Auto News 5

Let's skip over the marketing puffery about the Boxster Spyder "taking an idea back to the basics" and talk about the real reason this lighter roadster exists: testosterone. You see, the regular Boxster and Boxster S are very good vehicles -- nearly perfect vehicles, actually -- but they're often dismissed as chick cars. This is a problem for Porsche, since much of the market for $60,000 sports cars is made up of middle-age men looking to compensate for their receding hairlines and expanding beltlines.

As we wrap up seven months with the Nissan Cube, we are still impressed with the Cube's interior space and its ability to carry people of all sizes in comfort. Associate editor Eric Tingwall, our resident giant at well over six feet tall, spent some time in the Cube's rear quarters and came away surprisingly uncramped. "Headroom is cavernous and with the sliding rear bench in their rearward-most position, legroom was adequate." He was particularly impressed with the fact that the rear seats can be moved forward and aft and recline, saying "these features seem like something previously found on much more expensive vehicles."

For a long, long time, it seemed that domestic automakers gave scant concern to compact cars, instead focusing their resources and energy on higher-margin vehicles like pickups, SUVs, crossovers, and big cars. Recently, however, spurred by escalating CAFE standards and shifting buyer preferences, American automakers (well, Ford and General Motors, at least) once again professed their dedication to building small that cars buyers will actually want.

The Nissan GT-R is not warm and cuddly. Perhaps that's to be expected of a car that is widely known as Godzilla. The GT-R's fearsome legend grew during the years it was sequestered in far-off Japan, but its awesome prowess came to be known worldwide thanks to its long-running feature role in the Gran Turismo video game series. Finally, the GT-R's international stardom proved so great that Nissan developed the sixth-generation model for a worldwide market, including North America.

This black-on-black 911 Turbo looks menacing at first glance, but it's anything but scary once you sit behind the wheel. In fact, this would be an extremely easy car to live with every day. The 911 Turbo has awesome capabilities-500 hp, 480 lb-ft of torque, 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds -- but there are few apparent compromises to everyday driving comfort. The suspension is more supple than stiff, the seats are supportive but not unforgiving, and the prodigious power and torque are easily tamed when you need to maneuver through urban gridlock. Of course, at $150,000, you expect a lot from a car. The 911 Turbo pretty much delivers everything you ask of it.
- Amy Skogstrom, Managing Editor

Miles: 19,500
Months in Fleet: Eight

Months in Fleet: One
Miles to date: 3163

So, what makes this G37 an Anniversary Edition? Well, it has a Premium package, a navigation package, a sport package, and four-wheel active steering. It also has a new exterior color that most of us would call gray but Nissan calls Graphite Shadow. Its interior is leather, colored Monaco Red. (We've had lots of cars with red leather interiors lately, and I have to say that they don't really float my boat, but this one is well-executed.)