Ford F-150

For Matt O'Leary and Pat Schiavone, P415 was just another assignment. To their bosses in Dearborn, though, P415—the internal codename for the 2009 Ford F-150—was almost certainly the Ford Motor Company's single most important new-model design and development program this decade. The F-150 is a phenomenon: More than 33 million have been sold since the nameplate was launched in 1948, and the F-Series has been America's best-selling truck for 31 years straight. Last year, one in three vehicles carrying the Blue Oval badge sold in America was an F-Series. On a world scale, the F-Series accounts for 13 percent of global Ford Motor Company sales—including Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, the lot. This thing is a big deal in Dearborn.

Cadillac CTS-V

THIS IS IT. The fastest, most powerful Cadillac ever built. The fastest, most powerful American sedan in history, for that matter. Locked, loaded, and gunning for Europe's heavy-hitting sport sedans—BMW M5, Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, Audi RS6. Read all that again. Now pinch yourself. No, you're not dreaming. Motown— well, GM at least—has its mojo back. Meet Cadillac's monster new CTS-V. Cadzilla, if you will.

Chevrolet Corvette 2008

ALTHOUGH the rumor mill has been churning with details about the 2010 C7 Corvette, don’t think Chevy is done with the C6 just yet. Introduced as a 2005 model, he 2008 C6 gets a sizeable mid-production-cycle mechanical makeover, along with a muchneeded tuneup of its touchy-feely bits. Its LS3 engine’s output will be upped to 430 horses at 5900 rpm and 424 pound-feet at 4600 rpm (previously 400 horses and 400 poundfeet) due to a bump in bore that raises the displacement from 6.0 to 6.2 liters.

Lotus Exige S 240

Taking it to the Street, The Art of The Possible. Has long been known as a pure enthusiast's car, but with its new 2008 Lotus Exige S 240, the company is showing it hasn't forgotten about taking these vehicles to the streets of your own neighborhood.
The Exige S 240 gets a power bump from 220 horses to 240, hence the name, and a torque increase from 165 pound-feet to 170. Along with this added oomph, Lotus upgraded the clutch plate cover to handle the extra twist, which is expected to be good for 0-to-60 in 4.0 seconds and 100 mph in just under 10 seconds.

Dodge Viper ACR

WITH 8.4 LITERS AND OVERHEAD VALVES UP FRONT, THE VIPER ACR SEEMS AN OLD-SCHOOL SUPERCAR. UNTIL YOU DRIVE IT.
YOU'RE took ng at Dodge's answer to the Porsche 911 GT3 RS or Lotus Exige, a road car you can drive to the track, hot lap all day, and drive back home, tires, brakes, and ego intact. The Viper ACR is raw. It's wired. And it's probably the best weekend racer yet from Detroit.

Chevrolet Malibu LTZ

While the town of Malibu seems to be a magnet for natural disasters—wildfires, mudslides, beach erosion, Hollywood A-lisiers in rehab Malibu, the car, seems to radiate mostly positive energy (see our First Drive, February 2008). And the praise is well deserved for this new front-drive midsize sedan whose styling reflects a certain European sensibility and whose chassis, based on the Epsilon architecture found in the Saturn Aura, Saab 9-3, etc., is a no-excuses improvement over the outgoing model's.

Chevrolet HHR SS

Chandler, Arizona - Thanks to General Motors Vice Chairman and ultimate car-guy Bob Lutz, the engineering team responsible for creating an HHR truly worthy of the Super Sport name did a great deal of the car's development work on the famed Niirburgring circuit in Germany. And it shows.

For Two Coupe

IS THIS SOME SORT OF CRUEL JOKE, HAVING THE LARGEST GUY on staff (all 6 ft. 4 in. of me) write the road test of the smallest production car we've ever tested? If so, it didn't work. Interior space is far from a problem in the smart fortwo; rather, it's one of the new city car's strong points. Built at a Daimler-owned factory in France, the smart fortwo is a model of packaging efficiency, able to comfortably accommodate two large adults and a couple of suitcases in a tidy overall package that's 39.5 in. shorter than a Mini. Parked nose to tail, two smarts take up less space than a Chevy Suburban. That's short, and the upright car is about as tall (60.7 in.) as it is wide (61.4 in.).

TesLa Roadster

Nikola Tesla was a genius who, more than 100 years ago at the dawn of the electric age, invented alternating electrical current, the radio, and the AC motor, among other things, that are instrumental to our modern life. Now, in the 21st century, Tesla Motors is trying to reinvent the automobile, and we spent a day driving the company's first product, the Tesla roadster.

Saturn Astra XR

The most striking aspect that people will notice will be in the interior. The Astra exudes an aura that is definitely not of this continent. The font used on the gauge text isn't traditional, nor is the radio stack. It takes but a few seconds to adjust to the unique layout, but it's certainly not 'Murican. The tilt and telescoping steering wheel has audio controls (standard on XR variants), and the turn-signal and windshield-wiper control stalks have nothing in common with any other domestic product. The turn signals are of the "smart" type, which means a momentary application of the stalk causes the blinker to (lash three times before resetting itself. At the very end of the turn-signal stalk are the controls for the standard cruise-control system.

Porsche Cayenne GTS

ALgarve, Portugal—Porsche a marque distinguished for setting sports-car standards throlighoul the automotive realm, decided in 2002 that it would inch out on a limb and launch its own line of Sport Utility Vehicles. The birth of the Cayenne proved a smart move and arrived in multiple trim levels from a base V-6 model to the Iop-of-the-line turbocharged V-8 juggernaut Cayennes are competent on-road performers and yet fairly capable off-road explorers, but therein lies the compromise. Porsche's desire to keep its brand identity prominent within each model line has inspired the most road-focused Cayenne yet. the GTS.

Nissan Murano

NISSAN'S strange place with the Murano. It sells more every year—annual sales are nearly double what they were after the Murano came out for the 2004 model year—but the Murano was getting stale. Plus, fresh new entries are overwhelming the segment: There were only a handful of crossovers five years ago; now there are more than 25, and that number could go up to 35 by the end of 2008. How does Nissan make the Murano better without changing what makes it sell?
The new model adheres to the basic Murano theme—sporty drive, functional yet stylish cabin, wrapped in a unique-looking shell.

Audi Cross Coupe Quattro

AFTER FINALLY entering the SUV segment with the Q7, Audi is preparing to slice it up with an A4-based Q5 hinted by the Roadjet concept and a smaller Q3 hinted by the Cross Coupe quattro. The Q3 will slot below the Q5 as a response to tighter European Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations, like proposed U.S. CAFE regulations.

KIA Borrego

AS WE go smaller and greener and move away from big, body-on-frame V-8 sport/utilities to more compact crossovers, Kia branches into a new segment with its V- 8 - po we red, b ody-o n -f ra m e, seven-passenger Borrego sport/ utility. It features the same powerful (about 375 horses!) 4,6-liter V-8 you'll find under the hood of Hyundai's new Genesis. Kia says the V-8 Borrego (Mohave in South Korea) will go on sale just ahead of the Genesis V-8. So let's talk timing. When Kia began developing the Borrego some four years ago, gas was under $2 per gallon, automakers were still touting the sustainability of the big-truck boom, and Toyota was working on its huge new Sequoia.

Honda FCX Clarity

HOOFING it out of the convention hall after Chevrolet's press update on the Volt at the Los Angeles auto show, I came away feeling that I, finally, once-and-for-all, absolutely, had the future of the automobile figured out. Mo question about it: Plug-in hybrids like the Volt [or as GM prefers to call it, an extended-range electric vehicle) will be how we and our kids will get around in our looming SIOO-plus per-barrel-oil and climate-changing world. "The Volt's on schedule," they confidently stated, and its first set of development batteries—which arrived on Halloween at GM's research center in Warren, Michigan—"turned out to be a treat not a trick,"their battery czar quipped. It's nice when the light above the road to tomorrow is suddenly so brightly illuminated like this.

Ford Interceptor

PRESS THE electrically triggered chrome door handle and the door pops open. The sculpted one-piece leather seats are as stiff as the suspension, and you slide onto them as into a Barcelona chair. A 21st-century "shaker "looms in your view, and the rest of the hood is long and upright.. .you're overlooking a similar expanse of sheetmetal as in a Chrysler 300.Hit the electronic ignition button on the headliner just aft of the header, and the 5.4-literV-8 fires up with a rumble.

Jaguar XF Supercharged

YOU'LL notice the heartbeat every time you enter the driver's seat of the new 2009 Jaguar XF sedan. Not just your ticker—the car's, too.
Slide into the cockpit, and immediately your eyes are drawn to the keyless start/stop button on the center console: It's beating a rhythmic red, as if theXF is coming alive. Press it, and the supercharged 4.2-liter V-8 twists into a muted whir, concealed air vents in the dash glide open, an innovative rotary shift knob—the so-called JaguarDrive Selector— rises out of the transmission tunnel. You've just witnessed "the Jaguar handshake,"the first of several servings of pizzazz that differentiate this striking new four-door from such classmates as the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and the BMW 5 Series.

Lexus LX570

Bodacious Ballerina SURE, SHE'S A DANCING HIPPO, BUT SHE'S LIGHT ON HER BIG FEET. A JET-LAGGED, carb-loaded mind is wander-prone, so while the Lexus rep described how the cross-linked variable-rate shocks use a spring-rate valve to help limit dive, squat, and roll in the new LX 570, improving its dynamic handling, I daydreamed first of hippopotami in ballerina skirts, then of the rubenesque Motormouth Maybelle dancing to "Big, Blonde, and Beautiful" in the musical adaptation of John Waters's "Hairspray.'This largest Lexus has no more business vamoosing through chicanes than it does scaling 45-degree slopes, fording two-foot-deep streams, or straddling nine-inch-tall rocks; yet it's capable of doing all the above.

Ford Fusion SeL

This wasn't the Fusion we wanted. Its as-tested price was far too high, due mostly to its optional sunroof, nav system, andseveral other gratuitous gewgaws—all of which we tried to ignore. Still, if you specify just the five-speed automatic ($875), the sport-tuned suspension ($895), and the leather skins ($895), you'll wind up with a quite luxurious little sedan fetching just over 23 grand.

Dodge Avenger SXT

It may looklikea seven-eighths-scale Dodge Charger, but any other claim the Avenger may lay to its big brother's well-earned reputation is a stretch.
What most damages the Avenger is its 173-hp, 2.4-liter "world engine," built just down the road from us in Dundee, Michigan. It produces way too much racket—the noisiest in our group at full throttle and at 70-mph cruise. And the sound quality was alternately described as "walnuts in a Cui-sinart," "a weed whip with a loose spool," and "four shot wheel bearings,".