The Straight-GOODS/Sports Sedans

2010 Acura TL SH-AWD Base Price: $48,490 Driver Must Haves: The ability to ignore the non-German badge The addition of a new manual gearbox allows the TL into The Goods for the first time. Granted, you have to pony up for the loaded $48,490 SH-AWD Tech to get to the new six-speed stick, but it’s […]

Design versus Safety: The ongoing battle

[svgallery name=”2010 Buick LaCrosse”] Photos and story by John LeBlanc Form versus function. It’s the Battle Royale behind most automakers’ closed doors, fought between the aesthetic wishes of the design team and the slide-rule-wielding safety engineers. Sometimes, the slide-rulers win. Take for instance the 1972 Volvo Experimental Safety Car.

The Trouble with Toyotas: Should brake override systems be mandatory?

You’ve probably already read the story, or watched the chase video of the runaway Toyota Prius that had to be stopped by a police car Monday in California after the car’s accelerator became stuck. Now whether you can blame the car or the driver, it does bring up the question: If the gentleman’s Prius had […]

Comparo: 2010 Cadillac SRX 3.0 vs. Lexus RX 350

[svgallery name=”2010 SRX vs RX”] Story and photos by John LeBlanc Everyone loves an underdog, right? History had David and Goliath. Film has Rocky Balboa versus Apollo Creed. And sports has the Toronto Maple Leafs pitted against, well, pretty much any other team in the NHL. So we can understand how you might be cheering […]

2010 Geneva: Bertone creates Pandion-ium

[svgallery name=”2010 Geneva Bertone Pandion”] Story and photos by John LeBlanc GENEVA – Full disclosure: When I saw the first PR images of Italian design house Bertone’s Geneva concept, the Alfa Romeo Pandion, it came across as a bit of a rip take-off of BMW’s recent Vision EfficientDynamics. Now that I’ve seen the concept up […]

« go back — keep looking »