Test Drives, Trends & Events

The 2009 Lexus LS 460 is a full-size luxury sedan with a mid-size luxury sedan price tag.

The full-size luxury sedan market is full of players but attention seems to focus on two main stars: the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the BMW 7-Series. Both are filled to the brim with leading-edge technology and both are luxuriously appointed inside. Both have large and potent engines and both are leaders in an exclusive category. There are other choices in this category that don’t seem to get the same level of respect, but the 2009 Lexus LS 460 is one car that offers similar levels of comfort and luxury at a price as (relatively) subdued as its exterior styling. More...

The 2009 Subaru Impreza WRX STI with Subaru Performance Tuning (SPT) goodies is enjoying the sun at the NADAguides.com office.

Subaru has a long history of building quality sedans and wagons that come standard with a good all-wheel drive system and a reliable engine. The average Subaru today is a very useful and safe vehicle that can provide driver and passengers with the occasional thrill thanks to the all-weather handling capabilities and fun turbocharged motors. There is a car in this family that takes this “fun” to another level. The 2009 Subaru Impreza WRX STI is not simply a fun car, it is a rally-racing bred, all-terrain conquering, lunatic car that smashes through the “fun zone” taking its occupants straight to 11. More...

The 2009 Cadillac CTS-V is a stylishly-creased sports sedan with aggressive body lines.

A luxury sports sedan is a wonderful thing. A comfortable and well-equipped interior paired with an engine that has a little oomph behind it, and you can enjoy the fun with up to four other people. There are quite a few choices in this category; the Audi S6, BMW M5, and Mercedes E63 AMG spring to my mind right away. They are all German and they are all excellent. However, the most thrilling member of this class prefers Levi jeans stained with last night’s apple pie; The 2009 Cadillac CTS-V, the American embodiment of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hannibal Lecter. More...

The Hurst Challenger Series 4 is a limited-production “gentleman’s hot-rod”.

If you like cars at all, you have most likely stumbled across an automotive auction on TV. Auction workers screaming at bidders interested in a low-mileage piece of automotive history. I am currently in the driver’s seat of a rumbling and gurgling piece of future automotive history, the 2009 Hurst Challenger Series 4. A supercharged beast of a modern muscle car that will be built in very limited quantities. This car that I have been given the keys to is wearing a dash badge reading “No.00001”. Don’t expect too many low-mileage examples in the future though; Hurst is building these bad boys to be driven daily. For one great weekend, I did just that. More...

Stylish with an aggressive stance, the 2009 Pontiac Solstice Coupe GXP gets it right in the exterior design category.

Making a basic sports car seems like it should be easy. Start with a two-passenger car then add a manual transmission that takes power from an engine with some pep and feeds it to the rear wheels. This is sports car 101. Sure you can expand on this idea and start playing with AWD or semi-automatic paddle-shifted transmissions, but that causes costs to rise and begins to take the driver further away from total control of the sports car. The 2009 Pontiac Solstice Coupe GXP gets a lot of this recipe correct on paper, in reality however it is a different story. More...