Sports Car Reviews

Los Angeles Gerhard Richter, the development chief of BMW's M division, practically gnashed his teeth in frustration when he told us last spring that the BMW M5 would be made available with a six-speed manual transmission in 2007. He knew that rabid BMW puris more

Alois Ruf is the warrior monk of the Porsche business, religiously dedicated to high performance. His shop in the tiny village of Pfaffenhausen to the west of Munich is a place where people from all over the world come to get in touch with the true spirit of P more

It's one of those amazing roads you can't help but come back to: a rhythmic mix of fast and slow sections, first wide open and then tree-lined on both sides, mostly smooth but dotted with patchwork surfaces here and there, a mild yet steady climb from the bott more

Every supermodel has her favorite catwalks. In the case of the Alfa Romeo 8C Spider concept car, the most notable appearances so far have included Pebble Beach (concours d'elegance), Goodwood (Festival of Speed), the Nrburgring (Oldtimer Grand Prix), and Ares more

We drive the Volkswagen Iroc concept, which foretells the new Scirocco's 2009 arrival in Europe and possibly the United States. more

You don't so much drive an Ariel Atom as shotgun it through the landscape. Wind goes up your shorts. Bugs go down your gullet. Gravel, freed from the bonds of gravity by the Atom's passing vacuum, wanders up into your underpants. Faced with the whole of creat more

When you boil it all down, there's only one thing to say about the new Mini: it looks a lot like the old Mini. Yes, it's better; yes, it's faster; yes, the engineers continually emphasize the number of parts that aren't shared with the outgoing car. But the po more

The original Volkswagen Rabbit was an excellent small car. Unfortunately, VW soon began to Americanize it, thinking we wanted more luxury features. We didn't. It was already the best in its class, and the embellishments watered down all its German-engineered a more

Honda's roller-skate-sized Civic put the company on the map in America during the first gasoline shock back in 1973, and since then, Honda has been cranking out successive--and usually excellent--iterations of its small car, regardless of where a gallon of unl more

The Mazdaspeed 3 is the hottest sport compact to roll this year. Check the facts: 263 hp, a fortified chassis, and a racy cabin for a base price of $22,835. Radar guns see a demure econobox. The reality is that affordability, practicality, and stealthy velocit more

You know what I'd do if I owned a 2007 Porsche Boxster? I'd find someone with a 2006 Boxster, and I'd pull up next to him and say, "Excuse me, but what's it like to have only 240 horsepower? I have 245 horsepower, see, so I'm curious how the other half lives." more

We don't tend to think of the Germans as creative visionaries--they're far too logical for that. But every so often, Germans solve an engineering problem so creatively that it becomes art. more

There are two Bentley worlds--old money, embodied by the Arnage and the Azure; and arriviste, represented by the Continental GT family. While the classic rear-wheel-drive cars were conceived at the end of the steam age, the four-wheel-drive models were born so more

Welcome to Innsbruck, the 800-year-old former outpost of the Hapsburg Empire, where we've come to drive the new BMW 3-series coupe, the car that for centuries (OK, maybe it only seems that long) has been the most notable of semi-affordable sport coupes. more

BRASELTON, GEORGIA Six people. That's how many employees Lotus Cars USA had on its payroll in 2003. Six. Lotus sold seventy-five cars in America that year, and all of them were Esprits. more