“Aw, nuts,” I said to myself when I stepped out of the Volkswagen R32.  “Now I’ve got to add another parking spot to my dream garage.”

Even though construction materials for dream garages are cheap, I don’t say that as frequently as you might think.  This time I had a good reason to because the unassuming Volkswagen Golf you see here is a very special car indeed.  The 2004-only R32 is the hottest Golf ever to grace U.S. shores.  It’s also the first North American Golf with 4Motion all-wheel drive (which …

After two years of beating up on unsuspecting (and more expensive) German sports sedans, the Subaru WRX’ natural enemy has finally arrived on our shores, with Mitsubishi’s announcement that it will be bringing its rally-bred Lancer Evolution to the U.S. this year.  Unfortunately for Mitsubishi, the WRX hasn’t grown fat and placid on its steady diet of hapless Nissan Sentra SE-Rs and Audi A4s.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Even as the Lancer Evolution is getting geared up, an even angrier WRX is making its debut.

If the all-wheel drive, 227-horsepower …

For some reason, it seems like every time I get a Volkswagen GTI, I end up at a car show.  My drive in the 2003 GTI VR6 was no exception; within hours of picking the car up, I was hanging out in a parking lot with a bunch of Subaru WRX owners, talking shop.  It’s a testament to the GTI’s name and ability that this unassuming hatchback was able to draw nods of favor from guys who were used to 300-plus horsepower super-sedans.

Volkswagen’s GTI has been around for a long …

At the risk of offering too much personal information, I would like to announce that I once ate an entire bag of marshmallows for breakfast.  The Dodge Neon SRT-4 feels like the morning that resulted.  In a word, it’s frenetic.  Not once during our test drive did this little red rocket even consider calming down.  “Go!” it seemed to scream from the moment the key was turned.  “Hurry, hurry, hurry, we have to go go go go go!”

That the SRT-4 is in serious need of a Valium should be obvious …

The Ford Motor Company has always been a relatively conservative brand.  Ford rarely gets too caught up in the fad of the moment, preferring instead to stick to mainstream vehicles, for mainstream folks.  And even when the Blue Oval brand does jump onto the bandwagon, it usually hedges its bets somewhat.  The most radical-looking new car from Ford, the unabashedly retro Thunderbird, is a very conventional beast under the skin, developed as it is from existing products.  For the most part, the marketing folks at Ford just don’t go for …

Like it or not, this is the muscle car of the future.  When the Playstation Generation hits forty and goes looking for that car they always wanted when they were young, stupid and broke, the 2002 Acura RSX will be one of those on the list.

That’s hard for some sports-car purists to swallow, because the RSX, like many Acuras and most Hondas, doesn’t have much in the way of a personality.  The quirks and nuances that endeared thousands of drivers to MGs, Mustangs and Alfa Romeos are all but absent …

227 horsepower.  All-wheel drive.  You probably don’t need to know what a rally car is to appreciate all that’s wonderful about the 2002 Subaru WRX wagon.  But just in case you do, we’ll explain it anyway.

The largely European sport of World Rally Championship (WRC) racing involves a driver, a navigator, and a car sturdy enough to thrash as fast as possible over nasty, twisty unpaved roads, through mud, snow, or ice.  The navigator’s job is to call out directions to the driver; the driver’s job is to execute the specified …

We happened upon an impressive, chaotic scene during the Volkswagen GTI’s stay with us.  An import custom-car show had just closed for the night, and the roads were filled with bespoilered and bewinged compacts, all painted bright colors, cruising slow and throbbing bass into the night.  The GTI actually fit in reasonably well with this crowd, as our test car was painted in vivid “Tropic Orange Metallic.”  But after a few minutes of 10-mph cruising, we’d had enough of wasting the driving-oriented GTI.  We got out of line, sped past …

If your initial reaction to the scoops, spoilers, wings, and flares of the 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS is anything other than, “Wow, it looks like a rally car!” then it’s not likely to be the car for you.  If the letters WRX don’t have any car-related meaning in your vocabulary, and if Colin McRae is an unfamiliar name, then the 2.5 RS isn’t going to make a great deal of sense.  You have to love the sporty Subaru for what it represents as well as for what it is.

The …

I can’t help but feel for Subaru; the purveyor of entertaining all-wheel drive vehicles seems to be forever locked in combat and disagreement with its sharpest critics–its own biggest fans. When the WRX got its first facelift in 2004, the Subaru loyalists hated it. When the design was revised again in 2006, they hated it even more. Subaru’s Forester and Tribeca have gone through similar styling woes. Now, for 2008, the WRX is all-new, along with the Impreza lineup, and it’s got a completely new look And guess what? …