SILVIO CALABI: Opinionated at any speed

Compared to last week’s hybrid SUV from an up-market home-grown brand, this gas-electric Honda is a paragon of civility, and for much less money. It exhibits none of the dysfunction of that Detroit hybrid—no lurching transitions between gas and batteries, no wooden brakes, no sudden rushes of electric acceleration—and this one, a loaded Touring model, lists for just $35,950. 

That’s about the median price of an ordinary new car sold in the US…

Sheer presence on the road is worth something, certainly—status expressed in acres of gleaming sheet metal set off by polished accents of metal and glass. Although the new Genesis G90 is a couple of inches smaller than a Mercedes S-Class sedan, it looks bigger and sleeker, ready to be turned over to a chauffeur.  

In fact, it’s a toss-up whether the front or the back is the best place to be. This exceptional car is sinfully comfortable and…

Let’s imagine that Honda has a minivan-design team of young parents who meet (or used to, anyway) in a well-lit, pastel-hued room where the electrical outlets are plugged and the floor is littered with Legos.

They discuss how to separate squabbling kids, entertain them on long drives, clean up spilled Goldfish and monitor vital signs in the wayback.

Then they send their list of must-have features to engineering and sales, who decide:

1, whether they can meet those needs…

The action in pickup trucks these days seems to be in the bed, with tougher liners, 5th-wheel trailer hookups, tie-downs, storage boxes, lights, power outlets and tailgates that open gently instead of crashing down like old toilet lids.

Some trucks offer a split gate, which can open to the side, like a door, or fold down horizontally.

Another option is a loading ramp, rugged steel sections that unbolt from the sides of the bed and hook onto the lip of the gate.

The…

The sedan is dead, they say, killed off by the SUV. But no one told Hyundai, so they upsized their Sonata into a big, sleek car with four doors and a trunk. A modern, grown-up sedan, that is.

How modern?

This one is not only a smooth and silent 50MPG hybrid, it also has solar panels in the roof, which can add two miles of electric-only driving every day. It’s also way more Web-enabled than I am, right down to a digital key in my smartphone.

This sort of cleverness…

When you drive a Volvo, no one ever asks, “How fast is it?” or “How much horsepower has this got?” 

It isn’t that no one cares; it’s that we care about different things in Volvos. The usual questions are, “Is it as comfortable as it looks?” and “Do you feel safe in it?” And finally, “How does it drive?”

So the answers, then, are: Yes, yes and very well. Over the five decades that I’ve known Volvos, they and the upper-end Germans have…

This is Mercedes-Benz’s newest and most spectacular SUV—a full-size luxury war wagon with a 603-horsepower chip on its tailored shoulder and a toothy, Killjoy-the-clown grille that will alarm anyone who finds it leering in the rearview mirror. Best to pull aside and let the big Benz rocket by, or it might flatten you. Just for fun. 

Imagine an all-wheel-drive S-Class sedan on stilts with two more seats and sufficient aggression to spank…

“That’s a Toyota?”

Yep. It’s the latest Supra, the two-seat sports/grand touring car that Toyota has made, off and on, since Jimmy Carter was President. The last Supra, 1993 to ‘98, was the most expensive Toyota ever—around $35,000, as I recall, and the twin-turbo version was also the most powerful Toyota. 

This new GR Premium model costs $56,615 with everything from radar cruise control to a touchpad and one of those magic buttons…

The sedan is dead, they say, killed off by the SUV. But no one told Hyundai, so they upsized their Sonata into a big, sleek car with four doors and a trunk. A modern, grown-up sedan, that is.

How modern? This one is not only a smooth and silent 50MPG hybrid, it also has solar panels in the roof, which can add two miles of electric-only driving every day.

It’s also way more Web-enabled than I am, right down to a digital key in my smartphone.

This sort of cleverness…

The new Jeep Wrangler may be “little” next to an SUV, but it is still an outsize vehicle. Modernizing it with seat heaters, LEDs and a Web-linked computer is putting lipstick on a pig. A rutted road will scramble your brain. Cutting a corner with any accuracy depends on luck. Tire roar and wind noise are deafening. And don’t even think about an emergency lane-change on the interstate.

A Jeep Wrangler is domestic fare like the Mustang, the 4X4 pickup and the H-D hog—machines from an…

One of the pleasant “little things” in the Subaru Outback is the switch for the e-brake, which is near the shift lever on the console.

E-brake means emergency brake or electronic brake. To set it, we no longer step down hard on a pedal hidden in the leftmost bowels of the footwell; instead, we press a button. But too many carmakers hide this button in the lower left corner of the dash—they think we expect it to be where the pedal used to be. In fact, it should be just where Subaru put…

 To anyone who enjoys cars, the Si—the sporting Honda Civic—strikes the right balance between old-fashioned, involved, three-pedal driving and creeping digitalis, the blight of beeps, chimes, LEDs and prompts meant to protect us.

The Si’s safety systems in no way intrude on its dynamic integrity and fun. Electronics mess up only the throttle response, which would be quicker if there were an actual wire connecting the pedal to the gas—which in turn would make heel-and-toe downshifting…