It was love at first sight when Alfa Romeo debuted the 4C concept car at the 2011 Geneva auto show. At that time, Alfa Romeo said it would put the car into production, but it has been an excruciating two years waiting for any news of the car.

Now the wait is over, as Alfa Romeo announced it would not only show the production car at the 2013 Geneva auto show, but will also sell this beautiful little two-seater in the United States.

The 4C is a mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive car, a perfect formula for excellent handling. The production vehicle will … Read more

This week saw a war of words between Tesla's supporters, lead by CEO Elon Musk, and New York Times' environmental reporter John M. Broder. The issue in contention was the range of the Model S electric car during a typical East Coast winter, as detailed by Broder in the article "Stalled Out on Tesla's Electric Highway."

Broder's article could be taken as an indictment against the practicality of the Model S, but reading his account closely, I did not see anything that went outside of how I would expect an electric car to behave.

Finding … Read more

Oft-criticized for its appearance, something about the Nissan Juke appealed to gearheads, enough so that the company created the Juke-R, a high-performance, and costly, version of the compact SUV using the GT-R's engine. For those of us lacking the funds for one of those custom-built rocket sleds, Nissan comes out with the Juke Nismo.

The Juke Nismo was first shown as a concept at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show.

Nismo is Nissan's sport brand, which in the retail market covers performance parts and a version of the 370Z. The introduction of the Juke Nismo should be the first … Read more

BMW has attempted to sidestep the dreaded "W word" in marketing and designing the 2013 X1 xDrive28i that recently rolled into the Car Tech garage, but have no qualms about it, the X1 is a wagon. Granted, it's a tall wagon that perhaps skirts the lower boundaries of what could be considered a crossover, but, even with the slightly increased ground clearance of a crossover, everyone who approached me about the X1 while I was out for a spin referred to the vehicle as a big blue wagon. So, I'll be referring to it as a … Read more

Hybrid and electric cars turn in the best fuel economy numbers, but if you are not ready to trust that newfangled technology, here are five gasoline-driven cars that manage very good mileage. For this round-up, we stuck with recent models we have actually driven. Instead of focusing on the highway fuel economy number, which many automakers do in their advertising, we looked at the combined city and highway numbers. … Read more

The Infiniti M37 sedan starts at $48,700, but our 2013 M56 sedan starts at a base price of $63,700. What do you get for the extra $12,500? About 1.9 extra liters of displacement that's about a Honda Civic's worth of engine size and power. That's an impressive little source of bragging rights there, but does it really make this flagship sedan better than its more modest sibling?

420 horsepower V-8 The 5.6-liter V-8 engine that spins its crank under the M56's hood outputs 420 peak horsepower and 417 pound-feet of torque. … Read more

CNET and car reviews may appear to be an unlikely combination, but new cars have become technology platforms, using electronics to inform and entertain drivers, avoid collisions, and even save fuel.

Since we began reviewing cars in 2004, automakers have increasingly included navigation, Bluetooth phone systems, and advanced technologies for playing digital music files in dashboards. In fact, the latest trend is to give cars complete data connections, letting drivers use online search to find destinations or listen to streamed music from an Internet-based service.

Given our technology focus, CNET reviews cars differently than traditional publications such as Car and … Read more

Rolls-Royce, a brand known for its excessively luxurious vehicles, is on the cusp of unveiling a third nameplate to its stable of of vehicles. It's called the Wraith, and according to Rolls, it will be the "most dynamic and powerful Rolls-Royce in history."

The Wraith will be the seventh model in the automaker's current lineup, if you count the drophead, coupe, and extended-wheelbase variants of the Phantom and Ghost as separate models. The newest Rolls appears to be a two-door coupe (no trademark, rear-hinged coach doors here) with a fastback-style roofline that flows from the base … Read more

The 2013 North American International Auto Show -- simply, the Detroit auto show for those familiar -- was the stage for quite a few debuts that ran the gamut of vehicle types, classes, and feasibility. Chevrolet pulled the wraps off of the next great American supercar, a dueling pair of luxury sedans were debuted by Infiniti and Lexus, Ford showed off a very thinly veiled look at the future of one of the best selling vehicles in the world, and glossy concept sedans and crossovers could be found around every corner.

Among this wide range of vehicles, one theme was shared: fuel efficiency. Of course, it's no surprise that the next generation of vehicles will need to sip less fuel than the last, but we found the variety of fuel-saving techniques for these concepts and production cars to be almost as interesting as the cars themselves. We've rounded up a few highlights below:… Read more