Auto News 5

The 2014 Corvette is our twenty-fifth annual Automobile of the Year. Looking back at its twenty-four predecessors, we make no apologies for our brazenly subjective decision-making process.

Most Jeep enthusiasts are aware that the modern-day Wrangler is a distant descendant of the Willys-Overland CJ that was used in World War II, but Jeep has decided to make that connection even more evident with this special-edition model. The 2014 Jeep Wrangler Willys Wheeler Edition, which debuts at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show, is designed to commemorate the 1945 Willys-Overland CJ-2A off-roader.

The third generation of the modern-day Mini is making its debut at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show and will reach showrooms in March. Using a new front-wheel-drive platform that will be shared with a new family of small, front-wheel-drive BMWs, the Mini will appear first as the hardtop (as the standard model is known). The rollout of the new version will follow the roughly one-per-year cadence of the current cars, with the convertible, the Clubman, the Countryman, and so on following in sequence. Until they are replaced, the current versions of those older models will sell alongside the new cars, as Mini’s factory in Oxford, U.K., has the flexibility to produce both simultaneously.