That's the 2013 Ford Taurus. I was going for the old 'reflection in a puddle of water' shot, and maybe went a little too far.
We're somewhere between Portland Oregon and the Pacific Ocean, and when you see moss that's three cm thick on the trees, you know they're not unfamilar with rain in this part of the world.
Ford has made several upgrades to the Taurus, Mustang and Oakville-built Flex for 2013. We'll have more details on all of them in next weekend's Wheels, and on www.wheels.ca.
580 horsepower.
$58,000.
Do the math.
Is this the most spectacular supercar value ever?
On a hundreds of horsepower-per-dollar basis, nothing can touch it.
And it's more - much more - than simply stuffing a 6.2 litre supercharged V8 under the hood.
Although as we know from the Corvette ZR1 and Cadillac CTS-V, that's not a bad way to start.
And, it's built in Oshawa.
Full details in next weekend's Wheels, and on wheels.ca.
BTW, maybe it's just me and my diseased mind, but to me, the Camaro's taillights always look like the logo for those 'Underalls'...
Is the McLaren MP4-12C, soon to be launched in North America, as good as the fabled Ferrari 458 Italia?
Find out - well, find out MY opinion - in this weekend's Wheels section, and on www.wheels.ca.
Got an e-mail from the owner of a 2011 Ford F-Series pick-up today.
It has the base 3.7 litre V6 engine, which I have driven (shared by Mustang, incidentally) and reported on - great engine, good power, good fuel economy numbers.
But he complains that he gets nowhere near the advertised fuel economy, and feels he has been duped.
He also mentions that the US EPA numbers are quite a bit lower than Canada's, even after adjusting for the difference in our gallon. The US numbers are actually closer to what he is recording in the Real World.
He says he has always been a GM loyalist but was swayed by these numbers, and he and some of his other Ford-owning buddies feel they've been misled.
Thought I'd share my response to him with all of you - comments and any further info any of you can share always welcome.
*******
As you know, the mileage tests are conducted according to government-mandated protocols, which are conducted under very specific conditions - warm temperatures, etc. - and which are monitored pretty closely. The numbers the manufacturers report are what they got on those tests, and the purpose isn't necessarily to tell you exactly what YOU'LL get, but to provide a comparison for one vehicle versus another.
One thing we know for sure - the Canadian Car of the Year for 2012 will be Korean.
The top three finalists, each of which won its category at last October's Car of the Year Test Fest conducted by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC), are the Hyundai Accent, the Hyundai Elantra, and the Kia Optima.
Given that Elantra (right) was also chosen North American Car of the Year this week at the Detroit Auto Show might give you a hint, although the two awards have not always coincided.
Accent offers a lot of the Elantra's same attributes - style, economy, value - in the lower-priced sub-compact segment.
Optima is simply a gorgeous piece, which is also a good car to drive.
This clean sweep is a reflection of how far the Korean industry has come in a few short years, cranking out cars that aren't merely inexpensive, but also look good, and drive well too.
The finalists for Utility Vehicle (a.k.a. 'truck') of the Year are BMW X3 (also a finalist in the North American contest), Dodge Journey, and Volkswagen Touareg TDI Clean Diesel.
Harder to pick a favourite here. Even if it were strictly on the basis of 'Most Improved Player', X3 versus Journey would be a close-run thing. The old X3 wasn't very good, the new one IS very good.
The Journey, always a strong 'cubic-metres-per-dollar' vehicle as reflected in its strong sales success in Canada, gains a new and dramatically better interior which turns it from a vehicle you might have to buy to a vehicle you might actually WANT to buy.
A different variation of Touareg has also won this award before, so your guess is as good as mine.
Finalists for Best New Design are Hyundai Veloster, Jaguar XKR-S and Range Rover Evoque.
Again, a Korean car - for a design award? That really is something. I'll also bet Optima wasn't far behind.
The big Jag (left) is merely sensational to look at, especially in the French Racing Blue of the test car.
And Evoque won the overall North American Truck of the Year award this week too, and its styling was surely part of that.
There is a small overlap of the juries for these two competitions.
The North American contest is judged by a panel of 50 journalists, of which maybe five (including yours truly) are also members of AJAC. While there is a ride-and-drive program, attendance thereat is strictly optional, and only about half the voters actually drive the vehicles back-to-back.
The Canadian contest brings all the new vehicles to a central location (Niagara-on-the-Lake) for four days of back-to-back, same-roads-same-day comparison by over 70 journalists from coast to coast. It is, we believe, the most comprehensive and objective such program in the world.
The Canadian results will be announced at the start of the Press Day for the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto on Thursday, February 16, 2012.
Looks like the end of a long and winding road for SAAB. The 'other' Swedish car company, now owned by the Dutch Spyker organization, filed for bankruptcy a few days ago.
SAAB began building cars in the late 1940s. SAAB was originally an aircraft company - "SAAB" stands for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget" (roughly, Swedish Airplane Company Limited).
Sweden was politically neutral during World War II, but SAAB built some pretty good military airplanes to help defend its homeland, just in case.
Once hostilities ended, the engineers set their skills to land-bound transport.
The original SAAB even looked a bit like an airplane fuselage without wings.
Two-stroke engines initially, and always (at least until nearly the end) front-wheel drive.
SAABs were always unique and characterful. Their cheekiness, plus amazing results in international rallying thanks to Eric "On the Roof" Carlsson's brilliant driving, attracted a small but fanatical customer base.
SAAB was an engineering pioneer in a lot of ways. That front-wheel drive thing, strong in aerodynamics (that airplane heritage), one of the first car makers to introduce turbocharging in semi-mass-market cars.
But it always struggled to find a 'critical mass' market.
When General Motors lost the fight with Ford to buy Jaguar in 1989, The General decided it needed an up-scale European brand anyway, and settled on SAAB.
There were always suspicions that GM didn't really know what it had in SAAB, or exactly what to do with it.
Car-making has always been a capital-intensive business, and it got more so in the late 20th century as ultra-expensive emissions and safety technology especially made it increasingly difficult for small car makers to survive.
GM tried to graft some of the SAAB character onto platforms used for Opels, Cadillacs and other GM models.
The challenge was this: if GM took away the charming SAAB weirdness, they'd lose the traditional SAAB aficionado.
But if they aimed for a wider audience and made SAABs too much like, say, BMWs, why would customers not just buy BMWs?
Which, by and large, they did.
Various other efforts to expand SAAB's product range included SAAB badges on a Subaru Impreza (left, the 9-2X, the infamous 'SAABaru'), or on a face-lifted Chevy Trailblazer SUV (the 9-7X).
Hey; if Porsche and Volvo could sell SUVs...
Actually, SAAB's suspension engineers didn't do a bad job on the 9-7X; the marketing and sales staffs just couldn't push either of these 'hybrids' (in the pejorative sense of that word) off buildings onto unsuspecting customers.
When GM went through its restructuring a couple of years ago, SAAB was among the first brands tossed out of the lifeboat. If Oldsmobile and Pontiac didn't make it, what chance did SAAB have?
"None," is the answer.
The remains of the company got tossed around, with Dutch, Chinese and Russian interests involved. It could have been a John Grisham novel if only someone had got murdered.
The final nail appeared to be GM's refusal to extend licencing rights for various technologies to a Chinese auto maker, with which GM would be competing in that growing market.
A sad ending to colourful story.
Got an e-mail from a reader taking me to task for referring to the drive train of my weekend Wheels road test subject the Subaru Impreza as being "four-wheel drive."
He said he was "frankly disappointed" at what he called a "glaring error" because he said the Impreza - every Subaru - has an "all-wheel drive" system, not a "four-wheel drive" system.
No error here, glaring or otherwise.
The Subaru Impreza has four wheels.
All are driven.
Hence, four-wheel drive.
"All-wheel drive" is a misleading and imprecise term.
A two-wheel drive motorcycle (yes, there is such a thing...), a three-wheel drive tricycle (not sure about that...) or a six-wheel drive army truck (yes again...) would each be an "all-wheel drive" vehicle.
In the automotive world, the term "all-wheel drive" was co-opted (if not invented) by marketing people to attempt to distinguish between part-time four-wheel drive systems in (older) trucks and full-time (sometimes; not always...) systems in passenger cars.
This attempt is unsuccessful. The correct terms actually should be "manually-engaged part-time four-wheel drive" - what you see with a shift lever in older trucks, or newer trucks and most four-wheel drive passenger cars which require pushing a button to engage the "other" pair of wheels; "part-time automatically-engaged four-wheel drive" - what you see on most of today's four-wheel drive vehicles, even trucks, where the "other" pair of wheels is engaged whenever the system detects slippage at the main driving wheels; and "full-time four-wheel drive" - when all four wheels are being fed torque all the time, usually in varying quantities, and which best describes Subaru's systems.
I guess all of these terms take up too much room.
But from an engineering perspective, "all-wheel drive" is meaningless, irrelevant and imprecise.
I am an engineer, and just refuse to be sucked into marketing bafflegab. If I were a marketing person I'd still be working for Procter and Gamble!
So, you can call it what you will.
Me?
Four wheels.
All are driven.
Four-wheel drive.
Couldn't be simpler.
Anybody know another Hybrid that costs $127,395?
True, I have been averaging around 8.8 litres per 100 km (32 mpg, give or take) which is pretty impressive for a big fast car like this.
That said, a hundred and twenty seven grand buys you a lot of gasoline...
But to be able to park beside Priusses and Insights, and save a few steps to the Ikea Warehouse Exit door?
Priceless...
