Chevrolet expands the Cruze lineup with a five-door hatch for Europe. Everybody knows hatchbacks are king in Europe’s crowded compact-car segment, but Chevy’s data provides proof: The brand says hatches account for 65 percent of sales in the class. And now Chevy’s new Cruze will enter the fray with a five-door hatchback variant set to debut at the Paris auto show. It expands upon the Cruze sedan that has been on sale overseas since last... 

Ford’s awesome off-roader gains two real doors, drops its base engine, and picks up a few new toys. We’ve been enamored with the F-150 SVT Raptor ever since Ford unveiled the truck nearly two years ago. The off-road capability, toughness, and all-round bad-ass-ness quickly made the Raptor a C/D favorite. It’s clear we weren’t the only ones, as Ford claims that Raptors stay on dealer forecourts for a quarter of the time standard F-150s... 

Each week, our German correspondent slices and dices the latest rumblings, news, and quick-hit driving impressions from the other side of the pond. His byline may say Jens Meiners, but we simply call him . . . the Continental. Right now, traveling anywhere between Mercedes-Benz’s Stuttgart headquarters, the company’s Bremen factory, and its Papenburg test track, you are bound to run into camouflaged M-B prototypes. Just last week, I... 

When it comes to turbochargers, two isn’t necessarily better than one. What Is It? Remember, this is Car and Driver you’re reading. You know exactly what the BMW 335i sedan is. It’s one of the best sports sedans on the market, with a perfect balance of supple ride and superb handling. For 2011, BMW dropped the N54 twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six and replaced it with the N55 single-turbo 3.0-liter. With direct fuel injection, a twin-scroll... 

This horribly mutilated STI shows that development continues on the joint Toyota/Subaru sports coupe. Sports-car loving Toyota president and CEO Akio Toyoda is committed to producing a Lexus LFA for the masses—or at least some kind of affordable rear-drive sports car—possibly as early as late next year. That is, if the horribly chopped and bobbed Subaru we caught scaring small children in the desert ever fulfills its production destiny,... 

It was a great weekend for the auto-racing enthusiast: F1 from Spa, perhaps the best track on the schedule; MotoGP from Indy; ALMS from another great track, Mosport; and IndyCar at Chicago. First to Spa. The wonderful road course in the Ardennes forest of Belgium, with its long straightaways and super-fast corners, is a place for F1 cars to perform as their designers intended. Lewis Hamilton did a marvelous job in changeable conditions during... 

As Mazda moves away from its Nagare design language, this concept shows what’s next. The Mazda Shinari concept gives us a clear idea as to what the next Mazda 6 will look like. The first vehicle wearing a new Mazda design language dubbed Kodo (“Soul of Motion”), the Shinari concept is a gorgeous, if slightly overblown, four-seat coupe that looks like the lovechild of a Maserati GranTurismo and a Jaguar XF. The cab-rearward proportions;... 

A deep dive into Mazda’s new gas and diesel four-cylinders reveals huge fuel-economy gains. Around the world, automakers are grappling with the changes necessary to meet escalating fuel-economy regulations. To this end, Mazda is launching a new family of four-cylinder engines—fours power the vast majority of Mazda’s cars—called Sky-G (gasoline) and Sky-D (diesel). We drove both in prototypes of the next-gen Mazda 6 and, thankfully, either... 

A pretty big-deal little tidbit slipped out during the recent Mazda technology forum we attended: the company is tinkering with the idea of a diesel powertrain for the next-gen Mazdaspeed 3. And this came straight from Robert Davis, Mazda USA senior VP of product development, who is one of the key guys making these decisions for the U.S. market. He alleviated some of our skepticism with a few details. First, he says that the younger crowd that... 

Mazda’s recent technology forum was all about its new Sky family of inline-four diesel and gasoline engines, as well as a new six-speed automatic and chassis improvements to the next-gen Mazda 6. But we couldn’t help but ask Seita Kinai, senior managing executive officer of Mazda’s research and development, about the future of the rotary. After all, he’s the guy in control of it. “The rotary is very important for Mazda,” was Kinai-san’s... 

Another face-off between cars and people, places, and stuff with similar names. We recently pitted several cars against people, places, and stuff with similar-sounding names, but determining how the Ford Fiesta fares against Taco Bell’s Fiesta Taco Salad was just the beginning. Here we take a look at more cars to see how they stack up against their auditory doppelgangers. Keep Reading: Cars Versus Similarly Named Stuff: Round 2 –... 

More power was all the XK needed. Jaguar is confident that it got the XK right. Proof is right there on the order sheet, where there are almost no options. The factory is 13 color choices away from churning out an endless parade of identical cars. The only options are added-cost paint, a pair of wheel upgrades, a black headliner, a heated windshield, HD radio, and the Advanced Technology package, which bundles adaptive headlights (which you... 

Last Monday, we introduced our new monthly feature, “Ask a C/D Editor” and then mercilessly threw EIC Eddie Alterman at you and ran for cover. Here are his answers. v8vader : “As the enforcer of quality journalism for a major industry publication- factoring in your obvious passion for the products of said industry- do you find yourself guided more by a responsibility to readers and fellow aficionados or to the industry itself? I could... 

It’s by now common knowledge that BMW will soon sate fans of the roundel badge with an M-fettled version of the 1-series coupe, to be dubbed 1-series M Coupe . To whet your BMW-loving appetite, the company has released this overly dramatic teaser video. Swelling orchestral music, quick cuts, and faux-interference editing are great, but we’d rather see more of the car itself. The video shows the 1-series M mostly shrouded by a car cover,... 

Some folks are never satisfied with a good thing, or even a great thing. But few have turned pickiness into a business like Brabus GmbH, the German tuning company that takes Mercedes-Benz and AMG’s best offerings and makes them, in its eyes, better. The latest Benz to get the Brabus boost is arguably the most capable sports car ever to wear a three-pointed star, the new SLS AMG . The “Brabus program” for the SLS starts with a sprinkling...