Listen to the blaring media din in America today, and you’d assume that the domestic car industry is as good as gone, a corpse that somehow manages to stagger into the next business quarter propelled by its own dust. This is simply false, and we are going to spend the next 5 articles proving it.
Despite the fact that many of the featured cars are still in the development stage and we haven’t taken their full measure yet, we have gotten close enough to see how fiercely competitive they are. Best of the U.S.? Damn Right. These are the cars that make us proudest of the American car industry, a country-creating enterprise that still has plenty of passion, skill, ingenuity, and life left in it.
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2011 Cadillac CTS/CTS-V Coupe
Disregarding the tony black slacks he’s wearing and the wet garage floor, Dave Leone is on his knees. “Look at this,” he says, shoving his hand between the top of a Cadillac CTS Coupe’s rear tire and the upper fender lip. “I call this the ‘Leone Finger Test.’ If three fingers fit, the gap’s too big. What I got here is two and three-quarters, max.”
He’s not done yet. Continued…
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2011 Ford Mustang
Wait, isn’t it still 2010? Ford has barely granted adequate time for its updated 2010 Mustang to shine in its own model year before launching a new 2011 model this spring. Then again, you’re probably reading this March issue well before the month has arrived. Your head hurt yet?
Model-year tomfoolery aside, the latest Mustang GT signals the return of the “5.0” badge. Continued…
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2011 Buick Regal
Out in cyberspace, the bloggers are all atwitter. The Buick Regal is going to be offered with a manual transmission, the first time for the brand since the 1989 Skyhawk!
This incredulity ignores two simple and self-evident truths. First, if Buick is to have any future, it must compete with such imports as Acura, Audi, and Volvo and can’t simply cater to an aging demographic. Continued…
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2012 Ford Focus
One of Alan Mulally’s objectives since becoming CEO at Ford in 2006 has been to develop products on a worldwide basis. This sounds familiar, if only because another Ford CEO, Alex Trotman, did the same thing back in the 1990s. This approach resulted in products such as the Contour (not a rip-roaring success) and the original Focus (which was). Continued…
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Oshkosh M-ATV
(Mine resistant Ambush protected All-Terrain Vehicle)
Ten minutes ago the sound of live ordnance echoed in the distance. Now the soundtrack has changed to a mix of humming turbo-diesel, minor rattling, and shouted expletives of amazement. We’re at the Aberdeen Test Center (ATC), located on the 73,000-acre Aberdeen Proving Ground Army base in northeastern Maryland. Continued…
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