New models

At this year's CES, Harman International's Aha announced a partnership with Honda. Today Honda hosted a conference showing how that partnership would play out with a new service called HondaLink. This new connected service will let drivers listen to a variety of Internet-based stations, featuring everything from Slacker radio to Yelp listings of nearby restaurants.… Read more

Some compact cars offer Eco buttons and fewer have Sport modes. The Juke not only has both, but makes these settings more comprehensive than any other car in its class.

The car's D-Mode (which does a very techie-cool swap with the climate controls) includes a color display that shows the different features for each setting. For example, Eco mode not only detunes the throttle, but runs the air conditioning on lower power. Sport mode affects not only the engine and transmission, but also the power steering.

These D-Mode settings are made possible in part by the Juke's advanced … Read more

Tesla's model ramp-up is looking rapid indeed, as Franz von Holzhausen, the electric vehicle maker's chief designer, talked to British publication Autocar of a new model planned for 2015 to compete with the BMW 3-series. Tesla's Model S, the first car it built from the ground up, began deliveries to customers just last month. Tesla also showed off a new concept, the Model X crossover, earlier this year, which enters production at the end of 2013.

Von Holzhausen said Tesla would target a price of $30,000 for the BMW 3 competitor, and would experiment with more-radical … Read more

I like the Kia Soul more than its minibox rivals. It's cheap and cheerful, crisply styled in a way the doughy Nissan Cube should emulate. But I was disappointed in the newly revised power train. It's more advanced in terms of engine tech, output figures, and number of gears yet it all added up to a pretty gutless and vague driving experience. I don't recall that from the 2011 model. The automatic transmission is probably a poor choice for this car if you know how to shift.

It's also no small matter that Kia burdens the … Read more

High-dollar cars tend to lean on the technology pretty hard -- and tend to do it pretty badly. The cabin tech in an Aston Martin or Maserati typically doesn't equal what's in a Camry. But the big boys make up for it with exotic technology in their power trains, audio output, and sybaritic creature comforts like champagne coolers.

I was rather pleasantly surprised to find the 2012 Bentley Conti GT doesn't go too far over the top in high-tech gimmickry. Its W12 engine is exotic, yes, but has been knocking around the Volkswagen group for almost a decade. … Read more

I wasn't sure what to expect when we got the Tacoma in -- we don't review trucks very often and have no idea what we're doing when we take them off-road. But I approach the Tacoma Baja Edition like I do every car: As an everyday ride with some special talents.

The head unit in the Tacoma is more limited than what Toyota is capable of -- in fact, it only offers Bing search and Pandora radio apps, not the full complement of Entune apps like OpenTable and MovieTickets.com. Disappointing and, I feel, an ill-advised segmentation … Read more

So Lit Motors is developing what looks a lot like a motorcycle, but with several traits from a car: You don't have to balance and you don't get wet. They call this model the C-1 and the full-size running prototype is, admittedly, in a very basic state. But here we see the sort of thinking that is perhaps just this side of too radical, while performing drastic surgery on one of the last great areas of waste in our daily lives: the amount of car we lug around for no particular reason.

I like Daniel Kim, he wants to change things but isn't up "there" in a world of intangibles. He began his career as a Land Rover mechanic and, like Steve Jobs, did a little coursework at Reed College in Oregon before moving on (probably bored with the routine progression of college.) He's assembled a team of about a dozen people in a old warehouse in San Francisco that looks like a poster child for urban renewal. … Read more

With a cabin that abounds in leather and metal, the Bentley Continental GT shows true luxury coachwork. Double-paned windows and excellent engineering insulate passengers from the outside world, making the cabin of this tourer a cozy room on wheels.

All this luxury makes this coupe weigh over 5,000 pounds, but the twin-turbocharged W-12 engine does not strain even when running uphill. A six-speed automatic runs smoothly, making for effortless driving. However, put the car in sport mode, and it suddenly changes from meandering bison to swift-footed cheetah. It seems almost miraculous how this car deals with winding roads, given … Read more

Mazda has officially pulled the wraps off of the 2013 model year update to its Japanese market Mazda Roadster, known elsewhere in the world as the MX-5 Miata.

The new Roadster gets a revised front end that further evolves the Nagare design language's trademark grin into something both that's more in line with the current generation of the Mazda3, but also less obviously a big happy face. A new front spoiler frames the Roadster's chin. It's a subtle change, as mid-cycle refreshes are wont to be. The rear end of the car appears to be completely … Read more