Auto News 5

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – Just like the other small cars coming to market these days, the all-new 2015 Subaru WRX is more spacious and more refined. But the good news is, the 2015 WRX still knows how to play rough, and it’s got a 268-hp engine and trick, new all-wheel-drive hardware to prove it.

It came with a really clumsy name -- Vision EfficientDynamics -- and a very complicated surface design with entirely too many unrealistic show-car details (few really want to travel in a glass-sided car), but we and many of the industry's top designers were greatly impressed by BMW's 2009 Frankfurt show concept car. Four years later, with a simple Apple-like name -- i8 -- and simplified (but definitely not Apple-like) surfaces, BMW's extreme expression of a possible and probable future for the automobile is a brilliant reality.

Using a new approach to product development, which incorporates input from younger customers at even the earliest stages of the process, Nissan has addressed the enthusiast and casual buyer alike with its pair of concepts just unveiled at the 2013 Tokyo auto show.

The 2015 Kia K900 full-size luxury sedan debuts at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show. This flagship model for the brand is a rear-drive sedan based on the Korean-market Kia K9, which itself is built on a version of the platform shared with the Hyundai Equus and Genesis.

Despite Subaru’s April Fool’s joke about a diesel BRZ convertible last year, the Subaru Cross Sport Design -- essentially a BRZ wagon -- is no joke. It’s a real concept car at the 2013 Tokyo auto show, and although we have no idea whether it will make production, it’s an undeniably cool take on the crossover.

After years of tests and trials, Hyundai is ready to put a hydrogen-powered car on sale to the general public in the United States. The 2014 Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell will launch in spring 2014, but with many caveats.