Driven
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The 2013 Dodge Dart has gotten off to a slow start in the market, but it's a vitally important car for Chrysler. The first vehicle based on shared underpinnings from its parent Fiat, the Dart has to show Chrysler can build competitive cars--and, even more important, top-quality small cars that compete in the heart of the market: the compact four-door sedan segment. Based on a weekend test drive, the first Dart we'd driven since the launch event last summer, we'd say that the Dart is a huge step up from the unloved Dodge Caliber hatchback it replaced. But it's not yet among the best in the...
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2013 Ford Escape 2.0-Liter EcoBoost: Gas Mileage Drive ReportThe Ford Escape is one of the most popular compact crossovers on the market today, and its all-new 2013 model goes head-to-head with the Honda CRV and Toyota RAV4. Both of those vehicles were redesigned in 2012 or 2013, so crossover competition is now fierce. We spent six days with a pale green...
John Voelcker -
2013 Buick Encore: Subcompact Luxury Crossover, Drive Report
It's a subcompact. It's all-wheel drive. It's sort of a crossover, sort of a small wagon. It's also a Buick. Huh? We recently spent four days and covered 373 miles in a 2013 Buick Encore, the newest and smallest entry in the five-car lineup from GM's near-luxury brand. Despite its subcompact size...
John Voelcker -
Honda N One: Quick Drive
The retro-styled Honda N One, which goes on sale in Japan this month, is super-cute—nodding to the original 1967 Honda N360—and looks perfect for space-confined urban duty. It's possible at first glance, from a distance, to liken the N One to the Mini Cooper or Fiat 500 and see it...
Bengt Halvorson -
2012 Mitsubishi i Electric Minicar: Driven
It took a while, but we've finally had a chance to spend time with the smallest plug-in electric car sold in the U.S. The 2012 Mitsubishi i (also known as the i-MiEV) is a battery electric minicar roughly the size of a Mini Cooper. The little hatchback has four doors, four usable seats, and a lot...
John Voelcker -
2012 Toyota Highlander Hybrid: Quick Drive, Highest MPG With Third Row
If you need to carry up to seven people at once, and you're quite horrified by the mileage ratings on most of the three-row vehicles that are truly up to the task, we have the vehicle for you: the 2012 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. With EPA ratings of 28 mpg city, 28 highway, it's the highest-mileage...
Bengt Halvorson -
Small cars are fun to drive--or at least they should be. But there may be a law of diminishing returns in adapting the very smallest cars from Asia and Europe to the U.S. market. We don't much like the driving experience in the Smart ForTwo, so we had high hopes for the 2012 Scion iQ minicar--the smallest car by far that Toyota sells in the States. But a brief road test on the twisting roads of Bear Mountain State Park, north of New York City, didn't show the little iQ in the best light. In fact, we didn't particularly enjoy it. It's not a car that feels like it wants to be driven fast, or...
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Volkswagen Up: The Coolest High-MPG Small Car We Can't Have
The Volkswagen Up is a small, simple, very modern hatchback minicar that's fun to drive, keeps up with U.S. traffic, and returns 40 to 60 miles per gallon. But you won't be able to buy one in North America. And that's a shame. We drive a lot of cars here, most of them perfectly competent subcompact...
John Voelcker -
2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid: Brief Drive Report
In the world of plug-in cars, the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt may get all the attention, but a new arrival will make it very much a three-car race. The 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid is just now arriving at Toyota dealers in California plus a dozen or so other states. While it may look just like a...
John Voelcker -
Drive Report: Electric-Car Neophyte Uses 2011 Nissan Leaf For A Week
The reviews of the Nissan Leaf electric car have already been posted, and one GreenCarReports writer even owns a Leaf, but this isn't going to be your standard review with driving impressions. It's no secret that I'm not exactly a green-car kind of guy. When the opportunity arose this winter to...
Joel Feder -
2012 Honda Civic Hybrid: Hammer It, How High Is Gas Mileage?
Honda has managed to raise the gas mileage ratings on all of its new 2012 Civic models, including the 2012 Civic Hybrid, which is rated at a combined 44 mpg. In a road test over several days last May, we managed to get a real-world 45.3 mpg over a route that was about two-thirds highway, one-thirds...
John Voelcker -
2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas: First Drive
Honda has been the only carmaker to offer a natural-gas powered passenger car, and they've done it quietly in a handful of states for more than a decade. But with the arrival of an all-new Civic this year, the company will make the 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas available through selected dealers...
John Voelcker -
If you read only certain subsections of the "news," you might be forgiven for thinking that plug-in electric cars have been a sales disaster. They haven't. The Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevrolet Volt are all built in quite small numbers, and their sales have been commensurately low, totaling slightly more than 15,000 by the end of this month. That means they register barely a blip against the 11 or 12 million vehicles sold annually in the U.S., or the 1 billion vehicles on the world's roads. We wanted to get a sense, though, of just how much use those cars are getting. We wondered...
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2011 Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid: Drive Review
Over a varied road test of more than 600 miles, including Manhattan traffic and upstate New York two-lane roads, we were surprised and pleased to get more than 27 mpg in our 2011 Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid sport-utility vehicle. It's fast, handles superbly, and is a pleasant place to spend...
John Voelcker -
2012 Ford Focus Titanium: First Drive Review
Overall, we liked the 2012 Ford Focus Titanium edition a lot, though its $27K price tag startled us, the gas mileage was a little lower than expected, and the MyFordTouch system did not seem ready for primetime to us.
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevrolet Volt: Quick Drive Impressions
The 2011 Geneva Motor Show has come and gone and was a real treat for electric car fans. Not only could you get close to cars like the 2011 Nissan Leaf and smart fortwo electric drive, but some were even available to test. One of the cars attracting a lot of attention was the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...
Antony Ingram -
2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In: Driven
When the Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid goes on sale about this time next year, it will be the first mass-production vehicle from Toyota that plugs in. Yet, despite that, the Plug-In feels more like a value-added version of the Prius than a model that will be itself iconic or radically new. It's...
Bengt Halvorson
