Automotive Reviews
Five Doors
2011 Lexus RX 450h
Oct 31st
Appreciating the Lexus RX 450h requires a keen sense of the subtle. What Lexus has done with this vehicle is taken the relatively simple process of propelling a car down the road, made it impossibly complex, and then refined it so that it seems simple again.
Confused? Just check out the power-flow display on the dash, a prominent feature in all of the Toyota/Lexus family hybrids. The complicated dance of electric and gasoline power, battery charging and regenerative braking as well as engine shutoff and re-start, is evident only in the constantly changing power-flow arrows of the display. Without it, you’d never know what this luxury hybrid crossover was up to.
2011 Ford Focus
Oct 20th
It’s hard to believe it took this long for the Focus to get here. If you’re not a car person, you might not realize that the Europeans have been getting the “good” version of the Ford Focus for many years. The Focus sold here was something of a dinosaur, first developed in 2000 and allowed to soldier along with significant updates but missing out on the whole-car redesigns that the European version benefitted from. There was talk of bringing the “Euro-Focus” to the United States, but it’s been a long time materializing.
For 2012, the Focus finally appears in the same form as overseas, and the result is a significant upgrade. The all-new 2012 Focus spans the range of the compact spectrum, with affordable entry-level versions and enough amenities available to turn it into a premium compact.
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2011 Scion xD
Oct 11th
There’s some question as to if Scion has lost its cutting-edge mojo. The brand has gotten a bit conservative thanks to influence from parent company Toyota, and Kia and Nissan are fielding edgier subcompacts these days. The new microcompact iQ is interesting, but has limited appeal, the redesigned tC is an excellent car but arguably less in-your-face than it has been in the past, and the boxy xB has faded almost entirely into the woodwork thanks to an influx of cube-shaped vehicles from Kia, Nissan and others.
Somewhere behind the xB in terms of curbside crowd-drawing ability is the xD. Unchanged since 2008, the xD is perhaps exempt for the moment from the pressure to be the attention-getter of the family. In fact, there’s a chance it might’ve been cancelled by now if it weren’t for the upsurge in gas prices. And it’s precisely that upswing that keeps the xD, which isn’t fresh in hip-car terms, from being hopelessly out of date. More >