Auto News 5

This beautiful sedan is our reward for the billions of dollars that the Ford Motor Company poured into Coventry's moribund Jaguar before off-loading the brand in 2008. Ford made a lot of mistakes with Jaguar, starting with buying it in the first place, although most of them related to applying Detroit's rigid mind-set to a company that was its antithesis. But in one respect Ford's ingrained attitudes brought a major improvement: Jaguar manufacturing quality is better, even if the cars aren't always up to the standard that their superb appearance implies. With increased reliability and an advanced aluminum structure, Jaguar's XJ ought to have been our 2004 Design of the Year --- except that it hewed so closely to revered 1968 shapes that few perceived the difference between the 2003 steel and 2004 aluminum cars.

The skeptics insisted it would never happen, that electric cars couldn't compete with internal combustion a century ago, and -- until cheap, powerful, and dependable batteries arrive -- they never will.

There has never been a more colorful, more controversial, or more powerful Man of the Year. Ferdinand Karl Piëch is a direct descendant of the Porsche-Piëch dynasty, the billionaire father of twelve children, a professed dyslexic, and a ruthless leader. But behind the carefully cultivated bad-boy image lurks the greatest visionary of the trade. No other living captain of the automotive industry has whipped this business forward with the same foresight and determination as the balding, thin-lipped Austrian with the wing-nut ears and the piercing, soft voice. To name only a few examples, Piëch was the head of Porsche engineering during development of the Le Mans-winning 917, pushed for low-drag automobiles with the Audi 5000, spearheaded development of Quattro four-wheel drive, was the main brainpower behind the TDI turbo-diesel engine and the lightweight aluminum-spaceframe architecture, and released the funds required to develop direct-injected gasoline engines and dual-clutch automatic transmissions.

We've heard rumors of a Nissan Murano convertible for a long time and always shrugged them off. Now we've got all the official info on Nissan's strangest convertible and have to accept that this wacky vehicle is headed to production in the very near future.

The Pathfinder is no longer Nissan's only inexpensive seven-passenger vehicle. With the Los Angeles Auto Show introduction of the Quest, Nissan revisits the minivan model that it retired just a couple years ago.