Street Life Auto Club

Pickup trucks have been an American mainstay, the warp in the weave of our automotive fabric, since the first Ford Model T runabout with a pickup body rolled off the line more than 80 years ago. Country music hits such as “Big Ol’ Truck” and “She Wants to Drive My Truck (Dance Mix)” document the proletariat’s romance with the pickup, as integral to their identities as their livelihoods. If social norms force Bay Area residents into hybrids, then you had better be a U.S. Army Ranger and mixed-martial-arts champion if you want to drive anything but a pick-’em-up in Tuscaloosa or pretty much anywhere NPR isn’t on the radio dial.

When Jeep introduced a pair of Dodge Caliber-based crossovers called the Compass and the Patriot less than two years ago, purists wailed in protest that Jeep was diluting its brand image. But alas, these very “distractions” might indeed be what saves the brand as it enters the era of unforeseen gas prices and all but the Wrangler risk becoming at least temporarily irrelevant.

Too bad the Patriot and Compass were launched with some of the worst interiors we’d seen since the 1984 Dodge Duster.

Well, evidently, someone inside Chrysler (clearly not the same person that signed off on the original interior) agreed, rushing an interior redo for the 2009 model year.

Powerful and aggressive, compact sports sedans offer all the car you need if the focus is on the driving experience instead of pampering passengers. And since the segment’s ancient progenitor, the 2002, BMW’s small sedans have virtually defined the genre. Today’s 3-series is still the car that everyone else tries to emulate, but facing an onslaught of competition from a sportier Mercedes C-class, a more Germanic Lexus IS, and a strongly improved Audi A4, the BMW 3-series actually needs to fight to retain its position.

A Significant Face Lift

This mid-term face lift comes a bit early, and it is fairly extensive by BMW’s standards. Clearly visible changes include a new front bumper with friendlier-looking lower air intakes. The front grille loses its effeminate eyebrows, and the hood gains two pronounced creases, similar to those on the now-departed Z4 M versions. The front lighting units are accentuated with LED turn signals encased in a cool-looking grid. The taillights offer a similar effect, and their outer shape has been altered to match those of the 3-series coupe. The headlights regrettably keep their odd shape, despite the M3 sedan having demonstrated that the coupe’s simpler headlights work perfectly with the four-door body. Wider aluminum wheels accentuate the car’s width, and a new side-view mirror design apes the two creases on the front hood.

When the Pilot launched in 2002 as an ’03 model, it was a little ahead of its time. Back then, trucky, body-on-frame SUVs such as the Ford Explorer were the big sellers, and fuel economy wasn’t in the forefront of anyone’s mind. The Pilot’s innovative beginnings on the Odyssey minivan’s unibody architecture weren’t due to Honda’s superior foresight, however; the company simply didn’t have a body-on-frame platform to start with. So the Pilot launched by default as what is, in today’s vernacular, a crossover.

An intelligently packaged three-row, eight-passenger SUV, the Pilot was lighter and more efficient than the competition, as well as a smooth on-road driver, grabbing the large-SUV award at our annual 5Best Trucks competition six years in a row.

The competition took notice, and recently there has been an influx of competitors that have squarely targeted the Pilot: specifically, the Mazda CX-9 and GM’s quartet of large utes, the GMC Acadia, the Saturn Outlook, the Buick Enclave, and the Chevy Traverse.

Our current large-SUV champ in this ever-growing three-row class is the sporty CX-9, which knocked the Pilot off the podium for 2008. Naturally, Honda has rethought and updated the Pilot for 2009 to stay in the hunt.

Large SUVs, 600-hp speedboats, and big-displacement toys sound like a good idea when gas costs $1.86 a gallon, but when you return from the gas pump with the same bow-legged waddle you sport after your yearly colon-cancer screening, wretched excess rots in the driveway.

People far, far higher up the pay scale than us (including grocery baggers) tell us that high gas prices are here to stay, despite the current relief. Suddenly, your neighbor’s ratty ’88 Charade you hated for de-bourgeoisifying the hallowed aesthetic of your gated community is starting to seduce you like the dorky girl next door who becomes hot in all those ’80s movies. There’s only one problem: all three cylinders of a Daihatsu Charade will fill your life with suck and agony meted out mile after painful mile.

With all of Ford’s woes in America, you may be surprised to learn that its European operation is on a roll. Ford of Europe is a profitable business that offers a range of cars that are generally acclaimed as the best-handling and most fun to drive of any from a big-volume automaker.

Soon after he arrived at Ford in 2006, CEO Alan Mulally recognized the strength of engineering and design residing at Ford of Europe and decreed that its work should become the standard for Ford’s small cars around the world. So the U.S. should get versions of the popular European models just as soon as Ford can get them modified, certified, and into production. It can’t happen a moment too soon: Detroit desperately needs those attractive and economical small cars.

The key is the new Fiesta supermini, which will go on sale in Europe this fall and in the U.S. a year or so later. In the meantime, Ford of Europe has plunged into the market for crossover SUVs, or soft-roaders, just as the tide is turning against urban 4x4s due to Europeans having to shell out the equivalent of about $9 for a gallon of gas.

Ford’s iconic Mustang is due for a significant update for 2010, and while Ford is still holding back images of the freshened pony car itself, it has revealed an official image of the studly steed that will grace its grille.

Compared with the outgoing badge, the new pony has been working out: it’s more angular and defined, its head has been raised a bit and its neck tilted into the wind “to give it a feeling of greater speed and better balance.” Proportions are also more realistic, Ford says. Base Mustangs will wear badges with a tinted chrome finish, while GT models will be available with a black chrome finish. “It’s just a faster-looking steed,” said George Saridakis, design manager for the 2010 Mustang.

The Nissan Cube might be the squarest car on the planet—it’s 65.8 inches wide and 65.0 inches tall. The boxy second generation of this little economy car was introduced in Nissan’s home market in 2004, but like Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet, it never made it to U.S. shores. A new third-generation Cube, however, is headed here in 2009. To check out the shape of this particular thing to come, we ran the current Japanese-market Cube through theC/D meat grinder.

As you’d expect, it’s adorably cubelike. But along with the dimensional symmetry comes a distinct asymmetry in the design. For one, there’s no glass on the driver’s-side D-pillar, and for two, the passenger-side glass wraps around to the tailgate.

The Cube is small. Its 146.9-inch length is only 0.7 inch longer than that of a Mini Cooper S and more than 20 inches shorter than the length of that other automotive box, the Scion xB. But being nearly 10 inches taller than the Mini and using all of its width, the Cube is more spacious inside. Passengers sit upright, like in a chair. In the rearmost position, the back seats offer comfortable accommodations, and they also slide forward to make more cargo space. The seats are covered in a rattan-like fabric that feels more suited to an apartment than a car.

Having just given us a chance to drive a prototype version of the V-6–powered 2010 Camaro, GM has now released a single shot of the most-powerful version of its reincarnated pony, the SS.

While the simple front three-quarter studio shot doesn’t tell us everything about the vehicle, it tells us enough. The majority of the changes appear on the front fascia where, most notably, the upper nostril from the original Camaro concept makes its way back—just after we’d thought it had been axed. Likewise, the revised face also sports a more pronounced lower lip in addition to a crease just above the fog lights that adds to the aggressive styling.