUV buyers' affections, the horrific B9 sets off a mile behind the starting line.

Not to belabor the point, but who in their right mind would put a vagina on the nose of an SUV, and then accentuate the effect with wings and hood strakes AND make the shape stand proud of the grill? Yes, I know: the design reflects Fuji Heavy Industries' past as an airplane manufacturer. But they don't make airplanes anymore, and the ones they DID make attacked Pearl Harbor. While we're at it, the B9's rear resembles the face of a gigantic alien– which is only fitting. Other than its side profile, the B9's best viewing angle is high Earth orbit.

That my trusty sidekick decided to pack it in just days before this WRX STi arrived can hardly be viewed as coincidence. Rather than face the license and physics compromising surety of Subaru's turbocharged, all-wheel-drive juggernaut, my radar detector committed suicide. In the dead of night, leaping from her once-cozy, hardwired and suction-cupped perch, Michelle (my BEL) fatally dashed upon the rocky shoals of my daily driver's center console. It wasn't a cry for help, as nary an ear was around to hear her final (undoubtedly false) bleating. Tragic, yes… but completely understandable given the circumstances.

For as you can plainly see, Subaru hasn't exactly wrought a Q-ship here. The STi is utterly infested with attention-grabbing aerodynamic addenda: skirts, scoops, vents, canards, EVERYTHING. Factor-in the gaping mesh grille inserts, look-at-me STi stickery, 17" 12-spoke BBS alloys, and it's a miracle owners ever make it out of their driveways without police choppers whirring overhead. And then there's the small matter of the rump, where some Suba-guru epoxied a park bench to the decklid, screwing a Dutch Boy finial to the pipework as some sort of perverse coup de grâce.

Ever since I can remember, the Chevrolet Corvette has been the fat Elvis of sports cars. Every few years, someone would try to convince me that “America’s sports car” had received the engineering upgrades it needed to restore faded glory. But no. The latest ‘Vette was always a dynamic disaster: a feeble chassis married to lackluster brakes and an incompetent suspension, with more than enough horsepower to make it swap ends with frightening ease. Oh, and the car’s interior remained the only place capable of making a Motel 6 bedroom seem luxurious.

The Mercedes-Benz R500 has three rows of seats, so it can’t be a sedan. It’s too tall for a station wagon, too low for a minivan and lacks sufficient ground clearance for an SUV. If you define a “crossover” as an automobile that doesn’t fit into any known genre, then the R500’s got it nailed. For its part, Mercedes calls the R-Class a “grand sports tourer”. A rose by any other name… and the question remains. Is the R-Class a genuine game changer or simply a clever attempt to get new money for old rope?

A close examination of the R500’s content reveals some decidedly familiar kit. The big Merc shares its platform, manufacturing facility and full-time four-wheel-drive system with the latest generation M-Class SUV. The R500’s V8, a Mercedes staple, is married to Stuttgart’s supernaturally-smooth seven-speed automatic transmission. Naturally, the R-Class inherits every safety acronym in Stuttgart’s playbook: ABS, ASR, ESP, BA and, no doubt, an MFA from USC.

Stylistically, the R-Class borrows heavily from the CLS chop-top . The R500’s headlights, grille and hood wedge down into a centerline crease, while the swoopy side windows create a surfer’s perfect curl. The rear declares its independence; the side contours curve into bulbous shapes in the lift gate, with keyhole-lensed taillights. It's a radical statement, but anything less would have tagged the R500 as a minivan wannabe.

The original press reports on the new Mercedes M-Class SUV claimed it had car-like handling. It didn’t. The same will be said about the R-Class twin-under-the-skin. It doesn’t. The R500’s driver’s seat is well forward in the wheelbase and the H-point (the driver’s hip location inside the chassis) is a lot higher than a standard sedan’s. The combination creates excellent visibility, but delivers fundamentally different balance reference points than a car. In other words, steering a sailboat from halfway up the mast doesn’t feel the same as when you’re standing on the deck.

Our test R500 came equipped with optional Airmatic adaptive damping. The system adjusts the R500’s shock absorber settings every .05 seconds. It automatically firms-up in the corners, softens for rough roads and drops the car’s chassis (at 77mph) for improved handling, stability and reduced drag. There’s also a switch to increase the vehicle’s ground clearance by roughly three inches for deep snow or traversing that two-track leading to your cabin in the Adirondacks.

When fully exercised, the R500’s V8 emits a healthy snarl. The engine stumps-up enough oomph to hustle the nearly two-and-a-half ton crossover from zero to sixty in an entirely respectable 6.5 seconds. Yes, there is that. Even with all-wheel drive constantly searching for maximum traction, the R500 is simply too bulky to earn the right to place “sport” and “R500” in the same brochure .

In more sedate situations, the R500 offers all the practicality of a minivan— without the flexibility of a high roof or room for seven. On the positive side, three kids, one friend and a large Coleman cooler is quite enough for one outing, thank you very much. And the R’s rear seats fold en masse for a fully flat cargo area, or individually, for those rare occasions when you’re carrying four people and a grandfather clock.

Predictably, the R-Class’ option list is almost as long as the credit application. The optional Rear Seat Entertainment System allows middle passengers individual control of the audio and video delights, but denies the same power to passengers vegging in the way back. The R500's optional panoramic sunroof package includes a normal sunroof and a deeply tinted roof above the second and third row seats. It’s excellent for curing D-pillar claustrophobia, as well as a quick, neck straining tour of the Manhattan skyline.

Women who wish to watch from the back of the bus will not be well pleased with R-Class ingress. There’s no way to enter the rear seats without mooning the assembled multitudes. Exit is no more graceful. J-Lo may be expert at backing out of marriages, but don’t look for her to reverse engineer herself from the rear seat of an R-Class anytime soon. And don’t look if she does.

Personal indignity aside, the R500 has a lot to recommend it. It’s roomier than a sedan and almost as practical as an SUV (and a lot less thirsty). The R is also sleeker than any current minivan, handles better and leaves mom’s people carrier in the dust. In sum, Stuttgart (via Alabama) has assembled something unique from their well-established box of tricks. Whether or not the R500 is worth the usual three-pointed premium depends as much on customers’ aversion to other genres as their attraction to Mercedes’ brave new wheels.

[For more of John Matras' reviews, please visit www.carbuzzard.com ]

When BMW designer Chris Bangle first unleashed his version of venerable 7-Series in '02, the oddly angular "flame-surfacing" inflicted upon the plutocrats pride and joy was roundly criticized for not being round enough. At the same time, the overly-complex iDrive mouse controller iDrove customers nuts. Although Bimmer's brand cachet helped maintain the 7-Series' showroom momentum, the new, "refreshed" 7-Series was designed to right those wrongs and restore the natural order.

And so the Seven's sheet metal has returned to slab-sided safety. Gone too are the peculiar Dame Edna wraparound headlights and the gi-normous, protruding back end bustle. The hood has been re-sculpted as well, giving the car's nose a somewhat flatter, more balanced appearance. Otherwise, Bangle's art school over-indulgence has been replaced by, of all things, blingery. Xzibit A, B and C: the larger kidney grill at the front, the concave seven-spoke wheels and the more tightly gathered rear bumper (designed to show off the 7's wider rear track). The overall effect is extremely color-sensitive and a bit schizo: Bad Boyz meets Bavarian burghers.

Accord and Camry owners: "You're Welcome." At the risk of sounding sniffy, Toyota and Honda owners owe a large debt of gratitude to Nissan. Without the Altima, rival pink-slippers might still be trundling around in severely underpowered appliances. Rewind to 2002, when Nissan lit a fire under the collective backsides of every carmaker in the family sedan segment. At the time, Altima's haute-couture shape and Tabasco-infused engine gave competing engineers gray hair– and their marching papers. How else do you explain today's 240hp Accord?

That was then. And this is… later. Fortunately, while Nissan's busied itself immolating the wick at both ends of their considerable lineup, they haven't lost sight of the car that put them back in the game. I submit Exhibit 'SE-R'. Okay, so the new uber-Altima only boasts a modest bump in horsepower (10) and an extra ratio (6) in the manual gearbox. But don't be misled: the revised Altima is no trim-and-tape proposition designed to hold the fort until reinforcements arrive. It's yet another leap forward for Nissan's standard bearer.

If you want a lesson in engineering excellence, drive the new Bentley Continental Flying Spur slowly. At 35mph, with just 1500rpms on the tachometer, the go-pedal responds to the slightest pressure with a perfectly measured amount of additional momentum. Reverse ditto the brakes. At the same time, the big Bentley’s power-assisted steering helms with an ideal combination of endless ease and infinite precision. All the Flying Spur’s systems work so well, and work so well together, that driving the $170k luxury car is an exercise in surgical satisfaction, offering complete mastery over a finely-honed instrument.

At full chat, the Continental Flying Spur has an ability to murder an open stretch of tarmac that beggars belief. She’ll steam from naught to 60mph in 4.9 seconds, and crest the ton just 6.4 seconds later. While you can pile on the mph’s without kickdown, why would you? Paddle, tip or auto– the Spur’s six-speed slips into lower gears like a supermodel slips into something more comfortable. And then the 17.4 foot luxobarge hurls itself down the road like God’s own fastball. No surprise, then, that the Flying Spur is the world’s fastest production sedan. Bentley turned down our request to enter the Spur in the Silver State Classic Road Race, which would have given it official membership status in their 200mph Club. Bugger!

Never mind. The accelerative experience is a delight in and of itself. Straight line performance is both more dramatic (“Can you PLEASE warn me before you do that next time? I just put a line of mascara down my neck.”) and more mundane (“I’m sorry Darling. How fast did you say we’re going? Really? How marvelous. How do I look?”) than you could possibly imagine. Ironically, the leather-lined leviathan’s sumptuous interior isn’t wholly responsible for the muffled ferocity. It’s the Flying Spur’s underlying mechanicals that elevate the car to plausible deniability come ticket time.

All hail the Spur’s W12. The 6.0-liter powerplant’s configuration is bizarre (two narrow angle V6’s joined in turbo-charged matrimony), sonically eccentric (more whine than woofle) and entirely unsuitable for mass motoring (10mpg in city mode). And? In this rarified demographic, all that matters is that the VW-sourced mill produces a torque curve that’s almost as flat as week-old champagne. In the great Bentley tradition of barking mad waftability, we’re talking about 479lb-ft. of twist at 1600rpm. What can you do with that much oomph lingering underfoot? What CAN’T you do with it?

Surprisingly, the answer to that question isn’t cornering. The Flying Spur changes direction with remarkable grace and conviction. Throw the 5000lbs. sedan into a corner and it leans a bit, and then hangs on for dear life (in the great Volkswagen Audi Group tradition). Understeer is out there, somewhere, but only truly determined stupidity will start sliding the beast’s nose towards the scenery. At any angle, the Spur’s multi-link rear axle and front double wishbones dismiss surface irregularities like a hot iron gliding over a wrinkled sheet. In fact, the air-suspended, four-wheel-drive Flying Spur offers more comfort and confidence through the twisties (long sweepers preferred) than its Continental cousin, the GT.

When it comes to style and cachet, both cars are so far ahead of the competition that it’s simply a matter of choosing between aesthetic aggression (GT) and dignified practicality (Flying Spur). The slow-selling Rolls Royce Phantom is the only car that can match the Continental Flying Spur’s exclusivity and charisma– for nearly twice the price. That said, the Flying Spur’s exterior seems distinctly clunky and unresolved in places. The disproportionately large rear lights detract from the overall design harmony, as do the bulbous, asymmetrical rear three-quarter windows. While we’re at it, the chrome side window surrounds don’t match the front and rear’s Darth Vader window treatment. Still, I wouldn’t kick the Spur out of bed for eating crackers.

The Bentley’s cabin quality easily trounces the Mercs, Bimmers, Masers and even Audis of the world, and gives nothing away to the Roller. The Spur’s materials and workmanship– fragrant leather seats and surfaces, burled wood, mechanically dampened “brightwear” (Bentley-speak for switchgear), plush carpeting, etc. — are eerily perfect. (It was almost a relief when the armrest’s aluminum end piece fell off.) The Spur’s ergonomics are also peerless, benefiting from the fact that the donor car– the VW Phaeton– was developed before mouse-driven computer controllers invaded luxury car sancta. Satellite radio, parking sensors and Bluetooth connectivity are the only delights missing from the standard luxury car manifest.

Taken as a whole, the Bentley Continental Flying Spur is the world’s best sedan– provided you’re not a member of Greenpeace or a pistonhead who prefers a vehicle with an emotionally engaging personality. Make no mistake: the Continental Flying Spur possesses both an unquenchable appetite for fuel and a detached, Germanic persona. Even so, for the time being, the Flying Spur is as good as it gets.

An Italian tailor once told me that the best men's clothing is invisible. A well-made suit flatters its owner, not the tailor. And so it is with the Audi S4 Avant. Despite the company's decision to slather the press car in Crayola yellow, and their unconscionable policy of inflicting their gauche grill across the entire model range, the S4 Avant is an entirely restrained machine. It's completely devoid of the aesthetic fripperies that announce a heavily modified car's sporting aspirations. The S4 Avant is all about the driver, not the manufacturer.

The bias is obvious the second you enter the belly of the beast. As the S4 Avant's door thunks shut with startling finality, you're captivated by an interior that is as dour as it is functional; a dark plastic and leather cabin that feels more like an operating room than an automotive cockpit. Every human interface– from the clicking HVAC controls to the steering wheel's tiny thumbwheel controllers– reacts with perfectly measured tactility. Even the in-dash MMI (Multi-Media Interface) works with chilling precision. The car's single-minded minimalism raises your driving game on the subconscious level.

Life for this wee Swede hasn't been easy. Low man on the totem pole, bastard half-Asian stepchild to the rest of the family, Volvo's S40 sat idly by in darkened showroom corners while siblings bulked up courtesy the brand's design NordicTrack. Unable to do little but watch its brethren emerge with quickened reflexes, broadened shoulders and finely tailored threads, the colorless S40 must've felt like Billy to the rest of the Baldwins.

But no more. That's because Volvo's finally replaced the (ironically-named) Mitsubishi Carisma doppelganger with something more befitting the brand. As here in T5 guise, that means 'out' with the 1.9-liter light-pressure turbo (a tepid lump that'd barely get out of its own way, let alone stand up at stoplights), and 'in' with a properly force-fed 2.5-liter five-cylinder and six-speed manual. 'Out' with the uninspired oriental NedCar chassis, 'in' with a more robust platform spun from the same cloth as the Mazda3 and Euro-market Ford Focus.

Hot rods are preposterous. That's why people love them. The new Magnum SRT-8 is a perfect example; the moment pistonheads clock The Dodge Boys' hot rod hauler they break into a big, stupid grin. Much of the comedic impact comes from simple nostalgia; the Magnum SRT-8 reminds them of pre-pubescent fantasies of unbridled power and unabashed style. In fact, I reckon the chop-top, dub-clad station wagon was born in the back seat of a '67 Chrysler Town and Country, when a proto-car designer watched a young Buck in a hopped-up sedan blow his Mom's doors off. So to speak.

In this case, adult reality matches childhood fantasy. If we're talking about straight line performance (a sensible restriction considering the uber-wagon's wheelbase and weight), the Magnum SRT-8 is fully capable of humiliating even the most muscular metal. Chrysler claims the Magnum SRT-8 will accelerate from zero to sixty in the low five's, and complete a quarter mile in the high 13's. After bellow blasting the beast from a standing start (in the breakdown lane) to a triple digit sprint (down the "set the radar detector on stun" lane), I believe them. This sucker is quick with a capital "K"; as in I'm gonna KICK yo' ass.

There comes a point in every enthusiast's life when it's time to slow down– at least until some of the penalty points on their license expire. To avoid a complete loss of personal mobility, hamstrung throttle jockeys often find themselves transitioning into a slower vehicle. Not being attuned to The Ways of the Sloth, these once and future speed demons usually slide into some po-faced laggard. Bad move. The miserable car nut simply ends up thrashing the horseless carriage until it reaches extralegal velocities. If you have to go slow, there's only one way to go: the Land Rover LR3.

The LR3 is Oxycontin on wheels. Here's the pharmacology: command seating, a light and airy cabin, widescreen windscreen, superior sound system, silken slushbox, progressive brakes and roll-suppressing air suspension. Press the right pedal and the British-made SUV doesn't administer the G-force jolt pistonheads crave. Instead, it unleashes something just as intoxicating: a seamless surge of forward progress known to the luxury-class cognoscenti as "imperious wafting". Within minutes, driving slowly is as sensually satisfying as lying in a hot tub after a long day's work. Ten minutes later and the "go-faster" part of your brain goes numb.