When a carmaker has a model that has been around for a while, it start’s making special models, such as Porsche has done with the 2008 Boxster RS60 Spyder. But then, aren’t all Porsches special? Still, with a mid-cycle update due in January, 2009, Porsche was able to tweak a bit of extra interest in its “budget” Boxster line by creating a limited edition run dubbed the RS60. Read the full review here and comment below. Read Full Story

We’re not sure if “racing improves the breed” but it sure does make it fun. Witness the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X MR. It’s not really derived from “racing” as such but rather “pro rally,” which is a cross between a drive down a dirt road in Spain or a snow-covered fire-trail in Michigan, and the Indy 500, except that rally cars have a navigator who gets what’s basically a TripTik because neither driver nor navigator has seen the road before. A specific breed of cars has resulted from... Read Full Story

We know some have held back from buying the Rolls-Royce Phantom because it was too stuffy and squarely formal but here’s a new Rolls with which one can get down, as common people might say. The new Phantom Drophead Coupe is a sexy droptop with more flowing lines, a picnic boot for tailgaters, a stainless steel hood (bonnet if one may), swoopy rear-hinged doors that open from the front, and teak rear deck cover, as on a European speedboat. It has a nine-channel, 15-speaker sound system with an... Read Full Story

Our colleague Jim Henry recently wrote in bnet.com  abou a survey that claimed the wealthy are buying more fuel efficient cars, concerned as they are about the price of fuel. Wait, those who buy a house with the floor space of the USS Enterprise with the concurrent carbon footprint of Godzilla in a coal mine (think Barbara Streisand, Al Gore and John Edwards) and believe themselves greener than Kermit will worry about the cost of fuel? Not bloody likely. The only reason Sir Paul... Read Full Story

We go back a long way with the Mazda Miata. We first drove the Miata in 1989, when there were just two of Mazda’s roadsters on the east coast. Later we earned our Sports Car Club of America competition license in a Showroom Stock C Mazda, and had our first ever win in our first ever race. And although we have never owned a Miata—having been in the minivan stage of life—every time we’ve driven a Mazda Miata has been yet another homecoming. So it was with great anticipation that we scheduled... Read Full Story

We have seen the future and it is…a Cube? It is for Nissan, anyway, beginning in the spring of 2009. Sold in the Japanese market since 2002, the Cube is aptly named because, well, it’s a cube. Technically it’s a parallelepiped, defined as “a solid with six faces, each a parallelogram and each being parallel to the opposite face,” or more colloquially, a rectangular solid. Or more simply, a box. Who says you don’t learn anything here? We have more to say about this parallelepiped on wheels, of... Read Full Story

My doctor hasn’t prescribed bloodletting as a cure for a long time. I don’t see why the corporate version that armchair executives trot out ever so often is any better. The “bloodletting” I’m referring to in the first sentence, of course, is the recurring cry of automotive pundits that this or that (almost always) American manufacturer should eliminate this or that division or nameplate. The argument is not whether it should be done but whether which should be eliminated. At GM, they say... Read Full Story

Acura touts the all-new 2009 Acura TSX as a player in the “premium sports sedan segment.” We think they’re missing the boat. Or at least the boat should be named Mr.Smoothie. Or somesuch. The boat we’re talking about is that the “premium sports sedan” description somehow misses the fact that the 2009 Acura TSX is smooth. Smooth as velour pavement. Smooth as cream on strawberries. Smooth as that guy your daughter brought home from college. Though with the TSX you do not have to spend the... Read Full Story

The Chevrolet Corvette is such a fixture in the American landscape, if Grant Wood were still alive he’d paint that dour-faced pitch-fork holding farm couple in a Corvette, the farmer with his hand on the shifter and grins on both their faces. And no doubt he’d update the duds as well. As such, it doesn’t seem like there’d be much to talk about with the 2008 Corvette: front engine, big horsepower, plastic body and, especially in recent years, a tenacious grip on the road. What more needs be... Read Full Story

So gasoline has hit $4.00 per gallon and seems poised to go even higher. Well, la-de-da. And why do we say that? The law of supply and demand says the current price bump is from the well-known effect of supply and demand. Pardon the tautology for a moment because in this case, much of the demand comes from future-trading speculators who are pushing the price up in hopes that the price will keep going up, a self-fulfilling prophesy. Futures trading is like signing on for home heating fuel at a... Read Full Story