VIDEO: Audi Explains A7 Four-Door Hatchback As A "New Class" Of Car

Well, we'll give it this...it's a heck of a lot prettier than the upcoming BMW 3-series four-door fastback.

Mazdaspeed 3 Review

Looking for the most fun you can have involving four wheels and a five-figure price tag?

You just found it.

The Mazdaspeed 3 has been a hot ticket for quite a while...but they keep making it better and better...and the new 2010 model just pegs the fun meter all the way.

Turbocharged. Intercooled. 263 horsepower...96 more than the stock Mazda 3.

Put your foot in it and hang on.

Best of all, Mazda's not only making each Mazdaspeed 3 faster, but more civilized.

You might expect a punishing ride. You'd be wrong.

You might expect bargain-basement surroundings (or else how could they sell so much power for $23,195 base?). You'd be wrong.



The Mazdaspeed 3 is so well equipped (18 inch wheels, halogens, cloth & leather seats, killer audio system, Bluetooth, dual-zone climate control) that you could buy it absolutely stock and have a winner.

As it was, the test car only had one option...the Mazdaspeed Tech Package...an audio system upgrade, navigation, alarm and keyless start for $1895. Anything that gets nav alone below 2 grand has to be considered an advancement.

With delivery charges, $25,840...and a bargain in every way.

EPA estimates: 18 mpg city/25 highway. Five star crash ratings, except four for side crash rear seat. Four star rollover.

Chevy Aveo LT Review

Scroll to bottom of review for update.

TireKicker Phrase I Never Expected To Write #1:

"The Chevy Aveo is a good car. It's worth a look, a test drive and possibly a place in your driveway or garage."

If they gave a "Most Improved Player" award to cars, the new Aveo would win it, hands-down.

I'll get to how good the '09 Aveo is in a second, but here's what it had to overcome: Raised on the somewhat snarky automotive writings of David E. Davis, Jr., Jean (Lindamood) Jennings, John Phillips, P.J. O'Rourke and others, I've got a smart-aleck streak in me (okay, it was there before I ever picked up a car magazine).

After testing the first Aveo five years ago, someone asked me what I thought. I broke into song, using my best Harry Belafonte impression (to the tune of The Banana Boat Song [Day-O]):



A-Veo

A-Ve-e-e-o

A-Veo come and me wanna walk home

A-Veo

A-Ve-e-e-o

A-Veo come and me wanna walk home

Is piece of crap Korean car

A-Veo come and me wanna walk home

Is piece of crap Korean car

A-Veo come and me wanna walk home.

There may have been more. I really don't remember. But it was that bad. A bottom-line Daewoo freshly acquired by GM with no time to do anything but slap a couple of Chevy badges on it and ship it to the USA.

Well, time and development are wonderful things. Yes, the Aveo is still small, inexpensive and Korean-built, but now it's Korean as in "keeping up with Hyundai's growth curve".

You either like or don't like the shape of a subcompact hatchback. There's not much room to work with, so most look like the Aveo from the windshield back. Chevy's taken the step of adding what's becoming the family nose (the bold, split grille from the Malibu) to the Aveo...giving it a longer hood and making the entire car look quite a bit more substantial.

Inside, well...somebody's been inside a Volkswagen recently. Better-than decent plastics, the top half of the dash grained like VW, in a tasteful two-tone (the tester was the mid-range 1LT trim level). Every surface attractive to the eye and to the touch.

The $13,595 base price brings with it a year in OnStar's Safe & Sound plan, air conditioning, a rear window defogger, a tilt steering column, front and rear floor mats, and armrest, height and lumbar adjustments for the driver's seat, and a 180-watt premium audio system with six speakers, AM/FM/CD and iPod jack. GM's vehicle fleet folks loaded it from there...$425 for power windows, door locks and remote keyless entry, $925 for a 4-speed automatic transmission, $440 for anti-lock brakes and $250 for cruise control. Total tab: $16,295, including delivery.

That puts it in the reach of some tempting larger alternatives like Honda Civic. But the payoff is at the gas pump: The EPA says 25 city and 34 highway...both believeable figures based on how little the fuel tank needle moved during my week with the car.

Oh, and the safety statistics are impressive too: Five stars for driver and passenger in the frontal crash test, four stars for both in the side crash and rollover tests.

Like everything but the price? The base LS model starts at $12,625. If you can live with rolling up your own windows, locking your own doors, not having a remote and living with four instead of six speakers (and less wattage) for the audio system, you're set...especially if you live someplace where air conditioning isn't a must. If you need air, then it's a dealer-installed option, the price is likely to be at the dealer's discretion, and you're probably dead even or better off stepping up $900 to the 1LT and getting it standard from the factory.

Even without the grim first-gen Aveo to compare it to, the new Aveo is a solid pick for subcompact buyers.

UPDATE: Some mid-year changes have been made and they're not good. First, base price is up for the 1LT...it's now $14,100.

But more troubling is the smell in our second Aveo tester this year. There is a strict no-smoking rule in press vehicles...and like all strict rules...especially aimed at journalists...it occasionally gets ignored. Doesn't happen as much as it used to, really.

But the Aveo smelled like someone smoked a carton of the worst cigarettes on earth and then tried to cover it up with a can of air freshener.

And nothing got rid of it...not even Ozium.

I parked it after a day and a half. Couldn't stand to be in it.

The GM reps took the car in and had someone try to find the problem....was it in the HVAC ducts? In the compressor?

Nope.

It was in the seats. More accurately...the glue for the seats. When it gets hot...as it does in Phoenix in the summer...it smells like this.

Now, it's never exactly cold in Phoenix...a locked car in sunlight in January can get over 90 degrees inside...and the first car didn't smell like this, so I don't know what's up. Maybe some have it and some don't.

But if you go shopping for an Aveo...spend some time in it before you let the salesman turn on the air, okay?

Toyota Prius Review

Cult cars can be a lot of fun. For one thing, they're instant conversation starters.

And no matter what you say, the 2010 Toyota Prius is a cult car. A big cult, to be sure, but a cult nonetheless...with the faithful believing everyone should drive them and an equally passionate resistance trying to set the English-language record for the number of times the word "smug" can be used in a single sentence.

But back to the conversation starter thing...having just handed the Prius back to Toyota yesterday following a week at the wheel...there are a handful of core questions everyone asks:

How many miles per gallon does it get?

How much money does it cost?

Is it nicer than the last one?

The answers:

51 in the city, 48 on the highway (according to the EPA).

$25,800 base...$30,709 the way the tester came (with moonroof, solar powered air conditioning, voice activated navigation, upgraded audio system, Bluetooth, backup camera, floor mats and security system).

Yes. In fact, here...have a look inside:



Much more upscale than last time around...in fact, Toyota's channeling its Lexus side here.

Oh, yeah...the other big question is "How does it drive?"

Heck with that...I wanna know why it stops.

As in without warning.

20 years ago, Audi suffered through a non-phenomenon called "unintended acceleration"...where owners claimed their sedans were roaring off at full speed while they stood on the brakes (evidence later showed they were, every last one of them, standing on the accelerator).

Well, let's call this "unintended de-celeration". You're driving along when suddenly, the Prius is coasting...the gas pedal does nothing...and you eventually crawl to a stop.

I'll solve the mystery. You probably just made an adjustment to the climate control system (while keeping your eyes on the road like a good driver should) and accidentally pressed the "Park" button.



That's right...for the uninitiated, Priuses (Priii?) don't put Park on the gear shift...it's a separate button...marked with a big "P", above and to the left of the gear shift...and for 2010, it's directly below the climate controls.

From online research, it appears a handful of last-gen Prius owners found this flaw the hard way (at first, you think the car has simply died on you) back around 2005...and Toyota whipped up a software solution so that pressing the Park button in motion above 7 miles per hour would have no effect.

I don't know whether it got overlooked in the new Prius, or if the tester malfunctioned, or what...but after figuring out why it happened by accident, I was able to make it happen multiple times...at 25 miles per hour.

Hey, look...they fixed it once and if it needs fixing again, Toyota will do it. But it does point up the issues raised by gimmicks and complexity. Does the Prius really need a giant function key instead of a legitimate parking gear on the shift lever? The answer, in my view, is no...which is why hybrids that resist the urge to re-invent everything and focus purely on the economy and emissions appeal to me more.

Honda Insight EX Review

Let's skip right to the central questions here. Should Toyota be worried? Is the new Honda Insight a Prius-killer?

Yes and no.

Yes to the first question because Honda has come through with a hybrid for a couple thousand dollars less than the Prius sells for (Insight EX base price: $21,300. With destination charges, $21,970). And in tough economic times, the car payment (if you can afford one at all) matters big.

No to the second because there will be a large group of people (especially existing Prius owners) who will choose the Prius for reasons that the Honda (at least at present) can't touch.

The Insight is shaped like the Prius (apparently the best shape for reducing wind resistance), has four doors and is powered by a gasoline-electric hybrid engine. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

Honda got to the price advantage by making a smaller, less powerful, less comfortable, less refined car that actually gets fewer miles per gallon than the Prius.

If you've never driven a Prius, you might not notice. If you have, you most certainly will. The Prius interior is almost like being in a Camry. The Insight makes a Civic (one size class smaller) feel a bit roomier.

If you stomp on the gas pedal of a Prius, you're surprised by what it can do. The same move in an Insight produces a lot of noise from the 98 horsepower four-cylinder gasoline engine and the continuously variable transmission, but frustratingly little speed.

Each evolution of the Prius reminds us that Toyota also makes Lexus...refinement is definitely on the agenda. The Insight was built to hit a price target and it shows.

And even with all those things, the Prius wins the fuel economy contest with an EPA estimated 48 city/45 highway to the Insight's 40 city/43 highway.

That't the objective stuff. The subjective, like Honda's overly complicated, overly cute instrument panel and dashboard layout are strictly matters of opinion and taste. But for me, I gotta ask...is this the same company that built my '84 Civic Sedan, a model of simplicity and ergonomics that got 46 miles per gallon on the highway for the 14 years and 140,000 miles I owned it?

Think I'm being harsh? Read what Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson wrote about the Insight in a Times of London piece.

Scion xD Review

As small sedans go, the Scion xD strikes me mainly as okay. There are a bunch I can think of that are more fun to drive, better looking.....but the price points ($15,450 base, equipped with stability control, floor and cargo mats and a security system for $17,394) are within bounds, crash tests (four-star frontal, five star side-impact) are great for a small car, reliability appears to be a strong suit...and it's hard to argue with the EPA numbers here:

26 city/32 highway.

Sure, I know gas is half the price it was last summer. But even if it stays in the $2 per gallon range, in an uncertain economy, just how much of your money do you want going into a tank and out an exhaust pipe?

It may not be love at first sight, but over time, you could develop quite an attachment to a car with these qualities.

Toyota Yaris 5-door Review

If you haven't already read my post from last fall about the 2009 Toyota Yaris Sedan, now'd be a good time.

The 5-door? All the good stuff you get with the four-door minus the trunk, but plus the convenience of a hatch.

The price? Would you believe exactly ten dollars more than the as-tested price of the four-door...with the same EPA estimated 29 city/35 highway miles per gallon.

As with the four-door, there are the questions about what else $16,700 and change could buy you...but the Yaris in either configuration is well worth a look and a test drive.

Toyota Corolla Matrix XRS/Pontiac Vibe GT Review

The above could probably make a pretty good puzzle. You know..."find at least x number of differences between these two pictures".

Well, I'll jump straight to the answers. The top picture is the Toyota Corolla Matrix and the bottom shot is the Pontiac Vibe GT. And, apart from some exterior styling cues, they are the same vehicle.

Wait...what? Toyota and Pontiac? The same car? Yep. This is the current fruit of a partnership between GM and Toyota going back to the 1980s, which produced the short-lived Geo. The cars are built here in the U.S. (the Toyotas in Detroit and the Pontiac in Fremont, California, near San Francisco), using 61% American parts and 39% Japanese.

Essentially, it's a five-door hatchback version of a Corolla (which is why that name is part of the Toyota version). If you need a competitor to help pigeonhole the Corolla Matrix/Vibe, the Chrysler PT Cruiser is probably the one to think of: We're talking small sedans made more versatile with the hatchback. And the Matrix/Vibe, especially the new for 2009 models, are more fun to drive.

The Pontiac gets the edge because of little things like OnStar, 3 months free of XM Satellite Radio and bigger things like a better warranty. But it's not likely to break and the Toyota is likely to have better resale value, for no reason other than brand prejudices. Dealers can sell used Toyotas better than used Pontiacs, even when they're the same car.

Pick either and you'll get an EPA estimated 21 city/29 highway miles per gallon with an automatic transmission (inexplicably, the number drops to 21/28 with a stick), the same standard features and the same options, more or less. Base prices are within a few hundred dollars of each other (the XRS and GT are the top of the line and start around $21,000...you can get the base models of Matrix/Vibe for the low $16,000s).

If you've driven the previous generation Matrix/Vibe, test drive the new '09...both are hugely improved.

Toyota Prius Review

Once strange, the shape of the second-generation Toyota Prius hybrid is now instantly familiar...the Beetle of the new milennium. Given how many have been sold and are on the street, it's hard to remember that Toyota was taking a big chance a few years ago with a radical design. In fact, they were. In 2004, they sold 54,000 of them. Last year, it was 181,000...with 190,000 expected to leave dealer lots in calendar 2008.

Sales figures aren't the only thing that has grown on the Prius...so have sales prices. The 2004 model was a loss leader at $20,000 base...and most buyers kept it simple. The Prius we drove recently started at $23,770 and got the $5,925 Touring package. That's leather-trimmed seats and steering wheel, voice activated DVD GPS navigation, a 9-speaker JBL audio system with AM, FM and a 6-CD changer with mp3 and WMA capability, satellite radio capability (though not an actual XM subscription), Bluetooth hands-free phone capability (again, it's prep, not the actual system), vehicle stability control, backup camera and more.

Bottom line: (insert drum roll here): $30,554. Now, that was helped by an Extra Value Package discount of $1,750...dropping the final price to $28,804, but there's still an element of sticker shock in knowing that this car can now break 30 grand.

Beyond that, it's the same as it ever was...roomy beyond its exterior dimensions, extremely safe (four-star frontal, rollover and rear seat side crash ratings, five stars for front-seat side crashes), and very economical. The EPA's new methodology for estimating fuel economy gets the Prius down from its original pie-in-the-sky 60 MPG to a much more achievable 48 city/45 highway.

If you like this Prius, now's the time to buy. The third-generation arrives sometime next year as a 2010 model. Early photos suggest it will look the same, but different...and price creep is inevitable.