Auto News 5

Driving the WRX brought me back four years to when the current generation was just making its debut and I was car shopping. Though the WRX was high on my list, I ultimately ended up buying a Mazdaspeed3 instead. Why? Because the kind of fun you have with a WRX is the kind of entertainment found best on unpaved, muddy, and/or snow-covered back roads where you blast past rows of trees, shoot up and down hills like a roller coaster, and go sideways as much as possible; it's the kind of fun where the distinctive note of the turbocharged flat-four rings out through open fields while you do your best impression of an stage-winning rally racer. When I left the office with the keys to the WRX, its dark gray paint was sparkling clean from the car wash; when I arrived home, the yellow light of my garage only helped to show off the more fitting coating I'd added onto the lower half of the WRX: dirt and mud, the product of sheer driving fun.

Is there room in our Four Seasons fleet for two sporty compact crossovers? We're starting to find out as the Kia Sportage duels against the new Mazda CX-5.

On the shrinking list of sport-utes with true off-road chops, the Grand Vitara is at or near the top. It does pretty well on-road too, with decent handling and excellent visibility. It also has a relatively low step-in height for a vehicle that can tackle pretty much anything you throw at it and an acceptable 3000-pound tow rating. It certainly lacks the on-road refinement of road-biased crossovers and comes up short in terms of interior quality and design when compared to those same vehicles, but when looked at next to the Jeep Wrangler and Patriot it stacks up well, with a roomier front seat and less bouncy ride than the Patriot and a much lower price of entry than the Wrangler.

The decision to purchase a minivan is a pragmatic one. Drive a minivan and you admit to the world that you have children and a Costco membership, and that you want one vehicle that can transport your offspring and multi-packs of toilet paper.