2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid and Energi, the hybrids you actually want

2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid and Energi, the hybrids you actually want: Motoramic Drives

Hybrids largely come in two categories: the oxymoronic performance cars like the underwhelming Honda CR-Z, or pragmatic fuel-sippers with the allure of a Whirlpool dishwasher, like a Toyota Prius C. So it’s a delightful surprise that the 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid and Fusion Energi not only satisfy behind the wheel, but also live up to its EPA figures (unlike Ford’s C-Max Hybrid).

Part of the obvious appeal is style: in a sea of midsize Ed O'Neills, the new Ford Fusion is a Sophia Vergara of grocery pushers. And those dreamy curves don’t come with exorbitant maintenance bills like an Italian exotic, or an unattainable price tag.

Moreover, the Hybrid and plug-in Energi are the most desirable of the Fusion line-up. Sure the 231-hp Titanium AWD trim has more immediate acceleration, but in city driving the gasoline turbo gets the mpg of a Mitsubushi Evo. Plus, the Fusion hybrid has one of the more rewarding fuel economy displays on the market. Unlike the hackneyed, touchy-feely user interface of its competitors like the Kia Optima Hybrid, which shows a plant blooming with frilly flowers when you’re saving gas, Ford just tells you the percentage of energy returned from regenerative braking, or your average fuel economy per trip.

Even without resorting to self-aggrandizing metaphors of saving a tree through your driving (imagery lost on me since I have a black thumb with plants), it feels like a video game when trying to maximize efficiency. The no-nonsense UI and tactile feedback clearly communicate how the hybrid system works, providing a sense of connection to the car. For example, you get a subtle tug when the brakes transitions to the conventional disc brakes. Conventional wisdom says it should be seamless, but because you feel the switch over, the car subconsciously teaches you to be soft on the left pedal to get the energy back.


And that’s behavioral patterning I haven’t embraced with any other hybrid. I found myself driving 60 mph in the slow lane for my daily commute, as opposed to barreling down the left lane — and enjoying it. The steering provides decent feedback, and although the batteries to the rear crimp on trunk space (especially the Energi, which barely fits a set of golf clubs), it provides better weight balance while still retaining a sporting character around the bends. If you need to romp on it, the combined 188 hp from the gasoline and electric motor is more than enough for passing on freeways, though I was content to keep it running in the electric mode whenever possible.

Choosing between the hybrid and plug-in comes down to daily driving habit: the hybrid is ideal for city driving, where it’s easy to hit 50 mpg even in snarled stop-and-go traffic. But on the interstate that efficiency can quickly dwindle to 35-40 mpg, especially when getting to speeds above 70 mph, or driving in cold weather. Whereas it’s easy to hit the EPA-rated figure (47/47 city/hwy mpg) around town, on the freeway it’s impossible to hit that number when going above 65 mph — mostly because the Fusion won’t use much of the electric motor. Hence the Energi is better suited for longer, higher-speed jaunts with its 21-mile electric range, and the higher throttle threshold for the gasoline motor to kick in means it feels more like a full-fledged electric car. That said, the additional 300 lbs. of weight in the plug-in does slightly dampen acceleration and the responsiveness through the corners.

Starting at $38,700 the Energi trim lands in luxury car territory, but it benefits from a $3,750 Federal tax credit, and for the Prius-loving Californians, an additional $1,500 CARB credit as well as the coveted HOV lane sticker. The hybrid starts at $27,200 which is a strong deal considering its combination of style, fuel efficiency and crisp dynamics. But you can’t go wrong with either — an engaging drive is a rarity in the appliance-minded segment of midsize cars.

April 22: Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce, dies on this date in 1933

April 22: Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce, dies on this date in 1933

One of the most famous engineers in automotive history rarely set foot in the factory with his name on it. After launching the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in 1905, and building the factory in 1908, doctors told Henry Royce he was near death from overwork in 1911, and barred him from the premises. For the next 22 years, Royce worked from estates, often hiring designers and engineers to draft his plans and help him flyspeck problems. Working from home, Royce not only built up Rolls-Royce but designed aircraft engines that defended Britain in two world wars. Today, the aeronautical and automotive businesses that still bear his name have long been separated, but both can rightly claim his mantle. Here's a glimpse of Royce at work:

The hot, and merely lukewarm, models of the Shanghai auto show

The hot, and merely lukewarm, models of the Shanghai auto show

In the late 1980s, there were only 176 cars registered to private individuals in the entire nation of China. Those stats did not include the cavalcades of outmoded Hongqi limousines used to ferry about key Party members, which likely brought the total beyond the three-digit range. Still, contrast this with 2012 when, in what is now the world’s largest automotive market, nearly 20 million vehicles were sold.

That is a significant and rather abrupt increase and has not come without some concomitant (cough) havoc. It is also is nearly one car for every human living in Shanghai, which now ranks as the globe’s most populous city, and is the site of this week’s Chinese Auto Show, an honor it alternates, annually, with Beijing. Having attended the festivities in the capital last year, this sitting was beyond preferable. Alluring, cosmopolitan, and at once fiendishly diverse and monolithically immense, Shanghai is kind of like Haussmann’s plan for Paris, but with every block sprouting brightly illuminated seventy-story erection. In contrast, Beijing is more like 19th century Leeds, but with every block sprouting recalcitrant glandular growths and a rheumy pallor.

We could count about 11,000 constantly moving construction cranes from our perch on the 86th floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and similarly ceaseless crowds at the block-square, seven-story Louis Vuitton store across the boulevard. Yet the mood among the American and European and Japanese auto manufacturers was cautiously sober. After a decade or so of ludicrous record-breaking growth, the free-range catbird days are, apparently, over. China, we kept being told, is maturing.

This means different things to different manufacturers.

It means that the ultra-luxury segment is no longer the market’s sole automotive focus, though it continues to churn inexorably toward its imminent position as global leader, as evinced by the ten-deep crush of spectators vying for an opportunity to be prevented from accessing the cordoned stands where the Rolls-Royce Wraith and Bentley Flying Spur made their Chinese debuts.

It means that there is room for a brand like Maserati, which introduces a new car about as often as the Canadians coronate a king, to show two all-new vehicles — its elegantly dilated Quattroporte, and its sharply aggressive E-Class-fighting Ghibli — both part of their China-fueled plan to increase global production ten-fold in the coming years.

It means that Audi can choose, after a quick-peek preview prior to the New York Show, to officially debut a pair of premium and super-premium small sedans, in the handsome, and positively B3 80-echoing A3 and S3.

It means that, based on the government’s ability to craft and enforce autocratic dictates — for worse, and occasionally for the environmentally better —a Lotus Elise-platformed, former Lotus executive-run, Motown-based, alt-power startup like Detroit Electric, can choose to world premiere their carbon fiber-bodied roadster here in the hopes of cashing in on the Party’s green-for-green initiative. Ditto for Porsche and their plug-in Panamera S e-hybrid. And Icona with its audacious Vulcano 950-hp hybrid hypercar.


The Nissan Friend-Me concept; the Great Wall Olay
And it means that there is expansion enough in the needs and tastes of the vast middle of the market that home country manufacturers like Geely, BYD, Brilliance, Lifan, Gaima, and the aptly titled GAC, can move from creating blatantly mimetic rip-offs of iconic exemplars of lifestyle-oriented success like the 2007 Lexus RS and 2007 Mini Cooper, to creating blatantly mimetic rip-offs of iconic exemplars of crisp inanity, like the 2007 Hyundai Sonata.

Here’s what “maturing” doesn’t mean: aging. The youth/car conversation in the West is focused almost exclusively on our Millennials’ auto-averse predisposition for texting-while-remaining-in-virtually-connected-stasis-in-mom’s-basement to the far riskier texting-while-driving. Quite the opposite is true for the kids in the Axis of Sino Evil. Remember the One Child policy of the '70s and '80s? Well, it was effective. But when dealing with 500 million workers of child-bearing age, it still yielded the world’s largest demographic cohort: 250 million only children, now in their 20s and 30s. You may have noticed, without any sense of foreboding, that this is approximately the size of America’s entire population. Except these whippersnappers are all educated, entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, employable, and raised up in an era of capitalistic plenty. And they’re hungry for cars.

Nissan is after a meaty chunk of this horde with their Facebook-is-not-available-in-China-taunting Friend-Me concept, which promises to bring these sibling-less youths together with their beloved peers in “a show-offy design that combines a cocoon-like interior with tech-savvy integration, allowing the constant sharing of mobile experiences,” whatever that means. If every picture tells a story, this one’s goes something like this: once upon a time there were some 370Z headlamps, and on their way to the Peach Forest, they met a grille shaped like the Boxster S exhaust outlet, a erratically distended flank that resembles a Leaf stretch limousine, some wheels last seen julienning zucchini on a LaMachine, and a set of Bangle-era BMW 6-series taillights that were bit by a rabid bat and sprouted prehensile wings. We smell a hit!

Mercedes and BMW are gunning for these kids’ lonely aspirational dollars with Sportily Active-ish Vehicles. Benz cocked and shot off the 67th round in its semi-automatic assault on the niche marketplace: a handsomely snouty — and not excessively over-styled, for a change — CLA-based GLA high-rider. We generally hate crossovers, but we were captivated. Likewise for the Bavarians, who played the tree-frog card with an azurely anuran five-door sport-activity coupe-sedan-hatchback thingy: #mce_temp_url#the X4. As with goslings, or baby bok choy, there are times when hitting something hideous with Doctor Shrinker’s ray gun can render it adorable, and the Bimmer folks have proven this by downscaling their ug-duck X6 into this palatable fun-sized treat.
Just to make sure that China’s GenOne-Is-The-Loneliest-Number gets the (text) message, BMW plan to load the driver-centric screens of their vehicles with a network of social network-friendly apps like the Chinese Facebook (Tencent), the Chinese Twitter (Sina Weibo), the Chinese Pandora (Douban) and the Chinese YouTube (Youku). During a tour of these incipient integrations at BMW’s Connected Drive lab in Shanghai’s lovely French Concession district, we asked one of the marque’s tweengineers precisely who would be driving the car while she was raptly scrolling and scrawling networked connectivity upon the touchpaddy iDrive controller. She raised her hand proudly. We almost rolled our eyes and said, “(Chinese) kids today,” but then we remembered that there are 250 million of them, and they function with one communal hive brain, and reconsidered; we don’t fancy that kind of enemy. Also, given the traffic in China, none of them will ever drive faster than 20 kph, so what kind of damage can they really do?

And what of Flint’s strutting Imperial Lion, the formerly dominant Buick? Well, in this ever-maturing market, the brand that has spent the past five years fleeing from its synonymity with maturity made a big noise by unveiling the latest iteration of its ancient Riviera personal luxury yacht concept. It’s not a production-ready car. And it’s not exactly ugly. But while 175 of those 176 privately owned '80s vehicles may have been Buicks, in a marketplace predicated on freshness, this fruit may be a bit over-ripe.

Smart to build a Fortwo with wings, for cool kids only

Smart to build a Fortwo with wings, for cool kids only

Daimler, the parent of Mercedes-Benz and Smart, traces its heritage to the very invention of the gasoline-powered car and an empire built over a century around engineering excellence and designs of beauty. On the other hand, Smart will now build you a tiny two-seat car with fake wings, for about $43,000.

First shown at the Los Angeles auto show last year, the Smart forjeremy concept was a joint project with fashion designer Jeremy Scott, who operates in that rarefied air where he can be both hailed as a creative genius while appearing to trick wealthy people into paying top dollar for ugly clothes. Since the wing is his trademark symbol, Scott modified a Smart ForTwo by sticking a pair on its haunch, along with swaddling the interior in leather.

The production version — and once again, let me emphasize that the world's oldest and most successful automaker will actually sell this thing for use on public roads – can be bought with either the regular Smart 102-hp engine or one of two electric drivetrains for European customers at an additional charge; there's no indication it will fly across the Atlantic. While it keeps the leather-trimmed interior of the concept, unlike the original the wings do not also act as brake lights.
Said Scott: "I wanted to design something out of the ordinary, something that expressed my dreams and fantasies and that transferred my fashion ideas to automotive design. I see myself driving this car and can well imagine my friends and cool people all over the world loving the unique design of this Smart.” We would have also accepted "I'm really keen to kickstart that Zoolander sequel."

The pleasure of an all-original 1963 Jaguar XKE with Jay Leno

The pleasure of an all-original 1963 Jaguar XKE with Jay Leno

Jay Leno and his garage gang shoot so many videos it can be hard to keep up, but after watching these for several years I think I can tell when something drives in that he's particularly enthused about. This 1963 Jaguar XKE coupe that Leno bought from its original owner scratches an itch he's clearly had for years, and Leno provides a master class in the difference between restoration and preservation, and what a classic is for. When someone can get this excited about two-bladed fans and gas filler neck corrosion, you know they're an elite breed of enthusiast.

April 23: Bob Burman set the world speed record in the Blitzen Benz on this date in 1911

April 23: Bob Burman set the world speed record in the Blitzen Benz on this date in 1911

One hundred and two years ago today -- April 23, 1911 -- Bob Burman set the world speed record of 225.65 kmh (140.21 mph) in Daytona Beach, Fla. behind the wheel of the Blitzen Benz. The 200-hp car was twice as fast as aircraft of its time, and Burman's record would stand for eight years. The above photo comes from the Library of Congress' Flickr photostream. Check out the video below of the guys from the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center starting the car's engine at the 2011 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance:

2014 Kia Cadenza, aspiring to more

2014 Kia Cadenza, aspiring to more: Motoramic Drives

Let’s say you’re ready to buy a new car. And let’s say that the last few years had been good to you, financially, and you have somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000 to spend. Would the first thing that comes to mind be: I’m going to get myself a Kia? No. It wouldn’t. But with their new 2014 Kia Cadenza “premium” sedan, Kia is angling to change your mind.

The word Kia loosely translates as “rising out of Asia,” and Kia has definitely risen. From humble World War II-era beginnings, when the company manufactured steel tubing and bicycle parts by hand, and an equally humble middle period, where it existed mainly to make Mazda-derived vehicles sold as cheap Ford nameplates, suddenly Kia is the 8th-largest car brand in the United States by volume, outselling such household names as Volkswagen, BMW, Mazda, and Chrysler with 557,000 new vehicles sold here last year.

Kia’s current rise can mostly be pegged to 2006, when it began to shift its focus from making dime-cars, hiring Peter Schreyer away from Audi as Chief Design Officer, declaring design its “core future growth engine.” Soon after, Schreyer debuted Kia’s “tiger nose” grille, establishing it as the car’s calling card. Kia relaunched the Sorento CUV in 2009, the youth-oriented, brilliantly-marketed, and extremely recognizable Kia Soul in 2010, and a sleekly redesigned Optima sedan in 2011. It sold 152,000 Optimas in 2012 alone, to customers it believed would eventually be able to take the leap up from affordable mid-sized cars. Slowly, the company was trying to persuade consumers that Kia could be an aspirational brand.
Enter the Cadenza, an all-new car which Kia calls its entry in the “emerging premium space between mainstream and luxury.” It’s questionable whether or not that space actually exists outside of marketing land, but in Kia’s mind, they’re straddling the line between stalwarts like the Toyota Avalon, the Nissan Maxima, the Ford Taurus and the Chevy Impala, and entry-level luxury cars like the Lexus ES and Acura TL. Kia wants the Cadenza to play with the big boys in the segment. So that’s how it’ll be judged.

The company claims that the Cadenza’s exterior design has a “distinctive sport sedan form, as if the car would be equally comfortable on the Autobahn or carving through the Swiss Alps.” We drove the Cadenza in San Francisco and environs, so it’s impossible to speak to its Alpine capability, but it does look and feel something like a sports sedan. The exterior design isn’t going to blow any minds, but it also doesn’t have any significant flaws, with an elegant silhouette, chrome accents, twin tailpipes, and, on the highest trim package, 19-inch alloy wheels that give it strong shoulders.

Cars in this segment aim to feel pleasant inside, and the Cadenza definitely hits that target. The interior is low-key, if a bit generic-feeling, with wood accents on the dash and and wood-and-leather-wrapped steering wheel, an unfussy dashboard, and materials that successfuly mimic luxury. Overall, it feels a little tighter and younger than the Avalon, a little less muscular and sleeker than the Maxima, way better in every way than the new ticky-tack Impala, and, at the highest end of its wish list, close to par with the Lexus ES.

The Cadenza has a 3.3-liter direct injection V-6 engine that offers 293 hp, almost exactly the same as the Avalon, and a fine six-speed automatic transmission with paddle shifters. But it benefits greatly from an excellent fully independent suspension, with a McPherson strut setup in front and a multilink rear design, which makes the car surprisingly agile through tight turns. We drove it along some wavy segments of the Pacific Coast Highway and through the Sonoma Valley. It hugged the road with great precision, pinpoint steering, and excellent braking. This type of car tends to feel pillowy and drifting through turns, but the Cadenza neatly sidestepped the usual flaws. It’s not often that a car like this can boast an excellent suspension as its most outstanding feature, but this one does, like a secret toy surprise.
In terms of amenities, the Cadenza has a roomy backseat and a large trunk, though the front passenger seat rides a little low and isn’t as comfortable as the rest of the car. It comes standard with a navigation system with satellite traffic, a high-resolution eight-inch screen with the now-standard array of linked-up apps, rear-backup camera, and leather seat trim. A “Premium” package throws in a panoramic sunroof, really nice Napa leather seats, a 12-way ventilated driver’s seat with extra cushioning, and a heated steering wheel. At the top of the line is the Technology package, which adds smart braking, lane-departure warning, a cyborg cruise control, and a rear blind-spot detection system, all of which place the Cadenza (at least with this package) at the high end of industry safety standards.

The Cadenza’s pretense toward luxury actually approaches it; the car is above-average or better for its segment, a success all around for Kia, with one glaring flaw: subpar gas mileage. I realize that this isn’t a small vehicle, and you need to make certain concessions for a V-6 engine, but 19 mpg city/28 mpg highway is just not good enough — certainly not when you’re asking people to take an expensive flier on a new product.

Kia spent a lot of time talking about “value opportunities” while presenting us with the Cadenza. “Value is what you get for your money,” they said. As such, they threw a fancy two-day premium-ish party for us and our significant others. This included meals, nice hotels, a spa treatment for the wife, and a private dinner hosted by a boutique Napa Valley winemaker, going a couple steps beyond the usual car junket quasi-bribery. We had a nice time, and it was a nice car. But I kept thinking about value. Cars have hidden costs, with fuel at the top of the list.

The Lexus ES300 hybrid costs the same as the Cadenza, or even a little less, and it gets 40 mpg. Plus, it’s a Lexus, with all the amenity that implies. The Avalon hybrid gets the same mileage as the ES. Even the base model Avalon, which in terms of luxury features, if not drive performance, pretty much evenly matches the Cadenza, gets 21 city and 31 highway. Plus it costs several thousand dollars less. That seems to get a lot closer to offering actual value.

Then again, if you’ve got $40,000 to spend on a Kia, maybe you’re not worried about such things.

Amusing yourself with a 550-hp station wagon

Amusing yourself with a 550-hp station wagon: Motoramic TV

It’s always dangerous to engage in hyperbole, particularly when that hyperbole pertains to some sort of world title (witness the bickering between Bugatti and Guinness over the Veyron’s top-speed honors). But I feel confident proclaiming that the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG wagon rivals the Batman roller coaster as the world’s most effective way to impart G-forces on your children. That’s just a fact.

If you care to prove me wrong, find me another wagon that does 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds. OK, that’s the number for the 2014 model, which has all-wheel-drive. But the rear-wheel-drive 2013 model still knocks off 60 mph in 4.2 seconds (and surely does better burnouts). Hold onto your Happy Meals, everybody!

The car that I drove was fitted with the $6,550 AMG Performance Package, which bumps the twin-turbo 5.5-liter V-8’s output from 518 to 550 hp, and torque from 516 lb.-ft. to a monstrous 590 lb.-ft. Top speed, while still electronically limited, rises to 186 mph, the better to execute those school runs that happen to include long stretches of derestricted autobahn. While we’re gleefully checking options boxes, I’d also spring for the limited slip differential ($2,030) but might pause at the carbon ceramic brakes—$12,625. Aw, get those, too. Honey, it’s safety equipment. For the kids.
The base price, by the way, is $93,305. A Vista Cruiser it’s not. And the AMG foregoes the rear-facing third-row seats of the E350, as the beefed-up rear end displaces too much space beneath the floor. Life is often unfair.

To give the big Benz a shakedown, I took it up LA’s Mulholland Drive, home to some fantastic corners and, at any given time, a cross-section of some of the world’s most desirable machinery. When I pulled over to take a breather, it was hard to decide whether to gaze out at the city or back toward the road, where the ongoing parade included the likes of a Ferrari California, a Lotus or two and a veritable fleet of BMW M-cars. All serious performance cars and, with few exceptions, all of them slower than the innocuous station wagon parked at the turnout.

If you’ve got the money and the commendable good taste to buy a 550-hp wagon, the E63 AMG represents a rare reconciliation between family-car pragmatism and supercar thrust. Call it Six Flags Under the Hood.

2014 Chevrolet Impala, an enigma without mystery

2014 Chevrolet Impala, an enigma without mystery: Motoramic Drives

“We’ll make money on this car,” the guy from Chevy was saying about the 2014 Impala at its launch this week in San Diego. His thinking may have been wishful. Fully loaded — which is the only way that this vehicle should be ordered — the Impala runs more than $41,000. Even in an era of inflated car prices, that’s a lot of money. Such an outlay can get you a lot of car in this world: A BMW 3-Series, a jacked-out Hyundai Genesis, certain members of the Lexus family, and even Chevy’s vastly technologically superior Volt all run in that range or below. If you want to sell something for 40 grand, it’s going to have to offer more than a 3.6-liter V6 engine, adaptive cruise control, and seats covered with a substance that somewhat vaguely resembles, and might in fact be, actual leather. It’s going to have to be lovely to look at, comfortable to sit in, and fun to drive, or at least some combination thereof. The new Impala, unfortunately, misses the mark.

The 3.6-liter engine purports to offer 305 hp, which should be more than enough, but the carry-over V-6 has to haul 150 lbs. more than it did in the elderly 2013 edition. The car gets a pretty sad 19/29 mpg split, so it had best drive fast and loose (The 2.5 Liter and 2.4 Liter with “EcoAssist” engines, which come out later this year for the Impala, offer even less power, and only mediocre gas mileage. They will run in the low-to-mid thirties, price-wise, but should probably be avoided). During four hours of road testing, the V-6 proved barely adequate. Going up hills was a chore, and I’m not entirely sure why. In the immortal words of Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty from Airplane!, it handled sluggish, like a wet sponge. The little plus and minus symbols on the gearshift for the six-speed automatic didn’t help any, either. If you’re going to pretend to allow manual shifting, put in paddle shifters or go home. When I did try the manual shift, it felt about as intuitive as trying to change channels on an airplane armrest
Now for some kind, or at least some neutral, things about the Impala. The steering is untroubled, and I liked the brakes. They were sharp and un-hitchy. The exterior design, while certainly nothing special, doesn’t remotely offend. The car has an enormous trunk, and lots of rear-seat space. It also has top-notch, state-of-the-art safety features, including front and rear cameras and truly effective lane departure warnings. Also, Chevy appears to have put substantial engineering effort into establishing a quiet interior, including, according to the press materials, “triple-sealed doors with acoustic perimeter water deflectors” and “body cavities filled with acoustic foam baffles.” And you know how painful that can be. Regardless, it’s a pretty quiet ride.

But oh, the interior! I met the interior designer and she was very nice and obviously quite hardworking, but she got saddled with some bum materials. Chevy cries leather, but it felt like I was sitting on a cheap half-inflated kiddie basketball the whole time. They also claim “soft-touch” material, but there was a springy element to the whole car that just felt plain unappealing. Also, the “dual cockpit” design in the front seemed out of step with current luxury design trends, which tend toward more integrated, swooping look. The Impala was somehow simultaneously boxy and curvy, and it didn’t remotely connect with the present, or with me. It was rubber, I was glue.
Speaking of “connect,” a few words here about Chevy’s “MyLink” system, which gets a refresh starting with the 2014 Impala. The friendly guy in charge of the system was extremely patient in explaining it all to me, but it felt like total overkill. The car companies, particularly the American ones, seem to think that offering “connectivity” in their cars is going to magically magnetize millennial buyers into their orbits. But anyone in their 20s who can somehow afford anything more expensive than a Kia Soul isn’t going to be buying an Impala, and no one is going to be attracted to what amounts to a third-rate Kindle Fire knockoff embedded into the dash. A decent stereo, a GPS, and a USB port will more than suffice. Voice and gesture recognition looks great in commercials, but it doesn’t really matter all that much in the real world. The guy I talked to was even threatening “voice-activated tweeting.” “It’s coming soon,” he said. Save us, Steve Jobs’ ghost!

The Impala was once a stylish marquee name, a glorious tail-finned showpiece of Detroit’s golden age. Those days are as distant as Don Draper sitting alone at the hotel bar. Now it’s just clumsy, expensive department-store jewelry, dated and stale, desperately out of step with the times.

Chevy told us that about 70 percent of the current Impala is going to rental and commercial fleets, meaning that two-thirds of these cars won’t be purchased by individual humans. For the 2014 model, they said, those numbers are going to be reversed — with the 2013 model soldering on as a fleet-only special named, unironically, the Impala Limited. But you can’t just flip a switch. Not at these prices. The Impala may not be a budget vehicle, but soon enough, Budget may be the only place you’ll find one.

2014 Aston Martin Rapide S, big mouth strikes again

2014 Aston Martin Rapide S, big mouth strikes again: Motoramic Drives

In the sole single from their classic 1986 album "The Queen Is Dead," The Smiths croon saccharinely about committing an intense array of vicious activities, including: smashing teeth, bludgeoning the supine and empathizing with flame-roasted martyrs. Conspicuously absent from this musical litany is, achieving contemporary European automotive/pedestrian impact standards. This is not because Morrissey and Marr could not come up with a rhyme for “pedestrian” — given the lyrical prominence of Joan of Arc in said tune, “equestrian” is a rather obvious choice — but rather because these standards were not developed until 2009, 22 years after the group disbanded.

Still, the song in question, “Big Mouth Strikes Again,” could very well have been written about the newly revised 2014 Aston Martin Rapide S, whose muzzly — or, in Aston’s delightful parlance, “metallic full-face” — grille was inspired in no small part by these new regulations. Forged in one monumentally lustrous extrusion, the fascia is spring-clipped to the front of the car in such a manner as to absorb the force of a low-speed collision with a human fibula, thus meeting the (bizarre) new European leg-clobbering standards. Beats the hell out of a plaster cast.

The grille also makes this handsomest of existing sports sedans look even more deliciously savage and brutish — an assessment that we can now back up, experientially, having spent the better part of two days thrashing the Rapide S up and around the Catalonian mountain.

Coming as a surprise to exactly no one, driving the car in these conditions approaches the euphoric, with a chassis that is as delightfully lithe and stiff as men’s gymnastics team on an outing to Cheetah’s, brakes that bind as snug and agreeably as your favorite cashmere turtleneck just after it’s back from the environmentally friendly dry cleaners, and precise steering that provides levels of feedback previously achieved solely during a live performance by Iggy and the Stooges in 1973.
The Rapide is equally congenial on the highway. Some of this is the responsibility of its slightly wider seats, made possible by the removal of Aston’s stubbornly misplaced and finickally turgid handbrake, which occupies the space where your left thigh would prefer to be. Some of it is due to the hidebound nature of the cabin, which features more tightly stretched leather than Cher circa 1989-2003.

But most of the car’s amazing ability to suck down asphalt taffy can be pinned on the newly lighter and lower-mounted 6-liter V-12, which, in addition to being more efficient (or, at 15 mpg combined, “efficient”) now puts out nearly 20 percent more power than the previous engine — that’s 80 additional un-gelded stallions — for a total of 550 hp. Sixty miles an hour comes up as quickly as a quaff of spoiled milk; 120 mph arrives as readily as a second pitcher of margaritas. In fact, we can affirm that the engine is this peppy throughout the legal and extra-legal portions of the gas pedal’s range, a point driven home by the rather esophagal exhaust blather. We cannot think of any other vehicle whose manufacturer does not end in i that partners better with a long stretch of tunnel and a run to the top of second (or third or fourth) gear.

Your guide to Aston Martin
The $300k Aston kept in a barn 33 years
We have only two complaints about the car, aside from the fact that we are not permanently in possession of one slathered in the deliciously fathomless, green-undertoned, patinated brown hue that Aston Martin refers to as “bronze.” First, some combination of the car’s ideal weight distribution, high-driveshaft tunnel, stubby greenhouse, and muscular alacrity occasionally makes one feel as if one is rowing a canoe while lying supine a fathom or two below the hull — with the concomitant sense of quease. Also, as nice as it is to have a sports car with a pair of usable rear seats, one should be aware of their limits. We are of average build, and found being ensconced back there for a brief spell akin to experiencing the larval-to-pupal transition, confining silkiness and sense of security included. But we stuffed one of our huskier friends back there, a former high school football type, and it required a giant pair of forceps and a few quarts of local Spanish olive oil to extricate him.

Still, a glimpse of the Aston — or, better yet, a cavalcade of Astons — traveling down the road makes us more than willing to disregard these shortcomings. The car’s beauty is undeniable, and as seductive as it appears in photos or when parked, pales when compared to the impact its cohesively flanged and flared surfaces make as it passes you at speed. (The delicate new rear lip helps, capping the car’s end with a subtle finial.) Aston’s prior experiment with sedans, the Lagonda, may have had the temerarious and angular chutzpah of a Donald Judd sculpture, but the Rapide is pure Serra: sensuous, sinuous, imposing, and impossibly elongated.

We may find the Porsche Panamera and the Ferrari FF more engaging to drive; and each may have a roomier interior, a sharper transmission, and more electronological gewgaws than the Rapide. But if we were spending our own $199,950, we might still place an order for June delivery of this freshened Aston, for its ideally blended perfection of form and function. And mouth.