Car Buying University

In the Automobile Magazine letters mailbox, there is a certain genre of complaint that I'd characterize as, "Why don't you guys get real?" The theme is that we're a bunch of out-of-touch hedonists who spend our days driving Pagani Huayras up the side of the Matterhorn with Scarlett Johansson riding shotgun. And while that's a great idea, now that I mention it, it does behoove us every now and then to dip a toe into the cold bath of reality. Well, how about driving a Dodge minivan to Atlantic City? And after that, how about off-roading in rural Pennsylvania? Is that real enough for you? It's as real as the 1000 percent of the recommended daily allowance of sodium in a bag of truck-stop beef jerky, my friend.

After the strong finish to 2011, auto industry insiders were looking ahead to 2012 with great expectations. All were predicting a year of higher sales -- for their own companies, naturally, but also for the industry overall. Most estimates were that sales could grow from 12.8 million units in 2011 to well into the 13 million-unit range in 2012. The January figures are now in, and in the first month of the new year, we're actually on a pace to top the 14 million mark. Sales were up by 11% over January 2011 and yet incentive spending has pretty much held steady. Another few months like this and analysts will have to revise their estimates upward.

I'm not one to COMPLAIN, but being an observant Jew at a car magazine has its challenges. For one, there's one day every week, from sundown on Friday until one hour after sunset on Saturday, during which I do not drive, in honor of the Jewish Sabbath. Even if it's a really, really cool car. I'm also limited in where I go to eat: Michigan may still be the epicenter of the U.S. auto industry, but it's hardly a destination for kosher food.

In early 2013, the Mini Paceman crossover coupe -- the seventh and final body style of the current Mini -- will arrive. Just six months later, the third-generation new Mini is set to debut. The new line will launch with the signature two-door hatchback, but brand expansion has firmly taken hold at Mini and the company is planning four new models to bring the full lineup to eleven vehicles.

You may think that southeast Michigan, home to General Motors’ proving ground in Milford, gets plenty cold enough in winter. Yet for true cold-weather testing, GM engineers subjected the next-generation C7 Corvette to the extreme chill of northern Canada. That gave our spy photographers a chance to snap photos of this prototype version of the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette as it is readied for production.

Chevrolet's stand at the Detroit auto show provided an intriguing if confusing look into the bow-tie brand's sport compact strategy, from the mild -- a slightly modified version of the Sonic due out later this year -- to the wild -- a Lamborghini Gallardo knock-off called the Tru 140S, which would ride on the same platform as the Cruze.

Chevrolet knows damn well how to build a sports car. Evidence: the Corvette. Ever since the mid-1950s, it has defined the very idea of what an American sports car is. Attempts to create a second Chevrolet sports car, however, have been met with less success. Excepting the Chevelle SS and a handful of Camaros -- and maybe the Corvair Monza if we're being generous -- it's been rare to find a performance Chevy as inspired as the Corvette. The 2010 revival of the Camaro raised our hopes, until its sloppy handling and performance-numbing obesity torpedoed our expectations. The 2012 Camaro ZL1 changes all of that with huge power, sophisticated technology, and exceptional handling.

If Lincoln were a hospital patient, it would be in intensive care. Years of neglect and questionable product decisions have turned a once-proud brand into a luxury car afterthought. But according to Ford, that's all about to change, and it starts with the Lincoln MKZ Concept on display at the 2012 Detroit auto show - a future vision of where the MKZ and Lincoln as a whole is headed.

We're always up for more power, especially under the hood of a rear-drive sports car like the Hyundai Genesis Coupe. And with the newly updated 2013 Genesis Coupe spinning on its 2012 Detroit show stand, Hyundai has delivered it -- big time.

Patience and persistence count for a lot when you're shaping brands. BMW is probably the best example, having evolved, model by model, from a German also-ran that built a weird minicar to the undisputed crafters of Ultimate Driving Machines. General Motors is probably the worst example, its recent history being littered with tales of expensive impatience. It remodeled the entire Oldsmobile lineup and then shut down the brand, it remodeled the entire Saturn lineup then shut that down, it engineered an all-new Saab 9-4 and 9-5 and...you get the picture. Such was the expectation for Cadillac when it decided a little more than a decade ago to build German-style sport sedans. Surely, Cadillac would get the whole European thing out of its system and then go back to building ponderous sedans. Or disappear altogether.

The A4 is Audi's best-selling car, topping the brand's sales chart in the U.S. and selling over five million examples worldwide since 1994. To help keep the car fresh and demand high, Audi is sprucing up the A4 and its performance sibling, the S4, for the 2013 model year.

Three months before the glitz of Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Forrest Lucas settles into his parked motorhome as the junior and modified karts buzz demonically around Las Vegas Motor Speedway's off-road course. It's the first program after star driver Rick Huseman died in a plane crash, but the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series has drawn a big crowd of stoked young people, many wearing the Lucas Oil Products logo somewhere on their bodies. The company's logo is also on the camera helicopter, on the water truck and the grader that groom the track between races, and even on a radio-controlled model a kid plays with near the grandstand. The Lucas Oil Productions rig is on-site, recording the action for later broadcast on any of several networks, including Lucas's own newly acquired fixer-upper, MAVTV. Lucas is looking splendid in a nicely detailed burnt-orange shirt and sharply creased black Wranglers. An Indianapolis Colts Super Bowl XLI watch adorns his left wrist. The slight stoop in his posture betrays the fact that he'll turn seventy on February 25, yet Lucas shows no gray hair. He flashes an alabaster smile when I present the quart of Lucas Heavy Duty Oil Stabilizer that I'd purchased for $10 at Pep Boys and repeat what the counterman said: "It's good stuff. It works. They have good additives."

Never mind the numbers. Sergio Marchionne, master of ceremonies at Fiat and Chrysler, adjusts them as he moves along the steep and winding road to promised prosperity. He continued to predict 500,000 Alfa Romeo sales for 2014 until September, when Harald Wester, CEO for Alfa and Maserati, felt compelled to lower the target to 400,000 units -- still a massive 150 percent increase over the disappointing 2011 results. To reach this goal, the Italians have an ambitious new product rollout. After several fits and starts (see sidebar), Alfa insists it's finally committed to -- and is in fact counting on -- a return to the U.S. market.

Auto sales finished the year up by 10% over 2010, and a particularly strong 4th quarter has manufacturers optimistic for 2012. For the month of December, the increase was 9% over 2010, which doesn't sound like a big finish, but that year-ago December was actually one of the best months of the year. Better to look at the annualized selling rate. There we see that this December's pace would translate to a full-year total of about 13.5 million units; that's just behind November for the best performance of 2011. (The actual 2011 full-year total was 12.8 million new cars and trucks sold.)

I have to be careful. There are a lot of police around today," said Jurgen Weissinger. He's the chief engineer for the complete Mercedes-Benz sports car line -- and specifically for the highly camouflaged SL550 in which I was a passenger, the model to be revealed at the 2012 Detroit show. That we were rocketing uphill on a winding two-lane mountain road at about 110 mph made his words slightly inappropriate, but since the car felt as if we were proceeding quietly at half that speed, I was relaxed and just enjoyed the ride.

There are three make-or-break turns in California. One is Dead Man's Curve, on West Sunset Boulevard. Another is the Corkscrew, at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. The third, in Pasadena, is Camera Corner, the 107-degree right from South Orange Grove Boulevard to West Colorado that a Rose Parade float driver must negotiate -- blind. Slowing down will slosh thousands of gallons of water or make acrobats quiver. Stopping is a disgrace. Over more than a century -- longer than the Indianapolis 500 -- the Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade has evolved into a car culture like no other.

"Welcome to New Stanton," the sign cheerfully announces, but reality speaks a different language. Although the main drag is lined with many of the same franchises that were around in better days, prosperity has long since checked out and moved on to greener pastures. In the late 1970s, however, New Stanton, Pennsylvania, was a model of economic growth. A harbinger of the carefree life was Volkswagen of America, which had set up the nearby Westmoreland Assembly Plant to build the Rabbit, Golf, GTI, Jetta, and, briefly, the Rabbit pickup. Employing in its heyday some 5700 workers, VW's first foray into the automotive holy land ended ignominiously only ten years after it began. The crisis that caused the closure was due to a mix of ill-advised product planning, persistent labor problems, and a swing in buyer preference toward Japanese brands. Two years after VW moved out of the facility, Sony took over and began manufacturing TV sets until Westmoreland was mothballed in 2010.

Fantastically long and low, with sheer fins and swooping bodies, they are dream cars on paper. But many of the drawings turned out in Detroit's studios, such as those of early Motorama and other concept cars, were destroyed.

The past two years have been rough for Saab. Since its independence from General Motors in 2010, the quirky Swedish brand has been beleaguered with financial woes, production stops, and an ever-shrinking customer base for its products. Now, with the final days of Saab upon us, we take a brief look back at the 22 months after GM's divestment of the downfall of the brand "born from jets."

The Chevrolet Aveo RS concept, which debuted at the 2010 North American International Auto Show, was more than just a quick preview of the brand’s new subcompact offering. It was a salvo of sorts, suggesting the company focused on developing a small car that was potentially substantial and – of all things – somewhat sporty.

For more than 50 years, the Mercedes-Benz SL has occupied a special place atop the German automaker’s lineup. The current-generation SL, armed with timeless sheetmetal and the brand’s latest and most innovative technology, has admirably carried on the tradition. As the all-new 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL-Class prepares to take the stage at the 2012 Detroit auto show, there’s no doubt the Benz faithful will have higher expectations than ever for the latest-generation of the iconic roadster.

Las Vegas, Nevada – Security has traditionally been tight in Vegas casinos, but not this tight. We’re among a small group of journalists allowed past burly bodyguards into a conference room in the lower level of the Aria Resort’s conference center. This isn’t an attempt to reenact a scene from Ocean’s Eleven – instead, we’re here to see four new Acura products hours after they were secretly shown to North American dealers.

BMW's 6 Series has traditionally consisted only of two-door offerings, the new 2013 6 Series Gran Coupe may throw that convention to the wind.

It Has been said of Harold LeMay that he never met a car he didn't like. That statement goes partway toward explaining how he amassed such a vast car collection, but it doesn't go all the way. You also should know that LeMay was the owner of a large and successful refuse-hauling company, so where other collectors might on occasion have had to say no to another car purchase, LeMay was free to say yes. And say yes he did -- 3500 times.

We’ve been building up to this for the past couple months. New-car sales have been strengthening through the fall, and it now appears that automakers will end the year on a high note. Certainly that was the case in November, with industry sales running 14% ahead of last year (nearly double the increase we saw in October). That made for an annualized sales rate of 13.6 million, which is a high for the year. Anyone who has been near a TV this past month knows that automakers got a jump on the typical year-end sales frenzy with a nonstop ad blitz. The sell-a-thon has made for bigger incentives than last month, and yet analysts claim, paradoxically, that transaction prices are still strong. An aging national fleet and pent-up demand created by several slow sales years is considered to be the underlying factor driving these larger volumes. If that’s the case, then the auto industry won’t just enjoy a strong finish to 2011, but could be poised for good 2012 as well.