The road to roadster heaven and eternal two-seat, open-top happiness is not a Dollarama journey. Not if you want something brand new. Even Mazda’s excellent MX-5 Miata now starts at $31,900. No car company today offers the equivalent of a budget-friendly MG MGB, Triumph Spitfire, or Sunbeam Alpine. The roadsters in 2016 are all high-horsepower, …
Lexus NX 200t F Sport premium crossover: nothing to worry the Germans
If you’re a married man with a university education, kids, and a household income of $165,000, you’re the target buyer for the 2016 Lexus NX 200t? So your thoughts on the busy sheetmetal of this compact luxury crossover? Makes me dizzy. There’s nothing here to pull everything together, to make all these visually “noisy” elements …
Why Honda makes the Ridgeline, the Accord of pickups
Honda sold 3,200 Ridgeline pickups to Canadians in 2010, a sales high point for the decade. Last year? Two hundred twenty-nine sold. Those numbers alone would have any reasonable person asking why Honda bothers with the Ridgeline. Car companies spend hundreds of millions to develop a single model like the Ridgeline, even if in this …
Don’t be fooled by the A4’s design — beneath the skin is an impressive automobile
Audi’s A4 has played third fiddle to the BMW 3-Series and Mercedes-Benz’ C-Class for as long we all can remember, Audi hates to hear this, but the C and 3 out-sell the A4 by a ratio of 2:1 in Canada. (BTW, last year for the first time ever, the C-Class bested the 3-Series, 9,992 to …
Jag’s XE — so good it erases painful memories of the execrable X-Type
WINDERMERE, England — I was fully prepared to suffer launch failure once I’d taken the wheel of Jaguar’s over-hyped XE sedan. This is, after all, the Audi A4/Mercedes C-Class/BMW 3-Series fighter that the British brand hopes will forever end talk of the execrable X-Type. You remember the X-Type, the low-quality, tarted-up Ford Mondeo with the …