Auto News 5

For us, there are few better ways to relieve stress than by taking a car to the ragged edge of its abilities.

We knew we were adding a dash of flash to our Four Seasons fleet when we took delivery of a Range Rover Evoque, but we did not expect our newly arrived Mazda CX-5 to turn just as many heads as the posh Range Rover.

Crossovers have become the white bread of the automotive market both for their ubiquity -- more than one out of every five vehicles sold last year -- and for the fact that they're more convenient than they are interesting or enjoyable.

I didn't get a chance to really test this C300's 4Matic all-wheel drive system but the C-class in any iteration always feels comfortable, luxurious, and, above-all, rock solid. The doors, trunk, and even the glove box close with a satisfying "thunk" that reinforces this impression. On the road, though the C-class is anything but heavy or oppressive to drive. Instead, it manages to be effortless without feeling soft or detached.

Automotive journalists have a slightly warped view of the high-end sports car market. While we feeble automotive scribes pine for a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series or for Porsche to offer a 911 GT3 RS with manual cloth seats and an A/C delete option, most real buyers aren’t interested in such compromise for ultimate performance. The truth is that many customers simply want a sports car that’s fast, a convertible, sounds good, and one that their significant other will actually ride in. Enter the Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG that we recently drove in the south of France.

This magazine has taken a rather hard line when it comes to the subset of premium crossovers best identified as "swoopy sporty things." We gave lukewarm reviews to our departed Four Seasons Infiniti EX35 and Acura ZDX, despite their strong driving dynamics and solid reliability, because we simply could not figure out what purpose they served better than existing alternatives. The promise of a sporty car, an SUV, and a luxury sedan wrapped into one vehicle seems to add up to poor headroom and a higher price than you'd pay for an equivalent car or crossover.

The 2012 Volkswagen Passat is more than just another Passat, or even yet another midsize sedan in an already vast pool of similar-sized vehicles in North America. No, the innocuous-looking sedan, which went on sale in 2011, reflects a shift in Volkswagen's North American product planning -- and, for that matter, VW's global ambitions.

It's been said that fashion repeats itself on a twenty-year cycle. If you don't believe that also applies to the automotive industry, might we suggest you blow the dust off a January 1994 issue of this very magazine, in which we celebrated the new Dodge Neon, our surprise choice for Automobile of the Year.