I recently had the pleasure of driving the 2013 Cadillac XTS (review to come!). Though there are many elements to the car that made it such a pleasureable drive, the standout feature is Cadillac’s driver-interface, called Cadillac User Experience, or CUE. The system has been in the development process for years, and while the old system got long-in-the-tooth, this system was being perfected behind the scenes. The payout is absolutely worth it, and CUE was…
Call it a first world problems, but there are some comfort features we simply cannot live without. They may not be necessary to make the car run and get from point A to point B, we just could not handle it. Maybe we have gotten soft, but perhaps the better explanation is that cars have gotten so good that we take certain car features for granted. The features discussed here are not the stereo and…
Artfully dissecting each curve of I-70 heading up into the front range of the Rockies, you forget that this car is (or at least was) supposed to be a big, beefy American boulevard cruiser. Behind the wheel of the All-Wheel-Drive Chrysler 300S, I felt more like I was piloting a well-sorted German sedan through the Alps. Granted, there was never any confusing this V8 model with the V8-powered 300C, but the power was never lacking.…
Is one automaker as synonymous with a particular attribute as Volvo is with safety? The Swedish automaker has been at the forefront of safety tech for decades, and in the last ten years is where things have gotten interesting. The strides made in airbags alone have been impressive. What were once luxury features have now become standard across the board. The safety of the occupants in your car are no longer an option, listed next…
I miss the Acura Integra. Seldom does such a fun compact car come along that has daily usability, and is from a Japanese luxury brand. The Japanese have gotten pretty good at killing off the fun in a car when they redesign it. The Integra’s successor, the RSX, may have had roughly the same power, but was not nearly as fun to drive (The Japanese-spec ’98 Integra is widely considered to be the best-handling mass…
As infotainment and navigation systems become more and more advanced, their ease-of-use and how we interact with them play a more central role in our decision when buying a new car. On paper, a car may check all the right boxes with a large car navigation screen that lets you control all of the car’s functions, but if the menus do not make sense or work seamlessly, they become a nuisance, or even worse- a…