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Other than the fact that I don't own a trailer to tow behind this big Ford, I used the Expedition to its full extent this past weekend. I loaded up two car seats and three adults for runs to Trader Joe's, Ikea, Target, and Whole Foods. I never ran out of space for the shopping and no one complained about not having enough room. The ride and lack of noise on the highway is impressive and it plugged through the snow with little trouble Sure, it's still a big huge beast and doesn't exactly handle well or slot easily into parking spaces but it does what it sets out to do quite well. I find the interior packaging far superior to that of a Suburban. The seats fold flat, making it very easy to load flat pack boxes at Ikea. In a Suburban, you have to decide if you need to remove the third row before heading off on your errands. If you then need to haul extra people, you have to reinstall the third-row seats. Not good. I also find that the Ford doesn't have the annoying secondary vibrations through the chassis and the suspension that you feel in the GM product.

So, I'm afraid I'm one of those people to whom our design editor, Robert Cumberford, refers in his column this month (page 16). You see, since I drove the new Insight in Arizona in early December, I've been telling my colleagues that Honda "copied the Prius" for the design of its new, second-generation Insight. Although I certainly defer to Cumberford's erudition (the man is a walking, talking encyclopedia of automotive history, especially as it pertains to car styling) and his assertion that designs for both the Prius and the Insight are in fact informed by research conducted in Germany some seven decades ago, I will still state this obvious fact: since its debut five years ago, the second-generation Prius has become the definitive shape for a hybrid car in America. It's little surprise, then, that Honda chose to ape the Prius's basic exterior design and packaging philosophy. After all, the first-generation Insight, which debuted in 1999, was an oddity: a tiny, side-skirted, skinny-tired two-seater that even fervent Honda fans could not wrap their heads around. Lesson learned, Honda wanted its new, second-generation Insight to be friendly rather than freaky, useful rather than nearly useless, and, most important, a sales winner. So, like both the existing Prius and the all-new, 2010 model seen in the following pages, the Insight is an aerodynamically optimized, four-door, five-passenger hatchback sedan.

If you recall Chrysler's PR coup from this past summer, you'll likely remember the Dodge EV - a two-seat electric sports car that was reportedly a demonstration of Chrysler's forthcoming electric technology. You'll then realize the 2010 Dodge Circuit, unveiled at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, is essentially the same car.