Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR Race Car Driven!

– The models racing in various motorsports series have moved too far away from production cars. Take NASCAR, which has become a personality show performed with nearly identical tube-frame cars—even if the new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 racer is a step in the right direction—or Germany’s DTM, which has moved from a colorful lineup of production-based […]

2018 Ford EcoSport Driven: Think Small

– If the SUV has become the vehicular avatar of suburbia, then all those hulking Ford Expeditions and their ilk are the McMansions of the highway. But every trend must produce a countertrend—in real estate, that’s the tiny-house phenomenon, whose devotees reject the ballooning size of the American tract house. In the automobile market, one […]

2018 Subaru BRZ tS Driven: It Needs More Power, So It Has More Grip

– Limited to a production run of just 500 for 2018, the Subaru BRZ tS (“tuned by STI”) is the new benchmark version of the company’s rear-wheel-drive sports coupe. This dialed-in BRZ offers more grip and control than ever before while retaining the brilliant car’s familiar well-balanced character. A spoiler alert, though: If you’ve always […]

2018 Porsche 911 GT3 Touring Driven: The 911 R with a Massive Discount

– Here’s something intuition won’t tell you: The visceral Porsche 911 GT3 with the Touring package, which mandates a manual transmission and replaces the standard GT3’s freestanding rear wing with a version of the less effective variable spoiler fitted to most of the 911 line, is actually slower than the big-wing car. Despite a 221-pound […]

2018 Hyundai i30 N Driven: The Precursor to the Veloster N Prizes Character Over Refinement

-We can’t tell you what the new Hyundai Veloster N is like to drive yet, but we have sampled its more symmetrical four-door sibling, the Europe-market i30 N. It is both the first product from Hyundai’s N performance division and a preview of the mechanical package that buyers in the United States will experience in […]

2019 Infiniti QX50 with Variable Compression Ratio Engine Driven!

– There’s a new kind of engine under the hood of the new Infiniti QX50. Like many of its competitors, it’s a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four, but what goes on inside is radically different from anything that’s come before it. For the first time in a production vehicle, there’s an engine that can change its compression […]

2018 Buick Regal TourX Driven: The First Buick Wagon in Decades

– We’re told that Buick’s new mission is providing relief to the “underserved.” Buick representatives on hand at the introductory drive event for the new Regal TourX used the word repeatedly as they described their aim to sell vehicles in niches overlooked by other carmakers, as if the brand now operates as something of a […]