Auto News 5

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- Revealed to the public at the 2014 Los Angeles auto show, the 2014 Honda Civic Coupe is revised in every important way, from it looks to the kind of mpg it gets on the highway. But more important, it is more like itself than ever. And this is a very good thing, as we were reminded during a short drive.

Nissan has followed up the lightly warmed-up Juke Nismo with the Juke Nismo RS. As we reported last month, the 2014 Nissan Juke Nismo RS has more serious performance upgrades than the non-RS model that went on sale this summer.

Nissan surprised us with the Nissan Sentra Nismo concept that makes its debut at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show. We knew the company’s Nismo performance division would be showing a Nissan Juke Nismo RS, but this modified Sentra compact sedan appeared out of the blue with a turbocharged engine and aggressive appearance package.

There are few maxims more durable than race on Sunday, sell on Monday. Or, in Infiniti’s case, sell on Wednesday, race on Sunday. That’s how Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel wound up behind the wheel of a 2014 Infiniti Q50 last week to tout the retuned sport sedan’s handling prowess days before he won the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.

Talk about a loophole. Mercedes-Benz still won’t sell its turbocharged A 45 AMG hot hatch in North America, but judging by this thinly-disguised concept shown at the 2013 Los Angeles auto show, it will sell the 2015 Mercedes-Benz GLA 45 AMG on our shores.

TOKYO -- It certainly won't be called the Vezel when Honda begins building the new Fit-based crossover/utility vehicle in the Mexican town of Celaya, Guanajuato, in the spring of 2014, though that's how it was unveiled at the 43rd annual motor show here. The Vezel, as it will be called in its home market, is based on the Honda Fit b-segment and wears sheetmetal reminiscent of its slightly bigger sibling, the CR-V.

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.