2009 Motor Trend Car of the Year Contender: Hyundai Genesis
Yogi Berra’s great line, “deja vu all over again,” has often been repurposed to automotive occasions, but it’s hard to think of a better one than this case of the new Hyundai Genesis luxury sedan. Way...
View Article2009 Hyundai Genesis: A Car Detroit Can Now Only Dream of Building?
I’ll let you into a little secret: the Hyundai Genesis came close to winning the 2009 Motor Trend Car of the Year title. You will recall Hyundai’s big rear drive sedan secured votes from two of the...
View Article2009 New York: Equus Why Hyundai Has Nothing To Lose
Officially, the Equus sedan is on Hyundai’s New York Show stand “to test reaction”. Unofficially, reworking the Equus for the U.S. market is a live project in Seoul, with the company chairman himself...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: Day 1
Daybreak, and we’re parked outside the Gare de l’Est, one of six major railway stations that serve Paris. Nothing particularly unusual about that, perhaps, except for the cars we’re driving — a pair of...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: Day 2
I awoke in Strasbourg to the pitter-patter of rain on my hotel room’s thick-glassed windows. Day 1′s weather in Paris had been warm and humid, so the thought of precipitation had me hoping the clime...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: Day 3
Hammer time! We’re on the A92 autobahn that runs from Munich to Deggendorf, a small town that’s of no particular importance except for the fact it’s at the end of one of the quieter and less speed...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: Day 4
As this blog goes live on MotorTrend.com, the 2009 Tour de France will have just concluded the day prior in Paris. Only three days ago we began our Orient Express adventure in the City of Lights. Now...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express Day 5
We’re heading into Transylvania today. The skies should be leaden, with lightning strobing in the wet gloom and thunder grumbling like a distant artillery barrage. Instead we’re travelling in bright...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: Day 6
I have never motored over the Stelvio Pass in the Italian Alps. After driving up the Transfagarasan Road in Romania on Day 6 of our journey along the Orient Express, I’m not sure that I need to. You...
View ArticleOn the Trail of the Orient Express: The Finale
;It’s easy these days, as we roll along the interstate, the air conditioning on, your favorite music warbling from the sound system, cruise control and automatic transmission doing most of the driving...
View ArticleRoad Testers Law: Park Your Preconceptions, and Beware of the Numbers
It’s been fascinating to read the howls of outrage in the comments following the Hyundai Genesis Coupe’s win over Mustang, Camaro, and Challenger in our V-6 ‘hustlecars’ comparison. Basically the...
View ArticleA Week Under The Tucson Sun
Scanning Motor Trend’s vehicle sign-out sheet, trying to decide on the best rig for my annual fishing trip to California’s Eastern Sierra, I passed on such utility machines as the Mitsubishi Outlander...
View Article2011 Hyundai Sonata Put to the 40-Hour Test
There’s nothing like a big ‘ole road trip to truly take the measure of a car. It exposes weaknesses that may never surface in a week-long stint or a year of overnight commutes. This year’s family...
View Article2011 Detroit: Choose Your Own Edition
By now you’ve seen a ton of our 2011 Detroit auto show coverage. Our team attended all of the sneak peaks, press conferences, reveals and receptions and exhaustively profiled all of the concepts and...
View ArticleThe 2012 Toyota Camry: From a Sonata Owner’s Perspective
Whether you love it, hate it, or are generally indifferent, the Toyota Camry gets a lot of attention, and generates a lot of sales. Few cars in recent memory have generated as much interest as the new...
View ArticleShould Hyundai Build a Rear-Drive Sedan to Take on the New BMW 3 Series?
Whether purists like it or not, BMW is pressing ahead with its turbo four-cylinder strategy. First it was the Z4 Roadster and 528i, now BMW has just-announced that its all-new 2012 BMW 3 Series will...
View ArticleTrading Places: Is Hyundai the New Honda?
Growing up in Southern California in the 1980s, I used to ride along with my parents, staring out the car window and trying to spot the coolest automobiles the world had to offer. All the best wheels...
View ArticleCar-Quest: The $3000 First Car
My nephew Nick turns 16 at the end of the month, and unlike many of his automotively blasé peers he’s itching to get behind the wheel. And with Uncle Frank visiting for Christmas, what better time to...
View ArticleSales Up, But Too Early to Call it a Boom
Hello from Wolfsburg, Germany, where I missed U.S. January sales reports to attend a Volkswagen program. The news reports I’ve read seem pretty optimistic about the industry’s 11 percent year-over-year...
View ArticleElvis and Equus: King for a Day
Last November, a month before my birthday, my wife asked, “What do you want to do for your 38th?” Here was my opportunity, I thought, to do what I had wanted for the last five years: drive to Vegas in...
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