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That probably sounds like a no-brainer...I mean, Ford's a car company, right? But the fact is that Ford and the other domestics spent most of the last two decades selling trucks and SUVs. Sure, they made cars, but they weren't the company's prime focus (way more profit in the trucks and SUVs) and consumers had long since put Toyota and Honda on the top of their family sedan shopping lists.
Well, that's all changing...and three weeks (yep, an extended test) in a Ford Fusion SE (courtesy Bell Ford in Phoenix, Arizona) goes a long way toward explaining why.
We've said it before, we'll say it again: Want to know how good a car is? Get as close to the base model as possible. In this case, the tester was one level up...the four-cylinder SE. A base price of $22,830 buys a six-speed automatic transmission, 8-way power driver's seat, an AM/FM/SiriusXM Satellite Radio with CD, mp3 capability and six speakers, automatic headlamps, foglamps, floormats and 17" alloy wheels.

Loaded?  No. Nicely equipped? Absolutely.  Cloth seats breathe nicely in the summertime, so the lack of leather was actually a plus. And the interior design...the placement of all the controls...is so intuitive, so logical, that the Fusion went from a pleasant ride in its first few days to being an extension of the driver as the days and weeks went on.
As an automotive journalist used to a week at a time, multiplying the test window could expose serious flaws or at least niggling shortcomings, but not with the Fusion. It held up. I could see living with this car for the length of a 5-year car loan. Especially when you consider that the bottom line of this one is right at about $23,500 with delivery charges.
EPA estimates: 23 city/33 highway. Camry and Accord are still strong choices, but they can no longer take for granted that it's all theirs.

Boulevard Buick in Signal Hill, California has probably seen its share of slow-moving units over its 50 years in business...but why has this brand-new 1987 Buick Regal GNX stayed on the showroom floor for almost half that time?

The fascinating story from the Los Angeles times via The Detroit Free Press.

Cell phone charger cords are unsightly and often end up in the way of important stuff like gear shifts, HVAC and audio controls. Now, GM (at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) is introducing cordless charging technology.

Full story from The Detroit News.

After 15 years as an almost-exclusive GM offering (Audi offered it briefly about a decade ago), General Motors is making OnStar available through its competitors. Vehicles from Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda will soon feature OnStar, and aftermarket versions will be on the shelves at stores including Best Buy.

While I've consistently said I wouldn't part with 2 grand for a factory nav system, OnStar's list of features and price point make a lot more sense...and upgrades to the system happen on OnStar's end.

Full story at The Detroit News.

The other weak point for the STS is that Cadillac's been planning its demise for a while...meaning not much has gone into upgrades the past few years...especially in the interior. Nothing's seriously wrong, mind you...it's just that it looks and feels a full generation behind what a 2011 luxury car should look and feel like.  And that's at the $47,280 price point. Start clicking the option boxes and you can get an STS past $60,000 without a lot of strain.

We pretty much did our post-mortem of Mercury five days early...running down the cause(s) of the impending death.

So what happens now? Well, Ford says they're going to devote their energies into revitalizing their Lincoln brand.

On paper, this makes a bunch of sense. The successful model for car sales is one mainstream brand, one luxury (think Toyota/Lexus)...with no definable space for a "middle" brand (GM is bucking that wisdom by keeping Buick).

But where exactly is Ford taking Lincoln? Part of the problem is that for all the talk of how Mercury was done in by being nothing more than some re-badged Fords, it's hard to say Lincoln's in much better shape (the MKZ is a Fusion, the MKX an Edge, the MKS a last-gen Taurus and the MKT a Flex...though those last two are pretty well disguised).

Unique products? Well, there's the Town Car...but that's a dinosaur headed to extinction with no plans for a replacement. Oh, yeah...and they still sell the Navigator. Just not many of them.

Ford says a small car (based on the next Focus) that was supposed to be a Mercury will now be a Lincoln.

Depends on how they do that...but it sounds a little down-market for where Lincoln needs to be.

The TireKicker take? Lincoln needs to take serious aim at Cadillac. They need one car at least as good as the CTS. A CTS-V competitor would have to follow. And, you may have noticed, the CTS is not a re-badged Chevrolet. They need a larger sedan to do battle with the DTS/STS replacement that's coming. They need a crossover to compete with the SRX.  And, if there's a market for a premium sedan below the CTS in the U.S., Lincoln needs to play there, too.

Until and unless the Ford Expedition becomes as good as or better than the Chevy Suburban, Lincoln doesn't need to go chasing the Escalade (especially not the pickup version).

All this means engines, materials, and enthusiasm well beyond what we've seen from Lincoln before...plus a promotion budget to get the message across to buyers (it's been 10 years since Cadillac claimed "Breakthrough" with Led Zeppelin and they're just starting to see the results). And that's going to be way more than combining the money devoted to Lincoln now with what they would have spent on Mercury.

The situation calls for a world-class luxury brand. And until and unless Ford gets that, Lincoln's in danger of being a more expensive Mercury.

The above image is page one of a four-page ad that ran in People magazine last fall to promote the GMC Terrain SUV.

Well, as Rolling Stone once famously said about Jim Morrison of The Doors,


But in Einstein's case "dead" doesn't mean "he can't sue us from beyond the grave". For while Einstein didn't will his body to science (there's dispute whether his brain was preserved against his wishes) and was cremated, Einstein did leave his publicity rights to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is suing GM for the unauthorized use of Einstein's image.

General Motors...even the new, smaller, GM, should have a legal staff that knows (or at least can learn) this stuff. The only upside for them? The university is going easy on them. The suit is for $75,000...a little less than two loaded GMC Terrains.

GM's ditched its logo from the flanks of its cars and from its advertising. And though you'd have to be of a certain age to recall,  it was once associated with a slogan: "GM. Mark of Excellence".




Well, now Cadillac has put distance between itself and GM in its advertising, yet somehow comes up with a tag line that's derivative of the "Mark of Excellence".



Which begs the question: When spending $40-50K for a midsize luxury sport sedan, do you want "leadership" or "excellence"?  My take: Excellence, thank you very much. And Cadillac's old positioner "Standard of the World" strikes me as promising more of what they need to build if they intend to actually play in BMW, Audi and Mercedes' ballgame.

Oh...and there's this: A big hat tip to Peter DeLorenzo at Autoextremist, who points out that the new Cadillac ads are from the same agency that did this Jaguar spot. See if you can spot the similarities.

On second thought, try to find some differences. It'll take less time.

The wait between thinly disguised show car and production Camaro was so long that a lot of people were predicting the real thing would be a dud...that the public would be bored silly before the first one was sold.

Boy, were they wrong.

No, it's not going to be 1967 all over again, when 220,000 Camaros rolled out of showrooms and into driveways across America...100,000 is probably more like it. But in this day and age, that's an impressive number for a limited-use vehicle (have you tried the back seat?) with two more or less equally attractive direct competitors.

Part of the appeal here has to be the magic Chevy has wrought with the base V6. At 305 horsepower, it's five horsepower more than the '09 Mustang V8, and only ten less than the 2010 Mustang V8. The fact that it can get 29 miles per gallon on the highway no doubt sweetens the deal for newly-green buyers.

And then there's the look. It takes a lot of critical thinking to get past the "Wow!" stage when you walk up to the new Camaro, especially in the right color (ours was the yellow you see above). Once that critical thinking is mustered, though, the only downer is the car seems a bit big...especially if you've been exposed to the first-gen (1967-69) car this one emulates. But the truth is, there's no way to build a car with the capabilities of this one, and the equipment the government mandates and buyers demand and have it be as light and lithe as the ones from 40 years ago.


And the cluster of gauges down on the floor console? Well, we've learned way too much about ergonomics and keeping our eyes on the road the past four decades to think that's anything but a gimmick with no real value for the driver.

Ah...driving.

For the purposes of television, I took the RS out to the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving near Phoenix and spent half an hour or so on the autocross track. The RS handles sweetly...especially given its size and weight. The SS, with a heavier 425-horsepower V8 over its nose, probably won't move as nimbly.

Base price starts in the 22s...our tester bottom-lined at $30,160. These days, for this kind of performance, that's a bargain. It goes a long way toward explaining how Camaro is overcoming a late start, stiff competition, a bad economy and a burgeoning "sports cars=bad" mentality with a car that draws its inspiration from before its target buyers were born.

UPDATE: Did another week in another RS recently...this one with a six-speed manual...makes a big difference in performance (which is already stellar)...and kept the  price below $30K ($29,175). EPA estimates 17 city/29 highway.

If only Chevy can fix the interior darkness and visibility issues (beyond suggesting we buy the 2011 Camaro Convertible, that is)